One Klan Washed the Other: Mississippi Police Colluded With KKK.

Jerry Mitchell makes a compelling case that the Ku Klux Klan was able to literally get away with murder in Mississippi—home of some of the most high-profile murders in the Civil Rights era—thanks to assistance from local law enforcement officials.

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Mozambique Considers Lifting Abortion Ban.

In an effort to reduce the astronomical number of annual maternal deaths in Mozambique, the government of that African state is considering making abortion legal.

According to the Ministry of Health, illegal abortions are the third leading killer of pregnant women, a horrific statistic in light of the fact that Mozambique has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world.

South Africa saw a 91% drop in maternal deaths in the 10 years since abortion was legalized there. Worldwide, the World Health Organization reports that 68,000 women die annually from unsafe abortions.

Hopefully more African countries will follow Mozambique’s lead and recognize a woman’s right to choose when and whether to have children.

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What is this World Coming To???

Yikes!!!!!

Four gay men have been arrested in the Netherlands for intentionally infecting other men with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The four accused—all of whom are HIV positive—organized sex parties during which they drugged the guests with GHB (a date-rape drug), had unprotected sex with them, and then injected them with HIV-infected blood, which the assailants had drawn from themselves.

Two of the accused have confessed to performing the injections and face charges of rape and “premeditated severe assault.” They face a maximum of 16 years in prison. The third suspect is still being investigated while the fourth man, who is not a suspect in the rapes, is being charged with selling “a considerable amount of drugs” including Ectasy and GHB.

According to Police Chief Ronald Zwarter, ”The motive to do this was the ‘kick,’ and the feeling that unsafe sex is ‘pure.’”

Man, this sort of thing takes all the fun out of gay sex parties!!!!!

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Cops Gone Wild!!

A 39-year-old Detroit police officer, Roosevelt Tidwell, has been charged with sexual assault and sexual misconduct.

According to the 41-year-old female victim, she and a male friend were drinking in their car in a public park. Tidwell approached them and assured them that he would not take police action against them if the victim returned to the patrol car with him. Once in the car, he forced her to perform a sex act with him. He also got her mobile phone number and, about a month later, threatened her into a meeting with him during which he forced her into again having sex with him in the patrol car.

What makes this case even worse is that the new allegations come after Tidwell was already being held in jail on 16 felony charges of forcing several couples to perform sex acts in Detroit’s Chandler Park. Tidwell apparently approached the couples in the park and ordered them into sex acts while he watched.

This is clearly a case of a police officer using his position to fulfill his perverted sexual desires. Voyeurism is cool and all but only when the person(s) being watched is(are) willing to put on a show. And forcing someone to have sex against their will is rape. Plain and simple.

I hope this guy goes away for a long time.

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Ghosts of Racist Violence Return to Haunt U.S.

The FBI recently reopened several unsolved murder cases from the Civil Rights era, thereby resurrecting long-buried memories of racist violence in the U.S.

Here are some of the better-known cases:

August 1955: Emmett Till, 14, from Chicago, is murdered and mutilated while on holiday in Money, Mississippi after whistling at a white woman. Two white men are acquitted of murder by an all-white jury (they later confess to the crime in a magazine article). 

June 1963: NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is murdered in Jackson, Mississippi. White supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was jailed for life in 1994 but died seven years later.

September 1963: Four black girls are killed in a bombing at a church in Birmingham, Alabama. Three men were convicted of murder, the last of them in 2002.

June 1964: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman are arrested by local police and handed over to a racist mob. The next day their burned-out station wagon is found in the Bogue Chitto swamp, and the bodies of the three men are found 44 days later, buried 15 feet in an earthen dam. Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of these murders in 2005. Eight other bodies—including those of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee—were discovered during the search for Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman.

July 1964: Teenagers Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee are beaten to death by members of the Ku Klux Klan and dumped in the Mississippi River. Former klansman and sheriff’s deputy James Seal is currently being retried on murder charges in the Moore and Dee case.

June 1965: Klansmen shoot at the patrol car of deputy Oneal Moore and his partner Creed Rogers. Moore is killed and Rogers loses the use of one eye. The two Black deputies had been on the job for a year and a day. No-one was convicted of this crime.

For a longer list of victims of racist violence in the U.S., take at look at Biographies of Slain Civil Rights Figures.

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“I can have my penis surgically removed and still manage this city.”

Steve Stanton (above) recently lost his job as city manager in Largo, Florida after he announced his plans to undergo a sex change operation and become a woman.

He later applied for the position of city manager of Sarasota, Florida. Stanton—who had recently started living as a woman—showed up at the interview wearing a skirt, pumps, and makeup. The job was  given to another candidate.

Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is. I don’t think Steve-soon-to-be-Susan Stanton should have been fired. If he performed his job well, his private life should have had no bearing on his professional life.

Hopefully Steve/Susan will be able to find a job soon.

Read the full story here.

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Justice delayed is justice denied! No escape for racists!

Take a good look.

This is what a racist, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a murderer looks like. An ordinary person. No horns, no tail, just a heart full of hatred.

James Seale (seen above in the mugshot from his initial 1964 arrest) has been charged with the 1964 kidnapping and murder of hitch-hikers Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. It’s the second time he’s facing these charges. He was first arrested in 1964 but charges were dropped by local law enforcement officials who cited insufficient evidence.

Seal held Moore and Dee at the point of a shotgun while his fellow klansmen beat them with tree branches.  The victims were then dumped in the Mississippi River where their bodies were discovered by FBI agents who were searching for the bodies of three other victims of racist violence.

Hopefully, James Seal will not escape justice this time and his name will forever be associated with the vilest and most vicious members of our society.

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Surprise surprise! The media marginalizes progressive religious voices.

According to a new report released by Media Matters, the mainstream media quotes conservative religious figures two to three times as often as they quote progressive or centrist relitious figures!!

In other words, when audiences come upon something said or written by a “religious leader,” odds are two to three times greater that they’ll be receiving a conservative message.

No wonder it seems like there are more of them out there.

Read the full report here.

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“Blood Diamond” should have been shot in Sierra Leone.

Apparently, some people are upset that Blood Diamond gave a negative portrayal of Sierra Leone.

I think it’s ridiculous for people to argue over whether or not the movie is positive or negative. The themes of the movie—war, violence, amputation, exploitation—are negative so it’s ineviatable the movie will be negative. But banning it!!?? That’s just dumb. That would be like Germans calling for every Holocaust film to be banned because it’s negative.

What bothered me about the movie is the fact that it wasn’t even filmed in Sierra Leone. Most of it anyway. The beach bar scene was not filmed at the beach in the capital, Freetown. The cast was not even Sierra Leonean: their accented Krio was a dead giveaway, as was their accented English. Sierra Leoneans don’t roll their Rs the way East and Southern Africans do. Also, there are no cheetahs in Sierra Leone, and the fishing village in the opening scene was obviously somewhere in Eastern Africa. Sierra Leonean fishing boats are large, dug-out canoes that are propeled by paddles or motors, not sails. Those triangular sails are found in East Africa.

Apparently, some filming was done in Sierra Leone but, according to the director, “Equatorial West Africa just didn’t have the infrastructure to accommodate all our needs for this size production. We needed other locations, as well.” In the end, most of the film was shot in South Africa and Mozambique, which is a pity because Sierra Leone can hold it’s own against any African country in terms of natural beauty and the recovering tourist industry would no doubt have benefited tremendoulsy from the publicity.

Although the plot was entertaining and action-packed, I was repeatedly irritated to see scenes that were obviously not Sierra Leone. Ultimately, Blood Diamond got away with not being filmed on location because of the audience’s ignorance about Africa. Anyone who knows the difference between West, East, and Southern Africa would have been disappointed.

Perhaps the filmmakers did not expect any Sierra Leoneans to see their movie, which is sad because wasn’t the movie supposed to be about the Sierra  Leonean experience? It’s possible they were only interested in profiting from this national catastrophe. I understand that Hollywood studios exist to make money for their shareholders but the least they could have done was shoot more of the movie in Sierra Leone.

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U.S. Healthcare System Gets Lowest Score.

A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund finds that, compared to five other industrialized countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom), the U.S. has the most expensive, least efficient, and least accessible healthcare system. 

That’s what we get for accepting the idea that somebody should make a profit every time we get sick.

Read the full report here.

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