(no subject)

[neadods]

amilyn says it best: Homegrown Terrorism: America at War on Women.

Click through my tags below, too. Read about Noel Noeson, whose right to conscience involved stealing prescriptions and refusing to answer telephones lest he be asked about birth control. Read about the Biting Beaver, who was shuttled from hospital to hospital attempting to find Plan B until it was too late - and then was given abortion "advice" that might have killed her. Read about the head of Health and Human Services calling it "an important statement" that women be denied birth control. Read, and do not wonder why women need abortion in a country that treats them like this.

Then keep reading. Read about the doctors who've performed abortions on people who picket them - and who then return to the picket lines, because the only moral abortion is theirs. Read about the woman whose fetus died late term in utero - unable to get a doctor to remove the corpse that was festering and sickening her because nobody did late term abortions. Not even to remove a CORPSE. Read about the pro-life girl all ready to do the right thing and adopt - only to discover that none of the prolife shelters she'd helped advertise wanted a biracial baby.

There has been a war for a long time. A war of shouting, of vandalism, of intimidation, of attempted murder, and real murder. Call it for what it is:

A war.

A hate crime.

Terrorism.

Comments

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Then I've doubly failed at my intent, which is not just to point at the Christian wingnuts, but to say, in a word, "you are exactly the same as the other terrorists who've attacked us."

I can only see one way out of this, so I'm going to edit the post in a different direction as soon as I post this.

ETA: Edited. Religion is no longer the drive of the last paragraph. I should not have brought either 9/11 or Muslimism into this; the two are *not* equatable and the point can be made without doing that.

I apologize for giving offense.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

which is not just to point at the Christian wingnuts, but to say, in a word, "you are exactly the same as the other terrorists who've attacked us."

Hmm, I didn't realise that. Possibly because I particularly don't associate either the Taliban (who're a Pashtun political movement who owe much of their current status to U.S. funding) or jihad (which is an Islamic religious concept) with the Saudi-funded Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked the U.S. (Aside: the Saudis and the the Taliban don't even practice the same version of Islam.)

I apologize for giving offense.

You didn't offend me. I don't think "jihad" means the same as an appropriated word in USian English as it does in its original context. I think that appropriation is problematic because it means that neither USian culture or Islamic culture understands what the other is talking about when they use the word so it becomes a barrier to communication rather than a bridge.

I'm glad you chose to edit.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

You didn't offend me.

Cool. I suddenly realized that I'd have to go remind myself what you believe, and it's faster, easier, and probably more accurate to assume I'd been a serious dork.

I don't think "jihad" means the same as an appropriated word in USian English as it does in its original context.

If it ever did, it doesn't anymore. Jihad is pretty much shorthand for "9/11 and/or Taliban" in US English. And there are an awful lot of parallels between the far-right dominionist evangelical movement and the Taliban, which is the reason for the talibangelicals tag and for Starcat's anger; we're both members of a comm that has been tracking the political rise specific branches of far-right Christianity that is hostile to everything outside itself, including all other branches of Christianity.

So that's the background I brought to the original post and she brought to her answer.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Jihad is pretty much shorthand for "9/11 and/or Taliban" in US English.

Yes, which implies all Muslims are terrorists and is extremely problematic (for USians if the rest of us can't tell the difference between supposedly liberal Usians and right-wing USian nutjobs because you all use the same problematic language and therefore imply you believe/support the same things).

there are an awful lot of parallels between the far-right dominionist evangelical movement and the Taliban

Which is hardly surprising because, as I said in my previous comment, the Taliban's rise to power was funded by the US government to spread your own country's ideas to Afghanistan.

we're both members of a comm that has been tracking the political rise specific branches of far-right Christianity that is hostile to everything outside itself, including all other branches of Christianity.

Yes, and yet you verbalised your anger at your fellow USians, Christian USians, by referring to a Pashtun political movement and Islam. Something is pushing your focus away from your own domestic terrorism, even when you're trying to talk openly about it. It worries me because your ("your" individual and "your" collective) discourse on domestic terrorism is important and shouldn't be derailed by right-wing nutjobist concepts creeping in where they don't belong.

Which is why I risked more derailing by posting my first comment on this post and am continuing to derail because I think you might need to see/know what appears to be happening from my outside perspective.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

and is extremely problematic (for USians if the rest of us can't tell the difference between supposedly liberal Usians and right-wing USian nutjobs because you all use the same problematic language and therefore imply you believe/support the same things).

Which is why I rewrote; it was faster and easier to make my point by backing away from loaded language, once my attention was brought to the non-US view.

the Taliban's rise to power was funded by the US government to spread your own country's ideas to Afghanistan.

American foreign policy, particularly as practiced by the same people who shook Saddam's hand a couple decades ago and then bombed the snot out of him now is a whole 'nother conversation. Personally, I don't deny it, I never agreed with it, I had no control except overridden votes about it.

The parallels now, to a liberal American woman, have little to do with foreign policy and everything to do with the parallels between self-appointed religious leaders oppressing women in particular in the name of purity or religion or family rights or whathaveyou. The complete whackaloons aren't throwing acid in schoolgirls' faces here, but they are literally standing between them and doctors providing legal medical services, screaming at them, forcing them away from the doors, and in many cases stalking them. And now one of them has committed an assassination while all the people who urged him into it wash their hands of it.

I think you might need to see/know what appears to be happening from my outside perspective.

I'm schizophrenic about this, because while I agree that it never hurts to get an outside perspective and I agree with your original comment or I wouldn't have edited; at the same time, this particular conversation is an American speaking mostly to other Americans about an American atrocity, and thus using language, including appropriated words, as it would be understood by that audience. Plenty of what I write about is generic enough to be worldwide, but politically, it's like your BNP posts. I can read them, but what's the point of the American point of view on them? It's not like I could vote.

As I type, Countdown (a political commentary show) is running and giving a much more detailed parallel between domestic and imported terrorism.

They haven't used the j word. :)

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

this particular conversation is an American speaking mostly to other Americans about an American atrocity, and thus using language, including appropriated words, as it would be understood by that audience.

O'Reilly and Limbaugh do exactly the same.

I wonder where American Muslims have been disappeared to.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Also, I apologise that my original comment, directed at you, seems to have become a whole thread of derailment from the important issues addressed in your original post. Sorry.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Like I've never wandered off on a tangent in other people's posts. :) Don't think twice about it.

I look at it this way. It's not a bad thing to be reminded that my readership may not be legion, but it is international. Better to deal with an issue that might derail the larger conversation head-on and thus get *back* to the larger conversation than get all fussy about a single word when it's an avoidable one and, as Box points out, not a bad reminder.

And there's gonna be plenty of discussion of this all over the blogosphere. I'm a bit surprised jonquil hasn't posted yet.

I do, by the way, continue to rec amilyn's post if you haven't followed the link. She has had to deal directly with more of the issues related to the assassination than I have.