Not that I want to encourage your ranting, but the only thing of subtance you seemed to be saying (besides your usual insults) was how much of a “real radical” you are.

First… the Brits were good, but they weren’t that good.
Sure they left behind law and democratic traditions, but they also laid mudrdered, abused and enslaved people and destroyed cultures. Like the Romans before them, they had a great culture, but it was built on the backs of the people they colonized.

Second… The U.S. doesn’t have an empire? Don’t make me laugh:
Just off the top of my head here are some past and present coutries under direct control of tightly under the U.S. sphere of influence: Canada, Turkey, the Phillipines, Japan, Germany, China, Cuba before the revolution, Israel, Chile, El Salvador and Honduras, All the south pacific states they used for atomic testing, Panama, the current Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq under the Shah,

Like I said, that’s just off the top of my head

Why are you always so pedantically dense? You said “<b.Believe it or not a lot of Israelis do as well.

I’ve had this list of Jewish and Palestinian sites in my files for about three years and quote from these sites often.

www . jewishvoiceforpeace . org

www . electronicintifada . net Best source of up to date news

www . gush-shalom . org

www . merip . org Excellent analytical/scholarly site but it’s not free

http : // www . deiryassin . org/ Report one of the massacres of civilians by Menachim Begins terrorist gang

www . palestinechronicle . com News and Analysis

www . fromoccupiedpalestine . org Eyewitness accounts

www . btselem . org / english / Torture Eyewitness accounts

http : // www . antiwar . com / roberts /?articleid=11452
Analysis of American politics and anti-Palestinian activities

http : // www . alternet . org / story / 62618 / Growing Jewish anti -zionist movement and zionist smear tactics

www . al-awda . org Right to Return Coalition

www . couragetorefuse . org / English IDF Refusniks

http : // www . geocities . com / NoApartheid /

www . palestinercs . org Palestine Red Crescent Society

(you’ll have to connect the dots – Queerty’s defense program goes apeshit when it detects lots of links)

And in the future, instead of lamely trying to patronize real radicals why not expand your dialog with racist loonies like Attmay – I’m sure you’ll find you have lots in common with them and nothing in common with me.

The zionists never give asylum to any Palestinians. Their open door policy for Jews is accompanied by a program of driving Palestinians out of their homes and away from their homeland.

According to The Jewish Daily Forward ,

“Because they are so vulnerable to blackmail, it is assumed by the families and neighbors of gay Palestinian men — sometimes correctly — that they have been blackmailed into becoming informers, either for Israeli intelligence or for opposition Palestinian factions. So when they meet a violent end, the motivation of the killers is not entirely clear.

And in Israel? Misinformation abounds. In a 2004 speech at the University of California, Berkeley, Alan Dershowitz said: “I support Israel because I support gay rights. Recently, a progressive congressman, Barney Frank from Massachusetts, worked with me and Israel to grant asylum for 40 Palestinian gays.”

Alas, not a word of this is true.

When gay Palestinian men run for their lives into Israel, they do not seek — and they cannot get — “asylum,” which is a special status under international law available to those who can establish a “well founded fear of persecution” in the country of their nationality or “place of habitual residence.” Israel has never granted asylum to Palestinians, gay or not, says Anat Ben-Dor of the Refugee Rights Clinic at the Tel Aviv University Law Faculty — even those who can credibly claim they will be killed if they are sent back to the West Bank or Gaza. This is because Israel interprets international asylum law as inapplicable to Palestinian nationals.

http://www.forward.com/articles/1125/

@Bill Chicken: I’m the racist? You’re the one accusing the Israelis of genocide and rationalizing terrorism and Hamas war crimes. Islam is not a race. The Arabs are a race and you will note I never said a bad word about them, nor will I. Some of them aren’t even Muslim, and some of them are…gasp…gay! If they were not brainwashed by the Mohammedan menace, they would be better off.

You, on the other hand, Bill Chicken, are a Nazi. A full-fledged, jackbooted goose-stepping Nazi.

@strumpetwindsock: You proved me right by saying they were using parliamentary systems used by THE BRITISH. Take away the British influence and you wouldn’t have those systems.

America has never owned an empire. Puerto Rico and Guam don’t count.

Compare being gay in Europe to being gay anywhere in Asia or Africa. And don’t you dare tell me gays are better off in any of those places. And the threats to gays in Europe are coming from Muslim immigrants who refuse to integrate into the mainstream culture. West is best.

I’m sure the Imperial Japanese who committed atrocities against the Chinese and Filipinos that outraged even the Nazis “didn’t want to change”, but tough shit. They did, and they’re better off for it. They beat us at our own game; they produce superior cars and electronics to us.

If a Western power took over a Muslim country and totally secularized it in a few generations, don’t tell me gays wouldn’t be better off there. Forcibly remove religious fanatics = improve the gay situation. It’s really that simple. Why can’t we do it in the USA? Hell, I’d do it to Jamaica.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan. We drove them out and left when we obviously were not ready. Perhaps we could have stayed long enough to prevent the Taliban from rising to power.

But by all means delude yourselves into thinking that the MuSLIME terrorist states have consciences and can be reasoned with.

I live right next door to your country, so I know a bit about American govenrnments thinking they know what is best for other countries. But the fact is you don’t have the right, and you don’t actually have the power.

Colonize those worthless dumps and stay there forever? I think I missed that line item in Obama’s budget. Where do you think you will get the money or the people?
Maybe your country should find Osama bim Laden first before you go running the entire world.

I actually agree with you in part about colonialism – particularly British colonialism – introducing the rule of law and ending slavery. It was a two-edged sword though, and they have a great deal of blood on their hands, and thought wrongly that they could pound people into submission.

And read my post. Some of those worthless dumps WERE democratic and using the parliamentary system introduced by the British before we fucked them up. That “west is best” attitude is whacked, I am sorry to say.

The Palestinians are still the war criminals here. The Hamas charter still calls for the destruction of Israel. Everyone else supported the two-state solution except the Palestinians.

Like it or not, the situation is not going to go back to pre-1947 any more than you or I are going to pack our bags, get off Indian land and fuck off back to Europe – and who would be expected to make room for us there?

If as you say you don’t want Israel obliterated the best you can hope for is the ’47 UN partition. And as I said, given Syrian aggression I wouldn’t give up Golan either. They lost it fair and square. Also, it’s not up to us to force a secular state on the Palestinians.

I agree with you entirely that our countries should back off in that region. Unfortunately things have escalated to the point where the Palestinians are being used as pawns by Iran, and the Syrians are doing the same in Lebanon. The U.S. and its allies are not the only ones doing the killing over there. Until both sides back down nothing will change. And unfortunately if the rest of the world does not prevent Iranian attempts to develop nuclear arms, Israel likely WILL take action.

And I know there are other black sites, but the torture state of choice in all three recent Canadian cases has been Syria:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20031201/cole
http://www.reuters.com/article.....F420081021

But back to the topic at hand (sort of) I assume everyone has heard about the new Afghan family law. Women can’t refuse sex or leave the house without their husbands’ permission:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/.....women.html

Nice to be fighting for freedom, eh?

West is best. We should have colonized all those worthless dumps and stayed there forever. Then maybe they wouldn’t be so worthless. Colonialism worked. The only bad thing about it at all was the racism of the colonizers. Remove that from the mix and it would not have been nearly as bad.

Gays would be better off if these regions were still under British colonial rule, considering that while they may have been anti-gay then, Britain is ahead of the US in terms of gay rights.

The right to self-government must be earned. The “Iraqis” have forfeited it, and the Palestinianazis and Iranianazis do not deserve it until they are fully westernized and de-Islamized.

The Muslims are an oppressor class. Their homophobia is like Christianity on steroids. Hatred of the religion of gay-bashing is respect for human rights. BigJake75 is right. Just like KKKristianity, Islam does suck and should not be tolerated at all.

And Bill Chicken, it cannot be said more, that you are a monster. Nazis like you are the reason Israel needs to exist and has a casus belli against every Muslim country. They have more of a right to exist than the United States as far as I’m concerned. Nazis like you are why French Jews are fleeing from their home country in droves. Do you have a picture of Hitler on your nightstand (and no, I don’t believe in Godwin’s “Law”)? What about Yasser Arafat? Osama Bin Laden? These people are terrorists, plain and simple. And you are their enabler.

Eliminate Islam and Christianity=world peace

On the issue of the zionist colony in Palestine and it’s murderous treatment of Palestinians we disagree just as thoroughly.

“not Golan – they won that in war” Criminal colonialist states don’t ‘win’ anything, they steal. The zionists notion of peace is to steal a piece of Jordan, a piece of Egypt, a piece of Lebanon and a piece of Syria, gobble Palestine whole and maybe later go after a slice of Turkey and some figs from Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

“Until Israel’s neighbours recognize its right to exist the conflict will continue…” What’s likely is that if the zionist bunkerstadt doesn’t get its head out of it’s ass and agree to the formation of a secular Palestinian state recognizing the rights of Palestinians to their land pre-1947 and their unlimited right to return they’re likely to be obliterated. Most of us don’t want them obliterated but the time when the US and its client states like England and Canada can rum amok in South Asia is finite. The US military brass will be booted out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan just as they were booted out of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

“On the other hand you can hardly wonder why they have a siege mentality.” The zionists have a siege mentality because they attack everyone around them repeatedly. They consistently kill Palestinians, starve them and deny them food and medicine. They’re violently hated by hundreds of millions of people, just as the US government is for bankrolling zionist apartheid and ethnic cleansing. That hatred can be very dangerous, it lead to the unprovoked and vicious murderous attack on civilians on 9-11.

“Our governments don’t send suspected terrorists to Israel to be tortured; Syria is the place for that kind of dirty work.” Actually it’s more likely that people kidnapped by the CIA and the military would end up in Egypt and Turkey but no one has any figures. At any rate the CIA and US military don’t lease them out to the zionists because they’re too busy murdering and torturing Palestinians in their concentration camps. The victims of kidnap/torture/murder, which is how a street cop would describe the CIAs term ‘rendition’ are no so much ‘suspected terrorists’ as they are anti-zionist and anti-colonialist militants.

There are over 1 million civilian dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably as many in Palestine. They didn’t die because they were well treated by zionists and by the American military brass in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan or by the US’s English and Canadian client states.

Until Israel’s neighbours recognize its right to exist the conflict will continue, and like it or not, Israel is not likely to disappear. Plus, it’s the only Middle Eastern country that is a mature democracy, and has at least some respect for the rule of law. If I had to live in one of those countries I know which one I would choose.
Our governments don’t send suspected terrorists to Israel to be tortured; Syria is the place for that kind of dirty work.

So sorry Bill, I agree with you again; I am only pointing out you cannot lay all the blame for that situation at Israel’s feet. And blaming Israel for anti-gay actions from muslim clerics is taking it a bit far.

Anyways, this is yet another reason why I don’t think democracy in this region works exceptionally well and why Saddam should have stayed in power.

The zionists systematically drive millions of Palestinians out of their homes and homeland with heavy doses of mass murder such as the January 2009 ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. They deny Palestinians basics like food, housing, medical access, and education and they maintain unremitting apartheid practices. Their apartheid practices were well described by Desmond Tutu, an expert on the subject, who now calls for a divestment campaign against the zionists like the one that brought the SA racists to their knees.

http://www.alternet.org/blogge.....to_school/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1957644.stm

The contrast between the zionists dual policies of expelling and mistreating Palestinians and turning a few token Palestinians as spies doesn’t escape the attention of the mullahs and ayatollahs who use it to incite anti-GLBT hatreds. You can see the effects in the religious and political hostility towards us in groups like sunni Hamas, shiite Hizbullah and the various muslim Brotherhoods.

Alex said “It was not Muslims or Jews or Baha’i that blew up 16th Street Baptist Church, but no one calls the KKK Christian fanatics. “

Exactly. The difference between christers and islamists is not how much they want to hurt and sometimes kill people they hate but only their ability to do so. If Karl Rove, Josh Dubois or some other theocrat is successful in eliminating the secular character of the Republic all bets are off.

Over at change.org, we’ve put up an action alert where you can contact your legislators via email urging Congress to investigate abuses against the LGBT community of Iraq. Here’s the URL:

http://gayrights.change.org/ac.....ns_of_iraq

My question wasn’t with regards to Muslim nations. I was thinking more along the lines of India, Nepal or Sri Lanka. But thanks for the links. I bookmarked the wordpress site.

DYING TO COME OUT: THE WAR ON GAYS IN IRAQ
http://men.style.com/gq/featur.....ntent_5304

Get on their e-mailing list to keep on top of things.

In terms of asylum it’s granted unevenly in the EU, the US and Canada.

Latino GLBT folks, especially those with HIV/AIDS have died in ICE detention camps without meds. Most of our (few) victories have been in the EU. It depends on how much noise we make. Asylum for Medhi Kazemi was a victory due to intenatinal pressure. Most are not so lucky and are sent back to face certain torture and death. I’m not aware of any amnesty programs in muslim nations, if that’s you question.

Here’s a very good informative article on the subject by Omar Hassan at GWB that just came out today. http://gayswithoutborders.word.....ar-hassan/

ACTION = REALITY.

WORDS = B*LLSH*T.

The US has been arming and training both Sunni police and Shiite militia to pit them against each other. These thugs, in addition to targeting each others communities for ethnic cleansing both found time to hunt down, humiliate torture and murder GLBT folks. One young man, 14 years old, was hacked to pieces for being effeminate. (Not all that different from the murder of King a little over a year ago.)

http://www.blackvoices.com/boa...../message/1

When Obama took office he inherited the mantle of war criminal from Bush who’s gotten it from Clinton, the ever so heroic mass murderer of half a million Iraqi children. Watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf83udJfbMs ONLY if you have a strong stomach – it’s horrific.

That’s why it’s unlikely that Obama will do anything meaningful to end this problem. The terrible inter communal strife in Iraq is just what the US government and military want because it divides Iraq while Texaco/Chevron and others establish hegemony over its petrochemical industries.

What Obama should do is order an immediate airlift to safety and asylum for everyone threatened with persecution, jail, torture and death and he should do the same for threatened GLBT folk in Jamaica, Uganda, Afghanistan, Poland and Nigeria. But he won’t, not in a millions years. Nor will he take even basic steps like ordering order Hillary Clinton to broadcast that US embassies and consulates everywhere in the world have an open arms policy towards granting asylum and protection for GLBT folks in danger of violence.

These easy humanitarian steps will never be taken. The US wants instability in the region. That’s why there are over a million dead in Iraq. That’s why the US finances zionist ethnic cleansing in Palestine and why the murder of civilians is increasing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The dreadful truth is that dead GLBT folks are just ‘collateral damage to Obama and the Pentagon.

Our bothers and sisters in South Asia and Europe will no doubt launch a campaign to help save those they can and we should support it to our utmost. Anyone who writes the WH or State should include a demand for asylum.

I try to be balance. My comment to Jason in WV was to say that as bigoted as some of our politicians are, we don’t execute people for being gay. It is not W’s fault that Islam sucks and hates gays and women. Yes, I mean that. It was not Christians or buddhists or Hindi that blew up the towers.

You will also see from the rest of my previous comment that my criticism of America on gay rights is pretty well placed. And yes, HRC has no credibility. And yes, Obama is not pushing the defense department and congress to overturn DADT.

Relax, and realize that I am grateful to be here. I have also travelled to other countries, and still would not live anywhere else.

Guess what? Bombing to smithereens doesn’t work either. I think that was tried in Vietnam and Cambodia.

What we should have done is stay the fuck out of there in the first place – and I am not only talking about George Bush. The Europeans and Americans designed that country at the Paris Peace conference in 1919 and it was a recipe for failure.

And believe it or not, democracy would work just fine in Asia if the U.S. and Russia would stop behaving like they own the oil.
Iran was actually a democratic nation until the U.S. overthrew Mossadegh’s government and installed the Shah in 1953.
Afghanistan also had a democratic system until shortly before the Soviet invasion.

I will have to go and lie down I think, I feel most odd!

but seriously Sec. Clinton has no credibility. It was her husband who backed down immed on military service for open homosexuals, and gave us DADT. Now, Sec. Gates says that he and Obama have ‘a lot on their plates right now’ and will not be overturning the ban anytime soon.

Why would anyone around the world take our protests seriously? We elect either open haters or users like Clinton/Obama.