BBC NEWS | Africa |Oh. My. Goddess!
This has to stop. I don't care if you believe magick is real, or nonsense, or whatever, but this cannot be tolerated anywhere by anyone. We have to get under the entitlement that tells people they have the right to kill someone for Witchcraft. I don't care if the victims were or weren't, did or didn't - no one has a right to kill someone else for this or any reason. STOP IT!
YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL A HUMAN BEING, NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE!
This must be the basic understanding that is the foundation of our civilization. You don't have the right to kill. Period.
You don't kill Witches.
You don't kill gay people.
You don't kill immigrants, documented or not.
You don't kill women.
You don't kill children.*
You don't kill people who never did a damned thing to you, no matter where they live.
I don't care if you are a cop, a soldier, a parent, a spouse or a lover.
YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL.
*A fetus is not a child. It might be a human someday if the mother so chooses, but it isn't human yet. The right lies with the Mother.
posted 10:06 pm at The-Goddess
Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama and John Edwards are big winners in Iowa tonight, and there's a reason for that - all three represent change from the status quo. Hillary Clinton came in a close third for the Democrats, specifically because she's too beholden to the DLC's Republican-lite corporation-loving party machine. Edward's took second place with far less money than either Barack or Hillary - he's only using public campaign financing. He won't owe anything to corporate interests when his campaign is over, and he got there without a huge war chest.
Huckabee is a nice guy - he's easy to like. The problem is that beneath that personable image lie some very fucked up ideas that would have us living in a Christo-fascist theocracy and women would be breeding slaves of the state. That, my children, must not happen. The Democrats have to win next year, no matter what. Whoever gets the Democratic nomination, make no mistake, we all have to get behind him or her. Right now, I say the money is evenly split between Barack and John.
The turnout in Iowas was unprecedented - young people were an astonishing 56% of new voters. If you watched the caucus, you saw that Kucinich, Dodd, Biden and Richardson all failed to generate enough support to be considered viable. The vast majority of those people who started out supporting one of those four candidates (or should that be 5? Is Gravel still in this race? I haven't heard from him in a while, but there's been a virtual media blackout on anyone but the top 3 Dems) went to Obama. Young people overwhelmingly went for Barack. Not my first choice, but it made me proud. I never thought I'd live to see a viable non-white presidential candidate. Maybe there is hope for us as a nation.
My heart still belongs to Kucinich. While he's still in the race, I can't in good conscience vote for a lesser candidate. He's the only one with all the goods, and I'm praying that all the weeks he has spent in New Hampshire pay off in a big way. I want to see Dennis surprise everybody the same way all those new people who turned out tonight in Iowa surprised the media. Dennis represents the clearest and best form of change we can hope for - but I'm realistic as well as optimistic.
John Edwards speech after the race was called tonight gave me chills. He was damn near channeling John Kennedy and it brought tears to my eyes. Barack is giving his speech as I write this, and he's an inspirational speaker, too, though I'm not feeling it the way I did with Edwards. I could get behind an Edwards/Obama ticket with great enthusiasm thought neither is my first choice. Barack has a huge banner behind him that says "CHANGE" and if there was one resounding winner in tonight's caucuses, that winner was Change. There will be a new America in one year - let's hope it's a better, free-er, kinder and more prosperous one.
One final note to all the Progressive men who will be crowing about the upset accomplished by Libertarian spoiler Ron Paul - about one quarter of Paul's positions are radical and wonderful, but the other three-quarters are frightening and exactly the wrong direction for this country. One of those very wrong positions is that he is radically anti-choice. Some of you are far too eager to trade my sovereignty over my own uterus away for the idea of smaller government. The friend of my enemy is my enemy, too.
posted 10:55 pm at The-Goddess
Facing South: Bill Quigley
Guest Contributor
In a small, still mostly segregated section of rural Louisiana, an all-white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white prosecutor testify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a trial of a fight at the local high school where a white student who had been making racial taunts was hit by black students.
The fight was the culmination of a series of racial incidents starting when whites responded to black students sitting under the "white tree" at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree. The white jury and white prosecutor and all white supporters of the white victim were all on one side of the courtroom. The black defendant, 17-year-old Mychal Bell, and his supporters were on the other.
The jury quickly convicted Bell of two felonies -- aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Bell, who was a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, faces up to 22 years in prison. Five other black youths await similar trials on attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy charges.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The rest of the story, which is being reported across the world in papers in China, France and England, is just as chilling.
I don't know whether to cry, scream or throw up. For the love of Goddess, who loves ALL of her children, please go read the rest of the story. The entire succession of events, and the fact that the whites are virtually unscathed while the black are being victimized by the entire system, including a prosecutor who told the black kids "that if they didn't stop making a fuss about this "innocent prank I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen." "
Apparently he's trying to do just that and it's working.
From the article:
People interested in supporting can contact:
The Jena 6 Defense Committee,
P.O. Box 2798
Jena, LA 71342
jena6defense@gmail.com
Friends of Justice
507 North Donley Ave.
Tulia, TX 79088,
www.fojtulia.org
ACLU of Louisiana
P.O. Box 56157
New Orleans, LA 70156
www.laaclu.org or 417-350-0536.This is an urgent situation, so if you can send money, please do. If nothing else, join the ACLU because your dues go for things like this. This affects all of us, not just because the world is watching, but because none of us is free when shit like this can go down, and you know the Alberto's Justice Department won't do their jobs and stop this the way they should.
posted 11:30 pm at The-Goddess
BBC NEWS | Americas | US DJ criticised over Obama songWhy are they laughing? Well, just in case Hurricane Katrina didn't convince the rest of the world that Americans are the most racist mother fuckers on the planet, now they're watching us tolerate Rush Limbaugh sing "Barack the magic
negro." This is not a question of rights. It's a matter of taste and judgement. When are we going to demand that our media behave like adults?
Continuing with this week's theme of White Supremacy, Americablog
reports that
James Dobson's crew at the
American Family Association and some of the other radical Right Wing groups are quoting
Paul Cameron. In case you're not familiar with his work, Cameron advocates the extermination of homosexuals and tattooing HIV patients on their faces. Cameron's group, the
Family Research Institute, is monitored by the
Southern Poverty Law Center as an ACTIVE HATE GROUP!
Cameron made his remarks about exterminating gays at CPAC, where Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot."
What scares me is that the people in a position to stop these hate mongers don't really understand how dangerous they are.
posted 10:34 pm at The-Goddess
OrcinusI kid you not. David Neiwert explains it more clearly than I can, but suffice it to say that when Homeland Security pulled that big raid that supposedly rounded up thousands of illegal immigrants and criminals cast a much wider net than they admitted to.
There are families in concentration camps in this country right now. Some of them were in the country
legally and many have children who are American citizens.
The children who are big enough wear prison clothes. They are divided into groups under 12 and over 12 for their one hour of education a day, which is an English language class. They are permitted 1 hour of recreation a day, usually inside.
People are getting sick from the food. They're surrounded by barbed wire and guards with guns. In America. Right now.
Most Germans didn't really pay attention when the Jews were rounded up, either.
The best place to learn more is
Latina Lista. She's in Texas where this is happening and she's all over it.
posted 5:49 pm at The-Goddess