National, Regional and Local News

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

Which would have been the same exact words that would have been bravely spoken from the POTUS 4 months ago.
Sorry.
What a change (for the better).

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Surveillance video shows Atlanta suspect entered first spa more than an hour before shooting

By
Elyse Samuels,
Tim Craig and
Timothy Bella
March 19, 2021 at 6:06 p.m. EDT

The suspect in the shootings at three Atlanta-area spas entered Young’s Asian Massage more than an hour before gunfire was reported at the business, the beginning of a rampage that left eight people dead, most of them Asian women, surveillance video obtained by The Washington Post shows.

The video shows that Robert Aaron Long first spent an hour sitting in the parking lot outside the shop. He then entered and 1 hours and 12 minutes elapsed before he was seen leaving the establishment and getting into his car. Several minutes later, people appear in the parking lot and police arrive. The length of time that Long spent inside Young’s was previously unknown. It’s unclear what he was doing for the hour after he was seen entering the spa and before the shooting began.

Through visual analysis of the surveillance video, The Post determined that the man seen in the footage is Long, as the images match photos of the suspect released by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. During the 1 hour and 12 minutes after Long entered the building, the video shows cars driving up, and people coming and going. The video does not appear to be manipulated.

The timing of Long’s departure in the footage came four minutes ahead of the first reports of gunshots to 911, which came at 4:54 p.m., according to a 911 call log and the Cherokee Sheriff’s office. (The time codes that appear in the upper left corner of the surveillance video are four hours off. Four hours is also the time difference between Eastern and Coordinated Universal Time or UTC.) At the time of those reports, a separate video obtained by The Post, shot by Marcus Lyon, a 31-year-old customer of the business, shows several victims laying motionless on the ground in front of the shop.

When asked about the surveillance video, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office declined to provide details to The Post about when Long was shown to have entered Young’s and what is known about what preceded the shooting.

“We are unable to give out that information,” an official told The Post, before being directed to Capt. Jay Baker, the spokesman for the sheriff’s office. Baker, who is no longer the spokesman for the case after he was widely criticized for saying the shooting suspect was having “a really bad day,” did not immediately return a request for comment.

Police arrived at the scene Tuesday at a time when Young’s regularly had more customers, according to business metrics tracked by Google.

Authorities have so far released only limited details about Long’s movements on the day of the shooting. Some details have emerged, including from an attorney for a store in Canton, Ga., who confirmed that Long bought a 9mm pistol there the same day.

Multiple messages left for Young’s were not immediately returned.

Lyon, a delivery driver in Kennesaw, Ga., who was at Young’s for the first time, said nothing felt out of the ordinary when he arrived around 4:40 p.m. Tuesday. He said that while he didn’t notice Long in the spa, the trauma of what happened has left him wondering if he just didn’t see him.

“I keep replaying it in my mind these last couple days,” he said. “I didn’t think this could happen. It’s crazy.”

Hannah Knowles, Jorge Ribas and Mark Berman contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... -shooting/

[dryrunguy]

I think we know what he was probably doing before he started shooting, right? Just one more time?

[ti-amie]

The guy who shot nine people dead in church a few years ago prayed with them before he started shooting.

[ti-amie]

I edited some of the first post.

Molly CrabappleFlag of Puerto Rico
@mollycrabapple

Delania Yaun was one of the eight people murdered by a fundamentalist, racist...in Atlanta. Cops arrested her husband Mario at the scene and held him for four hours in handcuffs so tight they injured his wrists. They would not tell him if she was dead

Delania Yaun was white. Her husband Mario González is Mexican. Police refused to believe González was married to a white woman, brutalized him, and refused to even let him see his dead wife's body

I haven't seen this covered outside the Spanish media


Hispano Tiroteo Atlanta: Sobrevivió a la masacre y cuenta su historia
EN EXCLUSIVA: Hispano que sobrevivió a la masacre en Atlanta revela su historia en una de las salas de masaje donde perdió a su esposa.
mundohispanico.com

[JazzNU]

At least some of these places don't appear to be that kind of massage parlor. Licensed massage therapists and licensed cosmetologists and couples getting massages together aren't very common at that kind of spa unless Atlanta has another kind of thing going on.

[Suliso]

Also victims seem to be a bit old to provide that kind of services.

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

You can look at those news and actually be happy. It means they know the only way to win elections is by cheating.

[JazzNU]

Florida being Florida because Desantis DGAF about anything other than revenue

[patrick]

Yep, all about revenue and contributions from donors that has to be in billions at least.

[Suliso]

Having not grown up religious I was reading the article below with an amazement. There might or might not have been a specific Asian hate element in this particular crime, but surely this twisted religiousness is also to blame for a lot of ills in the society. Without it the guy would likely have had a girlfriend and all those other women would be alive...

Atlanta Suspect’s Fixation on Sex Is Familiar Thorn for Evangelicals

The man accused of killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent, blamed “sexual addiction,” a disputed term used in parts of evangelical culture.

By Ruth Graham
March 20, 2021

When Brad Onishi heard that the man accused of a rampage at three Atlanta-area spas told detectives that he had carried out the attacks as a way to eliminate his own temptations, the claim sounded painfully familiar.

Dr. Onishi, who grew up in a strict evangelical community in Southern California that emphasized sexual purity, had spent his teenage years tearing out any advertisements in surfing magazines that featured women in bikinis. He had traded his online passwords with friends to hold himself accountable. “We had a militant vigilance: Don’t let anything in the house that will tempt you sexually,” Dr. Onishi, now an associate professor of religious studies at Skidmore College, recalled.

The evangelical culture he was raised in, he said, “teaches women to hate their bodies, as the source of temptation, and it teaches men to hate their minds, which lead them into lust and sexual immorality.”

Robert Aaron Long, the suspect in the massacres that left eight people dead, told the police this week that he had a “sexual addiction,” and he had been a customer at two of the spas that he targeted. He was so intent on avoiding pornography that he blocked several websites on his computer and had sought help at a Christian rehab clinic. A former roommate said that Mr. Long agonized over the possibility of “falling out of God’s grace.”

When Mr. Long, 21, was arrested on Tuesday on his way to Florida, the police said, he told officers he had planned to carry out another attack on a business connected to the pornography industry.

Many people saw clear signs of misogyny and racism in the attacks, in which six of the victims were women of Asian descent.

But Mr. Long’s characterization of his motivations was also very recognizable to observers of evangelicalism and some evangelicals themselves. He seemed to have had a fixation on sexual temptation, one that can lead to despair among people who believe they are failing to follow the ideal of refraining from sex and even lust outside heterosexual marriage.

Combating pornography and improper sexual desire is an enduring theme within contemporary conservative evangelicalism. In churches, men partner in “accountability groups” to hold each other responsible for avoiding sexual temptation and other moral dangers. Others use “accountability software” like Covenant Eyes, which monitors screen activity and sends reports about pornography usage to a designated “ally.” Countless books promise spiritual and practical strategies for breaking free of the habit.

Historically, some evangelical leaders have also drawn a direct line between pornography and violence. James Dobson, the influential founder of Focus on the Family, recorded a video interview with Ted Bundy the day before the serial killer’s execution in 1989. Mr. Bundy’s message was that an “addiction” to pornography fueled his crimes.

“What a tragedy!” Mr. Dobson wrote later, referring to Mr. Bundy’s violence. “There is a possibility, at least, that it would not have occurred if that 13-year-old boy had never stumbled onto pornographic magazines in a garbage dump.”

In recent decades, many conservative evangelical leaders and their churches have begun to speak more frankly about sex. “It’s very openly talked about that God created sexuality, it’s something not to be ashamed of, and that God made it for his purposes,” said Anson McMahon, a pastor in Buford, Ga., who was a guest speaker at several summer trips for young people in the early 2000s at the Baptist church later attended by Mr. Long.

But if conversations around sexual issues have become more frank, the message that sex is reserved for straight married couples has remained unchanged.

Many Christians trace their condemnation of pornography back to Jesus. “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” he is quoted saying in the Gospel of Matthew.

For Protestants in particular, whose faith prioritizes correct internal beliefs and spiritual attitudes, that passage has contributed to a worldview in which inappropriate sexual thoughts are just as sinful as wrong actions.

The problem with pornography, in this view, is how it affects the person’s mind and heart.

“Masturbation in and of itself, the act is a biological act,” said Heath Lambert, the lead pastor of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., and author of a book for evangelical men struggling with pornography use. “What’s wrong is lust. What’s wrong is what happens in my heart.”

The attacks at the spas violated all church teachings, Dr. Lambert said, and he thought the obvious root of the violence was the pornography that the accused gunman “was using and trying to get away from.”

White evangelicals do not use pornography more than other demographics, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who has researched the role of pornography in the lives of conservative Protestants. In fact, white evangelicals who regularly attend church look at pornography less than the general population.

But they report significantly more anguish around the practice. Almost 30 percent of white evangelicals say they feel depressed after using pornography, compared with 8.6 percent of white liberal Protestants and 19 percent of white Catholics, according to a survey Dr. Perry co-conducted in February as part of the Public Discourse and Ethics Survey. White evangelicals are also significantly more likely to report that they are “addicted” to pornography.

Dr. Perry described a phenomenon in some parts of evangelical culture that he called “sexual exceptionalism,” in which sexual sins are implied to be more serious than other categories.

“So many men boil down how they’re doing spiritually to how often they have looked at porn recently,” Dr. Perry said, reflecting on his research in evangelical settings. “Not whether they’d grown in their love toward others, given generously of their time, or spent time connecting with God, but if they masturbated.”

For some with experience in evangelical youth culture, Mr. Long’s fixation on sexual temptation was a reminder of a damaging approach to teaching young people how to address sexuality.

“It presents a very demeaning view of manhood,” said Rachael Denhollander, an evangelical advocate for sexual abuse victims. “Every time you teach a woman in the presence of a young man that it’s her responsibility to keep a man from lusting and that she has the power to keep him from sexual perversion by what she wears and what she does, what he hears is that it’s her fault.”

Jeff Chu, a writer in Michigan, attended an evangelical junior high and high school that, like many similar schools, enforced strict rules for the lengths of girls’ skirts with the goal of encouraging modesty. “It was so rarely about the men controlling their own desires, and so often about women not being temptresses,” Mr. Chu recalled. “So many of us who haven’t fit within the norms of that culture, whether it’s women or queer people, we’re always seen as the problem.”

And while the police said that Mr. Long claimed he was not racially motivated, some saw a connection between strict sexual beliefs and violence against Asian women in particular.

“Purity culture teaches young men to view young women who do not try to maintain modesty as sinister forces,” Dr. Onishi said. “It’s hard not to think about the fact that Asian women have been sexualized and set up to be viewed through the lens of an exotic other who is sexually desirable.”

Despite evangelicalism’s preoccupations with individual sexual morality, its leaders’ failures are so numerous as to have become cliché. In the most recent high-profile example, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries announced last month that its eponymous founder had a pattern of groping and exposing himself to massage therapists, among other sexual misconduct. Mr. Zacharias, who died in 2020, owned two day spas in the Atlanta area.

Mr. Long sought treatment for what he described to the police as a “sex addiction” at HopeQuest, an evangelical treatment center in Acworth, Ga., the city where one of the attacks took place. The center advertises its treatment of “sex addiction” and “pornography addiction” in addition to drugs, alcohol and gambling. The center lists indications for sex addiction including “‘crossing lines’ of personal beliefs or values in his/her behaviors, which results in extreme emotional distress and feelings of guilt and shame.”

The language of addiction is used often in evangelical circles to describe someone who uses pornography or engages in other sexual behaviors that violate their own values, but does not necessarily rise to the level of clinical addiction, Dr. Perry said.

“Sex addiction” is not an established psychiatric diagnosis, and there is a debate in the mental health community about how to define and treat compulsive sexual behavior.

“There’s no evidence-based treatment for sex addiction,” said Joshua Grubbs, an assistant professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University and a clinical psychologist. Evangelical sex addiction treatment tends to emphasize total abstinence from any sexual behavior outside heterosexual marriage. “They don’t take into account that humans are creatures with a drive for sex,” Dr. Grubbs said.

Mr. Long and his family were active members at Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Ga., which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. In the church’s youth group for high school students, Mr. Long was “one of those core young men involved in everything we did,” said Brett Cottrell, a former youth and missions pastor at the church.

In November, an associate pastor at the church, Luke Folsom, preached a sermon on the “battle” against sin. He quoted a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his followers that it may be worth gouging out an eye if it causes them to sin.

He continued, addressing the use of pornography directly. “Cut it out by getting rid of your smartphone, getting rid of internet connection, anything and everything that would allow you to do it,” he said. “Your soul is at stake.”

Lust, he added, is “a heart problem, not just an eye problem.”

The church, which declined a request for an interview with its leaders, issued a statement on Friday that condemned the violence at the Atlanta-area spas, as well as the suspect’s “stated reasons for carrying out this wicked plan.”

The church also emphasized that the gunman alone was to blame for his actions. “The women that he solicited for sexual acts are not responsible for his perverse sexual desires nor do they bear any blame in these murders,” the church stated. “These actions are the result of a sinful heart and depraved mind.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/us/e ... e=Homepage

[mmmm8]

AITA or is the lunacy scale increasing daily?
Should the American Psychoanalytical Association start some sort of "Doomsday Clock", the day when 50% + 1 of all Americans go irreversibly cuckoo? I mean, in Venezuela we frequently talked about "The C Day"*, the day everything would finally go to pieces, but this is like pedal to the metal, no seat-belts, no headlights on, a fifth of Jack in your hand, driving to hell.

Off Topic

* In Vennieland, our equivalent to f*** is "coño", which is used in as many ways and can range from hilarious to offensive. So, "El dia del C***". Which, of course, did happen.

There is a reason things like white nationalism and other "ism" movement are subject to scientific studies that look at their spread as an epidemic, the same way an infectious disease spreads.