"Emo" and gay kids targeted, killed in Iraq (warning graphic content).

[William769]

(AP) BAGHDAD - Young people who identify themselves as so-called Emos are being brutally killed at an alarming rate in Iraq, where militias have distributed hit lists of victims and security forces say they are unable to stop crimes against the subculture that is widely perceived in Iraq as being gay.


Officials and human rights groups estimated as many as 58 Iraqis who are either gay or believed to be gay have been killed in the last six weeks alone — forecasting what experts fear is a return to the rampant hate crimes against homosexuals in 2009. This year, eyewitnesses and human rights groups say some of the victims have been bludgeoned to death by militiamen smashing in their skulls with heavy cement blocks.


A recent list distributed by militants in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City neighborhood gives the names or nicknames of 33 people and their home addresses. At the top of the paper are a drawing of two handguns flanking a Quranic greeting that extolls God as merciful and compassionate.


Then follows a chilling warning.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57395105/emo-and-gay-kids-targeted-killed-in-iraq/

[Lint Head]

1. This is what happens in a theocracy. It's Rick Santorums wet dream.

[TheMadMonk]

3. NO! This is what happens when outsiders attempt to impose their own values.

The local radicals lash out murderously at anything that can be attributed to those outsiders: Homosexuality, independence for women, education for children.

It may not be any bed of roses for, gays, women and kids, but almost invariably, "liberating" them will result in even worse treatment for the marginalised.

[Lint Head]

4. "Quranic greeting that extolls God as merciful and compassionate." Rampant theocracy.

[TheMadMonk]

5. NO! Theocray is just a convenient fucking excuse.

Hitler thumped no holy books to bring about his campaign against homosexuals, the physically and mentally infirm and the "lesser races". Hitler PAID the pulipit pounders to keep their noses out of his homicidal and genocidal business.

Stalin went a step further and added religion to the list of activities to be suppressed with violence.

"God's Will" is simply one of the more effective rallying cries when it comes to trying to force one group to behave in accordance with the desires of another. However, it is hardly essential: "They've got oil." is more than sufficient.

[truedelphi]

7. + 1. n/t

[Fearless]

8. Excuse me a second...

So we shouldn't fight for human rights because people might receive "worse treatment"? I'm sorry, but you're flat wrong.

[TheMadMonk]

10. Keep YOUR filthy words out of MY mouth. Force feeding isn't fighting.

Invading for oil and pretending it's about human rights wasn't a fight for rights. But it made better press than "We're really jonesing for the black stuff".

All that did was give false hope to these people before they were abandonned to the tender mercies of their neighbours.

Equal rights MUST be fought for from within.

Why are women's/minority rights a state issue? Employment rights? Because you collectively bloody well won't be told by outsiders (your own elected federal government?) what to do.

But invade a sovereign nation and gee whilackers, you're right and their failure to conform to your worldview is all the evidence you need to pidgeonhole them evil.

[Fearless]

11. Iraq has been discriminating against and killing LGBT people since well before American influence.

Equal rights must be fought for from within?

Tell that to the Jews.
Tell that to Darfur.
Tell that to Rawanda.

Things like this should certainly not be intervened on... http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/04/21/37716/iraq-militias-glue/

Give me a break. We are ever more an international society and that kind of blind-eye will not be turned.

People who kill LGBT people ARE evil. People who kill people for personal gain (true or perceived) are evil.

This has nothing to do with what we have done in Iraq. Us being there has not caused these actions. It existed before it and will exist after. In Iraq and many other countries.

[TheMadMonk]

13. Yes from within.

The entire story of the Jews is fighting for their freedom.

Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda, and elsewhere have been given two messages by the rest of the world: 1) from the LGBT community that "This is what you can and should have." and 2) from the vast majority of the rest: "We have to tollerate you lot, but we don't have to like it and we're certainly not going to help."

They come out, and the world stands by and goes "tsk" when the inevitable attrocities occur.

Not saying it's right. Of course it's not fucking right. I'm saying it's what fucking IS whether you like it or not. Civilised parts of the world have learned to tollerate, a few rare parts have come to accept and almost nowhere in the world can be said to embrace. And in not one of those parts of the world was that freedom to exist imposed from the outside, it was all hard won from within their society by the main actors in the drama.

We can provide examples. We can show that the world doesn't come to a screeching halt when two mommies or two daddies happen. What we can't do is FORCE another to change their mind without first destroying that mind.

Give us all a fucking break and stop projecting your predjudices onto others. This is not turning a blind eye. This is not committing genocide and not permanently occupying, with Teutonic zeal, virtually every developing and third world country on the planet, because nothing short of depopulation, or a totalitarian boot heel to the neck will force people (en mass) to put up with that which they bloody well don't want. And if that boot heel ever lifted for a moment, the backlash would be truly horrific. Think Jasper, Texas times every known LGTB person, anyone suspected of being LGTB and probably every slightly effeminate male within reach. Oh, and add in any decent straight who does try to stand up for their fellow man.

Are you really declaring that most of the human race, for most of history is/was evil? Why not go whole hog and stamp Satan's brand on everone who ever enjoyed a cock or dog fight? Every whaler? Every fur trapper? Every husband who ever made a decision without first consulting his wife?

Abysmally ignorant, terrified witless, parochial, ill educated, indoctrinated. These people are a lot of things, but most of them don't know e-fucking-nough to be evil.

What IS evil is an educated person declaring anyone who does not share his world view to be evil.

[William769]

14. What is evil is a person who thinks they are educated

And defending people who think they have a right to abuse human rights and or crimes against Humanity.

[TheMadMonk]

15. I AM NOT FUCKING DEFENDING ANYONE! I am telling you that the World...

...is a nasty fucking place that does not give a flying fuck for your wishful wooly thinking.

I am telling you that the World will not change its mind about LGTB people until the World is damned well ready to change its mind. Just as the World is still making up its mind about women, child labour, slavery, bull, cock and dog fighting and other abominable human practices.

I am telling you that if we attempt to forcefully change the worlds mind for it, before it is ready to change, the results WOULD BE A BLOODBATH. Have been a bloodbath for women in Iraq and Afghanistan despite (and in fact in deliberate response to) the boot heel of the US on their collective necks. Have gone beyond bloodbath in sub-Saharan Africa where law and order have broken down almost entirely.

Most of these people you hate so vehemently wouldn't recognise either human right or crime against humanity if they leapt up and bit them on the face. The just plain DO NOT KNOW ENOUGH to even know that such things exist, let alone have any valid meaning in a world where subsistence living is the norm.

[Fearless]

16. The world would never have changed its mind if it weren't for brave people

Who stood up and said something, did something. The fact is that I don't know a single person that is gay or Black or a woman or any other minority or oppressed group in this world that would rather accept enslavement, debasement, torture, and yes death on bended knee rather than taking whatever flack may come from standing tall and defending themselves.

That is the bottom line for me.

You say it would be a bloodbath? It is a bloodbath. Of those killed for being gay. Of those married women daring to talk to other men. Of those women who aren't virginal at marriage (and also don't have lots of money to make the gov't look the other way). Of those oppressed groups who commit suicide because they feel so alone and so evil and so backwards in their societies. Yes, there is a bloodbath going on alright.

You would be willing to let it continue. I seek to end it. Everywhere.

Standing up for oneself and supporting others is NOT a fairy tale or a feel-good situation. It is real. And it is the ONLY way anything ever changes.

[TheMadMonk]

17. They all stood up and changed THEIR OWN PART OF THE WORLD.

Some truly brave souls go to other parts of the world and help the locals do that changing.

What doesn't work is going to those other parts of the world and dictating terms.

BULL-fucking-SHIT. History tells us that absent something resembling a local support network, the helpless and opressed choose the survival option (no matter how debasing) almost every single time. When people are starving or threatened with death THE VAST MAJORITY WILL demean themselves any way they're asked to, for just a scrap of food or a moment more of life.

How many times have you wanted to scream at the TV, "Fight back! He's going to kill you anyway." It's not a Hollywood plot element, it's reality. The lickspittle foil to the office/schoolyard bully? On TV he's but a pale imitation of reality.

OK a much, much worse bloodbath. As is being seen in Afghanistan right fucking now. As the US looses what little grip it ever held over the nation, those women and children encouraged to come forward to be the poster children of a new enlightened regime are enjoying a second go round as the VERY DEAD poster children for a resurgent Taliban, and a war machine that doesn't want to leave.

A debased life is not a pleasant one. But it is a life, and in the opinions of most, it remains better than the alternative.

Offering false hopes, with no realistic hope of delivery creates exactly the situations we have in Iraq, half of Africa, and Afghanistan today.

It is not that I am willing to let it continue. It's that I'm aware that any attempt to enforce societal change from the outside is far, far more likely to make matters worse than better.

By all means stand up for yourself and WITH others willing (and ready) to be stood up for, but you WILL NOT GET THE DRUNK TO SOBER UP UNTIL THE DRUNK IS READY TO STOP DRINKING OF HIS OWN VOLITION. He may (probably will) need all the help in the world, but he still has to be ready to accept that help, not have it thrust upon him.

I'm old enough (barely) to see just how far forward several "opressed groups" have advanced in the last several decades, and also to gauge the level of opposition they did it against.

AND YOU are throwing a temper tantrum when the the World refuses to instantly catch up several centuries in the face of entrenched opposition many times greater than the suffragettes, the labour movement, blacks, and libbers ever had to face.

It might not be happening fast enough to please you, but it is happening. Forcing it will not get you there any faster, and (again) as is happening in Afghanistan, is far more likely to invite bloody minded reprisal anywhere you are unable to enforce compliance.

[Fearless]

18. Tell the Jews that they should have just stood up for themselves.

[TheMadMonk]

19. And thankyou for making my point for me.

A tollerated "outed" minority through INTERNAL social engineering was made pesona non grata and the Holocaust was the result.

WWII was NOT fought over what was being done to the Jews, and after the war, their liberation was something of an embarrassment to the allies.

And their continued presence in the partitioned Palestine today is only possible because they have the military might to force that presence. And at that it literally takes thousands of dollars of external military aid for every dollar's worth of internal resistance to their presence.

[Fearless]

20. That is a gross oversimplification of why the Jews were targeted in WWII.

[TheMadMonk]

21. I said nothing about WHY it was done. And while a simplification of HOW...

...it's close enough for the purposes of this argument. The people of Germany, step, by baby step were led to accept and even participate in the persecution of Jews, the Romani, the disabled and other "undesirables".

[Fearless]

22. Led by what foreign power?

[msongs]

2. religion strikes again nt

[Broderick]

6. The way they are being stoned to death is horrific

Religion can be so ass backwards and evil. They pervert the words to excuse murder.

[Rowdyboy]

9. Now I live openly and freely in Mississippi, a cesspool of bigotry and hatred, but Iraq is different

Last edited Tue Mar 13, 2012, 02:03 AM - Edit history (1)

Here, even if someone wanted to, no one is likely to beat my head in with concrete blocks for being gay. Could happen certainly but the odds aren't high.

If I lived in Iraq today I would probably be as far back in the closet as I was in reality growing up in the Mississippi of the 1960's. I was a coward then and I would be a coward in Iraq today. Faced with a totally hostile society that threatened my life I'm afraid I would fold-I would not put my life on the line in order to freely express my sexuality.

Rereading this I see very clearly how contradictory it is from the philosophy of great men like Martin Luther King and the heroes of Stonewall-people I greatly respect for leading the way to my ability to live openly and freely in Mississippi in 2012. The inconsistency is glaring but the truth is the truth. Not all people are cut out to be heroes.

I'm not sure what the answer is, or even if there is one-but I hurt for the poor kids stuck in that particular nightmare and wish there was a way to help.

[Fearless]

12. I think that the only answer is that there is strength in numbers. n.t