Friday, July 7, 2023. The hate merchants demonstrate that hate is all
around, MEDMIA MATTERS documents RFK Junior's reliance on the hate
merchants, MTG gets kicked out of one hate group, Caitlyn Jenner leaves
another -- hate, the right-wing is soaking in it, as Madge from
Palmolive might say.
Cult
leader and cleric Moqtada al-Sadr returned to 'political life' as he
organized pretests against . . . Sweden. Sweden did not burn a holy
book but Moqtada needed a hobby and masturbation doesn't provide him the
umph it used to so this is what he went with. And he then tried to
enrage all of Iraq over Sweden. Thought his small cult continued to
turn out for rage-fests, the rest of Iraq largely ignored it.
But
if you were going to take offense, it was never the country of Sweden
you should have taken offense to. It was one of your own, Momika, that
burned the holy book.
Oh, look, here's an idiot.
Death sentence? You truly are
an idiot, Mansuri, and a hateful one at that. Also Monika doesn't have
"the face of a dog." He's rather photogenic.
The
rage against Sweden was a political ploy used to increase the profile
of certain struggling politicians and to distract from the rot in Iraq's
government.
The
book may matter to you but it's not a crime to burn it. I'm opposed to
all book burnings and bannings. But there are no international laws
against book banning. And the Iraqi government knows this but they're
trying to distract and they know Interpol from previous engagements.
They were able to make a vice president of Iraq appear guilty to the
gullible (and deceitful) US press by filing with them before. This is
no different. Nothing will come of this.
As
for their efforts to get Sweden to turn him over to Iraq? He's in
Sweden as a refugee. Any country that turned a refugee back over to its
country of origin in a matter like this would be a joke on the world
stage.
While everyone's talking about this -- and really gabbing about the
non-story that we noted at the top of yesterday's snapshot -- is anyone
paying attention to the governmental reordering that's taking place?
Suadad al-Salhy (MIDDLE EAST EYE) reports:
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has announced a major
shakeup of the country’s security and intelligence services, appointing
an influential spymaster ostracised by his predecessor as the head of
national security.
Officials in Baghdad told Middle East Eye that the changes unveiled
on Wednesday were intended to consolidate Sudani’s grip on power and to
exclude a number of officials and employees suspected of involvement in
corruption under the previous government.
One of the main – and most prominent - beneficiaries of the reshuffle
is Abdul Karim Abd Fadhil, also known as Abu Ali al-Basri, who was
named by Sudani to lead the Iraqi National Security Service (INSS).
Basri replaces Hamid al-Shatri, who was appointed by Sudani’s predecessor as prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
And dig deep into the report and you'll find this:
Another senior appointee, Ali Shamran Khazal, the new director general
of the INSS’s Governorates Security Department, is seen as an ally of
former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, sources said.
[. . .]
Security officials told MEE that most of the appointees were chosen on the basis of "partisan quotas".
"Some of those assigned are qualified and have been promoted. This
cannot be denied, but the selection of all was subject to political
quotas," a senior INSS official told MEE.
“Most of the appointees are either close to Maliki, Halbousi, or the
prime minister. No one in Iraq is named to occupy these positions solely
for his competence or for career progression.”
But
instead of focusing on that, the hate merchants -- hatriots --
scapegoat and rage to distract the American people. And, no, defending
those being scapegoated is never a distraction, it's a required stance
in any functioning democracy.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and other conservatives are
falsely claiming that a recent mass shooter was transgender. Like
Greene, the shooter supported gun rights and former President Donald
Trump.
On the evening of Monday, July 3, a shooter in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania killed five people. The gunman also shot two boys and
injured two others who survived. Police arrested a 40-year-old male
suspect named Kimbrady Carriker and charged him with murder, attempted
murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and weapons charges.
[. . .]
In a statement condemning right-wing claims about the suspect’s
gender identity, Asa Khalif of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s
LGBTQIA advisory committee said Carricker identified only as male.
“The language that is spewed out by the conservative press is violent
and is dangerous and is targeting trans women of color,” Khalif said, according to The Daily Beast. “It’s rallying the community to be violent and we’re better than that.”
Khalif noted that trans women and men “are the most vulnerable to
violence,” adding, “They want to live their lives and they have every
right to do so, and we will not allow conservative bigots to use that
type of language to attack trans people. This is about someone who used
violence to hurt and harm our city and our community, and I’m sure they
will be punished to the fullest extent of the law but we will not allow
trans women, and particularly trans women of color, to be the scapegoats
of bigots.”
However, right-wing figures like Greene and other conservative media outlets have repeatedly claimed that trans people are dangerous. Shortly after a late March school shooting by a possibly trans individual, Greene blamed the shooting
on hormone medications that the shooter may have been taking. However,
there’s no indication that the shooter was actually taking hormones,
that such medications contribute to violent behavior, or that the
shooter’s gender identity in any way motivated their behavior.
In late March, Greene claimed
that a trans-affiliated “antifa” group in Washington, D.C. was
organizing a violent protest event called the “Trans Day of
Vengeance.” There was no public evidence that anti-fascist activists
were in any way involved in the event. The event’s organizer said the
event’s name was merely a play on the Trans Day of Visibility, the day
upon which the subsequently-cancelled protest was scheduled to occur.
At the time, Greene wrote,
“A day after a mass murder of children by a trans shooter? The people
need to know about the threat they face from Antifa &
trans-terrorism!!!”
In April, Greene’s colleague Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said that affirming trans people’s identities will lead to school shootings.
She said that being transgender and learning about societal oppression
“radicalize” students and make them mentally ill, causing them to shoot
up schools.
A
drive-by e-mail from a hatriot wants to explain that Andrew Tate is
right about transgender people. I'm sorry? Andrew Tate. Isn't that
one of Glenneth Greenwald's buddies? And didn't he just get arrested
for human trafficking? Don't invite me to that party, I won't show.
But you can pass your e-mail along to Katie Halper. A human
trafficker? She platforms registered sex offenders like Scott Ritter. A
stupid [your swear of choice] like that should love a human trafficker
-- she and Aaron Matty can probably do two weeks giggling and playing
footsie with Andrew Tate.
But those of us with standards? We'll take a pass on the supposed insights of a hate merchant.
A
man threw hot coffee on another man at a Port Washington Starbucks
while shouting an anti-gay slur on Saturday, according to the Port
Washington Police Department.
The victim is a member of the LGBTQ community, and police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
NEWSDAY says
residents are shocked by the anti-LGBTQ+ violence. It is shocking and
it's also true that it steps forward when people don't call the hate
out. Various individuals -- including Glenneth Greenwald -- have stoked
hate against the LGBTQ+ community. We are seeing the effects of that
hate.
Bonita
A. experienced a flood of emotions as she headed back from a walk to
her front porch: anger, worry, confusion and frustration. The East
Sacramento resident, who requested her full name be withheld due to fear
for her safety, was one of many in the city who who found flyers with
anti-LGBTQ and antisemitic messaging on her doorstop. Packaged in
plastic sandwich bags with gravel and other material as weights,
authorities and residents found them in multiple Sacramento
neighborhoods and other California cities in mid-June. Some employed the
phrase “White Lives Matter,” while others featured a conspiracy
demonizing LGBTQ+ people and Jews, specifically targeting those who hold
both identities.
“It totally messes with my sense of
justice,” Bonita A. said. She soon alerted her fellow neighbors to the
incident, and now wants to support anti-hate activities in her own
neighborhood, recognizing that it’s also on folks like her who aren’t
Jewish or LGBTQ to speak out. “When you’re the one being targeted ... it
must be scarier for them.” “I do want to show the support, I want to
show them they’re not alone, and that they have more than just their own
community supporting,” she said.
Ads
from major companies that claim to support LGBTQ rights are appearing
on Rumble videos that spread extreme anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, including on
videos that spew anti-LGBTQ slurs and on one that alleges that the LGBTQ
movement’s “end game is to sterilize humanity.”
Rumble is an extreme right-wing video-sharing platform that is backed by various high-profile right-wing figures and dominated by QAnon content. Marketing itself as a defender of “free speech”, the platform has big ambitions to compete with a range of other tech companies and provide the infrastructure
to make figures that have been banned elsewhere “immune” from so-called
“cancel culture.” Rumble has also partnered with the Republican
National Committee to host the official livestream for the first Republican presidential primary debate on August 23.
The platform technically has a policy
against “Content or material that is grossly offensive to the online
community, including but not limited to, racism, anti-semitism and
hatred” — but it doesn’t mention anything specifically about sexuality-
or gender identity-based hate speech, and has previously failed to elaborate on its evidently limited enforcement practices. Rumble also has a documented history of profiting from homophobic,
white nationalist, and antisemitic content on its site. In March,
Netflix pulled advertisements from the website after Media Matters reported that they were appearing alongside videos espousing Holocaust denial.
This Pride Month, Media Matters identified ads from over 50 major
companies that appeared alongside Rumble videos that spread extreme
anti-LGBTQ hate. These companies include:
1-800 Flowers, ABC Mouse, Aleve, Alibaba, Allianz, Amazon, Ancestry, Apartments.com, Aussie, Capital One, Chevrolet, Crate&Barrel, CVS, Dave’s Killer Bread, eBay, Fiverr, Fortnite, Genesis, GoDaddy, Grainger, GrubHub, Intel, LG, Maybelline, Mazda, McDonalds, National University, Norton, Office Depot, PBS Kids, PlutoTV, Pods Moving & Storage, Ruggable, Salomon, Shopify, SimpliSafe, Spinbrush, Street Fighter 6, Target, Tempur-pedic, Temu, Toyota, Trint, UNICEF, Uniqlo, UPS, Viator, Welch Allyn, Western Union, and Wyndham.
Despite this, several of these companies, including Capital One, Maybelline, eBay, Uniqlo, UPS, and Amazon, have celebrated Pride Month on social media — seemingly expressing support for the LGBTQ community.
My
money doesn't support hate. I won't be using the above. I may even
bring a lawsuit agaisnt eBay which is offering for sale various
autographed photos of me -- photos I didn't autograph, it's not even a
good fake of my signature. As the signee -- the supposed signee -- the
one whose name is being used to sell this fake merchandise, I believe I
have standing in court to sue eBay. Let's see if I calm down as the
morning goes on or tell my attorney to send eBay a cease-and-desist
letter.
Oddity Bar has received fervent backlash after a doorman used an
anti-gay slur in an argument with customers during a concert by Delaware
metal acts ABYDOS, Bastion's Wake and Candlewax. A short video clip
from the June 23 show posted on Facebook by ABYDOS bassist Zach
Schroeder shows an argument ongoing about moshing. ABYDOS had stopped
performing.
"Then don't invite metal bands to play," one man is heard saying before the doorman says, "F----t."
A woman immediately responds, "Whoa. You can't use that slur. Hold on, hold on. Using that slur is not OK."
Hernandez, who has owned Oddity Bar for the past
year with his brother Manny, was nearby as the doorman said the slur.
Members of the bands and patrons have criticized Hernandez for a lack of
an immediate response.
"[Hernandez] seemed
very indifferent towards everything and was not apologetic at all. He
just kind of took the doorman's side the whole time," Candlewax bassist
and vocalist Josh Deckman said. "I literally told him, 'Look at me: I
have nail polish on and I'm flamboyant. As a member of the [queer]
community, what am I supposed to think? That I'm not welcome here.' They
were dismissive of that."
In another setback for equal rights, the Supreme Court also ruled
Friday in favor of a Christian Colorado web designer who refused to
create websites for same-sex couples even though the state bans such
discrimination. The justices were again divided 6 to 3 along ideological
lines. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the
decision was “heartbreaking” and a “reactionary exclusion.”
Following Friday’s rulings, California Congressmember Ro Khanna and
other Democrats reintroduced a bill imposing 18-year term limits on
Supreme Court justices and giving presidents two appointments during a
White House term. President Biden last week said the current Supreme
Court is “not a normal court,” but rejected calls to expand it. We’ll
have more on the latest Supreme Court rulings later in the broadcast.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to allow a homophobic website
designer to discriminate against gay couples because it violated her
faith was hardly a surprise. The conservative majority on the Court has
made it loud and clear that its role is to fulfill the fantasies of the
right. It may draw the line at some of the wilder dreams, like the idea
that legislatures can overturn popular votes,
but on core beliefs it has been extraordinarily consistent. The
decision last year to overturn five decades of precedent allowing
abortion removed any doubt.
Still, the decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis
is shocking for its unalloyed willingness to discount LGBTQ+ protections
and even mock the Court’s minority’s vigorous defense of them. In his
majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch has picked up some of Justice
Samuel Alito’s sneer as he chastises fellow Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the
author of the dissent, for engaging in “an unfortunate tendency by some
to defend First Amendment values only when they find the speaker’s
message sympathetic.”
While the full impact of the decision will take a while to unfold,
some things are already clear. Here are five takeaways from the
decision.
This was always going to be the outcome. The right
wing of the Court has been looking for an excuse to elevate the rights
of conservative Christians at the expense of LGBTQ+ people for a while.
This case was the perfect vehicle. So what that Lorie Smith, the owner
of the firm in question, never made a wedding website in her life. So
what if no one actually asked her to make one. So what if the case
included a fake request from someone who turned out to be a straight man. None of that mattered.
A normal Court would not be ruling in the case of someone who is asking
hypothetical questions. Smith hasn’t suffered any harm, a basic
threshold for seeking redress. Instead, this Court plowed ahead because
it has been heading in this direction for years. From its ruling in the Hobby Lobby case,
granting a corporation the right to withhold contraception access in
employee health care plans because the owners are Christian, to its
rulings allowing a public school football coach to pray on the field and allowing anti-gay Christian schools to get public funds,
the Court has been elevating the rights of conservative Christians. The
most recent ruling is just the logical, if reprehensible, next step in
that progression.
The Supreme Court’s decision represents a huge setback for equal protections for LGBTQ people and our rights across the nation.
Although
the precise question presented before the Supreme Court was whether a
website designer would be required to prepare a wedding website for a
hypothetical LGBTQ couple despite her religious objections to same-sex
marriage, the impacts of this decision will reverberate throughout the
American economy as businesses may feel emboldened to more freely
discriminate against LGBTQ people on the basis of the private religious
beliefs of their owners or employees.
In other words, the impacts will extend to more than just wedding websites.
To LGBTQ Pennsylvanians, the latest ruling may feel like simply an extension of the recent backlash we’ve been experiencing.
In Pennsylvania, we have seen campaigns against transgender kids come to our local school boards, most prominently in Bucks County, where some districts have launched a crusade against all things LGBTQ-related. Whether banning Pride flags in classrooms, removing books containing LGBTQ content from school libraries, or censoring teachers for acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people, opponents of equality have recently found new life in the commonwealth and will certainly be invigorated with new ideas spurred by this Supreme Court.
Meanwhile
the hate merchants turn on one another. We see it with MTG's expulsion
and we see it in reaction to Ron DeSantis' homoerotic but anti-LGBTQ+
ad. Ari Drennen breaks it down in this Tweet.
She is so right and it is
really hard to feel sympathy for Caitlyn Jenner who may very well be the
dumbest woman alive today (unless Casey DeSantis holds that title).
Chelsea Steiner (THE MARY SUE) notes:
As Ron DeSantis fumbles his way toward the Republican nomination for president, he’s made headlines for his inability to resemble a human being while running for office. And after pissing off white women and displaying less charisma than Jeb(!) Bush, DeSantis has alienated yet another potential group of voters: LGBTQ Republicans. Thanks to his bizarre homophobic campaign ad, the Florida governor now finds himself at odds with the Log Cabin Republicans, New York Rep. George Santos, and even Caitlyn Jenner.
Of course, it’s absurd that these Republicans were considering supporting DeSantis in the first place, given his deeply homophobic and transphobic track record. But that rarely stops gay Republicans from voting against their own self-interest. I mean, you have to be aggressively homophobic to turn off these voters. After all, they’re fine with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, but they draw the line at supercuts of Patrick Bateman, GigaChad, and drag queens!
LGBTQ Republicans say they feel misled by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
(R) after the GOP presidential hopeful’s “war room” shared a bizarre
video widely seen as inflammatory.
The video bashed former President Donald Trump’s (R)
support for the LGBTQ community and leaned into conservative state
policies passed under DeSantis this year that were criticized as
anti-LGBTQ.
LGBTQ conservatives, reacting to the video, said DeSantis had shown
his true colors as an “anti-LGBT champion,” undermining his arguments
that his support for the policies were about protecting children and
parents’ rights.
“It’s like he’s going mask off,” said Brad Polumbo, a Michigan-based libertarian journalist. “The cat’s out of the bag.”
Polumbo said he’d have considered voting for DeSantis at one time.
“I’m somebody who has my fair share of policy disagreements with
DeSantis, but I was considering voting for him in the primary before he
entered the race officially,” he said. “Since then, he’s done thing
after thing that really makes me increasingly write off that
possibility.”
Surprise, surprise, you
weren't really welcomed by the haters. David Brock made that mistake in
the 90s. MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA is one way he tries to help others
avoid making the same mistake he did.
While Trump’s first run for president featured what seemed like signs of
a thaw in the right-wing war on LGBTQ equality, his time in office was
marked by policies that enabled discrimination against queer and trans
people. The Trump administration banned trans people from serving in the military, advanced an interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that would allow employers to fire people for being gay, and at one point threatened to define “transgender” out of existence.
A
Fordham class reunion at the White House didn't see the occupant
welcoming a trans woman. No, kids, that was Bully Boy Bush and his Yale
class reunion at the White House.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his organization Children's
Health Defense are fans and promoters of James Corbett, a Sandy Hook and
9/11 conspiracy theorist who has claimed that “Hitler was a Rothschild”
and “Hitler and the Nazis were one hundred percent completely and
utterly set up … by the international banking community and the
international crony capitalists.”
Kennedy has thanked Corbett for his supposedly
“extraordinary work for keeping the public informed,” and Kennedy’s
anti-vaccine group has featured Corbett in numerous videos and at a
recent symposium.
Trump and several associates have been praising
Kennedy’s presidential campaign, with longtime Trump adviser Roger
Stone stating that the Democrat’s candidacy will help “soften Joe Biden
up for his defeat by Donald Trump.” Right-wing media figures, including former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon, have also been propping up his candidacy.
Kennedy’s connections to Corbett add to a growing list of
the Democratic presidential candidate’s right-wing media associations,
including but not limited to:
- Appearances on programs hosted by right-wing personalities, including Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Stew Peters.
- Promoting and partnering with QAnon and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists.
- Appearing as a “featured” speaker on the right-wing, pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour.
- Promoting right-wing organizations Project Veritas, The Epoch Times, and Judicial Watch.
- Conducting outreach to neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic accounts on the far-right platform Gab.
Corbett is a fringe online host whose website describes him
as providing “breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and
false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics,
geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more.” In a 2009 interview,
Corbett said he was inspired to become a media figure in large part by the work of 9/11 conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Junior's
destroying his own campaign with all the heavy petting he's been doing
with these hate merchants. Expect John Stauber's head to explode this
morning as he rants about George Soros while attacking MM for their
Junior report and bemoaning the fate of his MTG and the implosion of the
group Caitlyn has just left -- a group that John Stauber approves of
and has been promoting for months -- again, Rebecca called it months
ago
"john stauber is the 21st century david horowitz."
Again, the hate merchants need to be called out.
While
Katie Halper has yet again made nice this week with convicted pedophile
Scott Ritter, actual leftists on YOUTUBE have tackled real issues --
that's Olay above, that's THE VANGUARD, that's Kyle, that's Sam Seder
and THE MAJORITY REPORT, Nina Turner, that's a lot of programs. It's
only Katie Halper that sticks her head in the sand and prefers to
platform and promote convicted pedophiles.
I thought that was the wind down, but something on two of my favorite people, two friends, was just drawn to my attention:
Grammy Winning Singer-Songwriter and Style Icon Jody Watley welcomes the fabulous Vanessa Williams as a guest to “The Jody Watley Show,” on SiriusXM’s The Groove, Channel 50 for Episode 5.
Tune in on July 9th and catch the Vanessa Williams interview on The Jody Watley Show. 3 P.M. PST, 6 P.M. EST.
Vanessa Williams is one of the most respected and multi-faceted performers in the entertainment industry today.
[. . .]
Jody Watley, an
iconic figure in her own right, is excited to welcome VanessaWilliams to
“The Jody Watley Show” and engage in an enlightening conversation
about Vanessa’s illustrious career and enduring impact on the
entertainment industry.
The Jody Watley Show, a 2-hour monthly show airs every second Sunday
exclusively on SiriusXM’s The Groove at 6 PM (EST) / 3 PM (PST) and on
the SiriusXM app on smartphones and other connected devices, as well as
online.
SiriusXM reaches nearly 34 million subscribers monthly.
The Jody Watley Show is packed with the best of classic to contemporary R&B music and engaging conversations with surprise guests.
Watley is a celebrated singer, songwriter, producer, businesswoman,
and one of the architects of 21st century pop, affectionately referred
to as “The Queen of Cool.’
Renowned as one of the defining artists of the 80s with an influence
on style, music and pop culture, Jody Watley forged the template that is
now everybody’s playbook.
I will be listening, I hope you will be as well.
The following sites updated:
