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Tag: LGBTQIA

A Brief Primer On Texas’ F*CKED Up Politics & Why It Matters To You

Posted in Act Out!, Austin, Creative Commons, Journalism, and Video

Whenever you talk about terrible things happening in Texas, people start to tune out. You’re thinking, of course it’s fucking awful, it’s Texas. Why don’t we let them secede already?

It’s true, Texas politics seem like what happens when you apply dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” as an instruction manual BUT everything that happens there is a test balloon. The University of Texas at Austin motto is “what starts here changes the world.” And with most states and the U.S. Congress united behind that shit stain Trump, you can bet we’ll all be eating the same shit-filled Texas chili soon enough.

Now, the Texas government is full of low-life scum, but due to the peculiar whims of Texas politics, the Lt. Governor is a scumbag who stands above all the rest. The Lt. Governor is not just president of the state senate, but also sets the agenda for the entire legislative session. The senators and reps have a lot of politics to get through in a short amount of time, because the Texas State legislature only meets for 140 days every other year. Lemme say that again but slower: A hundred and 40 days EVERY OTHER year. The rest of the time, that massive building is just a big pink tourist trap.

The Green Party Is Failing Sex Workers

Posted in Journalism, Sex & Relationships, and The Establishment

At a time when our country’s two major political parties are increasingly alienating, many politically engaged voters are turning in exasperated hope to third party candidates, like the Green Party’s Jill Stein.

It’s no wonder the party attracts the attention of progressives, independents, seasoned voters, and newly mobilized Bernie Sanders supporters alike: the Green Party bases its platform on 10 key values, ranging from social justice and equal opportunity to nonviolence and ecological wisdom. Stein has called for a 50% cut to military spending, proposes a “Green New Deal” that would invest in renewable energy infrastructure, has called for an immediate forgiveness to all student loans, and has been a very vocal critic of the corruption in the DNC.

While Stein’s positions are often controversial, the desire for an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans isn’t hard to understand in this election cycle. Especially for left-wing voters looking for a candidate who will stand up for the rights of workers and our society’s most marginalized, the Green Party is, at least ideologically, an ideal choice.

But the party has a major, hypocritical flaw.

‘WikiLeaks Did Not Disclose “Gays” To The Saudi Govt’: Whistleblower Site Fires Back Against Media Attacks

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

WikiLeaks has filed a formal complaint accusing The Associated Press of violating journalistic ethics in a recent report that claimed the transparency site was responsible for “outing” private data belonging to Saudi citizens.

The Aug. 23 investigation by AP reporters Raphael Satter and Maggie Michael accused WikiLeaks of releasing the private data of “scores” of residents of the Gulf kingdom as part of the The Saudi Cables. This collection, which the site launched in June 2015, consists of over 122,000 files leaked from Saudi foreign affairs ministry.

In the report, Satter and Michael lodge serious accusations, including that WikiLeaks published private medical data relating to “sick children, rape victims and mental health patients.”

From Bathroom Bills To Islamophobia: It’s All Connected In America’s Anti-Diversity Backlash

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

From anti-Muslim legislation to violence targeting mosques and those who worship there, it’s clear that Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States.

While opponents of Muslims’ religious freedom often cite terrorist attacks carried out by religious extremists to justify their bigotry, analysis of the sources of Islamophobia reveal ties to broader, national issues of systemic racism and xenophobia in the U.S., and the people who stand to profit from fomenting hate.

A November poll by the Brookings Institution showed that 61 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Islam and 46 percent hold an unfavorable view of Muslims.

And compared to other forms of hate speech, anti-Muslim speech remains surprisingly acceptable. Saeed Khan, a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, told MintPress News, “When it came to the rhetoric against Muslims … it was one of the few communities or groups by which politicians and opinion makers could speak with impunity against without facing any kind of repercussions either politically or economically.”

Beyond ISIS: Orlando Mass Killing Is About Much, Much More Than ‘Radical Islam’

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

In the wake of the worst mass killing on U.S. soil since 9/11, politicians and the media seized on the killer’s purported declaration of allegiance to Middle Eastern terrorist groups as an excuse to demand more military intervention overseas and an increasingly militarized homeland.

Omar Mateen, the 29-year-old shooter who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando on Sunday, reportedly declared allegiance to Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the the terrorist group known in the West as ISIS or ISIL) during a 911 call placed just before he began his attack.

As journalists and investigators piece together the evidence, a complex picture is emerging of a conflicted man whose hate and violence were decidedly homegrown.

But this hasn’t stopped the presumptive presidential nominees from both major political parties from using Mateen’s actions as an excuse to call for waging more war and expanding the power of domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

At UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia Supports Right To Torture & Execute LGBT People

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

At the most recent session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia objected to a resolution that condemns the use of torture by law enforcement and reaffirms the human rights of LGBT people.

The resolution, passed during the council’s 31st session, which closed on March 24, condemns the use of torture “and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and urges nations to prevent torture by police or during pre-trial detention.

While the report is primarily focused on police and governmental use of torture, it briefly references the latest report by Juan Mendez, the special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which was issued during the session.

According to a U.N. press release, Saudi Arabia protested because Mendez’s report “included 65 references to sexual orientation and was an attempt to use the eradication of torture to promote other issues, which lacked any ground in international law.”