It is such a shame and an irony that terrorists who have killed and ordered the killing of unarmed and innocent Jews, are now being celebrated as Europe's apostles of peace.
Can you imagine Italian or French mayors and members of Parliament naming a street after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who murdered at least 84 people in Nice on July 14? Or honoring the brothers Salah and Brahim Abdesalem for their attack at the Bataclan Theater in Paris on November 13, 2015, in which 89 people were murdered?
The mayor of Palermo, Italy, Leoluca Orlando (left), awarded honorary citizenship to Marwan Barghouti (right), the Palestinian terrorist who orchestrated attacks that killed several people and who is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison.
What would have happened if the city council of Jerusalem had conferred the honorary citizenship on Italy's Mafia leader, Totò Riina, calling him a "political prisoner"? What would have happened if the city council of Tel Aviv had named a street after Giovanni Brusca, the Mafia butcher who kidnapped and tortured the 11-year-old son of another mafioso who had betrayed him, and then dissolved the boy's body in acid? The Italian government would have vehemently protested. With Palestinian terrorists, however, there is another standard, as if in the eyes of many of Italy's city councils, terror against Israeli Jews is actually justified.
In 2001 alone, 54,000 people "attacked" the Channel Tunnel terminal in Calais and 5,000 had gotten through.
Migrants evicted from Calais moved to Paris and established a massive squatter camp at the Jardins d'Eole, a public park near the Gare du Nord station, from where high-speed Eurostar trains travel to and arrive from London. The area has become a magnet for human traffickers who charge migrants thousands of euros for fake travel documents, for passage to London.
The President of the Alpes-Maritimes region, Eric Ciotti, criticized the government's "irresponsible" plan to relocate migrants in Calais to other parts of France. He said the plan would "proliferate a multitude of small Calais, genuine areas of lawlessness that exacerbate lasting tensions throughout the country."
A whistleblower reported that volunteer aid workers at "The Jungle" were forging sexual relationships with migrants, including children. "Female volunteers having sex enforces the view (that many have) that volunteers are here for sex," he said.
French riot police attempt to control a crowd of migrants in "The Jungle" squatter camp near Calais, on February 29, 2016, as demolition teams begin dismantling the southern part of the camp. After being pelted with stones and other objects, police responded with tear gas and water cannon. (Image source: RT video screenshot)
French President François Hollande has vowed "definitively, entirely and rapidly" to dismantle "The Jungle," a squalid migrant camp in the northern port town of Calais, by the end of this year.
Hollande made the announcement during a September 26 visit to Calais — but not to the camp itself — amid growing unease over France's escalating migrant crisis, which has become a central issue in the country's presidential campaign.
The French government plans to relocate the migrants at the camp to so-called reception centers in other parts of the country. But it remains unclear how the government will prevent migrants from returning to Calais.
Sceptics say the plan to demolish "The Jungle" is a publicity stunt that will temporarily displace the migrants but will not resolve the underlying problem — that French officials refuse either to deport illegal migrants or else to secure the country's borders to prevent illegal migrants from entering France in the first place.
Are French institutions sacrificing one freedom for another? Is equality between men and women being sacrificed to freedom of religion (Islam) to impose its diktats on French society?
If someone still does not realize that the Islamic dress code is the Trojan horse of Islamist jihad, he will learn it fast.
For years, "big brothers" have been obliging their mothers and sisters to wear a veil when they go out. Now that this job is done, they have begun to fight non-Muslim women who wear shorts and skirts -- no longer just in the sensitive Muslim "no-go zones" of the suburbs, where women no longer dare to wear skirts -- but now also in the heart of big cities.
"The law guarantees women, in all fields, same equal rights as men."
What people do not seem to know is that in the heart of Paris, a Muslim man can insult a woman for drinking a cola in the street and is served in stores first, before women.
Many people evidently still do not know that Islam is a religion and a political movement at war with the West -- and openly intent on subjugating the West. It must be responded to as such. The problem is, every time it is responded to as such, Muslim extremists run for cover under the claim of freedom of religion.
It is crucial for Western societies to start making a distinction between freedom of speech and incitement to violence, and to begin seriously penalizing attacks on innocents, as well as calls to attack innocents.
Snapshots of France's new sharia police. Left: In Toulon, 18-year-old Maude Vallet was threatened and spat on by a group of Muslim girls on a bus, because she was wearing shorts. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook with the caption, "Hello, I'm a slut." Right: In a resort in Garde-Colombe, a Moroccan man stabbed a woman and her three daughters on July 19, apparently because they were scantily dressed.
The Council of State, the highest administrative court in France, decided that, to allow freedom of religion, the burkini must not be banned. At first the ruling looked sound: why should people not be able to wear what they wish when they wish? What is not visible, however, is that the harm comes later.
If someone still does not realize that the Islamic dress code is the Trojan horse of Islamist jihad, he will learn it fast.
A few recent incidents include:
September 7. In Guingamp, Brittany, a 17-year-old girl in shorts was beaten by a man who considered her outfit "too provocative". Although the attacker escaped, so that the police have no idea who he is or what his background might be, it is a taste of things to come.
Geert Wilders during his March 2014 speech, where he asked "Do you want more or fewer Moroccans?" (Image source: nos.nl video screenshot)
Yesterday, I visited Maassluis. It is a town near Rotterdam, where the indigenous Dutch inhabitants have become the victims of immigrant youths of Moroccan descent.
Cars have been demolished, houses vandalized, people threatened. The Dutch no longer feel free and safe in their own city. When the local radio station interviewed some of the victims and referred to the perpetrators as Moroccans, it received an anonymous letter: "You are racists! Your time will come! I won't take care of it because I am too old. But our boys are the new soldiers."
Maassluis. It is just one of the many Dutch towns and neighborhoods terrorized by Moroccan or Turkish youth gangs. Others are Schilderswijk, Oosterwei, Kanaleneiland, Zaandam, Helmond. Not surprisingly, a poll shows that 43% of the Dutch people want fewer Moroccan immigrants in our country. These people are not racists; they are decent people, patriots who love their country and do not want to lose it.
Why has the philosopher, Michel Onfray, become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that "Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites."
Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He "forgets" that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that "ISIS kills innocent people", Onfray will reply: "We have also killed innocent people." It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.
The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at "inequality" as the root of ISIS's success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just "small incidents".
Famous representatives of European culture also embraced Adolf Hitler's dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for Western freedoms and democracy.
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (left) was one of many European intellectuals and artists who embraced Adolf Hitler's dream. Today, French philosopher Michel Onfray (right) has become the darling of the jihadist group, Islamic State, with his view that, while Islamists kill and massacre, it is not their fault; he blames the victims, because "the West attacked first."
After September 11, 2001, the cream of European intellectuals immediately started to find justifications for jihad. They evidently were fascinated by the Kalashnikov assault rifle, "the weapon of the poor". For them, what we had seen in New York was a chimera, an illusion. The mass killings were supposedly the suicide of the capitalist democracy, and terrorism was the wrath of the unemployed, the desperate weapon of a lumpenproletariat offended by the arrogance of Western globalization.
These intellectuals have sown seeds of despair in a large Western echo-chamber. From 9/11 to the recent massacres on European soil, the murdered Westerners are portrayed as just collateral victims in a war between "the system" and the damned of the earth, who are only claiming a place at the table.
Jihadists Target Spain "The actions of your ancestors are the reason for our actions today."
by Soeren Kern • September 27, 2016 at 5:00 am
The Islamic State document said that since the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, Spain "has done everything to destroy the Koran." It said that Spain tortured Muslims, including burning them alive. Therefore, according to the Islamic State, "Spain is a criminal state that usurps our land." The document calls on jihadists to "reconnoiter airline and train routes for attacks." It also calls on followers to "poison food and water" with insecticides.
"We will kill any 'innocent' Spanish infidel we find in Muslim lands, and... whether we are European in origin or not, we will kill you in your cities and towns according to our plan." — Islamic State document, May 30, 2016.
"We will recover al-Andalus, Allah willing. Oh dear Andalus! You thought we forgot about you. I swear by Allah we have never forgotten you. No Muslim can forget Córdoba, Toledo or Xàtiva. There are many faithful and sincere Muslims who swear they will return to al-Andalus." — Islamic State video, January 31, 2016.
"Spain is the land of our forefathers and we are going to take it back with the power of Allah." — Islamic State video, January 7, 2016.
An armed, masked Islamic State jihadist appears in a propaganda video, where he warns Spain that it would "pay a very heavy price" for expelling Muslims from al-Andalus hundreds of years ago. The Spanish subtitle above reads "Oh dear Andalus! You thought we forgot about you. I swear by Allah we have never forgotten you. No Muslim can forget Córdoba, Toledo or Xàtiva."
Islamic militants are stepping up a propaganda war against Spain. In recent months, Islamic State and other jihadist groups have produced a flurry of videos and documents calling on Muslims to reconquer al-Andalus.
Al-Andalus is the Arabic name given to those parts of Spain, Portugal and France occupied by Muslim conquerors (also known as the Moors) from 711 to 1492. Many Muslims believe that territories Muslims lost during the Christian Reconquest of Spain still belong to the realm of Islam. They claim that Islamic law gives them the right to re-establish Muslim rule there.
"[I]n spite of dire predictions by secularists, the [ruling] AKP did not introduce conspicuous efforts to Islamize Turkey. But since 2011, this has changed." — Svante E. Cornell, in "The Islamization of Turkey: Erdogan's Education Reforms."
In 2014, Turkey's government introduced a scheme which forcibly enrolled about 40,000 students at Islamic "imam schools," and granted permission for girls as young as 10 to wear Islamic headscarves in class.
A new study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found that 43% of Turkish women aged between 15 and 29 were neither working nor receiving education.
Turkish police and soldiers transport handcuffed military officers, who are accused of participating in the failed July 15 coup d'état. (Image source: Haber Turk video screenshot)
One way the rise of Islamist authoritarianism in a country can be seen is by the rise in the number of mosques, religious schools and prisons -- coupled with a sharp decline in the quality of education. Turkey is no exception.
Most recently, the Turkish government said that it would build 174 new prisons, increasing capacity by 100,000 convicts. This is Turkey's reply to complaints that six convicts must share a cell built for three. Convicts say they must sleep in turns in their bunk beds.
Before that, Turkey's government released nearly 40,000 convicted criminals, in order to make space for tens of thousands of suspects, including journalists, businessmen and academics, detained after the failed coup of July 15.
by Khaled Abu Toameh • September 26, 2016 at 5:00 am
Abbas and Fatah leaders in Ramallah claim that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (the "Arab Quartet") are using and promoting Abbas's rival, Mohamed Dahlan, in order to facilitate their mission of rapprochement with Israel.
Many Palestinians were surprised to see veteran Palestinian official Ahmed Qurei, a former Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister and one of the architects of the Oslo Accord, come out in favor of the Arab plan, which basically envisions ousting Abbas from power.
This, and not Israeli policy, is Abbas's true nightmare. After all, he knows that without Israel's presence in the West Bank, his regime would have long fallen into the hands of Hamas or even his political rivals in Fatah.
The "Arab Quartet" plan shows that some Arab countries are indeed fed up with Abbas's failure to lead his people towards a better life. These states, which have long been politically and financially supportive of the Palestinians, have had enough of Abbas's efforts to secure unending power -- at the direct cost of the well-being of his people.
When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN General Assembly on Sept. 22, 2016, he did not share with world leaders that his Arab brothers are pressuring him to introduce major reforms in his Fatah faction, and allow some of its expelled leaders, including Abbas's rival Mohamed Dahlan (inset), to return.
In his speech last week before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas trotted out his usual charges against Israel, citing "collective punishment," "house demolitions," "extrajudicial executions" and "ethnic cleansing." However, Abbas's thoughts seem to be elsewhere these days. He is facing a new challenge from unexpected parties, namely several Arab countries that have come together to demand that he reform his ruling Fatah faction and pave the way for the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership.
Yet this was not included in the UN speech. Indeed, why would Abbas share with world leaders that his Arab brothers are pressuring him to introduce major reforms in Fatah and end a decade-long power struggle with Hamas that has resulted in the creation of two separate Palestinian entities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
by Raymond Ibrahim • September 26, 2016 at 4:00 am
Recently in Iraq, 19 Yazidi girls were placed in iron cages and burned alive in front of a crowd of hundreds, for refusing to copulate with jihadis.
"Religious minority women under IS [Islamic State] control are often repeatedly sold from jihadi to jihadi. Once militants get tired of raping and abusing one particular girl, they usually sell them off to one of their militant buddies so they can rape and abuse them at their own pleasure." — Samuel Smith, The Christian Post.
After their children were abducted by the Islamic State, a couple answered their door to find the body parts of their daughters and a video of them being tortured and raped.
"Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community's mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war." — Local residents, Pakistan.
Islamic State jihadis laugh and joke about buying and selling Yazidi sex slaves, in a propaganda video.
Islamic law, always harsh, is still harsher for women. According to the Koran, men have "authority" over women and may beat them if they are "disobedient" (4:34). According to Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, women are less intelligent than men — two women are needed to equal one man's testimony — and the majority of hell's population is made up of women, who are likened to donkeys and dogs in their ability to distract a man from his prayer and thereby annul it.
What, then, is Islam's view of women who are "infidels"? They are at best "meant for one thing, the pleasure of the Muslim man," as one Muslim told a group of young Christian girls in Pakistan before terrorizing and murdering one. In the Koran, (see 4:24), non-Muslim women seized in a jihad can be bought and sold as sex slaves for Muslim men, as the Islamic State has been doing.
Emily Fuentes, communications director for Open Doors, a human rights organization that advocates for persecuted Christians, said:
Am thinking that, how it is possible that Some One is drink these? And, A female is drink these? And Muhammad is saying, "Listen all your disease go a Way"? What is it means Muhammad allow his companion to drink that?
"Your Status just equal to DOG and you are asking a questions to me about Islam, I know very well how to Run the Islam, you do not bark with me again like this again!" After saying this he free my Ears and Shove me in his feet again and I massage them.
On Next day I went to Different Islamic Scholars at Different Islamic Sects or Groups and asking same Question. Every One tells me "O That Sect is based on Lie you follow our Sects or Group".
From an Ottoman manuscript, two doctors telling a pharmacist how to make different medicines.
Editors' note: To those of you who have enquired, the author is a real man living in the Middle East who sent us these pieces because he is unable to share them with anyone where he lives. At first we tried to tidy up the English, but that seemed to knock much of the soul out of his work. So we made the editorial choice to present his work basically as he sent it; what you are seeing is the result of that choice. It is the way he sees the world from his point of view, unobstructed by editors. Perhaps think of it more as a different kind of article, more as folk art but in words. It is not meant to offend anyone or any religion. It always seemed, living among people from different nations, as if wrongnesses in English were often "righter" than rightnesses. The painter Paul Gauguin reportedly said: "If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue." We apologize to anyone who may not like these postings. "Those who understand, understand."
In thirty years, France has undergone an accelerated process of Islamization.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the main Islamic movement in France, explained how Muslims living in the West have to proceed: they may use terror, they may use seduction, exploit Westerners' sense of guilt, grab public spaces, change laws, and create their own society inside Western societies until they become Muslim societies.
France used to be a country where religious neutrality in the public space was seen as an essential principle. Muslim extremists appear to be using Islamic veils and head-coverings as visible symbols to create the impression that Islam is everywhere.
Politicians claim that they respect human rights, but they seem to have forgotten the human rights of the women who do not cover up -- of those who suffer from Islamization, who are no longer free to write, think, or go for a walk on the street.
Politicians refused to "stigmatize" Islam and do not want to see the consequences: harassment, rapes, the destruction of freedom.
French journalists write under the threat of trial or assault, and almost never use the phrase "Islamic terrorism." Almost all books on Islam in French bookstores are written by Islamists or by authors praising Islam.
Have non-Muslims lost the will to fight?
Yusuf al-Qaradawi (left), spiritual leader of the main Islamic movement in France, explained that Muslims in the West may use terror, they may use seduction, exploit Westerners' sense of guilt, grab public spaces, change laws, and create their own society inside Western societies until they become Muslim societies. Right: Muslim extremists in France appear to be using Islamic veils and head-coverings as visible symbols to create the impression that Islam is everywhere.
In Sisco, Corsica, on August 13, a group of Muslim men arrived on a beach in the company of women wearing "burkinis" (full-body bathing costumes). The Muslim men firmly asked the tourists on the beach to leave and posted signs saying "No Entry". When a few teenagers resisted, the Muslim men responded with a harpoon and baseball bats. The police intervened -- but it was just the beginning.
In the following days, on beaches all over France, Muslim men showed up, accompanied by women in burkinis, and asking beachgoers to leave. Tourists packed up and fled. Several mayors of seaside resorts decided to ban the bathing costume, and the "burkini ban" scandal was born.
Around 200 migrants from Calais, the principal ferry crossing point between France and England, are successfully smuggled into Britain each week, according to police estimates cited by the Telegraph.
In recent months, masked gangs of people smugglers armed with knives, bats and tire irons have forced truck drivers to stop so that migrants can board their vehicles.
"Before, it was just attempts to get on trucks. Now there is looting and willful destruction, tarpaulins are slashed, goods stolen or destroyed. Drivers go to work with fear in their bellies and the economic consequences are severe." — David Sagnard, president of France's truck drivers' federation.
"They want to go to England because they can expect better conditions on arrival there than anywhere else in Europe or even internationally. ... They can easily find work outside the formal economy..." — Natacha Bouchart, Mayor of Calais.
"The asylum seekers could apply for protection in France or the European country they first landed in... they only reached Calais by crossing French borders. France is part of the borderless Schengen Area of the EU, whereas Britain is not." — James Glenday, ABC News.
Hundreds of migrants roam the highway near Calais, France, trying to stop trucks headed for Britain, in an attempt to stow away on board. (Image source: RT video screenshot)
Building work has begun on a wall in the northern French city of Calais, a major transport hub on the edge of the English Channel, to prevent migrants from stowing away on cars, trucks, ferries and trains bound for Britain.
Dubbed "The Great Wall of Calais," the concrete barrier — one kilometer (half a mile) long and four meters (13 feet) high on both sides of the two-lane highway approaching the harbor — will pass within a few hundred meters of a sprawling shanty town known as "The Jungle."
The squalid camp now houses more than 10,000 migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who are trying to reach Britain. The migrants at the camp are mostly from Sudan (45%), Afghanistan (30%), Pakistan (7%), Eritrea (6%) and Syria (1%), according to a recent census conducted by aid agencies.
French politicians seem to believe they are elected NOT to defend French people and the French nation, but to impose a "human rights ideology" on society.
The rule of law is there to protect citizens from the arbitrary actions of the State. When a group of French Muslims attacks the entire way society is constructed, the rule of law now protects only the perpetrators.
For Western leaders, "human rights" have become a kind of new religion. Like a disease, the human rights ideology has proliferated in all areas of life. The UN website shows a list of all the human rights that are now institutionalized: they range from "adequate housing" to "youth." At least 42 categories of human rights fields are determined, each of which are split into two or three subcategories.
With what result? More than 140 countries (out of 193 UN members) engage in torture. The number of authoritarian countries has increased. Women remain a subordinate class in nearly all countries.
"Saudi Arabia ratified the treaty banning discrimination against women in 2007, and yet by law subordinates women to men in all areas of life. Child labour exists in countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Powerful western countries, including the US, do business with grave human rights abusers." — Eric Posner, professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
Human rights, originally conceived of as an anti-discrimination tool, became a Trojan horse, a tool manipulated by Islamists and others to dismantle secularism, freedom of speech and freedom of religion in European countries.
Scenes from the "hard jihad" against France; the November 2015 shootings in Paris, in which 130 people were murdered by Islamists.
On August 13, the Administrative Court in Nice, France, validated the decision of the Mayor of Cannes to prohibit wearing religious clothing on the beaches of Cannes. By "religious clothing," the judge clearly seemed to be pointing his finger at the burkini, a body-covering bathing suit worn by many Muslim women.
by Khaled Abu Toameh • September 21, 2016 at 5:00 am
Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials have turned medical care into a business that earns them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This corruption has enabled top officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to embezzle millions of shekels from the PA budget.
In 2013, the PA spent more than half a billion shekels covering medical bills of Palestinians who were referred to hospitals outside the Palestinian territories. However, no one seems to know exactly how the money was spent and whether all those who received the referrals were indeed in need of medical treatment. In one case, it appeared that 113 Palestinian patients had been admitted to Israeli hospitals at the cost of 3 million shekels, while there is no documentation of any of these cases. Even the identities of the patients remain unknown.
Hajer Harb, a courageous Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip, says she is now facing charges of "slander" for exposing the corruption. She has been repeatedly interrogated by Hamas. The PA regime, for its part, is not too happy with exposure about the scandal.
Gaza's hospitals would be rather better equipped if Hamas used its money to build medical centers instead of tunnels for smuggling weapons from Egypt to attack Israel.
A Palestinian man is transferred to an Israeli ambulance at the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, on his way to an Israeli hospital, July 29, 2014. (Image source: Israeli Foreign Ministry)
Question: How do Palestinian patients obtain permits to receive medical treatment in Israeli and other hospitals around the world? Answer: By paying bribes to senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those who cannot afford to pay the bribes are left to die in under-equipped and understaffed hospitals, especially in the Gaza Strip.
Yet, apparently some Palestinians are more equal than others: Palestinians whose lives are not in danger, but who pretend that they are. These include businessmen, merchants, university students and relatives of senior Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas officials, who receive permits to travel to Israel and other countries under the pretext of medical emergency.
by Philip Carl Salzman • September 21, 2016 at 4:30 am
Black Lives Matter has been guided to anti-Semitism by the concept of "intersectionality, which argues that all oppressions are interlinked and cannot be solved alone. Thus, women can never be treated fairly if blacks face racial prejudice, and the disabled are not given sufficient support to be equal to the abled, and unless the Palestinians are liberated from the Israelis, and the Israelis are liberated from their lives and their home.
"Intersectionality" urges us to view the world as divided into a conspiracy of oppressors and an agony of oppressed, and reduces people to a number of categories, such as gender, sexuality, race, nationality, religion, capability, etc. Differences, such as sexism, racism, nationalism and ability -- as opposed to what we have in common -- are reinforced.
Supporters of "intersectionality" cheer terrorists when they murder Jews. To them, that is just "social justice" at work.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) has been guided to anti-Semitism by the concept of "intersectionality, which argues that all oppressions are interlinked and cannot be solved alone. BLM activists have visited Gaza and expressed a sympathetic attitude towards groups like Hamas, which calls for the genocide of Jews and engages in terrorism.
The recently published platform of Black Lives Matter (BLM) states that Israel is responsible for "the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people," and "Israel is an apartheid state ... that sanction[s] discrimination against the Palestinian people." These statements are anti-Semitic not only because they are false and modern versions of tradition anti-Semitic blood libel, but also because BLM selectively chooses the Jewish State out of all the states in the world to demonize. What has inspired BLM to engage in this counter-factual, anti-Semitic rant? BLM has been guided to anti-Semitism by the concept of "intersectionality."
"Intersectionality" is the idea that all oppressed peoples and categories of people share a position, and by virtue of that fact are potential allies in the struggle against their oppressors.
