A man has posted videos on YouTube in which he claims to have deliberately infected thousands of women with AIDS.
The masked man – who calls himself “Trashman” and speaks with an American accent in a series of clips posted on the video-sharing website – claims to have infected between 1200 and 1500 women with the disease.
In the videos, Trashman reads the names and ages of some of the women he claims to have had unprotected sex with.
President of People Living with HIV/AIDS Victoria, Brett Hayhoe, said the man seemed genuine.
AIDS is contracted only once a person has been infected with HIV but Mr Hayhoe said the man may have lumped the two together.
“It’s extremely disturbing (and) the guy needs psychiatric help,” Mr Heyhoe said.
The videos – one of which has been viewed 195,000 times – also feature a web address to a “gangsta” portal filled with pornography and where Trashman has a profile.
In the first video, Trashman reads from a list of women he claims to have infected.
“Today I’m doing a show about something that’s more important than killing rappers,” he says.
“This here (piece of paper) that I hold in my hand is a list of women who I actually infected with AIDS on purpose.
“So if I call your name and if you just happen to be on my ‘I got the AIDS from that nigger’ list’, then God bless you.”
He then goes on to name several women and how old they are.
Mr Hayhoe said if Trashman was telling the truth, it would be “absolutely devastating” for anyone who has had sex with him.
“For someone to hear that on a YouTube video is just disgusting,” Mr Hayhoe said.
“To have your name yelled out would be shattering.”
Google, the owner of YouTube, has been contacted for comment.
Indifference is a cancer on society Sally. Greed is a cancer on society. Not ambition, which is self actualizing, but greed which only wants to take what others have. When your neighbors in this life have become nothing more to you then a means to an end, nothing more then stepping stones to your idea of paradise, then you have become the cancer. Trashman is your face in the mirror Sally.
David Roberts, over at Ex-Gay Watch, observes the kook pews falling over each other to excuse Sally Kern’s calling gay people a greater threat to the nation then terrorists, and writes…
I’m beginning to realize that, in at least some cases, what I thought was a more civil, sincere change in the hearts and minds of those who have opposed gay rights and equality in this society, perhaps was only a thin veneer which they feel has been imposed upon them.
Welcome to bigotville David. Yes…now they hate our guts even more for making them pretend to love us.
Economists say home prices are no where near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And there’s a pattern emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.
The ones with short commutes are fairing better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what’s long been inexorable—urban sprawl.
…
Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic surveyed two rows of neat new brick town homes on Falkner’s Lane. "These were selling for about $550,000 at the peak, which was about August 05, and they’re selling right now for about $350,000," Bogdanovic said."So $200,000 in a year and a half and fifty 50 of this community has been ether foreclosed on or is facing foreclosure.
For residents who work in the city, their commute is around an hour on trouble-free days. But that could extend upward toward two hours very quickly.
…
But construction in town has held steady. Goldberg sees other cities rebounding too, including Baltimore and Philadelphia."Philadelphia was loosing downtown housing and in town housing until very recently," Goldberg said. "And now that’s the hottest part of their market."
That’s my experience so far here in Baltimore. In the neighborhood I live in, the houses going up for sale still don’t stay on the market for more then a few weeks. Prices aren’t soaring like they once were…if anything they’ve gone down a tad. But just a tad. Prices are still more then double what they were seven years ago.
I can walk to work from where I live. For most folks here in my neighborhood who work in the city, the commute can’t be too bad because we’re close to I-83 which goes right into the heart of downtown Baltimore. The Light rail is nearby too.
Traffic congestion plus the rising cost of gas is already having an effect. The housing market collapse isn’t happening where people can live close to where they work, or close to rail transport. One of the biggest booming housing markets in Baltimore, still is around Penn Station. Which just also happens to be close to our gay neighborhood too.
I had to take a closer look. The column from Craig Smith begins promisingly…
Before you know it November will be upon us, and we will be required to choose a new president. But as in all elections, we will also vote on certain proposals and ballot initiatives. So I suspect it is only a matter of time before we hear the voices of the gay and lesbian community demanding the right to government-sanctioned "marriage," and this year I am all for it!
Homosexuals should enjoy the same rights and privileges married couples have experienced since the beginning of time: To be able to love and cherish, to have and to hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, ’till death do they part.
But this is a Wing Nut Daily column of course, so actually Smith is being sarcastic here. His real point is…
Thus I suspect if married gay couples honored their vows, within two to three generations we would not have any more gay babies being born. Given most gay people say they didn’t choose to be gay but were born gay, it would eliminate innocent people being born into a world that homosexuals deem so hostile toward them. It would settle once and for all the argument that homosexuality is genetic and not a choice. Nature, not nurture. If there is no procreation, there is no passing of genes and, thus, the species does not survive.
Darwin would have been right!
…
Let’s get serious. Homosexuality is a choice. And the choices people make are their business. What goes on in your bedroom is your choice. But when a group or person attempts to force society into condoning their choice or demands that their choice be taught to future generations as a "normal" lifestyle, I have a problem.
If you want to take the position that homosexuality is not a choice, then let’s experiment with my idea. We will know rather quickly who is right and who is wrong for nature itself proves the whole genetic argument invalid.
We’re having a Darwin moment here I see…
From: Bruce Garrett
To: Craig Smith
Subject: Darwin and Homosexuality
You write, "If you want to take the position that homosexuality is not a choice, then let’s experiment with my idea. We will know rather quickly who is right and who is wrong for nature itself proves the whole genetic argument invalid".
You need to take a little better interest then this in how the natural world really works. Perhaps this AP article from 1999 will help you out a tad…
Why Do Peacocks Stick Together in Avian `Singles Bar’?
Groups of peacocks strut their stuff in hopes of attracting the finest peahens, but only a few lucky guys will find a willing mate in the wild kingdom’s equivalent of a singles bar.
Scientists have long wondered why the unsuccessful peacocks stick around the same group year after year when the hens tend to select the same few males each breeding season.
Research published Thursday in the journal Nature suggests a sound evolutionary reason: Many of the bird buddies within individual groups are brothers. By working together, the brothers are increasing the odds that their genes will be passed to another generation.
"By helping your relatives to attract mates, your genes are spread," said Marion Petrie, a researcher at Britain’s University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The research sheds light on why some peacocks seem unconcerned with sex and are content to be hangers-on in the animal singles scene: Larger groups of peacocks attract more females, so some of the peacocks are there just to make the group bigger.
"The benefits of helping closely related dominants to attract more females may outweigh the subordinate males’ own meager mating opportunities," said Cornell University researcher Paul Sherman in an accompanying Nature commentary.
Petrie and her colleagues studied about 200 free-ranging peafowl in Whipsnade Park north of London. Using DNA fingerprinting, the researchers found birds inside the strutting groups are more likely to be related to each other than those outside the group.
But how do the related birds find each other? That’s unclear, but it is not because the peacock brothers grew up together.
In fact, the researchers found that when peacock brothers were separated before hatching, and then were released into Whipsnade Park when they were yearlings, the brothers still tended to group together.
The mechanism by which the birds found their relatives is unclear. It could be by odor, feather patterns or the sounds the birds make.
"There is some way in which kin can be associated, which doesn’t require learning or environmental clues," Petrie said. "They didn’t know their fathers or mothers. They could not possibly learn who their brothers were. They had no reference points to where they were born, but they still found each other."
If you don’t pass on your genes, but you help your siblings pass on theirs, your family genes get passed on, and that’s good enough as far as natural selection is concerned. If you help make your family, or your tribe look desirable, then the genes in that pool, which likely include a good many of yours too, get to go a few more rounds. If a trait is recessive, not everyone in the group needs to express it, for it to get passed along too, with all the others. If this is not true, then the mating rituals of Peacocks would not look the way they do.
Here’s a little something else to ponder when considering Darwin and homosexuality: the humble prostate gland. When you massage it, which is what happens during a certain kind of male to male sex, you can bring a human male to a right dandy orgasm. I doubt that massaging any other gland in the human body will produce anything other then pain, let alone sexual pleasure, but that one particular gland, in that one particular part of the male anatomy is different that way. You need to pay attention to that, because militant homosexuality didn’t do that, godless secularism didn’t do that, the Warren court didn’t do that, millions of years of adaptive evolution gave that to every human male who ever walked this earth, whether they had any use for it or not. And let’s be honest here, most don’t. The vast majority of human males have utterly no use for that.
Yet there it is.
So…actually, you’re probably sitting on all the proof you need for the genetic argument at this very moment.
—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.
I was too polite to tell him that as long as he’s got his head up his ass he should look around.
The tire pressure warning hasn’t come back, so I’m writing that one off to something they did during service ‘A’. I’ve got almost fourteen grand on the car now and it still drives like a dream come true…so solid and sure. Problem is gas is now at about $3.60 a gallon for premium at the cheap station near me (which is part of a convenience store chain, so they may be writing gas off as a loss leader…something the regular gas stations cannot do. I’m tempted to go to Costco to fill up but the numbers just don’t justify it. I’m using more gas to make the trip then I save in cost. So I might as well fill up locally. But I just can’t pop into it and take a drive just anywhere for the shear pleasure of driving it like I did in the weeks just after I bought it. I have to plan my pleasure drives out now. Oh well…it’s getting to be springtime here in Baltimore now, and there is a lot of yard work to do around the house anyway. But the annual road trip to California is going to be a tad costly this year. I’m really starting to be afraid now, that I’m going to live to see the end of the open road.
DMG now had a successful brand name, but still lacked a characteristic trademark. Then Paul and Adolf Daimler – the company founder’s two sons, and now senior executives at DMG – remembered that their father, who had died in March 1900 shortly before his 66th birthday, had once used a star as a symbol.
Gottlieb Daimler had been technical director of the Deutz gas engine factory from 1872 until 1881. At the beginning of his employment there, he had marked a star above his own house on a picture postcard of Cologne and Deutz, and had written to his wife that this star would one day shine over his own factory to symbolize prosperity.
The DMG board immediately accepted the proposal and in June 1909, both a three-pointed and a four-pointed star were registered as trademarks. Although both designs were legally protected, only the three-pointed star was used. From 1910 onward, a three-dimensional star adorned the radiator at the front of the car.
The three-pointed star was supposed to symbolize Daimler’s ambition of universal motorization – “on land, on water and in the air”…
So now you know where the star came from. And on that note, here’s a little something I found on YouTube for any other Mercedes fanboys out there reading this.
Mercedes Jellinek Whose father named his very famous Daimler made racing car after her, and whose name has been on every car Daimler has made ever since…
Hell is other people, said Sartre. I am not nearly enough misanthrope to agree. I can amuse myself for days at a time working on this and that solitary pastime at home, in my art room, in my office, reading a good book, listening to a favorite piece of music. But not for long. Without companionship I am miserable. Hell is having no one to talk to, no one to walk through life with. But I’ll concede that there are people in this world who embody hell pretty nearly. My maternal grandmother for one.
I’ve always found the concept of Hell…capital ‘H’…disturbing. Not to contemplate the reality of it, because I simply don’t believe in it. It’s disturbing in what it reveals about the human psyche. God didn’t invent Hell. Humans beings did. To put other human beings into. Nothing says more how bottomless the human capacity for evil is, then the idea of Hell.
In case anyone’s interested, the impetus behind my writing my last post, ”Homosexuality Isn’t Stealing or Lying …”‘ is this simple truth: If my gay friends, whom my life experience tells me can no sooner stop being gay than I can stop being straight, have to go to hell after they die, then I’m going with them. Too many gays and lesbians have been too good to me in this life for me to leave them behind in the next. I won’t do it. That’s really all I was saying.
What I am not saying (and certainly haven’t said) is that the Bible is wrong, or should be changed, or that fundamentalist or “conservative” Christians are wrong or should change. I’m not even saying that it’s true that gays and lesbians are born homosexual in the same way I was born straight. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t care. I leave those kinds of questions to the future and those in the present who, unlike me, like to debate. (And you better believe I have no interest in alienating my fundamentalist and “conservative” Christian friends, for whom I have nothing but love and respect. I wish I had blood relatives who’d ever been as good to me as some of my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ have been.)
Again: I’m saying nothing more than this: If any of my dear gay friends get condemned to hell for no other reason than that they’re gay, then I will choose to go to hell with them. I am sure Christ will let me make that choice. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m positive Christ understands sacrificing oneself for the love of others.
This isn’t just posturing, this man really believes in Hell, Capital ‘H’. Tavdy pointed me to this follow-up post over at John Shore’s blog in the comments to This Post. This man is really struggling between his love for his gay friends and what he honestly believes about God and for once I can look at this and believe it’s real and not some sort of empty posturing and that’s entirely because you can see he really does view gay people as human beings and not a bunch of faceless scarecrows with the word SODOMITE pinned on them. I really feel for him.
What decent person could accept entry into paradise, knowing that so many other good-hearted, decent, loving people are going to burn for eternity simply for loving someone of their own sex, and being loved by them? I think part of my own journey away from the faith, never mind what it had to say about my sexual orientation, was realizing that paradise itself would be a kind of Hell so long as I knew there were people burning alive in Hell for all eternity. What kind of person would feel comfortable in paradise knowing that? And for what? For being a Mormon instead of a Presbyterian? For being a Muslim or a Jew? For being an Atheist? For dismissing the story of Noah? For not praying to the Saints? For not going to church every Sunday? For that you burn for all eternity? What kind of person even conceives of such a thing to begin with? God didn’t invent Hell. Human beings did.
As I wrote back to Tavdy, I count my blessings. I could have easily grown up to be a biblical literalist. Considering the household I grew up in I’m still a bit surprised to this day that I didn’t. I could have ended up loathing myself as a gay teenager, drifting in and out of Ex-Gay programs, and generally hating myself and who knows what else. Destroying my mind with drugs and booze. Trying to kill my heart with brief barren assignations in the toilets because that’s where my twisted up conscience kept insisted my sexual desires belonged. Somehow I didn’t. I think I know why. Partly. I fell in love with the stars at an early age and began devouring books on astronomy and from there to nature and science. Ever since my thinking about God and my relationship to my creator has always been grounded in what I saw in nature and my theology such as it is, goes along the lines of "When the bird and the bird book disagree, believe the bird." I never took the bible literally and have always felt free in conscience and spirit to embrace the wisdom I see in it and discard what makes no sense. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live… Right…whatever…
But I can’t point to any moment in my life where I made a conscious decision to reject the idea that the bible is the Literal word of God. That never happened. All that happened was I had this gut level understanding ever since I can remember walking outside at night and looking up at the stars, that the literal word is up there in the dazzling night sky and there on the ground under my feet and the birds in the trees and the scent of the blossoms and there in the light of the rising sun. So whenever I read the bible I always had this sense that I was reading how people understood God to be, but not necessarily how God was, and whenever I read anything that was ugly or stupid or mean I just reckoned that had nothing do to with God and just glossed over it. God made the bird. Humans write the bird books and humans are not infallible.
Maybe there is a life after death…I have no idea. But the idea of Hell, like the idea of original sin, is cheap and petty and ugly and completely unworthy of that which could create space and time, let alone the birds and the bees out of nothing. Humans have an almost bottomless capacity to hate. If Hell is anything, it is proof of that. But I simply cannot believe that of anything capable of creating a soul. So I don’t believe in hell. I have seen a small portion of the hell humans can make for each other on this good earth however, and that has convinced me that Jesus was absolutely right about this: We have to love one another.
Sometimes a news article just jumps off the screen and laughs in your face. Via Box Turtle Bulletin… If you have any doubts about the depth anti-gay hate in this country, read this:
The General Assembly yesterday approved a resolution calling for expanded opportunities for Kentucky public schoolchildren to learn about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
House Joint Resolution 6 is named after the late Ernie Marx of Louisville, a Holocaust survivor who made a life’s mission to spread education about the horrors he witnessed.
It passed the Senate on a voice vote and the House by a vote of 83-12. It now goes to Gov. Steve Beshear.
The resolution would direct the Department of Education to make curriculum materials available for optional use in public schools by March 2009.
The material would be part of the Kentucky Program of Studies, which has state approval but is not required.
The resolution reflects four years of efforts by middle-school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Louisville, where Fred Whitaker offers instruction on the Holocaust and takes students to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
He said the pupils began lobbying for legislation that would give students in public schools access to opportunities to study the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
"These middle school students really knew something we should all know," Whitaker said. "They really knew there was something powerful that (happens) to anyone when they study the Holocaust and genocide."
Not powerful enough for some, apparently…
The Senate deleted a clause in the House version that cited other people the Nazis deemed "undesirable" because of their "race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology."
Whitaker said he received indications earlier in the session that the reference to sexual orientation was a "red flag" that could have endangered the bill.
Dig it. It took them Four Years, just to get the Kentucky statehouse to agree that school kids should probably learn something about one of the greatest human catastrophes of the twentieth century…Maybe. We’ll suggest they learn about it, but not require it. And then someone spies a clause in the bill suggesting that school kids learn that there were other victims besides Jewish folk, and that would have been fine too except for the homosexuals. You know…these guys…
But the republican majority leader tut, tuts, any suggestion that they wouldn’t have been fine…really…with including the gay victims of the holocaust in their Completely Optional Curriculum…
But Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, said in an interview that was never an issue for Senate leadership.
He said he had no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust as long as it’s "age-appropriate."
Whitaker said that, even without the language on other victims of the Nazis, "you can’t study the Holocaust and not also come across pink triangles," the insignia that homosexual prisoners were forced to wear.
You know goddamned well you can. For decades after World War Two nothing, Nothing was ever said about the pink triangles, until gay scholars started digging into it based on rumors and stories they’d heard from survivors. I started learning about the Holocaust in Junior High schools (middle school these days) and it figured in every lesson on that period of time for the rest of my grade school years and Not Once did I ever hear mention of the pink triangles, or how the Nazis had toughened Germany’s seldom enforced anti-gay laws, even before they enacted the brutally antisemitic Nuremberg laws, or how when the death camps were finally liberated, the surviving Jewish prisoners were released, as well as the gypsies, the Slavs, the intellectuals, the opposition party members…hell, even the communist prisoners were let go…but not the pink triangles. They were considered vermin by both the Nazis, and the American liberators.
Yes Mr. Republican Majority Leader Sir, you can goddamned well teach about the holocaust and not once mention the fact that gay men were rounded up by the Nazis too and shoveled into the death camps. That was the status-quo all during both our school years wasn’t it? And you’d like very much to go back to that status quo wouldn’t you? Because you know most of your voter base doesn’t think the Nazis did anything wrong when it came to exterminating homosexuals don’t you? And you know goddamned well you’ll loose votes if you do anything to suggest otherwise don’t you? If you have no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust, then why didn’t you have that line put back into the bill?
The Holocaust museum says the Nazis arrested about 100,000 men as homosexuals and that an unknown number died amid brutal conditions.
Marzian said she could accept the Senate changes.
"You have to compromise in legislation," she said.
You did a great job of putting the knife into it Kelly. You had your boys whisper that the bill Whitaker and Marzian worked on four four years was dead unless they deleted the line about gay victims of the Holocaust and they did it and now you can look at the cameras and claim you’re shocked, shocked, that anyone would bother caring about all that. This is why you’re majority leader isn’t it. You could have had it fucking put back in and insisted to your caucus that it stay there and you didn’t, and make no mistake, everybody knows who ripped that little page out of the history books and why.
And one other thing they’ll always know… In 2008, over sixty years after World War Two, Kentucky school children still aren’t routinely taught about the Holocaust, and won’t be because after four years of trying all the Kentucky state house could do was pass a bill that suggests they learn about it. That was about as far as you could go without loosing the bigot vote, wasn’t it Kelly? And now you get to play civilized man for the cameras.
Whitaker said he regretted that Marx, who died last year at age 81, didn’t live to see passage of the bill.
If it’s too much to ask that your schools teach about what happened to six million Jews I suppose it’s way too much to ask that it also mention the unknown thousands of gay victims too. Especially when you and your fellow republicans need to be able to gay bash for votes every few years.
Another thing about the homosexual/Christian “issue” is that it seems to me that we Christians should be clear on the fact that asserting homosexuals should stop acting homosexual necessarily means asserting that they should spend their lives never knowing the loving intimacy with another that straight people enjoy and know to be the best and richest experience in life.
If I were gay, and I lived and behaved in the way most Christians (understandably!) defend as biblical, I would live alone. I wouldn’t wake up every morning next to my wife. I’d never hold hands with my wife. I’d never kiss my wife. I’d never cuddle with my wife. I’d not know the profound pleasure of every day growing older with my wife. Remaining as sinless as possible would, for me, mean never knowing love of the sort that all straight people, Christian or not, understand as pretty much the best thing life has to offer.
Again: I’m not saying that it’s manifestly absurd and even cruel to suggest that everyone within a broad swath of our population spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I believe in the tenets of Christianity as ferociously as any Christian in the world. All I’m saying is that, as far as I can tell, we Christians (insofar as we ever speak with one voice) are saying that it is morally incumbent upon homosexuals to spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I hear a lot of Christians asserting that gays and lesbians should stop acting like gays and lesbians. But I never hear anyone saying the unavoidable follow-up to that — saying what that really means — which is that gay and lesbian men and women should spend their lives never experiencing what people most commonly mean when they use the word “love.”
This is what I’ve been waiting to see…someone who believes the bible categorically forbids same sex relationships admit what that really means to gay people. Not babble that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Not witlessly deny that there is ever any fulfilling, romantic, body and soul and spirit component to same sex relationships. But honestly and seriously look at what denying intimate romantic love to gay people does to their lives, to their inner lives, to their heart and soul. To our spirit.
Someone who is at least willing to both see human beings when they look at us, and honestly acknowledge the hell we are being put through for the sake of these biblical passages, can be talked with.
Thank you Mr. Shore. I’ve been waiting for literally decades to see a Christian writer make this connection. Usually it’s just quickly glossed over. I think the reason why is pretty obvious.
When my mom passed away a few years ago, I inherited her diaries. We never discussed my sexual orientation…it was a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell household. I was, like her, raised a Baptist, and the time of my coming of age coincided, not coincidentally, with the period of my leaving the faith. What I expected to read in her diaries from that time was grief over my slow but steady walk away from our church. But no. Grief there was, but it was almost exclusively over how the bright and cheerful son she once had turned into a moody, sullen, angry young man. It makes me cry to read those entries.
When you take the possibility of love away from someone…what do they have left? Think about that, the next time you see an angry homosexual.
Bruce: Perfectly said. Just … perfect. And what a touching, heart-wrenching story.
Liberal Christians like Fred Clark have never had any trouble acknowledging the spiritual potential of same sex love. But they’re not generally biblical literalists. Hopefully I’ll see more of this from those in the coming years. The people who don’t care and just don’t want to know have had the stage for far too long.
Despite the fact that I still don’t have my college degree and that I struggled to make ends meet for most of my life working various low paying blue collar jobs, I suspect I could never pass myself off as "a man of the people", were it not for the shot of "Bartender’s Special" a very foxy bartender gave me once at Larry’s Lounge in D.C..
To run for president, you need to drink a lot…
I think it had Southern Comfort in it, which automatically gives me extra bonus populist points. Which is good, because I wouldn’t have touched that glass with a ten foot pool if I hadn’t been completely twitterpated by the guy who handed it to me, and having a drink with a cute guy in a gay bar penalizes me severely on populist points.
I spoke in an undergraduate class today. As a friend of mine has said a few times about her students, pretty soon you’re going to have to explain to them what the Lewinsky scandal was. This isn’t a comment on the quality of the students, just that the degree to which 19 year olds have shared cultural and historic experience with me is shrinking fast. Bush v. Gore happened when they were 11. What’s recent history to me is a vague recollection for them.
I suppose I need to stop comparing Bush and Reagan, let alone Nixon…
Three Cheers For Heterosexuality. Oh Come On Now…Cheer!
Via Pam’s House Blend… Brian Blair is the opponent of Kevin Beckner, the openly gay man running for the Hillsborough County Commission in Florida. The county is holding its Day of Silence in honor of 15-year-old hate crime victim Lawrence King this year, and naturally, as Pam puts it, "…the idea of kids engaging in a silent, passive act against violence, harassment and prejudice during the school day is just too much to bear for these people of apparently weak faith." Here’s what Blair has to say about it:
"I have always believed that all citizens are equal and should be treated accordingly. On the other hand, no group of citizens should be given government sanction and support to promote their social and sexual agenda upon the rest of us and especially, on our children."
"Considering the fact that the same school system does not want to allow just one Minute of Silence in the classroom for God, this is preposterous."
"Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?’ If no action is taken to change this policy, then perhaps it is time for another surgical strike from the majority; ‘A Day of Abstention’ from school participation might be considered."
Brian Blair brings a high degree of seriousness to American politics, and Florida politics especially, not simply because he is a defender of heterosexuality against the militant gay agenda, but also because he was once a WWE professional wrestler. Here’s a photo of Mr. Blair (on the left) in his role as part of the WWE "Killer Bees" team…
Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?
When you want it the most there’s no easy way out
When you’re ready to go and your heart’s left in doubt
Don’t give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that’s the way it is
"In Paraguay we are at T-9 days to national elections. The ruling party has been in power for nearly 61 years (including more than 30 years of dictatorship). Now the state-run ADSL company is hijacking the DNS nationwide of a site that denounces the corruption in the party."
…provoked this comment…
Paraguay is a country ruled by a conservative coalition.
Which only goes to show what my old bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he’d say, "nobody believes in capitalism. Nobody believes in socialism. It’s socialism for me, and capitalism for you!" Ivan may have been a red, but he was a cynic first and foremost, and that keeps you honest.
In the end, there is only one thing that really matters in any system: transparency. At least if the system is supposed to be run for the benefit of the people who live under it. You can be all for the proletariat, or all for the free market, but if you’re pulling the wool of the peoples’ eyes, you aren’t any different from anybody else running a con behind high sounding priciples.
Well I believe in a free market because I don’t think that human beings can plan an economy any better then we can plan the weather. But a free market needs a rule of law and a means of preventing the power of money from subverting that rule of law, or that free market won’t remain free for very long, it’ll degenerate into oligarchy.
But that’s the republican ideal, isn’t it? For decades now anyone with half a brain could see that republicans favored oligarchy over all other forms of government. They claim to believe in both free markets and the rule of law and I think seven years plus of George Bush has pretty well decisively proved otherwise. Nothing disturbs the status-quo more then free market capitalism, when it isn’t turning it upside down. Nothing. And nothing locks the human potential in chains and thereby preserves the status-quo better then crony capitalism, which is to say, republican party economics.
The state religion of Oligarchy is God Loves The Rich. Its economic theory is To The Victors Belong The Spoils. Its theory of government is Might Makes Right. Vis:
On Thursday in the National Press Club in Washington, a crowd gathered to witness the presentation of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling to Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz. The story of Matthew Diaz was chronicled in this space repeatedly (also here and here). It is a story of courage, fortitude, conviction and suffering. Joe Margulies introduced the honoree with clarity:
no one can think it is fun when you sit in a courtroom as an accused, and a United States prosecutor points an accusatory finger at your chest and calls you a criminal and tells you that you have betrayed your oath and you have betrayed your country, and you have endangered the safety of the men and women that you swore to share your burdens with. And no one can think it is fun when you have to sit with your heart pounding in your chest as the jury files back into the room with a piece of paper folded in its hands, and that piece of paper holds your fate. And no one can think it is fun when that jury, your peers, pronounces you guilty. And no one can think it is fun when you have to face that same jury that will sentence you for what may be many years; many years that you will be away from your family, your life in tatters, your career ruined.
Matthew Diaz served his country as a staff judge advocate at Guantánamo. He watched a shameless assault on America’s Constitution and commitment to the rule of law carried out by the Bush Administration. He watched the introduction of a system of cruel torture and abuse. He watched the shaming of the nation’s uniformed services, with their proud traditions that formed the very basis of the standards of humanitarian law, now torn asunder through the lawless acts of the Executive. Matthew Diaz found himself in a precarious position—as a uniformed officer, he was bound to follow his command. As a licensed and qualified attorney, he was bound to uphold the law. And these things were indubitably at odds.
Diaz resolved to do something about it. He knew the Supreme Court twice ruled the Guantánamo regime, which he was under orders to uphold, was unlawful. In the Hamdan decision, the Court went a step further. In powerful and extraordinary words, Justice Kennedy reminded the Administration that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was binding upon them, and that a violation could constitute a criminal act. One senior member of the Bush legal team, informed of the decision over lunch, was reported to have turned “white as a sheet” and to have immediately excused himself. For the following months, Bush Administration lawyers entered into a frenzied discussion of how to protect themselves from criminal prosecution.
One of the crimes the Administration committed was withholding from the Red Cross a list of the detainees at Guantánamo, effectively making them into secret detainees. Before the arrival of the Bush Administration, the United States had taken the axiomatic position that holding persons in secret detention for prolonged periods outside the rule of law (a practice known as “disappearing”) was not merely unlawful, but in fact a rarified “crime against humanity.” Now the United States was engaged in the active practice of this crime.
The decision to withhold the information had been taken, in defiance of law, by senior political figures in the Bush Administration. Diaz was aware of it, and he knew it was unlawful. He printed out a copy of the names and sent them to a civil rights lawyer who had requested them in federal court proceedings.
Diaz was aware when he did this that he was violating regulations and that he could and would, if caught, be subjected to severe sanction. What he did was a violation of law, even as it was an effort to cure a more severe act of lawlessness by the Government. Diaz violated the law in precisely the same sense as Martin Luther King reminds us, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, that his arrest was based on a violation of law. That everything the Nazis did in Germany was lawful. And that every act of the Hungarian freedom fighters was a crime. In terms of the moral law, however, Diaz was on the side of right, and the Bush Administration and the Pentagon had, by engaging in the conduct that the Supreme Court condemned, placed themselves on the side of lawlessness, corruption and dishonor.
Diaz was charged, tried and convicted for disclosing “secrets.” For the Bush Administration, any information which would be politically embarrassing or harmful to it is routinely classified “secret.” In this fashion the Administration believes it can use criminal sanctions against those who disclose information it believes will be politically damaging. The list of detainees at Guantánamo, which by law was required to be disclosed, was classified as “secret.”
Diaz spent six months in prison and left it bankrupt and without a job. In addition to his sentence, the Pentagon is working aggressively to have Diaz stripped of his law license so he will not be able to practice his profession. The Bush Administration has sought to criminalize, humiliate and destroy Diaz. Its motivation could not be clearer: Diaz struck a blow for the rule of law. And nothing could be more threatening to the Bush Administration than this.
When republicans tell you that they love free markets and hate big government, look around:
Dean Baker has a nice rant about the disappearance of reliance on "market forces" now that the Princes of Wall Street are staring disaster in the face without government help:
What Happened to "Free-Market" Conservatives (or Neo-liberals)?: With the housing bubble in full meltdown, our political leaders are busily ignoring all the things they have said about the market over the last quarter century and looking to throw all the money that they can find to sustain the bubble. This would be comical, if it weren’t so painful.
Remember all the steel workers and autoworkers who lost their jobs due to trade agreements that were supposed to advance economic efficiency over the last quarter century? How about the workers in the airline, trucking, and telecommunications industry who lost jobs due to deregulation, which was also supposed to increase economic efficiency?
Well, it’s a new day. Nothing these people (or their economists) said matters anymore. It housing bubble support time!
For years, economic policy was supposed to be guided by market principles. If our autoworkers couldn’t compete with their counterparts in Mexico or China, who got paid $1 an hour, then it would be inefficient to have trade protection that would keep them employed here. The same applied to regulations that might keep high paying jobs in key sectors of the economy. Educated people all knew that interfering with the market was harmful to the economy, and if we ever forgot this basic truth, the Washington Post regularly ran sanctimonious editorials to remind us.
Well, it’s a new day. The housing bubble is melting down and Congress and the Fed are throwing money everywhere. After all, this isn’t about auto workers and truckers, it’s about Wall Street banks, and the politicians are pulling out all the stops to come to the rescue. In addition to the money that the Fed is throwing at the banks through subsidized loans at its discount window, it is also granting free insurance to the investment banks — a gift that is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Now Congress is jumping into the act. Remember way back in the fall when they couldn’t find $7 billion to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program? Well, now Congress can finds hundreds of billions of dollars to support a housing bubble. It’s a worthy goal. After all, the Wall Street crew might lose their shirts if the housing bubble continues to meltdown.
Congress will not be able to support the housing bubble indefinitely, but they might be able to do it long enough to allow the big boys to cash out and pass more of their bad loans onto the taxpayers and other suckers.
The political support for this bailout package may make it unstoppable, but if it does go through, we should be clear that there are new rules. In the post bailout world, anyone who makes claims about forcing workers or the poor to take pay cuts or do without benefits in the name of economic efficiency is simply a fool or liar.
Anyone who cared about economic efficiency would be yelling at the top of their lungs against this bailout. Anyone who can throw untold hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars at the rich to save their hides, has no concerns about economic efficiency, they just want to help the rich. In such a world, the rest of us have the right to demand the same sort of handouts from the government. And those who stand in the way are simply lackeys of the rich and powerful, who pretend to care about principles of economics.
Traditional Values = Forced Abortions And Prostitution
Bob Schaffer, Republican senate candidate for Colorado, is having his little vacation jaunts with convicted briber Jack Abramoff exposed on the pages of the Denver Post today. It’s smarmy for more reasons then the photos of him and his wife enjoying the lap of luxury on the dime of a group of Mariana Island sweat shop owners…
That’s Schaffer and his wife doing a little parasailing. Supposedly they’re investigating the conditions in the island sweat shops pending legislation to bring them under tighter U.S. regulation. The Mariana Island sweat shop owners were Abramoff’s biggest contributors. They’re about as sorded a bunch of republican bankrollers as you’re likely to find. As Joshua Marshall writes over at Talking Points Memo…
The Marianas program is notorious around the world for forced abortion, slavery, child prostitution, beatings and having the overwhelmingly female foreign workers houses in shacks with no plumbing surrounded by barbed wire.
And here’s Schaffer on his whirlwind tour of the sweatshops…
Schaffer later reported that the workers there all seemed happy. How…unsurprising. The Denver Post reports…
At the time, those alleged abuses and a push by the Clinton administration led to a flurry of congressional action. Several bills passed the Senate that would have brought the islands’ factories under stricter American laws, but the legislation failed in the House.
Hired by factory owners and the government of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, Abramoff and his firm were paid more than $11 million over nine years to fend off those efforts, according to reports.
In a 2001 memo to the Marianas governor meant to justify millions in fees, Abramoff singles out the relationships built with members of the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. protectorates. He points to the lavish trips for dozens of lawmakers and family members to build goodwill. And he says his connections ultimately scuttled dangerous legislation like the bill proposed by then-Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, which would have toughened the islands’ labor and immigration laws.
"We then stopped it cold in the House," the memo boasts.
"In the end, this all-out public relations and lobbying blitz brought the (Mariana Islands) back from the brink of legislative disaster," the lobbyist wrote.
Never mind for a moment, that these congressional representatives of The Party Of Moral Values had to know where the money was coming from. Never mind that they cheerfully turned a blind eye to forced abortions and prostitution in exchange for a good time on the dime of highly successful businessmen whose business model only happened to include forcing their employees to have abortions and go into prostitution. They’re congressmen after all. And…republicans. Is there a lower form of life then that? Actually…yes there is. Does the human gutter go any deeper? Actually, yes it does. And does it wear it’s righteousness on its sleeve? Tsk, tsk…Need you ask… Why…of course!
Abramoff for obvious reasons, had to conceal his payoffs to Schaffer. It would never do to have it look like the very sweatshops he was investigating paid for his trip…and parasailing lessons. So a third party payment was arranged. Guess who served as Abramoff’s willing frontmen?
Yes…those morally righteous bible believing god fearing Jesus loving save marriage from the homosexuals folks over at the Traditional Values Coalition…
In some cases, Abramoff — who is now in prison for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, none of it related to the Mariana Islands — took efforts to obscure the scope of that effort and his firm’s involvement.
Values Coalition paid for trip
Schaffer’s $13,000 trip was paid for by the Orange County, Calif.-based Traditional Values Coalition, which Schaffer described as a religious group "concerned with human rights."
"Whatever involvement (Abramoff) had with Traditional Values Coalition wasn’t known at the time," Wadhams said.
Later investigations have shown that in many instances, TVC — which claims to represent 43,000 churches — acted virtually as a political arm of Abramoff’s lobbying operation.
In one 2000 case investigated by The Washington Post, TVC lobbied heavily against a bill restricting online gambling that would have hurt one of Abramoff’s clients, eLottery Inc. In return, the report said, TVC received a check from the client for $25,000. Abramoff and TVC head Louis Sheldon had cooperated successfully so often that the now-jailed lobbyist began referring to him as "Lucky Louie," the newspaper reported. A TVC official didn’t return a phone call requesting comment.
What Are Traditional Values? While other pro-family groups may have their own specific definitions of what "traditional values" means, here’s what we consider to be traditional values:
A moral code and behavior based upon the Old and New Testaments. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that the Lord has given us a rule book to live by: The Bible. We are committed to living, as far as it is possible, by the moral precepts taught by Jesus Christ and by the whole counsel of God as revealed in the Bible.
Moral precepts…did you say…? Oh…lookie here…
Right To Life: We believe that every human deserves the right to life—from conception to death—and that we do not have the right to kill unborn children nor to murder the elderly through active euthanasia.
You don’t say…
Homosexuality, Bi-Sexuality, Transgenderism, And Other Deviant Sexual Behaviors: The Bible clearly condemns all sexual behaviors outside of marriage between one man and one woman. Homosexual behavior is explicitly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments as an abomination and a violation of God’s standards for sexuality. We oppose the normalization of sodomy as well as cross-dressing and other deviant sexual behaviors in our culture.
You don’t say…
A U.S. Interior Department investigation found that pregnant workers were forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Some were recruited for factories but forced into the sex trade instead.
And you helped a bunch of Marianas sweat shop owners to pay off enough U.S. congressmen that their sweat shops could escape being regulated and thereby keep operating business as usual, which meant forcing their workers to get abortions and become prostitutes, and god knows what else. My, my…what traditional values you have there…
The Homosexual Movement And Pedophilia
The homosexual activist movement and organized pedophiles
are linked together by a common goal: To gain access to children for seduction into homosexuality.
How many of the women you’ve helped sweatshop owners force into prostitution were underage I wonder?
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