George Clooney urges boycott of Brunei-owned hotels over death penalty for homosexuality

George Clooney urges boycott of Brunei-owned hotels over death penalty for homosexuality

Photo: Clooney has stayed in the hotels he wants boycotted. (Reuters: Lucy Nicholson)

Oscar-winning actor George Clooney has called for a boycott of luxury hotels owned by Brunei because of the nation’s plans to impose the death penalty for people having gay sex or committing adultery.

Brunei, a former British protectorate, has stated it will roll out new Sharia law punishments from April 3 that include death by stoning or whipping for sodomy, adultery, or rape.

In an opinion piece for Hollywood entertainment website Deadline.com on Thursday, Clooney wrote that “every single time we stay at or take meetings at or dine at any of these nine hotels we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens for being gay or accused of adultery”.

The Brunei Investment Company owns nine hotels in the United States and Europe, including the Beverly Hills Hotel, The Dorchester in London, and the Plaza Athenee in Paris.

The Brunei Investment Company and the Brunei Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to emailed requests for comment on Friday.

Clooney, who is also a political activist and one of the most influential names in Hollywood, said he had stayed at many of the hotels himself “because I hadn’t done my homework and didn’t know who owned them”.

Photo: Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has overseen the introduction of Sharia law. (Reuters: Ahim Rani)

 

The Gravity actor acknowledged that any boycott would likely have “little effect on changing these laws”.

But, he added: “You can shame the banks, the financiers and the institutions that do business with them and choose to look the other way”.

Clooney’s call was supported by movie director Dustin Lance Black, and American singers Rufus Wainwright and Belinda Carlisle under the Twitter hashtag #BoycottBrunei.

Politicians in Britain and Europe, Amnesty International and human rights groups in Asia have attacked the plans and raised concerns with Brunei.

The population of 400,000 — 67 per cent of whom are Muslim and therefore subject to the Sharia law — is ruled by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.

Dede Oetomo, one of Indonesia’s most prominent LGBT activists, said it would be a gross violation of international human rights if the changes went ahead.

“It is horrible. Brunei is imitating the most conservative Arab states,” he said.

Homosexuality is punishable by death in several Muslim-majority countries, including death by stoning in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Mauritania.

Photo: The Plaza Athenee, overlooking the Eiffel Tower, is being targeted by the boycott. (Reuters: Stephane Mahe)

Australia joins call to condemn law changes

Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said Australia had expressed its concerns about the laws to the Brunei Government.

“We are strong supporters of human rights right across this region and more broadly, including in Brunei,” Senator Payne said.

“We are absolute opponents of the death penalty in all circumstances so any suggestion that laws would facilitate the application of the death penalty is a matter of concern to Australia.”

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten called on Brunei to abandon the changes, arguing they would breach the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

“Consistent with Australia’s long-standing and bipartisan support for universal, indivisible and inalienable human rights, Labor is fundamentally opposed to the oppression of anyone on the grounds of their gender, sexual orientation or their religious beliefs,” he said.

Similar boycott held in 2014

Homosexuality is illegal in Brunei and punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment in the tiny oil-rich sultanate.

But under the changes Brunei will become the first Asian country to make homosexuality punishable by death.

Brunei was the first East Asian country to introduce Islamic criminal law in 2014 when it announced the first of three stages of legal changes that included fines or jail for offences such as pregnancy outside marriage or failing to pray on Friday.

A similar boycott was undertaken by celebrities like comedians Ellen DeGeneres and Jay Leno and British entrepreneur Richard Branson when Brunei brought in Islamic Sharia law penalties in 2014.

In 2015, Christmas celebrations were banned and religious followers warned it would be strictly enforced for fear Muslims could be led astray.

Punishment for violating the ban is a five-year jail sentence, and the Government said Muslims would be committing an offence if they even wore “hats or clothes that resemble Santa Claus”.

ABC/Reuters

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Christ-ISIS, the ‘Wests’ Counterpart of ISIS, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Coagulated in the Love of Hate

Fictionally ‘preventing Sharia Law’ by actually imposing their own brand of Christo-fascist Sharia Law.

The Republican platform hates gays, puts women back in the kitchen, and insists on religious law

By Mark Sumner

 

  Tony Perkins, author of much of the 2016 Republican platform

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Over the last week, as the Republican platform committee added planks to their ever growing platform a pattern established itself. Again and again, libertarian forces in the party raised objections to the parts of the platform that drove Republicans ever deeper into social extremism. Again and again, the libertarians lost.

Meanwhile, every time extremists on the right put forward a new idea, whether it was Bundy-esque demands on federal land or gratuitous attacks on President Obama, the plank was accepted. The result is a document that’s far to the right of the 2012 platform, decades out of sync with social reality, and enormously intolerant.

Republicans moved on Tuesday toward adopting a staunchly conservative platform that takes a strict, traditionalist view of the family and child rearing, bars military women from combat, describes coal as a “clean” energy source and declares pornography a “public health crisis.”

And while Republicans continue to warn about the non-existent threat of Sharia Law, their platform insists that religious law isn’t an option—it’s required.

The platform demands that lawmakers use religion as a guide when legislating, stipulating “that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights.”

It also encourages the teaching of the Bible in public schools because, the amendment said, a good understanding of its contents is “indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry.”

Who interprets God-given, natural rights? Conservatives, of course, and their interpretation presents an incredibly strict, incredibly narrow, and quite detailed picture of what it takes to be a Real American.

The Republicans: Preventing Sharia Law, by imposing Sharia Law.

Several of the issues added were in areas where the Supreme Court has already given a decision, such as the legality of gay marriage or the use of “religious freedom” laws to permit discrimination against gays. That they had lost on these issues only hardened the Republican positions.

Amendments were proposed that toned down the language on homosexuality. They failed. Amendments were proposed that recognized how LGBT people had been the targets of hate crimes. They failed. In fact, every proposal that tried to offer any so of inclusion was dismissed as “identity politics.”

Meanwhile …

But nearly every provision that expressed disapproval of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or transgender rights passed. The platform calls for overturning the Supreme Court marriage decision with a constitutional amendment and makes references to appointing judges “who respect traditional family values.”

Restricting bathroom access for transgender Americans? It’s in the Republican platform. “Conversion therapy” for parents who want to “cure” their gay children? It’s in the Republican platform. The idea that only a man and a woman together in marriage can properly raise children? It’s in the Republican platform. The Republican platform even has a statement against “cohabitation,” a fight that was lost some time while the Smothers Brothers was in its initial run.

Oh, and when it comes to immigration, Trump’s wall is now an official part of the platform. So is a statement that there should be no limit on the size of magazines for weapons.

The Republicans didn’t just take everything from the already hard-right 2012 platform. They took it all, and made it worse.

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Fear, Incorporated: Who’s paying for all that Islamophobic paranoia?

Fear, Incorporated: Who’s paying for all that Islamophobic paranoia?

By Stephen M. Walt

One of the distinctive features of American democracy is the permeability of our political institutions. It’s an incredibly wide-open system, given First Amendment freedoms, the flood of money that corrupts the electoral process, and a wide array of media organizations and political journals that can be used to disseminate and amplify various views, even when they have no basis in fact.

This situation allows small groups of people to have a profound impact on public attitudes and policy discourse, provided that they are well-organized, well-funded, and stay on message. And if you don’t believe me, then take a look at the Center for American Progress‘s new report Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America. It’s a remarkable piece of investigative work, showing how small set of right-wing foundations and individuals have bankrolled the most vocal Islamophobes in contemporary U.S. politics, such as Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Daniel Horowitz, and Robert Spencer.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Following a six-month long investigative research project, the Center for American Progress released a 130-page report today which reveals that more than $42 million from seven foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America…

Over the past few years, the Islamophobia network (the funders, scholars, grassroots activists, media amplifiers, and political validators) have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that “radical Islam” has infiltrated all aspects of American society — including the conservative movement.

The irony in all this that the extremists examined in this report have gone to great lengths to convince Americans that there is a vast Islamic conspiracy to subvert American democracy, impose sharia law, and destroy the American way of life. Instead, what we are really facing is a well-funded right-wing collaboration to scare the American people with a bogeyman of their own creation, largely to justify more ill-advised policies in the Middle East.

Related articles

• Godly Terrorist Anders Breivik Inspired by American Catholic Fascist Robert Spencer, Jewish Hatemonger Pamela Geller & Fascist Religious Right (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• CFAP Report: $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America (crooksandliars.com)
• New report maps the roots of Islamophobia (salon.com)