The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali, 1931, 9.5 x 13 in., oil on canvas.
Monthly Archives: March 2008
THE TORTURED DEATH OF DOROTHY DIXON SHOCKS ILLINOIS TOWN
By JIM SUHR,
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted: 2008-03-21 17:05:54
ALTON, Ill. (March 21) – Banished to the basement, the 29-year-old mother with a childlike mind and another baby on the way had little more than a thin rug and a mattress to call her own on the chilly concrete floor.
Dorothy Dixon ate what she could forage from the refrigerator upstairs, where housemates used her for target practice with BBs, burned her with a glue gun and doused her with scalding liquid that peeled away her skin. They torched what few clothes she had, so she walked around naked. They often pummeled her with an aluminum bat or metal handle.
Dixon — six months pregnant — died after weeks of abuse. Police have charged two adults, three teenagers and a 12-year-old boy with murder in the case that has repulsed many in this Mississippi River town.”This is heartbreaking,” police Lt. David Hayes said. “It was almost as though they were making fun of the abuse they were administering. This woman was almost like living in a prison.”
Investigators put much of the blame on Michelle Riley, 35, who they said befriended Dixon but pocketed monthly Social Security checks she got because of her developmental delays.
Dixon saw little, if any, of the money, Hayes said. For months she weathered the torment to keep a roof over her head and that of her year-old son, who weighed just 15 pounds when taken into state custody after his mom’s death.
“I’ve never seen an almost conspiratorial effort by a group of people to continuously torture someone until she finally died, then not really show any remorse,” Hayes said. “It was just a slow, torturous, tragic way to die. I highly doubt Dorothy Dixon even knew she was dying.”
Riley, 43-year-old Judy Woods and three teenagers, including Riley’s 15-year-old daughter, LeShelle McBride, are charged with first-degree murder, aggravated and heinous battery, intentional homicide of an unborn child, and unlawful restraint. Riley’s 12-year-old son is charged as a juvenile.
Riley, her daughter, Woods and 16-year-old Benny Wilson have public defenders who did not immediately return messages for comment. An 18-year-old defendant, Michael Elliott, planned to get his own attorney, court records show.
All remain in jail on $1 million bond.
John Badman, The Telegraph / AP
Michelle Riley, 35, is led from the house where Dixon’s body was found. Police said Riley befriended Dixon, got her to move into the home, and then pocketed the mentally disabled woman’s Social Security checks. Investigators said Riley was the ringleader of the torturers. Neighbors said Riley treated Dixon like a slave.
Messages left with a Chicago-area sister of Dixon went unreturned, but neighbors, Hayes and newspaper accounts offer a mosaic of the months leading to Dixon’s demise inside the small, white, blue-shuttered house.
Riley and Dixon, police said, had lived in Quincy, a Mississippi River town about 100 miles north of St. Louis, Mo. Quincy is where Riley worked as a coordinator for a regional center that helps the developmentally disabled with housing and other services. Dixon was a client.
For years, an impoverished Riley struggled raising her children. Her use of methamphetamine and cocaine brought drug convictions in 2002 and 2004. But with treatment and housing help from the Quincy YWCA, Riley put her life in order — so much that in February of last year, the Quincy Herald-Whig did a story on her comeback.
Last summer, Dixon and Riley moved into the $800-a-month, three-bedroom rental in Alton about 15 miles north of St. Louis. From the start, neighbors Chad Hudson and Terri Brandt considered Riley trouble.
“Michelle was evil, vindictive. Manipulative,” said Hudson, who is convinced the teenagers were Riley’s powerless minions.
“She was angry, vicious,” added Brandt.
Riley considered Dixon her slave, making her rub Riley’s feet until Riley fell asleep and forcing her to run naked around the house when she got in trouble, the neighbors said.
“Being in their house was like being in a prison day room,” Hudson said. “They just sat around the kitchen table and fought.”
There was little question that Riley ruled the roost.
While doing fix-ups on the home last fall, landlord Steve Atkins saw Riley “barking orders” at the children and everyone else. Atkins joked to her whether he needed to call the Army and see if they wanted their drill sergeant back.
“She didn’t laugh about it at all,” Atkins said. “Obviously, I hit a nerve.”
Atkins said Dixon generally kept to herself “but was always nice when she spoke to you.” He saw no hints she’d been suffering or tortured.
“I would have never, ever suspected something like this,” he said. “It’s definitely shocking.”
Police said Dixon was allowed out of the house but didn’t say under what conditions. Hayes didn’t know who the father of Dixon’s fetus is.
Hayes said things apparently came to a head Jan. 30, when investigators believe that Woods, during a dispute, beat Dixon on the head with an object Hayes wouldn’t identify. The next day Woods found her dead.
Hayes watched the autopsy and found her injuries disturbing. X-rays revealed roughly 30 BBs lodged in her. Deep-tissue burns covered about one-third of her body — her face, her chest, her arms and feet — and left her severely dehydrated. Her face and body showed signs of prolonged abuse. Many of her wounds were infected.
None of the injuries, Hayes said, proved singly fatal to Dixon. Her system already was taxed by her unborn baby.
“The autopsy sort of indicates her immune system just shut down,” he said. “It was not capable of fending off any more.”
In the rental home’s basement, Atkins said, he found spots of blood in a shower and tiny smears on the concrete floor, washer and dryer.
“It’s disgraceful the way this girl died, as kind and as sweet as this girl was,” he said. “She didn’t deserve to die the way she did. It’s just terrible, senseless. It’s just a total shame.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. (SOURCE )
***********************************************************************************************
Disabled, pregnant woman used as target practice
Six people, including a 12-year-old, are in jail on $1 million bond for torturing a pregnant woman with developmental delays who lived with them.
ALTON, Illinois (AP) — Banished to the basement, the 29-year-old mother with a childlike mind and another baby on the way had little more than a thin rug and a mattress to call her own on the chilly concrete floor.
Five adults and a 12-year-old child were charged with Dorothy Dixon’s murder.
Dorothy Dixon ate what she could forage from the refrigerator upstairs, where housemates used her for target practice with BBs, burned her with a glue gun and doused her with scalding liquid that peeled away her skin.
They torched what few clothes she had, so she walked around naked. They often pummeled her with an aluminum bat or metal handle.SOURCE
Dixon — six months pregnant — died after weeks of abuse. Police have charged two adults, three teenagers and a 12-year-old boy with murder in the case that has repulsed many in this Mississippi River town.
“This is heartbreaking,” police Lt. David Hayes said. “It was almost as though they were making fun of the abuse they were administering. This woman was almost like living in a prison.”
Investigators put much of the blame on Michelle Riley, 35, who they said befriended Dixon but pocketed monthly Social Security checks she got because of her developmental delays.
Dixon saw little, if any, of the money, Hayes said. For months she weathered the torment to keep a roof over her head and that of her year-old son, who weighed just 15 pounds when taken into state custody after his mom’s death….
Hayes watched the autopsy and found her injuries disturbing. X-rays revealed roughly 30 BBs lodged in her. Deep-tissue burns covered about one-third of her body — her face, her chest, her arms and feet — and left her severely dehydrated. Her face and body showed signs of prolonged abuse. Many of her wounds were infected.
None of the injuries, Hayes said, proved singly fatal to Dixon. Her system already was taxed by her unborn baby.
“The autopsy sort of indicates her immune system just shut down,” he said. “It was not capable of fending off any more.”
In the rental home’s basement, Atkins said, he found spots of blood in a shower and tiny smears on the concrete floor, washer and dryer.
“It’s disgraceful the way this girl died, as kind and as sweet as this girl was,” he said. “She didn’t deserve to die the way she did. It’s just terrible, senseless. It’s just a total shame.”
I still have a lot of questions about what happened to Dixon. Who was the father of her babies? If he wasn’t involved with the well-being of Dixon and their offspring, why? Were the pregnancies the result of abuse? Was a social worker aware of the circumstances surrounding Dixon’s one-year-old?
Four of the perpetrators are between the ages of 12 and 18, which is also tragic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A TIMELINE IN THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MS. DOROTHY DIXON:
Judy Woods, Dorothy.NEWS February 1, 2008
Judy Woods, Dorothy Dixon. Other Articles in this Category. Spectators line Broadway for Halloween tradition. State law could compromise ballot secrecy. …NEWS February 1, 2008
Vambaketes, right, of the Alton Police Department, help a distraught woman out of the house at 2957 Hillcrest in Alton after the body of Dorothy Dixon, 29, was …NEWS January 31, 2008
County Juvenile Court. The six are charged with playing a part in the death of Dorothy Dixon, a developmentally disabled woman. …NEWS March 10, 2008
The six are charged with playing a part in the death of Dorothy Dixon, a developmentally disabled woman. Other Articles in this Category. …NEWS March 10, 2008
members of Chicago-based group Feminist Response in Disability Activism organized a memorial, procession and then moment of silence in honor of Dorothy Dixon. …
COLUMNS June 6, 2008
1 story, which will appear Jan. 2. ALTON – Dorothy L. Dixon died a long, slow torturous death in the weeks leading up to the discovery of her body on Jan. 31. …
NEWS December 27, 2008
31, 2008, death of Dorothy L. Dixon. Riley faces a sentence ranging from 30 to 45 years in prison; no sentencing date has been set. …NEWS October 26, 2009
Filed under Uncategorized
THE ELEPHANT OF CELEBES
The Elephant of Celebes, by Max Ernst, 1921, 49.37 x 42.48 in., oil on canvas.
Filed under Uncategorized
THE APPLE OF MY EYE
Over at Abagond, he has put up a post on America’s denial of its racist history. Here is an excerpt:
Apple-pie America
by abagond
Apple-pie America is that part of America where nearly everyone is white and well-off, happy and innocent. The bad in the world always seems to be somewhere else – in a bad part of town, in a bad part of the world, in a bad part of history. Always there, never here. And when on occasion it is here, like with 9/11, then it is because madmen from somewhere else are behind it.Its golden age was in the 1950s. From about 1955 to 1975, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and Watergate destroyed the faith of many. But now that most Americans are too young to remember those things, apple-pie America is making a comeback.
Judging from Obama’s speech on race in March 2008, most Americans seem to believe in it.
To see if you live in apple-pie America, take this simple true/false test (for Americans only):
Read the rest of this great post here: http://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/apple-pie-america/
Filed under Uncategorized
PAT BUCHANAN: A COWARD, A LIAR. . . .AND A RACIST HATER
March 21, 2008
PJB: A Brief for Whitey
posted by Linda
By Patrick J. Buchanan
How would he pull it off? I wondered.
How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?
How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about “the U.S. of K.K.K. America,” and howled, “God damn America!”
My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.
Yes, Barack agreed, Wright’s statements were “controversial,” and “divisive,” and “racially charged,” reflecting a “distorted view of America.”
But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.
Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.
The “white community,” said Barack, must start “acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds … .”
And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?
The “white community” must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with “ladders of opportunity” that were “unavailable” to Barack’s and the Rev. Wright’s generations.
What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?
Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.”
Was “white racism” really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said — that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.
This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.
Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?
Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.
Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?
Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?
Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?
We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.
Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.
http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=969
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Buchanan, as a white man you have stated your hatred of black Americans and your cowardice in your lies about black people who have done more for this country than you can ever hope to do. As the liar that you are, America did black people no favors when she wantonly sought to keep forever enslaved a race of people who have just as much right to live in this country as anyone else.
As for what Rev. Wright said, he spoke the truth. But, haters such as yourself refuse to hear the truth because humans such as yourself cannot handle the truth. You would rather go on believing that this country was based on democracy, when in reality it was founded on lies and genocidal abominations.
“The “white community,” said Barack, must start “acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds … .”
And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?”
First is to acknowledge the wrongs of America against her black citizens:
-The Middle Passage where half-dead innocent Africans were thrown overboard to waiting sharks who fed off them:
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/black-history-month-january-1-1808/
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/hurricanes/
-The banks located in the North that financed slave ships that carried black Africans to a living death that awaited them in America; the North which originally legalized slavery and kept cotton as king (cotton grown and cultivated by black enslaved people), exporting that cotton to England and the rest of Europe:
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/new-york-opens-slave-burial-site/
-The genetic damage done to black people by white male rape of black women and girls during slavery AND during segregation; black people were black until the rapist sperm of the scum of Europe was forced into their veins via savages who were no more Christian than a rabid dog;
-The lynchings, the tortures of thousands of black men and boys, and black women:
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/at-the-hands-of-persons-unknown/
-the beatings, the starvations; the unequal substandard crap that passed for so-called education: the expenditures of $1.00 for every black child, and $9.00 for every white child in schools across the South;
-the race riots all across America, especially in the North, where whites murdered thousands of black citizens:
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/the-wages-of-whiteness/
-the racist pogroms, the ethnic cleansings against innocent black citizens and the theft of their property:
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/black-history-month-pbs-independent-lens-banished/
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/rosewood-massacre-remembered-by-survivor/
-the creation of sundown towns, sanctioned by the local, state and federal government:
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/sundown-towns/
-The denial of citizenship; the denial of the vote; the shutting of union jobs to black men all across America; the domestic back-breaking labor that forced black women into the role of breadwinners to keep their families from starving;
-the inequalities and inhumane medical treatment in hospitals, that is given to black patients as opposed to the more humane medical care given to white patients:
Those are just a few of the things you can acknowledge America. Have the balls and tits to own up to all the sick and unforgivable atrocities that you as a country have done against black people.
__________________________________________________________________________
“Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.”
And white-run America has only always given black people a one-way conversation. Since when has white-run America sat down and shut up and listened to black people? The whole country? Never!
White-run America has listened and responded with respect and humanity towards black people for the last 450 years? Like hell it has. White-run America has in overwhelming large numbers fought against slavery? Like hell it has. Then why did slavery exist for over 350 years? White-run America stood up against segregation? When? After thousands of black lives were lost? After 100 years of humiliating double-standard, two-faced hypocrisy? Then why did the fascist, racist regime known as segregation exist for 100 years if America cared so much for black people? Why put it into place, immediately after the abolition of slavery, if America cared so much for her black citizens?
As for the Civil Rights Movement, before it could gather steam, it was torn asunder by the Goldwaters, the Reagans, the so-called Moral (Immoral) Right Majority who hated (and still do) to see black people get one inch away from the degraded pariah status that white-run America seeks to keep black people in. And as for the dismantling of Jane/Jim Crow segregation, those hateful soul-murdering laws may be gone from the books, but Jane Crow still lives, still cripples and suffocates the lives of millions of black citizens. Jane/Jim Crow IS NOT DEAD. It lives on in the lives of millions of black people segregated from the rest of American society—socially, economically, educationally. Segregation (residential/educational) is still a putrid blight upon American society. Segregated churches are still the law of the land. Predatory, discriminatory lending in loans and credit still exists. Disparate racist draconian sentencing still exists where whites are given lesser sentences for the same crime a black person is convicted of. George Bush may hate black people in how he mishadled and insulted the survivors of hurricane Katrina, but when many whites lost their homes to mudslides and fires in California, the help wagon was put out for them in full force. Where the hell was that quick help for the hundreds of thousands of people of Katrina/New Orleans from the illustrious, forward-thinking American government?
There has never been a true dialogue between black and white America because many whites do not want to face up to the vicious horrific cruelties this country has done to its black citizens. White people are not the wronged and injured party; black people are.
White people need to sit down, listen, and accept the role their people have played in the destruction of millions of black lives since the beginning of this country. White people do not call the shots on what is wrong, what is racist, what is discriminatory. Only black people are in a position to do that. Only the wrong and damaged party can state what has happened to them. Whites need to shut up, stop bristling, stop going into fits of denial. Face facts: Your people of this nation did sick grievous wrongs to many, many black people.
Sit down.
Listen.
And learn.
America is a Great Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, it is painful to face up to that, but, face up to it you must.
Dialogue?
You have to admit that you (America) have done wrong before you can have a dialogue with your black citizens. Before you can, with respect and understanding, sit down and speak to your black citizens of the legacy of 450 years of sick brutality, you have to own your shit and claim it.
_____________________________________________________________________________
And this sick filthy comment:
“First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.”
How the hell can kidnapping and enslaving an entire people’s ancestor’s, degrading, defiling, and murdering millions of them be in any way a compliment to those wronged people? Black African people had civilizations in Africa before European contact. Civilizations and nations: Mali, Timbuktu, Zimbabwe, Songhay. Black women cultivated rice in West Africa and brought that knowledge…that gift to America, among many other gifts. Black women and men from Africa brought many herbal remedies with them in treating illnesses, knowledge that no white person had. Black people smelt iron and created metalworks, artwork, fabric and textile procedures that no white person of European ancestry had knowledge of.
What gifts has white-run America given to black people and the world, besides white supremacy and white racism?
As for the figure of 600,000 black people living in slavery, Pat Buchanan, you made no mention of the millions of black people who died on slave ships, the thousands of black people who died within a year of arrival to America from harsh brutal beatings from slave owners; black people who died from the exposure to freezing temperatures; black people who died from food not fit to feed hogs; black people who died from exposure to European and New World diseases.
No. America has never been the best place for black Americans. Tearing a people from the only world they have known and tossing them into the hands of murderers is not something this country can be proud of. But, then again, America runs from her history like the fool and liar that she is, hence the reason for your malicious diatribe Pat Buchanan. If anything, black Americans have been the best thing that has ever happened for this country.
As for so-called “Christian salvation”, you can shove that up your ass. If being a Christian means keeping another human being as a slave; if being a Christian says creep out of your bed from your white wife to crawl down to the slave cabins and rape and defile the purity of black virginal girls of pre-pubescent age; if being a Christian says for you to castrate, torture and burn for hours on end a black man tied up to a tree; if being a Christian means denying medical care to a black human being, turning them away from a hospital for them to die when the right thing to do would have been to give them medical care; if being a Christian means committing barbaric Nazi/Joseph Mengele experiments on black people all throughout the history of America, starting in slavery all the way up to the 1970s—–if those things, among millions of other wrongs done to black people, are what makes one a Christian——-then no one needs to see what being a non-Christian is.
America needs to get done on her knees and thank God that black people have done so much to make this a better place for all people. If not for black people, you, Pat Buchanan, would be living in a country of savages, you would not have civil rights, you would not have a way out of the inhumanity that millions of your people have built up over the centuries in monstrous mistreatments against black people. If not for black Americans being the true voice of reason and moral vision in this country, America as a country would have perished long ago. It is black people who have done the most to make this a better more civilized, more humane, more democratic country———not wretched monstrosities such as you, Pat Buchanan.
Black Americans have been God’s gift to this country. That black people did not, and have not given up on this country speaks more to their taking the high road many, many times over, even in the face of acts of terrorism committed against them on a daily basis.
________________________________________________________________________
“Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.”
And that is a damned lie.
What the hell have millions of white people GIVEN black people? What? Hell. Brutish, thuggery and cruelty, yes, but, dignity and respect as human beings? Where? I have not seen where white people, 99.9% of the white population has treated their fellow black citizens as human beings. If white people have been so concerned for the welfare and decent respect of black people’s humanity, why are many white neighborhoods all-white, where if there are POC they are anything but BLACK PEOPLE?
Where have the majority of white people in America given black people so much goodness, peace, joy, happiness, but, most of all RESPECT AS FELLOW AMERICANS in this country? What have white people in all their time in this country, done for black people, as opposed to all white people have done to and against black people?
Give me, Pat Buchanan, your irrefutable concrete evidence of all the magnanimous, wonderful, lovely, outstanding things that white people have done for black people in the last 450 years. (And I am not speaking of one or two whites you can count on one hand; I am not speaking of John Brown, Viola Liuzzo, Lysander Spooner, either. I am speaking of the millions of whites who see black people everyday, all week, all year-long. I am speaking of those white people who cross paths with their fellow black citizens on a daily basis.) Whites have never had an equal fair relationship towards black people in America, so, please, Pat Buchanan, tell me who are these millions of white people who have done so much good and right in the lives of millions of black people?
Convince me.
PROVE IT TO ME.
I would love to see you pull that rabbit trick out of your magic hat.
No country has done so much to destroy black people the way America has. No country has hated a people the way America has, but, then again that hatred is understandable. If you do wrongs for centuries against a people who have done you no wrong, of course you will hate that group of people, Pat Buchanan, not to mention developing contempt and self-hatred of yourself. The self-hatred you will harbor in yourself will eat you up inside because you will know that your people have done countless wrongs and inequities against those people whom you sought to destroy. And in seeing that you could not destroy and tear asunder what God created, you will hate and vilify the very people you could not destroy with all of your lynchings, your slavery, your segregation, your restrictive covenants, your sundown towns, your gerrymandering, your redlining, and your racist stereotypical lies.
“Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans.”
Bullshit.
White Americans have done very little for black people, through the centuries. Those white people who stood shoulder to shoulder with black people you can, then and now, count on one hand:
Much of what black people did they did themselves: sought after their family members who were torn from them during slave sales; walked miles, to obtain an education, both little children and elderly black people—knowledge that had been denied them for centuries; educated their children that no matter what white-run America said, black parents told their children they were just as good as any white person in this country. Black people did much by themselves when they faced segregation; they maintained communities of solidarity and communual self-help, since they received little to none from many white people.
Black people had towns they built themselves, with no help from white people:
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/black-history-month-all-black-towns/
before many of these towns were burned down by many whites or the black citizens were run from those towns due to racist ethnic cleansing by rabid white mobs.
And as for this statement:
“Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.”
No, you can shove your lies. Welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, section 8 housing, Pell grants and all the programs you mentioned, America never had black people in mind when these programs were instituted, even though these programs were created for all Americans. It was white people who benefitted the most from these programs, not black people. Whites still make up the welfare rolls more than black people. The southern whites saw to it that black people during segregation did not benefit in any way whatsoever from the federal government programs created under FDR to help all Americans, be that program Social Security, the G.I. Bill, FHA loans or any other government program. White Americans benefitted the most from racist unjust disparities of those programs given more for the benefit of whites at the expense of black people. White people have benefitted from over 450 years of white affirmative action, which leads to the massive unequal wealth gap that divides blacks from whites, a divide ten times the size of the Grand Canyon.
As for these programs bringing black people into the mainstream, these programs are and never were the problem. The problem of the 21st Century is the same problem that existed in the 20th Century: the RACE PROBLEM. A problem created by white people, not black people, a problem still maintained by the majority of the white people in this country. Black people have never been the race problem; white-run America has always been the race problem.
“Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.”
Lies.
White women benefit the most from AA, Pat Buchanan, but I hear you screaming nothing against all the AA they have benefitted from:
Governments, colleges and businesses have not engaged in discrimination against whites. Government, colleges and busisnesses have engaged in discrimination against blacks. And still does.
SCOTUS, the federal government, white colleges have a long history of discriminating against black people. As for AA, only the very best qualified candidates for the job are hired through AA. Those black people who do get hired through AA, are often more over-qualified to get the job more than whites who apply for the same job. Municipal and government jobs (police officer, fire fighter, postal worker) carry high standards and requirements, therefore many black candidates who apply for these jobs must, and do meet, the strict requirements of these positions.
White-run America has not done anything for black Americans that they have been doing for themselves for centuries.
“Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.”
A damned lie.
BLACK churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and INDIVIDUALS all over America have donated THEIR time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirment and nursing homes for BLACK PEOPLE throughout America’s vicious racist history.
Black women like Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McCloud Bethune (Bethune-Cookman College), Frances Harper, Ella Baker and many unknown black women (and men) have taken care of the black communtiy with little to no help from millions of white people. Black people all across the South provided shelter for black people traveling the South because they knew that their fellow black people could not stay in white hotels. Black people took black friends—and black strangers—into their homes because they knew no one white would look out for a black person the way a black person would. (Black people even took in white people people and fed and cared for them as well. Could millions of white people say they did the same for millions of their fellow black citizens?)
Black women of the black church in the 19TH Century, and throughout much of the 20TH Century, collected monies to send black girls North to school, to live with relatives, to get a more decent job than what was thrown to black women living in the South. Black women created and maintained organizations in the North, and South, for black girls, helped fund the building of boarding homes for them, so they would not have to live on the street. And not many white organizations were doing that for white girls in the cities in the North.
Black men and women took in orphaned black children whose parents died or were lynched due to violent lynch mobs destroying a black family. Black women created club organizations to uplift and educate millions of black children. Black churches created mission programs to help black people in the South and black people who went to Africa to work as missionaries. Black people in America made many ways out of no ways, no thanks to the millions of white people who cared less for black people, as well as ignored black people’s existence.
“We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”
No. I hear the grievance. Where is your gratitude Pat Buchanan and America?
Where is your gratitude for all that black people have done for America? Black people have done more to keep this country from becoming a living hell for everyone in it. Millions of white people have done the opposite. Many white people have done much to destroy America.
Black people have done much to save America……..from itself.
As for crime.
White America’s crimes against humanity scream out from beneath and above the Earth. White-run corporations have sold America out from under itself, to the highest bidder for the almighty dollar.
White-run America has sold government classified information to foreign governments, and in the process, endangering military, and civilians lives. White-run America has sold jobs and employment overseas all for the cheap buck.
You want to talk about crime Pat Buchanan, talk about the pervasive maintenance of structural and institutionalized white supremacy, the social, the residential, the economic violence that has been a normal way of mistreatment of black Americans by white Americans; crimes that have given America the audacity to say that white makes right, that white, no matter how depraved, no matter how sadistic, no matter how homicidal, is the Alpha and the Omega of America—whiteness has murdered, thieved, burned, genocided, lynched, raped, bastardized, infected, maligned and annihilated every race it has come into contact with, especially black Americans. White-run America can in no way speak of crimes that black people are accused of when white-run America has nearly destroyed this country with its lies and running from its criminal, sadistic, history. With its perverted monstrous slaughtering of millions of defenseless black citizens. White-run America has committed the greatest crimes against black America, and white Americans should hang their heads in shame for all the inhuman cruelties they have done to black people, overtly and covertly.
You want to see a better America, Pat Buchanan? Pull your head out of your ass, grow some balls, and man the fuck up.
America as a country has been a piece of shit towards her black citizens. She knows it. And you know it as well.
Getting mad because Rev. Wright told the truth will not make the truth go away.
So, sorry, Pat Buchanan, millions of us Black citizens have heard it all before, about 450 years of racist hateful hells we have had to live through.
And as for “40 trillion tax dollars”. You can shove that up your ass as well.
All the blood money in America will never atone for all the abominable filth that has been done to millions of black Americans, both past and present.
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PERU TRIBE BATTLES OIL GIANT OVER POLLUTION
Monday, 24 March 2008, 09:13 GMT 
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Peru tribe battles oil giant over pollution
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It is a familiar story. Big business moves into a pristine wilderness and starts destroying the environment and by turn the livelihoods of the indigenous people who live there.But in a reversal of plot, there are now cases of people living traditional lifestyles who are now invading the territory of the big companies and taking them on at their own game. The story of the Achuar tribe living in the Amazon rainforest of north-eastern Peru is one of them. Last year, they filed a class action lawsuit against oil giant Occidental Petroleum, in Los Angeles. Now they are awaiting a judge’s decision on whether the case can proceed in the US or will be sent back to Peru, where it stands little chance of coming to court. ‘No credible data The Achuar people, who have lived for thousands of years in the rainforest, allege that the company contaminated their territory during more than 30 years of oil drilling, making their people sick, even causing some to die, and damaging their land and livelihoods beyond repair. Occidental Petroleum, which pulled out of Peru eight years ago, denies liability in the case.
It has responded, saying: “We are aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts resulting from Occidental’s operations in Peru.” The oil bonanza began in Peru almost 40 years ago when many foreign companies were given an open invitation by successive governments to test and drill in the Amazon. What they did not consider was the devastating impact it would have on the native people, principally the Achuar – their land, their livelihood and their health. The Achuar’s spiritual leader, Tomas Maynas, wears a bright red headdress made of toucan feathers, and has red war paint streaked on his face. He is the plaintiff in the suit against the company. He remembers how everything changed when the oil companies arrived. He says the animals ran away, the fish died and their crops started to wilt.
“The Peruvian state just wants to extract as much oil as they can from our land. They’ve made millions of dollars but we haven’t seen it here. “We know there’s wealth here and there’ll be more drilling so the state will keep on killing us. But sometimes, when there is pressure, the state gives in.” The lawsuit alleges Occidental Petroleum ignored industry standards and employed out-of-date practices, dumping around 9bn barrels of toxic waste water into streams and rivers over 30 years. After Occidental left, its operations were taken over by Pluspetrol. Pluspetrol agreed to change practices in late 2006 when the Achuar, after repeated attempts to negotiate, took direct action. Shotguns and spears Many of the older Achuar men once fought in tribal wars with their neighbours, now they finally had the chance to hit their elusive new enemies where it hurt – in their pockets. Peacefully, yet armed with shotguns and spears, they occupied and held the Amazon oil wells in October 2006.
The government and the company, losing millions of dollars a day, were forced to come to the negotiating table. The Achuar came away with a commitment from Pluspetrol to reduce contamination and to pay millions of dollars to clean up and establish a 10-year health plan. It was thanks to help from outside but also a new generation of indigenous leaders who are learning how to protect their rights in the modern world. “A whole generation had their health damaged. How can we keep quiet as our parents did?” asks 29-year-old Petronila Chumpi. “We can’t allow this, we’re a new generation, we know how to read and write and we have to help our people because they didn’t have the knowledge to defend themselves against the oil companies. But now we do.” Improvement Even on a fast motorboat, Trompeteros is a long day’s journey up three rain-swollen rivers from Loreto’s regional capital, Iquitos. A hamlet of some 3,000 people, it is situated right opposite Block Eight, one of the main oil wells.
Local people say there is still contamination and oil spills, but now the Achuar have GPS transceivers to log the problems where they find them. Little by little there are signs of improvement. But there is frustration on the part of Pluspetrol, which has pledged to pay millions of dollars, that the government is not playing a bigger role. “This oil industry should be of benefit for everybody – maybe today it’s not of benefit to indigenous people and the government should find the best way to solve that problem,” says Roberto Ramallo, general manager of Pluspetrol Norte. But the problem is that the Achuar and other tribes live on top of potentially enormous reserves of crude oil. Thanks to an intense drive to auction it off, almost three-quarters of the Peruvian Amazon is leased for oil exploration and extraction. High global demand and the price of oil is also making companies look at the Peruvian Amazon as an attractive prospect, but is it sustainable? “All of this petroleum exploration in the Amazon is a grand experiment,” says Bill Powers of E-Tech, a not-for-profit engineering firm. “It’s just coming into the jungle, developing the resource, getting the economic benefit and historically it’s been whatever happens to whoever was there before, happens. “There’s no plan, there’s no effort made to ensure that they maintain their cultural integrity or that they have something to do once the rivers and the forest don’t provide what they used to provide.” Future plans Carbon trading schemes have yet to reach this part of the Amazon and the oil boom is not the only threat. President Alan Garcia has proposed privatising large areas of the rainforest, but local officials say the government in Lima does not understand the impact this would have.
The regional president of Loreto, Ivan Vasquez, says the Amazon needs to preserve its diversity at all costs. “The ecosystem is the genetic bank of the Amazon, as it brings together genetic matrices which don’t exist anywhere else – thousands of interconnected genetic bases. “That is our capital, the genetic bank that we have to preserve for humanity, and for the world.” The Achuar have so far rejected new oil exploration on their territory. Their story is an emblematic case of resistance for indigenous Amazonians and is unprecedented in Peru. But the Peruvian rainforest, the biggest stretch of Amazon outside Brazil, is still the focus of the relentless global hunt to find new sources of fossil fuels. |
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A whole generation had their health damaged. How can we keep quiet as our parents did 
(Article courtesy of the BBC NEWS)
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DANGEROUS STIGMA: HOW A CONGOLESE GIRL STRUGGLES WITH WITCHCRAFT ACCUSATION
Sunday, 23 March 2008, 00:32 GMT
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DR Congo’s ‘dangerous’ superstition
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Gracia likes watching television – mostly soaps and cartoons, but sometimes the news.The young woman, tall and thin with braided hair coiled on her head, is doing well at school and wants to be a doctor. In the two-and-a-half years since I last saw her, her life has been transformed. Then, she was living with 30 people in one house, too poor to afford school fees. She had been sent back to DR Congo by her father and step-mother, after living with them in Tottenham, north London, for several years. She is thought to be among hundreds of African children living in the UK and sent back to DR Congo or Angola after being accused of witchcraft. Traumatised The issue came to light in the summer of 2005, when a court in London heard the case of a young girl who was tortured after being accused of being possessed. The jury learnt a new word, kindoki. It is what the Congolese call witchcraft. After I first reported on Gracia’s plight in Kinshasa, one listener was so moved she began sending money to support the girl.
Now, Gracia lives with her aunt and can afford school fees. Inside her home there is a television and three sofas, and her mother has come to visit. Gracia tells me how thankful she is for the financial help she has received, and talks about her favourite lessons, living with her aunt, and the holidays. But when I ask her to tell me what led her father and step-mother to accuse her of witchcraft, she does not reply. Often these accusations can be a way of ridding a family of an extra mouth to feed. Gracia is “very traumatised”, says Adolphine Kumbaki, who runs a charity called Bantu Cocorico, which has been helping to look after Gracia. “To say a child is a witch is very, very dangerous,” she says, and many such children are abandoned. Aid agencies think that the most of the 13,000 children sleeping rough in Kinshasa have been accused of kindoki. Stigma Gracia’s mother says that even though life is much better for her daughter, her daughter longs to return to London. Asked if London or Kinshasa feels like home, Gracia replies simply: “London.” “I don’t like being here, I don’t like the schools here, I don’t want to stay here,” she says.
Her mother says she would like Gracia to return to the UK. “She isn’t happy, she always thinks of returning,” she says. But there is no prospect of return. Kinshasa, desperately poor with its streets full of hawkers and smell of diesel and sewage, is alien, but Gracia has got to stay. Though she feels trapped, she does talk of her future. She is doing well at school, especially in maths. A good education then may prove to be her way out, by providing a cure for the stigma. |
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(Article courtesy of the BBC NEWS)
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LIBERIA’S CHILD RAPE VICTIMS
Thursday, 18 January 2007, 12:01 GMT
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Liberia’s child rape victims
BBC NEWS
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Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, came to power in Liberia a year ago, promising to tackle the problem of rape, which had become increasingly common during the previous 14 years of conflict in the country.Will Ross has been travelling around Liberia to assess whether that war on rape is being won.
“I like to turn lemon into lemonade – make a bad situation into a good one,” declared the smartly dressed woman as she entered the room. Annie Demen is Liberia’s deputy minister of gender, a post set up to empower women. She also heads the taskforce charged with stamping out sexual violence in Liberia. But there was not much to smile about when I turned up later that day to interview her. News had just reached the office that an 11-year-old girl called Janjay had died after being raped six months ago. Janjay’s mother said the rape had left her so badly injured she was incontinent and had to wear nappies. I had driven past Monrovia’s cemetery several times – large white tombstones on which names were crudely written in black paint. They were often hard to read as the grass was head-high. With young, dangerous-looking men sitting on some of the graves, it looked like the kind of place to avoid. But, as I followed Janjay’s small white coffin through the cemetery, the main risk was to the feet and the nose.
With no public toilets in Monrovia, you have to tread carefully and, as the cemetery had also become a rubbish dump, some of the mourners held handkerchiefs over their noses. Several women beside the grave held black and white photos of young Janjay and had written alongside each photo, “Stop rape”. Few convictions Similar messages are splashed all over Monrovia on billboards.
“Seek free treatment now at Benson Clinic,” reads another. It is run by the charity Médecins Sans Frontières. With a queue outside her door, the head nurse told me that five to 10 people arrive there every day but half of them are not women. They are young girls between five and 12 years old. And it gets worse. Each month the clinic treats several babies for rape but, from all the cases that have been recorded by the clinic since 2003, you can count the number of men convicted on one hand. One such case was in the town of Gbarnga last week. The road there is pretty good by Liberian standards but you still end up performing a kind of slalom to avoid numerous potholes. The town’s High Court was shut and it looked as though somebody had lost the key years ago.
But there was some life at the Magistrate’s Court, where a man thumped away on a typewriter as the magistrate summed up the latest case. A woman stood in the dock accused of beating somebody else’s daughter. I could not wait for the verdict – there were too many delays, as the wounded typewriter was nursed back to health. ‘Seduced by the devil’ A crude court this may have been but, in a country which was ruled by the gun for 14 years, it is a step in the right direction. I met a man who knew a man who knew where the man with the keys to the High Court lived. Now often in Africa on a Friday the phrase, “the man with the key is not around” really means come back next week. But on this occasion I was in luck. The man with the key may have been drunk and snoozing at home but he was friendly and in the mood to help. In the court he ruffled through a collection of dusty files and then started reading. Fifty-seven-year-old Stephen Dollo, being moved and seduced by Satan the Devil, intentionally jumped on the peaceful five-year-old girl, removed her clothes and committed the crime of rape. And then the file of Arthur Blackie, a 64-year-old man who was found guilty of raping an eight-year-old girl, Josephine. Arthur Blackie is a church pastor. Superstition
Now, I have asked plenty of people here to try to shed some light on why a man would rape a five-year-old or even a baby and, after the initial shrug of the shoulders, there is often a whisper or two about superstition or belief. They think it will bring them good luck, one man told me. In South Africa people have struggled to dispel the belief that raping a baby helps prevent or cure HIV Aids. And it is possible that a similar belief exists here. It is exactly a year since Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, was sworn into office. When she announced a war on rape, she broke new ground by saying that she too had been a victim of sexual violence. There has been some legal reform and rape is no longer a bailable offence but little else has changed. The hope among many here is that the death of young Janjay will kick-start the war on rape. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday 18 January, 2007 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times. |
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LIBERIAN WOMEN SUSPEND GHANA PROTEST
Monday, 24 March 2008, 14:26 GMT
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Liberians suspend Ghana protest
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Hundreds of Liberian women living in Ghana have suspended a five-week sit-in protest against their repatriation. The women ended their demonstration at Buduburam refugee camp in Central Province after Liberia’s envoy visited. The ambassador assured them he would present their concerns to the Ghanaian authorities and the United Nations. The protest is directed against a UN plan offering each of the refugees $100 to return to Liberia. Sixteen men were repatriated at the weekend to Monrovia. No-one met them when they arrived in Liberia’s capital on Sunday, Penelope Chester of the Niapele Project, an NGO working in the Buduburam refugee camp, told AFP news agency. On Monday, the UN refugee agency called on the Ghanaian government to suspend further deportations. But they are accused of sustaining the controversy by calling for the prosecution of the ringleaders of the protest. Concerns are also being expressed about some 500 women and children being detained at another camp. Ghana has denied forcibly repatriating refugees. Tens of thousands of Liberians remain in Ghana some five years after the end of the civil war and officials have had months of talks on the best way of getting them home. Buduburam camp is now half deserted as many young men have gone into hiding fearful of arrest. Human rights lawyers for the refugees say they will launch legal action on Tuesday against the Ghanaian government for violating the rights of those arrested and deported. |
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(Article courtesy of the BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk )
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Ann
