al Qaeda Opposes Marriage Equality
I had not realized that al Qaeda produces an English-language online magazine, but apparently they do.
Mother Jones has been checking it out.
Mother Jones has been checking it out.
In the latest issue of Inspire, the Al Qaeda-produced English-language magazine that teaches readers how to cause traffic accidents, torch parked cars, and "make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom," the terrorist group goes after President Barack Obama for "evolving" on marriage equality. In an infographic titled "The Nation Standing on 'No Values," the magazine also goes after "gay congressman" Barney Frank, who is no longer a congressman. It also cites statistics showing American Catholics are less likely to attend Mass and are increasingly supportive of same-sex marriage. Al Qaeda Hits Obama for Supporting Marriage Equality
Al Qaeda is a strict "traditional marriage" outfit.Barney Frank, the symbol of the American Dream. Huh... <strokes_chin_thoughtfully> I hate to agree with them but I think they got that part right.
The image calls Frank a "symbol of the American dream," which appears meant to be insulting. Let us all tremble at the thought of the infinite masses who never thought about being a terrorist before they stopped to consider Obama shifting his position on same-sex marriage.
posted by JimK at 10:20 AM
16 Comments:
Video Showing the Huge Gap Between Super Rich and Everyone Else Goes Viral
Too sweet. Anti-gay activists will LONG for the days they were associated with the Westboro “God Hates Fags” Church.
Definitely one for the favorites bar.
so ....
this story is kind of relevant to the discussion typically held on this blog.
any reason you didn't bother to mention it ?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/27/us/colorado-transgender-girl-school
"No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country,” he said.
Rand Paul's filibuster.
somebody explain to me how it is okay to use drones to kill us citizens on us soil but not okay to waterboard captured terrorists who are not us citizens ?
Paul's filibuster was doomed from the start. There were already more than 60 votes to bring Brennan’s nomination to the floor and well more than 50 to confirm him, and nothing Paul said was going to change that. So he was essentially putting on a show in an attempt to up his 2016 chances for President.
Meanwhile, here we have another Christian, showing her support of al Qaeda's opposition to Marriage Equality:
Christian teen performs anti-gay rap in the forest, films it
Sure, it's hate speech. But it's rhyming hate speech
YouTube user “Apologetics” has a message for anyone who 1) is gay, 2) loves a gay person, 3) believes gay people should have equal rights:
“Don’t propagate your hate, because I have a higher standard on who you date. I’m not here to rally against that which the government legislates, I simply don’t support a mind that is reprobate. Homosexuality is not innate. It is not a genetic trait. It cannot replicate the love between a man and a woman which God did indeed create.”
Propagate? Legislate? Reprobate? Wait a minute — this hate speech rhymes!
It’s no accident, either. The video, titled “T for Tolerance,” is a two-minute anti-gay Christian rap, which is, for totally normal and good reasons, being performed by a teenager in the middle of a forest.
Now this might sound like a hateful and terrible thing to do, but it’s really an act of love. Here’s why: This young Shakespeare has so much Christian compassion for the gays that she would just hate to see them “bake in the lake of fire for love’s sake.”
I’m thinking this rapper is really on to something. Maybe we would all be more receptive to hate speech if it rhymed more of the time? Like, maybe Westboro Baptist’s shtick would go down a little easier if they had a theme song? Or maybe San Francisco 49ers’ corner back Chris Culliver’s comments about gay athletes would have worked better if he’d said “Ain’t got no gay people on the team. They gotta get up outta here… or I’m gonna scream!” And what if the National Organization for Marriage did their next mass mailing in iambic pentameter? The possibilities are endless!
Take it away, Apologetics!
2012: The Year in Hate and Extremism
Excerpts:
"Matt Barber of the anti-gay Liberty Counsel said he feared that the nation, which he described as already on the brink of civil unrest, was headed for “a second civil war.”"
" The anti-gay Family Research Council charged Obama with “dismantling” the country."
"Some broad social progress that did occur last year — the rapidly increasing acceptance of LGBT people and same-sex marriage — fueled just such a backlash among anti-gay religious groups that saw themselves beginning to lose the issue. (A December USA Today poll found that 53% of Americans now support same-sex marriage, up dramatically from 1996, when 27% supported such unions.)
The American Family Association issued predictions for the future that included the claims that conservative Christians will be treated like African Americans before the civil rights movement, that the state will take charge of children at birth, and that cities with names like St. Petersburg will be forced to change their names. Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality said the 2012 election of openly gay Tammy Baldwin to a Senate seat representing Wisconsin signaled that America is “falling apart.” The volume of these kinds of comments seemed higher than ever before."
"Then, this January, an Alabama high school student was arrested for allegedly plotting to attack his black and gay classmates and bomb his school. Former friends of the student said he and a group of up to 11 other students regularly shouted “white power” and gave stiff-arm Nazi salutes in the halls of their Seale, Ala., school but were ignored by school officials and security officers."
"somebody explain to me how it is okay to use drones to kill us citizens on us soil but not okay to waterboard captured terrorists who are not us citizens ?".
Both are wrong. American leaders just take the position that anything they want to do is automatically moral.
"Then, this January, an Alabama high school student was arrested for allegedly plotting to attack his black and gay classmates and bomb his school. Former friends of the student said he and a group of up to 11 other students regularly shouted “white power” and gave stiff-arm Nazi salutes in the halls of their Seale, Ala., school but were ignored by school officials and security officers."
Nothing's more important than free speech, right?
"To the surprise of many prognosticators, anti-black racism in America — not just that limited to the far right — actually rose over the four years of Obama’s first term, according to a 2012 Associated Press poll. The poll found 51% of Americans expressed explicitly anti-black attitudes, compared to 48% in 2008, while 56% showed implicitly anti-black attitudes, up from 49% four years earlier.".
Wow! I knew it was bad, but there's way more racists in the States than I thought.
Out of curiosity, Priya (and a genuine interest to understand): when I went to Canada often in the '80s, mostly to Quebec and Montreal, but once to Ottawa, there seemed to be a lot of tension and almost bad feeling between Canadians of French and British descent. Just from watching the news, that seems to have settled down over the past couple of decades. What's your take on it?
rrjr
McCain said Thursday that Sen. Paul’s filibuster claims about drone use were “totally unfounded,” and that “The country needs more senators who care about liberty, but if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about.” He added: “To somehow say that someone who disagrees with American policy and even may demonstrate against it, is somehow a member of an organization which makes that individual an enemy combatant is simply false.”
Graham agreed: “To my Republican colleagues, I don’t remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone, do you? They had a drone program back then, all of a sudden this drone program has gotten every Republican so spun up. What are we up to here?”
“People are astonished that President Obama is doing many of the things that President Bush did. I’m not astonished. I congratulate him for having the good judgement to understand we’re at war,” he said. “And to my party, I’m a bit disappointed that you no longer apparently think we’re at war.”
Robert, there was a lot of tension between english and french canadians back in the 80's and 90's with french Canadians conserved about preserving the french language and culture in Quebec against creeping anglocization. There was a referendum in Quebec in 1995 to seek seperation from Canada and establish a sovereign quebec and the referendum was narrowly defeated. It probably would have lost by a wider margin but the seperatists made absurd promises like a seperate quebec would be able to maintain use of the Canadian dollar after seperation regardless whether or not Canada approved.
Since that time, in my opinion, people in Quebec have felt that was the best chance at achieving seperation and as the population of french speaking Quebecer's has continued to shrink I believe most think seperation is no longer a realistically achievable goal. Now Quebecers are more focused on economic issues and certainly at this time anyway it appears that Quebec seperation hopes are a thing of the past.
"“People are astonished that President Obama is doing many of the things that President Bush did. I’m not astonished. I congratulate him for having the good judgement to understand we’re at war,” he said. “And to my party, I’m a bit disappointed that you no longer apparently think we’re at war.”"
That's where Obama has been a big disappointment. He's continued with the warrentless wire-tapping and spying on American citicizens and continued with the imprisonment, prosecution, and execution of people without due process of law. In these areas Obama has been just as malicious as Bush.
The U.S. seized a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who once served as an al Qaeda spokesman and flew him to New York to face trial, an antiterrorism coup that casts light on the group's murky relationship with Iran.
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who was captured in Jordan, has been talking to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents for several days in New York City, according to multiple people familiar with the case. He was captured after leaving Iran, which has sheltered remnants of the global terror group.
The Justice Department on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging Mr. Abu Ghaith with conspiring to kill Americans, and he is set to appear in federal court in Manhattan Friday morning. It was unclear Thursday if Mr. Abu Ghaith had a lawyer representing him.
Mr. Abu Ghaith's arrival in the city where al Qaeda terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, marked what may be the final stop in an odyssey that took him from his native Kuwait to Afghanistan by the side of his father-in-law and, around 2002, to Iran. He faces a life sentence if convicted.
"He was never an operational commander in al Qaeda, but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he was the voice of al Qaeda,'' said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. His biggest intelligence value now, Mr. Hoffman said, is to provide insight into what he called the "very perplexing and enigmatic" relationship between Iranian authorities and al Qaeda.
U.S. officials have long been trying to figure what Mr. Abu Ghaith and other al Qaeda figures were doing in Iran and how much leeway the Iranian government was giving them to operate their terrorist network.
U.S. officials believe that Iran last year gave new freedoms, including the option to leave the country, to Mr. Abu Ghaith and other members of what was known as al Qaeda's management council in Iran. He was detained in Ankara, Turkey, last month on suspicion of entering that country with a false passport.
Turkey didn't turn Mr. Abu Ghaith over to U.S. authorities, as Washington had initially wanted, but instead decided to deport him to Kuwait via Jordan, officials said. U.S. operatives then captured him in Jordan, which has worked closely with the U.S. in hunting terrorists, they said. Officials at the Turkish Embassy in Washington didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The suspect was flown to New York by the FBI last week, and he has been talking to interrogators since, said the people familiar with the case. Officials decided to file charges against him after he stopped cooperating.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the arrest shows "no amount of distance or time will weaken our resolve to bring America's enemies to justice." George Venizelos, head of the FBI's New York office, described Mr. Abu Ghaith's position in al Qaeda as "comparable to the consigliere in a mob family or propaganda minister in a totalitarian regime."
Conservative provocateur James O’Keefe has agreed to pay $100,000 and apologize to a former ACORN employee who was fired after being portrayed in one of O’Keefe’s undercover video stings.
The ACORN sting was one of O’Keefe’s first and most successful operations, leading to a congressional prohibition on federal funding for ACORN that caused the group to collapse. But Juan Carlos Vera, a former employee whom O’Keefe and accomplice Hannah Giles secretly filmed in a California ACORN office, said the tape violated a state law against recording someone without their permission, so he sued the two conservative sting artists.
Giles settled this summer, but the suit against O’Keefe is still in federal court.
Now, according to documents obtained by Wonket [see: Wonket Sexclusive: Totally Blameless Crime-Stopper James O'Keefe to pay $100,000 to ACORN Criminal], Vera has agreed to drop the case against O’Keefe in exchange for $100,000 and acknowledgment from O’Keefe that the video did not include the fact that Vera had called the police during the sting. The settlement, dated Wednesday, adds that O’Keefe “regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family.” He has 30 days to pay up.
In an email exchange with Salon, O’Keefe confirmed the settlement and said a statement was forthcoming.
It’s not the first time O’Keefe has run into legal trouble. He had felony charges against him dropped in relation to a sting targeting Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. He pleaded guilty to a lesser crime and was sentenced to three years probation.
It’s time to overturn DOMA
By Bill Clinton, Published: March 7
The writer is the 42nd president of the United States.
In 1996, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Although that was only 17 years ago, it was a very different time. In no state in the union was same-sex marriage recognized, much less available as a legal right, but some were moving in that direction. Washington, as a result, was swirling with all manner of possible responses, some quite draconian. As a bipartisan group of former senators stated in their March 1 amicus brief to the Supreme Court, many supporters of the bill known as DOMA believed that its passage “would defuse a movement to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended the debate for a generation or more.” It was under these circumstances that DOMA came to my desk, opposed by only 81 of the 535 members of Congress.
On March 27, DOMA will come before the Supreme Court, and the justices must decide whether it is consistent with the principles of a nation that honors freedom, equality and justice above all, and is therefore constitutional. As the president who signed the act into law, I have come to believe that DOMA is contrary to those principles and, in fact, incompatible with our Constitution.
Because Section 3 of the act defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, same-sex couples who are legally married in nine states and the District of Columbia are denied the benefits of more than a thousand federal statutes and programs available to other married couples. Among other things, these couples cannot file their taxes jointly, take unpaid leave to care for a sick or injured spouse or receive equal family health and pension benefits as federal civilian employees. Yet they pay taxes, contribute to their communities and, like all couples, aspire to live in committed, loving relationships, recognized and respected by our laws.
When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that “enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.” Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.
We are still a young country, and many of our landmark civil rights decisions are fresh enough that the voices of their champions still echo, even as the world that preceded them becomes less and less familiar. We have yet to celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, but a society that denied women the vote would seem to us now not unusual or old-fashioned but alien. I believe that in 2013 DOMA and opposition to marriage equality are vestiges of just such an unfamiliar society.
Americans have been at this sort of a crossroads often enough to recognize the right path. We understand that, while our laws may at times lag behind our best natures, in the end they catch up to our core values. One hundred fifty years ago, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln concluded a message to Congress by posing the very question we face today: “It is not ‘Can any of us imagine better?’ but ‘Can we all do better?’ ”
The answer is of course and always yes. In that spirit, I join with the Obama administration, the petitioner Edith Windsor, and the many other dedicated men and women who have engaged in this struggle for decades in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.
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