Culture and Religion

It's official: gay marriage is as legit as marriage between a man and woman. Dissenters to this new self-proclaimed truth are pilloried as dinosaurs or bigots. The Pope is an object of ridicule, as is, of course, Islam. Bakers who refuse to take an order for a gay couple's wedding cake are convicted of discrimination and given a hefty fine.

The 'yeas' have triumphed among straights (heterosexuals) in the secular, rich West, where gaylib established itself 50 years ago as the latest trendy social movement. Large and popular Gay Pride Day marches in June have more straights than gays in attendance, and floats by (straight) Google employees, Starbuckers, what-have-you, are the centrepieces. June has been declared 'gay pride month' in Canada, the US and much of western Europe, commemorating the 1969 Stonewall riots, a series of spontaneous, violent (yes!) demonstrations against a police raid that took place June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village.

Legalization of homosexual activity came both before (UK and Canada) and after 'Stonewall', and "buggery", the last frontier of sexuality (for both gay and straight), was grudgingly removed from the legal code, with only a few US states still holdouts. Of course, this is all part of the western secular world bubble, though Russia legalized homosexuality in 1993 and China decriminalized it in 1997.

Gay marriage and the state: win-win

Persian http://kayhan.ir/fa/news/105682

In commemoration of Imam Khomeini's death

1) The king of Saudi has recently called Iran a source of terrorism. Is there anything you want to remind king Salman that shows him who is the real responsible of terrorism?

From promoting Osama bin Laden, to 9/11 itself, and on to Syria and Yemen, the evidence of Saudi support for terrorism -- willful killing of innocent civilians -- is clear as day. Combine this with Saudi condoning of US state terrorism, and there is no question who is the real terrorist.

2) What has been the greatest achievement of Imam Khomeini and the Islamic republic to the community of Islam at large?

University of Toronto's March "Islam Awareness Week: Power of Diversity" featured talks highlighting nature, the trials of boxing great Muhammed Ali, and an festival of fine arts and food. The talk by two native Canadian converts was especially empowering. We first honoured the native peoples who once dwelt on the land where we were sitting, the Mississauga, Huron and Iroquois. Toronto (Tkaronto ) is an Iroquois word, meaning  'reflection of trees on water' or 'meeting place', and the Toronto Passage – the Humber and Rouge rivers – as a shortcut between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay. It was a vital link in the trade route that ran from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior.

The first speaker was David Alexanderson, a Cree/ Lakota from Saskatchewan, who spoke about the nightmare of growing up native in Canada -- his parents alcoholics, his father violent, his childhood spent in 57 different foster homes, where he suffered frequent abuse by these constantly changing authority figures. Because his parents were drinking heavily during his mother's pregnancy, he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, which creates severe behavioural problems.

http://noliesradio.org/archives/126016
We are told we live in a Judeo-Christian civilization, that the West has a Judeo-Christian heritage, a concept useful to a largely Christian empire where Jews play a powerful role, but one which is rejected by serious scholars, both Christian and Jewish. Talmudic scholar Jacob Neusner told Newsweek: "Theologically and historically, there is no such thing as the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's a secular myth favored by people who are not really believers themselves."

The concept was popularized in the 1940s as a reaction to Nazism and was used by the imperial elite in promoting anticommunism, and in Israel's conquest of Palestine, fashioned as a "clash of civilization" targeting Islam. Many of the founders of Israel (Ben Gurion and Begin) had been communists, and many American Jews in entertainment and intellectual life were communists and had to refashion themselves as anticommunists in the new age of US empire.

It became the foundation of the ideology of the “special relationship” between the US and the newly proclaimed Jewish state in 1948, and was integral to American politics by the 1960s. It was an inevitable result of Israel’s creation and its early need to make an unbreakable bond with the leading empire.

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Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. A graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he has been writing on East-West relations since the 1980s.

He has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan, as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer. Presently a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram, he is also a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeerah and Turkish Weekly, and is a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio.

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Eric's latest book The Canada Israel Nexus is available here http://www.claritypress.com/WalbergIV.html