Asalamu Alaikum.

I have been trying to keep my posts as short and sweet, insh’Allah as possible lately.

But this will have to be a long one, subhanAllah. Please bare with me.

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Insh’Allah I would like to use this post to make a statement for the Left about how to orient ourselves as Leftists towards religions and religious people. This approach I think, should be adopted from Liberals, to Anarchists, to Socialists, and to Progressives in general. Insh’Allah.

I think that this is an important issue for three main reasons.

1) It is not uncommon for me to hear people on the “Left” make insulting and bigoted comments about religious people. SubhanAllah.

2) As struggles around various issues become stronger, struggles in communities of color will become more intense. As communities of color begin to fight back, many atheist comrades will find themselves organizing side by side with religious people and even religious leaders, as many religious centers are also political centers. Mash’Allah!

So making bigoted comments against religious people will not fly when, for example, you’re organizing for Immigrants Rights at a Church, or for Palestinian Liberation at a Masjid (mosque).

Of course, all of these criticisms also apply to people of particular religious faiths, towards other people of other religious faiths, or of no faith (i.e. Muslims towards Jews, Atheists towards Catholics, etc.).

3) The incident at Fort Hood has blown open the issue of Islamophobia into the public sphere in a new way. The absolute absence of any organized response by the Left to the incident at Fort Hood has shown how deeply Islamophobia has penetrated and atrophied the Anti-war Movement and the International Left in general. Its been about eight years that the Anti-war Movement has existed, and it has still not broken off the chains of Islamophobia.

If the Anti-war Movement is to succeed, and if the International Left is to grow, then the Left will need to be able to respond to these sort of incidents with immediate condemnation of the wars in the Middle East of Capitalism as the catalysts for catastrophes like the event at Fort Hood.

The Left will need to be able to call protests for the expanded, free medical care for all active duty soldiers and veterans, to call for the immediate end to the wars in the Middle East which butchers millions of people in the Middle East, and destroys US soldiers physically and psychologically in the process.

So let us begin, insh’Allah…
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Alhamdulillah, the first and most important thing to say is that freedom of religion is a civil right.

Any individual should be able to choose to follow whatever religion(s) they want, or to follow none at all.

This is the first thing to keep in mind, insh’Allah.

No one should ever be pressured to lose their faith, nor should anyone ever be pressured to join any faith. Everyone should be free to practice whatever religion(s) they feel is right for them, insh’Allah.

For Socialists, it is important to defend civil rights. Socialists should not support any particular religion, or even Atheism, but should lend our support to defending freedom of religion.

In that same vein, Socialists should not support marriage as an institution, but we should defend people’s civil right to marriage, insh’Allah. Two major examples being that even though marriage as an institution is historically a product of class society, we defend the right of people of different races to intermarry (as in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s) and the right of LGBTI couples to marry (as in the contemporary Equal Marriage Movement).
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It is important to identify exactly what Marx and Lenin said about religion.

As Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in the Los Angeles Times in October 2008, Marx is “still the most eloquent and thoughtful of the nonbeliever.” Rodriguez went on to  write, as Phil Gasper of ISR issue 63 pointed out, that “Marx came to understand religion ‘as a symptom and not the disease,’ and ‘as a source of solace’ that would not disappear ‘until the sources of people’s pain – an unfair economic system – had been eradicated.’”

Marx’s 1844 quote is often mis-quoted and mis-understood:

Religious suffering is at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

If as a Socialist I only communicate one thing, insh’Allah it is that all things must be put into context. In that paragraph Marx explains several things. He explains that religion is often the source of sanctuary for the oppressed. And that it can also be the rallying point for resistance. The particular line that compares religion to opium, needs to be specifically put into context as it is the most often quoted part.

Opium, in the 1840s, was a medicine. It was used to help people in pain. Opium’s modern stigmatization as a debilitating vice is not the context that Marx had intended and is a used as a misrepresentation of what he in fact meant. His intention was to say that many people use religion to help aleve their pain, and to cope with the truly oppressive and exploitative conditions that people deal with under capitalism and all class societies.

Sharon Smith, in her article in the International Socialist Review (ISR) titled Women and Islam, quotes a lot from Lenin and his stances. Most importantly and most necessary for comrades to remember is that, as Smith pointed out:

Lenin argued, “we must not only admit workers who preserve their belief in God into the Social-Democratic Party, but must deliberately set out to recruit them; we are absolutely opposed to giving the slightest offense to their religious convictions, but we recruit them in order to educate them in the spirit of our program.”

Lenin also stated:

The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a truly private affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind.

Alhamdulillah, I think it is important to point out that Lenin, the person always portrayed as the enemy of religion, is saying that it is important for comrades not to offend religious people and that we ultimately hope to protect religion as a private affair, as it should be. Mash’Allah!
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It is also important to understand that the working class is a heterogeneous (diverse) body.

Some workers are dedicated to being Atheist. Some are dedicated to being religious. Most workers are probably somewhere in between. Of the workers that are religious, they may belong to any (or several) of many different religions from around the world, and any of the different branches or sects of those religions.

So even within religious communities there is much diversity.

This is important to understand because as socialists we seek to do two things:

1) recruit the most class conscious workers to our program of working class self emancipation (i.e. Marxism).

2) we want to use our socialist organization(s) to provide radical, revolutionary leadership for the working class, to help point the way forward.

In both of these instances, we are working among the masses of people that are heterogeneous in their backgrounds, identities, religious/non-religious beliefs, etc.

So in both instances we are trying to recruit from the heterogeneous working class, as well as trying to work within the heterogeneous working class.

So to have a Socialist organization that reflects the diversity of the working class (though reflects the consciousness of only the most class conscious members of that class), requires also recruiting from the religious communities.

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The next step to understand is that not all class conscious Socialists are Atheists.

I don’t really think I need to explain this, but it is very patronizing towards the religious community to assume that all socialists are Atheists. This is an unfair generalization and does not meet the facts.

See previous section.

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While what it means to be of a religion can vary, the politics of an individual are separate from an individual’s religious beliefs, regardless of whether or not they are believers.

People are shaped by their experiences and the ideas that they are exposed too, while also shaping the world around them, and the ideas in that world.

In that same way, a person’s religious ideas will not necessarily influence their political beliefs anymore than the absence of religion would influence someone’s political ideas.

What must be kept in mind is that, based on an individual’s exposure to certain ideas coupled with their life experience, an individual will become right-wing or Left-wing. If they are religious, they will justify their ideas through their religion, regardless of what those ideas are.

This explains how, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were both religious people, and saw their religious ideas as their inspiration to fight for Left-wing goals. Dr. George Tiller, the assassinated Abortion Rights doctor, was also a Church-going Christian.

Conversely, subhanAllah, the monster, Scott Roeder, that murdered him was also a Christian that identified his right-wing politics as justified by his faith.

So someone’s faith, or even having faith, does not immediately determine their politics. An individual’s politics are justified by their religious beliefs, not the other way around.

It is also important to say that being an Atheist does not mean that the individual is inherently Left-wing either. While folks like Marx and Lenin are great examples of Left-wing Atheists, there are also important and famous examples of right-wing Atheists as well.

Two quick examples:

Sartre was an infamous Zionist.

Nietzsche was an infamous Social Darwinist, and frequenter of brothels.

Again: a person’s politics influence, inform, and shape the rest of their ideas; religious or not.

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There is a class divide between ruling class religious people/leaders, and working class religious people/leaders.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, lets use the example of the Catholic Church (P.S. I often use Catholicism for my examples because for most of my life I was Catholic).

The average religious person, just like average human being in general, is working class. But the leaders of institutions that dictate to the followers what it means to be a follower are generally members of the ruling class.

So, in the example of the Catholic church, the Pope is clearly a member of the ruling class. The influence, affluence, and general power that the Pope carries is immense. Though the Pope has no legal influence in international matters, his social weight, and the wealth of the Catholic Church, have immense  influence in local and international matters.

The interests of the Catholic Church as an Oligarchic institution, and the interests of that Oligarchy (the Bishops, the Pope, the Cardinals, etc.) are the interests of the rich. Their interests are to stay rich, to stay powerful, and to keep the masses on a leash to retain their own power.

Conversely, the average Catholic follower is a working class person with working class interests and demands. The average Catholic has to deal every day with the pressures of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The average Catholic has to deal every day with job-insecurity, with low-wages, lack of access of health care (which includes abortion and birth control), and other social services, etc.

Therefore the interests of the average Catholic are potentially revolutionary interests, which run up against the reactionary interests of the Catholic Church’s rulers.

This class divide permeates all class societies, and all religious communities within class societies.

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It is also important to add, that many of the negative aspects attributed to religions  are negative aspects of class society that have been adapted and molded by religions.

Sexism, homophobia, the entrenchment of the nuclear family, gender norms, racism, etc are all negative aspects born out of class society. In an effort to divide the masses (to pit them against each other), and institutionalize private property (and the transfer of private property), these negative characteristics of class society had to be developed to create a class society.

These things were not developed by religions, they were given their shape and form by religions. But the things themselves (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) are products of class stratification, and will only disappear with the overthrow of class stratification; not with the overthrow of religion.

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So where did religions come from?

Before there were organized religions, it is thought that religions developed as a way to explain what seemed otherwise unexplainable (i.e. good harvests, good hunts, famines, mild summers, scorching draughts, etc.). These primitive forms of religion, or belief in other worlds, or other-worldly creatures, existed even in proto-communist societies.

These religions did not develop into the powerful institutions that they are now until class societies began to develop.

The prediction is that with the abolition of class society, that religions will fade because it is thought that religions were created to fill the vacuum before the advent of science and industry. So through socialism and communism, it is thought that religions will fade away.

This may true. This may also not be true, and it is important to recognize that no one knows exactly what will happen to human cultures in a revolutionary society. One thing that is certain is that it is possible for someone to be simultaneously religious and revolutionary. It was also true that religions, in a different form, existed in proto-communist societies. Therefore it is not impossible for religions to continue in a revolutionary society.

Moreover, just as it is possible that marriage and genders may disappear in a revolutionary society, Socialists should not ridicule people who struggle for marriage rights, who identify with a particular gender that disagrees with the status quo (i.e. a “man” who identifies as a “woman” or a person that identifies by no gender), or who identify as religious.

Whether or not marriage exists in a revolutionary society; whether or not genders exist in a revolutionary society; whether or not religion exists in a revolutionary society: we need to stand in solidarity.

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So what do Socialists have to offer the religious community? Why should people who are religious, but interested in socialist politics support International Socialist Revolution? Why should religious communities trust organizations that were tainted by Stalinism and Maoism as being anti-religious?

All religious communities suffer under capitalism. Capitalism creates the racism, sexism, and homophobia that plagues all of society, including religious communities. Just as capitalism fuels racism, sexism, and homophobia, it also fuels bigotry towards various religious minorities.

It was capitalist expansion that fueled the divisions in India between Hindus and Muslims. It was capitalism that fueled anti-Semitism to scapegoat Jews during the brutal beginnings of industrialization. It is capitalism that tries to pit the religious communities against Atheists (and vice-versa) also as scapegoats.

A socialist society would be a society that is created through the emancipation of the working class, by the working class as a class, for the working class. A socialist society would be one in which the walls of racism, sexism, homophobia, and intolerance towards the religious/Atheists would be torn down.

A person’s personal ideas about religion could be their own private affair, without having to deal with Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc. Moreover, religious faiths would be freed to expand their ideas in a new setting.

The racialization of religions would be destroyed so that people would be freed to experiment with different ideas and explore their spirituality, or to come to their own conclusion about rejecting all religions and being Atheist, without fear of any form of reprisal.

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In closing, the Left should not join in with the right-wing in bigotry. Bigotry towards religious people is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice that is still frequently expressed with little or no regard for those communities.

Any and all ideas of religious people being inherently backwards must be met immediately in the same way that racism, sexism, and homophobia would be met: with immediate rebuke.

No faith should be treated as if it were backwards. Religious faith is precisely that: Faith. It can neither be proved nor disproved; hence it is faith. Moreover, it is not anyone’s business to attempt to prove or disprove to anyone whether any religion is “correct” or whether no religious beliefs are “correct.” The point is to embrace our comrades and to respect each other.

What matters is what a person’s political orientation is, and whether or not they trust that the working class must, as a class, be its own liberator. This is the task of Socialists today: to win the working class to Marxism (the radicalizing minority now, the great majority of the masses during periods of potential revolution).

The recent incident at Fort Hood has shown that unfortunately many people on the Left still shares bigoted ideas with the Right-wing towards the Muslim community. This position needs to be immediately corrected. Insh’Allah.

If you are a living, breathing person (at least as it is currently defined) who resides in Anchorage, Alaska, you have noticed a tension in the air over the past year. It started with the election, which pit neighbor against neighbor on a more pronounced platform than ever before, with both our own Governor making headlines as she toured the lower 48 on the Straight Talk Express, and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich taking on Uncle Ted for his Senate seat. Most people had never even known that profound differences in ideology existed from one mailbox down the street to the next. But all of a sudden, things were looking a lot different, and many people did not care for it one bit; shocked at the reality they had unintentionally unearthed. The predisposition that many of us had to stop when someone has a flat tire, or to be ready to break out the jumper cables when you see someone looking distraught, staring at their old car in the Fred Meyer parking lot, seemed to wither away and devolve into public screaming matches over health care, stimulus money, equal rights for our LGBT, growing homelessness, the city budget in Anchorage, among a host of other divisive topics. All of a sudden, the sense of community that we’ve all shared with each other – the neighborly convictions that have defined Alaskan hospitality – have turned into angry sneers seen in the rear view in reaction to whatever bumper stickers are placed on your car and therefor define you. The times are changing, and they are changing quickly. But, for all the tension that already exists, and has been mounting…

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Meet Christopher Kurka, a 22 year old Eagle River resident who quietly submitted a proposal for an initiative to Lt. Governor Craig Campbell back in August, which Campbell approved in late October, allowing Kurka to begin collecting the 32,734 signatures needed to get the initiative placed on the ballot for Alaskans to vote on. The topic? Kurka seeks to afford constitutional rights and protections to the unborn. And, if successful, our state constitution would be amended to reflect that, causing a maelstrom of possible, and probable, implications.

Although both the Lt. Governor and Attorney General Dan Sullivan said that this does not seek to outlaw abortion or overturn Roe v. Wade, the intent of such a proposal, and admittedly it’s author, is exactly that. The summary for the bill, suggested by Campbell, reads: “This bill would extend legal person status to the pre-birth stages of human development. Under this bill a legal person would be recognized starting from the point of conception through birth and until death. This bill would not amend or repeal existing state law regulating abortion, but could impact some areas of the law to extend rights prior to birth.”

“The state responsibility is to protect our rights, and the most fundamental of those rights is the right to life. So what we’re doing here is asking the people of the state to sign this initiative, to get it on the ballot, and then to vote for it, so the unborn will be recognized as a person just like the rest of us,” Kurka told KTUU back in October.

His argument seeks to change the most common framing of the debate around abortion. Just this past week, we’ve seen the fairly publicized battle between Catholic Bishop Tobin and Patrick Kennedy heat up regarding whether or not pro-choice Catholics should be allowed communion. On MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews interviewed Tobin and made this statement:

“What should be the penalty for a young woman, or a girl even, to have an abortion, and if there’s no penalty for it, are you really outlawing it?”

His broader point was that it is one thing to take a personal, moral stance against abortion because it conflicts with your own individual world view or ideology. But, to this point, we have not impacted other people who may

from KTUU

have a differing belief, nor have we imposed sanctioned against people for ending a pregnancy, because while we may disagree on the practice, the majority of Americans do not feel that the act is a criminal one. It is a deeply troubling decision a would-be mother must make; but we have not felt that it is one she should serve time for.

This initiative seeks to change this policy. It seeks to make abortion criminal, and would seek to prosecute women who terminate pregnancies for murder or manslaughter. And the implications could be a lot further reaching. Despite the Lt. Governor’s explanation that finds the proposal acceptable; that it does not seek to “amend or repeal existing state law regulating abortion,” it would have to, if written into law. If constitutional rights are afforded at the point of conception, which is the specific aim of Mr. Kurka’s efforts, then we could very easily be looking at the abolition of choice, contraception being made criminal, rape and incest resulting in children born into horrendous and often violent living conditions, among countless other concerns. And we would be forced to try in a court of law those who performed and/or underwent abortions as murderers. I hate to sensationalize the radical implications that could possibly ensue, but this is the exact wording of the proposal. This is in no way a hyperbolic account of possible outcomes.

Jeffrey Mittman and the ACLU also find the language in the proposal to contradict the law unconstitutionally.

“The ACLU is supporting a lawsuit filed this week by plaintiffs that include Vic Fischer, a former Democratic legislator and delegate to the state constitutional convention. The suit argues that Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell shouldn’t have certified the measure and seeks to stop the sponsors from collecting signatures to get it on the ballot.” [ADN]

“To me, it looks like they are trying to return us to back-alley abortions,” Clover Simon, Alaska vice president of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest told the Alaska Star.

As Matthews and others point out, thus far the Catholic church as a whole has not gotten behind this sort of legislation, and hesitate when suggesting the idea of prosecuting women for undergoing the procedure. But fetal personhood proposals are popping up all over the country, in states as red as Montana, blue as California, and confused as Florida.

Be assured, we will see many in our religious community jump on board, especially in the wake of the troubles getting the needed signatures for the “Parental Consent” law petition trumpeted by the Alaska Family Council.

The Focus on the Family off-shoot, led locally by Jim Minnery, has been frantically attempting to meet the required number of people to sign their support which would force minors to notify their parents when they sought to terminate a pregnancy. This is the result of a similar billed which passed in 1997, but was struck down in 2007 when the Alaska Supreme Court found the law unconstitutional, citing their stance that sharing this information with parents violated the privacy of their teenage daughters. While a parental notification and consent law might sound beneficial, as a first impression, it loses merit when taking into account that Alaska ranks as the worst state in the union when it comes to rape, and in addition, according to Health and Human Services:

Since 1976, Alaska has ranked in the top five states in the nation for the highest rate of reported rape per capita. In 1993, Alaska ranked 1st in the nation: highest per capita incidence of rape.
Alaska has 6 times the national average of reported child sexual assault.
1 in 4 girls before the age of 12 and 1 in 6 boys before the age of 18 nationally will be sexually assaulted.
Fairbanks Health Center surveyed 419 clients over a 3-week period and found that 24% reported physical abuse in the past 6 months while 39% reported some form of sexual abuse (1995).
In 3 out of 4 reported cases, the victim knew the offender, the most commonly reported type of sexual abuse is a father who commits incest with his daughter–usually the eldest daughter.
As many as 4 out of 5 offenders were sexually assaulted as children.
One-third of incest victims’ mothers were sexually abused as children.
Alaska’s rape rate is 2.2 times the national average overall.

So, maybe being legally forcing kids to tell dad that they’re pregnant after he just lost his job and has been drinking all month isn’t the greatest idea.

Most Alaskans get this, even if they do not agree with abortion. But the Alaska Family Council is determined to curb choice at every turn. Minnery’s AFC newsletter:

“You’ll find more info on our website at www.alaskansforparentalrights.org but suffice it to say that we need roughly 40,000 signatures and to date – we are about 10,000 short of that mark.  We have only a few precious weeks to get the remaining signatures and we are simply not going to reach our goal without more churches stepping forward.”

With the story about this new fetal personhood initiative, which would take care of the parental consent notification as well as the larger issue, the website advertised above is already offline. They can’t get the signatures one way, so they’re on to try their luck with a different extreme. I don’t think it’s too mavericky to assume that Wal*churches like Prevo’s Anchorage Baptist Temple will follow suit as the knowledge of this initiative begins to circulate.

As for Christopher Kurka, his fight goes on. In a bold display of creepy disconnect (that may ring all too familiar with many in Anchorage), he tells the Alaska Star: “This is what I enjoy. Some people have a favorite football or basketball team they cheer for. For me, this is my sports team, and I am a dedicated fan.”

Kurt Nimmo / Infowars – November 28, 2009

Jeckyll Island, GA

Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve mob boss, is running scared. He is deathly afraid of an audit of his criminal organization.

“These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States,” Bernanke wrote in the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post.

Bernanke penned his tribute to central banking and globalism prior to his scheduled testimony before a Senate panel on his renomination to serve a second four-year term as Fed mob boss. Bankster tool Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, tried to derail an effort to audit the Fed but failed. A proposal to audit the Fed’s monetary policy deliberations won a committee vote recently over Frank’s objections.

In his Mockingbird media editorial, Bernanke “conceded the Fed had missed some of the riskiest behavior in the lead up to the crisis. But he said the Fed had helped avoid an even more damaging economic meltdown and has stepped up its policing of the financial system.”

In fact, the Fed was specifically designed to create financial crises. It was all plotted in 1910 when minions of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, the Rothschilds and Warburgs met on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. In 1913, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank was created as a direct result of that secret meeting. Said Congressman Charles Lindbergh on the midnight passage of the Federal Reserve Act: “From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.”

In order to scientifically create an economic depression, the Fed prompted irresponsible speculation by expanding the money supply sixty-two percent between 1923 and 1929. The so-called Great Depression followed. This depression “was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence,” declared Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee. “The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.”

In March of 1929, Paul Warburg issued a tip that the scientifically created crash was coming. Before it did, John D. Rockefeller, Bernard Baruch, Joseph P. Kennedy, and other banksters got out of the market.

A few years later, the banksters and their minions met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and plotted the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The purpose of these two criminal organizations was to set-up a global Federal Reserve system and wage economic warfare on billions of people. The weapon they used was debt and the loss of sovereignty that follows.

In 1971, then president Nixon fit one of the last pieces into the puzzle — he signed an executive order declaring that the United States no longer had to redeem its paper dollars for gold. It was a great day for the banksters and the global elite. The gold standard ensured predictability and regularity in the economy and the banksters wanted to put an end to that. For the bankers, order and control is realized out of chaos and misery.

Fast-forward to the present day…

Link to entire article below…

http://www.infowars.com/audit-the-fed-bernanke-and-the-bankers-are-running-scared/

A sexy new music video from Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.

The song is called ‘Video Phone’.

I love how provocative the outfits are….this is Beyoncé on fire…and we already know Lady Gaga likes to literally set the stage on fire.

As the annual Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj kicks off in Saudi Arabia, many of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha under hardship.

The effects of previous wars coupled with the devastation from natural disasters in their country has stopped them short in their rejoice of the annual holiday.

The weather was sunny and hot Friday morning over the desert valley on Mina, a contrast to the unusually heavy rains that soaked the faithful on the pilgrimage’s opening day Wednesday. The downpours caused heavy flooding in the nearby Red Sea coastal city of Jiddah, killing 83 people.

The stoning rituals at Mina have long been the most hazardous of the hajj. The pilgrims — more than 3 million this year — file past three stone walls representing Satan and stop to pelt them with stones in a symbolic rejection of temptation. In the heavy traffic, crushes and pileups have killed hundreds, most recently in 2006.

Wikipedia reports…

Eid al-Adha (Arabic: عيد الأضحى‎ ‘Īdu l-’Aḍḥā) “Festival of Sacrifice” or “Greater Eid” is a holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God. It is also celebrated by the Druze.

Eid al-Adha is the latter of two Eid festivals celebrated by Muslims, whose basis comes from the Quran.^[1] Like Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha begins with a short prayer followed by a sermon (khuṭba).

Eid al-Adha annually falls on the 10th day of the month of Dhul Hijja (ذو الحجة) of the lunar Islamic calendar. The festivities last for three days or more depending on the country. Eid al-Adha occurs the day after the pilgrims conducting Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia by Muslims worldwide, descend from Mount Arafat. It happens to be approximately 70 days after the end of the month of Ramadan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha

“A good Muslim should bring happiness to the hearts of fellow human beings” he said.

After the early morning prayers, the faithful flocked to makeshift animal markets, while others, dressed in their finest clothes, headed to cemeteries to visit the graves of dead friends and relatives.

Source…

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzONYVoEPpfYIKnFrS3bg-WGHf3QD9C7UM8O0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/20/eid-alfitr-2009-feasts-ce_n_292769.html

So many of my friends know of Melissa Fay Greene’s writing because of her fabulous book There is No Me Without You.  But I came to know Melissa because of Praying for Sheetrock.  A dear friend sent me a copy as a gift with a card inside that said “those of us who spend our lives tilting at windmills must read this book.”

He was right.  It made me wish I had been born earlier so that I would have been old enough to have lived through the Civil Rights Movement as an adult — I would hope that I would have been there as a Freedom Rider….

And, Praying for Sheetrock was the most beautifully written book I’d ever read.  I didn’t know that prose could read like poetry (or maybe it is vice versa?)  The story is heartwarming and it tells of the civil rights movement in the south from the perspective of real people living their real lives in a way that created and caused real change.  It is a lovely book — and even if you don’t spend your life tilting at windmills, you should read it…

Patrick Stewart: Repeated Domestic Violence Against His Mother and the Legacy of Witnessing It

Filed under: Activism, Best interest of the child, Child Abuse, Children and Domestic Violence, Children who witness abuse, Children’s rights, Civil rights, Domestic Abuse, Domestic Violence, Good dudes, Hate Crimes, Human Rights, Intimate Partner Assault, Patrick Stewart, Violence against women — justice4mothers @ 1:10 pm

Another classy guy, Patrick Stewart wrote this article about the childhood filled with domestic violence against his mother.  From The Guardian (UK):

Patrick Stewart: the legacy of domestic violence

As a child, the actor regularly saw his father hit his mother. Here he describes how the horrors of his childhood remained with him in his adult life

Patrick Stewart as a baby with his mother Gladys. Photograph: Collect

My father was, in many ways, a man of discipline, organisation and charisma – a regimental sergeant major no less. One of the very last men to be evacuated from Dunkirk, his third stripe was chalked on to his uniform by an officer when no more senior NCOs were left alive. Parachuted into Crete and Italy, both times under fire, he fought at Monte Casino and was twice mentioned in dispatches. A fellow soldier once told me, “When your father marches on to the parade ground, the birds in the trees stop singing.”

In civilian life it was a different story. He was an angry, unhappy and frustrated man who was not able to control his emotions or his hands. As a child I witnessed his repeated violence against my mother, and the terror and misery he caused was such that, if I felt I could have succeeded, I would have killed him. If my mother had attempted it, I would have held him down. For those who struggle to comprehend these feelings in a child, imagine living in an environment of emotional unpredictability, danger and humiliation week after week, year after year, from the age of seven. My childish instinct was to protect my mother, but the man hurting her was my father, whom I respected, admired and feared.

From Monday morning to Friday tea time he worked as a semi-skilled labourer, and was diligent and sober. Often funny and charming, he was always rich in the personal stories of warfare and adventure that thrilled me. But come Friday night, after the pubs closed, we awaited his return with trepidation. I would be in bed but not asleep. I could never sleep until he did; while he was awake we were all at risk. Instead, I would listen for his voice, singing, as he walked home. Certain songs were reassuring: I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen; I’ll Walk Beside You . . . But army songs were not a good sign. And worst of all was silence. When I could only hear footsteps it was the signal to be super-alert.

Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised – I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn. Curiously, I never felt fear for myself and he never struck me, an odd moral imposition that would not allow him to strike a child. The situation was barely tolerable: I witnessed terrible things, which I knew were wrong, but there was nowhere to go for help. Worse, there were those who condoned the abuse. I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.

No one came to help. No adult stepped in and took charge. I needed someone else to take over and tell me everything was going to be all right and that it wasn’t my fault. I wanted the anger to go away and, while it stayed, I felt responsible. The sense of guilt and loneliness provoked by domestic violence is tainting – and lasting. No one came, but everyone knew. Our small houses were close together. Every Monday morning I walked to school with my head down, praying that I would not encounter a neighbour or school friend who had heard the weekend’s rows. I felt ashamed.

Very occasionally one person would come to our aid – Mrs Dixon, our next-door neighbour, the only person who would stand up to my father. She would throw open the door and stand before him, bosom bursting and her mighty weaver’s forearm raised in his face. “Come on, Alf Stewart,” she would say, “have a go at me.” He never did. He calmed down and went to bed. Now I wish I could take Lizzie Dixon’s big hand in mine and thank her.

Such experiences are destructive. In my adult life I have struggled to overcome the bad lessons of my father’s behaviour, this corrosive example of male irresponsibility. But the most oppressive aspect of these experiences was the loneliness. Very recently, during a falling-out with my girlfriend, I felt again as though I were shut out and alone, not heard or understood. I was neither, but it was such a familiar isolation that it was almost a comfort and consolation.

I managed to find my own refuge in acting. The stage was a far safer place for me than anything I had to live through at home – it offered escape. I could be someone else, in another place, in another time. However, whenever the role called for anger, fury, or the expression of murderous impulses, I was always afraid of what I might unleash if I surrendered myself to those feelings. It was not until 1981, when the director Ronald Eyre asked me to play the psychotic Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, that the breakthrough came.

He quietly told me that the play would only work if I gave myself over, completely and totally, to the delusions, madness and murderousness of this man. “If you do that,” Ron said, “I will be at your side. I will be available to you 24 hours a day.” From that time forward I was never again afraid of my feelings on stage.

The truth is that domestic violence touches many of us. It is very possible that someone you know – a friend, sister, daughter or colleague – is experiencing abuse. One in four women will experience domestic violence at some point in her lifetime. And every week two women are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales, and 10 women take their own lives as the only way they know how to escape a violent partner. You are almost certainly paying for it. Domestic violence costs around £26bn a year in medical, legal and housing costs.

This violence is not a private matter. Behind closed doors it is shielded and hidden and it only intensifies. It is protected by silence – everyone’s silence. Which is why, in 2007, I became patron of Refuge, the national domestic violence charity. Every day the organisation supports more than 1,000 women and children through its national network of refuges and services. At Refuge, women and children are given psychological support to help them overcome the trauma of abuse. A team of independent legal advocates are on hand to protect women at high risk of violence through the legal process.

Thanks to Refuge’s tireless campaigning, attitudes have changed. Police tactics have improved and most men are no longer able to get away with beating women. Yet the statistics still make for grim reading. More than two thirds of the residents in Refuge’s network of refuges are children. I cannot express how sad – and angry – it makes me to think that we still cannot ensure the safety of women and children in their own homes.

Most people find the idea of violence against women – and sometimes, though rarely, against men – abhorrent, but do nothing to challenge it. More women and children, just like my mother and me, will continue to experience domestic violence unless we all speak out against it. You can do this by supporting Refuge’s latest campaign, Four Ways To Speak Out.

Let us know what you think about how domestic violence victims are supported and protected in this country. Email women@guardian.co.uk or write to Women, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU

Technorati Tags: Patrick,Stewart,Domestic,Violence,Against,Mother,Legacy,Activism,Best,Child,Abuse,Children,rights,Civil,Hate,Human,Intimate,Partner,Assault,Another,article,From,Guardian,actor,father,Here,life,Gladys,Photograph,Collect,charisma,Dunkirk,stripe,officer,NCOs,Crete,times,Monte,Casino,soldier,birds,trees,civilian,terror,misery,feelings,environment,danger,humiliation,instinct,Often,warfare,adventure,trepidation,Instead,Certain,Take,Home,Again,Walk,Beside,army,footsteps,temperature,skill,imposition,situation,Worse,truth,guilt,friend,Very,person,Dixon,door,Come,Lizzie,lessons,example,male,aspect,isolation,consolation,refuge,role,fury,director,Ronald,Eyre,Leontes,Winter,Tale,daughter,colleague,lifetime,England,Wales,Behind,patron,supports,services,trauma,team,Thanks,Police,statistics,residents,Most,Four,Ways,Speak,victims,Email,Women,Kings,Place,York,London,dudes,Crimes,horrors,emotions,situations,impulses,delusions,doors,refuges,attitudes,organisation,week,songs,neighbour

from: http://www.shewired.com/Article.cfm?ID=24007

Gay rights activists are planning a protest against Vallejo, California mayor Osby Davis after he called gays “sinful” in a interview with the New York Times.

Mayor Osby Davis told the New York Times gays are “committing sin and that sin will keep them out of heaven. But you don’t hate the person. You hate the sin that they commit.” The New York Times quoted Davis as part of an article titled “Faith and Tolerance Collide in Vallejo,” which explores rising tensions in the city between recent gay and lesbian transplants and evangelical Christians.

Davis defeated openly gay candidate Gary Cloutier by just two votes to take the post of mayor in Vallejo in 2007. Cloutier said the Vallejo city council is rife with anti-gay sentiment and he has repeatedly been introduced as “a gay” in council meetings.

Davis later apologized for the comments in a press statement, saying his words were taken out of context. “I have worked hard to unite Vallejo and I will continue to do so. To those I have offended by my comments, I apologize… I care for the entire community and my desire is to build consensus on our diversity. Let me be clear, I have and will stand against hatred, discrimination and divisiveness wherever they exist.”

Bay activist and former planning commissioner Charles Legalos is pushing for the mayor’s censure over his statement to the New York Times. “His comments were completely out of line,” Legalos told the Oakland Tribune. “They have no place coming from a city official.”

Openly gay Catholic priest Lou Bordisso, a former school board candidate, is planning a protest on Dec. 1 against Davis in front of City Hall. Bordisso told the New York Times he believes local evangelical Christians “have a hidden agenda to impose their particular version of Christianity on the citizens of Vallejo.”

“The mayor’s comments were of a theological nature and he was acting in his capacity as mayor and that’s completely unacceptable,” Bordisso said, according to Fox40.com. “There needs to be a separation of church and state.”

INTERNET BILLBOARD

Article II, Sec. 1, cl. 5 of the US Constitution

“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President. . .”

From the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution.

“or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until
a President shall have qualified;”

It is not a conspiracy theory. Using the term “birther” in a condescending, Orwellian manner to discredit decent, hard working Americans who believe that the US Constitution is the law of the land, will not be tolerated.

1. Barack Obama has employed a legion of private and government attorneys to prevent revealing his country of birth. Innocent and eligible persons seeking the office of president do not do that.

2. Barack Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya and a British citizen.  “natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution” was explicitly written to deal with the issue of foreign allegiances at the time of the writing of the US Constitution.

3. Barack Obama’s citizenship and allegiance was further tainted when he was adopted by his stepfather Lolo Soetoro and Obama became an Indonesian citizen.

4. Some combination of the above allowed Obama to travel to Pakistan in 1981 when travel there was restricted to US citizens.

5. The only document presented by the Obama camp is a Hawaii COLB. There has been no substantiation that it is authentic and it does not establish country of birth. As Lou Dobbs stated, “It is a piece of paper that refers to another piece of paper.”

6. All other documentation, all school records, that would establish country of birth have been kept hidden and restricted.

7. No authentic documentation has been presented to establish that Barack Obama was born in the US.

8. The records of all hospitals in Hawaii have been searched. There is no record of Stanley Ann Obama ever having given birth to a child.

9. Barack Obama’s paternal grandmother in Kenya has stated on multiple occasions that she was present at Obama’s birth in Mombasa.

10. Others have stated, including multiple family members, officials and press, that Obama was born in Kenya.

This has been presented in a manner that a fifth grader can understand. However, if you have any questions, please contact me on this blog.

Failure to learn more about and understand this critical issue and take appropriate measures can only be construed as apathy,  ignorance or having an un American agenda. This includes the Mainstream Media and the Fox network.

Once again the story of the MRA, militant (mens rights activists) complaining over a story removed from Psychology Today. They think that PAS will get into the DSM….sorry it will NEVER happen. But interestingly enough there is research that suggests that these types may have what is called….Small Penis Syndrome….I present to you…

Review of small penis syndrome

1. June 2007 13:20

Rep. Barney Frank talks on the floor of the House about discrimination against our LGBT community. Politics is supposed to be about policy, and is supposed to be a coat-check platform, where emotion and personal ties are left at the door. But I honestly don’t believe we live in that reality any longer.

He tried, but his true self showed through. And, according to me, good on him.

Mr. & Mrs. Loving

             The plaintiffs, Mildred Loving, a Black woman of Rappahannak, Virginia and Richard Perry Loving, a white man living in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They married in June 1958 in the District of Columbia, they had to leave Virginia to get around the Racial Integrity Act, a law in the state banning marriages between any white person and any non-white person. When they returned back to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban. They were caught sleeping in their bed by a group of police officers who had invaded their home in the hopes of finding them in the act of sex (another crime). In their defense, Ms. Loving had pointed to a marriage certificate on the wall in their bedroom. That, instead of defending them, became the evidence the police needed for a criminal charge since it showed they had been married in another state. On Jan 6, 1959 the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The pshyco trial judge in the case, Mr.Bazile, reciting Johann Friedrich 18th-century interpretation of race, proclaimed that
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Global Warming Or Global Governance?

The Tonka Report Editor’s Note: I’ve posted this before and here it is again. Watch it, folks! - SJH

As an active concerned group of community partners I want to make sure you all saw the Oregonian article about part of the new middle level social studies materials to be used in Portland Public Schools. We will not begin using it until fall 2009.

Go to this link for the Oregonian article of May 12, 2008.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1210559107109450.xml&coll=7

AFRICAN-AMERICAN-HISTORICAL-DISTRICT.COM

Kurt Nimmo / Infowars – November 27, 2009

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez wants to put a dead man on trial in a U.S. civilian court. Menendez has told CNSNews that Osama bin Laden should be brought to justice and prosecuted in civilian court, where he will most certainly be convicted.

“When we catch bin Laden, should he be Mirandized? Should he be read his Miranda rights? If there’s going to be a civil proceeding, the attorney general said it wouldn’t matter,” Matt Cover of CNSNews asked Menendez.

“As far as I’m concerned he should be prosecuted, brought to justice, and hopefully – and I fully expect – convicted,” declared Menendez.

CNSNews asked the question after Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina grilled Obama’s attorney general on how the administration would handle terrorists caught in the future. “If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?” said Graham.

Eric Holder wasn’t sure how to answer Graham’s question. He said it “all depends” if Osama bin Laden would be read his Miranda rights. Holder’s apparent confusion is rather perplexing coming from the top cop in the country.

Graham understands the law better than Obama’s attorney general. “Well, it does not depend,” Graham replied. “If you’re going to prosecute anybody in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial interrogation occurs, the defendant – the criminal defendant – is entitled to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent.”

Not that Graham believes accused terrorists deserve a day in court. He believes Holder is guilty of “making bad history” in his decision to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his supposed co-conspirators to New York for trial in civilian court.

Watch the video below…

Link to entire article below…

http://www.infowars.com/senator-wants-to-know-if-the-dead-osama-will-be-read-miranda-rights/