Russian Gays Face Tough Road Toward Equality

Most Seem to Favor Low-Key Approach Over Confrontational One

By Anton Troianovski Special to The Washington Post Saturday, August 11, 2007

… with a small gay rights movement taking shape amid a more frank pop culture, gays are struggling with altogether different questions. Should they openly confront what many people see as growing homophobia in a society where nationalism is on the rise and grass-roots social movements are almost nonexistent?

A handful of activists made headlines around the world this past spring when they were viciously beaten by Russian nationalists at a gay rights protest in central Moscow. Riot police on the scene offered no protection. The activists claimed a partial victory, arguing that media coverage allowed the whole world to witness the plight of gays in Russia.

Firm resistance is needed, said Alexey Davidov, 30, a leader of the march. Gays who disagree “don’t realize, if things keep going the way they’re going, how many dead bodies there will be all around Russia 50 years from now.”

Campaigners say homophobia is as much a political as a social issue. They note that nationalists portray gay groups as conspiring with foreigners to smear Russia’s reputation. On May 29, for instance, several journalists published a letter in the pro-Kremlin Trud daily that said: “The short-lasting arrests [at the protest] allowed the foreign press to get video footage of the ‘violation of the rights of sexual minorities’ — which is in high demand in the nascent large-scale psychological war against Russia.”

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But other gays express skepticism over an approach that pushes them into the public eye. “Some people come to wave their fists, and others come to prove that we’re gays, we’re somebody and aren’t scared of you,” said Svetlana, 17, at a Moscow city park frequented by gays. “What can come of it?”

A handful of activists made headlines around the world this past spring when they were viciously beaten by Russian nationalists at a gay rights protest in central Moscow. Riot police on the scene offered no protection. The activists claimed a partial victory, arguing that media coverage allowed the whole world to witness the plight of gays in Russia.

In politics, gay groups have found next to no allies. None of the small parties that advocate Western-style democracy have made an issue of gay rights; some of them argue that Russia has much bigger problems.

Despite the hostility, gay life in Moscow quietly beats on. On July 7, a lesbian couple exchanged the marriage vows of the Russian Orthodox Church. The ceremony, held in a cramped apartment that is home to two couples, was attended by a handful of close friends, but no parents.

“God has no people whom He turns away or doesn’t accept,” Skripnik-Dardaki said. “And gays are the most glaring example of these people who are turned away — exiled, besmirched, spat-upon, damned.”

Some day humans that populate this planet will be accepted as humans who populate this planet. Humans are responsible for caretaking the environmental sustainability of this planet for the welfare of fellow humans. Political and religious excuses for excluding any segment of the human population are totally unacceptable. Prosecute humans who hurt other humans.

All humans were created by the same higher power for one reason or other. When humans turn against one another, it is of their own making and not the making of the higher power. If you really think that a higher power is amused at the conflict we perpetrate upon one another, you are delusional. Are humans just a spectator sport? Humans are certainly living out a Roman Coliseum side show for someone out there. We are responsible for our own despair and have no heavenly excuse for what we do to each other!

Bush Administration Last Days – Are We Scared Yet?

Bush administration wants us to be scared of:

• AlQaeda,
• Other un-named terrorists,
• Gays,
• anyone who is not a radical Christian, anyone who is not with his agenda,

• Inclusive health care
• People who think

This administration wants his population to be white or act white, buy in to the Armageddon concept to justify:

• atrocities against other cultures (anything outside of his world is PAGAN)
• completely destroy other civilizations (because they are PAGAN)

• grab oil resources wherever we can (so his greasy buddies can profit)
• allow genocide to grow exponentially long enough so that if we DO step up to responsibility thousands or millions have already died,

End Time Christian’s wars against PAGANS are equal to Islam’s war against INFIDELS. Euphemisms abound to cloak atrocities against other populations to justify world domination. The Political Islamists have used terror against innocent Americans, OK, so have Political Christians:

• 1. First of all crimes against Americans are results of economic suppression and interference in local politics with extortion and bribery.
  2. American businesses use underhanded tactics to secure advantageous pricing and cheap labor from disadvantaged and desperate.
  3. Americans or their Proxy Mercenary Armies have injured, threatened or killed opposition to their agendas throughout history – don’t get me started on the American Indians.

Pagan can be defined broadly:

Wikipedia – the faith traditions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This includes the Dharmic religions (such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism), Native American religions and mythologies and Shinto as well as non-Abrahamic ethnic religions in general. More narrow definitions will not include any of the world religions and restrict the term to local or rural currents not organized as civil religions.

Both “Pagan” and “heathen” have historically been used as a pejorative by adherents of monotheistic religions (such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam) to indicate a disbeliever in their religion.

Religious Extremism: Answers.com, Wikipedia, BBS News

Wikpedia – Dominionist , Islam

Answers – Dominionism, Islam

Religious Tolerance – Dominionism, Islam

Disbelievers – United States Government – Islam – Christianity

 

 

Bush’s conversations with GOD have allowed Counterfeit Religion to be used as an excuse to conquer for OIL!

 

 

Manufactured Rapture – Armaggedon Equals Corruption

 Bush, Mideast Wars and End-Time Prophecy
By JP Briggs II, Ph.D., and Thomas D. Williams
t r u t h o u t | Special Report    Friday 29 June 2007

“Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.”
– Former US President Thomas Jefferson

   President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God’s end-of-days plan, according to close observers.    Historians and investigative journalists following the “end-time Christian” movement have grown alarmed at the impact it may be having on Bush’s Middle East policies, including the current war in Iraq, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the strife in Lebanon and the administration’s repeated attempts to find a cause for war against Iran.

    Many people are aware that Bush is “the most aggressively religious president in American History,” as eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described him, (Schlesinger, “War and the Presidency,” 143) but most remain without a clue to what this actually means.

Crosshairs Iran – an Illustration

Divine Mission

The Israel Connection

Neocons and End-Timers

End Game

Hats off to Truthout for a supurbly researched article that scares the HELL out of me! 

Fundamentalist Social Destruction Is Everywere

Egypt forbids female circumcision   By Magdi Abdelhadi  BBC Arab Affairs Analyst

Egypt has announced that it is imposing a complete ban on female circumcision, also known as genital mutilation.

… the death of a 12-year-old girl in Upper Egypt a few days ago triggered an angry barrage of appeals from human rights groups to both the government and the medical profession to act swiftly and stamp out the practice. The doctor who carried out the operation has been arrested.

Egypt’s first lady, Susanne Mubarak, has spoken out strongly against female circumcision, saying that it is a flagrant example of continued physical and psychological violence against children which must stop.

The Grand Mufti and the head of the Coptic Church said female circumcision had no basis either in the Koran or in the Bible.

Recent studies have shown that some 90% of Egyptian women have been circumcised.

The practice is common among Muslim as well as Christian families in Egypt and other African countries, but is rare in the Arab world.

It is believed to be part of an ancient Egyptian rite of passage and is more common in rural areas.

Conservative families believe that circumcision is a way of protecting the girls’ chastity.

Gospels of the Demented are being imposed on people everywhere.

Anything is justified in the name of religion. 

 

Freedom of religion is the freedom to worship according to one’s own heart – NOT the freedom to impose YOUR rules, rites or beliefs onto the unwilling.
Religions have obscure interpretations that can be grabbed to justify any atrocity.

Case in point:  The Right To Life seems to be justifiable to unborn American children, but not the child victims of American warcraft.  How can we justify bombing a whole village in an effort to kill ONE or a DOZEN of the opposition. Collateral damage is NOT acceptable under any justification.

 

I am disgusted and sick to my stomach with the RIGHTEOUS of any religion bellowing from both sides of their mouth about “What God Wants”!  The arrogance of the HUMAN RACE to actually base it’s knowledge of what God wants on thousand year old texts or an army of self-serving blow hards behind pulpits.

 

Beware Christian Dominionists – God Tells Them To Kill

Beware the Dominionist “love bomb” By Kerry Tomasi Online Journal Contributing Writer

During a recent address to the Good Shepherd Baptists in Terre Haute Indiana, Col. J. Tyler Ryberg had this to say about our “war on terror”, and its current focal point, Iraq: ” . . . it’s an act of love to kill evil people who seek to kill Americans, it’s an act of love for our nation”. And with regards to those “Islamic jihadists” in Iraq seeking to kill us: “Peace is not an option.”

In light of the half million innocent (i.e. – not “Islamic jihadists”) Iraqi men, women, and children who may have been killed (thus far) as a result of our invasion, many have questioned where Col. Ryberg gets his reasoning (not to mention his definition of “love”).

But I’m not one of them. I know where he gets his reasoning. He gets it from what he deems the “supreme law of the land” – the Bible, and specifically the Old Testament.

Consider the biblical account of God’s ‘chosen ones’ (the first ones, not us) and their foray into the land of Canaan. Recall that God instructed Moses and Joshua to invade the “promised land” and kill everything and everyone they could get their hands on. They were to ” . . . save alive nothing that breatheth”. (Deut 20:16-17, 7:1-2, Josh 10:40)

When you combine this myopic “we’re special” conditioning with the reasoning espoused by Ryberg and others within the Dominionist movement (Google or Mash it), you create an extremely volatile and dangerous situation. And it’s all the more dangerous because these folks have infiltrated and/or control much of the Republican Party.

They want an authoritarian theocracy similar in design and kind to that in the days of Moses and Joshua.

A theocracy that believes it has a god-given right to exercise dominion over the entire earth, including other people and their property.

A theocracy that views billions of others not quite like themselves as evil.

A theocracy with enough nuclear firepower to destroy the planet.

So much for the Constitution …

 

US blacklists allies for ‘slavery’

FUNNY, THEY DON’T SAY HOW LONG WE HAVE IGNORED THIS

 

The United States has blacklisted several Middle East allies for not doing enough to fight what it calls “modern day slavery”.

 

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar were put in the worst category in the state department’s annual Trafficking In Persons report, along with Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and Malaysia.

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The seven additions joined regulars Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, Cuba, North Korea, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

 

The US accused the 16 countries of failing to meet the minimum standards – the worst category or a Tier 3 ranking – to fight the human trade.

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Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, on Tuesday issued the blunt message that “no one deserves to be a modern day slave”.

 

Mark Largon, a senior adviser to Rice on the trafficking issue, said it was

“especially disappointing that so many wealthy countries in the Near East [Middle East] … are on Tier 3”.

 

The 236-page global survey found the number of prosecutions against human traffickers was low.

 

Risk of sanctions

 

Getting on the list means a country is vulnerable to US sanctions for failing to stop the annual flow of up to 800,000 mostly women and children worldwide to work in the sex trade and other forms of forced or bonded labour.

Many of the trafficking victims seek to escape poverty in Eastern Europe, South and South-East Asia, and are sold into the sex trade, manual labour or abused as domestic workers.

 

Bahrain was cited for making “no discernible progress” and for not seriously investigating allegations and enforcing laws aimed at protecting foreign workers mostly from South and South-East Asia.

THE US HAS PARTICIPATED IN USING THESE VICTIMS …

 

Report criticised

 

Critics said the report was politically motivated and argued that the US had no business criticising other countries when its defence department had hired trafficked workers in Iraq.

 

Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report 2007

BOTH SIDES OF OUR MOUTHS MUST BE SOOOOO BUSY…. 

NO WONDER NO ONE TRUSTS THE USA ANYMORE 

King George Has Armageddon Envy!

Fightin’ Words from Putin, Ahmadinejad

Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t showing any sign of softening up in his response to the U.S. government’s plans to install an anti-missile shield in Europe.  Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dramatically announced that Israel’s days are numbered.

 King George is determined to start COLD WAR or HOT WAR

Mr. Putin, in an interview at his country residence outside Moscow, said he considers U.S. plans to build an eastern European anti-missile site to shoot down Iranian missiles a provocation aimed at Russia.

Asked what he might do to retaliate, he said he would return Russia to the Cold War status where missiles were aimed at European targets.

“It is obvious that if part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States is located in Europe, and according to our military experts will be threatening us, we will have to respond,” he said.

King George has Armageddon envy!  Why are we going along with this?

Why is the news media just NOW putting this on the front page?

 

 

 

Administration Meltdown – Return To Good ‘Ol Cold War

PUTIN WARNS EUROPE

Moscow may target weapons at Europe if the US builds planned missile defence facilities in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

  Gorbachev criticises US ’empire’

 The former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has blamed the US for the current state of relations between Russia and the West.

  Echoes of Cold War in missile arguments

Russian hostility to the American plan to station anti-ballistic missiles and their radar in Poland and the Czech Republic is an indication of the wider unease in relations between Moscow and Washington.

If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe

President Vladimir Putin

So, this is what King George does if it is: 

 Too Soon to Say if Coalition Winning Terror War

 It’s too soon to say if the United States and its coalition partners are winning the war on terror, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.

Do we recognize another tactic by King George and his paranoid band of Droids?  He is determined to start Armageddon whatever the cost.  Europe must be expendable according to King George’s quest.  For George, mental health is not an option, at the world’s expense.

What the HELL is God saying to this guy?  Obviously George needs a translator because what he’s hearing cannot be what God is saying.  The King’s language skills are lacking and I’ve never heard God speak in broken HillBilly!

Of course my voices speak about peace, not destruction.

How Influential Is The Surgeon General? Really!

HAND IN METHODIST RULINGS RAISES CONCERN IN GAY COMMUNITY

Lexington Herald-Leader Staff writers Karla Ward and Barbara Isaacs and researcher Linda Niemi contributed to this article.

The nomination of University of Kentucky professor Dr. James W. Holsinger as U.S. surgeon general has come under fire from groups that fear his actions as a high-ranking official in the United Methodist Church indicate he is anti-gay.

Holsinger, 68, who holds UK’s Charles T. Wethington Jr. Chair in the Health Sciences and is a former chancellor of UK’s Chandler Medical Center and a former state Secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, is being challenged for his role in decisions by the United Methodist Judicial Council. That highest “court” rules on disputes involving church doctrine and policies in the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination.

In his role on the nine-member Judicial Council, Holsinger has opposed a decision to allow a practicing lesbian to be an associate pastor, and he supported a pastor who would not permit an openly gay man to join the church. In both instances, Holsinger’s supporters say, he was correctly interpreting and applying church policy. (The church’s bishops voted later to allow the gay man to become a member.)

Reaction from the gay and lesbian community to Holsinger’s nomination has been pointed.

“Dr. James Holsinger has demonstrated in the past that he harbors religious-based prejudice towards homosexuals,” said Jamie McDaniel, coordinator of Soulforce Lexington, the local chapter of a national organization that opposes the use of religion to oppress lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “As a gay American, I am deeply concerned over any surgeon general nominee not being healed of such personal prejudice.”

Boy, this really make the UNIFIER GUY look good …

A date has not been announced for confirmation hearings for Holsinger’s appointment. He will go before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. Three Democrats on the committee are presidential candidates: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a graduate of the University of Louisville law school. The GOP members include Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. Kentucky’s senators, Republicans Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, are not on the committee.

The surgeon general is often called “America’s doctor.” The role is primarily an educational one, though it comes with public relations clout that can influence public policy.

Holsinger has been a member of the United Methodist Judicial Council since 2000 and has been its president since 2004.

In addition to his medical degree and a doctorate in anatomy and physiology, both from Duke University, Holsinger’s several degrees include a master’s degree in biblical studies from Asbury Theological Seminary, which trains many Methodist ministers. He has been a trustee there since 1990 and was board chairman from 1997 to 2004.

In nominating Holsinger last Thursday, President Bush said the cardiologist will focus on childhood obesity. Holsinger has declined to comment publicly until the Senate hearings get under way.

Holsinger’s role in the United Methodist Judicial Council’s decisions was first reported by former Herald-Leader religion writer Frank Lockwood, who is religion editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock and operates the Bible Belt Blogger Web site.

The Book of Discipline, the governing document in the United Methodist Church, says that “all persons are of sacred worth” and that “all people” may become members. However, on the issue of becoming a pastor, The Book of Discipline explicitly says “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and thus “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot become ordained ministers.

Representatives of Kentucky’s gay and lesbian community say the U.S. surgeon general needs to keep church doctrine and health policy separate.

Christina Gilgor, executive director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, an organization that seeks equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, said: “While serving on the Methodist Judicial Council, Dr. Holsinger voted to ban a lesbian from the clergy and a gay man from lay membership. We expect America’s ‘top doctor’ to promote healthy public policy, not ideology.”

Concerns about Holsinger have also come from gay groups on the national level.

“We can only hope that … Dr. Holsinger would rely on scientific data and not church doctrine,” Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, said in a statement. “The Senate should take a hard look to make sure he isn’t another in a long line of ideologically driven Bush administration nominees.”

Lexington’s First United Methodist Church, asked Holsinger and his wife to set out and start a new congregation.They founded Hope Springs Community Church in a warehouse at 1109 Versailles Road. Calhoun called it a socially diverse congregation with a “very vital recovery ministry.” It serves the homeless and those with addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex; and it has a Spanish-language Hispanic congregation with its own pastor.

“It’s built around compassion for people who struggle with a lot of issues,”

Hope Springs also ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian, Calhoun said.

“We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle,” he said. “We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle.”

On this point, the church would differ with many gays and lesbians, who consider their sexuality a matter of identity, not a lifestyle choice.

The UNITER GUY has struck again if Congress is still sleeping!

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What Happens when Musharraf Falls?

Blogger Qur’an – Bible points out:

 Bush wars are not going so well in Afghanistan and Iraq where Talibans has announced to launched nation wide attacks on foreign forces and its local allies. Talibans attacks are killing Canadian and British soldiers almost on daily basis.. Bush’s “war on terror” strong supporter Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is in deep trouble trying to hang on to power. Pervez Musharraf opposition is rising among the moderate Pakistanis for firing Chief Justice and the religious parties and its supporters are angry because of his constant attacks on civilians in NWFP for “war on terror”.

 View on the news from those in the middle of it

Iraq is situation is worst than Afghanistan where hundreds of civilians get killed daily with rising numbers of US troops deaths. The US soldiers deaths may rise sharply as they have now launched offensive attacks against Shiites in Baghdad and Southern Iraq. Dick as usual busy is creating fear by telling the Americans that Al Qaeda wants to kill four million US citizens including children so they have to fight them in Iraq. The majority of ill-informed US citizens will believe Dick Cheney absurd lie and keep their support for war in Iraq. According to reports about 1000 US soldiers died since last year Memorial Day and with the latest strategy adopted by US military to go after Mehdi Army might double or triple the number of US soldiers death on Memorial Day.

Bush regime is blaming Iran for all Iraq violence and try to scare them with their military power with war exercises with its Naval fleet in Persian Gulf to me is looking for more conflicts rather than bringing the peace in Iraq. Lebanon situation is calm for the time being but Bush stupidity will turn into bloody violence again because they will force Sinora government to use force against Al Qaeda inspired group which will be the begining of new war and it will create more problems for US occupation military and Israel.

Bush and Dick who put so much pressure on Pervez Musarraf to strike the tribal areas in fact had weaken his government. Will Pervez Musharraf survive this latest growing opposition I really don’t know have to look deep into Pakistan news.

Can you spell ‘collateral’?  When (and If)  Musharraf falls America will loose the lone  ally that is holding  angry Islamic fundamentalists at bay.   On the other hand, America  cannot seem to hold it’s own angry fundamentalists at bay.   Total chaos will have to be redefined.

When the dam breaks, heaven, hell, nirvana and limbo will have a major housing problem!