Liviu Librescu
Liviu Librescu
Liviu Librescu (August 18, 1930 – April 16, 2007; Hebrew: ליביו ליברסקו) was a Romanian born and educated Israeli-American scientist and academic whose major research fields were aeroelasticity and aerodynamics. His most recent position was Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Tech.[3] The 76-year-old Holocaust survivor was shot and killed in the Virginia Tech massacre while holding off the gunman at the entrance to his classroom so his students could escape through the windows.[4]
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Diet enacts law to reduce air pollution in big cities
TOKYO — The Diet enacted a revised law Friday aimed at reducing motor vehicle emissions by tightening regulations on the construction of department stores, offices and other facilities in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The revised law on vehicle-emitted nitrogen oxides and particle matters is designed to regulate those facilities, which may generate heavy vehicle traffic.
The revised law empowers prefectural governors to formulate and implement antipollution measures such as building flyover roadways at intersections or other designated areas polluted heavily with nitrogen oxides and particles from vehicle emissions that cause asthma. It requires reporting to governors projections of gas emissions and plans for reducing emissions before building facilities such as hotels and theaters that may draw vehicles.
In addition, trucking and transport companies in areas surrounding the designated ones are required to work out measures to cut vehicle emissions such as reducing the number of their entries into such areas.
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Lauren Nelson helps nab child preditors and pedophiles
Lauren Nelson is a beauty queen from Lawton, Oklahoma who holds the Miss America 2007 title. Nelson is the second consecutive Miss America and sixth in the history of Miss America to hail from this state.
Nelson was Miss Teen Oklahoma 2004, and in this role, she performed at the 2005 Miss America Pageant.[2] En route to Miss America, she won the Miss Oklahoma State Fair local title and then competed in the Miss Oklahoma pageant for the first time on June 11, 2006, and was crowned Miss Oklahoma 2006, for which she received a $16,000 scholarship. At age nineteen, she was the youngest contestant to become Miss Oklahoma.
Nelson went on to represent Oklahoma in the Miss America 2007 pageant broadcast on CMT from the Aladdin Resort and Casino on January 29, 2007. She won a preliminary swimsuit award on Thursday night, becoming her state’s first Swimsuit preliminary award since 1955. At the conclusion of the live telecast, Nelson was crowned the 82nd Miss America. She succeeds Jennifer Berry, of Jenks, Oklahoma, in the first occurrence of consecutive winners from the same state since 1959-1960.
A graduate of MacArthur High School, Nelson is a student at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is also a member of Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority. She is a member of Centenary United Methodist Church in Lawton, Oklahoma. Her goal is to become a Broadway performer. Her Miss America talent was a vocal performance, and her platform issue is “Be NetSmart – Protecting Kids Online”. She receives a $50,000 scholarship award along with the title.
In a recent article she expressed support for Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.[3]
Nelson recently teamed up with host John Walsh on the FOX television show America’s Most Wanted to assist in the apprehension of potential child predators. Initial reports as of May 1, 2007, stated that she did not plan to return to testify against those predators that were apprehended, putting the prosecution’s case in jeopardy. [4] However, she appeared to change her mind later that day, and it is reported that she will testify against the perpetrators.
Source: Wikipedia
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Immigration
Immigration
Although human migration has existed throughout human history, immigration in the modern sense refers to movement of people from one nation-state to another. Immigration implies long-term permanent residence (and often eventual citizenship) by the immigrants: tourists and short-term visitors are not considered immigrants (see expatriates). However, seasonal labour migration (typically for periods of less than a year) is often treated as a form of immigration. The global volume of immigration is high in absolute terms, but low in relative terms. The UN estimated 190 million international migrants in 2005, about 3% of global population. The other 97% still live in the state in which they were born, or its successor state.
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Northern Illinois Shooting
Five dead in Illinois university mass shooting
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 2:38am GMT 15/02/2008
A gunman has opened fire in a packed university lecture hall in Illinois, shooting 18 people and killing four before turning his gun on himself.
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| Rescue workers carry a victim out of the university lecture hall where the gunman opened fire |
The attacker, described as a tall skinny white young man dressed entirely in black, walked out from behind a screen in a geology class around 3pm, said officials at Northern Illinois University.
The gunman, armed with a shotgun and two handguns, then opened fire before shooting himself on the stage.
Police officials said five people had died, including the gunman. Many victims were shot in the head at the university in DeKalb, 65 miles west of Chicago.
Witnesses said the gunman- said to be aged between 18 and 20 - kicked open a door near the stage in Cole Hall just 10 minutes before the end of the lecture and started shooting with the shotgun without saying a word.
Dispensing with the shotgun, the gunman - who was wearing a black ski cap and black trenchcoat - pulled out a pistol and walked down the aisles firing it into the crowd of terrified students.
Police Chief Donald Grady said the gunman was a student but not at the DeKalb campus.
Kevin McEnery, who was sitting in the fourth row of the lecture, estimated that he let off around 30 shots. He said: “He just kicked the door open and started shooting. I didn’t hear him say anything, just people shouting and screaming to get out.”
Some students dived for cover under their desks while others ran for the exits.
The campus was plunged into panic, as students poured out of the building, many trying to use their mobile phones and others simply praying.
All the injured were taken to the local Kishwaukee Community Hospital which said it had received 17 victims, of whom three or four had head wounds.
The university issued a statement on its website about an hour after the shooting saying that “the immediate danger has passed. The gunman is no longer a threat.”
George Gaynor, a fourth year geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, described the gunman as “a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on”.
He described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic. “Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg,” he said.
Some witnesses said the gunman shot at random but Edward Robinson, another student, claimed he appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall. “It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot. He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at,” he said.
All classes were cancelled on Thursday night and the 25,000-student campus was closed on Friday.
In April last year, 32 died after a mentally-disturbed and heavily armed student ran amok in the Virginia Tech campus. The incident prompted immediate changes in Virginia law that had allowed the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, to buy handguns.
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Triangle Tutors
Triangle Tutors has helped over countless students improve their grades, raise their test scores, learn productive study skills, build their academic self-confidence, and reach their full potential.
The Triangle Tutors program is successful because it provides highly individualized, one-on-one instruction in the comfort and security of home, free from distractions. Tutoring sessions may also be scheduled at schools, after school facilities, libraries, or community centers. Triangle Tutors instructors are experienced degreed professionals and certified instructors with impeccable credentials and a heartfelt enthusiasm for teaching.
They serve all ages, pre-kindergarten through adult. Tutoring is available in all core subjects - reading, mathematics, science, history - as well as study skills, foreign languages, standardized test prep, assessment testing such as ACT and SAT, GRE, GED, music lessons, and much more.
Triangle Tutors In-Home Tutoring Services is one of the most affordable tutoring programs available.
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Source: Wikipedia
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Vick ‘em t-shirts… too soon?
In a valient effort to poke a little fun at the Michael Vick scandal and irk rival Texas A&M, students at Texas Tech created a t-shirt displaying a football player hanging a dog with the slogan “Vick ‘Em” across the front.
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V-Tech Rampage - The Virginia Tech Video Game
Following 2005’s notorious Super Columbine Massacre RPG, the Virginia Tech shootings have been turned into a flash video game.
V-Tech Rampage, which promises “three levels of stealth and murder”, was uploaded to the flash website Newgrounds.com at the weekend by a user known by the alias ‘Pigpen‘. It puts the player in the role of Seung-Hui Cho, who slew 32 of his fellow students at Virginia Tech university on 16 April, and controversially recreates the tragedy in the style of a simple shoot-’em-up game.
The opening sequence of V-Tech Rampage
Reaction to the game has been mixed, with most reviewers on the website critical of what they see as an exercise in bad taste, but a handful reluctantly praising Pigpen’s “balls”. Several more admitted that they enjoyed the game itself despite having serious reservations about the subject matter.
One reviewer commented: “I’m a student at Virginia Tech and when I saw this, V-Tech Rampage, I thought maybe you killed Cho so it wouldn’t be QUITE as bad. But after actually playing, it is awful. You are a very, very sick person. You are barely any better than Cho.”
When Super Columbine Massacre RPG came out last year, the general response from the gaming community (such as it is) was to defend what was seen as an important principle: the right of games as a medium to portray whatever they choose, and not be seen automatically as toys and by extension a means of corrupting children with inappropriate content.
Many felt that SCMRPG was a childish and tasteless stunt, but when the game was dropped from the Slamdance festival line-up several other games makers pulled out in protest at a perceived threat to freedom of speech.
But V-Tech Rampage is a different kettle of fish. Firstly, the timing is far less sensitive - SCMRPG waited six years after the tragedy it portrayed (longer, let’s remember, than United 93, the first cinematic treatment of the World Trade Center attacks), V-Tech less than a month. Which suggests that Pigpen is motivated primarily by getting his name in the limelight and The Daily Mail’s letters page (or whatever the US equivalent is).
Second, V-Tech isn’t original. SCMRPG had a few important if somewhat trite things to say about desensitisation and the portrayal of violence; V-Tech is just a childish swipe at right-wing commentators who claimed the shootings were caused by excessive video game consumption.
Finally, V-Tech isn’t terribly good. As Kotaku puts it: “Free speech and free expression are great. Just make sure you’ve got something to say.”
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Virginia Tech Celebrates Graduation in Wake of Tragedy
AP
Graduate student Wirot Juwanuwong has his photograph taken in his graduation gown at the memorial for the slain students in front of Burruss Hall.
Graduate student Wirot Juwanuwong has his photograph taken in his graduation gown at the memorial for the slain students in front of Burruss Hall.
BLACKSBURG, Va. — The image most people have of Kevin Sterne is harrowing: a photo showing a tourniquet wrapped around his wounded leg as rescue workers rushed him out of Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall.
But on Saturday, there was a new image of the 22-year-old former Eagle Scout from Eighty-four, Pa. He was jubilant and full of life as he limped across the stage at the university’s Cassell Coliseum using a crutch and displaying a grin to accept his degree in electrical engineering.
The crowd rose to its feet and cheered Sterne in one of the most poignant and touching moments of the Saturday morning commencement ceremony at the College of Engineering.
It was one of several campus ceremonies in which individual colleges and departments handed out diplomas to students, including posthumous degrees to those killed in the April 16 attack at a dormitory and classroom building.
The College of Engineering was hit particularly hard, with 11 students and three professors killed in the shooting.
Engineering Dean Richard Benson was overwhelmed with emotion, his voice breaking at times, as he spoke about the slain.
“Forgive me,” Benson said quietly as he paused to collect himself while commemorating professor Kevin Granata, who was shot in a hallway as he tried to save students during the rampage in which 33 people were killed, including the student gunman.
The widow of G.V. Loganathan accepted a teaching award in honor of her husband, a man Benson said students fondly regarded as the best professor they ever had, the kindest person they ever met and incredibly wise.
Another slain professor, Dr. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was remembered by the dean for his “profound courage” in blocking his classroom door so his students could escape out the windows. He was among those killed by Seung-Hui Cho, who later took his own life.
At an English department ceremony, nearly all of the 135 graduating students and many faculty members stood when asked if they knew someone killed or injured in the shooting spree. The crowd of several hundred rose and applauded loudly as posthumous degrees were awarded to sophomore Ross Abdallah Alameddine and senior Ryan Clark. Clark was one of two students killed in a dormitory before the gunman moved to the classroom building.
English professor Nikki Giovanni read “We are Virginia Tech,” a poem she penned hours after the rampage that infused a campus convocation with strength the day after the shootings.
She was inspired, she said Saturday, by the desire to convey that “what we do is more important than what is done to us.”
The individual school ceremonies continued the theme of striking a balance between celebration and sorrow that began with a university commencement event Friday night.
While one engineering student’s mortarboard read “This 2 shall pass,” and one bore the name of victim Jarrett Lane, another graduate’s said “4 HIRE.” Students tossed around an inflatable beach ball and booed when it was confiscated.
Faces were somber as the dean commemorated the dead, but graduates broke out in cheers and tossed their mortarboards in the air as the ceremony concluded.
At the English department ceremony, department chairwoman Carolyn Rude said this year’s commencement could not leave behind the heart-rending events of a month ago, but she said tragedy can be used to heal.
“It does its best work within us if it enhances our resilience, our wisdom and our ability to care,” she said. “It finds its best expression in our will to honor the lives of those we have lost.”
-AP
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Westboro Baptist Church
Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is a controversial U.S. church headed by Fred Phelps and based in Topeka, Kansas. It runs the websites GodHatesFags.com,[1] GodHatesAmerica.com and others expressing condemnation of homosexuals, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Swedes, African Americans, Canadians, Americans, and other groups. The organization is monitored by the Anti-Defamation League,[2] and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[3][4] The group has achieved national notoriety in recent years due to its picketing of funeral processions for soldiers killed in combat, which functions as an extension of the Phelps’ anti-United States beliefs.
While its members identify themselves as Baptists, the Church is an independent church not affiliated with any known Baptist conventions or associations. The church describes itself as following Primitive Baptist and Calvinist principles.
The Church bases its work around the belief expressed by its best known slogan and the address of its primary website, “God hates fags”, and expresses the opinion, based on its Biblical eisegesis, that nearly every tragedy in the world is linked to homosexuality – specifically society’s increasing tolerance and acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. It maintains that God hates homosexuals above all other kinds of “sinners”[5] and that homosexuality should be a capital crime.
Purpose
Phelps has stated as his purpose for Westboro:
Our goal is to preach the Word of God to this crooked and perverse generation. By our words, some will repent. By our words, some will be condemned. Whether they hear, or whether they forbear, they will know a prophet has been among them… our goal is to glorify God by declaring His whole counsel to everyone… we hope that by our preaching some will be saved.[5]
The members of Westboro Baptist Church have explained their decision to use the word fag, a largely pejorative term for gay men, in their FAQ:
The word “fag” is a contraction of the word “faggot” (or, “fagot”). When traced through its etymological history, the word “faggot” simply means “a bundle of sticks used as fuel.” See dictionary.com and thesaurus.com (where such words as “fuel” and “brimstone” are used as synonyms). “Scholars” can’t decide when such a word began to be used in reference to homosexuals, so we’ll give the answer here: “I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.” Amos 4:11. The word translated “firebrand” is the Hebrew word “uwd,” which comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to rake together” (or, “to gather together”). In short, the Hebrew word “uwd” is talking about burning sticks of wood that are gathered together. That is what the English word “faggot” means. Amos 4:11 could just as easily be translated “…ye were as a faggot plucked out of the burning…”[5]
It is worth noting that this etymology is unproven, and likely incorrect. (see faggot (epithet) for details)
Westboro refers to itself as a Primitive Baptist church,[2] claiming adherence to the philosophy of John Calvin and to the principles of the Five points of Calvinism.[7]
Though Westboro is not officially identified with the King James-Only Movement, its website quotes the King James version of the Bible and recommends that the reader obtain a King James Bible.
Composition
claims that WBC consists of “about 150 members”.[8] BBC Two claims there are 71 members.[9] A compilation of the names of Phelps’ grandchildren and great-grand-children, combined with his nine “loyal” children and their spouses, though, numbers 90. Individuals who followed Phelps Sr. after he was voted out of his old congregation, Eastside Baptist Church (a traditional Baptist church), consisted of the Hockenbargers (whose offspring later married into the Phelps clan), George Stutzman, Chris Davis (who also married into the Phelps clan) and Theresa Davis (whose relationship, if any, to Chris Davis is unknown). Around 2000, another family (Steve and Luci Drain, along with daughters Lauren, Taylor and Faith and son Boaz) joined the group after Steve Drain, while taping a documentary on religious groups, interviewed several Westboro members and came to accept their theology. The Drains are not related to either the Phelpses or the Hockenbargers, nor to anyone else from the original group.
The Hockenbarger family that left Eastside to follow Phelps is headed by Charles William “Bill” Hockenbarger, allegedly a member of Christian Identity. Hockenbarger has been a friend of Phelps Sr. since the two men were in their twenties. In 2002, one of Phelps Sr.’s grandsons married one of the Hockenbarger granddaughters, with Phelps performing the ceremony. Karl Hockenbarger, the son of Bill Hockenbarger (and also an alleged Identity member) worked for Washburn University (where Phelps Sr. graduated in 1962).
In addition, at the outset several other Eastside members joined Westboro, but after Phelps began his activities (most notably his shooting of a dog that was irritating him[citation needed]), those members returned to Eastside or went elsewhere.
Phelps does not permit Westboro members to marry persons outside the church. As relatively few individuals have joined Westboro, there have been at least two marriages between the Phelps and Hockenbarger clans, resulting in some members having dual genealogical relationships (one member is both the aunt and sister-in-law of another). In the documentary The Most Hated Family in America, the young girls in the church express a disinterest in getting married, because “that’s not what we are about” and “we’re living in the last of the last days, times are very short”.[10]
Shirley Phelps-Roper esq., daughter of Rev. Fred Phelps and an attorney at the Phelps Chartered Law firm, is a prominent member of WBC and often a spokesperson for WBC. For the last couple of years, she has been running the day-to-day operations of the church.
Phelps Chartered law firm
All the principals of the Phelps Chartered law firm [2], a firm founded by WBC founder Fred Phelps, are members of WBC. Phelps Chartered handles most of WBC’s legal work and has received significant awards of attorney’s fees from the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Award Act of 1976 when WBC has been improperly prevented from picketing.[12]
The Westboro compound
The Westboro facility is organized around the edges of a lightly fortified compound, surrounded by ten homes organized in a block at 3701 SW 12th Street in Topeka. The house on the north-west corner of the compound belongs to Phelps Sr., its lower floor serving as the church “meeting hall” (as he refers to it). The other nine houses were once occupied by non-congregants, who moved away either on their own initiative or as a result of not wanting to live near Phelps Sr. and Westboro, and are now occupied by the families of Phelps Sr.’s nine children still associated with Westboro. The properties border an area enclosed by a fence with picketed tops. Inside the compound are U.S. and Canadian flags that fly non-stop (and are lit up at night), in an upside down position.[13] Westboro’s stated reason for flying the flags upside down (given on the frequently asked question page of one of its web sites), is that an upside down flag is “the international sign for distress” and that the U.S. is in distress because “our national support of perversity homosexuality is bringing God’s wrath upon us.”[5] The church website address is prominently displayed on the exterior of Fred Phelps Sr.’s house.
Westboro services, according to its website, are open to the public and begin at approximately 11:30 am (Central Time) on Sunday mornings. Phelps Sr. generally preaches for around forty-five minutes.[14]
The homes share a communal backyard, in the center of which once sat an Olympic size swimming pool; Phelps Sr. previously obtained tax exemption on the cost of maintenance and water by performing baptisms there and writing it off as a baptismal font. Sometime after 2000, the pool was filled in. No official reason has been given, but two theories (neither of which have been confirmed nor contested) have developed. One theory states that, according to Topeka residents, sometime around 2000 one of Phelps Sr.’s grandchildren nearly drowned in the pool and thus it was removed for safety reasons. The other theory holds that the pool was filled in because Westboro lost, or was about to lose, its tax exemption status on it.
The compound also includes a garage separate from the houses, which is used to store an extended cab/extended bed Ford F-150 pickup truck used to transport Westboro’s picketers around Topeka and elsewhere. In one of the many lawsuits that swirl around WBC the Kansas State Board of Tax Appeals ruled that the truck was not used exclusively for religious purposes, because at least 40 percent of the protest signs had a political slant, and would therefore be subject to property tax.[15]
Quotations from Phelps’ sermons
These quotes came from an audio file of sermon clips on satanlovesfredphelps.com.[16]
* “America is doomed and cursed by God irreversibly”.
* “It’s too late to pray for America. It’s a sin to pray for America”.
* “Hurricane Rita is an answer to the prayers of the suffering saints of Westboro Baptist Church”. (Hurricane Katrina has also been cited on other sources)
* “The Lord God Almighty killed [the people who died on 9/11], looked at them in the face, laughed and mocked at each one of them as he cast each one of them into hell”.
* “Nobody that’s intelligent and that fears God will fly the American flag any way but upside-down, the international symbol of distress”.
* “All ye having business before this honorable [Supreme] Court draw nigh, give your attention and ye shall be heard. No, no. Draw nigh and bend over. They’re gonna rape you up the butt”.
* “The President of the United States gets his jollies masturbating horses”. (This was a reference to a joke told by Laura Bush about her husband’s attempt to milk a male horse[17]).
* “The hell with your flag. The hell with your fag army, your fag courts, your fag-run government”.
* “This is the hypocritical, fag-infested, fag-run United States of America and we’re supposed to respect that fag rag flag?”
* “The red on that flag stands for fag rectal blood”.
* “On Pope John Paul II’s watch, the Roman Catholic Church became the church of the holy pedophiles. And sodomite feces replaced the wafer for their communion service. And Sodomite semen replaced the wine that the Pope drinks”.
* “1.07 billion members of that monstrous machine called the Roman Catholic Church. Every last one of them going to hell”.
Activities and statements
See also: Targets of Westboro Baptist Church
The group carries out daily picketing in Topeka (purportedly six per day with fifteen on Sunday, “Lord willing”, per the index page of its main website[18]) and travels nationally to picket the funerals of gay and lesbian victims of murder, gay-bashing or death related to AIDS, as well as other events related or appearing to be related to gay people. They have been known to protest outside theaters in Topeka, under the premise that live theatre (especially Broadway musical productions) is a haven of homosexuality, as well as Kansas City Chiefs football games, and live pop concerts in Topeka. They have also shown interest in picketing productions of the play The Laramie Project.[19] Recently, they have shifted their interest to picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in the Iraq War, believing this to be more of “God’s judgment” on America. The FAQ section of the website states that, in their view, soldiers didn’t join the military out of a sense of patriotism, but because they are “lazy, incompetent idiots” unable to find work elsewhere.[5] Some states, including Kansas, have passed laws prohibiting picketing at funerals. Westboro has also protested funerals of people ranging from Fred Rogers to Coretta Scott King.
One of Westboro’s followers estimated that the church spends $250,000 a year traveling around the world to picket. In the 1990s the church won a series of lawsuits against the City of Topeka and Shawnee County for efforts taken to prevent or hinder WBC picketing. As a result, the church was awarded approximately $200,000 in attorney’s fees and costs associated with the litigation. Otherwise, all of the church’s money comes from the combined income of its congregants and money won in lawsuits against their opponents.
Phelps Sr., his supporters and members of his church attend the aforementioned gatherings, as well as other gay-related events, with signs bearing anti-gay slogans. Phelps Sr. has characterized the AIDS Memorial Quilt as “100,000 living fags slobberin’ around 45,000 dead fags” and declared Elizabeth Taylor, a fundraiser for AIDS research, to be a “world-famous filthy Jew whore.” Other regular anti-gay slogans of Westboro include “Homosexuality = Death,” “Fags Die, God Laughs,” “Matthew Shepard Rots in Hell,” “AIDS: Kills Fags Dead” and “Ellen DeGeneres is a Lesbian Slut.” (The latter was carried at an “Equality Rocks” rock concert and fundraiser; at the event DeGeneres commented that she wasn’t offended so much by the slogan as the fact that they had drawn pockmarks all over her face on the poster.)
A collection of Westboro signs and slogans can be seen at “The signs of the times” web page.
Other slogans are[20]
* God Hates You[21]
* God Hates Your Tears[22]
* God Hates Fag Enablers[21]
* God Is Your Enemy[21]
* Thank God for 9/11[21]
* Thank God for the Tsunami[23]
* Thank God for Katrina[24]
* Thank God for Dead Soldiers[21]
* Thank God for IEDs (improvised explosive devices)[21]
* Thank God for AIDS[5]
* Fag Santa (carried at Christmas time)
* Fag Flag (with an American flag)[21]
* Fags Doom Nations (Image)
* Fags Are Worthy of Death (Image)
* Fags Eat Feces = Scat
* Fag Troops[21]
* Menninger Therapy (complete with two stick figures mounting)
* Repent or Perish[25]
* Dyke nuns and Fag Priests (carried outside Catholic churches)
* God Hates PS3
* Fags Play PS3
* Dyke Sows Wed Here (complete with pictures of pigs in wedding dresses covered with feces; carried at lesbian weddings)
* Brides of Satan (referring to lesbian weddings)
* Don’t Worship the Dead[21]
* Disney Fags (used during Disney on Ice at the Expo Center.)
* Your Pastor Is A Whore[21]
* Semper Fi Semper Fag
When Kevin Oldham, a gay musician, died of AIDS in 1993, Phelps Sr. sent a photo of Kevin to his parents. The photo contained the caption: “Kevin Oldham: Dead Fag”.[26]
The group came into the national spotlight in 1998, when they were featured on CNN for picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man from Wyoming who was beaten to death by two young males. Though Phelps Sr. claimed that Shepard’s murder was unjust (and the Westboro’s website states that Shepard’s murderers face the same fate as Shepard – eternity in hell unless they repent), his overt activism against Shepard’s sexual orientation, regardless of the mourning of Shepard’s family and friends (he called Shepard’s mother, Judy, a whore and a “mother from Hell” during the memorial service and told her she’d “soon be joining Matthew”), to some had the appearance of a tacit endorsement for Shepard’s murder.
On Westboro’s website, Phelps Sr. maintains a “Perpetual Gospel Memorial” to Shepard. There is a similar memorial to lesbian dog-attack victim Diane Whipple. Some direct quotes/images from the Shepard page:
* A photograph of Matthew Shepard’s face with animated flames dancing across it. When the cursor is moved across his face, viewers with a sound card will hear screams and a high-pitched voice shrieking “For God’s sake, listen to Phelps!”
* A counter which displays how many days Matthew Shepard has “Been in Hell”.
* “WBC does not support the murder of Matthew Shepard: ‘thou shalt not kill.’ Unless his killers repent, they will receive the same sentence that Matthew Shepard received – eternal fire. However, the truth about Matthew Shepard needs to be known. He lived a Satanic lifestyle. He got himself killed trolling for anonymous homosexual sex in a bar at midnight”.[27]
On January 25, 2004, Phelps picketed five churches (three Catholic and two Episcopalian) and the Federal Courthouse for allegedly legalizing same sex marriages in Iowa. Two women married in Vermont had their marriage mistakenly annulled by a federal judge in Sioux City, Iowa. The ruling was quickly reversed. The community response was to hold several counter-protests and hold a large multi-faith service in the town’s city auditorium.[citation needed]
The group has also picketed Billy Graham revivals, alleging that the evangelist will burn in Hell for failing to propagate the “God Hates Fags” doctrine. In October 2004, the group protested Graham’s mass meetings, calling the 85 year-old preacher a “Hell-bound false prophet”.
In press releases, WBC referred to Topeka mayor James McClinton as a “wife-beating tyrant”. McClinton, who is black, was portrayed in the press release as a gorilla in a suit with a swastika armband.[28]
A WBC member picketing the memorial in Buckhannon, West Virginia
A WBC member picketing the memorial in Buckhannon, West Virginia
On January 15, 2006, Westboro members protested the memorial of 2006 Sago Mine disaster victims claiming that the mining accident was God’s revenge against America for its tolerance of homosexuality.[29] Footage of the protest, including several members dancing, was later shown on Fox News.
In July 2005, the Westboro Baptist Church declared its intention to picket the memorial service of Cpl. Carrie French in Boise, Idaho. French, aged 19 years old, was killed on June 5 in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where she served as an ammunition specialist with the 116th Brigade Combat Team’s 145th Support Battalion. Her death is seen by the church as divine punishment of the United States. Phelps Sr. was quoted as saying, “Our attitude toward what’s happening with the war is [that] the Lord is punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that are worth a dime.”[30]
The Westboro Baptist Church declared its intention to picket the funerals of other soldiers as well and did so in August 2005. A group from the church protested at the funeral of Spc. Edward Myers, a soldier from St. Joseph, Missouri, who died in Iraq. Shirley Phelps-Roper (one of Phelps Sr.’s daughters and main author of the WBC Epics and Hate Letters) told a television reporter, “Who would serve a nation that is Godless and has flipped off, defiantly defied, defiantly flipped off, the Lord their God?” She then reiterated her belief that Myers was burning in Hell.[31]
After University of Missouri coach Kyle Hawkins “came out” as openly gay, WBC members announced plans to picket the University and all Missouri’s lacrosse games.[citation needed]
In the wake of the tragic Amish school house shooting, members of Westboro Baptist Church planned on picketing the funerals of the five girls killed in the shooting. Their signs were going to call the girls “whores” and that they are “burning in hell”. In an attempt to stop them, news radio personality/host Mike Gallagher attempted to dissuade them. After first rejecting a monetary offer, Gallagher offered them an hour of unrestricted airtime on his show. WBC accepted, and the picket was called off.[32] On October 5, 2006, members of WBC were “hosts” of the Mike Gallagher’s radio show, with Gallagher giving periodic warnings to viewers that they (the members of WBC) did not represent the views of him or the station.
In February of 2007, the WBC threatened to picket the funeral of ten Bardstown, Kentucky family members who died in a fire as well as a similar one in Tennessee where four children died in a fire. In both instances, fliers were sent to the communities stating that God “hates” both states “for promoting sodomy and immorality” and for the states “rabidly persecuting” the church. However, on the Friday before the Bardstown funerals, the church elected to use an hour of radio time to promote their message.[33]
Recently the WBC has also been picketing against Sweden because the pastor Åke Green was convicted for hate speech after having called homosexuality a cancer in one of his sermons. WBC has also been sending abusive faxes to Princess Madeleine of Sweden.[3]
On the day of the April 16th 2007 campus massacre on the Virginia Tech campus, the Church declared its intent to protest the funerals of the students killed. This was announced on the Church’s www.godhatesamerica.com website. On April 19th 2007, GoDaddy, the Internet registrar responsible for that website and its associated domain had suspended its registration, returning a “whois” DNS server entry of “suspended for spam and abuse”. Within hours, however, the domain had been restored.[citation needed] In a deal similar to that struck for the victims of the Amish school shooting, Gallagher and the Church have independently announced that the Church has agreed to not protest these funerals in lieu of three hours of unrestricted airtime on his show.[4][5]
Criminal record
In 1993, Charles F. Hockenbarger, Karl Hockenbarger, Timothy Phelps, Jonathan Phelps, Phelps Sr. and Margie Phelps were brought up on a variety of criminal charges stemming from information gathered following a raid of Westboro. Several charges were later dropped; the trials that followed saw every member of Westboro Baptist Church over the age of fifteen testifying in the defense of their family and fellow congregants; over 100 defense witnesses were called in all. Timothy Phelps, Charles F. Hockenbarger and Karl Hockenbarger were all found not guilty. Jon Phelps was found guilty of witness intimidation and misdemeanor battery, and has defended the actions that led to that arrest and guilty verdict as recently as October 11, 2006 on Midweek Politics, while Margie Phelps was found guilty of filing a false report and Phelps Sr. was found guilty of disorderly conduct as defined by aggravated intimidation of a witness; all three lost their appeals. All six filed lawsuits against the city and took their cases to