Cadged from Shakesville: Excellent satire about the hypocrites who believe that they are the arbiters of marital propriety
Showing posts with label Religious bigotry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religious bigotry. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
US vetoes motion on Gaza attack
The US has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli attack in Gaza that killed 18 civilians, including women and children.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6139968.stm
The draft, which also condemned Israeli military operations in Gaza, followed Wednesday's attack in Beit Hanoun.
The US ambassador at the UN, John Bolton, described the text as unbalanced and politically motivated.
Ten of 15 Security Council members backed the resolution. Four abstained - Denmark, Japan, Slovakia and the UK.
This was the second time this year the US used its veto on a draft resolution on Israeli military operations in Gaza.
The US has a history of vetoing resolutions condemning Israel which it feels are biased against the country, says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan at the UN in New York.
'Not even-handed'
The draft resolution - backed by Arab, Islamic and non-aligned states and formally proposed by Qatar - called for a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
It also asked the UN secretary general to set up a fact-finding mission into the deaths in Beit Hanoun.
The draft urged the Palestinian Authority to act to end violence - including rockets fired at southern Israel.
The US ambassador said he regretted the Palestinian loss of life, but disagreed with the language used in the resolution.
"This resolution does not display an even-handed characterisation of the recent events in Gaza, nor does it advance the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace to which we aspire and for which we are working assiduously," he said.
'Green light'
An Israeli government spokesman described the veto as "very satisfactory".
"The draft resolution did not stipulate that what happened at Beit Hanun was a tragic error," Avi Pazner told AFP news agency.
But Palestinian cabinet spokesman Ghazi Hamad of Hamas told Reuters the veto was "a signal that the US had given legitimacy to the massacres and a green light to [Israel] to ... carry out more massacres".
Qatar's ambassador said the credibility of the Security Council had been called into question by the vote and the cycle of violence in the Middle East would continue.
Israel launched its operation in and around Beit Hanoun last month in an effort to root out militants firing rockets.
The deaths were caused when what witnesses described as a volley of tank shells hit a built-up civilian area. Many of the dead were from one extended family, and included several women and children.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologised for the attack, describing it as a "technical failure".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6139968.stm
Solidarity With Gaza
The International Action Center condemns the criminal U.S.-backed Israeli bombing massacre on Gaza, and the mass murder of 200 and serious wounding of another 300 Palestinians. We call upon the progressive, anti-war and workers’ movement in the United States to join the angry, growing worldwide protests of these latest Israeli war crimes with U.S. complicity. We refuse impunity to the Israeli state and its backers.
The rightist Zionist regime had the arrogance to announce in advance its intention to strike Gaza’s embattled civilians. Like every serious Israeli move, this latest assault was done with a U.S. green light using U.S. weapons and spy services.
Compounding this arrogance, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has already said, "The operation will go on and be intensified as long as necessary," (AFP, Dec. 27) exposing his genocidal intent. The Israeli attacks, targeting civilian population centers and coinciding with the end of the school day, reveal a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible, including on children.
Under Israeli siege for over a year, the people of Gaza had been struggling to survive with insufficient food, power and a damaged and depleted medical-care system. The world has condemned this siege as an Israeli crime against humanity. The Israelis have carried out this murderous siege without protest from their powerful allies in Western Europe and the United States. And the Palestinian people in Gaza have faced down the siege over 18 months, providing once again an example for the world’s people that the criminal U.S.-Israeli alliance has grown desperate to tear down.
Like the bombing, the siege itself is a U.S.-Israeli war crime, with the billions in yearly U.S. aid used to bomb the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, cut off their electricity, and kick them out of their homes. Meanwhile, back home, the same U.S. government lets banks foreclose on workers’ homes and bosses lay off millions of workers and let tens of millions live in fear of an illness that will wipe out their savings—if the crisis hasn’t already.
We have no interest in allowing the U.S.-Israeli genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people of Gaza. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people against U.S. imperialism and Israel, Washington’s outpost in the Middle East.
We demand that U.S. aid to Israel be cut to zero, and that this money be used instead for reparations for the Palestinian people, to ensure their right to return, and for homes, jobs, health care and education for working people in the U.S.
Protest demonstrations have taken place already in Amman, Damascus, Cairo, in the cities of the West Bank and in mostly Arab towns within Israel’s 1967 boundaries. Organizations in Brussels, Madrid and other European centers have also called for protests. In the United States, the first action has been called for New York’s Rockefeller Center, at 50th Street and Fifth Avenues, for 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 28.
There demonstrators will say:
Defend Palestine!
Solidarity with heroic Gaza!
Stand in solidarity with Palestine!
ALL OUT TO PROTEST THE MASSACRES IN GAZA!
The rightist Zionist regime had the arrogance to announce in advance its intention to strike Gaza’s embattled civilians. Like every serious Israeli move, this latest assault was done with a U.S. green light using U.S. weapons and spy services.
Compounding this arrogance, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has already said, "The operation will go on and be intensified as long as necessary," (AFP, Dec. 27) exposing his genocidal intent. The Israeli attacks, targeting civilian population centers and coinciding with the end of the school day, reveal a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible, including on children.
Under Israeli siege for over a year, the people of Gaza had been struggling to survive with insufficient food, power and a damaged and depleted medical-care system. The world has condemned this siege as an Israeli crime against humanity. The Israelis have carried out this murderous siege without protest from their powerful allies in Western Europe and the United States. And the Palestinian people in Gaza have faced down the siege over 18 months, providing once again an example for the world’s people that the criminal U.S.-Israeli alliance has grown desperate to tear down.
Like the bombing, the siege itself is a U.S.-Israeli war crime, with the billions in yearly U.S. aid used to bomb the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, cut off their electricity, and kick them out of their homes. Meanwhile, back home, the same U.S. government lets banks foreclose on workers’ homes and bosses lay off millions of workers and let tens of millions live in fear of an illness that will wipe out their savings—if the crisis hasn’t already.
We have no interest in allowing the U.S.-Israeli genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people of Gaza. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people against U.S. imperialism and Israel, Washington’s outpost in the Middle East.
We demand that U.S. aid to Israel be cut to zero, and that this money be used instead for reparations for the Palestinian people, to ensure their right to return, and for homes, jobs, health care and education for working people in the U.S.
Protest demonstrations have taken place already in Amman, Damascus, Cairo, in the cities of the West Bank and in mostly Arab towns within Israel’s 1967 boundaries. Organizations in Brussels, Madrid and other European centers have also called for protests. In the United States, the first action has been called for New York’s Rockefeller Center, at 50th Street and Fifth Avenues, for 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 28.
There demonstrators will say:
Defend Palestine!
Solidarity with heroic Gaza!
Stand in solidarity with Palestine!
ALL OUT TO PROTEST THE MASSACRES IN GAZA!
Friday, December 26, 2008
The Founding of the Church of Gay
By AndyS in Colorado, Daily Kos
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/sex/115404/the_founding_of_the_church_of_gay/
And, any funds disbursed for public referenda on gay rights would be tax exempt to the extent that such similar activities of the Mormon, Catholic, or any other Churches, would also be tax exempt for the Church of Gay.© 2008 Daily Kos All rights reserved.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/sex/115404/the_founding_of_the_church_of_gay/
This will be a church and a religion with the following precepts (and ONLY the following precepts):
- "Sexual orientation is OK" -- to the Church of Gay, being gay (or straight, or
bi, or just not interested, for that matter) is ok, and any
disagreement with the above precept is sacrilege and heresy.
- The individual choice of marriage between any two consenting non-related
adults is Holy. Those partaking of the Act are, by definition, Holy in
the eyes of the Church of Gay.
- Discrimination or treating societally differently any person on the grounds of sexual
orientation in any manner is an abomination.
- The existence or non-existence of a creator is beyond the bounds of Church of Gay philosophy.
First, we can demand immediate tax exempt status for all activities of the Church of Gay as any other Church.
That's right -- your taxpayer funds will be used to fund our activities in overturning all laws contrary to our religious precepts. That's the way it is, and too bad for you. We will of course abide by non-endorsement-of-candidate IRS guidelines. The fact that in many cases this doesn't matter very much if we still bad-mouth candidates who believe in things contrary to our position is, again, too bad for you.
Secondarily, the State forbidding or interfering in any manner with the marriage of any two consenting non-related adults, along with all the legal rights attendent therefrom is heresy and an abomination to our church.
The state therefore would be restricting our freedom of religion to prohibit any civil marriage covered under Church of Gay religious law. Our First Amendment right to freedom of religion, you see, trumps every other right.
And, yes, any disagreement with our religious precepts is religious bigotry.
We demand in addition, chaplains for our religious philosophy furnished and paid for by the military for all military personnel here in the United States or overseas.
Happy Festivus, all you heathens!
© 2008 Daily Kos All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.dailykos.com//115404/
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Republican bigot attacks Islam
By Evan Derkacz
Posted on January 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/46173/
Good ol' boy Virgil Goode (R-VA) put his name on the map last month by catering to anti-Muslim bigotry in his district and denouncing [VIDEO] Keith Ellison (D-MN) for swearing on the Koran in an unofficial ceremony.
Rather than back away from his bigotry, Goode poured gasoline. From today's USA Today: "Let us remember that we were not attacked by a nation on 9/11; we were attacked by extremists who acted in the name of the Islamic religion."
Okay, well, if the GOP's GOB wants to tar entire religions with the brush of extremists who act in its name, he can start with the Army of God and other Christian terrorists and root out Christians in congress (Jews too!). The religion must be bad if some claim to kill for it, right?
Or is it just theirs?
Idiot.
Hat tip: Think Progress.
Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/46173/
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