Lynching Jokes and Noose Displays Are Offensive

Western Kenya's Escalating Ethnic Violence: 800 Dead

ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY writes:

NAIVASHA, Kenya - Gangs of youths armed with machetes and clubs fought running battles with police on Sunday and burned tribal rivals alive in their homes in western Kenya, pushing the death toll from a month of escalating ethnic violence to nearly 800.

Sunday marked exactly one month since the Dec. 27 disputed president election that sparked the violence that has transformed this once-stable African country, pitting longtime neighbors against each other and turning towns where tourists used to gather for luxury holidays into no-go zones.

25 People Killed: Kenya's Flawed Presidential Election

ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY writes:

NAKURU, Kenya - Men sobbed as police unloaded 16 charred bodies at a mortuary in this western Kenyan city. People with machete and arrow wounds overwhelmed the main hospital and were forced to share beds. Hundreds of homeless took shelter at a church.

And even as Nakuru struggled to recover from an explosion of political violence, there were signs Saturday that it was far from over. Those whose homes were burned vowed revenge. Gunshots rang out, and youths with sticks manned roadblocks.

At least 25 people were killed when the turmoil over Kenya's deeply flawed presidential election finally reached Nakuru, the country's fourth-largest city that had largely been spared the unrest. Men fought street battles with homemade guns, machetes and bow and arrows, while mobs torched hundreds of homes.

At the city mortuary, police wearing rubber gloves unloaded 16 burned bodies. Men standing by broke down in tears.

"I have never experienced this in my country," one man said, his face marked with grief. "I just pray that our leaders end this thing immediately."

Riots and ethnic fighting following the Dec. 27 vote have killed more than 700 people nationwide and forced 255,000 from their homes.

Kenya's flawed election system with resulting ethic and political violence should make us here in the United States realize that even though the confederate flag is still flying over South Carolina's statehouse, mass killings and violence have not erupted over Barack, Hillary, and John. Thank God.

Spot Comments on 'God Is My Sharpshooter,' Statement by Assam

"Spot" writes:

Jeanne (Assam)... is the armed security guard at Ted Haggard's old church who killed—or at least winged pretty good—the Christian zealot turned anti-Christian zealot, Matthew Murray on Sunday last. Murray was going to be a missionary, but apparently he washed out late in the program, and he has harbored a, well, grudge, ever since:

"It appears that the suspect had been kicked out of the [missionary] program [affiliated with the church] three years prior and during the past few weeks had sent different forms of hate mail to the program and/or its director," police said.

Murray shot up the missionary training center earlier in the day.

But let's get back to Jeanne:

JA: O lord! Let me shoot straight!

HS: A little to the left, Jeanne.

It does sound like it was a good thing that Jeanne was a good shot, but how many of you, boys and girls, think that the Holy Spirit did the aiming? Michele, Katie, anybody else? And if you do, how much work would it have been for God to have stationed Jeanne out in the parking lot where two people were killed, or at the missionary training center earlier that day, where several people were shot and two were killed?

God seems like an arbitrary Fella, steadying Jeanne's aim but not protecting all of the other people who got shot. Spot guesses that they just didn't have time to pray, or they didn't pray hard enough. Sad, really.

Spot touches on the age-old problem of pain and evil in the world. Why does God allow it? Why doesn't He stop it? Why does He appear to stop one evil event while allowing another (such as the deaths of those two teenagers from the same family)? Spot seems to think God is just arbitrary (or perhaps does not even exist); that God ignores some and protects others based on prayer.

Prayer is not to change God's mind; it is designed I believe to change our mind. The prayer of Jeanne Assam did not, in my opinion, change God; it changed her. Her prayer allowed her to be in the moment, to be unafraid and focused on a task for which she had been trained, prepared. If Christians believed that God always intervenes, then why even prepare for hate crimes, mass shootings, ridiculous evil.

Rantings of Matthew Murray

Matthew Murray reportedly ranted prior to his attacks in Colorado at Youth With A Mission in Denver and New Life Church in Colorado Springs:

"You Christians brought this on yourselves," Murray reportedly wrote on a website for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organisations, shortly before the second of his two attacks.

"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ... God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out.

"All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."

Source: KUSA TV

Matthew Murray, in these writings, sounds like a terrorist to me, a person motivated by hatred of others' religious beliefs. Someone who has decided that he has a right, perhaps even a responsibility to set himself above others. He sounds like someone who has put himself in the place of God, deciding who has the right to live and who must die.

Suicide Bombing in Kabul

A suicide bomber struck a minibus full of soldiers in the Chihulsutoon area south of Kabul, said Aziz Ahmad, an Afghan army officer at the site of the blast.

Purported Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed claimed responsibility for the blast in a text message sent to an Associated Press reporter in neighboring Pakistan.

The minibus was demolished and its mangled frame lay on the side of the road as the wounded were whisked to hospitals (four children were believed to have been killed.)

The blast was the third suicide attack in the city in the last eight days. It follows a similar attack against a NATO convoy on Tuesday that left 22 civilians wounded.

Teddy Bears and Teachers and Islamic Extremism

Don Singleton: Execute her

Don Singleton: Execute her

Sudanese React Violently to Name of Teddy Bear

Teacher hidden as Sudan mob urges death

By MOHAMED OSMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Nov 30, 5:06 PM ET

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and swords and beating drums, burned pictures of a British teacher Friday and demanded her execution for insulting Islam by letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Sudan's Islamic government, which has long whipped up anti-Western, Muslim hard-line sentiment at home, was balancing between fueling outrage over the case of Gillian Gibbons and containing it.

The government does not want to seriously damage ties with Britain, but the show of anger underlines its stance that Sudanese oppose Western interference, lawyers and political foes said. The uproar comes as the U.N. is accusing Sudan of dragging its feet on the deployment of peacekeepers in the war-torn Darfur region.

Many in the protesting crowd shouted "Kill her! Kill her by firing squad!"

In response to the rally in central Khartoum, Gibbons was moved from the women's prison across the Nile in Oumdurman to a secret location, her chief lawyer Kamal al-Gizouli told the Associated Press. He said he visited her there to discuss her conviction Thursday on charges of insulting Islam.

The 54-year-old Gibbons, who was sentenced to 15 days in jail, spoke Friday with her son John and daughter Jessica in Britain by telephone.

"One of the things my mum said today was that I don't want any resentment towards Muslims," the son told AP. "She's holding up quite well."

Despite the fervor of the protest, the rest of Khartoum was quiet. The rally was far smaller than February 2006 protests held with government backing after European newspapers ran caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, suggesting popular anger over Gibbons did not run as deep.

In their mosque sermons Friday, several Muslim clerics harshly denounced Gibbons, saying she had intentionally insulted the prophet, but they not call for protests and said the punishment ordered by the court was sufficient.

Still, after prayers, several thousand people converged on Khartoum's Martyrs Square, near the presidential palace, and began calling for Gibbons' execution. Many seemed to be from Sufi groups, religious sects that emphasize reverence for the prophet.

Some angrily denounced the teacher, but others smiled as they beat drums and burned newspapers with Gibbons' picture, waving swords and clubs and green banners, the color of Islam.

Chants of "Kill her!" and "No tolerance: Execution!" rang out as hundreds of police in riot gear stood by, keeping the crowd contained but not moving against the rally.

Protesters dismissed Gibbons' claims that she didn't mean to insult the prophet.

"It is a premeditated action, and this unbeliever thinks that she can fool us?" said Yassin Mubarak, a young dreadlocked man swathed in green and carrying a sword. "What she did requires her life to be taken."

Several hundred protesters marched to Unity High School, where Gibbons worked, and chanted outside briefly before heading toward the nearby British Embassy. They were stopped by security forces two blocks from the embassy. The protest dispersed after an hour.

"I would like to tell the whole world that what happened here from this English teacher is not acceptable to us," said a protester, Sheikh Nasser Abu Shamah.

There was no overt sign that the government organized the protest, but such a public rally could not have taken place without at least official assent.

Gibbons was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in jail and deportation for insulting Islam with the naming of the teddy bear, which was part of a class project for her 7-year-old students at the private school.

She escaped harsher punishment that could have included up to 40 lashes, six months in prison and a fine. Her time in jail since her arrest Sunday counts toward the sentence.

Neo-Nazis Making Nice: Little Green Footballs

2005: The Pieing of Conservative Speaker William Kristol at Earlham College

I remember receiving a letter from Doug Bennett, the president of Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana soon after this sad event.

Monkees/Monkeys

One view of and on humanity.

Hate Crimes

Reading the following this morning, I was stunned to find that Al Sharpton believes that hanging nooses from tree limbs is tantamount to attempted murder! There is no doubt that the white students were in the wrong, but the black students were more serious in their expression of hatred, beating a student into a state of unconsciousness! Speaking of a hate-crime.

The Jena case began in August 2006 after a black student sat under a tree known as a gathering spot for white students. Three white students later hung nooses from the tree. They were suspended by the school but not prosecuted. Six black teenagers, however, were charged by LaSalle Parish prosecutor Reed Walters with attempted second-degree murder of a white student who was beaten unconscious in December 2006. The charges have since been reduced to aggravated second-degree assault, but civil rights protesters have complained that no charges were filed against the white students who hung the nooses.

"The FBI report confirms what we have been saying for many months about the severe increase in hate crimes," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who organized Friday's march. "What is not reported, however, is the lack of prosecution and serious investigation by the Justice Department to counter this increase in hate crimes." Sharpton called for Attorney General Michael Mukasey to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights leaders to discuss this enforcement.