Here’s Holly Fisher, aka Holly Hobby Lobby.
She seems nice.
She and her friends have been gloating over how all those libruls’ heads are gonna explode over the photo. Unfortunately, someone posted this:
Oops. Whose heads are exploding?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Yeah her followers didn’t appreciate that when I tweeted it at her.
Methinks there is a borkquote tag in there.
Also, vaguely related, WWJD? (note: satire intentional)
(Answers: Hover here if you don’t want to watch)
The Twitter API, I found, strangely chokes over tweets that include smiley faces. Fixed now.
priceless … this story is going on my FB page…..
I’m so impressed. Really. Can’t you see my impressed face? I mean come on, who wouldn’t be impressed by a bible, a gun, and a flag? Did I mention I’m impressed?
But, but, they are totally different for reasons.
We have an opportunity to make a real-life version of this strip from Atheist Cartoons: http://www.atheistcartoons.com/?attachment_id=965
Quick, we need a picture of someone holding one of Greta Christina’s books in one hand and a coffee in the other.
YES
Yes, Travis, the TRUE religion (or fried chicken).
So one of her Twitter fans asks if her finger is on the trigger—which wouldn’t be proper gun safety. They couldn’t look at the pic and tell that it wasn’t—a white spot confused them, and they couldn’t count up to four, I guess.
A good pair of pictures, not that it will bother some folks. Do the Christian fundamentalists not realize that the Supreme Court is all Catholics and Jews? There isn’t a Baptist in sight, nor any other flavor of “Real Christian”, but nobody cares any more. They probably would side with the Muslims if it came to oppressing the non-religious and the women.
I like stuff like this, where we show how American right wingers think a lot like Middle Eastern right wingers. But I feel like it is only an introduction to a much bigger, deeper topic, where we show how actually American liberals who live in cities aren’t so very different from Middle Eastern liberals who live in cities. The ultimate aim is to have the liberals have some awareness of their own relationship with the violent right wingers. Empathy and realism can work hand in hand.
Menyambal #10
tsk
You don’t know how many fingers she has.
And what is going on with her right wrist?
Clearly, there has been a huge misunderstanding here. One of these is a picture depicts a good woman and the other, by contrast, must be a picture of a bad woman, right?
Surely, you see that one of these pictures shows a patriotic and faithful citizen, a woman whom many see as representing goodness, possessing characteristics which a sympathetic audience would interpret as truly wholesome. She’s simply holding the common and natural token of her faith in one hand. This is a book, I don’t need to tell anyone here, that we all know of and which many of us have read. And her faith, incidentally, is something which she sees as foundational to the existence of her country and to the very idea of morality; her other hand is locked to the hand grip of the symbol and substance (as she and many like her see it) of freedom and power. I’m sure she regards this as an unquestionable right! With a gun, she seems to say with her smile, “You may think I’m a soft woman, but go ahead and mess with me”. Behind her, the banner of not just her nation or people, but of her own identity.
Of course, the other picture is of an American. I can understand why her followers would be upset.
@ # 13 add a legitimate greivance to the woman on the right: the second line in Arabic stats “she was raped in the police station”
There are so many stacked and compounded cruelties layered one on top of the other, not just with the juxtaposition of the photos, but in the stories behind each person.
Fisher’s followers might object that she never bombed any buildings or, indeed, killed anyone. Yet, Fisher seems eager to be associated with a device that is expressly manufactured to kill people — many people, quickly.
The two women must have perceived their own role in conflict in different ways. Lewthwaite didn’t strike me as sporting bravado; Fisher is nothing but bravado — her ridiculous “exploding heads” remark only underscoring it.
Other than those differences, the symbolism of the photos is otherwise fairly similar. Both use militancy — one seeks to downplay her militancy with street clothes, the other wants to magnify it with additional gear — both juxtapose a portable, deadly weapon with the regionally understood, cultic reason why her attitude is “okay”; both stand before a regional altar.
Amateur:
Love the analysis.
Also, they all could be said to be symbols of power. Freedom perhaps as well. Could there be a third?
Lucky for her the words in the book are powerless to enforce themselves, like they might have if the magical thinking contained in it were real. On her wrist, she defies Lev. 19:28.
I like to state the obvious, Tony. Not sure how I feel at any given moment about The Obvious as an object, but the obvious does tend to be a lot more interesting (to me) than what I think about the obvious — whether this-or-that is true (or not).
Do you see a third? Maybe even just candidates for a third (or fourth, fifth and sixth?) I’m interested.
…here is something else, meanwhile: The woman on the right is something of a convert, right? For her, the book and the gun and the banner — and the gear and everything else — is soaked with fresh meaning that transcends her experience. I’m not so sure she takes any of it for granted. She might, to some extent, but it isn’t status quo and it must be something she sees as something under constant attack — something she proved to be worth killing and dying for.
The woman on the left takes all of these things in her frame as granted. I’m guessing, but I think I’m right. She takes the Bible as simply granted. She takes guns as being an extension of a certain mode of common American expression. She takes as granted that the American flag is the only flag. She is a “first citizen” (Liberals being “second”) She takes as granted these and even her own demeanor and right to express her thoughts, the middle-class house with its tidy lawn on a quiet street, three meals a day and spending money; all of it is definitely status quo.
Not a coffee, but a cyberpistol.
Fucking perfect.
(‘course, I’m old enough that both photos remind me of this. Long time ago for sure.)
Maybe I’m not smart enough to get Twitter, but I only see the Holly photo. The Al Qaeda juxtaposition photo is nowhere except here. Can someone point me to where it is? I’d love to see exploding teabag heads.
Amateur #18
Why is the woman on the right “something of a convert”?
—
Chas
First thing I thought of.
Amateur:
a third…
The guns they each wield-symbols of masculine power
The holy books the each hold-symbols of their faith, derived from their “father”
The flags on display-symbols of patriarchal power
There’s irony there. All three symbols are important to the identity of each woman. All three are strongly masculine symbols.
chigau @18:
I did a Google image search of the joint image, and this was one of the results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Lewthwaite
Are they the same woman?
bolding mine
By that, I mean ‘is the woman on the right the same as the woman from my wiki link?’
Ule Stevenson:
If you do a google image search, you’ll find that image.
My wikipedia link was right. The woman on the right is Samantha Lewthwaite :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2170301/Samantha-Lewthwaite-Chilling-terror-notes-7-7-bombers-widow-began-life-Home-Counties-schoolgirl.html
And as amateur deduced, she is a convert.
(amaetur, that nym so doesn’t apply to you)
This is brilliant.
Not a coffee, but a pen.
#20 ChasCPeterson – but her parents were rich enough for her not to have committed a crime.
@ChasCPeterson #20:
Yeah, but the SLA was left-wing, Patty Hearst’s sentence was commuted by Jimmy Carter, and then she was eventually pardoned by Clinton. I think that might be the trifecta of anti-Americanism to some conservatives, possibly a capital offense.
Regarding Holly Lobby, at least she isn’t wearing a “Pro Life” shirt like she is in other photos, as it would be a little inconsistent with the bible and rifle (or do two wrongs make a right?).
Let’s look at some of the consequences of being an armed society with weak gun laws.
While the overall rates of violent crime are somewhat comparable with the UK, the murder rate is four times higher in the USA, and that’s even with nearly five times as many convicted felons behind bars.
When criminals know there’s a good chance they’re going to be facing guns in the course of their crimes, strangely enough, they aren’t deterred, they simply seek armaments for themselves. And, of course, in a country awash with guns with virtually no effective legal restrictions on sales and secure storage, they’re trivially easy to obtain. Citywide bans, and even statewide bans can be circumvented by a day trip across city/state lines.
And once the criminals are armed to the teeth, what happens?
You get S.W.A.T. teams around the country armed with military grade hardware smashing their way into any place that might house a criminal suspect.
In other words, you get an arms race.
Yes, there are responsible gun owners. At least, they’re responsible gun owners until they forget to unload their gun before cleaning it and send a bullet into their neighbor’s home, or they leave it where their grandchild can find it and use it to kill herself (a friend’s parents did that), or he gets into an argument with his wife and shoots her, committing suicide afterwards (another person I knew). All responsible gun owners… until they weren’t.
But for all the responsible gun owners, there are plenty more legal gun owners who aren’t. Women are actually less safe in homes with guns in them than without, because they are more likely to come to harm from the gun of someone they know than someone they don’t. There are gun owners like George Zimmerman with a chip on their shoulder out looking for trouble and taking the law into their own hands (now, more than ever thanks to stand your ground laws). There are gun owners who do not secure their guns from the children in their home, as illustrated by the endless stream of accidental shootings of kids on a daily basis.
Mass shootings (three or more victims) are a once in a generation event in other modern democratic nations. Only in America have they become a monthly, almost weekly occurrence. Even accounting for population size, the USA has a large lead in the mass shootings numbers game.
The fallacy of the “You have nothing to fear from a responsible gun owner” argument is that it doesn’t account for all the collateral damage living in an armed society with lax gun laws brings with it.
The problem with insisting on the right to bear arms, is that it’s often someone else who suffers the inevitable consequences of that right you claim.
Whoops — that was supposed to be a comment on the current “gun-nut” thread over at Dispatches, where some kind soul of a gun owner has taken it upon himself to educate us on how non-threatening and law-abiding responsible gun owners are.
It doesn’t seem to be working…
“with guns in their hands and god on their side” — Bob Dylan.
In one hand they have the symbol of their faith in the other hand they have a book.
RevBDC #1 – good one!
Perusing her Twitter feed, I notice she retweeted some stuff by James Woods. When the hell did he go off the deep end?
Two thousand words, truly spoken. Nice job, whoever it was juxtaposed these.
Different continent. Same shit.
ah, I do love the scent of hypocrisy in the morning. Nice to see that “Holly” doesn’t believe in the bible she’s holding any more than I do.
@damien75 #28
Ooh, yes. Much better. Or a laptop.
Yeah, a laptop!
Unless there is a symbolism for a cup of coffe that I am not aware of?
Rev. BigDumbChimp @1. Sometimes a juxtaposition in imagery just lights the heart and brain on fire. I trust this pairing of images will go worldwide because it is captures the triune folly of time: the flag, the bible and the gun.
Pure poetry!
And amateur @ 15. “There are so many stacked and compounded cruelties layered one on top of the other, not just with the juxtaposition of the photos, but in the stories behind each person.”
Your phrase, ‘stacked and compounded cruelties’ is so very well arranged that I wanted to say a big thank-you for your looking into this as you have. When we allow flags, bibles, guns to trap our reason, we go fuzzy in vision. The stories behind each person is where we need to go, as you say so simply and clearly, but just watch the shitstorm that follows, all bombs bursting in air, all the fumes of hatred fartbooked and twittled… Not much interest will be shown in human beings, where they learned this peculiar brag into photography, this great love.
No symbolism in the coffee. I was just incorrectly remembering the comic and thought the “militant atheist” was holding a coffee, not a beer.
Just to be clear, I did not create that image.
To be fair… “Hearst later alleged that she had been held in close confinement, sexually assaulted and brainwashed.”
Very well said.
(except for the missing punctuation)
Pretty sure the coffee cup and/or coffee urn have been claimed as symbols for the UU church.
Thanks Obama!!1!1, who is from Kenya originally, donchaknow(?) She’s just a pigeon to cover Obummer’s leftist radicalism. She’s doin her patriarchal duty to take the rap, lettin the Bummer continue corruptin this God Blessed Merica. She deserves all the shame we can heap on her, she revels in shame. /snark
Cosmas@14 – also, I don’t think Samantha Lewthwaite has ever been arrested (efforts of police notwithstanding); consequently, I think the line about “she was raped in the police station” may have been added in error.
@ #36 nich
Always was a right-wing nut. He’s an actor. He portrays characters the opposite of his actual personality. “Lefty” movies like Salvator or others in which he acts “warm and fuzzy” are just jobs. He stayed in the “conservative closet” until he got a twitter account in 09.
@ #48 dannysichel
Good catch. It’s impossible to evaluate the claim definitively. The claim my be a lie for propaganda. That said, you can be in a police station without having an arrest on your record. No way for to know.
So, a picture of two fanatics with not an awful lot seperating them in terms of religious ideology other than geography and the emphasis placed upon covering one’s hair while female.
Well, that didn’t go exactly to plan for Holly, now did it? We can expect incessant whining about ebil libruls being mean to an ‘innocent’
gun-toting fanatic‘American partriot’ in three… two… one…Oh, and that muffled wet crumping noise you can hear – yup, that would be conservative heads exploding. Don’t stand too close or you may risk getting some kind of loosly brain-analogous material on your clothes.
Just remember if you don’t support the lady and values depicted on the right, you must support the lady and values depicted on the left. Or vice versa depending on company/geography.
There are literally no other choices.
None.
Not one.
Never.
Nuh uh.
Unpossible.
Louis
If you go by the symbols depicted in the photos, there aren’t really other choices. If you allow outside context, there are lots of others, but then you might want to consider that the symbols themselves aren’t saying what you think.
PZ: “She seems nice.”
Maybe it’s just me, but the gimungous firearm kind of negates anything I might conclude from the friendly expression on her face. No question that she’s attractive, but I’ll assume that PZ meant “benevolent” in this context.
And I don’t mean this in any snarky way, but PZ’s statement shows bias. Given a similar picture of a white American man, even with a beaming, friendly smile (e.g. not a smirk or sneer) would you conclude “He seems nice”? If either of them were anywhere near me, I would conclude that they were potential threats (I don’t know if the gun is loaded or why they are smiling). Hopefully, I’d have the sense to try to run for help or seek cover.
Given the rest of the symbolism, I can also probably conclude that they disagree with me politically. I don’t know if she’s “nice” and don’t really care much. She may be very kind to her friends, but I have some reason to think she would be intolerant of my views.
“If either of them were anywhere near me, I would conclude that they were potential threats”
Note that if either was a soldier in uniform, I could change my assessment, though the Bible would be a bit incongruous. If I’m not mistaken, that’s one reason we have uniforms, to make it possible to identify “friendlies” even if they are otherwise in a position to kill you.
The only difference I see is cleavage.
PaulBC:
Yeah, it’s you. Learn to recognize sarcasm.
Huh?!? Is the implication that the Bible is nice and sweet and decent and not at all the sort of document you’d associate with the deployment of high-velocity shootbangkill assault rifles?
Can’t we bury that myth – that myth about those myths – once and for all? It’s a well-meaning but purblind fantasy about what the Bible and Christianity are all about, a product of the decent impulses – and confused thinking – in our modern civilization.
I don’t criticize you, since the strange idea that Christianity is a decent and wholesome moral creed saturates our culture, and lots and lots of seriously minded and thoughtful people fall under its spell in consequence, even agnostics and atheists. But the idea is a sort of macabre joke.
It’s a comparatively recent misinterpretation; and little to do with what’s actually in the horrible book itself. The real Christianity is the religion of the heretic-burning Calvinists and Counter-Reformationists; the Inquisition, and Christopher Columbus, and the hideous wars of rival churches.
If you don’t believe this, let me point out that Jesus makes it explicitly clear throughout the Gospels that he thinks the Will of God shines out of the arses of Moses and his genocidal sidekick Joshua, and other of the viler crims of scripture. Jesus very name, in fact, is a version of the name Joshua, so it’s not very difficult to discern the ideology that actually lies behind all this love your neighbour kiss-and-make-up camelshit. And indeed, that famous remark often attributed to Jesus –
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind……And……..Love your neighbour as yourself.”
– is in fact an instance of Jesus quoting from Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
Which he not infrequently does, as when, for example, he’s facing down Satan. We all know Satan, right? The embodiment of evil!!
Which in actuality demonstrates that Jesus is the embodiment of evil, since Deuteronomy and Leviticus are sort of DIY handbooks of murder, tyranny and oppression. These are the authorities this hero of the human race relies upon to silence and shame the Lord of Darkness.
If we’re going to understand the religious right, we’re going to have to make sure that we understand Christianity. Not that follow the letter of the divine law of course. ( They’d all be on Death Row. ) But what they think and do is far closer to what Jesus told them to than many people realise.
PaulBC #54: “S/he seems nice” is a meme. The context in which I’m used to it is usually that the person being referred to is self-evidently not.
Here’s an example.
@ PaulBC, 54:
I read PZ’s statement of “She seems nice” as snark, precisely because she is holding a gun, making her expression rather irrelevant.
I don’t claim to know what PZ’s intent was with the statement, but before you go overanalyzing it, consider sarcasm as a possibility. (In this case, a possibility that makes much more sense.)
they
Maybe PZ was being sarcastic and my own bias is at work here. I’ll accept that as a possible explanation. I don’t expect smileys around everything, but I don’t think there’s enough context here to make a call either way.
I had also considered that PZ’s conclusion came from things other than the picture itself. I have never heard of Holly Fisher. Maybe she’s better known than I thought, and is a good person apart from her politics.
Call me humor-impaired. I’ll take it in this case, and it’s largely besides the point. Whatever that weapon is, my immediate conclusion is that it’s a threat, making all other considerations secondary. (In other words, you are witnessing my liberal head explode, as predicted.)
Anthony K #59
Thanks. Not aware of that one. I will keep it in mind for future reference.
David Chapman:
That wasn’t my reading of hexidecima’s comment.
This reads to me like “NIce to see that “Holly” doesn’t believe in the message of peace, love, happiness, and joy that people claim are biblical principles any more than I do”
Then you haven’t been here for very long. It was obvious to me it was snark.
Well I can’t see how that figures. But I’m not so much interested in showing that Hexidecima, Randay or Bob Dylan are wrong, more in exposing Christianity for what it actually is. Maybe they would agree with me, but let’s state what the Bible and Christianity are explicitly, not in a way that’s ambiguous.
Oh crap. That totally came out wrong.
I didn’t mean to imply that hexidecima doesn’t value those things. Merely that xe doesn’t think those are biblical principles.
Damn. Sory hexidecima.
PaulBC (#62)
It was obvious sarcasm. PZ would never call a conservative fuckwit who flaunts her Bible and her gun, worships the flag, and cheers on the destruction of other women’s rights “nice.” That’s the context.
To be clear, I’m happy to hear that PZ was just being sarcastic. Speaking only for myself, I can easily imagine falling into the trap of considering a woman holding a weapon as somehow less threatening than a man holding the same weapon, all other things equal, such as benevolence shown by facial expression. This is obviously stupid of me, but I’m being honest. I really don’t think that this is “just me” and I’ll accept that PZ is more conscious of hidden bias than I am. This case is a gotcha for me, because I never even considered sarcasm, though it’s obvious in retrospect.
PaulBC:
There’s plenty of context. You need to be able to parse context better. Also, this isn’t something for you to decide to argue about forever on. Have you read the commenting rules yet? You don’t seem to be too good on getting the whole “threads are not about you” business.
A. Noyd #68
I missed the Hobby Lobby connection when I posted my first comment.
But I think actually the main thing I was missing was the existence of “seems nice” as a meme.
Well I got what you meant at any rate.
Inaji #70
Yes, I missed the point and apologized for it. This will be my last posting on this thread.
OH, SNAP!
True Christian values there, “killing in the name of…”
Fascism.
I went to twitter to re-tweet that but saw on her twitter page others referring to rape threats she’s receiving from “liberals” (I’ll assume those more liberal than her on guns and/or region). I didn’t see any rape threats on my phone (I may just have those people blocked), but sadly, I don’t doubt she’s getting them. Shes a parody of herself, and shitting on women herself, but again, misogyny has no political boundaries.
PaulBC – that’s ok, that’s part of what the comment threads are for, to clear up any confusion from reading the original post.
That bible doesn’t look like it will be an adequate backstop. She should try the King James.
madscientist:
Perhaps it’s meant to be used for target practice, rather than a backstop.
There’s the idea going around on her twitter that the difference between the two is Holly has FREEDOM! Which is probably true, I suppose. It doesn’t explain why Holly, in all her FREEDOM! is doing a good job of acting that way.
Some factual corrections:
So the tweet in the right image does say something like “Horrifying testimony that will turn your hair gray
The Azhari student that was raped in a police van.” Except the tweet in the right image is shopped. The text from the tweet is for a story involving another woman entirely, Egyptian university student Nada Ashraf, who was raped by a police officer. Attached to the original tweet was not the photo above but a news story from Al-Jazeera reporting on the incident with Nada giving her testimony. This is the original tweet with the testimony video rather than the photo in the right image:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-undated-handout-image-reem-slaleh-raiyshi-a-mother-news-photo/2867765
Thus the rape mentioned has NOTHING to do with the woman in the photo.
The woman in the photo is not British convert Samantha Lewthwaite either. People have thought it was her because of this misleading Daily Mail article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2167442/Sinister-web-diary-British-7-7-bomb-widow-Jihad-obligation-accept-says-blog.html
The woman in the photo is instead Reem Riyashi, a Palestinian suicide bomber who has been dead for 10 years:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-undated-handout-image-reem-slaleh-raiyshi-a-mother-news-photo/2867765
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reem_Riyashi
One thing I’d note is that even without the shop, doubtless Reem Riyashi considered herself a hero–and was considered such by many, many, many civilians in the Levant, with the hero-lauding only undercut by criticism not for her actions but because she was a woman and a young mother who had left her kids behind. She thought herself to have been fighting an oppressive, invasive, usurping power that had taken over her homeland and reduced the Palestinian state to shambles. How she thought she was doing that by blowing herself up and killing and injuring a random group of people, including Palestinians, doesn’t make much sense, but it’s still normalized as ‘justified defense’ in the Levant. I think in that sense, the similarities between the photos as representing a set of values as right, true, virtuous to their own people is on point, except that Reem, setting aside the fact that she fucked everything up by choosing the terrorist route, actually had legitimate forms of oppression to respond to. And of course, there is the matter of scope: one photo is a statement in-and-of-itself while the other is a banner for structured, active militancy.
also…if you’re legitimately interested in a careful, context-driven comparison of American Christian conservatism and a militant Islamist group in the Levant from someone who has encountered both first-hand, I’ve written this blog post on growing up in Hezbollah culture. It might prove more useful than a context-empty sensationalized comparison of two photographs.
http://aveilandadarkplace.com/2014/02/26/what-it-is-like-to-grow-up-in-hezbollah-culture/
Hiba Krisht:
Thank you for the corrections.
Maybe I’m just a twitter novice, but, why do both photos have the same date & time stamp and the same number of retweets and favourites?
It’s pretty different. You have a weapon for self-defense in one scenario, offense for the other scenario and then…well, Bible vs Quran, no explanation needed.
christiansteenhorst-baker
Read comment #82.
Cant 100% confirm this but someone is claiming to be the person who responded with the picture of the Muslim woman. He just said that his info and family members info/addresses/place of employment were posted to right wing internet groups. They are harassing them to the point that his work just fired him cause of all the calls and emails they are getting.
Here is this person thread about it on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/29zcj2/so_i_tweeted_at_holly_hobby_lobby/
Mass shootings (three or more victims) are a once in a generation event in other modern democratic nations.
They happen fairly frequently here in Canada. Our overall gun violence rate is far lower than yours, likely due to our restrictions on handguns, but spree killers tend to use long guns, and long guns are not tightly regulated in Canada.
http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/06/review-true-enough-by-farhad-manjoo/
whynot, I wouldn’t say mass shootings happen fairly frequently in Canada. They seem to happen several years apart. They certainly don’t happen at a level anywhere near what you’d expect if they happened at a similar per capita rate to those in the US.
Samuel Adams, the Islamist woman in the picture would no doubt have argued her weapon was every bit as defensive as that of Holly Fisher. As for the Koran and the Bible, both are equally full of violence and sexism. The Bible has, and continues to be, used as a justification for violence and bigotry every bit as much as the Koran.
Neither weapon is for defense. That would be something blocking bullets. Both weapons are offensive. Why don’t you acknowledge that simple fact, all firearms are offensive weapons…..
whynot wrote:
While long guns are easily available to Canadians, they are still regulated far more than in the U.S.: Safe storage of these rifles is encoded in law, and there is a small firearms safety course that is required before you can own one. The “Open Carry” nonsense you see happening in the States would result in the idiots being arrested over here if they tried something similar.
Oh really?
Why do US xians need semi-automatic rifles? Xians make up 70% of the USA. They are almost all of the elected officials. They don’t face persecution. They do sponsor xian terrorism, a serious problem in the USA. In fact, I and many people on Freethoughtblogs have received countless death threats from xians. On a good day, PZ Myers has gotten up to 100 death threats.
You mean you have no explanation because you know nothing and can’t figure out how to find anything out.
The bible is pretty ugly. Stoning disobedient children to death, selling your kids as sex slaves (Exodus), genocide here and there. People who have read both say they are about equally ugly, but the bible might have a slight edge.
You have no explanation for why and when your mind stopped working? Without a history and a neurological workup, probably no one knows. Or cares.
and then…well, Bible vs Quran, no explanation needed.
When the first young lady blows up a marketplace filled with innocent people let me know. Until then the idiotic comparison is like apples and space shuttles.
I’ve got a better idea.
How about when the first xian terrorist assassinates an MD or blows up a family planning clinic. Hmmm, that happened a few decades ago.
Well how about when the first xian firebombs a mosque. Oops, they’ve been doing that for decades too.
The two terrorist attacks nearest my house both were done by xians. Some guy got in a shootout with the police while on his way to bomb an envirnomental group. And the local xians firebombed the local mosque.
Congratulations, you were able to name 2-3 incidents of “xian” terrorism in this country. When was the last incident of Islamic terrorism?
You don’t know because you’d need a crawling news ticker and a player program just to keep up.
Forty years and 55,000,000 abortions since Roe, and you still need to trot out the same dogeared list of 3-4 abortionist deaths to prove “duhhh,TERRRRoRRismmm, duhh”.
There is no comparison.
Xian terrorism has been a serious problem in the USA for decades. They are violent and occasionally killers.
We should know. Many of us have gotten death threats from them.
But I don’t see any reason to carry around an automatic rifle. I just hand them over to the local police and the FBI. We know how to deal with terrorists. Arrest them, try them, send them to prison for breaking our laws.
There you go. Eric Rudolph bombed two family planning clinics, a bar, and tried to bomb the Atlantic Olympics. He killed two people and wounded dozens more, some seriously. He is presently on death row.
Lying all ready. It doesn’t take long.
Xian terrorists have assassinated 7 MD’s in the last few decades. They’ve wounded around 200 people.
I could name dozens of xian terrorist incidents in the USA. The two I mentioned were just the two nearest my house, you idiot. Xians are historically and currently as violent as they think they can get away with.
Xianity started with a supposed murder of some guy on a cross. It’s been soaked in blood ever since. Between the heretic hunts, witch hunts, sectarian wars, Inquisitions, Crusades, and atrocities against aboriginal people, xians have killed tens of millions of people.
PS The last mass murder in a marketplace by xians was probably in Northern Ireland, not much more than a decade ago.
Catholics and Protestants have been killing each other off and on for 450 years.
“Eric Rudolph!”
*click whirrr”
“Eric Rudolph!”
*click whirrr*
“Scott Roeder!”
*click whirrr*
“Scott Roeder!”
*click whirrr*
ZOMG!!111! THEM XIAN TERRRRRURISSSTS ARE EVERYWHERE!!11!!11!
“The last mass murder in a marketplace by xians was probably in Northern Ireland, not much more than a decade ago.”
OH NOES!! HOW CAN THE REPUBLIC STAND MUCH LONGER?!?!?
None of which, of course, has anything to do with the young lady in the photo.
The fact that you reach back centuries to the Inquisition and the Crusades is pretty pathetic isn’t? Especially since Islamists kill more people every day before breakfast than “xian terrorists” kill in half a century.
Well they are. You clearly a xian terrorism supporter. You are also clearly stupid, you’ve already run out of coherent thoughts. It’s a xian thing.
It’s easy isn’t it, to support xian terrorists. A religion of hate produces mindless religious fanatics by the millions who will kill without thinking about it.
There really isn’t any difference between xian fundies and Moslem fundies. None, whatsoever.
We in the West have just spent 400 years putting xians on a leash and stuffing them in a box. Thanks to the Enlightenment, xians no longer can kill whoever they want. They really hate the Enlightenment, democracy, and the rule of law. It really dropped their dead body count way down.
Same type of religion, same reasons.
Most of the people the Islamists kill are other Moslems. Most of the people the xians killed were and are…other xians.
The difference between the Middle East and the USA is real simple. We don’t let religious kooks like you and Ms. Holly Hobby Lobby run around loose.
It’s the mark of civilized countries to make sure the religious fanatics don’t massacre millions.
Did you know Hobby Lobby pays its employees almost double the minimum wage?
Yet you’d try to boycott them out of business (HA!) while turning a blind eye to Joe Blow Inc. down the street who is paying their employees half that, just because they pay for a $20 bottle of BC pills each month.
Seriously, how fucked up does one’s perspective have to be to ride in that kind of clown car?
Rationalize all you want, but there’s no comparison to be made, no comparison at all, to the behavior of a handful of zealots in this country over the last few decades and the destruction and wonton murder that occurs on a daily basis at the hands of Islamofascists.
The fact that you post a photo of some young girl you don’t even know and, simply by virtue of the fact that she holds a gun and a Bible, compare her to a murderous Islamic extremist speaks volumes about your mindset, so totally bereft of logical thought and perspective it is.
No. It’s probably not true either. Xians lie and then lie some more. It’s one of their 3 main sacraments, the other two being hate and hypocrisy.
BTW, I did in fact, spend a few hours researching Hobby Lobby. They do pay above minimum wage. They don’t have a uterus police. Yet. The employees weren’t too happy but they weren’t too miserable either.
They have a history of discriminating though. They like to hire young, white women. If you are an older women or a nonwhite, forget it, you won’t get hired.
It’s light years beyond your tiny mind. A supporter of xian terrorists, follower of a violent religion of hate and lies. A troll.
Your perverted value system is beyond my mind as well. Whenever people like you threaten to kill me, which is often, I just hand the info over to the FBI and keep going. I don’t care to understand terrorists, but as long as they are in prison, I don’t have to.
Which BTW, has happened. Two xian terrorists hacked my computer and got my real name and address. Things were pretty tense. Until the FBI arrested them and charged them with felonies. Death threats are felonies.
“We don’t let religious kooks like you and Ms. Holly Hobby Lobby run around loose.”
But Ms. Holly Hobby Lobby and I ARE running around loose. Just like tens of millions of others like us, and yet violence from us is so rare that it’s statistically negligible.
How do you square that in your fevered, paranoid imagination? Or does the truth not even register … or not matter?
So you’re exactly like the Muslim population? Good to know. Glad you have perspective on that. Oh wait that’s not what you were trying to indicate at all was it?
“Whenever people like you threaten to kill me, which is often, I just hand the info over to the FBI and keep going. I don’t care to understand terrorists, but as long as they are in prison, I don’t have to.
Which BTW, has happened. Two xian terrorists hacked my computer and got my real name and address. Things were pretty tense. Until the FBI arrested them and charged them with felonies. Death threats are felonies.”
Cool story, bro!
Wow, gotta say you’re honestly breathtaking. There aren’t many trolls who can be this noxious, this consistently, this fast. I tip my non-existent fedora to you dandi.
Actually, they are more or less the same. The truth bothers you so you lie.
Not impressed.
Dandi you win. You can lie, babble, and change the subject longer than I can stay interested. My time is valuable and I’m not wasting it on a troll.
Toss off some death threats if you feel like it. We get them often from xians. But remember, they are felonies and you could end up in the cell next to Eric Rudolph.
PS But do keep up the good work. I was a xian myself for 45 years. Thanks to people like Ms. Holly Hobby Lobby, Steve Green, and trolls like yourself, I’m now an ex-xian and a Militant Atheist.
“So you’re exactly like the Muslim population? Good to know. Glad you have perspective on that. Oh wait that’s not what you were trying to indicate at all was it?”
No, if we were like the Muslim population, people would be diving for cover every time a car backfired, lest they get a serving of shrapnel sandwich.
That’s the image of U.S. “xians” you’d like to perpetrate, however, it only exists in your imagination.
Unfortunately for you, the vast majority of Americans don’t buy it.
Really dandi? According to Pew research there are 1.6 Billion Muslims in the world. They make up 23% of the world’s population, and the second largest religion behind Christianity. How many of those 1.6 Billion people do you think are terrorists? Really? Because the answer is a fraction of a fraction. Exactly the same as the number of Christian terrorists, a fraction of a fraction. I had guessed from your post that you were tarring 1600000000 people as all being terrorists across the board, but thank you for confirming your bigotry.
I planted four trees today.
That elevates me above people waiving un-“holy books and guns.
Yes, I said it. I “demand” being considered more important than people who pose a threat to humans and humanity. Especially because of the two rock I had to dig out.
Seriously, get a freaking huge boulder out of the soil with a shovel and a pike axe and you will appreciate my heroism. No? OK, then at least appreciate the tree i placed there.
(fuck guns)
Y.
dandi seems to think that the fact that christian terrorists want to kill people but the societal circumstances in which they find themselves prevent them from killing very many (George Tiller and all those others like him, all the victims of the Oklahoma City bombings, etc, being “statistically negligible”) compared to islamic terrorists is somehow a fact to be celebrated.
It is rather easy to celebrate when you set your bar for success at the bottom of a cesspool.
A statement that can only be made by someone who has never actually seen a Muslim population, and yet somehow still thinks himself qualified to talk about what they do.
Was it not the Christian Bible that includes the admonition to “judge not lest ye be judged”?
Was it not Jesus Christ himself who talked about the beams and motes in ones’ eyes?
When the Roman soldiers came for Jesus, Peter drew a weapon in self defence and wounded one of them. Jesus admonished him. Bearing arms in self-defence is, per Christ’s own words, unchristian.
People like dandi and those who sympathize with him aren’t christians. They are all apostates to that faith.
“Dandi you win. You can lie, babble, and change the subject longer than I can stay interested. My time is valuable and I’m not wasting it on a troll.
Toss off some death threats if you feel like it. We get them often from xians. But remember, they are felonies and you could end up in the cell next to Eric Rudolph.
PS But do keep up the good work. I was a xian myself for 45 years. Thanks to people like Ms. Holly Hobby Lobby, Steve Green, and trolls like yourself, I’m now an ex-xian and a Militant Atheist.”
First of all, don’t flatter yourself. I doubt you’re even on anyone’s radar enough to get a serious death threat outside the ubiquitous “Ima fuck you up” type of rhetoric the anonymity of the internet seems to provoke in all sides. You’re just not that important or effective outside your little coterie of sycophants on this page or some other cesspit like Democrat Underground.
Secondly, the old “my time is too valuable to waste” is the full-throated warble of every self-styled “progressive” I’ve ever engaged on the internet who has no logical position to stand on and who is at a loss for words when the pack isn’t around to pile on, distract, go off on tangents, and generally snark and snipe their way out of carrying on a cogent argument. So you’re playing true to type as far as that goes.
But you go right ahead and pat yourself on the back in he morning over how you bested the neanderthal conservative in a game of wits, and how you courageously slog on bearing the banner of “truth” while dodging all those opponents wishing you harm. I’m sure all your Borg collective will cheer you on as you collect yet another Junior-high-level photo graphic and littany of talking points with which to win the battle of ideas.
Dandi if you hate and scorn us so much why bother sticking your head in here? Isn’t that a touch hypocritical?
This, this right here reeks of the dizzying scent of hypocrisy. You accuse raven of intellectual cowardice, of forfeiting and then patting themself on the back before going and giving a huzzah to their mates, yet you have to know your trajectory right? You’re angling for a banning, and for what?
dandi, I have no doubt you’ll be patting yourself on the back for how you bested the neanderthal liberals in a game of wits, how you courageously slog on bearing the banner of “truth” while dodging all those opponents wishing you harm. And I’m sure your christian conservative collective will cheer you on after the ban you’re fishing for as you collect yet another Junior-high-level photo graphic and litany of talking points with which to win the battle of ideas. Projection dandi, it’s not a good thing.
“Was it not the Christian Bible that includes the admonition to “judge not lest ye be judged”?
Was it not Jesus Christ himself who talked about the beams and motes in ones’ eyes?”
The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
–Wm. Shakespeare
And oh, how they do it loudly and longly in liberal circles.
They don’t understand it, but they quote it, or at least, the fortune cookie version of it.
“dandi seems to think that the fact that christian terrorists want to kill people but the societal circumstances in which they find themselves prevent them from killing very many (George Tiller and all those others like him, all the victims of the Oklahoma City bombings, etc, being “statistically negligible”) compared to islamic terrorists is somehow a fact to be celebrated.”
Well that’s just it, isn’t it? If Christianity were so full of the violent zealots that the Left portrays them to be, “societal circumstances” would not be an obstacle. Christians would be more than happy to “martyr” themselves to achieve their ends, which doesn’t happen precisely because they are not the murderous extremists you like to paint them as.
Even in the face of 50,000,000 abortions, which many millions of them consider tantamount to murder, they still exercise restraint to the point that the same well-recited list of half dozen or so individuals who have retaliated with violence-in-kind over the past four decades are the only ones you can conjure up when you speak of “Christian terrorists”.
Compare that to the number of Islamics calling for death and mayhem over the simple act of publishing a cartoon, and see how foolish is your comparison of the young lady in the photograph to the murderer you have set her against, as if there is some equivalency.
“Dandi if you hate and scorn us so much why bother sticking your head in here? Isn’t that a touch hypocritical?”
Well now, you’re all for “holding up mirrors”, aren’t you? This thread would make it appear you are enthusiastically so. Who in here is going to hold up your own mirror if not me? Right now this is an echo chamber, and an echo is not precisely a mirror.
Besides, I don’t hate you. I would simply prefer to light a candle than curse he darkness.
As far as banning goes, that’s pretty much expected. Goes back to the whole echo chamber thing. If even one or two of you have been educated by exposure to something outside the hivemind, it’s worth it.
Y’all have a good day now.
Acts of christian terrorists in the US statistically insignificant? What the fuck do you call the assorted white christians that have spent that last 300+ years forcibly converting, raping, murdering, and all around terrorizing any ‘uppity coloreds’ or ‘heathens’ throughout the US and many foreign nations? It was ‘Good White Christians’ that slaughtered the native peoples of the ‘New World’. It was ‘Good White Christians’ that hunted humans like they were pests and kept other humans as livestock. It was ‘Good White Christians’ lynching blacks all over the south, and it was ‘Good White Christians’ that used to trade photos of those lynchings like they were fucking baseball cards. It was ‘Good White Christians’ from the US that went to the Philippines to ‘uplift and civilize and Christianize’ the largely Roman Catholic inhabitants. It is ‘Good Christians’ that continue to refuse women the right to control their own bodies because of a lump of foreign cells. Don’t like abortion, get yourself a fucking vasectomy.
dandi! I expect you won’t manage to stick the flounce, and because not a single ass who decides to show up and be a brave hero can’t manage to quote properly, here’s some help – use this:
<blockquote>Place Text Here</blockquote>, which will yield:
A day or two ago I read an article–on Crooks & Liars I think–about a preacher who heard a prowler in his garage. As a “good” xian and a “good” gun-owner, he got his gun out and went to confront the person. Probably to his surprise, the intruder managed to get into a fight with him, wrestle away his gun, and shoot him. His wife was sensibly calling 911. If the preacher hadn’t had a gun, he might have stayed in the house and still be alive, or in the fight he might have just gotten a beating or even won if he only had a baseball bat hit the intruder fast by surprise.
Why does a preacher need a gun when he has god? Even with the gun he didn’t think that he might not have time to shoot first and ask questions later.
I was in the Swedish Air Force 1981-1982 -the meterological unit- and had to learn to use a sub-machine gun in basic training.
I was bloody scared every time we went to the gun range, since I appreciated the risk of accidents. No way I would have held a loaded automatic weapon like the woman in the picture.
What did that muslim women do to deserve that? Only one has her finger on the trigger.
dandi@119,
It’s not “violence in kind” to murder a doctor who has never killed a person, you lying scumbag.
See MattP@121.
Another lie, and a tediously unoriginal one. The fact that this site’s regulars are all opposed to Christian as well as Muslim terrorism does not make it an echo chamber, just a place where the commonality between Christian and Muslim extremists is recognised. If you want to see for yourself that it’s not an echo chamber, visit a thread concerning issues over which we disagree, such as this one – scroll down for the argument over GMOs, or this one, on the possibilities of interstellar travel. Besides, we regularly get liars for Jesus like you visiting, along with atheists libertarians and MRAs – and the occasional liar for Allah.
“As far as banning goes, that’s pretty much expected. Goes back to the whole echo chamber thing. If even one or two of you have been educated by exposure to something outside the hivemind, it’s worth it.”
If you’re in a room and you say something and a hundred people say you’re wrong, there’s a possibility that the problem is not the acoustics.
No, they don’t, that’s just dishonest rhetoric. Many of them claim it is murder, compare the number of abortions to those of people murdered by the Nazis, etc. – but if they really believed these claims, the non-terrorists among them would be in the moral position of those who knew about the Shoah and did nothing. If anti-abortion activism was really about “saving the babies”, the activists would be campaigning for ready access to contraception and education in how to use it, which are known to reduce unwanted pregnancies. That with very few exceptions, they don’t, shows them to be liars.
@ David Chapman 58
you entirely missed the point. If she believes the bible, the whole thing, then she is limited in her actions if they are based on it. Her actions show that she doesn’t believe in it any more than I do because she simply picks and chooses what she wants her god to have commanded. Her actions are the usual amazingly ignorant actions of a TrueChristian, who is desperate to believe that some magical powerful being agrees with her pathetic opinions.
dandi @119:
Ah, another fool that cares more for fetuses than women.
Incidentally, it’s not murder. Fetuses are not people.
First time I come back to read your blog in years, this is the first thing I see… and I nearly snort coffee all over my keyboard. Well done.
dondi, @ various, pre-flounce:
Which only means that anyone citing scripture should be suspected of being the devil.
In terms of the two people in the pictures, I can assure you that the one of the left lives a lot closer to me, and votes on the politicians and laws that govern my life. So, there’s no question in my mind which is more of a threat to me personally.
I also know which one lives in the more powerful, influential, and better-armed country. And which one therefore shapes that country’s policies. I know which one of these women should be more fearful of the other, generally speaking. Look at who’s invaded who. Check the body count.
There is, as you say, no comparison.
Can we count Christian terrorism in other countries that Christians in the USA celebrate? I mean, like the violence against lgbt folks in Russia, or the execution of lgbt folks in several African countries? After all, it’s cowards like Scott Lively who don’t have the guts to kill themselves, but exports Christian Love to other countries who have caused this. (At least, they like to brag they caused it.)
And let’s not even get into Christian massacres of Muslim populations in Africa. That’s totes not terrorism.
I mean, as long as we’re comparing terrorism in America (which is almost entirely perpetrated by Christians) with terrorism in war-torn countries in the middle east. We might at least include christian terrorism from other countries
Also, I’m curious what message Holly Hobby Lobby is trying to send with an instrument of murder in one hand, and a rifle in the other? I can only assume she means to tell me she gets her way because of God and guns. Basically, the same message as the person on the right.
So, yeah. Not all that different.
dandi #120
You aren’t that good.
Jesus is disappointed.
—
And the people pictured are women, not girls.
“Hivemind.” An ad hominem meaning, “You all agree on something that I have neither the intelligence nor inclination to understand. Therefore, you are wrong.”
Why is it that folks who acuse us of “hivemind” all sound the same?
I tried to clarify this issue at #58. The religious right are frequently very Christian in their ideology. They only appear hypocritical because our culture will not come to terms with what the Gospels ( largely by referencing the Old Testament) actually teach. Christianity is a profoundly hypocritical dogma, which poses as an inclusive and compassionate faith whilst advocating genocide, murder, mysogyny, homophobia, slavery, and the subordination of the human spirit. The essential problem in a nutshell is that Jesus is first and foremost an Old Testament guy, he spends his time relentlessly emphasizing that the Old Testament is the Word of God and things won’t be OK untill we return to the doctrines of Moses. ( One other very important issue however is that, just to spice things up a little, he also includes the idea of eternal damnation along with the ugly doctrines of the Pentateuch.) Since the doctrines of Moses are unequivocally appalling, modern liberal interpreters of Christianity manage to push this undeniable fact down into their unconscious minds, and reconfigure Christianity as something largely new and fresh.
In the last few centuries, as our civilization has begun to improve in some aspects, this foolish and blatant misinterpretation has begun to push earlier and more accurate readings of these documents out of the picture, untill now many people, especially those from a liberal cultural background, find it difficult or impossible to focus on them at all. Most people are unaware, for example, that Jesus instructs us to follow the Old Testament commands to kill people for disobeying its stupid fucking laws. ( Mark 7, Matthew 15 )
I agree with you about the bit from the Gospels you quote but such pacifist sentiments are just an element of the disengenuous message of fair-mindedness and compassion that the Evangelists are keen to project. Trying to turn the authority of Jesus against members of the religious right is not the way forward; based on a delusion about what Christianity actually is, it will have no traction with such people, who at some level, thanks to their cultural background, know that it’s profoundly mistaken.
I doubt it.
All I can say is that you don’t seem to be tackling the argument I’m attempting to make. Yes there is hypocrisy involved here, but the hypocrisy is that of the Bible itself. Her pathetic opinions derive from her culture, and her culture is largely founded on, not a transgression of or a perversion of, the teachings of Jesus of Nazerath, and Moses, Paul of Tarsus etc. ( Or rather what the Bible claims to be their teachings. )
It is of course highly true that nearly all these characters largely ignore the Christian opposition to money and wealth, its original socialist foundation; let me be clear about that: They are full of shit even with regard to their purported beliefs in this fundamental matter, I would have to agree. But this great truth should not mask the fact that in most other cases, the appalling notions of the religious right are not a product of ignorance or hypocrisy on their part with regard to their faith, but in fact red-blooded, original and unadulterated Christianity. Which is itself ignorant, hypocritical and murderous. They don’t need to pick and choose between these different and contradictory elements of their faith because the Bible makes it perfectly clear that there is no absolute morality outside of the Will of God. So; kill and maim and subordinate those whom God tells you to. And love and honour and treat with decency those whom God tells you its appropriate to love and honour and treat with decency.
I feel that this is an immensely important matter, because we will not be able to destroy this malignant thing untill we get perfectly clear in our own minds, and communicate to everyone else, what exactly it is. And one last point, all these accusations of mine apply with very little alteration to Islam as well.
Speaking of terrorism and the lie of extremist love, let’s not forget the terrorism of the very young in families as they are terrified and brainwashed with biblical horror stories. Do you have children, dandi? Do you tell them about what will happen to them in Hellfire if they do not love Jesus? Would you obey God’s voice in your head and tie your son to a rock to gut him? Read Hiba @ 82 and 83. Read very very slowly. Your mocking of the side by side mirroring in these pictures, reveals only how lost in ‘love’ you are, how full of blind hatred a man can be to be willing to murder his own child because the boss says so. But then, you wouldn’t gut your child for God, would you dandi? You are not that good a believer, I bet.
I’d like to introduce dandi to kalid.
I don’t think we have to worry about if they celebrate it or not. dandi was happy to allow worldwide Muslim terrorism to stand against domestic Christian terrorism, so he shouldn’t be opposed to widening the scope of the latter to worldwide, provided he has an ounce of honesty in his body. Oh, and you missed the modern witch hunts in your list.
So the best dandi can do to hold up a mirror was to shout “WAKE UP SHEEPLE!” and be a hypocrite? You know what would have been more convincing? Literally anything else.
I suspect dandi will be back when they figure PZ is, so they can get PZ to invoke the Red Letters of Death against them. They can then go back to their friends and brag about how they’re so wonderful and powerful PZ had to ban them.
I just spent a few minutes googling Holly Fisher.
1. She is just a routine rightwing nutcase who rants and raves on Facebook. And lies a lot.
2. She has a history of making vague threats against people she hates, which seems to be just about everyone.
And oh yeah, when she isn’t making threats, she claims to be “pro life”. I should have known, waving an AR-15 rifle around is just so, you know…”pro life”.
3. I do think her photo with the bible, gun, and flag is useful. Xians never, ever miss an opportunity to demostrate the complete intellectual and moral bankruptcy of their religion.
PS I’d ask this wannabe terrorist who she is going to shoot first, but xians aren’t good at thinking. She hates so many groups, it would take her weeks to figure out which one to eliminate first.
So TRUE, so SAD…hypocrisy is so rampant & so blatant but are “they” even insightful enough to realize?
Psych. case for sure ~ but most of “them” are!!!
I think the bible and the assault rifle complement each other perfectly. After all, the bible does say, “Peace be steel”. To be honedt, a bullet between the eyes is a great pacifier.
*reminds self never to allow caesar to babysit…well, anything*
Can I put this mirror down yet? My arms are aching.
Louis
dandi:
And the fact that so many of you are gun toting, government hating, bible thumping extremists is cause for alarm. In the United States, far right terrorism (which is almost always synonymous with fundamentalist christianity) is a far worse threat than Islamic terrorism.
Since the Oklahoma City bombings, there have been over 100 Right wing terror plots, conspiracies, or racist attacks in the United States.
caesar:
FTFY.
And the difference between the individuals has been (for the most part) honestly discussed in this thread, because those differences matter when parsing the shared symbolism of the two pictures. To those of us who see religion and nationalism combined with power as a pathway to the most evil, inhumane atrocities, your words are of little comfort.
Unfortunately, according to her twitter feed, she is being threatened with rape and violence. One of the things conservative and liberal women have in common I guess.
One is wanted in connection with murdering people in a shopping mall (but then again, this blog probably figures consumers in a ‘shrine’ to capitalism had it coming). The other is married to a man in the armed services and has killed no one, nor has given anyone (outside of those who believe inanimate objects control people) reason to think she’d want to.
PZ, don’t you have a child in the American military? How does (s)he block the incessant murderous messages coming from those guns and flags all the time? Inanimate objects never sleep. (s)he must have tremendous willpower to stand it.
The comparison between the two women is morally degenerate. A new low for you, PZ.
@dandi #95
The picture, as well as commenters here, point out a similarity in principle. You are, since start, arguing about differences in degree.
That is not how honest discussions should go.
Almost the same goes for md #153
On the contrary, it is extremely apt. Both of them decided, and then publicly declared, that their religion justifies and goes hand-in-hand with shooting people. One lived in a de facto war zone, the other wants to – as long as she’s on the side with the most and biggest guns, of course. Reem Riyashi thought she was sacrificing her life to defend her compatriots from military invasion and undoubted oppression (both of which are real. And she did die, horribly mistaken) while Holly Fisher lives comfortably in one of the richest countries in the world, with a democratically elected government – indulging a fantasy about gunning down any of her compatriots she doesn’t happen to like.
Holly Fisher is anti-abortion, pro-religion, and a gundamentalist. She’s already a danger. As Tony pointed out, it’s people such as herself who make up the growing faction of domestic terrorists in the U.S.
md:
The comparison is quite apt, which you’d know if you read the thread, or engaged in a bit of critical thinking.
The presence of the flag indicates both women embracing authoritarian, patriarchal government.
The presence of their holy books points to the supposed source of and authority behind their beliefs.
The presence of the gun represents their willingness to kill (these are killing weapons) to defend their beliefs.
Any difference between the two is a matter of degree.
So let’s see. The left is comparing a girl that is religious and has a husband in the military to a jihadist who wants to kill innocent people. Talk about a sad state of critical thinking by the liberals. This girl really did make you guys’ heads explode as you have declined into complete irrationality and stupidity.
Mark A
What a strange choice of words. The first woman just wants to kill non-innocent people? She wouldn’t kill them herself, but her husband might have a chance to do it?
Mark A:
Have you even *read* the thread? Many people have explained the reasoning behind their thoughts. As I said to md, engage your brain. Stop trying to be a psychic and read what people are saying.
Head explode? Not hardly, We get a good laugh at self-important reactionary yahoos who show their “importance” off in inappropriate ways, like brandishing firearms unnecessarily, or criticizing those who try to make the world a better and safer place by not being utter assholes who try to intimidate others with veiled threats.
I was mistaken at first, I thought it was the White Widow.
The details matter, of course, but the point doesn’t change.
Oh, I don’t think Reem was mistaken. I think she died exactly as she intended to. Some choice quotes from Reem Riyahsi
“I always wanted to be the first woman to carry out a martyrdom operation, where parts of my body can fly all over … God has given me two children. I love them [with] a kind of love that only God knows, but my love to meet God is stronger still.”
as to the blather about oppression and invasion and not having democracy, Reem was first, a wealthy Palestinian, sent by Hamas, to blow herself up. You’ve probably heard of Hamas, they are the ones now democratically elected to run Gaza and lob random missiles into Israel. This is the democracy Reem was clearly suffering a lack of back in 2004.
Reem is a murderer of random innocents. Holly is not.
md:
Again, it’s a difference of degree. Reem was willing to kill others in the name of her beliefs (whether political or religious).
Fisher may not have killed anyone, but it’s clear she’s willing to kill others in the name of her beliefs (whether political or religious).
That’s a *huge* similarity between the two. And it’s incredibly unethical and immoral.
Yea, because the shared symbolism in the two photos, religion combined with armed power and nationalism, is such a benign thing. Tell me again how the one is a glorification of religious war and the other is not.
The point you are missing, md, is that the reasoning is exactly the same.
I’m just going to quote Amateur @13, who offered a spot on analysis of the similarities between the two women:
You’re the one who seems to think that making this comparison is somehow a glorification of Reem, or somehow excusing her actions, not us. The comparison must have hit home if you think that. They’re both symbolic of the immorality of guns + religion + nationalism. Sure, one has directly taken it a lot farther than the other. Why is that?
Both Mark A and md have mentioned that Holly Fisher has a husband in the military. What does that have to do with anything?
md goes further to suggest that PZ’s son must have to block out murderous messages because he is in the military yet doesn’t seem to think that Fisher’s husband gets the same messages.
Their reasoning is also supported and encouraged by their governments, one of which is arguably the most powerful and dangerous country in the world right now. So there’s that.
You can take these two at face value and as PZ telling you these two women are the same or you can think a bit and see them as symbols of widespread reasoning that they are parroting just like a lot of their nationals. And behind it all, there’s religion, violence and nationalism. Just different brands.
The actions, you know the part where the killing happens or does not happen, is different. That is the crucial difference that I spot.
And you may not have killed anyone either, Tony, I can’t be sure, but its clear you are willing to smear anyone by the lowest possible tactics for exercising their freedom (for now) to engage in a religion different than yours.
So, md, where in that image do you see these ‘actions’? How does the image portray the woman on the right as the bad woman and the woman on the left as the good woman? Does it even give you the slightest moment of pause to consider that scary Muslim terrorists and the religious right in the U.S. both idolize the same imagery?
md:
I’m not smearing anyone. Holly is holding a fucking gun. Those things are designed to kill people. She’s holding a bible, where she derives her beliefs from. She clearly believes she’s a patriot. All of this together says “I’m willing to fight for my political or religious views and I’m willing to kill over them”.
That you can’t see this is ridiculous. It’s plain as day.
*eyeroll* Neither did PZ say or imply that she was, nor can you assume that anyone shares your taste in such matters.
…Yeah, she does, not Holly Fisher.
And besides, “violence in kind” wouldn’t quite be “holding the other cheek”, would it…?
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, a non-Christian said fairly recently.
Troll.
…You make it sound as if jihadists were atheists.
Oh, of course she’s not. She’s proudly posing like she wants to be one, though.
@2- Thanks Owlmirror. Just viewed WWJD on my daughter’s 54″ screen. Awesome. Noting the vid was there since 06, plus sa change?
The woman on the right is carrying a deadly weapon and a religious book.
She later murdered a bunch of people.
The woman on the left is carrying a deadly weapon and a religious book.
Is it a good idea to wait?
These are two images intended to draw a reaction.
Doesn’t the fact that you have to research who the two individuals are and whey they have each done or not done in order to find out how these two women are different kind of tell you something?
Images. Not biographies.
If you need biographies to point out the difference between the images…
…well, then you’re not pointing our differences between the images, are you?
(that’s a rhetorical question. You can google what that means.)
Ah, I see md is still the same disingenuous ignorant asshole as he ever was.
How is putting the picture of someone next to a similar picture of someone else ‘smearing’ anyone?
Also, thinking that this mildly amusing form of criticism is ‘the lowest possible tactics possible’ is incredibly dishonest, really, this is the worst the ‘left’ can do? Yeah the right certainly doesn’t use worse tactics. Moron.
Also, no one wants to stop her exercising her freedom to engage in a religion different than ours. Dishonest shit.
md, staying classy and dishonest as always. Lying idiot.
As if we even had a religion.
md:
I don’t have a religion. I’m an atheist and my criticism of Holly is bc she embraces right wing ideology which tells people “might makes right” & “be willing to kill in support of your beliefs” while justifying it as patriotism with the blessing of god.
What has gone wrong with my fellow Liberals? How in the world does anyone actually believe the Western “right-wingers” are worse, or even close to the deeply sexist, homophobic and violent culture generated within political Islam. Some people need to learn a little something about the world that we live in.
To go back to a point from earlier, I really hate these body count comparisons between religious terrorists. The notion of X is better than Y because they’ve killed less people discounts the greatest portion of the victims of terrorism. You see, the point of terrorism is not to kill, the point is to terrorise.
The people who are killed are a means to an end. The goal is to change the behaviour of those who the terrorist disagree with. And of course, dead people have no behaviours to change.
Every woman who cannot access proper reproductive health care is a victim of terrorism. The extremist who kill in the name of their religious belief that da baybeee’s* are sacred march the Overton window away from sanity at the point of their guns. They allow the quieter fanatics to appear rational when they merely try to legislate away the rights of women.
This body count comparison is facile to the point of stupidity and I wish it would stop.
*To be clear: fetus =/= baby.
Islam is there, Western “right-wingers” here in this good old US of A, setting off bombs (i.e. Oklahoma city), killing doctors, killing police, trying to intimidate the federal government, etc. What part of reality don’t you understand?
stanley234
You need to add context to your statement of belief about the relative dangers of religious fanatics. As Tony points out in 149 in the United States the danger of right wing Christian fanatics is far greater than that of Islamic fanatics. If you’re going to assert that people are claiming that American Christians are worse than overseas Muslims please quote those saying so with nym and comment number.
stanley234:
Many of us are quite aware of the harm caused by other religious belief systems. Some of us are also aware that in the US christianity is deeply sexist, homophobic, and violent. From my link @149:
This is but a handful of the 100+ incidents of Right Wing terrorism in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombings. Some people are ignorant of these. Others think that they’re somehow different bc they appear as isolated incidents (pay no attention to the ideology of the GOP which encourages these behaviors). No matter the reason, right wing ideology, which is often linked to fundamentalist beliefs (and 2nd Amendment worship), is a huge problem in the United States. You overlook that and focus on the violence committed by Islamic extremists. We’re in greater danger of domestic terrorist attacks–from people who embrace right wing ideology–than we are of extremist Islamic attacks.
I’ve no interest in playing “which religious belief system is worse” (they’re all regressive, authoritarian, patriarchal, misogynistic incoherent mythological bullshit). I don’t think there’s a way to determine that, and even if there was, I think it would be pointless. Even if Islam were the worst religion on the planet, what then?
The western “right winger” religious fanatics also have access to (and already control) a great deal more power than Islamic Fundamentalists could even dream of touching.
Your listing of “right wing” atrocities does NOTHING to challenge my point. There is simply no viable comparison to countries that use the Qur’an as law and for you not to recognize the major differences between a western democracy and religious autocracy only illustrates my point. Naive and inexcusable.
chigau @176. “The woman on the right is carrying a deadly weapon and a religious book.
She later murdered a bunch of people.
The woman on the left is carrying a deadly weapon and a religious book.
Is it a good idea to wait?”
First, I would hazard, no, it is a bad idea to wait. Second, I pissed my pants laughing laughing when I read your simply brilliant point! I wanted to argue it and kill some folks who distracted me but then I decided to change my wet clothes…. Praise jeebies that you are present…..
Stanley@234, you cannot see in the mirror but only what is reflected your way via western media…. The flag, the book, the gun…. It is not Us and Them you twit.
stanley234:
The difference is the danger they pose to us. I am far more likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than I am to be killed by a muslim terrorist. Well, unless I travel to a country in which muslim terrorists are active.
But then, many of my fellow Americans would be in danger of Christian terrorists if they traveled to some African countries, too, or even to some European countries, since those countries delight in killing or jailing “sexual deviants.”
The point isn’t the differences between the subjects of the two photos. We’re not saying Holly Hobby Lobby is going to martyr herself for her beliefs. The important thing is the similarities between the photos. And what those similarities mean for us nice protected 1st-world-problem folks here in the US.
Your argument is essentially a “Dear Muslima” argument. Sure, there are folks who have it worse than us. That doesn’t stop our less-troublesome problems from being actual problems.
stanley234:
Your point is “horrible shit happens in countries dominated/run by Islamic law–and I say it’s the worst in the world bc reasons”.
I’m trying to point out that “horrible shit happens in countries dominated/run by Islamic law–but the United States has a lot of horrible shit that happens in it bc of right wing extremists, many of whom are fundamentalist extremists”.
What good does it do to point the finger at Islam and say “you’re the worst”? What can be done about that? How did you determine that Islamic extremism is the big bad? Did you measure examples of religiously motivated violence in both countries?
Also, does that mean we shouldn’t pay attention to the right wing terrorism in the United States?
Do we have to wait until we somehow reduce the threat of Islamic extremists before we can pay any attention to domestic terrorism? Do we simply ignore incidents of domestic terrorism until that time comes?
Also, this:
Is not a view I’ve seen expressed in this thread. Maybe I missed a comment. For my part, I know that countries dominated by Islamic extremism have tremendous human rights violations. My point is that here in the United States, the threat of right wing terrorism is greater than Islamic terrorism.
That is becauseyour point is not a point.
1. The xians are over HERE attacking our society, sometimes with guns and bombs. The Moslems are over THERE attacking their society. We live HERE, not THERE.
2. I’m a lot more worried about xian terrorists than Moslem terrorists for real reasons.
3. The two terrorist attacks nearest my house were both by xian terrorists.
4. I and many others have gotten countless death threats from the religious fanatics. For some of us it’s in the hundreds, maybe even higher.
I have never gotten a death threat from a Moslem!!! They were all…xians.
PS Stanley when was the last time a Moslem country invaded and occupied a xian country? When was the last time a xian country invaded and occupied a Moslem country. I’ll even give you a hint. It starts with an “I” and is ongoing as I type.
stanley234:
Everyone else has ripped this apart already, but there’s one thing I can’t help pointing out, which made me chuckle. The US is not a democracy. I hope you’re not seriously under the delusion that we the people matter, make a difference and that politicians work for us instead of bowing to special interests of the rich and powerful. Though it certainly looks like powerful protection with your insults: “naive and inexcusable”.
(Hint: it starts with an O.)
stanley234:
I get your point. We don’t live in constant fear of being blown to bits by a martyr to some religion we barely understand. Well, unless you work at a planned parenthood clinic. And yes: there is a definite difference in culture between the US and, say, Syria. But there’s a difference between the US and Central African Republic, too. It’s not like Christians aren’t capable of mass terrorism.
This graphic wasn’t designed to whip liberals into a fear-frenzy in which we were scared the Christian majority was going to be just like the Muslim majority in, say, Syria. If you’ve read the comments, that should be obvious. This thread isn’t about stoking fear, but rather about schadenfreude; the right wing seems so caught up in many things, including the fear of Sharia law, and the worry that their own religion won’t dominate the public some day, that they don’t realize they’re emulating the symbols of the same group that terrifies them.
It’s that emulation of symbols that are simultaneously funny, and scary. Funny because, ha-ha, deep-seated and unrecognized hypocrisy. Scary because, violent symbols and uncritical nationalism coupled with religious zealotry. Like that has ever turned out well.
But we already know about those dangers.
No. The graphic is all about pointing out how the extreme right has no fucking self-awareness. It’s all about reflexive knee-jerk reactionary conditioning. “Oh, immigrant children are infected with ebola!” and, “They’re going to redefine marriage so my marriage no longer matters!”
They sell dog-whistles for a dime apiece, each with a different call. You seem to be caught up in the, “But the furriners are worse than us, so your criticism is invalid!” whistle.
Israel is the closest thing to democracy in the Middle East and most Arabs are against democracy and freedom. Say what you will about Israeli bullying and “apartheid” – We are being fed an ENORMOUS amount of Islamist Jew-hating propaganda. If Liberals are truly about Human Rights we should stop and get perspective before we support any more of the real horrors in these religious states. The vicious comments attempting to attack me for telling the simple truth only illustrate my point.
Oh, I see the problem. “Viciousness” is exactly as you see it, and others are not allowed to recognize any threats of violence coming from certain parts of their own society, because other societies have it worse, therefore comparisons with the motivations those other societies use to make things worse are not valid. Totally fucking bonkers.
stanley234:
Uhm, wut?
Nobody’s been particularly vicious. There have been several responses, yes. But none of them have been vicious. And you have certainly not responded to any of them.
Citation sorely needed. Why do you think Arabs (an ill-defined group — there are many different groups, most with divisions greater than the “liberal vs. conservative” divide that currently has the US, with it’s 200+year democratic republic paralyzed) are against democracy and freedom? Seems that’s what the “Arab Spring” was all about.
Interesting perspective. I’ve not seen much “Jew-hating propaganda” myself, but maybe you can help educate. Do you have a recent example of such propaganda?
Question: where the FUCK have you seen any of us support the real horrors of these religious states?
Because, really. That’s a non sequitur of epic fucking proportions.
stanley234:
I’m convinced you’re not even reading peoples’ responses. No one has said or intimated that they fail to recognize the atrocities going on in the countries run by Islamic theocracy. The point, for the umpteen billionth time is
“They have bad shit happening over there and we have bad shit happening over here. In both cases, much of the bad shit is due to religious extremism.”
Unlike you, we’re not trying to rank which type of religious extremism is worse (and you still haven’t addressed any of my points with regard to this). We acknowledge that atrocities committed in those countries is horrible. Unlike you, we also recognize that there are religious extremists in the United States. They pose a greater danger to the citizens of the US than Islamic extremists. You’ve yet to even acknowledge the fact that domestic terrorism exists in the US.
As for ‘vicious comments’…you clearly don’t know this blog or the commentariat well. You haven’t seen ‘vicious’ you whiny little tone troll.
stanley234:
Okay, this is a bit of piling-on. I can’t apologize, as I’m just writing my drunken thoughts down as they come to me, but I have a question for you:
Does advocating human rights here in the US negate advocating human rights abroad? Can we perhaps accomplish both? Considering domestic advocacy might end in positive results, and advocating for foreign policy has less chance to do so, does foreign policy completely trump domestic advocacy?
I’m curious, as your line of reasoning seems to suggest we can only be truly about Human Rights if it’s someplace far away, where we have little chance of actually changing anything, rather than right here at home, where we have a greater say.
So, should we overlook the lesser human rights violations, simply because someplace there exists even greater violations?
So basically…they’re giving us a Dear Muslima, with an actual Muslima involved?
Priceless.
Gotta love md upthread:
-“Filthy Muslim is evil because she killed random innocent people!”
-“Good Christian is good because she has a husband in the United States Military!”
I wonder if md has ever heard of how bombs work. Or if he is aware of the fact that United States isn’t as faultless and virtuous as it pretends it is. Ignorance does appear to be a strength to him.
Also: stanley, learn what confounding variables.
Also also:
Who is we? Because if you are talking about the U.S., you are spouting bullshit. The opposite side of the same coin that think the media is controlled by some giant Zionist conspiracy.
stanley234, perhaps you should spend some time reading Dispatches From the Culture Wars. It might give you an idea at some of the religious crankism going on in the US. Some of these folks, or the people they influence, are only a step or two away from violence. Others advocate policies that would limit the human rights of many Americans, including such things as access to contraception and freedom of conscience. If not for the fact that they hate Muslims they would support many of the Muslim governments in their efforts to restrict the rights of women and minorities, just as they currently support such activities in place like Uganda and Russia. (I personally suspect they will eventually warm up to Muslims as the number of Americans who oppose things like gay marriage decline sufficiently.)
stanley234:
Okay, so I went back over the replies to your posts, and the only thing I can find that really is name-calling rather than strictly an actual point is this, in raven’s #191:
And that’s because raven was pointing out something important: right-wing terrorism is far more important to us, since it affects us a lot more. Geographically-speaking.
And then raven goes on to point out why that’s important.
So, all-in-all, that’s hardly vicious at all. It’s like folks here were willing to give you a chance. Which makes it terribly unfortunate you didn’t bother responding rationally to the very-well-reasoned responses given you.
Actually, considering the specificity of the responses, and your complete inability to address any of those responses, I have to say: you’ve been treated like veritable royalty here. You certainly have nothing to complain about. Your complaining about “vicious comments” really doesn’t serve you well at all. It’s like a Christian claiming martyrdom for a paper cut.
Granted, paper cuts hurt. Especially if you pour lemon juice in them. Just ask Miracle Max.
What is truly astounding is that anyone could actually believe that the rants they’ve written here don’t absolutely illustrate thrust of my point. Methinks thou doesn’t protest too much.
correction: That’s “DOEST”
stanley234:
Uhm, maybe I don’t understand your point. I’ve tried responding to what you’ve written. Maybe you could tell me what you mean.
What’s your point, exactly?
stanley234:
Methinks thou needs to address the points made in response to you or STFU. Your point has been made. You’ve reminded people who didn’t need reminding that horrible atrocities occur in Islamic theocracies. Since no one here has denied that-on the contrary, we fully understand and acknowledge that- it was a pointlessly condescending exercise on your part. You refuse to engage with the substance of our comments, and you won’t even answer questions aimed at understanding where you’re coming from.
stanley234:
Also, what rants? I see a lot of questions you’ve left unanswered. Do you consider anything that questions your assertions a “rant?” Because really, that’s all I’ve seen in the responses to you. Folks asking you to clarify, or to provide data. Sure, some of those requests were a bit abrupt, but really, since you barge in with nothing but assertions, that’s no more rude than you’ve been.
So, are you going to answer those questions? Or are you just going to continue being obtuse?
It’s all up to you. Really.
(But believe me: folks who come after to read this exchange will know whether or not you’ve answered the questions, or just tried to dodge them, as you’re doing here. Folks aren’t as stupid as you seem to think.)
Avo:
?
How was this conclusion reached? No clue.
How does one rank human rights violations? No clue.
What’s the point in arguing that Islam is worse than Christianity? No idea.
Tony!:
(I’m not gonna say anything here you don’t already know. This is for stanley234.)
Right. It’s like the (very true) assertion, “There are places in this world that have greater poverty than the US!”
Absolutely!
Does that mean that poverty in the US doesn’t exist? Fuck, no! But that doesn’t mean poverty in the US isn’t a major concern.
“There are places in the world with worse racism than the US!”
Does that preclude racism in the US? Fuck, no! Does it mean the US doesn’t have a problem with racism? Again, hell no! Does that mean we should ignore the problem of racism in the US? What kind of question is that?
And that’s all I’m seeing from stanley234: “Oh, this one thing is worse in some other place, ergo it doesn’t exist here. Or at least, you shouldn’t be paying attention to it.”
Fuck. That.
What disturbs me most is stanley234’s martyr complex. “Oh, you all are picking on me because I refuse to answer your questions. Halp! Halp! I’m being repressed!”
May I reiterate: Fuck. That.
Regarding the coffee/cyberpistol thing: If we were going to do an atheist version, I’d put my vote to a sonic screwdriver.
Because it’s not a weapon. It’s a tool. Well… Symbolically anyway. :P
You haven’t made a coherent point.
And now you are just trolling. The above is an assertion without proof and an opaquely written insult.
I’d be truly astounded if you weren’t a right wing extremist playing troll on a comment board.
1. Yes, there is!!! You are simply wrong and lying here.
2. The xian Dominionist Theocrats of the USA and the Moslem Taliban of places like Afghanistan and Somalia are very similar. Xian biblical law is a lot like the Moslem Koranic law of Sharia. Biblical law is probably far worse, so vicious it hasn’t existed for thousands of years. They even come from the same source, ancient tribal middle eastern cultures.
3. The difference which has been mentioned many times above is real simple. A lot of brave people in the West spent 400 years putting xians on a leash and in a box. The Moslems never had a Reformation or an Enlightenment. We did.
The fundie perversion of xianity, really, deeply hates the Enlightenment.
4. The fundie xian theocrats also hate the modern USA, modern US democracy, and will destroy it if they can. Their leaders are mostly Dominionists and they say exactly this and often.
5. Why we exist and what we are fighting against is…them. A new Dark Age run by fundie xians. The fundie xians created the New Atheists.
Holly Fisher is a typical and great example of US fundie xianity. She lies a lot. She hates a lot. She waves a rifle around and makes a lot of vague threats. She isn’t very bright. And she is proud of all that. And in parts of the middle east, if she put on a different outfit, she would fit in perfectly.
I can only think of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ilSrh-QbE
Anyone who compares abortion to killing actual people is a neo-nazi “xian” fanatic. Where does the Babble or Jezus say anything against abortion? The Old Testament, in Numbers I think, even gives an abortion formula. The abortion fantasy is entirely in the minds of these hateful misogynist freaks. They are probably retroactively concerned that their mothers would have aborted if they had known how their offspring would turn out.
Mark A @ 158:
If she isn’t planning on killing, why the gun?
I’m asking seriously.
. . .
stanley234 @ 187:
There is no comparison at all.
Check out who invaded who.
Check out who’s killing who.
Examine the body counts.
And to stave off any possible ‘but she’s not directly killing people’ objections – if she had her finger on the Drone Trigger or the Bomb Trigger, would she be less or more enthusiastic about using it, based on what you see here?
Who do you think she votes for?
What policies do you think she supports? (Protip – we know, as we have bothered to look over her self-posted info, so not really a hard question).
As fast as the US is killing Ebil Brown-Skinned Furriners, it’s not fast enough for people on one side of the political spectrum.
Check out which side is trying to make a western democracy into a religious autocracy. Check out which side yearns for, and actively works towards, that goal.
Then look at the pictures again.
I think it’s “SCAAAAARY MOOSLIMS!”
You’ll have to let me know if that counts as a vicious rant or not.
SetvoRstanley234http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,_methinks
Stanley has a lot in common with Holly Fisher and any Moslem suicide bomber.
He is a serial killer of the utterly defenseless!!! Strawpeople. The right wingnuts do this a lot.
He is comparing Western countries with dysfunctional Moslem ones.
That isn’t the subject of this post or what we are comparing!!!
It’s the difference between fundie xian extremists and fundie Moslem extremists. There isn’t any except one is running a few societies back to the Dark Ages, while another is trying to do the same thing here.
Looks like stanley just dropped off some trash and left. Probably looking for another strawperson to sneak up on and kill from ambush.
The fundie xians/right wingnuts murder strawpeople often.
And why not? They make easy victims, being inert strawpeople and not covered under our laws.
Oddly enough they could be though. The Supreme court has declared corporations persons. Of course they aren’t really people. Declaring corporations people doesn’t make them people!!!
But if the Supreme court can arbitrarily create people with more rights than flesh and blood people out of business groups, they can create them out of anything. They could in fact, just declare strawpeople to be persons.
And then the police would be looking for Stanely for murder 1.
I am just gonna leave this here
Protip for md, stanley, dandi, and all other idiotic, Islamophobic apologists for Western Holy War: The number of women and children and other civilians that AMERICA!!! should be killing is “zero”. Just in case you were unaware of that little tid-bit.
Really?
No one here chimed in with
Maybe everyone else just thought it was a little too obvious?
This is a rough blog, so I know it wasn’t because the reference was too ‘grittey.
Feel free to groan.
<snark, possibly triggering>Rape threats? Well, obviously she asked for them! Look at how she’s dressed in that photo! She’s showing her bare arms! If she doesn’t want rape threats she should dress more modestly, like the foreign woman! She probably made up the threats, anyway.</snark>
I’m sorry, but which one is the Christian lady?
What an insightful and cunning jab, jaym. Must have taken the whole six days this post has been up for you to come up with that piece of incredible wit.
@ jaym
Nice find! Our Cephalopodic eBil oBerlawd ™ looks so much younger in your pic.
(Is that you to his right?)
And you had to expend all your valuable time and energy, to come all the way over here to tell us that?
Bless you, jaym. That is so sweet and cuddly.
jaym:
So you can’t see the two images are at all similar?
Ok, critical thinking isn’t your suit.
Here is a comment by amateur @13:
Here is another comment by amateur @15:
I hope you’re now able to see the incredible similarities between the two.
That’s just great, jaym. Again, glad you felt so compelled to share your incredibly informative opinion in what is pretty much a dead thread. And also so glad that you justify it by saying that you don’t regularly pay attention to anything in these parts. I wonder what you read elsewhere that led you here? Guessing something in the slymepit, right? Oh, don’t be so coy. Please, share what is really on that brilliant mind of yours.
jaym is now gone. I think I recognized something in his email address: for someone who declares he isn’t obsessed, he’s been internet-stalking me for almost 10 years, and used to have an anti-PZ page.
The person who necroposted just to get in a random image insulting you was actually an obsessive troll after all! Despite claiming the contrary! I don’t know what to believe anymore!
Huh. This is a post about Christianity after all….was it ol’ Jinxy by chance?
As a tangential addendum, I noticed that when one searches for the photograph of the woman with the rifle and the Qur’an the picture gets identified as Major Nidal Malik Hasan. This led me to wonder if the photograph was retouched since outside the area of the head the photograph looks like it could be a pixel for pixel match.
A little more searching makes it clear that it was, of course, the Nidal Malik Hasan photograph that was retouched instead (which makes sense –in fact, the head looks pasted on on that one).
This led me to another finding. The folk who have been attributing the picture to Samantha Lewthwaite are mistaken. The photograph is actually of one suicide bomber Reem Riyashi (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reem_Riyashi).