Written By:
lprent - Date published:
3:17 pm, February 25th, 2011 - 36 comments
Categories: blogs -
Tags: christchurch earthquake
It is with a great deal of reluctance that I have to actually support Whaleoil on a post about a rather obnoxious website blaming the Christchurch quake on ‘depravity’. In between his usual obnoxious style of wanting to gut shoot looters, he actually proposes a reasonable action about a particularly obnoxious website.
Meanwhile a different kind of scum are also operating out there. These are religious bigot type scum who are blaming the earthquake on child prostitution, a gay festival and general depravity in Christchurch. I’m not kidding.
The fact that they have used a domain name to focus on the Christchurch earthquake shows that they are clearly linking all this to “god’s wrath”.
He suggests that people complain to the hosting company – abuse@bluehost.com citing
Section 9, part 14 states:
Obscene, Defamatory, Abusive or Threatening Language. Use of the Services to store, post, transmit, display or otherwise make available obscene, defamatory, harassing, abusive or threatening language is prohibited.
It is a bit of stretch because the site is just offensive rather than any of those things. But complaining will certainly encourage bluehost to cut off the site. I’d suggest that readers here just complain about the site as simply being offensive explaining why.
As was discussed in comments here yesterday, there is also a similar content in an e-mail that has been circulating from a minister from Aucklands Victory Church.
But I really find this statement by Whaleoil almost as offensive.
It sickens me as a christian that there are people out there like this. They certainly don’t know the caring forgiving god that I know.
Yeah, he is so caring that he wants looters to be gut-shot so they can die a tortured death from peritonitis because he can’t forgive. I can vividly remember covering the effects of gut-shootings during my training as a medic in the army decades ago. It is quite simply something that you wouldn’t wish on anyone unless you were being some kind of sadist.
I guess he just doesn’t like living up to the standard he wants to proclaim. Personally it is both the type of people that he is railing about and who hold hypocritical attitudes like his that put me right off religion long ago. That is despite the many religious people I know in various religions who live their life as an living example of their religion and who I can respect.
Update: DPF also finds it offensive with some rather uncharacteristically intemperate language. Bomber at Tumeke also has something to say about it.
Update: It appears that while I was writing this post, the site may have been shut.
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
I’ve heard it suggested (from oversees, and on the internet) that the abbreviation of Christchurch to ChCh might have also incurred God’s wrath.
The site is currently off the air so the protests may have had an impact:
http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/2/article_9984.php
Check the religious bigot scum link in LPrent’s post and you will see.
I published the post then did a moderation sweep and then saw your comment in OpenMike…. 🙂 I am just glad it is gone.
And it was the reverse for me :). Did open mike post then saw this. I hope it stays gone.
I’m the last person to support vigilante justice, but if the likes of these two* are found guilty, even my trigger finger will start to itch, and if that’s obnoxious then so be it.
* “The generators, donated by TelstraClear, were being used to power roadside cabinets fed up to 500 landline and broadband customers… The two skin-headed men waved offensive hand gestures at photographers and court staff and media present in a makeshift courtroom at the Christchurch Police Station.”
By all means – arrest, put in front of a judge, deny bail, and process through the legal system (as I see has been done) and generally make an example of them.
But gut-shooting? I suspect that you’d have a lot of medical staff wanting to demonstrate why they don’t like that idea on the vigilantes.
Indeed. Are there ‘aggravating factors’ that judges can apply when sentencing for this sort of thing? I’d assume that if found guilty they’ll get pretty near the max for what I guess is a simple charge of theft.
No more scum than industrialists that profiteer in wars. IMHO. Making the most from human misery
Point well made… I can think of someone else who made immense profits from the misery of others. Also no had hair, and fond of giving the finger – metaphorically, anyway – to media and the law. The difference being it was misery he helped create, which puts him a rung lower than these two. Except he was Vice President of the United States.
Shackling them together with their respective fellow lowlifes and sentencing them to take up a shovel and start working to rebuild what’s been destroyed, their sentence to end when the job is done, would be the appropriate disposition of all of them.
It’s funny how on dpf’s thread there is a growing theory that the site was awful and it was probably teh gheys what done it. 🙄
Poe’s law tells us it’s impossible to know if it’s satire or not, but I’m leaning towards satire. Which is no justification, given the writer(s) weren’t prepared to stick around, engage or otherwise make their case or put it in context.
That email however, is not satire, and while not as over the top as the site, makes exactly the same point.
I tend to avoid reading the sewer (especially now that I’m concerned about blood pressure). From my brief scan of the site this morning I really couldn’t find any of the usual spoof/satire indicators.
But either way it was quite offensive. And as you say, the email was just as bad.
As a gay man I cannot get excited about either of these. They’re par for the course and hardly the worst I’ve seen (I’ll take an largely laughable email over being called a faggot, pushed to the ground and kicked in the stomach thanks).
And Slater going on about intolerance? Reminds me a story involving a pot and a kettle.
That site was so ludicrous that the only people it bought into disrepute were the authors, and by implication, Christians in general.
I support freedom of speech. Taking it down because some people find the content offensive is censorship.
But complaining about it is also a freedom of speech (and you note that is what I advocated). But I suspect that the reason they got taken down was the nature of the type of host that they were on.
As has been pointed out to me a number of times by hosting companies (including as it happens – bluehost), there is also a contract that I have to conform to. In our case we got a very little warning as well when the bluehost terminated our site.
I suspect that with the links from various blogs over the last few days, the site simply got overwhelmed by both direct links and by the bots looking at it through those links. The demand was likely to have violated their (unspecified) usage conditions in their contract. That history was certainly a consideration in my mind when I maliciously linked to the site.
They can always start the site up again somewhere else at a higher cost (bluehost was really really economical). But I can always link to it again and help to provide the extra traffic that they probably don’t need, and I suspect that other blogs would do so as well. We’re all just exercising our freedom of speech.
It’d be interesting finding out how high a price that the authors of that site are willing to pay for their ‘freedom of speech’. It may be a freedom, but freedom always comes at a cost.
What is your problem?
What is my problem? That an online vigilante mob seem to have persuaded someone to refuse service to a site because they disagree with the content.
I have a problem when we outsource our decisions about morality to timid corporates. Witness the way that Paypal folded to US government pressure over acting as a payment service to Wikileaks.
Isn’t there a difference between top down govt pressure and consumer/peer pressure?
What about boycotts?
What if I ask a newspaper to run a letter or even an ad’ and they refuse because they don’t like the content?
Usually a host will only take down a site under court order.
Or if it becomes too troublesome.
They have grounds to terminate on:
9-14 Obscene, Defamatory, Abusive or Threatening Language. Use of the Services to store, post, transmit, display or otherwise make available obscene, defamatory, harassing, abusive or threatening language is prohibited.
Their legal libility amounts to no more then either $1 or the months invoice.
The only reason they have to keeping the site running would be to improve or maintain their reputation. But i don’t think they want to be known as supporters of gay bashers so i’m not surprised its been taken down.
Freedom of speech true, and also freedom to take the consequences of your speech
In this case enough outrage \”yeah yeah vigilante mob \” from a lot of people who found the site beyond disgusting. anyway with the web being what it it they can post thier insane rantings somewhere else but they deliberately chose a URL which would get traffic. So they obviously are out to incite.
If it was http://www.totalnutjobipinion.org then fine.
So I suppose my point is about intent, and in this case the intent may have been to cause anger, annoy people and get this sort of reaction so they can suck up into their own matyrdom myth.
\”Your right to swing your fist ends where it connects with my face\” I wish I could remember who said that
“I have a problem when we outsource our decisions about morality to timid corporates.”
Its bluehost, they probably paid for their $6.99US a month package and wondered why their site failed when it got worldwide attention.
You buy cheap shit, expect cheap results.
If they really wanted a website that could handle the load, they’d be looking at about $40 a month, with $80 setup fee.
And because their site is likely to attract denal of service attacks, it’d go up to $200 a month for a rock solid web server.
Now you can complain about how the company is too timid to handle the moral backlash, but such a website attracting so many visitors is going to be HUGELY disruptive to them.
That $6 package is where they have about 200 sites running on one server, and if one of them attracts worldwide attention it can disrupt 199 other customers.
End of the day, the site being unstable is probably their own fault, and its not resonable to expect bluehost to cover the additional expences and logistics from one site if they are using the ultra budget package.
Maybe if they picked up a premium package including a dedicated web server, but again, i doubt thats the case.
And the biggest looters of all, who are set to make tens of millions will be the receivers of all the businesses in Chch that will go under. These rapacious bastards will flog off everything as cheap as possible to their mates and themselves, stealing whole oufits for a song., after having gutted any value in them as fees and commisions. When was the last time you heard of any money being left after these arseholes were finished. I think all receiverships (and particularly any Chch ones ) should be done by a new government entity at minimal cost.
“I think all receiverships (and particularly any Chch ones ) should be done by a new government entity at minimal cost.”
Thats actually rather a brilliant idea, esp with relation to Chch.
I don’t agree with gut-shooting (thats torture) but shooting looters, absolutely
Enough with all the shooting already.
Patrol, respond, arrest, arraign, prosecute…… its what we do.
Leave the shooting sentiments to the god-botherers. Please.
Well said.
People should just let justice take its proper due course. Vigilante stuff can lead to a violent and lawless society, and I think that’s the last thing anyone wants right now for Christchurch, especially on top of everything else Canterburians are having to deal with right now.
Our Minister of Police, and Corrections, reckons a bit of prison rape is what’s in order:
http://dimpost.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/collins-get-midieval/#comments
She should pass an amendment to the Crimes Act to make it a legal part of the sentence, or STFU.
And we will continue to wreak havoc till we get what we want, which is not to be blamed for everything. Powerful aye?
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I have a take down notice under the DMCA on whail oil atm. But he hides his site behind a US server who does not respond. I think that the best thing to do is not draw attention to things like that site everybody is mentioning. You wont find me linking to it.
Here is a quick update re the Christchurch Earthquake:
http://thejackalman.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-christchurch-earthquake.html
Just read comments in Kiwibog. Some manage to agree but still run a line of homophobia.
DPF and Whaleoil. Stay the fuck away from gay issues. The very idea that your humongous sites are pretending to be caring is more vile than the original post to me. I’ll take a million looney sites and emails to your dangerous bullshit any day.
I don’t like to speculate but I would surmise that the DF and oil lard concocted the whole thing in the first place.
‘That is despite the many religious people I know in various religions who live their life as an living example of their religion and who I can respect.’
And who live and let live. I like George Carlin’s take on religion where he said he was a person of faith but didn’t believe in organised religion.
I have two friends, one a devout Mormon and one who’s a Jehovah’s Witness and the thing that has always impressed me about them is that when they talk to their kids about people who live differently from them is that they say that not everyone lives like they do, but that it is not their place to judge them. I also have friends that are agnostic and I reckon they’d blow many Christians into the weeds with their complete kindness and humanity as they always see people as just that, people first.
Had a cousin and her 13 year old daughter who were Jehovah Witness come stay with my elderly mother. They won’t be invited back.
They were very manipulative. Seems wherever they travel they hook up with the local JW cult branch. Within hours of my cousin’s arrival at mum’s place, the local JW crazies were knocking on the door looking for them, wanting to stay and chat with my mum.
The cousin and daughter would try the god talk on mum all the time. The teenage daughter was never allowed to be alone with any non JWs. If the mother went out and didn’t take the daughter, some smiley creepy middle aged guy from the local cult branch picked up the daughter whom she would refer to as ‘Uncle’ and take her away.
The daughter’s access to the internet was strictly controlled. That’s because there are lots of anti cult sites with info about JWs, which is got the JW leadership running scared.
They would invite mum out to ‘visit some friends’. Of course it turned out to be a gathering of JW cult members who would go to work on my mum.
None of it worked as my mum is wise to them, she could see the funny side of it too. Unfortunately my cousin couldn’t and departed under storm clouds.
Her final attempt was to email me suggesting that my mother was losing her mind. It was all done in a very manipulative, ‘oh so concerned for your mother, lets get together and talk about it’ way. I replied that my mum deserved a medal for hosting them for a week, I would go nuts if I had to put up with them for an afternoon.
So M maybe you need to take a closer look at your JW ‘friends’ and do some homework on cults and their control techniques.
Lovely, M, and good on old Whale. There’s a definite movement there that I think we should all applaud.
Like Lynn, after an initial goggle at the bizzarro grotesquerie of both his site and the Kiwibog, it was obvious that continued observance was unhealthy in every sense. Haven’t read either since kiwiblogblog days, but the occasional glimpses from Bomber’s stuff show a hint of humanity worming its subtle way in. Pain’ll do that. He’s still young, hope’s alive if he keeps looking.
As opposed to many of my grizzled peers and Bill English who will smile and wave at poor old JC this Sunday while applauding in their hearts the fascistic abortion-coralling recommendations of the Welfare Working group. Poor Mary. Pai marie.
And while we’re rambling; having just been coralled into enduring the interminable purgatory of watching the world’s most boring game for well over an hour and desperate for distraction, has anyone else noticed the remarkable similarity between the golden-ish highlights in (hair enhancement guru and shill) Martin Crowe’s distinctively different top-knot and that of our very own Prime Mincer as revealed in various shots from Chch? No? Look again. And (at least in the current pimms-induced euphoric state), I for one would certainly appreciate any effort by our technologically-enabled youth to reproduce the true picture of our leader in all imagined-or-not sans-hirsuteness glory if it could possibly be arranged. The eyes may or may not be the window to his soul, but we’ve been there, done that, no one home: let’s see the dome, and let him deny it if he will.
At ease.
I wonder how many Graeme Capills are hiding out in a site like that? That was his m.o wasn’t it? shouting about the depravity of Helen and gays for no good reason while all the time doing something abhorrent himself?
That’s a comment from Bomber’s site blogger. I suggest that less praying and more doing good works helping others would give more respect for the Christian way.
Incidentally Bomber has a very good summary of Christianity. I too, like Whaleoil, am a Christian and this is a hilarious way of looking at our religion and its birth. Don’t miss.