Carl Hiaasen: Racial lynchings, our own history of terrorism | Miami Herald Miami Herald

The victims, a man and a woman, were first tied to a tree.

Their fingers were hacked off and given out as souvenirs. Next their ears were chopped from their heads. A mob beat the man while a crowd of hundreds watched.

A large corkscrew was then used to mutilate both captives, who were tossed onto a fire and burned. While all this was happening, the onlookers — which included women and children — were served lemonade and deviled eggs.

This isn’t a scene the latest ISIS video in Syria. It’s a homegrown American atrocity that took place in 1904 in Doddsville, Miss.

A black man named Luther Holbert and a woman thought to be his wife were snatched by a lynch mob on suspicion of killing a white landowner. No prosecution, no trial, no finding of guilt.

The deaths were two of 3,959 “racial terror lynchings” in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. The Alabama-based legal-rights group spent five years researching such murders, and how they were used to terrify African-American communities.

As horrified as we are by the beheadings aired by thugs of the Islamic State, the barbaric spectacles that for decades took place in town squares and public parks across the Deep South were no less monstrous.

Racial lynchings often were staged in a festive carnival atmosphere with large crowds. Sometimes enterprising printers peddled postcards featuring photos of the mangled dead body.

(Please click the link below to read this column on The Miami Herald site-

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article10771169.html )

Extrasolar Planets Are, Almost, Everywhere

Extrasolar Planets Are, Almost, Everywhere (Op-Ed)

Charley Lineweaver, Australian National University
Date: 21 March 2015 Time: 07:32 PM ET

The Kepler satellite discovers exoplanets by measuring the light drop from a star when a planet moves in front of it. Maths can uncover many more exoplanets.
CREDIT: Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute

This article was originally published on The Conversation. The publication contributed this article to Space.com’sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

When Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay in 1770, we did not know how many planets were in our solar system. We only knew about Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Based on the orbits of these planets, 18th century European astronomers invented what is now called the Titius-Bode relation. It’s a simple empirical relation that describes the relative distances between the planets and the sun. It predicted the orbit of another planet beyond Saturn and another planet in the gap between Mars and Jupiter.

In 1781, William Herschel found Uranus – without relying on the Titius-Bode relation – but he found it in the orbit beyond Saturn where the Titius-Bode relation said it would be.

After this success, astronomers started looking for a planet between Mars and Jupiter in the orbit predicted by the Titus-Bode relation.

In 1801, Giuseppi Piazzi found a planet in the predicted position and called it Ceres. The Titius-Bode relation was on a roll.

But when Neptune was found in 1846 it wasn’t exactly where the Titus-Bode relation predicted it would be. And over the years so many small bodies have been found in orbits between Mars and Jupiter that Ceres was plutoed – demoted to an “asteroid”.

And so the Titus-Bode relation lost its shine. And like an old horse, it was put out to pasture. It was only taken seriously by numerologists and cranks.

The search for extrasolar planets

But then along came NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Over the past few years Kepler has been able to detect thousands of exoplanets and hundreds of multi-exoplanet systems.

Along with my PhD student Tim Bovaird and Master’s student Steffen Jacobsen, we reasoned that if the TB relation had been such a useful (if somewhat imperfect) guide for predicting planets in our solar system, maybe it would be useful in predicting planets in the new exoplanetary systems detected by Kepler.

We checked the hundred or so systems where Kepler had found at least a few planets and we found that the majority of these exoplanetary systems adhered to the Titus-Bode relation even somewhat better than our solar system did.

Thus, we became convinced that the horse still had some miles left in her – that the semi-taboo Titus-Bode relation could provide useful hints about the periods of as-yet-undetected planets around other stars.

Resurrection

Last year we used a generalised Titus-Bode relation to analyse 68 multi-planet systems with four or more detected exoplanets. We made predictions for the existence of more planets in these systems, based on the Titus-Bode relation.

So far, 5% of our predictions have been confirmed. This may sound like a small percentage, but given the inability of the Kepler telescope to see Earth-sized planets or smaller, a 5% detection rate is what you would expect to see if all the predictions were true.

The Goldilocks zone or habitable zone around a star is where the temperature is just right to have liquid water. Our new result suggests that there are, on average, two planets in the habitable zone.
Credit: Aditya Chopra, ANU, adapted from NASA/JPL

Almost all of the exoplanets detected by Kepler are larger than Earth and very close to their host stars. This is almost certainly aselection bias.

It is very difficult for the Kepler telescope to spot planets that are far enough away from their host stars to be in the habitable zone (where the temperatures are in the range where H2O will be liquid water).

Using the Titus-Bode relation is a controversial indirect technique, but I think it’s the best one we have if we are interested in answering the question: How many planets (on average) are in the habitable zones of stars?

How many potentially habitable planets?

Our answer to this question is 2 ± 1 and was published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The figures (above and below) illustrate our result.

The names on the left are the names of 31 Kepler exoplanetary systems. The blue dots are exoplanets detected by Kepler. Red and gray squares are our Titus-Bode-based predictions. The green horizontal band is the habitable zone. For comparison, the first system (at the top) is our solar system. The Earth is in the middle of the habitable zone.
Credit: Author provided

With about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, our result means there are 600 ± 300 billion planets in circumstellar habitable zones in our galaxy.

In the observable universe there are about 100 billion galaxies. Thus there are approximately 1022 stars in the observable universe and twice that many planets in circumstellar habitable zones in the universe.

That’s a lot of real estate for alien development. Not all of these habitable zone planets will be wet and rocky like the Earth, but a fair fraction (about 30%) should be. Now we need some zippy interstellarspaceships to colonise and over-populate all these worlds before the aliens do.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read theoriginal article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook,Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published onSpace.com.

http://m.space.com/28889-extrasolar-planets-are-almost-everywhere.html

Australia Is Again Stealing Its Indigenous Children | Truthout

This is outrageous. It must be stopped. Why do these damn right wing fascist monsters always behave as if indigenous people are commodities? And seriously-WHO votes these freaks into office over and over after their behavior is plainly detrimental to our countries and most individuals? Is the brainwashing really so effective?
ohnwentsya

Australia Is Again Stealing Its Indigenous Children

Tuesday, 25 March 2014
By John Pilger, Truthout | News Analysis

Sorry day: Honor the stolen generation. (Image: Pierre Pouliquin / Flickr)Journalism with real independence and integrity is a rare thing. Truthout relies on reader donations – click here to make a tax-deductible contribution and support our work.

The tape is searing. There is the voice of an infant screaming as he is wrenched from his mother, who pleads, “There is nothing wrong with my baby. Why are you doing this to us? I would’ve been hung years ago, wouldn’t I? Because (as an Australian Aborigine) you’re guilty before you’re found innocent.” The child’s grandmother demands to know why “the stealing of our kids is happening all over again.” A welfare official says, “I’m gunna take him, mate.”

This happened to an Aboriginal family in outback New South Wales. It is happening across Australia in a scandalous and largely unrecognized abuse of human rights that evokes the infamous Stolen Generation of the last century. Up to the 1970s, thousands of mixed-race children were stolen from their mothers by welfare officials. The children were given to institutions as cheap or slave labor; many were abused.

Described by a chief protector of Aborigines as “breeding out the color,” the policy was known as assimilation. It was influenced by the same eugenics movement that inspired the Nazis. In 1997, a landmark report, “Bringing Them Home,” disclosed that as many 50,000 children and their mothers had endured “the humiliation, the degradation and sheer brutality of the act of forced separation … the product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the state.” The report called this genocide.

Assimilation remains Australian government policy in all but name. Euphemisms such as “reconciliation” and “Stronger Futures” cover similar social engineering and an enduring, insidious racism in the political elite, the bureaucracy and wider Australian society. When in 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized for the Stolen Generation, he added: “I want to be blunt about this. There will be no compensation.” The Sydney Morning Herald congratulated Rudd on a “shrewd maneuver” that “cleared away a piece of political wreckage that responds to some of its supporters’ emotional needs, but changes nothing.”

Today, the theft of Aboriginal children – including babies taken from the birth table – is now more widespread than at any time during the last century. As of June last year, almost 14,000 Aboriginal children had been “removed.” This is five times the number when “Bringing Them Home” was written. More than a third of all removed children are Aboriginal – from 3% of the population. At the present rate, this mass removal of Aboriginal children will result in a stolen generation of more than 3,300 children in the Northern Territory alone.

Pat (not her real name) is the mother whose anguish was secretly recorded on a phone as four Department of Child Services officials, and six police officers, descended on her home. On the tape an official claims they have come only for an “assessment.” But two of the police officers, who knew Pat, told her they saw no risk to her child and warned her to “get out of here quick.” Pat fled, cradling her infant, but the one-year-old was eventually seized without her knowing why. The next morning a police officer returned to apologize to her and said her baby should never have been taken away. Pat has no idea where her son is.

Once, she was “invited” by officials to bring her children to “neutral” offices to discuss a “care plan.” The doors were locked and officials seized the children, with one of the youngest dragging on a police officer’s gun belt. Many indigenous mothers are unaware of their legal rights. A secretive Children’s Court has become notorious for rubber-stamping removals.

Most Aboriginal families live on the edge. Their life expectancy in towns a short flight from Sydney is as low as 37. Dickensian diseases are rife; Australia is the only developed country not to have eradicated trachoma, which blinds Aboriginal children.

Pat has both complied with and struggled bravely against a punitive bureaucracy that can remove children on hearsay. She has twice been acquitted of false charges, including “kidnapping” her own children. A psychologist has described her as a capable and good mother.

Josie Crawshaw, the former director of a respected families’ support organization in Darwin, told me, “In remote areas, officials will go in with a plane in the early hours and fly the child thousands of kilometers from their community. There’ll be no explanation, no support, and the child may be gone forever.”

In 2012, Coordinator-General of Remote Services for the Northern Territory Olga Havnen was sacked when she revealed that almost $80 million was spent on the surveillance and removal of Aboriginal children, compared with only $500,000 on supporting the same impoverished families. She told me, “The primary reasons for removing children are welfare issues directly related to poverty and inequality. The impact on families is just horrendous because if they are not reunited within six months, it’s likely they won’t see each other again. If South Africa was doing this, there’d be an international outcry.”

She and others with long experience I have interviewed have echoed the “Bringing them Home” report, which described an official “attitude” in Australia that regarded all Aboriginal people as “morally deficient.” A Department of Families and Community Services spokesman said that the majority of removed indigenous children in New South Wales were placed with indigenous caregivers. According to indigenous support networks, this is a smokescreen; it does not mean families and it is control by divisiveness that is the bureaucracy’s real achievement.

I met a group of Aboriginal grandmothers, all survivors of the first stolen generation, all now with stolen grandchildren. “We live in a state of fear, again,” they said. David Shoebridge, a State Greens MP, told me, “The truth is, there is a market among whites for these kids, especially babies.”

The New South Wales parliament is soon to debate legislation that introduces forced adoption and “guardianship.” Children under two will be liable – without the mother’s consent – if “removed” for more than six months. For many Aboriginal mothers like Pat, it can take six months merely to make contact with their children. “It’s setting up Aboriginal families to fail,” said Shoebridge.

I asked Josie Crawshaw why. “The willful ignorance in Australia about its first people has now become the kind of intolerance that gets to the point where you can smash an entire group of humanity and there is no fuss.”

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted withoutpermission.

JOHN PILGER

John Pilger is an Australian-born, London-based journalist, filmmaker and author. For his foreign and war reporting, ranging from Vietnam and Cambodia to the Middle East, he has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism. For his documentary films, he won a British Academy Award and an American Emmy. In 2009, he was awarded Australia’s human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize. John Pilger’s films can be viewed on his website.

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© 2015 Truthout

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/22659

Greenland Reels: Climate Disrupting Feedbacks Have Begun

• Greenland Reels: Climate Disrupting Feedbacks Have Begun

Thursday, 05 March 2015 11:10By Bruce Melton, Truthout

The author waves from a point about a mile onto the ice sheet near what is called Point 660, about 25 miles from Kangerlussuaq, on the west coast of Greenland, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Dust accumulates on the ice from as far away as Siberia. As the ice melts, most of the dust is left behind to absorb more sunlight and melt more ice in a climate change feedback that has already begun. (Photo: Bruce Melton)

Greenland is warmer than it has been in more than 100,000 years and climate disrupting feedback loops have begun. Since 2000, ice loss has increased over 600 percent, and liquid water now exists inside the ice sheet year-round, no longer refreezing during winter.

Melt and ice loss dynamics from Greenland are far more complicated than we understood just a few years ago. New discoveries have been made that add large uncertainties as to exactly how fast ice melt and iceberg discharge will increase in the future. Over the last decade, continued research into the rate of ice loss in Greenland has downplayed any rapid acceleration of current melt rates. New discoveries could be changing our understanding of this last decade’s work.

Greenland: Warmer Than in 100,000 Years

About 5,000 years ago, Greenland reached its warmest period in over 100,000 years. Since this time, Greenland had been cooling and the ice sheet was stable or growing. Beginning 30 to 40 years ago, however, a rapid reversal of cooling and ice sheet growth began.

The last 18 years have seen more melt than average across the ice sheet every year with an increasing trend that peaked in 2012 when the entire ice sheet surface temperature went above freezing for four days. (1)The melt line, or the elevation on the 11,000-foot-high ice sheet where the temperature does not rise above freezing in any given year, has steadily been increasing since the 1970s. (2) All of this melt is exposing areas beneath the ice sheet that have not been exposed in a very long time.

Across Baffin Bay to the west of Greenland is Baffin Island. This is the largest of the islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and ranked the fifth largest in the world; it is almost as big as Texas (Greenland is the largest). Baffin Island has its own ice cap as well as satellite ice caps to the main body of ice. It is these satellite ice caps that attracted the attention of researchers.

Collecting samples, Baffin Island, Professor Gifford H. Miller, University of Colorado, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR)

Led by the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, these researchers found dead plants and mosses still rooted in the ground immediately adjacent to the melting ice. The plants were dated with carbon-14 dating techniques to a time period 44,000 years ago that was in the depths of the last 100,000-year-long ice age. (3) At that time, the ice was growing and temperatures in the Arctic were 25 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the warmest time of our current interglacial era – the time between ice ages. The average temperature across the globe was 9 to 14 degrees colder than today. (4)

To find temperatures similar to today’s, we would have to go back nearly 120,000 years ago to the previous warmup between glacial periods, so it is virtually certain from these findings that the plants that these researchers found have not seen daylight in over 100,000 years. One of the amazing things this work reports is that some of the mosses at the 145 sites surveyed began to regrow once the ice melted away. (5)

Since the global thermal maximum temperature that occurred after the end of the last ice age about 5,000 years ago, Baffin Island cooled nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but since the 1960s, this area has warmed nearly 7 degrees Fahrenheit, and the snow line has increased in altitude over 2,700 feet (half a mile). (6) This research definitively puts to rest the talking point that Greenland was warmer than today at any time in the past 100,000 years. The warming has also taken place entirely in the last 50 years, and during this entire 5,000-year-long period the natural cycles have been cooling, not warming.

The Dust Feedback

As the ice sheet melts around its edges, dust captured in eons of snow becomes exposed. Most of this dust does not get washed away by melt, (please click the link below to read this article on Truthout- http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29462-greenland-reels-climate-disrupting-feedbacks-have-begun)

Mysterious Martian ‘plumes’ baffle scientists – CSMonitor.com

Mysterious Martian ‘plumes’ baffle scientists

Spotted by amateur astronomers, the huge plumes erupting from the surface of Mars have left scientists bewildered.

By Calla Cofield, SPACE.com / February 17, 2015

Scientists are puzzled by a mysterious plume that erupted off the surface of Mars in 2012. On the right, the location of the plume is identified in the yellow circle. On the left, close-up views of the changing plume morphology in images taken by W. Jaeschke and D. Parker on March 21, 2012. The background is a region on Mars known as Terra Cimmeria, where the plume formed. (Image source NOAA).

Grupo Ciencias Planetarias (GCP) – UPV/EHU

A mystery is brewing onMars: Amateur astronomers spotted enormous plumes erupting off the Red Planet’s surface, leaving scientists puzzled.

More than 155 miles (250 kilometers) high and hundreds of miles across, the baffling plumes were spotted by amateur astronomers in the spring of 2012. The plumes reflect sunlight, which means they could be made of water ice, carbon dioxide ice or dust. But clouds made of those materials would be hard to explain with current models of the Martian atmosphere, scientists say.

Images of Mars from the last 20 years reveal that shorter plumes, reaching heights of about 62 miles (100 km), occasionally flare up from the planet’s surface. An image by the Hubble Space Telescope from 1997 revealed another abnormally high plume, similar to the one seen in 2012, according to a statement from theEuropean Space Agency (ESA). [7 Biggest Mysteries On Mars]

Scientists at the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spainstudied the images of the plumes and confirmed that they reach heights of more than 155 miles (250 km) above the surface, and cover an area of up to 310 by 620 miles (500 by 1,000 km).

“At about 250 km, the division between the atmosphere and outer space is very thin, so the reported plumes are extremely unexpected,” says Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the Universidad del País Vasco, lead author of the new research.

The features developed in less than 10 hours and remained visible for about 10 days, but changed their structure from day to day, ESA officials wrote in a statement. None of the spacecraft orbiting Mars were in a position to see the plumes, due to their locations around the planet and light conditions at the time.

Analysis of the images from 2012 and of past images of plumes erupting from the surface of Mars haven’t helped the researchers determine what caused the plumes or what they are made of.

(Please click the link below to read full article on Christian Science Monitor-

http://m.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0217/Mysterious-Martian-plumes-baffle-scientists?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Science_final&utm_campaign=04_Newsletter%3AScience_Sailthru&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3AScience%2520Weekly%2520%2802%2F19%2F2015%29 )

Imbolc 2015: Facts, Dates, Traditions And Rituals To Know

Years ago this was always the most neglected of pagan holidays-at least it appeared that way to me in the local community. It’s nice to see an article like this in a general interest publication like HuffPo. I’m a bit isolated from actual interaction with humans so I may be missing a lot, but it seems like society is becoming more open and accepting of difference.

I love seeing all the interfaith initiatives, and so many people speaking out in respect of traditions other than their own. Tolerance, like compromise, is one of the fundamental necessities of a functional society.

Even though the evidence of ending and collapse is all around us now, Imbolc’s meaning is more relevant this year than ever before in my lifetime. The seeds of the new world are sprouting everywhere.

From the community coming together effectively to stop the ebola outbreak in Liberia, to the new Women’s mosque opening in California, to the incredible rise of activism and awareness in the children and youth today; the signs are everywhere.

Have a Blessed Imbolc and a beautiful Spring ( Autumn for those on the Southern side-I’ve always wondered, are the cross quarter holidays celebrated differently in the South? As in, since this holiday is in summer there is it celebrated as Lughnasa for the harvest? It has always seemed odd to me trying to celebrate “winter” holidays in the subtropical region. I imagine how much more odd it would be to have Spring celebrations in the end of summer or harvest festivals in Spring!)
Blessings,
ohnwentsya

HuffPost Religion Editors
The Huffington Post Posted: 02/02/15 09:33 AM ET Updated: 02/02/15 09:59 AM ET

For many in the U.S., the only ‘religious’ event this time of year is the Super Bowl. But for many pagans and Wiccans, February 2 marks the important holiday, Imbolc, and their attention may be focused somewhere other than the television screen.

1. Imbolc is one of fourmajor pagan sabbats, or holidays, along with Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. In between these sabbats, pagans celebrate the seasonal solstices and equinoxes.

2. Imbolc ispronounced “IM-bulk” or “EM-bowlk.”

3. Imbolc falls on the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Although it isattributed to the ancient Celts, ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and indigenous groups are also believed to have celebrated an equivalent holiday.

4. Nowadays Imbolc may be related toCandlemas and Groundhog Day, and indeed there is evidence from early Irish lore surroundingweather divination this time of year.

5. Also called Brigid’s Day, Imbolc honors the Celtic goddess of fire, fertility, midwifery and the young. Many Pagans will pay tribute to Brigid by arranging an altar and ‘invoking’ the goddess through prayer.

6. The term ‘Imbolc’derives from Old Irishand means “in the belly,” or alternately “ewe’s milk.” The interpretation lends significance to the holiday as a celebration of fertility, reproduction and the young — all overseen by the goddess Brigid.

7. Imbolc observes thewaning of winter and approach of spring. Pagans often use fire and other forms of light to encourage the lengthening of day. Seed and bud imagery may be used, as well, to promote the growth of new life ensured by springtime.

8. As with many pagan holidays, food and music are essential. Dishes for Imbolc tend to incorporate seeds, dairy and other spring-evoking foods.

9. Celebrants oftenprepare talismans to use during Imbolc ceremonies and then keep in their homes. These include a Brideog — a small straw doll dressed in white cloth — and a Brigid’s Cross, also often woven from straw.

10. Imbolc is a time forspring cleaning. Some clean their homes, take ritual baths and de-clutter their lives in other ways. This is believed to create space for the goddess to come into people’s live and for new seeds to take root in the coming spring.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6594060

MORE Disclosure News USA-NASA Cuts Live ISS Video Feed As UFO Appears (Real Footage) | Collective-Evolution

This article contains multiple videos so I am posting the intro only. Please click the link below to see the full article with all videos. Blessings,
ohnwentsya

NASA Cuts Live ISS Video Feed As UFO Appears (Real Footage)
January 23, 2015 by Arjun NASA was recently accused of cutting their live feed from the International Space Station (ISS) just as an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) was spotted hovering in sight.
The event took place on January 15th and is causing quite a stir. As you can see, it’s a small grey object slowly rising and then disappearing as NASA cut the feed. I am not saying this is an extraterrestrial space craft, but it’s unidentified.

That being said, I have provided some officially documented UFO footage from NASA in a video below this one, as well as more, vital information regarding the UFO phenomenon.

The video seems to be going viral, and sparking much controversy as many mainstream media outlets are claiming that the accusers are ‘conspiracy theorists.’ Anytime the subject of UFOs is placed within the realm of conspiracy theory, it does harm to a very serious issue that has had the attention of governments, military/intelligence agencies and many others for a very long time -not to mention several NASA astronauts.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/01/23/nasa-cuts-live-iss-video-feed-as-ufo-appears-real-footage/

The day the Klan messed with the wrong people

This is my favourite story EVER from Daily Kos Community. This took place where I grew up; just about twenty years before my personal experience with the local Klan group.

I can’t stop laughing because when my family told them their sheets made great targets in the dark-we had No idea that they already had experience with that!;-)

This also shows why “armed liberals” isn’t necessarily an oxymoron. I personally believe in, promote and work toward a nonviolent society in all ways. But I also know from first-hand experience that while we live in a violence based society sometimes it can be very handy to show the bullies what time it is-notice how these folks used guns in nonviolent ways to deter violence.
Blessings,
ohnwentsya

Ps- I must add a caveat to a detail in this story that the KKK ceased to exist PUBLICLY until 1984 because they were definitely active in the county next to Robeson in the 1970’s, though not with big public rallies etc. They operated “underground” through threats and intimidation if individuals and families.

By gjohnsit on Daily Kos Community

“You saw those cars coming, and you knew who those men were. They wanted you to see them. They wanted you to be afraid of them.”
– Lillie McKoy, former mayor of Maxton talking about the KKK

By the mid-1950’s the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum and the KKK decided they had to fight back. Their campaign of terrorism swept through many of the southern states, but largely fell flat in North Carolina.
James W. “Catfish” Cole, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, decided he was going to change that. Cole was an ordained minister of the Wayside Baptist Church in Summerfield, North Carolina, who regularly preached the Word of God on the radio. His rallies often drew as many as 15,000 people. As Cole told the newspapers: “There’s about 30,000 half-breeds up in Robeson County and we are going to have some cross burnings and scare them up.”

Cole made a critical mistake that couldn’t be avoided by a racist mind – he was completely ignorant of the people he was about to mess with.

Dr. Perry was a black doctor in Monroe, NC, and helped finance a local chapter of the NAACP. One night at a meeting, the word was received that the Klan threatened to blow up Dr. Perry’s house. The meeting broke up and everyone went home to get their guns.

Sipping coffee in Perry’s garage with shotguns across their laps, the men agreed that defending their families was too important to do in haphazard fashion. “We started to really getting organized and setting up, digging foxholes and started getting up ammunition and training guys,” Williams recalled. “In fact, we had started building our own rifle range, and we got our own M-1’s and got our own Mausers and German semi-automatic rifles, and steel helmets. We had everything.”

Many of these men were veterans of WWII and didn’t scare easily. Men guarded the house in rotating shifts and the women of the NAACP set up a telephone warning system.
On October 5, 1957, Catfish Cole organized a huge Klan rally near Monroe. Afterward the decision was made to move on Dr. Perry’s home.

a large, heavily armed Klan motorcade roared out to Dr. Perry’s place, firing their guns at the house and howling at the top of their lungs. The hooded terrorists met a hail of disciplined gunfire from Robert Williams and his men, who fired their weapons from behind sandbag fortifications and earthen entrenchments. Shooting low, they quickly turned the Klan raid into a complete rout. “[Police Chief] Mauney wouldn’t stop them,” B. J. Winfield said later, “and he knew they were coming, because he was in the Klan. When we started firing, they run. We run them out and they started just crying and going on.”

Amazingly no one was killed, but a number of cars were disabled. The following day the Monroe city council held an emergency meeting and passed an ordinance against Klan motorcades.

This setback was a huge embarrassment to Cole and his racist movement. He needed a weaker opponent to abuse and he needed it quick. Cole’s target was a small indian tribe that was marginalized even in the indian community – theLumbee.

The Lumbee had been fighting for official recognition since shortly after the Civil War. Through recorded history they were normally classified as “mulatto” and “free persons of color”. They had always considered themselves indian, but were classified and treated as descendants of blacks. Their eyes and skin were lighter than most indians.
The State of North Carolina recognized them in 1885, but the federal government refused to recognize them as a distinct indian tribe until 1956. The Lumbee Act, which recognized their existence, specifically prohibited the tribe from receiving federal services normally provided to tribes by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Lumbees were living alone in the margins.

On January 13, 1958, the Klan burnt a cross on the lawn of a Lumbee woman because she was living with a white man. The next day it was the lawn of a Lumbee family that had moved into a white community. As the days passed more crosses were burnt while Cole traveled around the area holding rallies and preaching against the evils of “mongrelization” and the loose morals of Lumbee women.
Pleased with the growing hatred he was feeding, he called for a massive Klan rally of 5,000 members on January 18, 1958, at Hayes Pond. The purpose was to remind indians of “their place in the racial order”.

“He said that, did he?” asked Simeon Oxendine, who had flown more than thirty missions against the Germans in World War II and now headed the Lumbee chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “Well, we’ll just wait and see.”

“They didn’t differentiate between the Indian and black population. They figured to have their usual show and go home.”
– Stan Knick, director of the UNC-Pembroke Native American Resource Center

In the days leading up to the Hayes Pond rally, Cole had come through town with a loudspeaker on his flat-bed truck, preaching his vile hate for everyone to hear.
Cole wasn’t actually from the county and neither were many of his followers. So it was probably a surprise to Cole when Robeson County sheriff Malcolm McLeod visited Cole in his South Carolina home and “told him that his life would be in danger if he came to Maxton and made the same speech he’d been making.” Cole’s reply: “It sounds like you don’t know how to handle your people. We’re going to come show you.”

The Battle of Hayes Pond

The Fayetteville Observer had gotten word that the Lumbee were planning onattending this rally even if they weren’t invited.

Reese reported that Lumbee leaders, including Neill Lowery and Sanford Locklear, had decided to run the Klan out of the county. Willie Lowery’s barbershop in Pembroke become the Lumbee planning room for the upcoming battle. From there the call went out for volunteers and according to Reese, more than 1,000 Lumbees answered the call.

Another leader was Simeon Oxendine, who had been a waistgunner on a B-17 during WWII. He wasn’t someone you wanted to match up against.

Cole’s big rally was a flop before it even started. The local Klan members sensing the mood of the community stayed away. Instead, only 50 of his most hard-core supporters showed up to hear Cole preach against the evils of mixed marriage on the public address system he had set up on his truck. As the sun was setting they rigged up a floodlight and prepared a tall, wooden cross to burn later.
The sound of a reel-to-reel tape of “Kneel at the cross” poured into the meadow. They wore white hooded robes and carried rifles. The Lumbee, they assumed, were cowering in their homes that night.

“They were talking about blacks, using the ‘n’ word a lot, calling us ‘half-n’s’,” Littleturtle said. “I think their intention was to intimidate us.”

Instead of cowering, the Lumbees had assembled about a mile away. Small groups of armed Lumbee indians, about 500 in total, fanned out across the highway and began to encircle the Klansmen.
As the song finished and the rally was to begin, Sanford Locklear walked up to Cole and began arguing with him. Words became shoves and tempers rose. Neill Lowery had seen enough. He leveled his shotgun at his hip and blasted out the floodlight. The field went dark.

The Lumbees began firing into the air and yelling their warhoops as they charged the field. The nerve of the Klansmen broke and they fell into complete panic.
The Klansmen dropped their guns and scrambled for their cars. Some had brought their wives and children with them, who wailed in fear as dark-faced Lumbee milled around their cars and pointed flashlights at them.

James Cole, the Grand Dragon himself, was in such a panic that he ran into a nearby swamp, abandoning his wife and “white womanhood” in the process. Cole’s wife, Carolyn, also in a panic, drove her car into a ditch. After a few minutes several Lumbee helped push her car back onto the road.

“The only thing they left behind was their stuff and their families.”
– Littleturtle

The state patrol, led by Sheriff McLeod, had set up camp about a mile away. McLeod intentionally waited until the shooting started because he didn’t want to be accused of defending the Klan by showing up early. He organized his men to search the bushes for Klansmen who were hiding, and then escorted them out of the county.
Afterward the police tossed a couple tear-gas grenades into the field to disperse the crowd. The battle was over.

Four people suffered minor injuries from falling shotgun pellets. One Klansman was arrested for public drunkenness.
One Klansman cursed a Lumbee who was blocking the road. The Lumbee punched him through the open car window.

To the victors go the spoils

The victorious Lumbee had collected the robes and banners that the Klansmen had left behind. They then held their own “Klan parade” through the town of Maxton. Some rode in cars, other marched. The parade ended with a bonfire of Klan material in Pembroke. Catfish Cole was hung in effigy.
The large, captured Klan banner was taken back to the VFW convention in Charlotte, where Lumbee posed in front of it for pictures.

Charlie Warriax and Simeon Oxendine

Newspapers praised the Lumbee and mocked the Klan. James Catfish Cole was prosecuted, convicted, and served a two-year sentence for inciting a riot.
The Klan ceased to exist in Robeson County until 1984.

[Update:] I’ve found two somewhat related stories worth mentioning. One involved a Klan rally in Massachusetts three decades earlier.

in 1924, the largest gathering of the Ku Klux Klan ever held in New England took place at the Agricultural Fairgrounds in Worcester. Klansmen in sheets and hoods, new Knights awaiting a mass induction ceremony, and supporters swelled the crowd to 15,000. The KKK had hired more than 400 “husky guards,” but when the rally ended around midnight, a riot broke out. Klansmen’s cars were stoned, burned, and windows smashed. KKK members were pulled from their cars and beaten. Klansmen called for police protection, but the situation raged out of control for most of the night. The violence after the “Klanvocation” had the desired effect. Membership fell off, and no further public Klan meetings were held in Worcester.

I’ve done some searches but failed to find more information about this event.

Something else that might interest people, did you know that Superman fought against the Klan?

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2010/01/17/826081/-The-day-the-Klan-messed-with-the-wrong-people?detail=email

**Disclosure News USA** Air Force puts declassified UFO reports online. Is the truth out there? – CSMonitor.com

UFO buffs and everyone waiting/watching the “Disclosure” process; note the tone change in this article compared to many previous U.S. government statements and U.S. news reports on this topic. One sentence frankly admits the sightings were of technology beyond our level of knowledge.

I have long been skeptical of any possibility of official “Disclosure”, but I see in this and other articles in recent years a slow incremental movement away from the constant denial and cover-up of anything that disagrees with the official stance.

I don’t know what the full facts are. I’m definitely not a UFO hobbyist or researcher and I don’t have any personal theory or”axe to grind”. I have just heard from so many friends who are passionate about this issue (with so much evidence to present) that I can no longer justify blind faith in those who assure us that everything in the world is both knowable and known.

Blessings,
ohnwentsya

SCIENCE

Air Force puts declassified UFO reports online. Is the truth out there?

The Air Force has released a stockpile of documents pertaining to decades of military investigations on objects that were spotted over American skies throughout the years.

By Alexander LaCasse, Staff Writer JANUARY 20, 2015

• FBI/AP
  View Caption

Thanks to the Air Force, more than 130,000 documents describing military investigations of UFO activity over American airspace are now online.

“Project Blue Book” and “Project Grudge” were the official names of the investigations military officials headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio conducted between 1947 and 1969. The projects were discontinued after a joint review determined that no intelligence was being produced from the studies. The report specifically stated that no UFO “reported, investigated and evaluated,” ever posed, “any indication of threat to our national security,” CNN notes. The investigations suggest that the sightings “represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge,” the network also reported.

The disclosure comes after years of federal Freedom of Information Act requests filed by UFO researcher John Greenewald. The FBI will be making the files available on their website containing case files in PDF form from some of the FBI’s most notorious cases, from Bonnie and Clyde to Jimmy Hoffa. According to the same CNN report the case file, the initial field report following an alleged UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 has garnered over two million page views so far.

Recommended: Are you a space whiz? Take our quiz!

Among some of the UFO cases the Project Blue Book Collection touches on are the “Exeter Incident,” “the Kenneth Arnold sighting,” from 1947 and “the Mantell crash,” from 1948.

Here are some of the most high-profile UFO mysteries:

Roswell,1947

During the first week of July in 1947, something is said to have crashed in the New Mexico desert, Northeast of the town of Roswell. Upon learning of the crash site Maj. Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group, who was stationed at Roswell Army Air Field, went to inspect the area. He allegedly found an aluminum foil-thin metal that was indestructible in the debris field, which he claimed composed the outer body of the object. Marcel also claimed that pieces of metal at the site had a strange purple writing on them.

At 11am on July 8, 1947 a public information officer for the base put out a press release stating that wreckage of crashed disk had been recovered. By the end of the day higher-ups in the Air Force made the base commanders release a second press release that asserted the material in the debris field came from a downed weather balloon.

The Exeter Incident, 1965

A man named Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking to his Exeter, N.H. home on a September night when out of no-where, a beam of light that was described as ninety feet in diameter began floating and wobbling towards him. Another panic-stricken woman who was driving from Exeter to Epping, called the police after a similar object had followed her for some 12 miles. The officer on duty did not think much of the woman’s call but after Muscarello was picked up by a couple and driven to the police station, the officer wanted to know more.

The officer had Muscarello take him to the spot where he saw the light. Muscarello had originally run to the nearest house to get help and went back to the same residence with the officer. After the owner’s horses and dogs began to stir, the beam of light rose above the trees. The police officer had been in the military and failed to recognize what kind of aircraft this was.

After the experience the police officer wrote to the Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, but investigators said they could not determine what caused the beam of light.

Kecksburg, Penn, 1965

In a small town 40 miles North of Pittsburgh, residents saw a fiery object crash into the town’s woods. Not too long after the object was reported, police and military personnel were on the scene and barricaded off the woods and turned away anyone who tried to get close. Hours later a military flat-bed truck with a large object covered by a tarp was seen leaving the woods, and the authorities never elaborated on what the object was.

A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against NASA to turn over its Kecksburg investigations ended in 2009, according to SPACE.com. As a result, the government did not force NASA to hand over any documents that would explain what became of the object removed from the Pennsylvania woods.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0120/Air-Force-puts-declassified-UFO-reports-online.-Is-the-truth-out-there?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily&utm_campaign=20150121_Newsletter%3ADaily_Sailthru&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3ADaily%2520Newsletter%2520%2801-21-2015%29

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What They’re Not Telling You About Monsanto’s Role in Ukraine | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

What They’re Not Telling You About Monsanto’s Role in UkraineSkip to main conte

Will this be a takeover of Ukraine’s farmland?

by
Christina Sarich

There are many facets to the conflict in Ukraine that have been overlooked by most media outlets. The role of western biotech firms is just one of them. (Image: via Natural Society)

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) is helping biotech run the latest war in Ukraine. Make no mistake that what is happening in the Ukraine now is deeply tied to the interests of Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and other big players in the poison food game.

Monsanto has an office in Ukraine. While this does not shout ‘culpability’ from every corner, it is no different than the US military’s habit to place bases in places that they want to gain political control. The opening of this office coincided with land grabs with loans from the IMF and World Bank to one of the world’s most hated corporations – all in support of their biotech takeover.

Previously, there was a ban on private sector land ownership in the country – but it was lifted ‘just in time’ for Monsanto to have its way with the Ukraine.

In fact, a bit of political maneuvering by the IMF gave the Ukraine a $17 billion loan – but only if they would open up to biotech farming and the selling of Monsanto’s poison crops and chemicals – destroying a farmland that is one of the most pristine in all of Europe. Farm equipment dealer, Deere, along with seed producers Dupont and Monsanto, will have a heyday.

In the guise of ‘aid,’ a claim has been made on Ukraine’s vast agricultural riches. It is the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat. Ukraine has deep, rich, black soil that can grow almost anything, and its ability to produce high volumes of GM grain is what made biotech come rushing to take it over.

As reported by The Ecologist, according to the Oakland Institute:

“Whereas Ukraine does not allow the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, Article 404 of the EU agreement, which relates to agriculture, includes a clause that has generally gone unnoticed: it indicates, among other things, that both parties will cooperate to extend the use of biotechnologies.

There is no doubt that this provision meets the expectations of the agribusiness industry. As observed by Michael Cox, research director at the investment bank Piper Jaffray, ‘Ukraine and, to a wider extent, Eastern Europe, are among the most promising growth markets for farm-equipment giant Deere, as well as seed producers Monsanto and DuPont’.”

The nation WAS Europe’s breadbasket – and now in an act of bio-warfare, it will become the wasteland that many US farmlands have become due to copious amounts of herbicide spraying, the depletion of soil, and the overall disruption of a perfect ecosystem.

The aim of US government entities is to support the takeover of Ukraine for biotech interests (among other strategies involving the prop-up of a failing cabalistic banking system that Russia has also refused with its new alignment with BRICS and its own payment system called SWIFT). This is similar to biotech’s desiredtakeover of Hawaiian islands and land in Africa.

The Ukraine war has many angles that haven’t been exposed to the general public – and you can bet that biotech has their hands in the proverbial corn pie.

© 2015 Natural Society

Christina Sarich is a contributing writer for the Natural Society.

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