AFA Lies Again-Takes Credit for Something That Never Happened
At the end of last week, the SPLC designated hate group, American Family Association’s (AFA) Brian Fischer became incensed when he was supposedly contacted by someone using the U.S. Army network to access the Southern Baptist Convention Website (sbc.com). Fischer claimed, as he so often does, that Obama’s military was blocking Christian websites (despite the fact this was only one website). It turns out the SBC site contained malicious code that would have compromised any computer or network, which accessed the site.
The Department of Defense (DoD) takes their network security pretty serious, as they should. In fact, many people don’t think they take it serious enough. They use filtering software which exams the code that actually creates the web page in a browser, and determines if the code itself looks as if contains malicious code, malware, trojan software, insecure redirects, etc.
Users on the DoD network attempting to connect to the SBC website received the following message: “The site you have requested has been blocked by Team CONUS (C-TNOSC/RCERT-CONUS) due to hostile content.” It is not unusual for network administrators to use strong language when creating these messages, so that users are reminded of the threats. However, rather than doing some investigation, Fischer, Town Hall, and others jumped on this as, what they consider, yet another attempt by Obama (because, of course, he controls the DoD’s computer networks from the bunker at the White House), to censor Christians and restrict religious freedom.
I went to the SBC website, and get a malicious code warning. I then viewed the code of the site, and found that nearly every news article on the front page had a URL redirect to other sites. URL redirects are often used by hackers to get you to a site they control by clicking on what appears to be a legitimate link, but get taken to a site with malicious content. The large number of redirects alone would be enough to trigger some filtering software.
It didn’t take much investigation to understand what was going on, but Brian had no time for that. He had to attack…because, you know, his God’s apparently not big enough to take care of himself, and everything the government does today is part of an overall strategy to end Christianity in favor of Islam…or something like that.
Shortly after that, even the SBC admitted there was malicious code on the site (inadvertent I’m sure), removed it, and the DoD unblocked the site. Has Brian made mention of all this? Not exactly. What Brian is now doing is even worse than the highly inaccurate and inflammatory claims he made about the site filtering to start with. Now he’s trying to infer this was nefarious plan on the part of the DoD, and take credit for getting the block removed. I received a mass email today from the AFA in which they discuss how they, “do something about the issues today.” His last bullet point claims:
When the military blocked the Southern Baptist Convention website for what it deemed “hostile content,” AFA exposed the anti-Christian deed. Within hours, the Pentagon reversed itself and unblocked the website on military bases everywhere.
Notice, no mention of the malicious content on the SBC website which might have compromised the military’s network and placed soldiers around the world at greater risk. Nor is there any mention of the SBC removing the malicious code, and the DoD’s filters then allowing access. Nope, it was all just because Brian made a fuss. Here’s what is on their website page linked to from their email about this matter:
Had this issue not gained national attention, the sbc.net website would still be blocked today…It is critical that we remain vigilant in defending religious freedom, especially in the military. Because of your actions, the Pentagon quickly resolved this issue and unblocked the sbc.net website.
I just don’t understand how these people and groups claim to be Christian, but just have absolutely no problem telling bold-faced L I E S. There’s no other way to describe what they do.
