Rowan Wolf, PhD
Voice of Conscience

Solidarity vigil in Orlando for victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre. Photo: Fibonacci Blue

Introduction

Omar Mateen and James Howell – Homophobes or Terrorists? Losing the Truth Through Misdirection.

Omar Mateen

Wesley James Howell

Omar Mateen, the homophobic beserker who went on a killing spree in Orlando, Florida, was a “security guard” for G4S  (a global security firm formerly known as Wachenhut,  and the 3rd largest publicly traded company in the world).¹ It took awhile for the media to acknowledge that Omar Mateen was a homophobe, but that was hardly out of their mouths before they were off speculating that he was an Islamic terrorist under orders from ISIS. This shift in the story line is important from the perspective of not addressing homophobia, and trying to link it to a presumed “larger threat” to the country. This morphing of the story is consistent across various disasters and incidents. The media creates a world of hypotheticals pointing every direction except for those that would allow some progress on addressing very serious issues.

Photo by Gage Skidmore … Attribution-ShareAlike License

Donald Trump, in his usual uninformed spouting, blasts that the massacre is because of  “ lax” immigration laws and accused President Obama of “political correctness” in not targeting “radical Islam.” (The Wrap) Never mind that Mateen was NOT an immigrant. Further, neither was James Howell (arrested yesterday), the other homophobe arrested in LA with guns and bomb making materials in his van heading for the LA Gay Pride march.

Of course, you have to feel a little bit of sympathetic (not) for the sticky position that the Trumpster is in. After all, most of his “fifth column” are homophobes too. They are just way right, and Christian evangelical right, homophobes. So poor Donald can’t say anything too sympathetic for the victims of Mr. Mateen or he risks offending his base.

However, the corporate media is not doing much better than Trump, and with relief they are jumping from the uncomfortable issue of homosexuals as victims of this atrocity, to Islamic “terrorism” or even “home grown, Islamic terrorism.” For nobody wants to confront two very nasty facts. First, that Mateen and Howell and all the other U.S. homophobes are products of U.S. culture, and their homophobia is the homophobia embedded deeply in this culture. And second, that hate crimes ARE terrorism; that is what makes them hate crimes. The constant media and governmental protestations that Mateen and Howell have no connection to each other is a lie on the face of such a statement. Mateen and Howell share two very important things. 1) their homophobia ran deep enough, and 2) they felt that they had some right or permission to violently attack the targets of their hatred. I am sure that no one wants to go there, but Trump bears some responsibility for creating an atmosphere that fans this hatred at the same time that he encourages people to act out that hatred violently.

Rationalizing Hatred and Hiding It In Plain Sight

People do not want to address the unfortunate reality that there really are deep veins of misogyny, homophobia, racism, and classism that run through US society. They always have, and looking the other way, or attributing to the biases held by some people (not “us” of course) does not make them any less real nor less devastating. These biases are deeply engrained in the culture and reinforced thousands of times in images and references that most of us hear every day. We hear and see them so often that we rarely even notice as they traipse across our consciousness.

This lack of awareness of the systemic nature of these cultural biases (that become writ large in devastating ways at times, as with the massacre in Orlando), also reinforces the persistent misrepresentation of hate crimes. The distinguishing characteristic of hate crimes is that the message sent by the perpetrators is to the whole target GROUP. Hate crimes are perpetrated upon an individual (or sometimes a small group or property), but the message is to the group. For example, the torching of black churches or mosques or synagogues, are not aimed at that specific place of worship. The message is to all people who worship in that way. Likewise when a person of perceived “hispanic”² descent is beaten up at a bus stop. The message is to everyone who “looks like” that person that they should not be there, or sometimes anywhere.

The message sent by hate violence is to the whole group, and it is intended to “terrorize.” So, in effect, hate violence is terrorism even though there is great legal resistance to recognizing it as such. Further, violence against women is also hate violence (and hence a form of terrorism), but legislators really do not want to start down that path. For while (perhaps), acknowledging that hate crime is different from regular crime, to acknowledge that in the case of women would challenge the basic structure and operation of sex roles within the U.S., for they are by their very nature unequal. This fundamental cultural atavism over women, the feminine, and gender roles, lies at the very heart of homophobia.

The Deliberate Obfuscation of “Hate Crime”

Whenever the issue of “hate crime” comes up, or there is pressure to have something prosecuted as a hate crime, there are many folks who get up in arms. They argue that it is discriminatory to have “extra” penalties, and “special” prosecution for some crimes simply because they happened to someone who is a person of color, and most particularly for reasons of gender or sexual orientation. “Why should “they” get “special” treatment under the law?” The answer is two fold. One, because the message sent by the perpetrator is to ALL people with that characteristic. It is not a “personal” crime. Two, anyone can be the victim of a hate crime, but people of higher social status (white, male, heterosexual, or middle class or above, Christian, or any combination of the preceding) rarely are the victim of hate crime. They are protected in many ways, not the least being social constraint based on deep socialization. However, it is the STATUS of race, ethnicity, religion, that is “protected,” and everyone has those statuses – not just people with lower status in each of these social categories. In other words, everyone has a race, everyone has a sex, everyone has a sexual orientation, everyone has a religious designation (even atheists), and everyone has a social class.

This, unfortunately, takes us back around to the ever popular spout of “political correctness.” For at its base, the real anger over political correctness is that people with low (or lower) status should not have the “right” to be treated with equal courtesy and respect. We should not have the “right” (or the social expectation) to name ourselves or expected to be treated as equals. The anger over “political correctness” is that whites, and particularly white males, should not be “burdened” with “having to watch” what they say. They shouldn’t have to be “burdened” with having to worry about how some “over sensitive” woman/queer/Black/Asian/Mexican/Indian/ (and most specifically since 9/11/2001) “Arab” f e e l s about how they have been addressed, acted towards, or talked to or about. Nor should they have the “right” to complain about it if they are offended and pull the “race card” or the “sex card.”  This is the coding and legitimation of deeply seated oppression in the 21^st century.

So some may wonder how the hell we got from a massacre of folks in a “gay” night club to the issue of “political correctness.” The answer is that the rancor that is evoked about political correctness points directly at the root of the systemic inequality that ends up with folks feeling that they have a moral and social right to harass, beat up, or even kill, people of one of these “lesser” groups. Of course, those with fundamentalist religious association may also feel that they have a religious responsibility and god given authority, to put “those” folks “in their place” (or in the ground). If you do not believe that there is tremendous anger over “political correctness,” then listen to one of Trump’s stump speeches and the response he gets back from the crowd; or bring up the topic in casual conversation at a family dinner or at work.

This same outrage carries over to deciding to call (and particularly prosecute) something as a “hate crime.” Remember the outrage over George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin (also in Florida) being prosecuted as a  hate crime? The same is happening with the flight to “terrorism” in the case of Mateen, and the deep relief on the part of corporate commentators to not have to deal with the combination of homosexuality and hate crimes. Instead, they deflect the issue to ISIS and Islamic terrorism where the real issue becomes not these 103 people whose lives have been violently shoved onto a different course because of one person’s deep hatred for who they were assumed to be (homosexual). Nor for the millions of homosexuals who are getting not only the message of how very dangerous it is to be an “out” LGBT in this society, but how much the society still does not want to deal with homophobia or structured inequality.

This country is never going to have the conversations it needs to have until it admits and accepts the we are deeply unequal and must address it. That conversation will not happen until we can identify the issue of privilege and confront it in the heart of the structure that we live in every moment of our lives.

Footnotes

1. Actually Mateen worked for G4S – the global security firm out of London and third largest publicly traded company on the planet. The US branch promotes themselves as “the leading U.S. security company.” Their front page trumpets their unmatched excellence with Risk360^TM Flexible Incident and Case Management – yes they trade marked their risk response. One might wonder if they are handling the investigation of Mateen.
2. “Hispanic” is an ethnic group designation and people of hispanic descent can be of any racial group. I sometimes refer to hispanics as “racialized ethnics” as the racial group assumed is usually whatever racial group dominates in that area. For example, if it is “Mexicans” then people assume mestizo (though few US whites know enough to use that term), while if the area has a predominance of “dark” Puerto Ricans or Dominicans, then that becomes the “hispanic” racial signifier.

Rowan Wolf, PhD

Is Managing Editor of The Greanville Post and Director of The Russian Desk. She is a sociologist, writer and activist with life long engagement in social justice, peace, environmental, and animal rights movements. Her research and writing includes issues of imperialism, oppression, global capitalism, peak resources, global warming, and environmental degradation. Rowan taught sociology for twenty-two years, was a member of the City of Portland’s Peak Oil Task Force, and maintains her own site Uncommon Thought Journal. She may be reached by email at rowanwolf@greanvillepost.com

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 Published time: 21 Oct, 2011

Supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad shout slogans during a pro-regime rally in Damascus on October 12, 2011 (AFP Photo / Louai Beshara) / AFP

The unrest engulfing Syria is mirrored in the internet with a PR-civil-war. While some videos show “atrocious bandits”, others opt for “atrocious army men”. And none shows what ordinary Syrians live through.

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Unlike other countries of the Arab Spring, there are a lot of different videos about Syria on the internet. TV channels around the world broadcast selective videos of atrocities by armed men. At the same time, they fail to show millions of Syrians rallying to support the government. And they don’t show videos of atrocities against Syrian people.

“The atrocity of bandits in this video is a sign that the US made a misjudgment,” Anhar Kochneva, director of the Jordan Club tourism organization comments on the video. “And now they are making an attempt of intimidating. It’s not a secret that they started preparing the anti-Syrian campaigns 10 years ago. They were proceeding from their understanding of Syrian people’s hatred toward the government, but they failed to notice that the country changed. They began supporting the anti-government rallies, but they failed to notice that these rallies actually brought people together. Millions of people just recently rallied in Aleppo, which the US considered an opposition center. The US believed that Syrians themselves would overthrow and betray Bashar al-Assad, but they failed to achieve an overturn performed by Syrians. Now they send in bandits, Syrians as well as those who co-operate with Americans among them. Some who got captured had performed terrible atrocities under the influence of drugs. For many of them, the only education they ever had was several years of school.”

 

Syrian army regulars celebrating a recent victory and hailing Assad.

Kochneva believes that the US Security Force rules these atrocities of bandits:

“Facebook didn’t work. They caused a provocation in Daraa but it didn’t work either. In the mid-April, the opposition met with Dan Feldman, representative of Hillary Clinton, in Istanbul. WikiLeaks reported that at that meeting a decision was made to start killing servicemen who at that time were unarmed, throughout the entire country. Four or 5 days later, servicemen in different parts of Syria were brutally murdered. And presently, many soldiers and officers are getting killed. Armed groups are kidnapping and murdering state officials.

“There are two centers of unrest left, Homs and Idleb. These videos show fierce terror of Sthe summer of 2011 in these cities. Three thousand people were killed, a third of them servicemen, and a lot of state officials. Ninety per cent of these murders were performed by bandits. This is what happened recently: officials stopped for a coffee on their way somewhere, and they got murdered.

“Bandits have been causing outrage in the north of the country, as there are many villages and forests there, which means a place for them to hide,” says Kochneva.

What’s the footwear of Syrian officers?

The Western media show videos of “atrocities of the Syrian army”. Kochneva comments on one of the most popular videos (of an officer beating up a boy): “Why is this officer wearing beach slippers?”

“Unlike foreigners, the entire Syria knows what the army wears on their feet. In the area of Hama, an army uniform warehouse was robbed. Bandits wore these uniforms while looting and ransacking, and making videos of this kind. There was just one trouble – no boots at the warehouse. Therefore the officers in the video are wearing beach slippers. Moreover, after this robbery, the army was quickly transferred to a different type of uniform. Furthermore, how can anyone understand why officers would record their own dirt and post it in the internet? They aren’t even allowed to go home; when would they find time to spend at an internet café? The army has a high authority, and people really ask them to enter their settlements to protect them.”

Kochneva is convinced that the West intentionally places a barrier for news from Syria. Otherwise, she believes, the EU and the US would not have imposed sanctions on the broadcast of Dunya, a Syrian TV channel which discusses videos of this kind of detail. Particularly, this channel even broadcasts the negotiations of the opposition. Some crafty migrants found a way of making voice chats discussing plans for destabilizing the country publicly available. Kochneva believes the authorities managed to take control over the country and to gain the support of the majority:

“People are laughing already at conspirators and their instructors. A French ambassador who attempted to talk patriarch Ignatius into supporting the US had tomatoes and eggs thrown at him when he was taken outside. A US ambassador, who was watching a rally to support peace in Syria from his car window, got wrapped in a Syrian flag with Bashar al-Assad’s portrait on it. People are saying, ‘Yes, there was terror, it was frightening and confusing; but we’re no longer afraid of you.’”

Not only have the Western media failed to report the truth. They have also engaged in an unrelenting propaganda campaign against Russia, Putin, Iran and Assad with the (by now) well known object of demonizing them, chiefly to prepare the American population for “extreme” measures against such targets. This is a typical cartoon floated by the presstitutes to besmirch Assad’s image.

How to create chaos

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ussian political scientist Ruslan Kurbanov, who spent several years in the Islamic environment in Syria, agrees that there are no preconditions for a civil war; even though several years ago one would have thought that it was indeed possible to happen. According to his observations, unhappiness with the authorities was in the air as early as 2005. It was mainly expressed in rumors:

“They said that people were disappearing. They were allegedly kidnapped by Mukhabarat for being unreliable. They said that kidnapped people were found several years later in prisons. They whispered about terrible conditions in Syrian prisons. I saw those who were personally affected by abuse of power. A family member of one of them was imprisoned for opposition-oriented statements; a relative of another one disappeared; a friend of yet another one went to Iraq, and now Mukhabarat examines his acquaintances. But this was just a tiny percentage of people.”

There were also rumors of stopping armed people:

“They said that armed people were stopped in Damascus. They stated those were militants. There were rumors about attacking and shooting between militants and the authorities,” says Kurbanov.

But the official Syrian media did not respond to these rumors in any way, neither confirming nor denying them.

Kurbanov notes the following characteristic episode:

“Policemen in the street would not respond to the traditional greeting, ‘salam aleikum’. When I asked the locals why the police would not respond to my ‘salam’, I was told that all of the police are Alawis, and they do not like Sunnis, especially explicit ones.”

What is more likely to prevail: hatred toward the US, or tribal ideology?

According to Kurbanov, Syria’s Islamic circles have a strong feeling of resentment against the United States. People are very annoyed by the US trying to impose its standards on Syria, even with regard to modes of dress, and they are upset that the Syrian government agrees to adopt these standards.

“For example, Syria’s authorities conceded to US demands and introduced tight pants for female students in high schools. There were also rumors about the US dictating to the Syrian government whether it should enroll foreign applicants in Islamic universities or not.”

Kurbanov recalls that the US had once declared Syria part of the “Axis of Evil”, and many Syrians feared that the Americans would start bombing Syria the way they did to Iraq. However, Kurbanov believes the US quagmire in Iraq could have its own implication for Syria.

“There were a lot of Syrians who volunteered to fight in Iraq. Bashar al-Assad rode this wave and agitated those who were spoiling for the fight. He let Syrians volunteers infiltrate Iraq. But those fighters were aware that after Iraq, they were to take on the regime back in Syria. I would not rule out that the lone gunners whom the Syrian government later had to hunt down at home were actually former insurgency fighters heading back from Iraq. In fact, it was not that difficult to creep over the border. I have heard stories about people from Syria easily slipping into Iraq, and even Afghanistan, and then coming back. I believe it is possible that some of Syria’s Iraq veterans jumped into the fight at home as soon as it started.”

Kurbanov believes that the animosity and atrocities committed by the opposition as it can be seen from TV films is a manifestation of tribal psychology rather than of an Islamic or revolutionary one:

“In my view, there was no soil for mutual hatred in society until the very last moment. But if blood was spilled in the first protests, I assume that the crowd might easily get filled with thirst to revenge the regime and separate soldiers. Even in the capital the Arabs have preserved their tribal mentality and are ready to stand up for their people.”

Kurbanov believes that the abundance of false reels about the army atrocities has a political goal of causing chaos in the country and forcing Syria to break up its union with Iran.

“I assume that these fakes are being injected into Syrian society to accelerate the speed of the explosion. Forces that are interested in this explosion want to break up Syria’s union with Iran. They include the United States, Saudi Arabia and Sunni Jihad fighters,” Kurbanov said.

Nadezhda Kevorkova, RT

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

A dispatch from RT (Russian Television)

Published time: September 06, 2013 12:29

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube by the Arbeen unified press office on August 21, 2013 shows a man comforting a Syrian girl in shock as she screams in Arabic “I am alive” following an attack in which Syrian opposition claim the regime used chemical weapons in eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus (AFP Photo)

•••

There is proof the footage of the alleged chemical attack in Syria was fabricated, Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, mother superior of St. James Monastery in Qara, Syria, told RT. She says she is about to submit her findings to the UN.

Mother Agnes, a catholic nun, who has been living in Syria for 20 years and has been reporting actively on what has been going on in the war-ravaged country, says she carefully studied the video featuring allegedly victims of the chemical weapons attack in the Syrian village of Guta (Ghouta) in August and now questions its authenticity.

In her interview with RT, Mother Agnes doubts so much footage could have been taken in so little time, and asks where parents of the supposedly dead children are. She promises to send her report to the UN.

The nun is indignant with the world media for apparently turning a blind eye to the Latakia massacre by rebel extremists, which left 500 civilians including women and children dead.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has called on the international community to pay attention to revelations made by Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib.

RT: The United States has used internet photos and video footage of the supposed chemical weapons attack in Eastern Guta to build a case against the Syrian government. Have you been able to look at these files? What do you have to say about them?

•

Mother Agnes: I have carefully studied the footage, and I will present a written analysis on it a bit later. I maintain that the whole affair was a frame-up. It had been staged and prepared in advance with the goal of framing the Syrian government as the perpetrator.

The key evidence is that Reuters made these files public at 6.05 in the morning. The chemical attack is said to have been launched between 3 and 5 o’clock in the morning in Guta. How is it even possible to collect a dozen different pieces of footage, get more than 200 kids and 300 young people together in one place, give them first aid and interview them on camera, and all that in less than three hours? Is that realistic at all? As someone who works in the news industry, you know how long all of it would take.

The bodies of children and teenagers we see in that footage – who were they? What happened to them? Were they killed for real? And how could that happen ahead of the gas attack? Or, if they were not killed, where did they come from? Where are their parents? How come we don’t see any female bodies among all those supposedly dead children?

I am not saying that no chemical agent was used in the area – it certainly was. But I insist that the footage that is now being peddled as evidence had been fabricated in advance. I have studied it meticulously, and I will submit my report to the UN Human Rights Commission based in Geneva.

RT: Recently you’ve visited Latakia and the adjacent areas, you’ve talked to the eyewitnesses to the massacre of civilians carried out in Latakia by Jabhat al-Nusra. What can you tell us about it?  

MA: What I want to ask first of all is how the international community can ignore the brutal killing spree in Latakia on Laylat al-Qadr early in the morning of August 5, an attack that affected more than 500 people, including children, women and the elderly. They were all slaughtered. The atrocities committed exceed any scale. But there was close to nothing about it in the international mass media. There was only one small article in “The Independent”, I believe.

[pullquote]

“There is a terrorist war going on against Syria right now. The international community and Syria’s friends should join forces and say: Enough! And they need to use every opportunity to do that. Otherwise this threat Syria is facing now will turn into a threat to universal peace…”

[/pullquote]

We sent our delegation to these villages, and our people had a look at the situation on-site, talked to the locals, and most importantly – talked to the survivors of the massacre.

I don’t understand why the Western media apply double standards in this case – they talk about mass murder that the use of chemical weapons resulted in non-stop, but they keep quiet about the Latakia massacre.

RT: Do you know anything about the fate of hostages captured in Latakia?

MA: In the village of Estreba they massacred all the residents and burnt down their houses. In the village of al-Khratta almost all the 37 locals were killed. Only ten people were able to escape.

A total of twelve Alawite villages were subjected to this horrendous attack. That was a true slaughterhouse. People were mutilated and beheaded. There is even a video that shows a girl being dismembered alive – alive! – by a frame saw. The final death toll exceeded 400, with 150 to 200 people taken hostage. Later some of the hostages were killed, their deaths filmed.

At the moment we are looking for the hostages and negotiating their release with the militants, but so far we haven’t managed to achieve that.

RT: We often hear reports of Christians being persecuted by the militants. Just the day before yesterday there was an attack in the village of Maaloula, where the majority of population is Christian. Are Christians in Syria facing grave danger?

MA: Everyone in Syria is facing grave danger. There was a case of Muslim religious leaders being kidnapped and beheaded. They were humiliated and tortured. Ismailis, the druze, Christians – people from all parts of Syrian society – are being mass murdered. I would like to say that if these butchers didn’t have international support, no one would have dared to cross the line. But today, unfortunately, the violation of human rights and genocide in Syria is covered up on the international level. I demand the international community stops assessing the situation in Syria in accordance with the interests of a certain group of great powers. The Syrian people are being killed. They fall victim to contractors, who are provided with weapons and sent to Syria to kill as many people as possible. The truth is, everywhere in Syria people are being kidnapped, tortured, raped and robbed. These crimes remain unpunished, because the key powers chose international terrorism as a way to destroy sovereign states. They’ve done it to other countries. And they will just keep doing it if the international community doesn’t say “Enough!”

RT: You’ve managed to get hold of some sensitive information. Does this make you fear for your life as someone who keeps documents that may compromise the militants? Has anyone threatened you?

MA: You are right. I do get threatened. They are trying to discredit me. I know there is a book coming out soon in France that labels me as a criminal who kills people. But any believer should first and foremost trust their conscience, their belief in God, and that will help them save innocent lives. I don’t care much about my own life. My life is no more precious than that of any Syrian child, whose body could be used as evidence to justify wrongdoing. This is the biggest crime ever perpetrated in history.

RT: What should the Syrians do to stop the tragedy they are going through?

MA: The Syrians themselves can do nothing to stop it. They can only rely on the international community, friendly nations, world powers, such as Russia, China, and India. With a lot of enthusiasm we did welcome the news that the British parliament voted against the participation of their country in the possible war against Syria. There is a terrorist war going on against Syria right now. The international community and Syria’s friends should join forces and say: Enough! And they need to use every opportunity to do that. Otherwise this threat Syria is facing now will turn into a threat to universal peace.

RT: What should the Vatican and other hubs of Christianity do to put an end to this tragedy?

MA: The Pope says he has no planes, no bombs, and no armed forces. Instead, he has the power of the truth, and the truth he has told. There are messages coming from everywhere in the world urging against a military intervention in Syria. Those who want to hear them will. The Pope, the patriarchs, Nobel Prize winners, including women, keep saying the same in unison: Let’s stop fighting. No conflict can be solved by military means. Stop adding fuel to the flame!
All the prominent public figures in the world have risen to speak against the war. Everyone has spoken their mind, but the US prefers to turn a deaf ear. The world public opinion has turned against the US. It’s the first time in history that America is alone. They are claiming that they are backed by ten countries. But I insist they aren’t, because the people of these countries disagree with their governments. Even the American people disagree with their government.

RT: Do you believe that this tragedy will end and Syria will remain a homeland for all Syrians, regardless of their ethnical or religious identity?

MA: I’m not Syrian myself, but I’ve been living in Syria for 20 years. I’d like to remind everyone that Damascus is the most ancient capital in the world. I would like to remind everyone that Syria is the cradle of civilization. I would like to remind everyone that this is the holy land that gave birth to the main world religions. What is happening in Syria should serve as a lesson for everyone. I mean that in existential rather than political sense. I am convinced that with God’s help the Syrian people will be able to remain strong, heal their wounds, reconcile and chase out all the foreign mercenaries and terrorists. I believe there will be peace in Syria. But for that we need help from the international community.

•••

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