Only The Walking Dead (Or Liars) Need Apply

Sounds like a fun place.

With the potential for a Jimmy Swaggart or two I shouldn't wonder. Here and here, a must watch if you haven't previously.

Religious University Employees Should Know What They're In For at Work
by Maressa Brown
November 1, 2011

Shorter University, a small, extremely conservative private Christian Baptist school in Georgia, is under fire today for demanding its employees sign a "Personal Lifestyle Statement." If it sounds discriminatory already, that's because it really, really is. Basically, the statement would require employees to pledge that they reject homosexuality, adultery, and premarital sex. They would also be vowing to go to be active in local churches and to not take part in drug use or drinking alcohol in the presence of students (probably not a wise idea anyway). (Wow, they should just add dancing to this while they're at it, so the employees can rebel by grinding in a barn.) As for anyone who doesn't sign the statement? They're at risk of gettin' the ol' pink slip!


Yeah, the school's president himself, Don Dowless, says, "Anybody that adheres to a lifestyle outside of what the biblical mandate is would not be allowed to continue [at Shorter]." Gotta love tolerant people!

But the fact of the matter is that people who have been hired to work at this university can't exactly be surprised by this. The school is known to be uber-conservative, and it's private, so that pretty much means they can hire and fire whomever they please, based on whatever criteria they choose, right? As long as their criteria doesn't break a discrimination law -- which it very well could -- they can probably get away with it. If anything, a case would probably go to trial for a long time anyway.

Sure, it sounds like a "witch hunt," as some worried employees have described it. One anonymous employee told an LGBT-oriented paper in Atlanta:

We now will live in fear that someone who doesn't like us personally or someone who has had a bad day will report that we've been drinking or that we are suspected of being gay.

It really stinks to have been hired under the assumption that you could be who you are -- gay, horny, a cheater, a drinker, an atheist -- without it being an issue. But oops, oh well, rules have changed! Now it is apparently a problem at Shorter, and if I were someone who was worried about being canned because of this statement, I'd high-tail it out of there, jobless status be damned! Who would want to feel like they had to hide or walk on eggshells just to fit in at some holier-than-thou place of employment? Screw that! Should these people be driven from their jobs for who they are? NO way! But it doesn't seem like, at least in this case, there's much they can do to avoid it. cafemom

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Mississippi: Personhood Status For Fertilised Egg

Update: Rachel Madow conceived in rape tour.

These people are insane, and the article is a testimony to that insanity.

But the proposed Initiative 26 is much more than affording full legal rights to, and declaring 'personhood' status to a fertilised egg, it would effectively outlaw all other forms of contraception other than the purely barrier methods, condoms and diaphragms.

Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate of any state in the nation. It also has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy nationwide

And in a country that is visibly coming apart at the seams, the priority in Mississippi are the rights of a fertilised egg. Mississippi did have another priority, but they have already addressed that issue, by imposing a state-wide ban on the sale of vibrators. You think I jest? clicky or: Violators will face up to a year in prison and a fine of less than $10,000. clicky

I don't have a 'stuff you couldn't make up' tag, perhaps I should initiate one. I do have a 'batshit crazy' tag, but that doesn't do justice to stuff like this; 'batshit dangerous' perhaps, might be nearer the mark.

Daily Kos has this: Occupy My Uterus. My Ass! Fertilized Eggs Are NOT People!

Legal Rights for Fertilized Eggs? How a Terrifying Law Could Lead to Jail-time for Miscarriages, Birth Control Bans, and the End of Legal Abortion

Mississippi could well be the first state to pass a "personhood law," once considered too extreme for mainstream anti-choicers.
By Irin Carmon
October 26, 2011


Dr. Freda Bush has a warm, motherly smile. In her office just outside Jackson, Miss., she smiles as she hands me a brochure that calls abortion the genocide of African-Americans, and again, sweetly, as she explains why an abortion ban should not include exceptions for rape or incest victims. The smile turns into a chuckle as she recounts what the daughter of one rape victim told her: “My momma says I’m a blessing. Now, she still don’t care for the guy who raped her! But she’s glad she let me live.”

Bush is smiling, too, in the video she made to support as restrictive an abortion ban as any state has voted on, Initiative 26, or the Personhood Amendment, which faces Mississippi voters on Nov. 8. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor, black or white, or even if your father was a rapist!” she trills. But Initiative 26, which would change the definition of “person” in the Mississippi state Constitution to “include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the equivalent thereof,” is more than just an absolute ban on abortion and a barely veiled shot at Roe v. Wade — although it is both. By its own logic, the initiative would almost certainly ban common forms of birth control like the IUD and the morning-after pill, call into question the legality of the common birth-control pill, and even open the door to investigating women who have suffered miscarriages.




Personhood amendments were once considered too radical for the mainstream pro-life movement, but in the most conservative state in the country, with an energized, church-mobilized grass roots, Mississippi could well be the first state to pass one. Initiative 26 even has the state’s top Democrats behind it.

And in Bush, it even has a respectable medical face. Last month, Bush led a press conference of fellow gynecologists to try to refute the “scare tactics” of the opposition, which includes even the solidly conservative Mississippi State Medical Association. (The group feared 26 would “place in jeopardy a physician who tries to save a woman’s life.”) In one of several “Yes on 26″ videos in which she stars, Bush says unequivocally, “Amendment 26 will not ban contraception.”

But when we spoke, Bush was far less sure. And if her smiling face carries the day, the debate over even basic access to birth control could be heading to similar votes in every state legislature, and extremists have their dream case to take to a Supreme Court where the Roe majority teeters precariously.

That’s partly because the Personhood movement hopes to do nothing less than reclassify everyday, routine birth control as abortion. The medical definition of pregnancy is when a fertilized egg successfully implants in the uterine wall. If this initiative passes, and fertilized eggs on their own have full legal rights, anything that could potentially block that implantation – something a woman’s body does naturally all the time – could be considered murder. Scientists say hormonal birth-control pills and the morning-after pill work primarily by preventing fertilization in the first place, but the outside possibility, never documented, that an egg could be fertilized anyway and blocked is enough for some pro-lifers.

Indeed, at least one pro-Personhood doctor in Mississippi, Beverly McMillan, refused to prescribe the pill before retiring last year, writing, “I painfully agree that birth control pills do in fact cause abortions.” Bush does prescribe the pill, but says, “There’s good science on both sides … I think there’s more science to support conception not occurring.” Given that the Personhood Amendment is so vague, I asked her, what would stop the alleged “good science” on one side from prevailing and banning even the pill?

Bush paused. “I could say that is not the intent,” she said. “I don’t have an answer for that particular [case], how it would be settled, but I do know this is simple.” Which part is simple? “The amendment is simple,” she said. “You can play the ‘what if’ game, but if you keep it simple, this is a person who deserves life.” What about the IUD, which she refuses to prescribe for moral reasons, and which McMillan told me the Personhood Amendment would ban? “I’m not the authority on what would and would not be banned.” No – Bush simply plays one on TV. And if her amendment passes, only condoms, diaphragms and natural family planning — the rhythm method – would be guaranteed in Mississippi.




Bush also says in the commercial that the amendment wouldn’t “criminalize mothers and investigate them when they have miscarriages.” And yet if the willful destruction of an embryo is a murder, then that makes a miscarried woman’s body a potential crime scene or child welfare investigation. What about women whose miscarriages were suspected to be deliberate or due to their own negligence? One Personhood opponent, Michele Johansen, told me she wondered whether she could have been investigated for miscarrying a wanted, five-week pregnancy, because she rode a roller coaster. (Her doctor ultimately told her they were unrelated.)

The boilerplate Personhood response, echoed by both McMillan and Bush, is that no woman was prosecuted for miscarriage before Roe v. Wade, so why start now? Of course, there was no Personhood amendment at the time, nor much knowledge of embryonic development. And in countries with absolute abortion bans, like El Salvador, women are regularly investigated and jailed when found to have induced miscarriages.

Pressed, Bush said, “Look at the numbers of women who were injuring themselves [pre-Roe] in an attempt to have an abortion. It was not 53 million,” the estimated number of abortions since Roe v. Wade.

“I don’t have all the answers,” she said, “but those questions that are there do not justify allowing nine out of 10 of the abortions that are being done that are not for the hard cases,” she said.

But a Colorado-based Personhood activist, Ed Hanks, is more than willing to publicly take things to their logical conclusion. He wrote on the Personhood Mississippi Facebook page that after abortion is banned, “the penalties have to be the same [for a women as well as doctors], as they would have to intentionally commit a known felony in order to kill their child. Society isn’t comfortable with this yet because abortion has been ‘normalized’ — as the Personhood message penetrates, then society will understand why women need to be punished just as surely as they understand why there can be no exceptions for rape/incest.”

Personhood represents an unapologetic and arguably more ideologically consistent form of the anti-choice movement. It aims squarely for Roe v. Wade by seizing on language from former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun – the author of the Roe decision — during the hearings that the case would “collapse” if “this suggestion of personhood is established … for the fetus.”

Similar ballot measures have failed twice in Colorado, where an evangelical pastor and a Catholic lawyer started the Personhood movement, but Mississippi is no Colorado. It’s the most conservative state in the nation. Planned Parenthood (which doesn’t even provide abortions in its one clinic here) and the ACLU are dirty words. Where there were once seven abortion clinics in the state, the one remaining flies in a doctor from out of state. As for supporting life, Mississippi’s infant mortality rate is the worst of any state in the nation. The number of babies who die as infants in Mississippi is double the number of abortions annually. It also has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy nationwide, alongside a child welfare system that remains dangerously broken.




Even so, if Initiative 26 passes, it would embolden similar efforts in Ohio, South Dakota, Florida and other states, currently trying to get a Personhood amendment on the ballot in 2012. And though there have been no reliable public polls, insiders on both sides believe it is headed for approval. “This thing will pass if people don’t understand what it really means,” says Oxford-based attorney and Initiative 26 opponent Forrest Jenkins. The Personhood movement “can either convince people that birth control is abortion or they can convince people that it’s not really true and we’re just being silly.” (Indeed, when I asked one college student who described himself as pro-life about the birth-control implications, he said, “I thought that was just gossip.”) Unfortunately for opponents, talking about sweeping and nuanced implications takes a lot more words than “stop killing babies.”

Mindful of anti-abortion sentiment in the state, even the local pro-choice opposition has taken to referring to all these implications – like banning birth-control pills — as “unintended consequences” of the initiative. But as my conversations in Mississippi with pro-Initiative 26 doctors made clear, for many Personhood supporters, these effects are anything but unintended. They’re part of the plan.



I had barely arrived in Mississippi when I was declared a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” by the grass-roots wing of the movement. Les Riley, the self-described “tractor salesman with 10 kids and no money” who got Personhood on the ballot, stopped responding to my messages, so I’d posted interview requests on the Personhood Mississippi Facebook page, disclosing that I was pro-choice but committed to giving them a fair hearing.

“This is just a reminder of some of the ‘Neutral and Fair’ mainstream media that are trying to lure us into debate, argument, and confrontation,” Wiley S. Pinkerton wrote on the same page, not long after. “They are coming to this site hoping to catch us without the full armor of God.”

Of course, even if I’d wanted to, the chances of catching any of them without “the armor of God” seemed remote. The Personhood movement in Mississippi is openly theocratic. Riley has written that “for years, the pro-life movement and the religious right has allowed the charge [of being “religiously motivated”] to make them run for cover. I think we should embrace it.” Riley, in fact, had already enthusiastically embraced Christian secessionist and neo-Confederate groups as part of his coalition. (Thenational media play his personal history received by the time of my visit this month might explain some of the hostility to the press.)

Last summer, a more mainstream face, Brad Prewitt – a lobbyist and former high-level staffer for U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran – took over the campaign at the request of the American Family Association, which, like Prewitt, is based in Tupelo. (Riley continues to actively campaign, though he isn’t listed on the official Yes on 26 site. Prewitt promised an interview several times, but never came through.) Prewitt, too, publicly described the conceptual origin of Personhood being “the Bible, Genesis,” and declared, “Mississippi is still a God-fearing

At several public forums organized by the secretary of state to discuss ballot initiatives, resident Scott Murray’s statement was typical: “I know there is an issue with pregnancies, unmarried pregnancies, but I tell you the greatest prevention is God, and we’ve got to return to God.” So was Stephen Hannabass’ assertion that “we’ve got to repent. We’ve got to come before God and beg for mercy for our state and for our country.” Continue into insanity.

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Sorry Ladies The Sanctity of Life Doesn't Extend to You

Further update (latest) 17 Oct 2011 The Let Women Die Bill of 2011: H.R. 358 Forces Women to Play Russian Roulette in Their Hospital Emergency Room

This is an update on my previous post: Women's Reproductive Rights: America The Next Nicaragua

Bishops Are Behind the 'Let Women Die' Act and the Push Against Birth Control--Even As They're Under Fire for Sex Abuse Scandals

The first bishop in the US is indicted for child sex-abuse coverup; meanwhile, his colleagues push for laws that will intrude on our sexual freedom.
October 17, 2011

Last week, the House's passage of the now-notorious H.R. 358 -- also known as the "Let Women Die" bill -- caused deserved outrage. But the bill's connection to the high-ranking Catholic group that fought for its passage, even while the American church is fighting a horrific new sex abuse scandal, hasn't been given the attention it deserves.

The new bill (which the president has vowed to veto) would essentially obliterate abortion coverage by both public and private insurers, and most egregiously get hospitals off the hook for refusing to perform abortions for women whose lives are in immediate danger. It would literally allow hospitals to let women die with impunity.

H.R. 358's easy passage by a majority in Congress (with some defecting Democrats in the ranks) delivered another shock of sexism in a political landscape that has been assaulted by one anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-women's health measure after another, all firing in a succession of rapid shots from statehouses across the nation as well as from DC. Helping to man the artillery is a largely disgraced Catholic hierarchy.

This momentum for misogyny has been painted as having mostly arisen from the Tea Party and the extremist evangelical megachurch Pat Robertson types. But these anti-choice forces are not alone, and they are not solely responsible: rather the (all-male, it should go without saying) Council of Catholic Bishops has aggressively, relentlessly, and successfully lobbied for many of the worst of the measures in the "War on Women."

During the health care debates of 2009, this group was instrumental in pushing for anti-abortion language. At the time, NPR reported that Democrats found them to be "a lobbying force of unexpected influence" that had decided after budget cuts to focus their "strongest efforts" almost entirely on abortion issues rather than waste time on say, helping the poor.

Specifically, their aims have included the one-two punch of pushing for the "let women die" clauses and anti-abortion measures of H.R. 358, as well as the alarming new fight against coverage for contraception, which would deprive the overwhelming majority of the Catholic public that uses birth control with coverage for birth control. more

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It's 2011 -- Why Is God Still Involved In American Politics? Speaking For God

I should have had this post out earlier in the week, but I have been in recovery. Not from too much grog, or even bad drugs, no something far more brain damaging than either of those. Mormonism! I've been reading about Mormonism, the tenets of Mormonism to be exact.

No linky for you just yet, because there is, once I've made myself a tin-foil hat, hopefully a post in the making. And if I can do justice to the thing, it should be of such incredulity, that you yourselves might have to retire to the bed chamber, quite possibly, with more than just a touch of the vapours. Of that though, another day.

Just a couple of paragraphs to get the feel, and then on to the article proper.

Things that used to be considered beyond the pale in politics, such as religious intolerance or ministers blatantly claiming they know who God supports in an election, have become normalized to the point where someone like Mitt Romney, who is odious in most respects but has never really made much of a fuss over his faith, is seeing religious tests becoming a major issue in his campaign.

Yes, just like the revival tent, going beyond the pale is just but a memory. But not so for those that speak for God; modern day Elmer Gantries! we got 'em coming out the woodwork. Ain't we Glenn? ain't we Pat?

Glenn Beck, Unhinged in Texas A read in its own right.

But it's this bit that's the cracker. Believe in the most outlandish batshit crazy stuff that you could possibly dream up and you are qualified to run for office. Believe in reality, and you haven't a snowball in hell's chance of being elected. Or if by some miracle (In the name of Noodles, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful) that you do manage to slip through the net, then beware, for "The Christians immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him." (Not)

I think ministering angels are a bit thin on the ground in North Carolina, not unlike Christians I shouldn't wonder.

Atheists already face discrimination when it comes to running for public office. A number of states ban atheists from holding public office, even though the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids religious tests for office. Of course, it’s difficult for an atheist to win enough votes to get office, so this conflict hasn’t been tested much, although one atheist city council member found himself under fire by religious bigots who wanted to use North Carolina’s ban on atheists holding office to push him out for not swearing his oath of office on the Bible.

I have embedded the short Rachel Maddow clip leading from the A number of states ban link. Perhaps it might be as well watching it first; whatever?

It's 2011 -- Why Is the Christian God Still Involved In American Politics?

The Mormon-bashing directed at Mitt Romney should concern everyone for what it reveals about the undue influence of religion in American elections.
By Amanda Marcotte
October 12, 2011

As an atheist and a liberal, it’s been tempting for me to simply laugh at Republicans fighting each other over the issue of whether or not Mitt Romney, a Mormon, gets to consider himself a Christian. From the non-believer point of view, it’s like watching a bunch of grown adults work themselves into a frenzy over the differences between leprechauns and fairies. But watching the debate unfold, I’ve become concerned about what it means to make someone’s religious beliefs such a big campaign issue, because it’s indicative of a larger eroding of the separation of church and state, which concerns not just atheists but all people who understand the importance of maintaining a secular government.

Robert Jeffress, an influential pastor who is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, went on "Focal Point" with Bryan Fischer and declared that one shouldn’t support Mitt Romney for president because Romney, a Mormon, isn’t a real Christian. This created a media dustup that was silly even by the usual standards of ever-sillier mainstream media campaign coverage. John King of CNN interviewed Jeffress, focusing strictly on the question of who Jeffress believes deserves to be called a Christian, and how firmly he believes that only people he calls Christians should hold public office. Candy Crowley of CNN dogged both Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann on the question of whether or not they believe Romney is a Christian, and then she got irate with the candidates when they refused to answer the question, claiming that it’s irrelevant.

These interviews are remarkable for what the CNN anchors didn’t discuss, which was the most important question of all: the separation of church and state. Even though our nation has a tradition of pastors staying out of partisan politics -- in fact, it is illegal for ministers to endorse candidates from the pulpit -- it seemingly never occurred to King to challenge Jeffress for overstepping his bounds by telling people that God wants an evangelical Christian who is a Republican for president. By making the story about whether or not Mormons are Christians, CNN left the viewer with the impression that only Christians deserve to hold public office, and that the only thing left to debate is whether or not someone “counts” as a Christian, making him or her eligible for office.

We’re a long way from the days when John Kennedy assured the public that he respected the separation of church and state and would keep his faith separate from his policy-making decisions. Now, even mainstream reporters take it as a given that politicians will let religion govern their actions, and the only thing left to debate on theology is how many angels any single politician believes dance on the head of a pin. Things that used to be considered beyond the pale in politics, such as religious intolerance or ministers blatantly claiming they know who God supports in an election, have become normalized to the point where someone like Mitt Romney, who is odious in most respects but has never really made much of a fuss over his faith, is seeing religious tests becoming a major issue in his campaign.

The ramifications for this shift affect more than conservative Mormons trying to win as Republicans. By not challenging the assertion that only Christians should hold office, mainstream journalists encourage bigotry against all religious minorities, including atheists. Atheists already face discrimination when it comes to running for public office. A number of states ban atheists from holding public office, even though the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids religious tests for office. Of course, it’s difficult for an atheist to win enough votes to get office, so this conflict hasn’t been tested much, although one atheist city council member found himself under fire by religious bigots who wanted to use North Carolina’s ban on atheists holding office to push him out for not swearing his oath of office on the Bible.

There’s a reason the Founding Fathers wrote a national constitution that forbade religious tests for office and required the separation of church and state. It’s not just protection against the escalating religious bigotry we're seeing lately, but also because religion should have no place in politics in the first place. Neither atheists nor believers benefit when leaders are guided more by religious dogma than by rationality. Angels and demons might be a fine thing to worry about when you’re in church on Sunday, but when you’re trying to govern real people in the real world, it’s far better to rely on evidence and empirical facts, interpreted through reason and not through the guesswork of faith. This is why Kennedy defended himself against questions about his faith by saying, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”

People like Robert Jeffress, when they propose religious tests for office--even ones held privately by voters--should face more challenges than reporters simply asking if they consider Mormons “real” Christians. They should be confronted with Kennedy’s words and asked directly why they disagree with our former president about the separation of church and state. They should be asked why they believe only a certain breed of Christians should hold office, and asked why they think it’s appropriate to demand that politicians put religious dogma before evidence-based and rational approaches to policy. Anything less than that is aiding the religious right in its mission to remake our secular democracy into a theocracy. It shouldn’t be tolerated. AlterNet

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Dash Your Brains Out On a Rock or Watch The Third Eagle of The Apocalypse

Which ever you find the more preferable.

This man is totally and unequivocally insane. What on earth is he jabbering on about?

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Julian Assange: America The New Reich - Department of Justice The New Gestapo - Britains Awake!

A follow up to my recent post: John Pilger on The 'Getting' of Assange The Guardian and The US Justice System. A post where I stressed, ''That the United States of America should never be allowed to get into its rancid clutches, the person of Julian Assange.''

You can read this story however you wish, the nuts and bolts of what came to pass, or as Amy Goodman intended, as an expose of what passes for justice in the Land of the Free.

A similar, if not worse fate, awaits Julian Assange should we in Britain, or those in Europe, cave in to the demands of the Great Satan. (Paul Craig Roberts) And Garry whatshisname for that matter?

The Great Satan, Iranian depiction. Which, however true, is a bit rich coming from that quarter.

Iran: The Cruellest Nation The Never Ending Evil

The Cruelest Race

Two Standards of Detention
By Amy Goodman
December 3, 2009

Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion zealot charged with killing Dr. George Tiller, has been busy. He called the Associated Press from the Sedgwick County Jail in Kansas, saying, “I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal.” Charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault, he is expected to be arraigned July 28. AP recently reported that Roeder has been proclaiming from his jail cell that the killing of abortion providers is justified. According to the report, the Rev. Donald Spitz of the Virginia-based Army of God sent Roeder seven pamphlets defending “defensive action,” or killing of abortion clinic workers.

Spitz’s militant Army of God Web site calls Roeder an “American hero,” proclaiming, “George Tiller would normally murder between 10 and 30 children … each day … when he was stopped by Scott Roeder.”

The site, with biblical quotes suggesting killing is justified, hosts writings by Paul Hill, who killed Dr. John Britton and his security escort in Pensacola, Fla., and by Eric Rudolph, who bombed a Birmingham, Ala., women’s health clinic, killing its part-time security guard.

On Spitz’s Web site, Rudolph continues to write about abortion: “I believe that deadly force is indeed justified in an attempt to stop it.”



Juxtapose Roeder’s advocacy from jail with the conditions of Fahad Hashmi.

Hashmi is a U.S. citizen who grew up in Queens, N.Y., and went to Brooklyn College. He went to graduate school in Britain and was arrested there in 2006 for allegedly allowing an acquaintance to stay with him for two weeks. That acquaintance, Junaid Babar, allegedly kept at Hashmi’s apartment a bag containing ponchos and socks, which Babar later delivered to an al-Qaida operative. Babar was arrested and agreed to cooperate with the authorities in exchange for leniency.

While the evidence against Hashmi is secret, it probably stems from the claims of the informant Babar.

Fahad Hashmi was extradited to New York, where he has been held in pretrial detention for more than two years. His brother Faisal described the conditions: “He is kept in solitary confinement for two straight years, 23- to 24-hours lockdown. … Within his own cell, he’s restricted in the movements he’s allowed to do. He’s not allowed to talk out loud within his own cell. … He is being videotaped and monitored at all times. He can be punished … denied family visits, if they say his certain movements are martial arts … that they deem as incorrect. He has Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) … against him.”



Hashmi cannot contact the media, and even his lawyers have to be extremely cautious when discussing his case, for fear of imprisonment themselves. His attorney Sean Maher told me: “This issue of the SAMs … of keeping people in solitary confinement when they’re presumed innocent, is before the European Court of Human Rights. They are deciding whether they will prevent any European country from extraditing anyone to the United States if there is a possibility that they will be placed under SAMs … because they see it as a violation … to hold someone in solitary confinement with sensory deprivation, months before trial.”

Similarly, animal rights and environmental activists, prosecuted as “eco-terrorists,” have been shipped to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ new “communication management units” (CMUs). Andrew Stepanian was recently released and described for me the CMU as “a prison within the actual prison. … The unit doesn’t have normal telephone communication to your family … normal visits are denied … you have to make an appointment to make one phone call a week, and that needs to be done with the oversight of … a live monitor.”



Stepanian observed that up to 70 percent of CMU prisoners are Muslim—hence CMU’s nickname, “Little Guantanamo.” As with Hashmi, it seems that the U.S. government seeks to strip terrorism suspects of legal due process and access to the media—whether in Guantanamo or in the secretive new CMUs. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Bureau of Prisons over the CMUs.

Nonviolent activists like Stepanian, and Muslims like Hashmi, secretly and dubiously charged, are held in draconian conditions, while Roeder trumpets from jail the extreme anti-abortion movement’s decades-long campaign of intimidation, vandalism, arson and murder.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback. The Muslim Observer

h/t Maren

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Missionaries of Hate: American Evangelicals Spread Gay Hate in Uganda: Extension

This should have been an update to: Missionaries of Hate: American Evangelicals Spread Gay Hate in Uganda: Updated but the thing just grew and grew, so now it's a post. But it ain't all bitterness and hate, it gets progressively lighter as you move on down the page.

Further gay hate reading at the link, includes the first video below.

Arizona "Pro-Family" Group Linked to Campaigning for Gay Discrimination within the UN; Uganda "Kill the Gays" Pastor

h/t Maren.



From the clip:

''If you want to join in the fight against extremism, call, People for the American Way.''

Americans, what are they like? Americans don't do irony, but I do.

''It is no slogan that America remains the most resolutely religious country on God's great earth, and it is no slogan that America will always occupy a special place in God's heart.'' George HW Bush.

Yes of course, he his after all very much like yourselves, a petty, vengeful, jealous, genocidal maniac.

God wilfully directs or commands the wholesale slaughter of thousands of men, women, children and animals, for no other reason than that "his" people should have their land. The Village Atheist

And who better to carry out God's work than you lot? You are after all ''His'' people.

Here's a video below, showing America carrying out God's work. He really must have had a special place in his heart for America on that day. And one or two others. What was the butchers bill for that little genocidal jolly, three, or was it four million?

God bless America.




Featured at: Least We Forget: Fuck America Nothing further to see.




Featured at: USAF: A Most Ungodly Organisation A Perfect foil for the clip above. I think I've got that arse about, what harm.




Comment and plenty more clips of hired killers getting their freak on for Jesus at: US Army: Bible Bashing For Jesus




Featured at: "I was ashamed to be an American today" One clip on the Fred & Wilma Museum, and one on a schoolboard's persecution of a sixteen year old atheist schoolgirl.




Featured at: These People Are Insane More clips.




Featured at: These People Are Insane More clips.




Pat Robertson's true colours come shining through, and it ain't purple. But just as importantly see how he is being coached (supposedly off air) and the talk of better screening for the telephone calls he is to receive. And all this on that nice Mister Larry King's Show. Shurely Shome Mishtake?




Gay Marriage: End of the world for some Christians. Catch the second fellow, he has a vote!






He does come in for some stick, does poor old Mr Winky.




Bill Maher on the homophobic Jerry Falwell.







Maher on Mormons.




Might I remind you that there is a man, two in fact, that aspire to become the next President of the United States of America, who believe this shit.

Featured at: Utah Tops The Wanking League More, ''everything you wanted to know about batshit crazy religions'' including the best ''Scientology explained'' clip that I have come across. Strap in, five point harness and airbag essential, check your brain at the door.




Spitting Image, Bush 41




Well he would be wouldn't he, he is after all an American.




Religion ala Eddie Izzard.




Rowan Atkinson Amazing Jesus


Further comment and clips.

"..after the slaying of Tiller the Killer" Loads o' crazies.

It's a Funny Old World SC "Foetus for Jesus" monument. Strap in.

United States Air Force AKA The Ministry Of Truth Interesting story on USAF censorship. We trust you to bomb shit out of people with multi-million dollar war planes, but we don't trust you enough to let you read blogs. Nasty old bloggers!

Admiral Mike Mullen Talks Shite Includes a Bill Hicks clip.

Who Would Jesus Kill? Ex Marine Colonel Totally Mad Strap in!

"we should not condone immoral (Gay) acts" Said top General, taking time out from genocide in Iraq.

Warmongering vs. the Sanctity of Life Hypocrisy at its best.

A Horror Story: Depleted Uranium Text only, you really wouldn't want to see a video of that.

Although there are stills showing the effects of DU (and bucket loads of hypocrisy) featured in the two posts below.

The United States of America The Greatest Nation of Hypocrites on Earth (Graphic)

Onward Christian Soldiers (Graphic)

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Missionaries of Hate: American Evangelicals Spread Gay Hate in Uganda: Updated

3rd update: I had the misfortune a few nights ago, to watch this forty five minute testament to homophobia and hate. And make no mistake, that's exactly what it was, pure hate.

Such hatred that can only be found in the ignorant and backward, especially when the flames for such hatred are fanned by the equally ignorant and backward Evangelical Christian missionaries of America. Who incidentally, don't have a Christian bone in their bodies, whatever one of those might be; Christian bones, not bodies.

I don't want to delve into all the talking points that the documentary raised, but I will make mention of one thing. Towards the end of the documentary, film maker Mariana Van Zeller, asks Scott Lively, Why Uganda? His reply was the usual blah blah, albeit said somewhat sheepishly, picking up on Van Zeller's implied but unasked question.

It doesn't take a great leap of faith to disregard Lively's blah blah, and come up with the answer that Uganda, complete with its ignorant and backward Christian sheep, was that just like the fertile soil of the country itself, so too were its adherents of the Christian faith, equally fertile, where the seeds of homophobia and hatred, once planted, flourish at an alarming rate.

It is without doubt, that Uganda and its people are ignorant and backward. Why else would such stories as these be so easily sourced on the Net?

Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda BBC 15m clip. (Grisly)

Witchdoctors Arrested After Decapitated Woman Found findingdulcinea.com

Uganda - Child Sacrifice Scourge - Witchcraft wunrn.com

Experience tells us that we can never look to these men of God for the truth, for to expect the truth would be too anomalous from people whose whole life is spent living a lie. But perhaps if there were to have be any element of truth in Scott Lively's reply to the question, why Uganda he might have said: Because its so ripe for the picking, or alternatively, I just love shooting fish in a barrel.

I had wanted to bring you an embedded version of the film, by uploading the download I have to Youtube. but for reasons I won't bore you with, the clip has given me all kinds of problems.

The documentary itself, Missionaries of Hate, is quite a rare bit of film online, however I managed to track down a stream in three parts that can be viewed here. Alas, and for a change from some of my recommendations, where I carry the disclaimer ''UK only I'm afraid'' this is the complete opposite, and for copyright reasons is unavailable in the UK.

Perhaps someone outside the UK would click the link and please let me know if it can be viewed at all. It is available however for download at the link below. One link on the blog and another in the comments section, and both links good.

Another clip that gave me problems, was the four minutes of film from Orwell's 1984, depicting the Two Minutes Hate, did you get that? But for entirely different reasons than mentioned previously. Those problems in the form of, and pray forgive my slipping into a bit of West Cork vernacular, because sometimes nothing else seems to fit the bill as describing the two people that uploaded the clip to Youtube, as miserated. Choosing as they both did to disable the embedded feature, it's not as though they made the thing is it? Even an appeal by me for one individual to enable the embedded falling on stony ground. As I say, miserated.

No harm, where there's a will there's solicitor as they say, I captured the thing and then re-upped it to Youtube, embedded enabled, and it can be viewed below.

Why I felt the Two Minutes so important to the post, is that viewed in conjunction with certain parts of Missionaries of Hate, it becomes a bit of a job to differentiate between the two. The only difference being, one is fiction, and the other ain't.

I shall include a few pictures of the main players at the bottom of the page. I do this in order to get the best out of the post, explained here, (Japanese Embassies Around The World) but an online gallery of Uganda's Righteous Rogues, can be found here.

Unedited

_

1st update: This is becoming an ever increasingly topical subject. I shall try and find a few links on the morrow.

-

2nd update: Here you go, Rachel Maddow has it all in eight minutes, the murder of gay activist, David Kato, inspired no doubt by, Scott Lively, Richard Cohen and ''The Family.''

The word ''Family'' in any US organisation, being a euphemism for a Jesus loving LGBT hate group.

Previous: Michele Bachmann and The Rise of Neo Nazi Candidates

Missionaries of Hate (2010)




Correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Uganda, where many question whether the growing influence of American religious groups has led to a movement to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.

As an anti-gay movement spreads across the continent, gay Africans and their families face an increasingly uncertain future of isolation, imprisonment or even execution.

The film makes it much easier to understand why the general Ugandan public is so eager to send their peers to jail. If the most prominent spiritual leader in your community made it his life purpose to convince you that there were people coming to eat your poop and recruit your children, you would be against them too. They are only hearing one side of the story and it is the origin of their information that is truly infuriating.

Although Ugandan leaders are deeply offended by the notion, the facts definitively show that American evangelists have played a central role in defining the nation’s hard line against sexual minorities. The documentary focuses on American evangelist Dr. Scott Lively, who is widely credited with installing the dominant notion that homosexuals are after your children.

When asked if he condemns the legislation, Lively says that he condemns the death penalty aspects of the bill, but that overall the bill is a “lesser of two evils” compared to the prospect of having American gay activists do to Uganda what they have done to America.

Visit http://fuckcopyright.blogspot.com/2011/09/missionaries-of-hate-2010.html for streaming or download links and trailer. Or just visit the most remarkable activist site you are ever likely to come across.

Somebody beat me to this one, saved me a job at least.

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America Is Moving Away From Religion: You Reckon?

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.


5 Signs That America Is Moving Away from Religion

If you look closely there are promising signs that American attitudes are changing in a way that may blunt the impact of religion on politics and culture.
By Tana Ganeva
September 28, 2011

In between bragging about the number of people they've killed and vilifying gay soldiers, the GOP presidential candidates have spent the primaries demonstrating how little they respect the separation of church and state. Michele Bachmann seems to think God is personally invested in her political career. Both she and Rick Perry have ties to Christian Dominionism, a theocratic philosophy that publicly calls for Christian takeover of America's political and civil institutions. (Even Ron Paul, glorified by civil libertarians for his only two good policy stances -- opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and drug prohibition -- sputtered about churches when asked during a debate where he'd send a gravely ill man without health insurance.)

GOP pandering to the Religious Right is just one of those facts of American political life, like climate change denial and Creationism in schools, that leave secular Americans lamenting the decline of the country, and of reason and logic. Organized religion's grasp on the politics and culture of much of Europe has been waning for decades -- why can't we do that here?

But there are signs that American attitudes are changing in ways that may tame religion's power over political life in the future.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, tells AlterNet that she thinks what happened in Europe is (slowly) happening here. While questioning religion remains controversial -- Gaylor says the group's work on church and state issues often elicits hate-mail strongly suggesting they move to, you know, Europe -- atheism, skepticism, and agnosticism are becoming more widely accepted.

"The statistics show there are more of us ... If you're in a room of people you can count on more to agree with non-belief or to be accepting of non-belief," says Gaylor.

Here are five trends that give hope one day religion will reside in the realm of personal choice and private worship, far away from politics -- something like what the Founders intended hundreds of years ago.




1. American religious belief is becoming more fractured

The intrusion of religion into places where it doesn't belong, like government or public education, naturally requires high levels of organization and control -- it's not something that just happens. So it's a good sign that even many Americans who maintain a personal religious faith are distancing themselves from heierarchical, top-down religion. Polls have repeatedly shown that even among the devout, emphatic proclamations of faith do not translate into actual churchgoing. In fact, church attendance rates hovered at around 40 percent until pollsters realized there's a major gap between what Americans tell them about their religious habits and their actual religious habits. Tom Flynn summarizes the over-inflation of US churchgoing and offers more accurate stats:

Americans may believe in a god who sees everything, but they lie about how often they go to church. Since 1939, the Gallup organization has reported that 40% of adults attend church weekly. (The most recent figure is 42%.) Gallup's figure has long attracted skepticism. Were it true, some 73 million people would throng the nation's houses of worship each week. Even the conservative Washington Times found that "hard to imagine." New research suggests that there may be only half to two-thirds that many people in the pews.

Americans are also actively shaping their religious beliefs to fit their own values. Profiled in USA Today, religion expert George Barna shares recent findings that show religion is becoming increasingly personal. Believers might drift from faith to faith until they find one that works for them, or cobble together a belief system drawn from many religious traditions. The US is becoming a place of "310 million people with 310 million religions" Barna is quoted as saying. Go to page two, or be like me, don't.

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Missionaries of Hate: American Evangelicals Spread Gay Hate in Uganda

Go to big updated post here.

This is becoming an ever increasingly topical subject. I shall try and find a few links on the morrow.

-

Here you go, Rachel Maddow has it all in eight minutes, the murder of gay activist, David Kato, inspired no doubt by, Scott Lively, Richard Cohen and ''The Family.''

The word ''Family'' in any US organisation, being a euphemism for a Jesus loving LGBT hate group.

Missionaries of Hate (2010)




Correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Uganda, where many question whether the growing influence of American religious groups has led to a movement to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.

As an anti-gay movement spreads across the continent, gay Africans and their families face an increasingly uncertain future of isolation, imprisonment or even execution.

The film makes it much easier to understand why the general Ugandan public is so eager to send their peers to jail. If the most prominent spiritual leader in your community made it his life purpose to convince you that there were people coming to eat your poop and recruit your children, you would be against them too. They are only hearing one side of the story and it is the origin of their information that is truly infuriating.

Although Ugandan leaders are deeply offended by the notion, the facts definitively show that American evangelists have played a central role in defining the nation’s hard line against sexual minorities. The documentary focuses on American evangelist Dr. Scott Lively, who is widely credited with installing the dominant notion that homosexuals are after your children.

When asked if he condemns the legislation, Lively says that he condemns the death penalty aspects of the bill, but that overall the bill is a “lesser of two evils” compared to the prospect of having American gay activists do to Uganda what they have done to America.

Visit http://fuckcopyright.blogspot.com/2011/09/missionaries-of-hate-2010.html for streaming or download links and trailer. Or just visit the most remarkable activist site you are ever likely to come across.

Read More

Death Penalty is Pro-Life: Baptist Albert Mohler Talks Utter Shite

And Genesis chapter nine, isn't a goddamned handbook for twenty first century living. These fuckwits would bring back stoning given half a chance.

President Of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Says Death Penalty Is About Affirming The Sanctity Of Life
By Zaid Jilani
Sep 23, 2011

This week marked the execution of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose case was considered by many to be deeply flawed. Davis’ execution has served as a wake-up call to the inequities and dangers of capital punishment in the United States.

Yet one influential religious leader appears to have been unphased by the global uproar over Davis’ death and critical examinations of the death penalty. Mohler argued in a Sept. 22 podcast that the death penalty is actually pro-life in a way, because it is intended to “affirm the value [and] sanctity of every single human life“:

A Southern Baptist seminary president says that according to the Bible, capital punishment is pro-life. “The death penalty is not about retribution,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast Sept. 22. “It is first of all about underlining the importance of every single human life.”

Mohler, who has a Ph.D. in theology, said in Genesis 9, where capital punishment is mandated for murder, “it is precisely because the taking of one human life by another means that the murderer has effectively, morally and theologically, forfeited his own right to live.” “The death penalty is intended to affirm the value [and] sanctity of every single human life, and thus by the extremity of the penalty to make that visible and apparent to all,” Mohler said.

Mohler is an influential figure in Baptist circles in the United State. As he notes on his website, he is president of the “flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world” and is a board member of the right-wing Focus on the Family. His position on the death penalty stands in stark contrast to that of many other Christian leaders. For example, the Catholic Church, which represents the largest Christian denomination in America, has been generally opposed to the practice since Pope John Paul II declared so in 1995. - Think Progress

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Not Only is Rick Santorum a Homophobic Twat, He's One Very Sick Puppy Indeed

I thought I had done for the day, but I have just read something that has given me an awful lot of trouble. So if you don't mind, I'm going to go down the ''a trouble shared is a trouble halved'' road.

We have recently had a post Rick Santorum is a Twat, but this little.... I can't call it a gem, in fact I don't really know what to call it. But it comes in the second article after all the homophobia.

Forgive me do, I pray.

Santorum Says He "Didn't Hear" Audience Members Boo Gay Soldier, But Condemns Them; Perry and Romney Don't

It was one of the more jarring moments in Thursday night’s debate. Stephen Hill, a U.S. Army soldier serving in Iraq, asked whether he, as a gay American, would be able to continue serving if one of these Republican candidates won. Some in the audience booed, and Rick Santorum slammed the Obama administration for giving gay and lesbian troops “a special privilege,” which would end under a Santorum presidency.

The former senator did not, however, have anything to say during the debate about the ugly audience reaction. Yesterday, in a Fox News interview, Santorum was willing to do the right thing.

“I condemn the people who booed that gay soldier. That soldier is serving our country. I thank him for his service to our country. I’m sure he’s doing an excellent job. I hope he’s safe and I hope he returns safely and does his mission well.

“I have to admit, I seriously did not hear those boos. Had I heard them, I certainly would have commented on them, but, as you know, when you’re in that sort of environment, you’re sort of focused on the question and formulating your answer. I just didn’t hear those couple of boos that were out there, but certainly had I, I would have said, ‘Don’t do that. This man is serving our country and we are to thank him for his service.’”

That’s a perfectly good answer. It may not be entirely truthful — other candidates said they heard the boos — and it doesn’t make up for Santorum’s awful substantive response to the question, but I’m glad he’s at least willing to condemn those booing a serviceman who’s putting his life on the line for the United States. It is, quite literally, the least he should do.

But what about the rest of the Republican field? Yesterday, Jon Huntsman and Gary Johnson, to their credit, also denounced those who booed Hill, albeit a day late. Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, however, refused requests for comment.

I don’t expect much from guys like Romney and Perry, and neither are likely to ever get a Profile in Courage award nomination any time soon, but if leading presidential candidates aren’t willing to stand up for an Army soldier serving honorably in Iraq, who will they stand up for?

By Steve Benen | Sourced from Washington Monthly

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What Rick Santorum Means by 'Keeping Sex to Yourself'

You know what Rick Santorum said last night regarding the fate of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in a Santorum administration:

That policy would be reinstituted. And as far as people who are in -- in -- I would not throw them out, because that would be unfair to them because of the policy of this administration, but we would move forward in -- in conformity with what was happening in the past, which was, sex is not an issue. It is -- it should not be an issue. Leave it alone, keep it -- keep it to yourself, whether you're a heterosexual or a homosexual.

Atrios noted the hypocrisy. ("If only the big gay gayeee gayee gays would stop talking about all the hot sexy sexytime all the damn sexytime everything would be ok. Oh, and have you met my wife and 4 children?") But let me just remind you of how Rick Santorum and his wife keep this personal stuff to themselves:

Father First, Senator Second

In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.

Upon their son's death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen's parents' home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.

"That's my little guy," Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father's hand. The senator often speaks of his late son in the present tense. It is a rare instance in which he talks softly.

He and Karen brought Gabriel's body home so their children could "absorb and understand that they had a brother," Santorum says. "We wanted them to see that he was real," not an abstraction, he says. Not a "fetus," either, as Rick and Karen were appalled to see him described -- "a 20-week-old fetus" -- on a hospital form. They changed the form to read "20-week-old baby."

Karen Santorum, a former nurse, wrote letters to her son during and after her pregnancy. She compiled them into a book, "Letters to Gabriel," a collection of prayers, Bible passages and a chronicle of the prenatal complications that led to Gabriel's premature delivery....

That was in The Washington Post in 2005. That's how Santorum keeps this sort of thing to himself -- by welcoming a Post reporter into his office and showing him a picture of the now-dead fetus he and his wife heterosexually created. And talking about the book his wife wrote on the same subject.

By Steve M. | Sourced from No More Mister Nice Blog

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