A Tweet to Ponder: II
9 months ago
30 December 2011
28 December 2011
Racial differences in felony sentences
Using various souhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrces (NCVS, UCR, BJS), I put together three tables which help explain why state prisoners are roughly half black even though African Americans are only 13 percent of the U.S. population.
The disparity is divided into differences in commtting serious violent crimes (i.e., robbery, aggravated assault, and rape/sexual assault), differences in the chance of arrest, and differences in the probability of conviction. (One limitation is that government statisticians are idiots and lump Hispanics in with whites, so "whites in the following table actually means "whites plus Hispanics.")
For all three types of violent crime, most of the racial disparity is due to blacks committing crimes at much higher rates. You might think this is obvious, but many liberals think the gap is due to a racist criminal justice system. Some of the difference in convictions is due to a greater black risk, given a crime, of being arrested. Some of this might be due to lower average black intelligence which leads to riskier crimes.
Finally, little or none of the racial gap is due to blacks being more likely to be convicted of a felony (which is likely to land one in prison for at least a year). In fact, given an arrest for rape, a white man is more likely to be convicted than a black man.
This might be, in part, due to less willingness of African American jurors to put a fellow black behind bars for a crime that can be difficult to prove. Or perhaps victims of black offenders--often black themselves--tend to be less reliable.
Overall, if liberals are bothered by the racial disparity in prison (myself, I care about punishing bad guys), the data suggests that they should focus on black criminality, not the system.
An Open Letter To Rabbi Abe Foxman And The ADL
Rob Miller deals with another Obama-lover.
I recently received the following fund raiser from the Anti-defamation League:
Dear Miller,
Just this past week, a Member of Congress was quoted referencing Nazi
propagandist Joseph Goebbels when discussing communication techniques of the Democratic Party.
We are truly living in troubled times when politicians feel they can benefit the national discourse with such vitriolic comparisons which insult the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust.
This was not the first time this has happened in this political season
and I fear it will not be the last time we hear such ignorant and spiteful
discourse between now and next November.
Help ADL speak out forcefully.
To me this raises three critical questions. Without the Anti-Defamation League, who would fiercely and relentlessly speak out against the trivialization of the Holocaust? Who would push back against the rising currents of anti-Semitism we’re seeing at home and around the world?
And without you, who would be there to fuel ADL’s vital work?
It was signed by the National Director, Rabbi Abe Foxman...and I felt it merited a reply:
Dear Rabbi Foxman,
I received your recent email with interest.
I realize that you and the ADL are very much involved in the Obama campaign,but are there no limits?
The fact is that Allen West, the member of Congress you mention is exactly correct when he compares the Soros-funded media machine and its adherents throughout the mainstream media as people Goebbels would be proud of, because they promulgate the Big Lie constantly when it
comes to Israel and the Jews. And by the way, he didn't mention the Holocaust, so your accusation that he trivialized it is simply untrue.
Do you realize that you are engaging in lashon hora, the defamation of a true friend of Israel and the Jews? Are you and your organization so wrapped up in the Democratic party that right and wrong simply have ceased to matter to you? Or did they not teach about lashon hora where you went to yeshiva?
Before he was in Congress, Colonel West stood with Israel and the Jews in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when pro-Hamas mobs attempted to spew their anti-Semitic bile on the streets. Where were you when that battle was being fought, Rabbi? How do you have the chutzpah to try and demonize this brave man? And to ask me for money to help fund it?
We now have the most anti-Israel administration in history sitting in the White House. Have you forgotten the way the Obama Administration has already trashed previous agreements with Israel, told them they have no right to their religious shrines , threatened an aid cutoff, and instituted what amounts to a de facto arms embargo during the early part of his term?
Do you not recall his deliberate humiliation of Israel's democratically elected leader, and this president's deliberate attempt last May to ambush PM Netanyahu by demanding Israel retreat to what we both know are indefensible borders? Can you possibly defend any of this, or President Obama's non-action on Iran or his championing of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Can you really say honestly that you're unaware of this president's long time intimate association with Israel bashers and anti-semites? Can you imagine what a second term for this president might mean to Israel and the Jews? And you claim that you and the ADL are 'fighting anti-semitism'?
In fact, whether you realize it or not, you are aiding and abetting it, along with the AJC, most of the Council of Presidents and far too much of the self-styled Jewish leadership. This is exactly what occurred during the Shoah, Rabbi, and it's a story I'm sure you know well, although it's probably inconvenient and unpleasant for you to recall it.
I've met you personally at several functions, even had the opportunity to engage in several conversations with you. I'm appealing to the human being behind the title and facade to step into the light.
This goes beyond things like 'Republican' and 'Democrat' and deals with simple human decency and the survival of the Jewish people and Israel. I urge you to think about what you're doing, really think about it.
You could use name and your position do the right thing and truly defend the Jewish people and Israel. Or you can turn away, and try to justify it to your conscience.
Sincerely,
Rob Miller
By the way, Rabbi Foxman's e-mail is afoxman@adl.org
Dear Miller,
Just this past week, a Member of Congress was quoted referencing Nazi
propagandist Joseph Goebbels when discussing communication techniques of the Democratic Party.
We are truly living in troubled times when politicians feel they can benefit the national discourse with such vitriolic comparisons which insult the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust.
This was not the first time this has happened in this political season
and I fear it will not be the last time we hear such ignorant and spiteful
discourse between now and next November.
Help ADL speak out forcefully.
To me this raises three critical questions. Without the Anti-Defamation League, who would fiercely and relentlessly speak out against the trivialization of the Holocaust? Who would push back against the rising currents of anti-Semitism we’re seeing at home and around the world?
And without you, who would be there to fuel ADL’s vital work?
It was signed by the National Director, Rabbi Abe Foxman...and I felt it merited a reply:
Dear Rabbi Foxman,
I received your recent email with interest.
I realize that you and the ADL are very much involved in the Obama campaign,but are there no limits?
The fact is that Allen West, the member of Congress you mention is exactly correct when he compares the Soros-funded media machine and its adherents throughout the mainstream media as people Goebbels would be proud of, because they promulgate the Big Lie constantly when it
comes to Israel and the Jews. And by the way, he didn't mention the Holocaust, so your accusation that he trivialized it is simply untrue.
Do you realize that you are engaging in lashon hora, the defamation of a true friend of Israel and the Jews? Are you and your organization so wrapped up in the Democratic party that right and wrong simply have ceased to matter to you? Or did they not teach about lashon hora where you went to yeshiva?
Before he was in Congress, Colonel West stood with Israel and the Jews in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when pro-Hamas mobs attempted to spew their anti-Semitic bile on the streets. Where were you when that battle was being fought, Rabbi? How do you have the chutzpah to try and demonize this brave man? And to ask me for money to help fund it?
We now have the most anti-Israel administration in history sitting in the White House. Have you forgotten the way the Obama Administration has already trashed previous agreements with Israel, told them they have no right to their religious shrines , threatened an aid cutoff, and instituted what amounts to a de facto arms embargo during the early part of his term?
Do you not recall his deliberate humiliation of Israel's democratically elected leader, and this president's deliberate attempt last May to ambush PM Netanyahu by demanding Israel retreat to what we both know are indefensible borders? Can you possibly defend any of this, or President Obama's non-action on Iran or his championing of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Can you really say honestly that you're unaware of this president's long time intimate association with Israel bashers and anti-semites? Can you imagine what a second term for this president might mean to Israel and the Jews? And you claim that you and the ADL are 'fighting anti-semitism'?
In fact, whether you realize it or not, you are aiding and abetting it, along with the AJC, most of the Council of Presidents and far too much of the self-styled Jewish leadership. This is exactly what occurred during the Shoah, Rabbi, and it's a story I'm sure you know well, although it's probably inconvenient and unpleasant for you to recall it.
I've met you personally at several functions, even had the opportunity to engage in several conversations with you. I'm appealing to the human being behind the title and facade to step into the light.
This goes beyond things like 'Republican' and 'Democrat' and deals with simple human decency and the survival of the Jewish people and Israel. I urge you to think about what you're doing, really think about it.
You could use name and your position do the right thing and truly defend the Jewish people and Israel. Or you can turn away, and try to justify it to your conscience.
Sincerely,
Rob Miller
By the way, Rabbi Foxman's e-mail is afoxman@adl.org
27 December 2011
Kwanzaa A Fake Holiday Concocted By Violent Felon And Black Supremacist
The True Story Of Kwanzaa From Front Page Magazine:
On December 24, 1971, the New York Times ran one of the first of many articles on a new holiday designed to foster unity among African Americans. The holiday, called Kwanzaa, was applauded by a certain sixteen-year-old minister who explained that the feast would perform the valuable service of “de-whitizing” Christmas. The minister was a nobody at the time but he would later go on to become perhaps the premier race-baiter of the twentieth century. His name was Al Sharpton and he would later spawn the Tawana Brawley hoax and then incite anti-Jewish tensions in a 1995 incident that ended with the arson deaths of seven people.
Great minds think alike. The inventor of the holiday was one of the few black “leaders” in America even worse than Sharpton. But there was no mention in the Times article of this man or of the fact that at that very moment he was sitting in a California prison. And there was no mention of the curious fact that this purported benefactor of the black people had founded an organization that in its short history tortured and murdered blacks in ways of which the Ku Klux Klan could only fantasize.
It was in newspaper articles like that, repeated in papers all over the country, that the tradition of Kwanzaa began. It is a tradition not out of Africa but out of Orwell. Both history and language have been bent to serve a political goal. When that New York Times article appeared, Ron Karenga’s crimes were still recent events. If the reporter had bothered to do any research into the background of the Kwanzaa founder, he might have learned about Karenga’s trial earlier that year on charges of torturing two women who were members of US (United Slaves), a black nationalist cult he had founded.
A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of them: “Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.”
Back then, it was relatively easy to get information on the trial. Now it’s almost impossible. It took me two days’ work to find articles about it. The Los Angeles Times seems to have been the only major newspaper that reported it and the stories were buried deep in the paper, which now is available only on microfilm. And the microfilm index doesn’t start until 1972, so it is almost impossible to find the three small articles that cover Karenga’s trial and conviction on charges of torture. That is fortunate for Karenga. The trial showed him to be not just brutal, but deranged. He and three members of his cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent “crystals” of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.
And in another lucky break for Karenga, the trial transcript no longer exists. I filed a request for it with the Superior Court of Los Angeles. After a search, the court clerk could find no record of the trial. So the exact words of the black woman who had a hot soldering iron pressed against her face by the man who founded Kwanzaa are now lost to history. The only document the court clerk did find was particularly revealing, however. It was a transcript of Karenga’s sentencing hearing on Sept. 17, 1971.
A key issue was whether Karenga was sane. Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from a psychiatrist’s report: “Since his admission here he has been isolated and has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that his attorney was in the next cell. … During part of the interview he would look around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for a moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed, stating that there was someone there and implying indirectly that the ‘someone’ was a woman imprisoned with him for some offense. This man now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.”
The founder of Kwanzaa paranoid? It seems so. But as the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you.
ACCORDING TO COURT DOCUMENTS, Karenga’s real name is Ron N. Everett. In the ’60s, he awarded himself the title “maulana,” Swahili for “master teacher.” He was born on a poultry farm in Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. He came to California in the late 1950s to attend Los Angeles Community College. He moved on to UCLA, where he got a Master’s degree in political science and African Studies. By the mid-1960s, he had established himself as a leading “cultural nationalist.” That is a term that had some meaning in the ’60s, mainly as a way of distinguishing Karenga’s followers from the Black Panthers, who were conventional Marxists.
Another way of distinguishing might be to think of Karenga’s gang as the Crips and the Panthers as the bloods. Despite all their rhetoric about white people, they reserved their most vicious violence for each other. In 1969, the two groups squared off over the question of who would control the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA. According to a Los Angeles Times article, Karenga and his adherents backed one candidate, the Panthers another. Both groups took to carrying guns on campus, a situation that, remarkably, did not seem to bother the university administration. The Black Student Union, however, set up a coalition to try and bring peace between the Panthers and the group headed by the man whom the Times labeled “Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga.”
On Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 students gathered in a lunchroom to discuss the situation. Two Panthers—admitted to UCLA like many of the black students as part of a federal program that put high-school dropouts into the school—apparently spent a good part of the meeting in verbal attacks against Karenga. This did not sit well with Karenga’s followers, many of whom had adopted the look of their leader, pseudo-African clothing and a shaved head.
In modern gang parlance, you might say Karenga was “dissed” by John Jerome Huggins, 23, and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, 26. After the meeting, the two Panthers were met in the hallway by two brothers who were members of US, George P. and Larry Joseph Stiner. The Stiners pulled pistols and shot the two Panthers dead. One of the Stiners took a bullet in the shoulder, apparently from a Panther’s gun.
There were other beatings and shooting in Los Angeles involving US, but by then the tradition of African nationalism had already taken hold—among whites. That tradition calls for any white person, whether a journalist, a college official, or a politician, to ignore the obvious flaws of the concept that blacks should have a separate culture. “The students here have handled themselves in an absolutely impeccable manner,” UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young told the L.A. Times. “They have been concerned. They haven’t argued who the director should be; they have been saying what kind of person he should be.” Young made those remarks after the shooting. And the university went ahead with its Afro-American Studies Program. Karenga, meanwhile, continued to build and strengthen US, a unique group that seems to have combined the elements of a street gang with those of a California cult. The members performed assaults and robberies but they also strictly followed the rules laid down in The Quotable Karenga, a book that laid out “The Path of Blackness.” “The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black,” the book states.
In retrospect, it may be fortunate that the cult fell apart over the torture charges. Left to his own devices, Karenga might have orchestrated the type of mass suicide later pioneered by the People’s Temple and copied by the Heaven’s Gate cult. Instead, he apparently fell into deep paranoia shortly after the killings at UCLA. He began fearing that his followers were trying to have him killed. On May 9, 1970 he initiated the torture session that led to his imprisonment. Karenga himself will not comment on that incident and the victims cannot be located, so the sole remaining account is in the brief passage from the L.A. Times describing tortures inflicted by Karenga and his fellow defendants, Louis Smith and Luz Maria Tamayo:
“The victims said they were living at Karenga’s home when Karenga accused them of trying to kill him by placing ‘crystals’ in his food and water and in various areas of his house. When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in Miss Davis’ mouth and against her face. Police were told that one of Miss Jones’ toes was placed in a small vise which then allegedly was tightened by one of the defendants. The following day Karenga allegedly told the women that ‘Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know.’ Miss Tamayo reportedly put detergent in their mouths, Smith turned a water hose full force on their faces, and Karenga, holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them.”
Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment. He was sentenced on Sept. 17, 1971, to serve one to ten years in prison. A brief account of the sentencing ran in several newspapers the following day. That was apparently the last newspaper article to mention Karenga’s unfortunate habit of doing unspeakable things to black people. After that, the only coverage came from the hundreds of news accounts that depict him as the wonderful man who invented Kwanzaa.
LOOK AT ANY MAP OF THE WORLD and you will see that Ghana and Kenya are on opposite sides of the continent. This brings up an obvious question about Kwanzaa: Why did Karenga use Swahili words for his fictional African feast? American blacks are primarily descended from people who came from Ghana and other parts of West Africa. Kenya and Tanzania—where Swahili is spoken—are several thousand miles away, about as far from Ghana as Los Angeles is from New York. Yet in celebrating Kwanzaa, African-Americans are supposed to employ a vocabulary of such Swahili words as “kujichagulia” and “kuumba.” This makes about as much sense as having Irish-Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by speaking Polish. One possible explanation is that Karenga was simply ignorant of African geography and history when he came up with Kwanzaa in 1966. That might explain why he would schedule a harvest festival near the solstice, a season when few fruits or vegetables are harvested anywhere. But a better explanation is that he simply has contempt for black people.
That does not seem a farfetched hypothesis. Despite all his rhetoric about white racism, I could find no record that he or his followers ever raised a hand in anger against a white person. In fact, Karenga had an excellent relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the ’60s and also met with then-Governor Ronald Reagan and other white politicians. But he and his gang were hell on blacks. And Karenga certainly seems to have had a low opinion of his fellow African-Americans. “People think it’s African, but it’s not,” he said about his holiday in an interview quoted in the Washington Post. “I came up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods would be partying.” “Bloods” is a ’60s California slang term for black people.
That Post article appeared in 1978. Like other news articles from that era, it makes no mention of Karenga’s criminal past, which seems to have been forgotten the minute he got out of prison in 1975. Profiting from the absence of memory, he remade himself as Maulana Ron Karenga, went into academics, and by 1979 he was running the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach.
This raises a question: Karenga had just ten years earlier proven himself capable of employing guns and bullets in his efforts to control hiring in the Black Studies Department at UCLA. So how did this ex-con, fresh out jail, get the job at Long Beach? Did he just send a résumé and wait by the phone? The officials at Long Beach State don’t like that type of question. I called the university and got a spokeswoman by the name of Toni Barone. She listened to my questions and put me on hold. Christmas music was playing, a nice touch under the circumstances. She told me to fax her my questions. I sent a list of questions that included the matter of whether Karenga had employed threats to get his job. I also asked just what sort of crimes would preclude a person from serving on the faculty there in Long Beach. And whether the university takes any security measures to ensure that Karenga doesn’t shoot any students. Barone faxed me back a reply stating that the university is pleased with Karenga’s performance and has no record of the procedures that led to his hiring. She ignored the question about how they protect students.
Actually, there is clear evidence that Karenga has reformed. In 1975, he dropped his cultural nationalist views and converted to Marxism. For anyone else, this would have been seen as an endorsement of radicalism, but for Karenga it was considered a sign that he had moderated his outlook. The ultimate irony is that now that Karenga is a Marxist, the capitalists have taken over his holiday. The seven principles of Kwanzaa include “collective work” and “cooperative economics,” but Kwanzaa is turning out to be as commercial as Christmas, generating millions in greeting-card sales alone. The purists are whining. “It’s clear that a number of major corporations have started to take notice and try to profit from Kwanzaa,” said a San Francisco State black studies professor named “Oba T’Shaka” in one news account. “That’s not good, with money comes corruption.” No, he’s wrong. With money comes kitsch. The L.A. Times reported a group was planning an “African Village Faire,” the pseudo-archaic spelling of “faire” nicely combining kitsch Africana with kitsch Americana.
With money also comes forgetfulness. As those warm Kwanzaa feelings are generated in a spirit of holiday cheer, those who celebrate this holiday do so in blissful ignorance of the sordid violence, paranoia, and mayhem that helped generate its birth some three decades ago in a section of America that has vanished down the memory hole.
End
Official Statement by Obama and Michelle on Kwanzaa Issued December 26, 2011:
Michelle and I send our warmest wishes to all those celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season. Today marks the beginning of the week-long celebration honoring African American heritage and culture through the seven principles of Kwanzaa — unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
We celebrate Kwanzaa at a time when many African Americans and all Americans reflect on our many blessings and memories over the past year and our aspirations for the year to come. And even as there is much to be thankful for, we know that there are still too many Americans going through enormous challenges and trying to make ends meet. But we also know that in the spirit of unity, or Umoja, we can overcome those challenges together.
As families across America and around the world light the red, black, and green candles of the Kinara this week, our family sends our well wishes and blessings for a happy and healthy new year.
26 December 2011
Longer sentences for hate murders
From Google News:
(UKPA) Murderers motivated by hostility towards disabled or transgender victims will face life sentences with a starting point of 30 years, after a pre-operative transgender prostitute was murdered in London.
Kenneth Clarke doubled the length of sentence which judges use to calculate the minimum term offenders must serve behind bars, saying hate crimes were abhorrent.
Killers “should be in no doubt that they face a more severe sentence for these unacceptable crimes”, he said on Thursday.
The 30-year starting point brings murders motivated by hate towards disabled or transgender victims in line with those motivated by race, religion, or sexual orientation.
It comes after Leon Fyle, 23, was jailed for life in September at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London for the murder of Destiny Lauren, a pre-operative transgender prostitute. Fyle, who was convicted after a retrial, was told he must serve 21 years behind bars before being considered for release.
Mr Clarke said: “Hate crimes are abhorrent, they leave sections of society living in fear and at risk of unprovoked violence. The courts already treat all hate crime seriously and aggravate sentences accordingly.”
Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said there was “no excuse for any form of hate crime”, and the moves would “send out a strong message to victims and perpetrators” that they will face “the full force of the law”. Her comments came as she announced the first national strategy to promote transgender equality.
Some 70% of children who are uncertain about their gender are subject to bullying, while 88% of transgender employees experience discrimination or harassment in their workplace, the Home Office said.
Ms Featherstone added: “Too many transgender people still face prejudice at every stage of their lives, from playground bullying, to being overlooked for jobs or targeted for crime.”
April Ashley, who became the first Briton to undergo sex-change surgery in 1960, said: “I think there are so many support groups out there unlike when I did my transition 52 years ago when there was no help at all. Today’s announcement shows we are moving forward to breaking down barriers and educating people.”
25 December 2011
African Warlord Who Killed 20,000 People Repents; Now Christian Evangelist
It’s a story of transformation that has surprised thousands and shocked all who have heard: a brutal African warlord with a violent past finds Christ and dramatically turns his life around.
Selected for The Economist Film Project, an initiative by The Economist in partnership with PBS NewsHour, “The Redemption of General Butt Naked” is a chilling documentary about the changed life of Joshua Milton Blahyi, once dubbed to be one of Liberia’s most feared warlords.
Now renouncing his violent past – which includes confessing to killing nearly 20,000 people during Liberia’s 14-year civil war – after converting to Christianity, Blahyi seeks to reinvent himself as an evangelist, traveling the nation as a preacher and asking for forgiveness from those whom he had hurt in the past.
Filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion spent five years with Blahyi, closely following his troubled life as he sought forgiveness from his former soldiers and his numerous victims.
Strauss had become interested in Blahyi after he read about him in a book called The World’s Most Dangerous Places.
“It was just a tiny blurb about a notorious warlord who had killed thousands and was now walking the streets preaching truth and reconciliation,” Strauss told The Los Angeles Times. “I wondered, ‘Could someone like this really exist?’”
“Was transformation this extreme even possible?” Anastasion added. “And how would that play out in the real world?”
Offering a glimpse into their questions through their documentary, the filmmakers created “The Redemption of General Butt Naked,” highlighting faith and forgiveness.
“The film forces [viewers] to question the very nature of what true, meaningful reconciliation looks like in a country where justice has not been available,” the film’s website noted.
“It’s only Christianity that can help this nation, because Christianity, it is the only belief, the only faith that tell you to love your enemies, that tell you to accept and forgive the one who hurts you,” Blahyi stated in an excerpt from the movie, according to PBS.
“All of us you see sitting here were notorious rebels. The only thing that is able to disarm them is love, the love that disarmed me. Only God is able to turn lives around.”
Prior to his conversion, Blahyi, a member of the Sarpo tribe in Liberia, was a spiritual consultant to the late Liberian president, Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe.
At age 11, he was initiated as a tribal priest and participated in his first human sacrifice, which he practiced monthly until he was 25. Later appointed as high priest to the Krahn people and then spiritual adviser to Doe, Blahyi previously told the South African Star that he “met Satan regularly and talked to him.”
He was dubbed “General Butt Naked” for entering battle with nothing but shoes and a gun, believing that his nakedness made him invincible to bullets. The previous general also claimed that he killed children, offering their blood to his god, and sometimes even plucking out their hearts and eating it before battle as well.
It is no wonder that all throughout the country, people still fear him, despite his conversion.
In 1996, Blahyi had a dramatic encounter with Christ during one of the most brutal fights in the history of the Liberian war, an encounter many deemed similar to Apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.
Jesus appeared to him as a blinding light and told him that he would die unless he repented of his sins, the Daily Mail reported.
Accepting Christ and asking forgiveness for his sins, Blahyi promptly laid down his weapons, left behind his soldiers, and went to a refugee camp in Ghana where he began his conversion process.
Now preaching where he once murdered, Blahyi hopes to rebuild the people whom he once hurt, advocating peace and not violence.
“It’s the toughest moment in my life to see somebody who I hurt in the past,” Blahyi reflected in the film. “There are thousands of people that can stand up here and say, this is what he did to me, this is what he did to my brother. I’m guilty. I’m 100 percent guilty for all the things I did in the past.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeated. Though many believed in Blahyi’s repentance and transformation, a few believe he is lying.
Despite their doubts, however, the former warlord continues to prove his turnaround through his actions, tirelessly preaching the Gospel to everyone he comes across.
He is currently the president and founder of the End Time Train Evangelistic Ministries in Ghana, which he founded in 1999, existing to shine the light of Christ in remote parts of Africa, including Togo, Benin Republic, Nigeria, Chile Republic, Guinea, and Liberia, his home land.
He returned to Liberia after six years of living in exile in 2004 and assisted in the disarmament process for one year, according to his ministry’s website, before returning back to the refugee camp in Ghana.
Three years later, he traveled back to his home country with a desire to return to Liberia with his family, which consisted of his wife, Josie, and their four children.
During that period, Blahyi agreed to admit his crimes before Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an act very few warlords agreed to do, though he did not know what the consequences of his confession would be.
“I went to the TRC because I wanted to reconcile with my country and be free of my conscience,” he shared in an excerpt. “And the fate turned out that they recommended amnesty for me.”
After he was recommended amnesty, however, Blahyi received several death threats from other warlords and fled to Ghana as a result. He has now returned to Liberia, preaching the truth of Jesus Christ to his people and teaching the broken about God’s infinite mercy and hope for mankind for sinners like himself.
The film will air on the Documentary Channel on Jan. 22.
PBS NewsHour ended their yearlong collaboration with The Economist magazine this week, highlighting the work of independent documentary filmmakers through The Economist Film Project.
Though they received more than a thousand documentary submissions, they chose only 19 films to showcase, ranging from skateboarding in Afghanistan to art made in the world’s largest landfill in Brazil.
Learn more about the film project and visit Joshua Milton Blahyi's site here.
Eryn Sun
Copyright © Christianpost.com. All rights reserved.
Kim Jong-il's Death Sparks New Supernatural Claims by North Korea State Media
As preparations for the funeral of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il take place, mythological accounts generated by the North Korean state media have continued to make extraordinary and outrageous claims of the leader’s life, death, and alleged supernatural existence.
The official biography of the Dear Leader insists he was “heaven sent.” When he died the official state news agency KCNA, regarded as the mouthpiece for the leader’s royal family, said that ice on a lake cracked “so loud, it seemed to shake the Heavens and the Earth” as the skies above sacred Mt. Paektu glowed red.”
“Wishing him to be the lodestar that would brighten the future of Korea, they hailed him as the Bright Star of Mount Paektu,” read the leader’s biography, according to the Washington Post.
The state agency has said that even nature mourned the death of their “Dear Leader.” This includes the country’s crane, which symbolizes longevity in North Korean culture.
“Even the crane seemed to mourn the demise of Kim Jong-il, born of Heaven, after flying down there at dead of cold night, unable to forget him,” KCNA quoted officials as saying.
Another report by the KCNA said the snowfall on the border of North and South Korea Wednesday showed the intensity of nature’s mourning.
As the Washington Post reports, the myths revolving around Korea’s leading Kim family began with Kim’s father, President Kim Il-sung.
The 69-year-old leader died reportedly last Saturday morning of a heart attack while on a train ride, but many conspiracy theorists are questioning this report.
His body now lies at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang, awaiting ongoing funeral preparations.
North Korea announced Friday that it would accept all of South Korea’s “condolence delegations” to attend Kim’s funeral, scheduled for next Wednesday.
The funeral’s guest list grows increasingly eccentric as the burial approaches, and includes such unexpected guests as Japanese magician Mariko Itakura, whose stage name is Princess Tenko.
Child Sex Abuse Enquiry Launched by Anglican Church
While in the Catholic Church the child abuse alegations are decreasing ever since the Church started to reject homosexual seminarists, other "churches" are welcoming homosexuals.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev. Rowan Williams, has set up an investigation in a diocese in southern England on Thursday, responding to allegations that priests who have been accused of abusing children have not been removed from their position and have been allowed to continue working.A statement released from Lambeth Palace, has said that the inquiry was in response to concerns within the diocese of Chichester in West Sussex, but it did not disclose which specific cases were involved. According to an article by the AAP, the investigation will be focused on alleged pedophile priests still working within the Anglican Church.
Bishop John Gladwin and Chancellor Rupert Bursell QC will carry out the inquiry, a brief statement on the Archbishop’s website revealed, and had the backing of Bishop of Chichester, the Right Reverend Dr John Hind. The investigation “will involve examining current child protection arrangements as well as making recommendations for the future.”
The statement also reveals that Williams will receive a preliminary report of the findings by the end of February 2012, after which the Church will decide what actions to take. It is unclear whether the investigation will focus on the history of child abuse in the Anglican Church, or only on current cases taking place.
Although the Catholic Church has received most of the attention when it comes to child sex abuse cases which have surfaced in many countries around the world, the Anglican Church has also had to deal with the issue. Back in May 2011, a review discovered that two priests accused of serious child abuse had been allowed to continue working.
A former Anglican chaplain pleaded guilty earlier this year to 18 counts of indecent assault on six schoolboys between 1956 and 1978, and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years of prison, the BBC has reported.
The chaplain, 84-year-old Leslie Carter of Warminster, Wiltshire, first abused a boy in a school in Cape Town, and continued assaulting boys between the ages of seven and 14 when he was appointed to Quainton Hall School in Harrow, north-west London in 1968.
Back in 2007, secret papers revealed that child abuse in the Church of England had gone unchecked for decades, The Telegraph reported. It said that “the Church has no idea how many pedophiles are in its midst,” since many allegations had not been recorded and information and evidence that could have prevented abuse had been “lost or destroyed.”
24 December 2011
Records Obama still hasn’t released
Doug Ross has this list of records Obama still hasn’t released:
- Occidental College records and transcripts — Not released
- Columbia University records and transcripts — Not released
- Columbia Thesis paper — ‘not available’
- Harvard University records and transcripts — Not released
- Medical records — Not released
- Illinois State Senate schedule — ‘not available’
- Illinois State Senate records — ‘not available’
- Law practice client list — Not released
- Certified Copy of Original Birth certificate — Not released
- Harvard Law Review articles published — None
- University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
- Record of Baptism — Not released or ‘not available’
Via Zippers
23 December 2011
“We are really before a monster that is destroying everything we hold dear”
SAO PAULO, Brazil, December 21, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Although Marxism appears to have died with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has only metamorphosed, and is now threatening culture in many nations at every level, according to one of Brazil’s best known priests.
In an exclusive video interview with LifeSiteNews, Fr. Azevedo tells LifeSiteNews that Marxists have moved into the cultural sphere following the discrediting of their economic views, and are now seeking to subvert all of the institutions of society from within.
“They have to have control of everything that produces culture. So first of all, the Church is important. But also universities, and schools, newspapers, the media and such. And of course in that battle they are in, they have everything in their hands right now,” Azevedo told LifeSiteNews. However, he added, we must realize that “God is with us.”
According to Azevedo, cultural Marxism not only incorporates the premises of Marx, but also Nietzsche and Freud. The goal is nothing less than the destruction of western civilization at its roots. Out of this destruction, we are assured, a utopia will emerge.
Among the institutions targeted for termination, said Azevedo, is the family.
“They think that the family is oppression, so once you have a family, that means you have a man, the male is oppressing the woman, and oppressing the kids, because he is imposing on them,” Azevedo said.
“So once you have a traditional family, you have a the man as ruler of the family and they think they have to break that down, and to have an equal society, you have to have people grow up in a different environment.”
In Brazil, the country with the largest Catholic population in the world, Marxists have targeted the Church, and large numbers of priests and bishops have embraced an ideology that replaces the spiritual teachings of Christ with a Marxist imitation known as “liberation theology.”
“Now what they are trying to do is to get to Christianity and change it from the inside,” said Azevedo. “So they keep the religious words, but they change the concept inside of the word.”
“When they talk about the kingdom of God, we as Christians, when we talk about the kingdom of God, we believe that you are talking about the kingdom of heaven, so you are talking about something that is not here in this world.”
“Well, they start saying that we are working here for the kingdom of God, and we want to bring about the kingdom here in this world. So in reality what they are talking about is the socialist society that they dream, the utopia that they think is going tho happen, is the kingdom of God.”
“They use the same words. It sounds like something Catholic, like something Christian, but at the same time you realize there is something strange about it, because there is something missing, and what is missing is everything that relates to the transcendental, to heaven, to life after death. Everything they do is they apply here on Earth.”
This rejection of spiritual realities is coupled with the exaltation of man as Nietzsche’s “superman,” who can determine good and evil for himself, as the serpent promised in the Garden of Eden, Azevedo said.
Citizens of Brazil and the United States are disarmed in the face of cultural Marxism, said Azevedo, because they naively believe that Marxism died with the fall of the Soviet Union.
“We are really before a monster that is destroying everything we hold dear, everything that we hold precious and sacred,” he said.
Fr. Azevedo is well-known in Brazil for his clear explanations and firm defense of the Catholic faith, which he presents in his television show for the New Song (Cancao Nova) network, as well as his blog, Christo Nihil Praeponere (Placing Nothing Before Christ)
NAACP's house negros support their democrat masters over the well-being of black babies
The word from LifeNews.com is that the NAACP is opposed to the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, which criminalizes abortion on the grounds of race or sex.
Incredible.
With Planned Parenthood operating 78% of their "clinics" in inner-city neighborhoods, and African Americans constituting 12% of the nation but having 37% of the abortions, this is not only racial suicide, but fratricide as well. When the NAACP objects to a bill that would not only outlaw sex-selective abortions, but race-based abortions as well, that’s fratricide. One may only speculate as to why.
Perhaps the NAACP believes that culling the excess of unplanned pregnancies among their daughters is the answer to poverty. That's genuinely understandable (so long as one sets aside the ten commandments, human instinct, and human decency), and as with most evil and mental confusion, it does have its own internal logic. Vacuuming African American wombs frees girls to pursue their education and vocational advancement.
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/
An Open Letter To Rabbi Abe Foxman And The ADL
Rob Miller deals with another Obama-lover.
I recently received the following fund raiser from the Anti-defamation League:
Dear Miller,
Just this past week, a Member of Congress was quoted referencing Nazi
propagandist Joseph Goebbels when discussing communication techniques of the Democratic Party.
We are truly living in troubled times when politicians feel they can benefit the national discourse with such vitriolic comparisons which insult the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust.
This was not the first time this has happened in this political season
and I fear it will not be the last time we hear such ignorant and spiteful
discourse between now and next November.
Help ADL speak out forcefully.
To me this raises three critical questions. Without the Anti-Defamation League, who would fiercely and relentlessly speak out against the trivialization of the Holocaust? Who would push back against the rising currents of anti-Semitism we’re seeing at home and around the world?
And without you, who would be there to fuel ADL’s vital work?
It was signed by the National Director, Rabbi Abe Foxman...and I felt it merited a reply:
Dear Rabbi Foxman,
I received your recent email with interest.
I realize that you and the ADL are very much involved in the Obama campaign,but are there no limits?
The fact is that Allen West, the member of Congress you mention is exactly correct when he compares the Soros-funded media machine and its adherents throughout the mainstream media as people Goebbels would be proud of, because they promulgate the Big Lie constantly when it
comes to Israel and the Jews. And by the way, he didn't mention the Holocaust, so your accusation that he trivialized it is simply untrue.
Do you realize that you are engaging in lashon hora, the defamation of a true friend of Israel and the Jews? Are you and your organization so wrapped up in the Democratic party that right and wrong simply have ceased to matter to you? Or did they not teach about lashon hora where you went to yeshiva?
Before he was in Congress, Colonel West stood with Israel and the Jews in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when pro-Hamas mobs attempted to spew their anti-Semitic bile on the streets. Where were you when that battle was being fought, Rabbi? How do you have the chutzpah to try and demonize this brave man? And to ask me for money to help fund it?
We now have the most anti-Israel administration in history sitting in the White House. Have you forgotten the way the Obama Administration has already trashed previous agreements with Israel, told them they have no right to their religious shrines , threatened an aid cutoff, and instituted what amounts to a de facto arms embargo during the early part of his term?
Do you not recall his deliberate humiliation of Israel's democratically elected leader, and this president's deliberate attempt last May to ambush PM Netanyahu by demanding Israel retreat to what we both know are indefensible borders? Can you possibly defend any of this, or President Obama's non-action on Iran or his championing of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Can you really say honestly that you're unaware of this president's long time intimate association with Israel bashers and anti-semites? Can you imagine what a second term for this president might mean to Israel and the Jews? And you claim that you and the ADL are 'fighting anti-semitism'?
In fact, whether you realize it or not, you are aiding and abetting it, along with the AJC, most of the Council of Presidents and far too much of the self-styled Jewish leadership. This is exactly what occurred during the Shoah, Rabbi, and it's a story I'm sure you know well, although it's probably inconvenient and unpleasant for you to recall it.
I've met you personally at several functions, even had the opportunity to engage in several conversations with you. I'm appealing to the human being behind the title and facade to step into the light.
This goes beyond things like 'Republican' and 'Democrat' and deals with simple human decency and the survival of the Jewish people and Israel. I urge you to think about what you're doing, really think about it.
You could use name and your position do the right thing and truly defend the Jewish people and Israel. Or you can turn away, and try to justify it to your conscience.
Sincerely,
Rob Miller
By the way, Rabbi Foxman's e-mail is afoxman@adl.org
Dear Miller,
Just this past week, a Member of Congress was quoted referencing Nazi
propagandist Joseph Goebbels when discussing communication techniques of the Democratic Party.
We are truly living in troubled times when politicians feel they can benefit the national discourse with such vitriolic comparisons which insult the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust.
This was not the first time this has happened in this political season
and I fear it will not be the last time we hear such ignorant and spiteful
discourse between now and next November.
Help ADL speak out forcefully.
To me this raises three critical questions. Without the Anti-Defamation League, who would fiercely and relentlessly speak out against the trivialization of the Holocaust? Who would push back against the rising currents of anti-Semitism we’re seeing at home and around the world?
And without you, who would be there to fuel ADL’s vital work?
It was signed by the National Director, Rabbi Abe Foxman...and I felt it merited a reply:
Dear Rabbi Foxman,
I received your recent email with interest.
I realize that you and the ADL are very much involved in the Obama campaign,but are there no limits?
The fact is that Allen West, the member of Congress you mention is exactly correct when he compares the Soros-funded media machine and its adherents throughout the mainstream media as people Goebbels would be proud of, because they promulgate the Big Lie constantly when it
comes to Israel and the Jews. And by the way, he didn't mention the Holocaust, so your accusation that he trivialized it is simply untrue.
Do you realize that you are engaging in lashon hora, the defamation of a true friend of Israel and the Jews? Are you and your organization so wrapped up in the Democratic party that right and wrong simply have ceased to matter to you? Or did they not teach about lashon hora where you went to yeshiva?
Before he was in Congress, Colonel West stood with Israel and the Jews in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when pro-Hamas mobs attempted to spew their anti-Semitic bile on the streets. Where were you when that battle was being fought, Rabbi? How do you have the chutzpah to try and demonize this brave man? And to ask me for money to help fund it?
We now have the most anti-Israel administration in history sitting in the White House. Have you forgotten the way the Obama Administration has already trashed previous agreements with Israel, told them they have no right to their religious shrines , threatened an aid cutoff, and instituted what amounts to a de facto arms embargo during the early part of his term?
Do you not recall his deliberate humiliation of Israel's democratically elected leader, and this president's deliberate attempt last May to ambush PM Netanyahu by demanding Israel retreat to what we both know are indefensible borders? Can you possibly defend any of this, or President Obama's non-action on Iran or his championing of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Can you really say honestly that you're unaware of this president's long time intimate association with Israel bashers and anti-semites? Can you imagine what a second term for this president might mean to Israel and the Jews? And you claim that you and the ADL are 'fighting anti-semitism'?
In fact, whether you realize it or not, you are aiding and abetting it, along with the AJC, most of the Council of Presidents and far too much of the self-styled Jewish leadership. This is exactly what occurred during the Shoah, Rabbi, and it's a story I'm sure you know well, although it's probably inconvenient and unpleasant for you to recall it.
I've met you personally at several functions, even had the opportunity to engage in several conversations with you. I'm appealing to the human being behind the title and facade to step into the light.
This goes beyond things like 'Republican' and 'Democrat' and deals with simple human decency and the survival of the Jewish people and Israel. I urge you to think about what you're doing, really think about it.
You could use name and your position do the right thing and truly defend the Jewish people and Israel. Or you can turn away, and try to justify it to your conscience.
Sincerely,
Rob Miller
By the way, Rabbi Foxman's e-mail is afoxman@adl.org
Utah Supreme Court: fetuses are ‘minor children’
LifeSiteNews - The ruling was issued in the case of a Utah couple who was suing their doctor after their child was stillborn in 2006, saying that the doctor refused to induce labor in time.
Although the justices were divided on the case, four agreed that unborn children should be classified as minor children.
“In my view, a plain language reading reveals that the term ‘minor child,’ as used in this statute, includes an unborn child,” wrote Chief Justice Christine Durham, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. “The statute does not itself define the term ‘minor child,’ but in general usage the term ‘child’ may refer to a young person, a baby or a fetus. The term ‘minor’ then, may refer to the period from conception to the age of majority, thereby encompassing an unborn child.”
Justice Ronald Nehring disagreed, stating that “the plain meaning of ‘minor child’ does not include a fetus” and that such an interpretation “creates absurd results under our laws.”
