I was raised a Baptist. And in my family’s particular strain of the faith, I was pretty much constantly taught that the human race is no damn good. My maternal grandmother was the most sour person you could imagine growing up with. As long as I knew her, I never once saw her smile, unless it was at someone else’s misfortune. But make no mistake, her pleasure did not arise from the sight of someone being brought down. To her it was always more a matter of misfortune reminding us that we were all no good in the eyes of the Lord. The instant you find yourself enjoying life, it could only have been because you were doing something wrong, and you needed to repent. So…obviously my memories of her aren’t exactly joyful. But one memory sticks in my mind as a time when I actually saw myself, very reluctantly, admiring her.
We were waiting in a train station for my mom to come back from some trip…I forget what it was for. It was sometime in the late 1950s and I was a very young child, holding on to grandma’s hand as we sat waiting for mom. In those days there was still legalized and enforced race segregation and the station had separate areas for "whites" and "coloreds." But grandma was tired that day, and had decided to take us to the first seats she saw available…in the colored section.
A kindly station manager came over and politely told grandma she had to move, she was in the wrong part of the station. I forget now what exactly he said to her, only that it provoked one of grandma’s stock in trade fire and brimstone sermons. How dare he, she thundered, set himself above anyone for the color of their skin! How dare he tell people where they could sit because of the color of their skin! I suppose if we were both black the police would have been promptly called and we’d have both gone off to jail. But this guy just shook his head and walked away with grandma still sniping at him as he left. The station was mostly empty anyway.
It was years later before I finally realized what it was that had so deeply offended grandma. She wasn’t angry that this guy thought that black people were inferior. What had pissed her off was that he thought because he was white, he wasn’t.
I’m telling you this, because of an amazing book of history I’m reading now. And like all truly amazing history books, this one is a personal account, told by an average everyday person who actually lived it, who saw it with his own eyes.
How I came to find it: In comments to my post a few days ago on Why American News Sucks In A Nutshell, Peterson Toscano linked to this article on AlterNet, Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America. That article by Ray McGovern begins thusly:
Americans today are seeing the same sheepish submissiveness that characterized Germany after the burning of the Reichstag.
"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater … Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later …"
These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a firsthand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as "Geschichte eines Deutschen" (The Story of a German). The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages — in English as "Defying Hitler."
I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Haffner’s birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and emailed to ask me to "write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush’s America … this is almost unbelievable."
At the end of the article, which mostly recounts the passivity of the press and congressional democrats to the Bush republicans in-your-face violations of constitutional law in order to spy on American citizens, McGovern turns finally to Haffner’s book and the parallels to what Haffner saw as the Nazis rose to power become scary…
In his journal Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the "sheepish submissiveness" with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German parliament building (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933. Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances "saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from then on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened and one’s desk might be broken into."
But it is for the cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do you see any contemporary parallels here?
In the elections of March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only 44 percent of the vote. Only the "cowardly treachery" of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:
"It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight."
The Social Democratic leaders betrayed their followers — "for the most part decent, unimportant individuals." In May they sang the Nazi anthem; in June the Social Democratic party was dissolved.
The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum folded in less than a month and in the end supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that "legalized" Hitler’s dictatorship.
As for the right-wing conservatives and German nationalists: "Oh God," writes Haffner, "what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward. … They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews. … They were not even bothered when their own party was banned and their own members arrested." In sum:
"There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. … At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown. … The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."
This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated.
Our founding fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison wrote:
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. … The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
Haffner’s words spoke to me…they grabbed me by the collar…
"There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion…millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. … At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown. … The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."
…and I had to get a copy of his book. I’m reading it now. I’m only into the opening chapters, where he relates his experiences growing up during the first world war, as a necessary background to understanding what came later. But it is already an absorbing, disturbing read. I find myself devouring it.
As usual, when reading a firsthand account of a period of history that you thought you knew from the books and grainy black and white newsreel footage, you discover quickly that what you thought you knew was only a small slice of the whole, and that you were missing things, many things, especially those little commonplace day-to-day things that fade with time and memory, allowing you to keep history’s terrible events at a safe distance from the present. Oh…that could Never happen nowadays. Already just a few chapters into his book, Haffner has obliterated that distance for me, and his past becomes all too real, all too immediate…
I need to show you this, from the third chapter of his book. Here, Haffner is describing how the first world war affected him, and his childhood companions…
For a schoolboy in Berlin, the war was something very unreal; it was like a game. There were no air raids and no bombs. There were the wounded, but you saw them only at a distance. One had relatives at the front, of course, and now and then one heard of a death. But being a child, one quickly got used to their absence, and the fact that this absence sometimes became irrevocable did not seem to matter. As to the real hardships and privations, they were of small account. Naturally the food was poor. Later there was too little food, and our shoes had clattering wooden soles, our suits were turned, there were school collections for bones and cherry pits and surprisingly frequent illnesses. I must admit, all that made little impression. Not that I bore it all "like a little hero". It’s just that there was nothing very special to bear. I thought as little about food as a soccer enthusiast at a cup final. The army bulletins interested me far more then the menu.
The analogy with the soccer fan can be carried further. In those childhood days, I was a war fan just as one is a soccer fan. I would be making myself out worse then I was if I were to claim that I was caught up in the hate propaganda that, from 1915 to 1918, sought to whip up the flagging enthusiasm of the first few months of the war. I hated the French, the English and the Russians as little as the Portsmouth supporters detest Wolverhampton fans. Of course, I prayed for their defeat and humiliation, but only because those were the necessary counterparts of my side’s victory and triumph.
What counted was the fascination with the game of war, in which, according to certain mysterious rules, the number of prisoners taken, miles advanced, fortifications seized, and ships sunk played almost the same as goals in soccer and points in boxing. I never wearied of keeping internal scorecards. I was a zealous reader of the army bulletins, which I would proceed to recalculate in my own fashion, according to my own mysterious, irrational rules: thus, for instance, ten Russian prisoners were equivalent to one English or French prisoner, and fifty airplanes to one cruiser. If there had been statistics of those killed, I would certainly not have hesitated to "recalculate" the dead. I would not have stopped to think what the objects of my arithmetic looked like in reality. It was a dark, mysterious game and it’s never-ending, wicked lure eclipsed everything else, making daily life seem trite. It was addictive, like roulette and opium. My friends and I played it all through the war: four long years unpunished and undisturbed. It is this game, and not the harmless battle games we organized in the streets and playgrounds nearby, that has left its dangerous mark on all of us.
Sound familiar? Haffner goes on to say later, that the Nazi base came mostly from his middle class generation, untouched by war except as a series of army bulletins, seeing it only in the abstract, somewhat like a soccer game.
From 1914 to 1918 a generation of German schoolboys daily experienced war as a great, thrilling, enthralling game between nations, which provided far more excitement and emotional satisfaction then anything peace could offer; and that has now become the underlying vision of Nazism. That is where it draws its allure from: its simplicity, its appeal to the imagination, and its zest for action; but also its intolerance and its cruelty toward internal opponents. Anyone who does not join in is a spoilsport. Ultimately that is the source of Nazism’s belligerent attitude toward neighboring states. Other countries are not regarded as neighbors but must be opponents, whether they like it or not. Otherwise the match would have to be called off!
Many things later bolstered Nazism and modified its character, but its roots lie here: in the experience of war – not by German soldiers, but by German schoolboys at home. Indeed, the front line generation has produced relatively few genuine Nazis, and is better known for its critics and carpers. That is easy to understand. Men who have experienced the reality of war tend to view it differently. Granted there are exceptions: the eternal warriors, who found their vocation in war, with all its terrors and continue to do so; and the eternal failures, who welcome its horrors and its destruction as a revenge on a life that has proved too much for them. Göring perhaps belongs to the former type; Hitler certainly to the latter. The truly Nazi generation was formed by those born in the decade from 1900 to 1910, who experienced war as a great game and were untouched by its realities.
Sound Familiar?
All my grade school life, and for decades after, I’ve been told that Hitler rose to power because of a character flaw of the German people, something specific to the German soul that the rest of humanity somehow naturally rose above. I’ve never believed it. Never. Thanks I’m certain, to that Baptist upbringing I had, and my church’s constant drumming into my head that the human race was a pretty sad, sorry, good-for-nothing thing that no amount of fixing could improve, and the best we could do was beg God for forgiveness. I’ve never believed that either I’m pleased to say, but at least I seem to have absorbed the lesson that, for good or ill, we’re all pretty much the same deep down inside. The irrational passions that move your neighbors one day, might just as easily grab you by the collar the next if you’re not careful. We are not fallen angels, but risen apes. Our line is legitimate, and thoroughly anchored to the natural world, and to that ancient past from which we emerged so many millions of years ago. Old…very old…tides pull and tug at our consciousness. We are capable of great things, but also terrible things. All of us. What happened to the German people could just as easily happen to us. Maybe it already is.
I’ll probably be posting more about Haffner’s book as I continue reading it. But you should go buy it. Sit down with it and read it. Let it transport you back to a time and place you only think you know about. Then lift your eyes from its pages, and look around.
My Friend Jon Larimore, who himself was once the sysop of the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau BBS System, informed me the other day that the Internet filters at Panera Bread are still calling this web site pornographic. I admit to feeling a small twinge of pride when Jon and I were sitting down to eat at Panera some months ago, and I first saw that message blocking access to my web site, with the notice that it had been deemed pornographic. I was also given a helpful address where I could appeal their decision if I felt that it was unwarranted. Of course I have no intention of doing that because I know damn well what the problem is. It isn’t that there’s actually anything pornographic anywhere here. At most this site might occasionally get an ‘R’ rating…but most of the time it would only merit a ‘PG’ and that for my tendency to curse a lot when I get angry.
Oh no…the problem is that I am a gay man, writing about my life openly and honestly and I don’t give a flying fuck if any of that bothers the bigots. Remember this: A militant homosexual is a homosexual who doesn’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. A militant homosexual activist is a homosexual acting like they don’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. You don’t have to march in any Pride Day parade. You don’t have to walk a protest line. You don’t have to wave your rainbow flag. All you need to be labeled a Militant Homosexual is believe you have the same right to exist as anyone else. Then you are a militant. And if you push back when you are pushed around by bigotry, then you are a militant activist.
I’m especially proud that this little notice from Jon that I’m still being blocked just coincidentally happened to come near the anniversary of a major milestone in gay history…the day we won the right to send and receive publications written by and for gay folks through the mail.
ONE, Inc. was founded by several members of the Los Angeles Mattachine Society who felt that a strong nationwide voice for education and advocacy was desperately needed. According to ONE, Inc.’s articles of incorporation, “…the specific and primary purposes … are to publish and disseminate a magazine dealing primarily with homosexuality from the scientific, historical and critical point of view, and to aid in the social integration and rehabilitation of the sexual variant.” But this wasn’t going to be just any magazine. Under the inaugural editorial leadership of Martin Block, Dale Jennings, Don Slater and Donald Webster Cory, ONE magazine was to be a first class product, a dramatic departure from the typewritten and mimeographed sheets which were more common at the time.
This Internet you are reading now, with the vast freedom of information and personal knowledge it makes possible, is an amazing, glorious thing to some of us who remember what the world was like once upon a time, when the censors could decide for us what we could and could not read…what we could and could not know…
ONE filled a very critical role for gays and lesbians during a very dark time. ONE’s debut coincided with a major push to rid the U.S. civil service of homosexuals. President Dwight D. Eisenhower would sign Executive Order 10450 in April of that year, which barred gays and lesbians from federal employment with its “sexual perversion” clause. This followed a highly-publicized purge of more than 400 gays and lesbians from the civil service some three years earlier. Homosexuality was criminalized in most states, and it was stigmatized as a mental illness by the psychiatric profession. Gays were not only denounced as security risks, but risks to the very moral fiber of the nation. Homosexuals were treated as subversives, on par with the “Communist menace” on which leading politicians were staking their career. The FBI had launched a major crackdown on homosexuality across the U.S., with many gays and lesbians losing their jobs for merely receiving homophile publications in the mail. And vice squads everywhere were setting up entrapment stings in bars and other meeting places, where a simple proposition or touch could lead to arrest and public exposure.
So when ONE caught the eye of the FBI, they immediately launched an investigation to try to shut it down. They went so far as to write to the employers of ONE’s editors and writers (they all depended on their day jobs for income), saying that their employees were “deviants” and “security risks.” Fortunately, no one lost their jobs, the FBI decided it wasn’t worth their time, and ONE continued publishing.
The job of shutting down ONE then fell to the U.S. Post Office. Since its inception, Los Angeles postal authorities vetted each issue before deciding whether it was legal to ship under the Post Office’s stringent anti-obscenity standards. And since homosexuality was illegal in most states, ONE had the added problem of possibly being guilty of promoting criminal activity…
In those days, the only voices allowed to publicly speak about homosexuals and homosexuality, were the voices of those who hated us. If we ourselves spoke up, if we published our stories in any form, we risked arrest, exposure, the loss of our jobs, our homes, and jail. This is how censorship and the sodomy laws together maintained the status-quo, by silencing dissent. And back then homosexuals were so universally despised that even the ACLU would not take this case…in fact, it defended the existence of the sodomy laws.
Two things changed all that, and made possible the world we now live in today: a scrappy little gay publication named One, and the supreme court of Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren court is almost universally hated today by the American right. From its striking down of the laws allowing race segregation to its striking down of the laws restricting the rights of Americans to freedom of speech and freedom of the press…even extending those rights to a hated minority, there is almost nothing the Warren court did, that the republicans have not vowed to overturn, should they get their chance to stack the court with like-minded right wingers.
So far Bush has given them two more justices. They only need one more.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — For many who lived through Vermont’s not-so-civil debate over civil unions, the memories remain painfully fresh: hate mail, threatening telephone messages, tense public meetings.
This time around, as the state weighs whether to legalize gay marriage, the debate is noticeably tamer with little of the vitriol and recrimination that surrounded its groundbreaking 2000 decision to legally recognize gay and lesbian couples.
…
Although that absence of an impending vote may be what’s keeping things civil, people involved in the debate have noticed a change in atmosphere.
"It’s a very different tenor," said Beth Robinson, chairwoman of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, which supports gay marriage. "People have had an opportunity to come to terms. Vermonters have had eight years to see the two guys next door, or the two women down the street who have a legally recognized relationship under the civil unions law."
Ah yes… Now that they’ve had a chance to see how it works for themselves, and that the sky didn’t fall when same sex couples were allowed to have the same rights as opposite sex couples…tensions have eased, and people are more use to the idea….
"It was a time unlike anything since the Vietnam War era, when you had the sense that the whole world around you was divided," said David Moats, author of "Civil Wars: A Battle For Gay Marriage," a book about Vermont’s civil unions controversy.
…
Last summer, the Legislature appointed an 11-member Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection to explore the idea of gay marriage and hear how Vermonters feel about it. The panel, which opponents say is stacked with gay marriage supporters and have boycotted, has held seven hearings and has three more scheduled.
The hearings have generated plenty of input, but no name-calling or personal attacks.
James LaPierre, who has a civil union partner and two children, saw the contrast firsthand. He went to a 2000 meeting on civil unions intending to get up and speak, but he was intimidated by the atmosphere and kept quiet.
"People would stand up and go to the microphone and there was jeering and catcalling," said LaPierre, 43, a nurse from Burlington. "It was hateful, and scary."
Last month, LaPierre went to a hearing by the Commission on Family Recognition. This time, the gathering was "supportive" and he got up and spoke. But it had fewer people — about 100, by his count, compared with about 500 at the 2000 event.
"Instead of a hateful, unruly, mob-like meeting, it was civil and organized. There was representation of the other side, but only two or three people," he said.
Now…you see how that works? When people can see for themselves that gay folks aren’t monsters out to destroy America and Family Life and Moral Values things get a lot calmer.
Oh…wait…
Opponents believe the change in tone may have more to do with their boycott — and the lack of impending action — than acceptance of gay marriage.
There’s the reason things are more civil today in Vermont then they were in 2000. It’s the boycott. The bigots figured they were going to loose…probably even worse this time then in 2000 because their vitriolic hate looks so ugly in retrospect…and so they called a boycott of the town meetings. And so…surprise, surprise…things are a lot calmer now.
This isn’t so much an indication of progress, as a reminder that things would have been a lot calmer back then too, were it not for the hate mongers. Nobody’s really moved on this issue; the majority of Vermonters didn’t object to same sex marriage or they’d have thrown out of office all the politicians who supported it and that wasn’t what happened. Only the bigots care, and of course they still care as much now as they ever did. If you could teach a bigot something they wouldn’t be bigots. The only thing that’s changed in Vermont is that this time the bigots aren’t going to those town meetings to whip everyone into a frenzy of hate. So things are calmer. How…unsurprising.
As I’ve transitioned over the course of my life as a software developer/systems engineer, from an exclusively Windows oriented work life to a mix of MacOS, Linux and Windows, I’ve come to appreciate how incredibly brain dead the Really Smart Kids at Redmond are when it comes to computer security. Windows, simply put, is unsafe at any speed. I say this fully realizing that Unix/Linux and MacOS (which is Unix down in its kernel), isn’t bullet proof either. But as there is a difference between driving a Mercedes-Benz or a Volvo and driving a 1960 Corvair, there is a difference between running a Unix like OS and Windows. I could point to a number of different Windows inanities that continue to bother me, but here’s the one that’s got my attention now: autoplay. And here’s why:
It’s time to add digital picture frames to the group of consumer products that could carry computer viruses and Trojan horse programs.
In the past month, at least three consumers have reported that photo frames – small flat-panel displays for displaying digital images – received over the holidays attempted to install malicious code on their computer systems, according to the Internet Storm Center, a network-threat monitoring group. Each case involved the same product and the same chain of stores, suggesting that the electronic systems were infected at the factory or somewhere during shipping, said Marcus Sachs, who volunteers as the director of the Internet Storm Center.
"When (the first incident) pops up, we thought it might be someone that was infected and blamed it on the digital picture frame," Sachs said. "But this is malware – and malware that does not seem to be very well detected. You could plug in a device and infect yourself with something that you would never know you had."
And that’s possible in large measure, because of autoplay…something build into Windows that isn’t in other operating systems because most software engineers think allowing executable code to be automatically run from any media you happen to insert into a drive or port is just plain nuts. And because Microsoft thinks doing that is such a really really neat idea, there is no easy way to turn the goddamned thing off. You have to attack it in the system registry. Here’s a sample registry script for turning off autoplay that I run on all my Windows 2000 and Windows XP boxes:
If you’re still running 95/98/Me the value of "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" should be BD 00 00 00.
For those of you who don’t want to deal with directly editing the Windows system registry (and you should absolutely leave it alone unless you know what you’re doing!), there is an article Here on how to use the Windows Policy Editor. However that only works on Windows XP Professional, and I assume the pro grades of Vista. If you don’t have either of those, there is a little application from Microsoft called TweekUI you can download Here.
Vista, apparently has a new dialog you can access from the control panel that lets you configure each device and also individual media types. I haven’t worked with it myself so I can’t comment on how simple or intuitive it is, but apparently you can just uncheck a box at the top of the dialog and that turns it off for all media and devices.
The motivation here of course, is to make installing new software and new hardware devices more convenient. But convenience can end up being more hassle then its worth. It would be more convenient if you didn’t need a key to start your car too. Then you’d never need to worry about loosing your car keys. Just your car.
So…according to this young cuteling I met in a D.C. bar last night…I’m a Throwback.
I’m quietly standing at the balcony rail of the outdoor smoker’s lounge of this gay bar, puffing on down one of my mini-cigars while some local friends of mine are inside chatting. I don’t smoke often, but lately I’ve been going for after dinner cigar walks and right now I feel like a cigar between the B-52s I’ve been downing.
This kinda cute young guy walks over to me and gives me a look…
Me: Hi.
He: Are you a throwback?
Me: Sorry?
He: You lived through the sixtes? You know…the hippies and that stuff…?
Me: Yeah…but I wasn’t a Hippy. There were a lot of different things going on back then. Most of us were just along for the ride.
He: I know…I’ve read all the books.
Me: Throwback?
He: You know…from back then…
Me: I don’t understand your use of the term.
He: You’re about my mother’s age…
The reason I’m a computer geek is that computers never baffled me as much as people do…
A pet dog missed the family’s dead cat so much that he dug up his grave and brought the body back into the house.
When Oscar’s owners woke up the next morning they discovered the dog curled up beside Arthur, the late cat, in his basket.
His owners, Robert Bell, 73, and his wife, Mavis, of Wigan, Greater Manchester, believe that the dog had licked the cat clean before falling asleep.
Mr Bell said that the two pets were constant companions. Arthur, who was a large cat, used to help Oscar to climb on to the sofa.
Oscar, an 18-month-old Lancashire Heeler, had watched Mr Bell dig a grave in the garden and then lower the cat into the hole.Mr Bell said: “He had managed to climb out through the cat flap in the night, obviously with the intent to get Arthur back. Bearing in mind that Arthur was a huge cat, Oscar must have used all the strength he could muster.
“Then he pulled him into the basket and went to sleep next to him. Arthur’s coat was gleaming white. Oscar had obviously licked him clean. It must have taken him nearly all night.”
Poor thing. And they say animals have no feelings. This is why I can’t own a dog…they’re just too nakedly emotional and I’m already bad enough that way myself.
DUBLIN – A teenager attacked a woman he mistook for a gay man because of her hairstyle, a court has heard.
The State was given more time to complete a book of evidence in the case against the boy who launched a serious attack on the woman, and a man. He mistook both for two gay men.
Thinking the couple were men because of the woman’s hairstyle, he attacked them on one of Dublin’s busiest streets, calling them "f***ing gay bastards".
The 16-year-old boy has been charged at the Dublin Children’s Court with assaulting the man, and assault causing harm to the woman on Middle Abbey Street on the evening of January 26 last.
In November, Judge Anne Ryan held the case was too serious to be dealt with in the Children’s Court and should be sent forward to the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, which can impose lengthier sentences.
The case had been remanded until this week to allow the State to complete the book of evidence. However, Judge Ryan was told that it had not yet been completed and the prosecution was seeking further time.
The west Dublin teenager, who is on bail and was not present because of illness, was remanded further in his absence, to appear again in early February when he is to be served with the book of evidence and sent forward to the Circuit Court.
Outlining the allegations, Store Street Garda Jamie Jordan had said the teen approached the man and woman.
"He asked ‘are you two gay guys?’. He then hit the man on his face and knocked him to the ground. He attacked the woman, threw her to the ground and kicked her in the back and stomach. He then jumped on the man’s back."
When the woman, who had been repeatedly kicked, got to her feet, her face was punched. She suffered bruising but both she and her boyfriend made a full recovery.
Earlier, the court had also heard that the comments made about them being gay men arose from the woman’s hairstyle, and during the attack he still thought she was a man.
"Throughout the attack, he made similar derogatory comments, something like ‘f***ing gay bastards’," the court had been told previously.
Defence solicitor Michelle Finan had told Judge Ryan the boy had never been in trouble before. She said he was admitting that he attacked the couple after he got heavily intoxicated.
Alcohol doesn’t make you hate people. It just lets the hate you already bear out.
Dig it. This was an opposite sex couple, and they still got the crap beaten out of them because their attacker mistook them for a same sex couple. Learn this: When politicians and clergymen stoke up passions toward gay people, they aren’t just attacking gay people. They are attacking humanity. They are calling down violence against everyone. They are unleashing the beast within, and that beast doesn’t follow orders.
I was reading Google News and this caught my eye in because I was driving down in that part of Florida recently, although not on that particular stretch of highway. Basically, yesterday there was a horrible 50 car pile-up on I-4 south of Orlando. It was almost certainly the result of fog and smoke from a nearby brush fire. I was watching video off the Orlando Sentinel website, which had been taken by helicopter, and when the camera panned away from the accident scene and up and around the area, I could not believe how dense the fog/smoke was all over a very wide area around the highway. How, I wondered, did the highway patrol not know there was a dangerous situation around that part of I-4? Well as it turns out…they did.
My family in California has to deal with these killer fogs all the time and it’s something I watch for while driving cross country. Sometimes you see visibility warnings on the highways about things like dust storms and such. But the danger…and I really worry about this…is that you’re driving down the road and you see an approaching fog bank or something and you don’t really know how bad it is in there until you actually drive into it and then it’s too late.
The warnings came long before metal slammed into metal on a moonless, socked-in Interstate 4 early Wednesday.
Before sunset Tuesday, National Weather Service meteorologists issued a fog alert based on a scale of one through 10. Experts consider seven or higher to be risky for drivers. The forecast for north Polk County was a 10.
A few hours later, the state Division of Forestry told the Florida Highway Patrol to expect dangerous conditions because of a particularly stubborn and smoky wildfire at I-4 and County Road 557. The blaze escaped from a controlled burn meant to get rid of dangerously dry brush.
The warning was not a routine call. Only once or twice a year do forestry officials, who rely on sophisticated computer models, tell FHP to be on guard for a smoked-in highway.
In all, those and other warnings of horrendous visibility caused by smoke, fog or both were unmistakable. Yet as it turned out, FHP troopers would find little to be concerned about, and the state Department of Transportation installed just one warning sign in each direction.
When I read this I thought, maybe they don’t get a lot of these down in Florida like they do in California. But no…they know perfectly well what can happen down there when they get the fog warnings this time of year. I didn’t know this…
But fire and weather experts in Florida say tons of tiny smoke particles roiling from a wildfire are a powerful magnet for water molecules. Smoke doesn’t create fog; it dramatically thickens it.
The two often go hand in hand this time of the year, Florida’s fog season. This also is the time of year for setting "controlled burns" to thin out grass, leaves and brush in forests.
So a little smoke can make a fog bank vastly more dangerous then otherwise. And those conditions are no stranger to that part of Florida.
I hadn’t known any of this. Along the California coast I know to watch for fog and I just won’t drive through a fog bank I see coming off the ocean. I had no idea it could be even worse in central Florida, well inland.
They should have closed that highway until the danger passed. I know…closing highways creates major traffic messes elsewhere. But they had to close I-4 anyway, when the cars and trucks started slamming into each other, and people started dying. One trooper later said he watched a man burn to death. They should have closed that highway.
Apparently Dan Savage appreciates the kind of male I do…at least judging by the ribbing he gets every now and then on Slog. Yes, I am well aware that tastes such as mine (and apparently his) are not all that well respected, anymore then the guys themselves are. I am reminded of this fact every year when the new calendars come out, and all I see on the racks at the gay bookstores are Chippendale types, or super models with body builder torsos, or big furry bears dressed in odd leather accessories.
I can say for a fact I’d fare better at seeing what I like reflected in gay culture in other parts of the world, particularly Asia and South America. But here in America men, both gay and straight, have to be double-plus Y chromosome Manly or they’re…well…you know…faggots. Look…I can appreciate how after generations of having our maleness called into question by prejudiced straights, gay men have been busy reclaiming that manhood thing for themselves ever since Stonewall. And that’s not a bad thing, really. Unless it descends into that same sterile brain dead fear of femininity thing that’s got the KulturKrieger here in the U.S. all worked up. Then it gets tiresome. It wasn’t the Manly Men who fought back at Stonewall…it was the drag queens and the girly boys.
Matthew Yglesias points out that Mitt Romney is ahead in delegates:
I saw some sentiment on TV last night that Michigan is must win for Romney, but I don’t really see it that way. Second place finishes are survivable for Romney as long as different people are beating him in different places and as long as he keeps picking up delegates. The GOP side has more winner-take-all primaries than does the Democratic side and, clearly, you can’t lose all of those. But basically while Romney’s not in good shape, he’s in at least okay shape.
I strongly doubt it’s going to be McCain. It’s either Romney or Huckabee. My guess is that Huckabee will take it. They won’t trust Romney as much as they’ll trust Huckabee. All those church buses full of primary voters the movement conservatives have been using to keep the moderate wing of the GOP on the outside looking in…? They’re going to run their own damn candidate this year, and to hell with what the establishment wants them to do. After all…it’s their party now…
[Update…] Looks like this was yet another Milt Romney ad-hoc rewrite of the facts…
Explains Berman, "the way they are doing this is by simply not counting Iowa. They say that Iowa’s delegates are not technically committed through the caucus process, and so, instead of extrapolating how the delegates would be apportioned (which is what media, such as ABC News and the Associated Press, do) they just pretend like Iowa did not happen."
Right. Like he’s pretending all those nice things he said about gay equality while he was governor of Massachusetts didn’t happen…
NEW YORK – Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair to a check-cashing store and tried to cash his Social Security check before being arrested on fraud charges, police said.
David J. Dalaia and James O’Hare pushed Virgilio Cintron’s body from the Manhattan apartment that O’Hare and Cintron shared to Pay-O-Matic, about a block away, spokesman Paul Browne said witnesses told police.
"The witnesses saw the two pushing the chair with Cintron flopping from side to side and the two individuals propping him up and keeping him from flopping from side to side," Browne said.
The men left Cintron’s body outside the store, went inside and tried to cash his $355 check, Browne said. The store’s clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O’Hare told the clerk they would go and get him, Browne said.
Alex Shevchenko has been arraigned for a hate crime tied to the assault and eventual death of Satender Singh in July. According to prosecutors, Mr. Shevchenko and Andrey Vusik taunted Mr. Singh in a park because they thought he was gay. Mr. Vusik eventually threw a punch that toppled Singh, dashing his head, they charge.
Gay leaders in Sacramento say the incident followed several years of escalating tensions with some Slavic immigrants.
"The gut feeling of the [gay] community is that preaching among the local Russian evangelical community is breeding hate and that something would happen. And Satender was the something that happened," says Ed Bennett, a gay Democratic activist.
While Slavic leaders say their community is being unfairly scapegoated for legitimate political protests and deeply held religious beliefs, some monitors warn that an emerging group called the Watchmen on the Walls may be fomenting a dangerous atmosphere within the ranks of Slavic immigrants here.
I’ll say it’s dangerous. Scott Lively, one of the group’s founders, is also the author of The Pink Triangle…a Holocaust revisionist book that argues that the Nazis were basically a homosexual movement and that rather then being among the victims of the Holocaust, homosexuals were the primary instigators of it. Consider that Lively is now preaching this message to Slavs in what was the eastern Soviet bloc at one time…a people who suffered a staggering loss of life at the hands of the Nazis during world war two…
Videos of Watchmen conferences abroad suggest some leaders are less modulated, and their audience less against violence. One video shows Lively giving a version of Singh’s killing different from reported facts, including the notion that Singh was undressing in front of children. The audience cheered twice as Lively recounted the punch and the death of Singh – a reaction Lively rebuked, saying: "We don’t want homosexuals to be killed. We want them to be saved."
The camera was on and Lively knew it. There is no way on God’s green earth Lively doesn’t know the impact his message that the Nazis were homosexuals and homosexuals are all basically Nazis has on this particular group of people. He knows Exactly what he’s doing. He has never publicly condemned the killing of Satender Singh by a group of young Slav men in Sacramento. There’s a reason for that.
The Great Orange Satan:
The more she’s attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she’ll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they’ve gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe’s mug to bring me back down to earth, but most people don’t know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can — by voting for her.I don’t know if reaction to the media treatment of Clinton had anything to do with voter choices yesterday, but I certainly know people in real life who a) don’t want Clinton to win and b) are tempted to vote for her every time they’re exposed to the way she’s treated by the deeply broken monsters in our mainstream media.
Given my druthers I would rather not see Clinton as the democratic nominee. She’s weak on gay rights issues, weak on the Iraq war, weak on corporate accountability. I’m afraid she would govern by triangulation much like her husband did, to the bitter regret of a lot of people who voted for him. But the vitriolic hate being directed at her and her husband from certain quarters (Hi Andrew!) recalls me back to the whole goddamned impeachment fiasco and if there is one thing the republicans and their news media enablers should be avoiding more then Bush’s record this coming election, it’s reminding people of all that.
Nobody cares how much you hate the Clintons Andrew, except the KulturKrieger and…geeze grow a brain willya…they hate you too. Remember what Truman Capote said about homosexual gentlemen.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation has once again named two San Antonio companies among the country’s best places to work for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers.
Media company Clear Channel Communications Inc. (NYSE: CCU) and telecommunication company AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) earned spots on the 2008 "Best Places to Work for GLBT Equality."
The designation is given to those companies that earn perfect scores on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index. It is a measurement, the organization says, that ensures that 10 million employees have protections on the job on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Yay! Let’s hear it for Gay Friendly Clear Channel!
Clear Channel, rejecting Howard Stern’s claims that he was canned for slamming President Bush, says its radio network does not have a political agenda.
But new political contribution data tell a different story about Clear Channel (CCU) executives. They have given $42,200 to Bush, vs. $1,750 to likely Democratic nominee John Kerry in the 2004 race.
What’s more, the executives and Clear Channel’s political action committee gave 77% of their $334,501 in federal contributions to Republicans. That’s a bigger share than any other entertainment company, says the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Mitt Romney founded Bain & Co. in 1984, and today its spinoff — Bain Capital — is the third largest private equity firm in the country. Today they boughtClearChannel, a company that owns over 1100 radio stations and 30 TV stations.
This is why media consolidation issues are so important. One rich guy who wants to be president can buy a media empire overnight. Now of course, Romney will argue that he didn’t buy Clear Channel, his private equity company Bain Capital did. And of course, there is no conflict of interest because Romney doesn’t tell Bain Capital what to do as he’s no longer officially with the company.
Still, seeing as how Clear Channel hosts Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity and controls over 1,000 TV and radio stations nationwide, does anyone here really think Romney won’t use this newfound pedestal to promote his candidacy, however subtly?
Sounds kind of like Romney’s relationship to Bain is like Dick Cheney’s to Halliburton. There certainly was never any problem there.
Okay…let me get this straight… The Human Rights Campaign Fund has given its award for "Best Places To Work For GLBT Equality" to a company whose executives works tirelessly to promote the party that works tirelessly to deny GLBT people equality in the workplace. A company that is owned in part now by a leading republican candidate for president, who has declared his opposition to just about any and all gay rights initiatives, Including the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act…
Lopez: And what about the 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Republicans where you indicated you would support the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and seemed open to changing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military? Are those your positions today?
Gov. Romney: No. I don’t see the need for new or special legislation. My experience over the past several years as governor has convinced me that ENDA would be an overly broad law that would open a litigation floodgate and unfairly penalize employers at the hands of activist judges.
This is the company HRC is giving an award to for "Best Places To Work For GLBT Equality"…and giving them a perfect score no less…???
Look…I appreciate that they want to be seen as non-partisan. But when you have two parties, one of which will at least consider supporting gay equality, and the other adamantly opposed to it, there isn’t much you can do…except sell out your membership for the sake of appearances…and invitations to cocktail parties in Georgetown and Chevy Chase.
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