Forty-nine dead, 53 injured in Florida nightclub shooting

Unionist wrote:

swallow wrote:

Putting the relative merits of Secretaries of State and their respective death tolls in another thread would be fab. 

Perhaps. But ignoring/denying the thesis that this murderous, imperialistic state enables massacres of all kinds - homophobic, mysoginistic, random, overseas - that would not be fab. It would be whitewashing the United States and its crimes against its own people and people around the world.

Great, we agree. 

[b]The names so far:[/b]

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old

Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old

Kimberly Morris, 37 years old

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old

Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old

Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old

Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old

Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old

Amanda Alvear, 25 years old

Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old

Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old

Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 years old

Oscar A Aracena-Montero, 26 years old

Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old

Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old

Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old

Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old

Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old

Cory James Connell, 21 years old

Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old

Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old

Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old

Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old

Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old

Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old

Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 years old

Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27 years old

Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 years old

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old

Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24 years old

Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old

Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 years old

Frank Hernandez, 27 years old

Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old

Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old

Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old

Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old

Multiple Suspects On The Loose In Orlando - Why The Media Blackout Of Eyewitness Accounts?

Submitted by Shepard Ambellas via Intellihub.com,

According to heavily censored eyewitness reports, totally suppressed from the mainstream, there were likely several other radicalized perpetrators involved with Saturday night’s terror attack, which led deaths of 49 club-goers at Pulse and over 50 others being injured.

One eyewitness to the attack, who was inside the nightclub when it happened, was giving his testimony to the attack, after being trapped inside the club, live on-air, to a mainstream news source when he was abruptly cut off after providing a crucial detail. The eyewitness said that during the attack “there was a guy there that was trying to […] hold the door closed so that we couldn’t exit,” as pointed out by an investigative reporter on YouTube.

Additionally, there were reports that police could be seen quietly conducting an “active search” for accomplices who may have already exited the nightclub after the attack.

Another eyewitness that was inside Pulse when the attack occurred told reporters, “I’m pretty sure it was more than one person, you know, like I said, I heard two guns going at the same time.” The eyewitness said that the event lasted “like eight minutes.”

Another crucial detail that the press is leaving out is that the shooter or shooters were initiating “rapid fire;” which means that the weapons used were likely fully automatic, as depicted by the same eyewitness when he made an animated machine gun-like sound with his mouth for the press to hear.

The witness said that he could smell the gun smoke in the air and that the attackers were “working together.”

“It was not one shot at a time,” but rather from a machine gun,” another witness said, who eventually made it out of the club into the “alleyway.”

Raw footage from the scene also reveals that officers may have been engaging an additional perpetrator outside of the nightclub, backing up other reports.

josh wrote:

In Sacramento, Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church said the killer succeeded in making Orlando safer."Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?" Jimenez said in a sermon originally posted on YouTube. "Um no, I think that's great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight."

In the sermon, delivered just hours after the rampage on Sunday morning, Jimenez also said, "I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a wall, put a firing squad in front of them and blow their brains out."

It may make me a bad person but I simply cannot post what I hope happens to him, his family and his supporters right now.  Note only is it hateful it reads like there's a threat of violence; I'm hopeful he is charged with a hate crime.

JohnInAlberta wrote:

josh wrote:

In Sacramento, Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church said the killer succeeded in making Orlando safer."Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?" Jimenez said in a sermon originally posted on YouTube. "Um no, I think that's great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight."

In the sermon, delivered just hours after the rampage on Sunday morning, Jimenez also said, "I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a wall, put a firing squad in front of them and blow their brains out."

It may make me a bad person but I simply cannot post what I hope happens to him, his family and his supporters right now.  Note only is it hateful it reads like there's a threat of violence; I'm hopeful he is charged with a hate crime.

No hate crime laws in the U.S. based solely on speech.

When It Comes to Orlando Massacre, Domestic Violence Is the Red Flag We Aren't Talking About

video

In a new article for Rolling Stone, journalist Soraya Chemaly writes, "The Washington Post reported Monday that 'although family members said [Omar] Mateen had expressed anger about homosexuality, the shooter had no record of previous hate crimes.' But that depends on how you categorize domestic violence." Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, has come forward to describe how Mateen beat her and held her hostage.

ThinkProgress reports that between 2009 and 2012, 40 percent of mass shootings started with a shooter targeting his girlfriend, wife or ex-wife. Just this month in California, a UCLA doctoral student gunned down his professor, prompting a lockdown on campus. But first, Mainak Sarkar allegedly killed his estranged wife in Minnesota, climbing through a window to kill her in her home. Last year alone, nearly a third of mass shooting deaths were related in some way to domestic violence. We speak to writer Soraya Chemaly. Her recent article in Rolling Stone is called "In Orlando, as Usual, Domestic Violence was Ignored Red Flag."

No, it appears that Trump has already overplayed his hand.

And so, the endless delving into the "motives" of a dead stranger continues - as if the brutality of an entire society can be reduced to the sum of its disparate, diseased individual parts. 

The perpetual quest to invert cause and effect, in order to whitewash the cause.

I think we need to unpack the line that this is worst mass shooting in US history. Here's what one of my friends posted on facebook:

Mia Amir wrote:

Also as Aurora Levins Morales wrote: "Dear everyone. Please stop saying this is the worst mass shooting in US history. Do not use this moment to erase the deaths of Native American people killed in mass shootings all over this continent. 1863: Bear River, Idaho was the site of a dawn massacre of 250 Shoshone women, men, and children--collective punishment for resisting. 1864: Sand Creek. Cheyenne and Arapaho. 28 men and 109 women and children. 1890: Wounded Knee, 150 Lakota women, men and children, and 51 wounded, some of whom died later."

Thanks Left Turn, I was thinking of posting that as well.

Of course, My Lai doesn't count, because it wasn't technically on sacred U.S. soil.

And neither do Hiroshima and Nagasaki - because, well, they weren't mass "shootings".

More importantly, both of them - like the Bear River massacre - weren't the doing of arguably deranged individuals. Which is all that really counts. Because it's too complex to blame the real criminal, and actually do something about it.

Unionist, I think it was specifically on US soil and not external colonial mass murders. I was thinking of several massacres of Indigenous Americans that had a higher death toll, and even some so-called "race riots" that were pogroms of African-Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot Horrible how these pogroms were called "race riots". That is like calling Czarist Russian pogroms Jewish or Gypsy riots.

Back then, there wasn't the technology that would have enabled such a mass murder by one killer.

But we must remember that it is not a contest. We need to build solidarity, not pinpoint which accursed group was most accursed.

lagatta wrote:

We need to build solidarity, not pinpoint which accursed group was most accursed.

If we can't identify the enemy standing in the way of progress, building solidarity will remain an empty slogan.

Hint: It's not any individual shooter. It's not radical Islam. Etc.

[url=http://thelasource.com/en/2016/06/13/after-orlando-we-must-redouble-our-... O'Keefe: After Orlando, we must redouble our efforts against homophobia[/url]

Quote:

The location of this massacre was Pulse, a popular gay nightclub. The target was the gay community. A hate crime, an act of terror. The shooter has been identified as an Afghan-American, born in New York. According to The Washington Post, his ex-wife reports that he “was not very religious,” and that he was a violent misogynist who beat her routinely. Regardless of this murderer’s motivations, there will now be ubiquitous efforts to use his hate crime to demonize all Muslims in the United States. The same right-wing politicians who have demonized, scapegoated, and institutionally discriminated against LGBT people in the United States will now use this mass killing to demonize, scapegoate and discriminate against Muslims. Homophobes will weaponize this murder of gay people in the service of Islamophobia.

Our response to this reactionary carnival of hate must be more solidarity and love than ever. The shooting happened in the United States, but this solidarity needs to take place worldwide because anti-gay violence is a global and persistent phenomenon. There has been immense progress made in recent decades, but the hatreds of the past still linger. So it’s worth remembering our recent history, and reflecting on how men in particular have been, and still are to varying extents, socialized in a toxic masculinity steeped in homophobic and misogynist prejudices.

PM Tells Luncheon of NATO Ambassadors That There Is No Distinction Between Tel Aviv and Orlando Attacks

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Netanyahu-Evil-o...

"The prime minister said Israel stands ready to help NATO in this collective struggle...mentioning that, in three weeks, the NATO countries will hold a summit in Warsaw where this issue will be a central part of the agenda.

'Know that Israel stands ready to advance that agenda..."

Unionist wrote:

If we can't identify the enemy standing in the way of progress, building solidarity will remain an empty slogan.

Hint: It's not any individual shooter. It's not radical Islam. Etc.

Sorry, but islam, or at the minimum an interpretation of islamic doctrine is at least partially to blame.  What do all of the nations that prescribe death for homosexual activity have in common?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/13/here-are-th...

There's no disputing that western culture and western religious influence is far more accepting of homosexuality than islam.  It all stinks but at least some degree of tolerance exists in primarily christian states.  You'll never catch me defending any religious claptrap but there is absolutely a "worst offender" on the planet.

Demonizing and legislating is quite different from murdering.  None of it is acceptable but I'd rather be called names vs. shot.  Having said that, any lawmaker who legislates against any innate trait should be removed from office post-haste; they are unfit for the position.

As far as religion in general goes, I'll give you Ghana as a xtian nation:

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/04/15/global-morality/table/homosexuality/

but the worsrt offenders are largly muslim nations.  Scroll to the bottom and the "morally acceptable" nations are largly christian, in fact Spain, the most accepting nation on the planet is catholic.

(again I'm not defending xtianity but I am calling out islam as a worst offender)

JohnInAlberta wrote:

As far as religion in general goes, I'll give you Ghana as a xtian nation:

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/04/15/global-morality/table/homosexuality/

Uganda and Kenya as well

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/06/14/omar-mateens-homophobic-ha...

It does no good — is profoundly specious — to pretend that homophobia and Islamic extremism were not toxically yoked in what unfolded in Orlando, though the U.S. president would not string all those words together. We don’t need to be reminded, in a condescending manner, that most Muslims are law-abiding and abhor the violence that’s become attached to their faith. But that’s not-of-mind right now; shouldn’t be.

On a planet reeling under the social and economic pressures of mass migration and displacement caused by radical Islamic groups in Central Asia and the Horn of Africa, five million foreigners were granted citizenship in the EU in the last six years. More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, compared to 280,000 the year before.

do you guys think this article is racist

How Conservative Christian Activists Spent Decades Fomenting Anti-Gay Hate in Orlando

In 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution excoriating Disney for “giving the appearance that the promotion of homosexuality is more important than its historic commitment to traditional family values.” The convention also denounced Disney for “establishing of an employee policy which accepts and embraces homosexual relationships for the purpose of insurance benefits.” It declared that Disney’s willingness to tolerate an independently organized gay and lesbian event was a “gratuitous insult to Christians.”

The convention’s boycott lasted eight years, and drew support from similar groups, including the American Family Association, the Catholic League, Catholics United for the Faith Inc., Citizens for a Better America, Concerned Women for America, and Free Will Baptists. Naturally, Focus on the Family—maybe the single most influential anti-gay group from the ’90s through the mid-aughts—jumped in as well.

“It has become clear that the Disney organization has utter disdain for those who hold traditional moral principles and conservative family values,” Focus on the Family President James Dobson declared. “Year after year, its leaders have insulted this large segment of the population by producing films, television and music that contradict cherished beliefs.” (Dobson is referring here to Disney’s production of My Best Friend’s Wedding, described by the American Family Association as gay propaganda and proof of “the entertainment industry’s open-armed embrace of the homosexual agenda.”)

“Focus on the Family now vigorously supports a boycott against anything that bears the Disney name and recommends that families,” Dobson continued, “especially those of the Christian faith, no longer trust or patronize their products and programming.” Dobson and his allies compiled a list of Disney movies to boycott, including 101 Dalmatians, Air Bud, and Bambi. Incidentally, the American Family Association promoted ex-gay conversion therapy in the same newsletter that announced the boycott.

The attacks on Disney and Gay Days have continued apace ever since. In 1998, televangelist Pat Robertson warned that Gay Days would cause hurricanes to descend upon Orlando, and that acceptance of homosexuality would bring about “terrorist bombs.” One month later, Robertson blamed Gay Days for the state’smassive wildfires that year. Robertson’s television show, 700 Club, still airs on ABC Family’s Freeform channel—which is owned by Disney.*

In 2008, the Christian Action Network, and anti-gay and anti-Muslim organization,launched its own campaign against Gay Days, calling the event an “orgy of depravity” and complaining that it was inappropriate for children to see “homosexuals kissing.” The theme park, CAN argued, should return to the days when it “enforced strict policies against homosexual behavior.” In 2012, the Florida Family Association hired three planes to fly banners reading “Warning: Gay Day at Disney6/1.” The purpose of the planes, the FFA explained, was to ensure that children “were not exposed to this coming out sordid spectacle [​sic​].” In 2013, the notorious anti-gay group One Million Moms issued an statement regarding “Gay Days,” warning “unsuspecting families” that “homosexuals, bisexuals, and transvestites … with an agenda” planned “to expose and desensitize children to this lifestyle by same-sex couples holding hands, hugging, and kissing.”

And so on. Perhaps this rhetoric helps to explain why the Pulse gunman apparently considered Gay Days as an alternate target for mass slaughter.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/06/15/pulse_orlando_shooting_and...

Orlando shooting shows how ISIS calls the shots

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/06/13/orlando-shooting-shows-ho...

I've looked at several lists and of the 76 nations which make homosexuality specifically illegal, 48 of them have a Christian, Hindu or Buddhist majority. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/where-homosexuality-is-illegal-2013-12

13 States, mostly where conservative Christian influence is strongest, still have anti-sodomy laws.  How strictly or harshly these laws are enforced, and how much hostility LGBT people face in daily life are somewhat different questions.  I will add that the Islamic states listed seem to have moven backwards since the "war on terror" began; but then are we really supposed to believe that Republicans are trying to protect gay people from Islamic bigotry?  Really?  

Or the macho culture celebrated there. .....

this is a total distraction....what is clear from numerous eye witness accounts, there were 4 snipers and possibly one woman with a belt bomb.......the shooters attributed their allegiance to ISIS, which is a US based terrorist movement for sure, with allies amongst government or rogue elements in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey...it is also clear that the FBI was involved with interviews and visits by állied´personnel...what is crucial is to discover who was behind this attack and why