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Christian Groups To Protest For The Right To Gay Bash

Justin Charity
Air America
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:57 EST

Photo Credit: Aviloud on Flickr

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission plans to protest the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law last month, by preaching outside of the Justice Department. Pastor Paul Blair is apparently concerned that the law will infringe on Christians' constitutional rights to act out their bigotry.

On November 16, 2009, at 1:30 PM, an ad hoc coalition of concerned ministers from various denominations will be holding a Press Conference and Rally for Religious Freedom in front of the Department of Justice.

A group of ministers including Rick Scarborough of Vision America, Gary Cass of the Christian Anti Defamation Commission, Bishop Earl Jackson of STAND America, Paul Blair and Steve Kern of Reclaim Oklahoma, Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, Brad Cranston of Iowa Baptists for Biblical Values and Jim Garlow, a leader in the Prop 8 battle in California will join together with others and boldly preach Biblical truth concerning the subject of homosexuality. If believing and proclaiming the Bible is considered a Hate Crime, then they are willing to be arrested, if necessary, in order to stand for the guaranteed First Amendment right to free speech for all ministers of the Gospel.

John Byrne
Raw Story
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:56 EST

US defense contractors are funding insurgents in Afghanistan, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, according to a report in The Nation published Thursday.

The report, by veteran investigative correspondent Aram Roston, asserts that US military contractors charged with assisting US forces in Afghanistan are actually funding the groups killing American soldiers. Roston describes a protection racket similar to that of the mafia, in which contractors pay the Taliban "protection money" not to attack them.

David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
rawstory.com
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:51 EST

Despite news reports that the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater has seen its contracts dry up and its influence wane, the company continues to do brisk business in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Obama administration may be too afraid of the firm to do anything about it, says investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.

"You know who's guarding Hillary Clinton in Afghanistan right now? Blackwater," Scahill told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Tuesday night. "You know who guards members of Congress? Blackwater. They have half a billion dollars in contracts in Afghanistan right now. CIA, State Department, Defense Department. Why is President Obama keeping these guys on the payroll? There has never been a company in recent history that made the case that corporations are corrupt, evil organizations [better] than Blackwater."

Scahill was on The Rachel Maddow Show discussing the New York Times' revelation that senior Blackwater executives allegedly arranged for bribes of up to $1 million for Iraqi politicians in a bid to retain its contracts and silence criticism of the company in the wake of the Nissour Square massacre in 2007, in which 17 Iraqi civilians died after Blackwater guards opened fire.

Though the Times report stated that it's unknown if the approved bribes ever reached their targets -- Iraqi politicians -- Scahill drew a connection between the alleged bribes and the fact that, after the Nissour Sqaure massacre, the Iraqi government first decided to bar Blackwater from operating in the country, and then reversed its position.

"You had the Iraqi government saying Blackwater was banned from that country, then suddenly doing an about face, and Blackwater remains in Iraq to this day," Scahill said.

Dahr Jamail
Truthout
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:00 EST

The military operates through indoctrination. Soldiers are programmed to develop a mindset that resists any acknowledgment of injury and sickness, be it physical or psychological. As a consequence, tens of thousands of soldiers continue to serve, even being deployed to combat zones like Iraq and/or Afghanistan, despite persistent injuries. According to military records, over 43,000 troops classified as "nondeployable for medical reasons" have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan nevertheless.

The recent atrocity at Fort Hood is an example of this. Maj. Nidal Hasan had worked as a counselor at Walter Reed, hearing countless stories of bloodshed, horror and death from dismembered veterans from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. While he had not yet served in Iraq or Afghanistan, the major was overloaded with secondary trauma, coupled with ongoing harassment about his being a Muslim. This, along with other factors, contributed towards Hasan falling into a desperation so deep he was willing to slaughter fellow soldiers, and is indicative of fissures running deep into the crumbling edifice upon which the US military stands.

Arnaud de Borchgrave
NewsMax
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:32 EST

Comment: Fact-twisting in the mainstream media is becoming more blatant every day. The article below is a prime example of how a story is morphed to implement the PTB's sinister goals. While the meaningless yet deadly wars the American empire is currently waging are losing support from within and without, the PTB will go the extra mile - paved of lies and propaganda - to make the populace believe that "the enemy is out there to get us".

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is the proverbial canary in the mine. Gunning down 12 soldiers and one civilian, and wounding 30 was not a random act of violence by an Army psychiatrist who was slated to deploy to Afghanistan, an evil war in his mind, where American infidels are killing good Muslims.

As the Virginia-born major told a female neighbor in his apartment complex, "I'm going to do good work for God." Hasan wanted, in his mind, to die a martyr, killing American soldiers who had been killing Muslim soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, or would soon be doing so.

Comment: How can anyone presume to know what was in Hasan's mind? Several of the earliest, raw stories talk of two or three shooters. There are many unexplained aspects to the Ft. Hood mystery here.

First is the report the perpetrator was dead and then hours later the revelation that he was still alive. Exactly how long does it take to determine if a person is dead or alive? Could it be no one knew whom the shooter or shooters were and a story had to be concocted for public consumption? What happened to the two other "suspects" that were detained? What did they do to qualify as suspects and more importantly, what information surfaced that led to their release? One of the suspects reportedly stated he "was with the shooter."

Second is the number of victims from a single shooter. Let us not forget this shooting did not occur at the mall, it occurred on a military installation where the victims had been trained in military tactics and some were combat veterans. We are to believe they did nothing to stop a single shooter and he was allowed to reload several times and continue shooting and the only thing that stopped him was the arrival of a police officer after the gunman had gunned down over 40 people?

And how so very convenient for the state, a perpetrator who was both anti-war and a Muslim; just doesn't get any better than that. Could this be an example of following the philosophy of Rahm Emanuel on dealing with a crisis?

Third was the shutting down of communications in and around Ft. Hood for hours. While the Army and the media will explain this in various scenarios, it also provided the Army with a chance to create whatever story it was they wanted to provide the public on the terrible tragedy. Of course we all know the Army would never distort or lie about the facts involving the deaths of innocents. Well, there is that My Lai thing. People on the ground have told me cell phone towers were jammed to prevent unauthorized dissemination of information after the shooting. Again, the Army would not want any information contrary to the company line emerging from this disaster.

Comment: Mr. de Borchgrave seems ignorant of the fact that planting evidence, especially on computers, is child's play in this information age. Maj. Hasan's psychological profile will be portayed according to the PTB's needs, and it will then spread to every household on the planet through the MSM.

As the person who forwarded this hit piece to SOTT commented:

We knew it was coming, but it's now out in the open. The attack has officially been cranked up to full throttle: If you believe 9/11 was an inside job, you are an "anti-Semite and a holocaust denier". It began two months ago with Michael Chertoff repeating this absurdity three times during a television interview in response to a Truther who called in. Now they've hired veteran journalist and Time magazine heavy-hitter Arnaud de Borchgrave to fire the first major volley out into the open. [...] How this will play out is left to be seen, but given the gullibility (and docility) of the Sheeple, I wouldn't be surprised if this final desperate tack continues to gain serious traction. It's actually all they've got left - but it's a dangerous gamble that could provoke serious blowback: When the truth does rise to the surface, as it inevitably will, and Israeli and US-dual-citizen complicity in 9/11 is exposed, it could fuel a national firestorm of real anti-Semitism that could dwarf the German historical precedent.

It appears that the Zionist agenda is ultimately about that:

It is an agenda that not only spurns all consideration for the welfare or lives of Palestinian civilians, but shows a similar contempt for the safety and well-being of the Israeli Jewish population.

[The Zionist] agenda, conscious or not, seems destined to push the Israeli-Palestinian conflict past boiling point, and in doing so, ignite a major conflict in the wider Middle East. Out of such a war, no group of people will emerge unscathed (if at all), regardless of their religious affiliation or what their "God" promised them 2,000 years ago.

Jeff Gates
Opinion Maker
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:53 EST

When waging war "by way of deception," the motto of the Israeli Mossad, well-timed crises play a critical agenda-setting role by displacing facts with what a target population can be deceived to believe. Thus the force-multiplier effect when staged crises are reinforced with pre-staged intelligence. In combination, the two often prove persuasive.

That duplicity was on display when U.S. lawmakers were induced to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9-11. That crisis alone, however, was insufficient. Military mobilization required a "consensus" belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons, Iraqi meetings in Prague, and so forth. Though all were false, those "facts" proved sufficient to induce an invasion of Iraq.

Such agent provocateur operations typically include collateral incidents as pre-staging for the intended main event. Ongoing incidents suggest a follow-on operation is underway. Recent history suggests we'll see an orgy of evidence that plausibly indicts a pre-staged Evil Doer. Though Iran is an obvious candidate, Pakistan is also a possibility where outside forces have been destabilizing this nuclear Islamic nation with a series of violent incidents.

Will it be coincidence if the next war - like the last - is consistent with the expansive goals of Jewish nationalists?

Glenn Greenwald
Common Dreams
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:33 EST

The NYT columnist who has supported 4 wars on Muslims in 6 years decries the Islamic disregard for human life.

David Brooks' column today perfectly illustrates what lies at the core of our political discourse: namely, self-loving tribalistic blindness laced with a pathological refusal to accept responsibility for one's actions. Brooks claims there is a unique evil that one finds in the "fringes of the Muslim world":

Most people select stories that lead toward cooperation and goodness. But over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged.

That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don't see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.

This narrative is embraced by a small minority. But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere. With their suicide bombings and terrorist acts, adherents to this narrative have made themselves central to global politics. They are the ones who go into crowded rooms, shout "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," and then start murdering.

But Brooks himself was a vehement, vicious advocate for the attack on Iraq, which caused this:

Israel National News
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:53 EST

Republican Whip Eric Cantor reminded the 2009 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "the man holding the gun with which he vows to kill Israel and the Jews."

Comment: More Zionist lies and propaganda; there is indeed a player who is a major threat to world peace based in the middle-east. But who poses that threat is not what the mainstream media, or Rep. Cantor would have people believe...

Are you getting the message that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler and Iran is the Fourth Reich and they're just days away from nuking us and if we don't Shock and Awe them into regime change and install a U.S.-friendly regime that will recognise Israel and sell their oil and gas to us instead of to the Chinese then we're all a bunch of appeasing Neville J'aime-Berlin's and WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!...? Because that's what you're meant to understand. That's the new meme, to make you scared enough to support a war you wouldn't otherwise support. Once again, our fears are being manipulated by people who want a war but haven't got a justification for starting one. Last time, they brought public opinion on board with scary stories about Iraq's nonexistent nuclear weapons and Saddam's fictitious links to al Qaeda; this time around, it's Iran's nonexistent nuclear weapons and Ahmadinejad's spurious equivalence to Hitler.

And that's why unravelling the meaning of Ahmadinejad's "myth of the Holocaust" is not just an obscure academic exercise. Knowing that a propaganda offensive is underway to demonize Iran's president as the new Hitler so that we can justify an attack on his country, we need to think critically every time our mass media draws these parallels between Nazi Germany and present-day Iran and consider whether this is a legitimate equivalence or more manipulative scare-mongering to lay the foundation for a new war. Despite what Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen et al sound like when they dispassionately discuss rearranging the Middle East, war is not really like a game of Risk or a role-playing exercise in an undergraduate PolSci seminar. It is much more like young soldiers getting their limbs blown off by roadside bombs, or entire families wiped out "collaterally" by our missiles. Knowing that this is what is really at stake, we should at least make the effort to determine whether the "Holocaust denier!" and other hitlerish epithets currently being hurled at Iran are based in fact, or are just the latest work of the same misinformers who - from the safety of their Washington thinktanks - repeatedly pimp for war in the Middle East, safe in the knowledge that it will never be their friends and relatives on the receiving end of the IEDs or the so-called smart bombs.

Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:59 EST

For drone freaks (and these days Washington seems full of them), here's the good news: Drones are hot! Not long ago -- 2006 to be exact -- the Air Force could barely get a few armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the air at once; now, the number is 38; by 2011, it will reputedly be 50, and beyond that, in every sense, the sky's the limit.

Better yet, for the latest generation of armed surveillance drones -- the ones with the chill-you-to-your-bones sci-fi names of Predators and Reapers (as in Grim) -- whole new surveillance capabilities will soon be available. Their newest video system, due to be deployed next year, has been dubbed Gorgon Stare after the creature in Greek mythology whose gaze turned its victims to stone. According to Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times, Gorgon Stare will offer a "pilot" back in good ol' Langley, VA, headquarters of the CIA, the ability to "stare" via 12 video feeds (where only one now exists) at a 1.5 mile square area, and then, with Hellfire missiles and bombs, assumedly turn any part of it into rubble. Within the year, that viewing capacity is expected to double to three square miles.

What we're talking about here is the gaze of the gods, updated in corporate labs for the modern American war-fighter -- a gaze that can be focused on whatever runs, walks, crawls, or creeps just about anywhere on the planet 24/7, with an instant ability to blow it away. And what's true of video capacity will be no less true of the next generation of drone sensors -- and, of course, of drone weaponry like that "5-pound missile the size of a loaf of French bread" meant in some near-robotic future to replace the present 100-pound Hellfire missile, possibly on the Avenger or Predator C, the next generation drone under development at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. Everything, in fact, will be almost infinitely upgradeable, since we're still in the robotics equivalent of the age of the "horseless carriage," as Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution assures us. (Just hold your hats, for instance, when the first nano-drones make it onto the scene! They will, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, be able to "fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.")

Michael Payne
OpEdNews
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:39 EST

The state of Israel can do no wrong in the eyes of the U.S. and the Congress. Time and time again, when Israel has been cited by the UN or by other international organizations for military actions that have violated international laws, the Congress has looked the other way and given it a pass. The House of Representatives has just made a mockery of justice when it voted to condemn the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344 to 36.

The Goldstone Report cites both Israel and Hamas for violating international laws involving human rights. Judge Goldstone, a much respected South African jurist and his team, undertook an in-depth investigation of the Gaza War, including events before, during and after that bloody conflict. They spent much time in Gaza looking into alleged human rights violations against Gaza and its civilians but Israel barred them from doing the same in their country. Israel refused to cooperate in any way.

Since the report was criticized by various elements of our government, Judge Goldstone offered to meet with U.S. officials and members of Congress to answer their objections but he was not given that opportunity. Here was a report that contained numerous facts and evidence to back up its assertions but the governments of both Israel and the U.S. would not even discuss it with Judge Goldstone.

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