Random Politics & Religion #09

Is that what the media said? Damn, need to add it to the above!

U.S. intelligence officials told top congressional leaders a year ago that Russian hackers were attacking the Democratic Party, three sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, but the lawmakers were unable to tell the targets about the hacking because the information was so secret.

The disclosure of the Top Secret information would have revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies were continuing to monitor the hacking, as well as the sensitive intelligence sources and the methods they were using to do it.

The material was marked with additional restrictions and assigned a unique codeword, limiting access to a small number of officials who needed to know that U.S. spy agencies had concluded that two Russian intelligence agencies or their proxies were targeting the Democratic National Committee, the central organizing body of the Democratic Party.

The National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies sometimes delay informing targets of foreign intelligence activities under similar circumstances, officials have said....

Trump actually said it. The media merely reported it. But hey! Its the media! They must be making things up!

Congressional leaders were briefed a year ago on hacking of Democrats
Reuters

Openers:

Top Secret

A Lone gunman executed a revered Queens imam and his friend as the pair walked home from Saturday prayers, blasting each in the back of the head without a word, officials said.

Mosque leader Maulama Akonjee and friend Thara Uddin were dressed in Muslim garb when the killer “approached from behind and shot” from point-blank range, said NYPD Deputy Inspector Henry Sautner of the Queens South Detective Bureau.

Akonjee, a married father of three, was a respected religious leader since his arrival in Queens from Bangladesh less than two years ago. The bearded Uddin, 65, died about four hours after the attack.

“We are all crying,” said his brother Mashuk Uddin. “There’s so much crying.”

Queens hookah bar shooting leaves four wounded, two cuffed

Scores of worshipers from the mosque gathered within hours at the murder scene to denounce the cold-blooded ambush as a hate crime.

“That’s not what America is about,” said local resident Khairul Islam, 33. “We blame Donald Trump for this . . . Trump and his drama has created Islamophobia.”

A high-ranking police source said the NYPD hate crimes task force would investigate, but it was “too early to say” what the motive was.

A second source said investigators were considering robbery as a possible motive because one of the men was found carrying several hundred dollars.

The shooter left his victims lying in their own blood just one block from the Al-Furqan Jame Mosque in Ozone Park, where the two victims prayed together only minutes earlier.

Cops had security video and witnesses who saw the killer, with the gun in his hand, sprinting away from the bodies, Sautner said.

The imam’s nephew said Akonjee had no problems with anyone in the neighborhood.

“I’m not sure what kind of an animal would kill that man,” said Rahi Majid, 26. “He would not hurt a fly. You would watch him come down the street and watch the peace he brings.”

Yes, Trump has created Islamophobia and not the terrorists that keep on murdering people.

Don't forget to include every other Christian in existence.

Well, the next time a Christian commits mass murder in the name of his religion, then I will gladly call him or her a Christian terrorist.

This may seem like I'm singling out a group of believers, but short of murdering people themselves, the Westboro Baptist Church do everything legally in their powers (family of lawyers, remember?) to spread hate, fear, etc. in the name of their "Christian Religion" (and is probably the most extreme example, while others are less conspicuous), such as literal gay bashing, with fists or weapons, because "it's not accepted in the bible"/"not part of God's plan!"

I'm not intentionally deflecting anything. Christianity has many problems that need to be worked out. That much is certain. But this tirade is false equivalence. If you want to compare Crusades-era Christianity to what's going on in modern Islam, then that would be a closer approximation. You're trying to compare the WBC to a group that blows people up, beheads people, kidnaps and rapes young girls, and various other atrocities. As much disdain as I have for the WBC, it's stupid to compare them to ISIS.

I want you to keep in mind, in this discussion, I'm talking primarily about the fringe elements - they are not as organized in the same militant style as the fringe elements of Islam, but they do exist. They just receive far less media notoriety/coverage because it's not something they think the public wants to hear, or that will shake the foundations of the country's main religious ideology.

That's kind of the catch 22 that I'm talking about.
You don't hear about it, because no one wants to talk about "Christian terrorists murdering people in the name of their religion", or spreading hate, inciting violence, and fear in the name of their religion.

Some people go so far as to defend it as "Freedom of Speech", or "voicing their opinions", etc. so it doesn't get the same sensationalist headlines, and ends up buried in article 44 at the back of the paper with only a few lines of info about a crazed madman.

This may seem like I'm singling out a group of believers, but short of murdering people themselves, the Westboro Baptist Church do everything legally in their powers (family of lawyers, remember?) to spread hate, fear, etc. in the name of their "Christian Religion" (and is probably the most extreme example, while others are less conspicuous), such as literal gay bashing, with fists or weapons, because "it's not accepted in the bible"/"not part of God's plan!"

Now, the argument made is that these people are not real Christians. Or Catholics. And this isn't a rant or tangent against religion or Christianity. The Churches will, however, tell the people that anyone who does so is not a "true Christian". Yet they grew up listening to what these churches have preached, or what they have allowed their pastors to teach young and impressionable minds.

How about the textbook nightmare occurring in Texas infringing on inalienable American rights according to the first amendment?

The argument I went with, was the legal and literal definition used to define a terrorist, and that a terrorist will hijack the representation of a religion, and that there are fringe elements (and specifically said fringe elements, nor that it was an attack on Christianity, but on the coverage or lack there of that these people who act in the name of Christianity do to inspire hate, fear, and terror, or to incite violence against others) of both groups that exist. Let me re-iterate for you:

That's news to me.

Can you elaborate?

When public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.

Absolutely.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.html

But what else could I expect from Slate? They are over-exaggerating a lot of it.

But I will give you the "infringing on First Amendment Rights" though.