I've been encountering a lot of liberal lefty racism and religious fundamentalism disguised as political analysis online over the time I've spent blogging among a majority amerikkkan bloggers who claim to detest their government's foreign policy as related to the middle east. People spend a lot of time discussing and debating how best to oust the village idiot from his high paying job. They debate which upper class smiling figurehead should replace him. Should the figurehead of choice be an affluent light skinned heterosexual black man? Or should they go with an affluent and stoic heterosexual white woman who has seen the inside of the big house before and liked it so much she wanted to return but this time openly at the helm?

They discuss whether georgie lied about the weapons of mass (read: amerikkkan) destruction. They argue about the time table for removing the dangerously skilled groups of trained and armed pawns from Iraq. They debate how much denial they will maintain about the genocide happening in Iraq. They conversate online about whether a change in affluent upper class governing clique will happen sooner or later.

I wish they'd spend more time examining the programming they've received as amerikkkan citizens which allows them to simultaneously question their government's policies and actions without examing the values they as individual members of the most dangerous nation on the planet hold dear.

Oh, and I live in kkkanada. I think the poltical bloggers here could do some of this self reflection and self critique, too.

I think liberal lefties, progressives, patriotic lefties need to take a closer look at the truths they hold to be self-evident.

I've been thinking about patriarchy and religion.

Last week I conducted part of a series of anti-oppression trainings for youth. I met with young men to talk about patriarchal relations(hips).

One young white man referenced muslim countries as a place where women experience much patriarchal oppression. He cited laws against wimmin being the ones to request divorces.

I don't know about all that.

I told him that to comment on the laws of other countries would really take having a historical analysis of their contact with imperialist white european "explorers" (dominators) who came full of themselves, came full of assumptions, came full of the arrogant belief in their cultural superiority and might. I believe that when these fundamentalist christians (by fundamentalist, I mean that they were so zealotous that they've forced the spread of christianity at sword point, at gun point, through genocide and through the theft of children), encountered people they did not know or understand, they reacted violently and that this violence has often had an equal and opposite reaction with peoples and cultures needing to manifest in defense of themselves, their beliefs and their religions more forcefully as if to say: Do not disprespect us or think that you will be able to sway us and introduce your ways and customs as you have so insidiously done in other parts of the world. We are powerful and you will not pass!"

The governments of countries attempting to resist attack may even respond as most human beings do in time of threat -- by attempting to exert more than the necessary amount of control over their citizens. (Just so we can be clear, I'm not talking about georgie and his gang trumping up giant lies so as to give a venue for their blood lusting paranoia and greed to run free.)

As I was saying...
Human beings as individuals struggle with fear based control issues that go into hyper over activity during times of danger real or perceived . Countries are made up of individuals, no?

I find it interesting that wherever dangerous, often homocidal and often extremely unethical european invaders have come and entered or attempted to enter and to meddle, that if the peoples they have aggressed and attempted to colonize, have risen up in resistance, that this resistance and boundary setting (however necessary) has been labelled "violent", "extremist" or "fundamentalism" rather than understood by those who watch and do nothing as a logical reaction to a very real threat.

I believe that when people from the white west, especially patriotic liberals, progressives or lefty liberals start talking about Islam as equated with religious fundamentalism and with the oppression of wimmin, they need to just stop and shut their mouths.

They don't know shite about shite.

I told the young white man I mentioned up above that if he wants to talk about wimmin not being able to get divorces he needs to realize that we live in a part of the world dominated by the descendents of white patriarchal europeans who like to do things "subtly" undercover.

I said that I've known many wimmin in kkkanada who have the "right" to request divorces in courts of law. But when they came out the other side of the divorce proceedings the way the patriarchally dominated courts functioned meant that these wimmin were stripped of so much they held dear. Their right to move and set up home when, where, as they wanted was taken away. Primary custody of the children they had been forced to raise without support in marriage due to the patriarchal beliefs of their male partners was now stripped away. They may have lost their sense of safety by having to engage with the very men they were trying to get away from in the first place. As wimmin demanding and receiving divorces, they felt punished. And weren't they?

This is how the courts let wimmin in the white christian dominated west know they don't have the right to request divorces.

And in terms of religious fundamentalism...
Don't even get me started.

I was listening to the radio and heard that Quebec officials are trying to force muslim wimmin to remove their veils when they go to vote.

french european settler invaders sent as an invading usurping force to north amerikkka in the hopes of stealing native land thereby extending the french empire westward across the atlantic encountered english european settler invaders sent as an invading usurping force to north amerikkka in the hopes of stealing native land. The english had more back-up, more hook-ups, more fire power, better strategists.

The english defeated the french, dominated Native people and set about attempting to dominate the french through a carefully orchestrated assimilation program they thought had worked so well, was working so well on the Natives that it could/would work well on the french, too. Though, in truth, the assimilation plan the english planned to use on the french simply involved absorbing one white people into a larger and dominant white people...I mean, they didn't plan a final solution for the french in the way they had envisioned for First Nation's people.

The french resisted. rebels blew things up (or so I remember). They kidnapped a british diplomat and a government official. They exerted their right to observe their version of christianity (fundamentalist catholicism) as opposed to switching over to the english religions of choice. They defended their "god given" right to impregnate their female partners with as many babies as they could birth without abortion or birth control. They demanded the right to educate progeny in their "faith", the right to label street signs en francais, the right to speak and to express themselves in their mother tongue and their right to replicate their culture as they so chose. They created a white settler revolution.

The french who so valiantly and successfully resisted cultural and religious erasure, habitually attempt to downpress Native communities in their province using violence and police intimidation. Now they're adding to their oppressive repetoire, having now decided to block Muslim wimmin from wearing the hijab.

Well, you know, in a power based society where hierarchies abound, the oppressed, once they have thrown off the chains of domination used to bind them, usually keep those chains in reserve so that they may bind others, thereby shifting, but not destroying power relations. Sweet.

Still wanna talk religious fundamentalism?

I live in christian dominated kkkanada, in toronto. This is a city where there is a church if not a few on every single city block. Stinkapee and I do christian church spotting. I've wanted to do synagogue, mosque and buddhist temple spotting. BUT they're a little harder to find since, the christian churches still dominate by sheer numbers.

The settlers' national anthem references the christian god and men, but not wimmin or other religions.

When people swear they reference the christian god and his dead son.

When people get married it's assumed that they will have their vows validated "sanctified" before a representative of the christian god.

When children are born, the ritual guardians their parents choose for them have the christian god's name affixed to their ritual titles.

When people are brought before a member of the privileged upper classes to account for any supposed wrong doing, any persons participating as witnesses in these proceedings are expected to touch a christian bible as a way to demonstrate that they are telling the truth.

When people hired to do prominent, high level public service work for the people of a city or province or state make their ritual vows to respect their work and to do it to the best of their abilities, they are often expected do this by touching a christian bible.

Prominent burial places in this city are decorated with the iconic sign which is universally believed to be the sign of the christian god's dead son.

And of course there's the big one. The date some christian bigwigs chose arbitrarily as the date they would celebrate the birth of the christian god's son shuts down whole cities, stops government paper pushing, closes the majority of shop doors, closes schools, closes financial institutions, slows pretty much everything to a halt so that even people of other faiths are forced to observe, if not to celebrate the dominant religion of white, european dominated north amerikkka.

Religious fundamentalism? Don't get me started.

Oppression of wimmin? In north amerikkka, internalized patriarchy means that a lot of what we wimmin experience as oppressive isn't done to us, but is instead perpetuated, given ongoing credence and life beyond us, by us. We participate in maintaining the very structures and beliefs that control us.

So, who exactly needs to be "liberated"?

Maybe we need to just concentrate on freeing ourselves and our families from christian religious fundamentalism here on Native land and concentrate on rooting patriarchy out of our minds before we get to "saving" other wimmin who haven't collectively asked for "help", anyways.