Russia Hacked the 2016 Election Says NSA Chief: Fake news was Really Used to Fake Out US Citz!

According to KGW.com of KGW-TV, Channel 8(Portland, Oregon) an article  "U.S. senators ask Obama to declassify documents on Russian involvement in election" by Sara Roth, KGW 5:23 PM. PST November 30, 2016:
A group of Democratic Senators, led by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, has called for President Obama to declassify and release more information about Russia’s involvement in the U.S. election.

Wyden, along with six other senators, signed a letter sent to Obama on Tuesday.

“We believe there is additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election that should be declassified and released to the public. We are conveying specifics through classified channels,” the letter said.

The letter follows Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s call for recounts in three states where Donald Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton.

A group of computer scientists said it is possible the election was hacked in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania but that claim has received criticism, with other experts saying hacking the election would be very difficult.

In October, the Obama administration publicly blamed the Russian government for hacking and attempting to interfere with the election process. 

Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”

Watts’s report on this work, with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger, appeared on the national security online magazine War on the Rocks this month under the headline “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.
The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.

PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.

[Could better Internet security have prevented Trump’s win?]

Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.
The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events.


Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations.

The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.)

This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians.

This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign. Researchers from both groups traced a variety of other false stories — fake reports of a coup launched at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and stories about how the United States was going to conduct a military attack and blame it on Russia — to Russian propaganda efforts.

[Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’]

The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.

“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”

He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action.

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate.

McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump’s victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. “They don’t try to win the argument,” said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election or hacking the accounts of election officials. “This is some sort of nonsense,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for Putin, said last month when U.S. officials accused Russia of penetrating the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.

RT disputed the findings of the researchers in an e-mail on Friday, saying it played no role in producing or amplifying any fake news stories related to the U.S. election. “It is the height of irony that an article about “fake news” is built on false, unsubstantiated claims. RT adamantly rejects any and all claims and insuations that the network has originated even a single “fake story” related to the US election,” wrote Anna Belkina, head of communications.

The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

“They use our technologies and values against us to sow doubt,” said Robert Orttung, a GWU professor who studies Russia. “It’s starting to undermine our democratic system.”

The Rand report — which dubbed Russian propaganda efforts a “firehose of falsehood” because of their speed, power and relentlessness — traced the country’s current generation of online propaganda work to the 2008 incursion into neighboring Georgia, when Russia sought to blunt international criticism of its aggression by pushing alternative explanations online.

The same tactics, researchers said, helped Russia shape international opinions about its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in Syria, which started last year. Russian propaganda operations also worked to promote the “Brexit” departure of Britain from the European Union.

Another crucial moment, several researchers say, came in 2011 when the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of rigging elections, sparking protests that Putin blamed the Obama administration — and then-Secretary of State Clinton — for instigating.

Putin, a former KGB officer, announced his desire to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” during a 2013 visit to the broadcast center for RT, formerly known as Russia Today.

“For them, it’s actually a real war, an ideological war, this clash between two systems,” said Sufian Zhemukhov, a former Russian journalist conducting research at GWU. “In their minds, they’re just trying to do what the West does to Russia.”

RT broadcasts news reports worldwide in several languages, but the most effective way it reaches U.S. audiences is online.

Its English-language flagship YouTube channel, launched in 2007, has 1.85 million subscribers and has had a total of 1.8 billion views, making it more widely viewed than CNN’s YouTube channel, according to a George Washington University report this month.

Though widely seen as a propaganda organ, the Russian site has gained credibility with some American conservatives. Trump sat for an interview with RT in September. His nominee for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, traveled to Russia last year for a gala sponsored by the network. He later compared it to CNN.
The content from Russian sites has offered ready fodder for U.S.-based websites pushing far-right conservative messages. A former contractor for one, the Next News Network, said he was instructed by the site’s founder, Gary S. Franchi Jr., to weave together reports from traditional sources such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times with ones from RT, Sputnik and others that provided articles that often spread explosively online.

“The readers are more likely to share the fake stories, and they’re more profitable,” said Dyan Bermeo, who said he helped assemble scripts and book guests for Next News Network before leaving because of a pay dispute and concerns that “fake news” was crowding out real news.

In just the past 90 days — a period that has included the closing weeks of the campaign, Election Day and its aftermath — the YouTube audience of Next News Network has jumped from a few hundred thousand views a day to a few million, according to analytics firm Tubular Labs. In October alone, videos from Next News Network were viewed more than 56 million times.

Franchi said in an e-mail statement that Next News Network seeks “a global perspective” while providing commentary aimed at U.S. audiences, especially with regard to Russian military activity. “Understanding the threat of global war is the first step to preventing it,” he said, “and we feel our coverage assisted in preventing a possible World War 3 scenario.”

Correction: A previously published version of this story incorrectly stated that Russian information service RT had used the “#CrookedHillary” hastag pushed by then-Republican candidate Donald Trump. In fact, while another Russian information service Sputnik did use this hashtag, RT did not.

The NSA Chief Says Russia Hacked the 2016 Election. Congress Must Investigate.

It's up to Capitol Hill to protect American democracy.

DAVID CORNNOV. 16, 2016 3:24 PM STRAIGHT FROM MOTHER JONES.

Despite all the news being generated by the change of power underway in Washington, there is one story this week that deserves top priority: Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, was asked about the WikiLeaks release of hacked information during the campaign, and he said, "This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect." He added, "This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily."

This was a stunning statement that has echoed other remarks from senior US officials. He was saying that Russia directly intervened in the US election to obtain a desired end: presumably to undermine confidence in US elections or to elect Donald Trump—or both. Rogers was clearly accusing Vladimir Putin of meddling with American democracy. This is news worthy of bold and large front-page headlines—and investigation. Presumably intelligence and law enforcement agencies are robustly probing the hacking of political targets attributed to Russia. But there is another inquiry that is necessary: a full-fledged congressional investigation that holds public hearings and releases its findings to the citizenry.


If the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies are digging into the Russian effort to affect US politics, there is no guarantee that what they uncover will be shared with the public. Intelligence investigations often remain secret for the obvious reasons: they involve classified information. And law enforcement investigations—which focus on whether crimes have been committed—are supposed to remain secret until they produce indictments. (And then only information pertinent to the prosecution of a case is released, though the feds might have collected much more.) The investigative activities of these agencies are not designed for public enlightenment or assurance. That's the job of Congress.
When traumatic events and scandals that threaten the nation or its government have occurred—Pearl Harbor, Watergate, the Iran-contra affair, 9/11—Congress has conducted investigations and held hearings. The goal has been to unearth what went wrong and to allow the government and the public to evaluate their leaders and consider safeguards to prevent future calamities and misconduct. That is what is required now. If a foreign government has mucked about and undercut a presidential election, how can Americans be secure about the foundation of the nation and trust their own government? They need to know specifically what intervention occurred, what was investigated (and whether those investigations were conducted well), and what steps are being taken to prevent further intrusions. 

There already is much smoke in the public realm: the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Also, Russian hackers reportedly targeted state election systems in Arizona and Illinois. Coincidentally or not, the Russian deputy foreign minister said after the election that Russian government officials had conferred with members of Trump's campaign squad. (A former senior counterintelligence officer for a Western service sent memos to the FBI claiming that he had found evidence of a Russian intelligence operation to coopt and cultivate Trump.) And the DNC found evidence suggesting its Washington headquarters had been bugged—but there was no indication of who was the culprit. In his recent book, The Plot to Hack America, national security expert Malcolm Nance wrote, "Russia has perfected political warfare by using cyber assets to personally attack and neutralize political opponents…At some point Russia apparently decided to apply these tactics against the United States and so American democracy itself was hacked."

Several House Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, have urged the FBI to investigate links between Trump's team and Russia, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has done the same. According to various news reports, Russia-related probes have been started by the FBI targeting Americans associated with the Trump campaign. One reportedly was focused on Carter Page, a businessman whom the Trump campaign identified as a Trump adviser, and another was focused on Paul Manafort, who served for a time as Trump's campaign manager. (Page and Manafort have denied any wrongdoing; Manafort said no investigation was happening.)

Yet there is a huge difference between an FBI inquiry that proceeds behind the scenes (and that may or may not yield public information) and a full-blown congressional inquiry that includes open hearings and ends with a public report. So far, the only Capitol Hill legislator who has publicly called for such an endeavor is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). On Tuesday, Graham, who was harshly critical of Trump during the campaign, proposed that Congress hold hearings on "Russia's misadventures throughout the world," including the DNC hack. "Were they involved in cyberattacks that had a political component to it in our elections?" Graham said. He pushed Congress to find out.


The possibility that a foreign government covertly interfered with US elections to achieve a particular outcome is staggering and raises the most profound concerns about governance within the United States. An investigation into this matter should not be relegated to the secret corners of the FBI or the CIA. The public has the right to know if Putin or anyone else corrupted the political mechanisms of the nation. There already is reason to be suspicious. Without a thorough examination, there will be more cause to question American democracy.

Russia's Involvement in the 2016 Election Is Growing by the Day

Now the NSA director admits Russia used Wikileaks to meddle in the campaign.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE

NOV 16, 2016
It's shoveling sand against the tide to ask this question again, but why isn't the fact that Russia played monkey-mischief with the recent presidential election—and the fact that we have no freaking idea how much the president-elect may owe to various financial institutions with connection to that kleptocratic regime—a much bigger story than it has been? Now, we've got the director of the National Security Agency chiming it. Via Quartz:

In response to a question, Michael S. Rogers, a Naval officer and NSA director since 2014, said on stage at a Wall Street Journal conference that Wikileaks was furthering a nation-state's goals by publishing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's presidential campaign weeks ahead of the election. "There shouldn't be any doubt in anybody's minds, this was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect," he said.

I am no fan of NSA shenanigans, and I am eternally grateful to Edward Snowden for letting us all know about at least some of the shenanigans in question. But I'm hard-pressed to see an ulterior motive for Rogers here. The budget and mission—for good and ill—of the intelligence community are a couple of the things in the American government that can safely be said not to be under existential threat from the incoming administration. Rogers isn't protecting his turf or his budget because nobody's coming after them.
If he doesn't trust Vladimir Putin, I don't blame him. Neither do I, and I will remain an angry skeptic on the subject of an innocent Trump-Putin connection until the president-elect releases enough of his financial documents to convince me that he's not in hock to the Russian oligarch or his bankers. The fact that Putin has been playing footsie with nationalist movements all over Europe doesn't fill me with optimism, either. Christ, there's even one starting up in Ireland now, although its official launch party in Dublin on Wednesday was canceled because the hotel it had booked for the launch bailed on it. From The Irish Times:

The National Party had circulated a short press release earlier this week informing media of an event due to take place at the five-star hotel situated across from Government Buildings at 3pm on Thursday. A spokeswoman for the Merrion said it has now cancelled the booking, but refused to give a reason for why this was done. The National Party claims that it wants to "remind the political elites and the general commentariat... of the extent to which the promise presented by the Proclamation of the Republic remains unfulfilled". It cited the Irish economy's "unsustainable debt", the "unrestricted policy of immigration to the point of population displacement" and "the blood lust of extremist groups to remove the equal right to life of the unborn child" in its release.

How perilous a time this is for the world is only beginning to be understood.

Is the White House Hiding Secrets About Russia's Role in the Election?

Seven senators have asked President Obama to declassify additional information about the Kremlin’s possible involvement.

KAVEH WADDELL  NOV 30, 2016

Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden Alex Brandon / AP

A group of top senators is asking President Obama to release more information about Russia’s involvement in the election, hinting that important details are being kept secret.

In a letter sent Tuesday and made public Wednesday, seven Democratic senators—six members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one member of the Senate Armed Services Committee—wrote a two-sentence letter to the White House. It read, in its entirety:

We believe there is additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election that should be declassified and released to the public. We are conveying specifics through classified channels.
The letter was led by Ron Wyden, an outspoken Democratic senator from Oregon who has long been active on technology issues. The other five signatories from the Senate Intelligence Committee included Mark Warner, who will become the committee’s next vice-chair. But the list of names had a glaring omission: Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s current vice-chair, was the only Democratic committee member who didn’t sign the letter.

Just yesterday, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings, called for an investigation of Russia’s role in the U.S. election. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, said she was in support of the investigation.

The claim that Russia attempted to meddle in the election has the weight of the intelligence community behind it. In October, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security announced that they were “confident” that the Russian government was behind intrusions into “U.S. political organizations,” likely referring to data breaches at the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.


Now that the election is over, it’s not clear what effect the release of concrete details about Russia’s involvement would have.

Feminista Jones

It is not easy to impress me. Actually nothing impresses me, but there are a few people who catch my attention in a way that most would not understand. 

Because my mind stays on many things at one time and I keep an open mind, I am constantly seeking knowledge and understanding. As well I feel out those who are like minded and those who are anti. 

In a world full of single tracked minds, inane drones and pseudo intellectuals it is a relief and pleasurable to come across someone who mentally stimulate me. It is better yet when that person is a female. Perhaps I'm sapiosexual, but Feminista Jones aka Michelle Taylor has caught my attention. 

So far what I've heard from Feminista Jones is on point and if you do not agree with her she will have you rethinking much of what you thought was so. I promise that she will force you to open your mind consciously or subconsciously, especially many of you self hating blacks and female bashing males. 

Below are a few videos of Feminista Jones and some info about her. 

LIVE on #Periscope: Black Feminism Didn't Destroy the "Black Family". Here's a list tho https://t.co/CWMWKlBxdj

— HRod17@IWonTho.com (@FeministaJones) November 29, 2016

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Feminista Jones (pseudonym of Michelle Taylor)[1] is a mental health social worker[2] and feminist writer from New York City, as well as a large contributor to Black Twitter and a prolific blogger about black feminist issues. In 2013, Jones was selected as a United Nations Foundation Fellow for her dynamic social media influence. In 2014, she launched a global anti-street harassment campaign (#YouOKSis) and a National Moment of Silence protesting police brutality (#NMOS14), both of which received international media attention.[3][4] For this work, she was awarded the 2014 Black Weblog Award for Outstanding Online Activism.

Jones describes herself "as a post-modern sex-positive, Black feminist woman, which basically means that I’m multi-faceted, at least in my expression of myself and my embodiment of feminism. I exist in a new era of critical thinking and self-identification. I promote the positive aspects of sex, sexuality, and sexual liberation."[5]
The sex-positive movement is a social movement which promotes and embraces sexuality with few limits beyond an emphasis on safe sex and the importance of consent. Sex positivity is "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, and encourages sexual pleasure and experimentation. The sex-positive movement is a social and philosophical movement that advocates these attitudes. The sex-positive movement advocates sex education and safer sex as part of its campaign." Part of its original use was in an effort to get rid of the frightening connotation that 'positive' had during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The movement generally makes no moral distinctions among types of sexual activities, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference.

Writing

She has written articles for the Washington Post, Salon, TIME.com, and TheEbony.com.

Jones is the author of the 2015 erotic novel Push The Button, a healthy, sex-positive response to what Jones saw as an abusive relationship in 50 Shades of Grey.[9]

Jones has been regularly featured on Huffingpost Live, has appeared on the Dr. Oz Show and the Exhale Show, and her work has been featured on C-SPAN and MSNBC. She has presented at various conferences at universities and, in 2014, she was honored as one of the Top 100 Black Social Influencers by The Root.

References

1.  "The Disruptors"CNN. August 2015. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
2. Jump up^ Hackman, Rose (26 June 2015). "'We Need Co-Conspirators, Not Allies': How White Americans Can Fight Racism".  The Guardian. Retrieved 15 April 2016.

Police Brutality: We Can't Forget [Anyone Who Isn't a Cisgender Hetero Man]

Feminists Don’t Get Dickmatized by Feminista Jones

Feminists Don’t Get Dickmatized

 March 13th, 2016  Feminista Jones

(En Español)

I already know that, by giving this piece the title I selected, most folks will react before reading. Such is the nature of this “140 Era” in which we live, I guess. If you’ve made it this far, allow me to explain my point of view.

I will say it again: Feminists don’t get “dickmatized”.

What does it mean to be “dickmatized”? For simplification, it is the idea that someone has sex with a person with a penis and becomes totally strung out and caught up in that person because the sex was so good. The dick was SO good, that the person is fiending, losing their minds, and in other ways growing addicted to being around that person. The person is “sprung”, as we say in the streets, and can’t stop craving that person(‘s sex). The dick makes you keep going back for more because it’s just SO amazing, that you can’t walk away from it, despite the millions of other free dicks ready, willing, and available to handle business. (To be fair, the complementary term would be “pussy whipped”, usually used to describe men who act these ways when having sex with cisgender women.)

I call bullshit.

It is anti-feminist to even remotely agree that such a thing could happen because doing so accepts that a penis wields such a controlling power over a woman’s intellect and sensibilities that she cannot control her cravings, responses, reactions, and interactions with the person to whom the penis is attached. It accepts the long-standing idea that the penis is a weapon that can control women’s actions, one that has long caused incredibly violent harm to women, men, and children the world over. It accepts the idea that men’s power is in their penises and that women can be moved to act against their own best interests simply because they came in contact with a piece flesh.

Again, I call bullshit. This isn’t possible. Feminists, theoretically, don’t believe this nor would one ever willingly accept that women are so much controlled not just by penis, but by any sexual activity, that they simply cannot control their impulses, actions, thoughts, etc. when they are around men who fucked them/ate them/ kissed them/sucked them well.

Image by trophygeek via Flickr

Instead, I think we struggle with reconciling the established social mandates that dictate how we’re supposed to behave sexually, as women, and with wanting to avoid being thought of as weak or stupid for our poorer or unhealthy choices that involve engaging men in intimate ways. We know that women are complex; there’s no one way to be a woman. We have very real, unique feelings and experiences that shape our individual womanhood and, unfortunately, many of us find our identities as women shaped by very narrow socialized ideas we can’t seem to shake, no matter how hard we pump our feminist fists.

What I believe is actually happening, in many cases, is that we may default to blaming the “dick” for our behaviors because we struggle to admit that we have developed feelings or an intimate connection to someone we know we probably shouldn’t or at a time when developing such a connection doesn’t really work for our lives at this point.

• Maybe it was a one-night stand in which the rules were established that, if it goes on, it’s just going to be sex but… feelings have developed over time (or maybe 5 or 6 times). You’re afraid that if you admit it to him, you might lose out on the intimate connection and time spent. You’re afraid that if you admit it to your friends, they’ll call you stupid. You’re afraid that if you admit it to yourself, you’ll end up “blocking your blessings”, as they say, or closing yourself off from connecting with someone more likely to give you the relationship you really want.
• Maybe it is someone else’s partner and you know there is no chance for you to have the kind of relationship you want, but now you have feelings and don’t want to stop seeing him, so you blame the “dick”. This could be in a poly, open, or creep situation, doesn’t matter. You just know that you cannot “have” him, and you’re not willing to walk away because despite what everyone says is the “right thing to do”, you’re just going with what works for you right now, judgments be damned. Still, it’s not socially acceptable to behave this way, so you blame it on the dick and claim you were “dickmatized” to explain your behaviors.
• Maybe it’s an ex-partner you can’t quite get over, but you don’t feel comfortable admitting it because you’re supposed to be putting up a brave, “I’m over it!” front, yet you know that we’re engaging in sexual activity as a way to stay connected. We say we’re “dickmatized” to explain why we can’t leave him alone, but are we really? With all of the free, plentiful dick that is thrown our way, are you holding onto the dick or rationalizing holding onto the man?
• Maybe you convinced yourself that you could manage a “it’s just sex” connection but because he has been saying and doing things that seem to go beyond sex, you’ve allowed yourself to believe actions speak louder than words and you get caught up. And when he sticks to his “Nah” when you ask if there is more, you’re embarrassed for letting yourself get caught up, so you rationalize it and blame the “dick”. You would rather give that power to a piece of flesh than own your unrequited feelings.
• Maybe he’s a complete asshole and you know good and damned well you shouldn’t be within 100 feet of his trifling ass, but…you can’t help how good we feel after we have sex (which is probably amazing because that’s what assholes do–they fuck amazing!) and he pulls us in close, whispers “I missed you” in your ear, and before you leave, gives you a gift he picked up because he “was just thinking about” you. He was thinking about securing that next session, but you read it as him actually caring about you and building something, so…you go along with it.

There are so many reasons we find ourselves developing feelings or intimate connections to people and I think we need to be more honest about them. You’re a human being and feelings are human responses that most people have, barring any disorders and what not. We have to think about how external factors play into how we accept or reject these feelings for what they are. It doesn’t help anyone if you find yourself falling for someone who has made it clear they have no intention of returning the feeling. It can be quite embarrassing and you might develop a deep shame for being so reckless. Why? Society will likely blame you for even having sex with the man– what did you think was going to happen, amirite?

It often goes back to shaming women for enjoying sex on their own terms, so many times, we hide our true feelings and posture in ways that will avoid societal backlash. We don’t want to be seen as women who succumb to feelings for men that we know we shouldn’t have in any sense of the word, so we rely on blaming flesh: the dick. It is more acceptable to blame the dick because society upholds that power men wield in their penises, so claiming to be “dickmatized” is something people with understand and accept because they, too, believe penises to be that powerful.

I reject this, as a sex-positive feminist woman seeking liberation through living and fucking on my own terms… and so should you.

We must stop giving our power over to “dick”. The average dick is 3.6 inches— I really want us to think long and hard about why we so easily accept the idea that such an appendage could contain so much power over our entire beings as women. Think about when you first came to believe such nonsense was even true. Who taught you this? How did it come up? Who are the people in your life who maintain this idea that dick is that powerful?

It’s time to accept our vulnerability, however it manifests. It’s time to accept that for all of the work we do to decolonize our minds and unlearn the patriarchy, it’s difficult to be fully invested in developing our own womanhood when so many people are waiting to ridicule you for EVERY little thing. It’s OK to be sensitive. It’s OK to make really stupid decisions. It’s OK to admit that this situation makes no logical sense and might end up being totally bad for me, but I’m just not ready to let it go. It’s OK to want more and to even wait for it as you prepare for the inevitable disappointment and pain it will cause. It’s OK to choose not to tell your friend about what you did with him because you just don’t want to hear her tell you how much of a fool you are.

It’s OK to own every imperfect thought, feeling, and action that you might have related to your involvement with a man and I encourage you to do so because it is certainly better than upholding the violent, patriarchal narrative that a penis is such a powerful sword that makes women fall weak to men’s control.

We’re better than that, y’all.

XOXO,

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Islam Forbids and Does Not Tolerate Terrorism and the Killing of Innocent People

Say: Come, I will recite unto you that which your Lord hath made a sacred duty for you: That ye ascribe no thing as partner or an equal unto Him and that ye do good to parents, and that ye slay not your children because of penury(fear of poverty) - We provide for you and for them - and that ye draw not nigh to lewd things whether open or concealed. And that ye slay not the life which Allah hath made sacred, save in the course of justice. This He hath command you, in order that ye may discern (Understand). Qur’an 6:151
The Qur’an says, “There is no compulsion in religion. The right way has become distinct from error.” (-The Cow, 2:256). Note that this verse was revealed in Medina in 622 AD or after and was never abrogated by any other verse of the Quran. Islam’s holy book forbids coercing people into adopting any religion. They have to willingly choose it.
The Qur’an assures Christians and Jews of paradise if they believe and do good works, and commends Christians as the best friends of Muslims. I wrote elsewhere, “Dangerous falsehoods are being promulgated to the American public. The Quran does not preach violence against Christians.

~Malik Shabazz

Islam is portrayed as a religion of “terror” and “killing”, yet this is just one of the most widely held misconceptions about Islam. Allah Almighty states unambiguously in the Quran (what means): "Nor take life -- which Allah has made sacred -- except for just cause. And if anyone is slain wrongfully, we have given his heir authority (to demand retaliation or to forgive): but let him not exceed bounds in the matter of taking life, for he is helped (by the Law)." [Quran 17:33]

Based on this verse, it is Islamically unlawful to murder anyone who is innocent of any crime. At this point, we would do well to remember the distinction between the Quran and Sunnah, and the Muslims. Only the Quran and Sunnah are guaranteed to be in accordance with what the Creator desires, whereas the Muslims may possibly deviate. Hence, if any Muslim kills an innocent person, that Muslim has committed a grave sin, and the action cannot be claimed to have been committed "in the name of Islam."

It should be clear, then, that the oft-used term "Muslim terrorist" is almost an oxymoron: by killing innocent people, a Muslim is committing a grave sin, and Allah is Just. This phrase is offensive and demeaning of Islam, and it should be avoided. It is hoped that as the general level of public awareness and understanding of Islam increases, people will keep "terrorism" and "Islam" separate from each other, and not use them in the same phrase.

Jihaad or Holy War?

Another misunderstood Islamic concept is that the Creator has imposed `Jihaad' on us. The term "holy war" has come from the time of the Crusades, and originated in Europe as a rallying cry against the Muslims in Jerusalem. Jihaad is an Arabic word, meaning struggle, but in the context of many verses in the Quran, it carries the meaning of military struggle or war. Allah gradually introduced the obligation of military struggle to the Muslim community at the time of the Messenger  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allah exalt his mention ). The first verse ever revealed in that connection is as follows, (which means): "Permission (to fight) is given to those upon whom war is made because they are oppressed, and most surely Allah is well able to assist them."  [Quran 22: 39]

This verse lays down the precondition for all wars in Islam: there must exist certain oppressive conditions on the people. The Creator unequivocally orders us to fight oppression and persecution, even at the expense of bloodshed as the following verse shows in which Allah Says (what means): "And fight in the cause of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits. And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque (in Makkah) until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the reward of the unbelievers. But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors." [Quran 2:190-192]

As one might imagine, the method of military struggle has been clearly and extensively defined in the Quran and Sunnah. Since this is a vast subject, we can simply summarize part of it by noting that it is unlawful to kill women, children, the sick, the old and the innocent. From the Sunnah, we find: Narrated 'Abdullaah, may Allah be pleased with him: "During some of the battles of the Prophet  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allah exalt his mention ) a woman was found killed. Allah's Apostle disapproved the killing of women and children." [Al-Bukhari]

A related misconception about Jihaad is often propagated by Muslims who say that: "Jihaad is only for self-defense of physical borders." The Quran and Sunnah refute this notion categorically. As the verses cited above show, Jihaad is obligatory wherever there is injustice, and Muslims need not acknowledge imaginary lines around the earth when it comes to upholding this obligation. The Messenger of Allah  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allah exalt his mention ) has also commented on this extensively in the Sunnah. From the study of the Sunnah, we find: Narrated Abu Moosaa, may Allah be pleased with him: "A man came to the Prophet  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allah exalt his mention ) and asked: 'A man fights for war booty; another fights for fame and a third fights for showing off; which of them fights in Allah's Cause?' The Prophet  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allah exalt his mention ) said: "He who fights that Allah's Word (i.e. Islam) should be superior, fights in Allah's Cause."  [Al-Bukhari]

Hence, the Creator obligates us to fight wherever people are being deprived of freely hearing or practicing the Message of Allah, as contained in the Quran and Sunnah. Sayyid Qutb, a famous Muslim scholar eloquently discusses the notion of Jihaad and self-defense in his book Milestones: "If we insist on calling Islamic Jihaad a defensive movement, then we must change the meaning of the word `defense' and mean by it `defense of man' against all those elements which limit his freedom. These elements take the form of beliefs and concepts, as well as of political systems, based on economic, racial or class distinction."

Judicial System of Islam:

A third major area of misconceptions about Islam is that of the Islamic judicial system,  which is considered unnecessarily harsh. This assumption is weak in two respects. First, it presupposes that human beings are more just and more merciful than the Creator, and therefore we can change the law. Second, it is often based on gross oversimplifications of Islamic law, such as saying: "all thieves get their hands cut off!" 

The Quran and Sunnah make it clear that the law of retaliation (or equality) governs us for murder and physical injury, but forgiveness is better as the following verses from the Quran show; Allah Says (what means): "The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah: for (Allah) loves not those who do wrong. But indeed if any do help and defend themselves after a wrong (done) to them, against such there is no cause of blame. The blame is only against those who oppress men and insolently transgress beyond bounds through the land, defying right and justice: for such there will be a grievous penalty. And whoever is patient and forgiving, these most surely are actions due to courage." [Quran 42:40-43]

The Creator ordained the law of retaliation for us, knowing full well that we might question it. In many non-Muslim societies today, there are ongoing debates about the death penalty. In Islam, this discussion is moot: The Creator has decided the matter for us. He has however given us an interesting verse in the Quran, which advises to consider the matter carefully if we want to understand it; the verse says (which means): "And there is life for you in (the law of) retaliation, O people of understanding, that you may guard yourselves." [Quran 2:179]

Most people are also unaware of the stringent conditions, which must be met for the law of retaliation to be applicable. The Sunnah is full of examples of the Messenger of Allah  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allah exalt his mention ) showing us when the law's preconditions were fulfilled. For example, a thief is only liable to lose his or her hand if the stolen item exceeds a certain value, and if it is proven that the item was taken from its normal resting place. Stealing food is not punishable by the loss of one's hand, and other items are exempt as well. This is just an example of how carefully the law is applied in Islam. Moreover, it must be clarified that penalties in Islam are meant to establish peace and security for the society.

The Sword of Islam:

Finally, another reason advanced for this prevalent misconception is that Islam `spread by the sword'. It should be clear by now that we must always distinguish between the Quran and Sunnah and the Muslims, when it comes to determining what the Creator has asked of us. Allah has stated clearly in the Quran (which means): "There is no compulsion in religion; truly the right way has become clearly distinct from error; therefore, whoever rejects Satan (and what he calls to) and believes in Allah, he indeed has laid hold on the firmest handhold, which shall not break off, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing." [Quran 2:256]

Hence, it is impossible to accept Islam under duress. Even if misguided Muslims were to try to `force' Islam somehow on others, based on the previous verse, it would not be accepted by the Creator. Historical arguments that try to demonstrate that Muslims did not `convert others by force' are actually secondary to the argument given above. However, it is worth noting that historically, Islam did spread by peaceful means. 

The Message of the Creator was introduced in Africa and southeast Asia by trading Muslims. People started converting to Islam in big numbers when the Muslims liberated them from the clutches of the cruel rulers, who used to tax then heavily and loot precious belongings from them whenever they wished. Today the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia. The military expeditions that led to the conquest of large swathes of territory in Europe and central Asia were all marked by tolerance of other creeds and faith. 

By Qais bin Zayed