A horrific video of a teen boy dying in the streets of Baghdad has gone viral after being posted to social media by his attackers, who killed him for being gay.
The victim is said to be a 15-year-old, known as Hamoudi al-Mutairi, who had earlier posted pictures challenging gender stereotypes. According to some media reports, Mutairi had been on his way home in Baghdad’s Yarmouk neighborhood when his assailant, in pursuit, caught the teenager and began repeatedly stabbing him. As the young man is seen lying on his side, covered with blood, a voice, presumably that of his attacker, asks what his name is, where his home is, and other details about him. One of the questions could be translated either as “who is your boyfriend?” or “who is your [male] friend?” Confused and in shock, the victim then asks the man behind the camera where all the blood covering his abdomen was coming from. “Your guts are out,” the voice replies, in a joking manner. Mutairi then asks to be taken to a hospital and the video ends with him saying, “I want my mom.”’
The video is posted to Facebook but due to the disturbing content we are not linking to it. The descriptions above are accurate.
Iraqi actor and Facebook personality Karar Noshi has reportedly been kidnapped and murdered in Baghdad for being gay.
“Security forces and witnesses” reported on Monday that Noshi’s body was found in central Baghdad following his kidnapping, although there was no official confirmation. Statements also claim that there was “evidence he had been tortured and viciously stabbed”.
Karar Noshi was a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts who worked in theater.
His family received the body of their son after he was found dead on Palestine Street (in central Baghdad).
One Iraqi social media page suggested he had been targeted for the way he looked/
Noshi was a young Iraqi graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts who works in theater.
His family received the body of their son Karar a short while ago after he was found dead on Palestine Street (in central Baghdad).
US-based Iraqi rights activist Faisal Al Mutar wrote on Facebook that Noshi had been killed after being “accused of being gay”.
Al Mutar later wrote that “Shia extremists” were behind the killing, perhaps referring to Iraq’s powerful socially conservative Shia militias. The armed groups have also been accused of kidnapping secular activists in recent months.
A video released Monday purportedly shows Islamic State militants (ISIS) shooting seven men in Rastan, a small town in the embattled central Syrian province of Homs for the sin pf “sodomy”. Also recent received reports from the province of Aleppo are that militants had also executed two men and a boy for also being gay.
The Rastan execution video shows a group of blindfolded men bowed on a dirt road, while a masked militant read out a list of charges that included “sodomy” and “drug addiction.”
The masked man invokes the authority of the “Supreme Judicial Court in Homs,” and sentences the accused to death. A group of nearby militants then opened fire with machine guns.
These, the most recent executions of the gay men which are documented by the vicious militant group are just the latest in the reports of brutality against homosexuals coming out of the conflicts in both Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State (ISIS) in January started releasing a series of images showing its fighters executing gay men by throwing them from the top of a tall building in Mosul, Iraq. Videos of gay men being pushed off buildings have become a semi-regular feature of the militant group’s propaganda efforts.
Back2Stonewall refuses to air any of the videos in question and asks that our fellow LGBT websites and blogs to refrain from doing so also.
The hysterical Ms. Sen. Lindsey Graham, appeared on Fox News Sunday. all a flitter and out of her ever loving mind that Rhett Butler, I mean Barack Obama isn’t in her opinion doing anything about ISIS.
“The first thing I want to tell American people, from my point of view, it is our fight, it is not just their fight. I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource or security and this is not about our safety. There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground to go into Syria, to destroy ISIL, without a substantial American component. To destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off the financing, and destroy the capability to regenerate. This is a war we’re fighting, not a counter-terrorism operation. This is not Somalia, this is not Yemen. This is a turning point in the war on terror. Our strategy will fail yet again. This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home.”
Can somebody please get the proof to out this bitch already. Jeeeeez.
Russia and Egypt: An Interesting Sense of Outrage
Charles Karel Bouley
“The United States criticizing Russia over gay rights is like Rwanda criticizing the Darfur over genocide… “
Yes, that is what I said when asked by a listener about President Obama’s condemnation of Russia over their stringent anti-GLBT laws.
“And spare me your concern for Egypt; our Revolution took eight years and cost many thousands of lives, they’ve only been at this two years. AND, in Iraq, each day, 25-50 die with almost 1,000 civilians dead in July and who was screaming about that? We did that! That is OUR fault!”
Yes, I finished with that. Because it’s how I felt at the time.
I know what’s going on in Russia is horrific. But what’s going on in Mississippi or Alabama or any one of 29 states where a person can still be fired for being gay, even if it’s just alleged is also horrible. And it’s horrible that GLBT youth can not hear a positive message about being gay in Russia, but there are school districts and states trying to do the same here. Yes, Conversion Rape (raping a “suspected” lesbian to convert her and not being punished for it) is horrific and has been reported in Russia. But sending someone away to Gay Rehab (conversion therapy), forcing thoughts and images upon them, making them betray their very soul, well, that’s a form of violation as well and can scar people for just as long and it’s practiced in almost every state in the U.S.
Yes, a Russian newscaster saying gay hearts should be burned or buried if the organs are donated after a death is just wrong, but so is the FDA and American Red Cross refusing blood donations from gay men when blood has been tested for HIV and Hepatitis for decades now that’s also appalling. Russian gay youth being attacked by skin heads and the perpetrators going unpunished is horrific, but GLBT youth are attacked by religious ideology in the U.S. daily and end up killing themselves in record numbers as well, dying without any repercussion to those that led them to it.
And let’s not forget that in 37 states the battle for marriage equality still rages where GLBT Americans have to beg legislators, or even worse, voters, to approve their love and unions and grant them equal protection under the law. Disgusting. England has gay marriage, Uruguay for the love of all things holy, but the fight rages here? ENDA is not the law of the land. And it’s only been in the last five years that DOMA or DADT have disappeared; two flawed and horrific breaches of law and Constitution that were the law of the land for years without much uproar.
The fact is this country is nowhere near where it needs to be for GLBT equality, safety and harmony in society. Yes, we are moving forward. But we are still very, very backwards.
Snowden pissed off President Obama, and Putin flipped him off by granting him asylum. So, the president tries to embarrass Putin on GLBT rights, having rainbow flags thrown in his face in countries he visited after the uproar. Celebrities called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics.
And now, a few weeks out, there’s a new scandal, Egypt has erupted, Glenn Greenwald’s partner has been harassed (who knew an openly gay man broke one of the biggest stories in the recent past!) and the athletes are preparing for Sochi. Mark Leno from Calif. (D-Senator 11th District) called for Calif. to stop investing pension funds in Russia in protest. I can’t find one story on the progress of that or if that has died.
And Russian GLBT youth are still suffering and dying, and while their American counterparts do have it better in many areas, it’s no picnic here either. It’s a daily battle outside of the Calif. or New York bubbles for gay men and women in America; a battle to stay employed, a battle to be in love and be recognized, a battle not to throw it all in as a youth because of institutionalized bigotry, and we may have a name for them now, but hate crimes still happen just like skin heads attacking Russians.
No, President Obama, when it comes to the GLBT community in America you have been better than any recent president in tone, but not in substance. DOMA was bad law. It wasunconstitutional. It had to be undone and I’m glad it was, but you don’t get credit for repealing something that should have never been enacted (shame on you Bill Clinton). As for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, when the Army needed bodies during the Civil War, they let in blacks. Why? Equality? No, they needed bodies. Our military at the time was waging war on two fronts with exhausted soldiers. It needed (needs) bodies. It also makes those people pledge valor, honor, dignity, pride, allegiance to Country so it is incongruous that it would also ask them to cover up or lie about who they are so again, glad it’s gone, but it benefitted the country more than the gays in general.
No, President Obama, you want street cred over here to criticize others? Make Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) the law of the land by making it a legislative priority and make it illegal in every state to fire a GLBT person for simply earning a living. Have a congressperson introduce legislation to simply grant marriage equality, period, all 50 states and let’s get this bigotry out in the open on the Senate or House floor. Stop doing half-measures and get the job done.
And as for Egypt, well, look at the Iraq Body Count. Just this past Monday, August 19, 14 people died. Seven in bomb attacks in Mosul, three by IEDs in Tuz, one by gunfire in Basra, one in Kirkuk, another IED death in Baquba with an AED death in Mahaweel. So far, in August, 495 civilians have been killed in Iraq violence. And we did that. We broke that country apart and now it is the Humpty Dumpty of the Middle East; nothing is going to put it back together again.
We spent trillions all told, and for what? We illegally occupied the country, deposed the dictator that was keeping the peace (and no, he was NOT a nice man), invaded, forced something on them they didn’t really want to buy, and then left. Now, the Chinese buy up to 60 percent of the oil from the country and we have $4/gallon gas, thousands of Americans with PTST, lost limbs or lost lives and up to 125,000 dead civilians.
Move in to Afghanistan and Pakistan and just talk drones and we’ve killed over 3,000 from the sky, and the CIA has said up to 25 percent of those people are unknown to us, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That means we’ve killed 750 civilians with drones (a conservative estimate), including over 100 children.
But we are going to condemn the revolutionary process of Egypt and be outraged at the violence?
In 2012, 131 people were murdered in Oakland, Calif. There’s been 58 murders to date in 2013. Over 21,000 people have died in the U.S. from gun violence since the Newtown tragedy and estimates say gun deaths will surpass auto deaths in the U.S. this year, and we can’t even get sensible legislation passed, let alone be outraged enough to actually do something about it.
The fact is, the Russian gay issue was made an issue because of mounting tensions with Russia, including Snowden, and Egypt is an issue because we support their military, they are the gateway to the Middle East and support Israel in so much as they don’t attack them. We need Egypt to keep relations in the Middle East which we need for, say it with me, oil. The only reason anyone cares about a “Stan” country or the MIddle East is oil. Wait, and Israel. And we should care about both, but again, the outrage over this particular situation in Egypt… really?
There’s a lot be be angry about across the world. But there’s also a lot to be angry about right here. A lot. And we can’t keep acting like sectarian violence isn’t happening in the streets of America. Religious right, Muslim Brotherhood, what’s the difference? Republicans refusing to legislate, a country in decline, a nation that excels at two things, incarcerating and killing prisoners but fails at everything else from education to equality, well…
In the 24-hour news cycle there’s room for us to be involved, and care about, many issues: including Egypt and Russia. But let’s be sure we know why we are involved, why we care. And then let’s make sure that as we throw stones, our house is not made of glass. Because Moscow or Mississippi anti-gay sentiment, laws and oppression are everywhere and hurts just as much to the person experiencing it regardless of geography. And make no mistake,the GLBT community still bears the brunt of hatred and hate crimes in America today. And the argument that, “well, you have it better here than there,” doesn’t make what’s going on here right. It’s a false equivalent.
And as for Egypt, what’s going on is horrific, from killing of journalists, rapes going on in the crowds going unreported, people dying for a simple political affiliation, revolution is indeed messy. Like France supported us, we must support the spirit of freedom and independence that burns in Egypt and throughout the world, but we must never forget that we can’t share freedom or independence if all Americans are not secure in their own.
And let’s not forget the horrors of Iraq. Let’s not forget the terrors that still exist in Afghanistan, the death, the violence. It’s a legacy we created and we seem to have left the Iraqis to die without so much as a blip on our nightly news.
——————–
Charles Karel Bouley, known on-the-air as Karel, is an American talk radio host and author. He is chiefly known for his two stints of work on KGO radio show in San Francisco, California. Prior to working for KGO the first time, Bouley was the first openly gay radio talk show host on KFI in Los Angeles. Karel is a high profile blogger for The Huffington Post, and his editorials have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal. He was also an editor and columnist for The Advocate.com, and a celebrity photographer for Billboard Magazine.
To listen to Chale’s podcast or The Karel Show live daily please visit his website, or get the App for iOS or Android
*Reprinted with the permission of Charles Karel Bouley
An independent UN investigation into the treatment of gay Wikileaks soldier Bradley Manning in Camp Arifjan in Kuwait and in Quantico in Virginia has concluded citing that the “US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment”
Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier’s arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.
“The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence,” Mendez writes.
The findings of cruel and inhuman treatment are published as an addendum to the special rapporteur’s report to the UN general assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights. They are likely to reignite criticism of the US government’s harsh treatment of Manning ahead of his court martial later this year.
This country should be ashamed.
We’ve become EVERYTHING that we originally fought against.
The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Campaign has released an alert that it is receiving reports from Iraq of a new wave of targeted killings and violence against individuals who are perceived to be gay or lesbian.
According to Iraqi human rights activists, in early February 2012, an unidentified group posted death threats against “the adulterous individuals” in the pre-dominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad and Basra. The threats gave the individuals, whose names and ages were listed, four days to stop their behavior or else face the wrath of God, and were to be carried out by the Mujahedin. According to sources inside Iraq, as the result of this new surge of anti-gay violence close to 40 people have been kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered. The Iraqi authorities have neither responded to this targeted violence nor have they publically denounced it. It is widely believed that these atrocities are being committed by a group of the Shiite militia.
Yep it sure was a great idea to replace the secular non existent threat with that fundamentalist religious extremist mess. But hey we brought them our democracy after all didn’t we?
So seriously fucked up.
Why did we go there? Why did we stay there? What did we get there? What did we gain there? What did we give there? What did we bleed for?
George Bush’s daddy issues and Dick Cheney’s Haliburton greed.
TITLE CARD; “If the Army Goes Gay.” A Codey Wilson Production
EXT. AMRY BASE IN THE IRAQ DESERT – DAY
Beefy Beast Soldier Number 1 sits behind the wheel of a motionless military convoy truck reading a newspaper while his buddy Soldier Number 2 stands besides it.
BEEFY BEAST SOLDIER NUMBER 1 What?!
SOLDIER NUMBER 2 Whats wrong?
BEEFY BEAST SOLDIER NUMBER 1 Gays, man! Gays in the military. It’s all right to be gay in the military!
Cue Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah Soundtrack
SHOT: A soldier unzips his uniform
CUT TO: A shirtless man dances in the distance atop a military vehicle
And thats how it all started for 22 year old National Guard specialist Codey Wilson when he and his buddies in a troop of National Guardsmen from Virginia took a JVC camera and filmed some of the guys in his company—dancing to Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah” in modified uniform filmed a spoof of what would happen if gay soilders were allowd in the military. There is a shower scene and a night scene with glow sticks and a scene with a kid in a gas mask dry-humping another soldier.
The video was posted on Youtube at around 5 p.m. on May 10 at 2am the video had 54,000 views. and was posted on blogs and other media sites around the world. But Wilson’s higher-ups weren’t laughing. and were less than thrilled with the video spoof and told him to take it down and he had to draft a letter explaining himself. He was investigated and put on garbage duty
*Read more and watch Codey Wilson’s Video by clicking on the “Read more” link below!
Nobody in Wilson’s “If the Army Goes Gay” video is actually gay.
Wilson does saythat there are homophobes on the base, “backcountry rednecks” Wilson calls them There were guys in the company who thought Wilson was disrespecting the unit or speaking out in favor of the repeal.
“The thing they seem most concerned about is that the repeal will usher in a slew of new rules about fraternization. “If everyone knows you’re gay and you touch someone, even as a joke, you’ll be going down for it, the same way that if a guy held a girl’s hand on the—Stop it, man! My roommate’s touching me right now.”
These kids don’t have politics—or not the kind you’d recognize back home. They made the video, says Wilson, because they want to be part of the conversation. They watch Lady Gaga videos from their warm blue laptops thousands of miles away, they download current music and post items on Facebook about caches of puppies they find inside of old bunkers. More than anything it says about gays in the military, the message of the video is, Hey, we’re still here.
“The most special thing about the video I made,” says Wilson, “is that for a few days, we kind of became members of society. It was like we actually mattered.”
Russia and Egypt: An Interesting Sense of Outrage
