Man Fired After Facebook Comment About Killing Police Goes Viral

Aaron Hodges 

Little did Aaron Hodges (pictured) ever fathom that two days after he passionately responded to a Facebook thread about the bully tactics utilized by many in law enforcement across the country, he would lose his job at a Portland, Ore. Nordstrom department store, according to KCTV 5 News.

Hodges joined a Facebook discussion about police excessive force and posted the following:

“Instead of slamming the police … every time an unarmed black man is killed, you kill a decorated white officer, on his door step in front of his family.”

Hodges claims he felt impassioned and did not mean for folks to take his comment literally.  He only wanted for people to see that all lives are worthy of respect telling KCTV 5 News, “So, if (an officer) was shot in his doorstep, they’re going to have 21-gun salutes and vigils and black strips across the badge. What is Eric Garner getting?”

Hodges was referring to Garner, of Staten Island, New York, who was killed by police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who used a deadly chokehold on him for a seemingly innocuous offense (selling untaxed cigarettes). Pantaleo was allowed to walk away unscathed, as no charges were brought against him, and Pantaleo’s non-indictment amplified a series of cross-country protests against strong-arm police tactics.

Exactly how Hodges’ Facebook comment went viral is still unclear but his profile did state he worked at a Nordstrom’s.  Customers of the retail giant began complaining on their Facebook and Twitter pages about the Hodges incendiary  statement.  Many of the comments painted a picture of a man who is a rabble-rouser. To this Hodges says, “The people who are out there on the internet, they have never interacted with me so it comes off as so abrasive that they’re like, ‘Wow, this guy must be some super radical.'”

Nordstrom’s powers-that-be decided to give Hodges the pink slip in response to the countless complaints they received from their irate clientele. They released the following statement:

“We want to be very clear that what this person chose to post from his personal account does not in any way reflect Nordstrom’s view – we do not tolerate violence, violent conversations or threats of any kind.”

Hodges told the news outlet he does understand the company’s position and accepts full responsibility for his actions.  “I have the utmost respect for Nordstrom as a company,” he said.

ECCLESIASTICUS 25:

1 In three things I was beautified, and stood up beautiful both before God and men: the unity of brethren, the love of neighbours, a man and a wife that agree together.

LEVITICUS 19:

18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Reaction In Little Havana: Deal is 'ultimate bailout'

MIAMI -- Cuban Americans reacted with mixed emotions to President Obama's announcement today that the U.S. was normalizing relations with Cuba after severing ties more than 50 years ago.

In the Little Havana neighborhood -- the unofficial political heart of this city, where more than half the population, 54%, is of Cuban descent -- hardliners protested with signs decrying Obama's move and chanting, "Traitor, traitor."

Carlos Munoz, a retired veterinarian who left Cuba in 1970, was among a group outside the well-known Cuban restaurant Versailles that was heated in opposition and disappointed by the historic move. Munoz said he felt betrayed by Obama's actions.

"We've been in the fight for Cuban independence for over 50 years, and we just got back-stabbed," said Munoz, 78.

Some Cuban Americans took solace in knowing that Alan Gross, an American arrested in Cuba in 2009 on espionage charges and released Wednesday on humanitarian grounds as part of the negotiations between the two countries, would soon be reunited with his family. Part of the agreement calls for the U.S. to release three Cubans imprisoned for spying.

"I'm happy they released that poor man who was going to die in that prison," said Miguel Saavedra, a mechanic who fled Cuba in 1965. "But this wasn't the way to do it."

Osvaldo Hernandez, a 50-year-old orthopedic technician who left Cuba on a raft with 13 others in 1995, wondered why the president didn't use the military to recover Gross.

"Why didn't they send in the SEALS, like they've done in so many other countries?" he asked.

Saavedra and Hernandez are members of a group called Vigilia Mambisa, a collection of exiled Cubans who want to maintain the economic embargo against the Communist island and advocate stronger sanctions to remove the Castro regime.

On Wednesday, they said Obama basically handed Cuban President Raul Castro everything he ever wanted in exchange for no institutional changes in Cuba.

"Obama is on his knees in front of a terrorist regime," he said. "It's sad."

Cuban Americans who support the easing of sanctions against Cuba praised Obama's move.

"Today, the President has taken major strides to update our Cuba policy so that it better meets the challenges of the 21st century," Ric Herrero, executive director of #CubaNow, a group that supports normalizing relations with Cuba, said in a written statement. "The changes ... will make it easier to support the Cuban people as they take ownership of their destiny and craft a more democratic and independent future for themselves.

He singled out Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida for their opposition to opening relations with Cuba on the basis of not engaging with repressive regimes, pointing out that Rubio's staff and Menendez have traveled and met with officials in China, which also has been criticized for human rights abuses.

Herrero said the changes Obama announced, such as easing the travel ban to Cuba and allowing financial transactions between the two countries, will allow Americans to help support Cuban entrepreneurs and businesses.

The push for human rights in Cuba will happen as more Cubans are exposed to more people and ideas, he said.

"The Cuban people will be better equipped and supported in their desire to exercise their human rights, develop civil society institutions and hold their own government accountable," Herrero said.

In Naples, Fla., Cuban-born Adriana Infanzon, 65, hopes the move toward normalization "opens up the possibility for investments and a better life for the Cubans."

Infanzon, a Catholic Charities caseworker, sees Cuban immigrants daily. Looking back at their lives on the island, "Most don't complain about their (human) rights," Infanzon said. "They talk about having nothing to look forward to."

Palm Bay, Fla., Mayor William Capote, who came to the United States at age 8 with his parents aboard a "Freedom Flight" to Miami in 1970, is optimistic about the new relationship with Cuba. 

"Hopefully, this will work out for the best," Capote said. ""When we talk about democracy, it's the availability that people from other countries come here for: to be able to go to school; to be able to do free enterprise; to start your own business; to have those opportunities that are afforded here in the U.S."

Capote said on his Facebook page Wednesday afternoon: "I support communication and dialogue that would help move my native homeland towards freedom and democracy. I hope we as a nation can embrace change and progress and focus on positive relations that empower the people of Cuba to be free and prosperous." 

Attitudes among Cuban Americans have shifted over the past 15 years. Many younger people and those emigrating from the island recently support normalized relations between the U.S. and Cuba, said Fernand Amandi, managing partner for the polling firm Bendixen and Amandi International. In Miami, he says, Cubans tend to be more hardline against Cuba than other Cubans across the country.

For decades, he said, feelings in the Cuban American community were more monolithic as almost everyone supported the economic embargo and other sanctions.

"There's been a recalibration" in the Cuban American community, Amandi said, particularly among people under 45, whose lives were not upended as their parents' and grandparents' lives were when they fled Cuba after Fidel Castro took over in 1959.

For anyone under 45, today's announcement is the "most momentous" regarding relations between the two countries, he says.

Not all older Cubans opposed Obama's moves.

Antonio Garcia-Crews spent six years as a political prisoner in Cuba before fleeing for the United States in 1979. The immigration attorney in Altamonte Springs, Fla., far from the exile hotbed of Miami, said he came out of that prison realizing that the U.S. stance on Cuba was contributing to Castro's grip on the island.

"I realized that the Cuban government hid behind the embargo to maintain the repression against the Cuban people," said Garcia-Crews, 75. "The road we've been taking doesn't go anywhere. We have to find a new road, and this is the first step on that road, on the road to democracy. Because now, it removes the argument from the Cuban government that it's the victim."

Cuban-American politicians mostly fell in the hardliner camp, panning Obama for working with Raúl Castro, who they say heads an oppressive regime, while expressing relief that Gross was freed.

Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants who left the island for New York City in 1953, said in a written statement, "President Obama's actions have vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government."

He said Gross's release is a profound relief for his family but that he should have been released unconditionally five years ago.

"Let's be clear, this was not a 'humanitarian' act by the Castro regime," he said. "It was a swap of convicted spies for an innocent American."

"Trading Mr. Gross for three convicted criminals sets an extremely dangerous precedent," he said, adding that he worries that Wednesday's actions will put thousands of Americans who work overseas at risk if they are arrested and used by "rogue regimes" as bargaining chips.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said he, too, was "relieved" that Gross was freed, but he echoed the sentiments of many in Miami who said they were repulsed by how it came about.

Diaz-Balart said Obama gave Castro everything he wanted: full diplomatic relations, more access to U.S. money and broader ability to work with American companies. In exchange, Cuba has promised nothing, he said.

"This is the ultimate bailout," he said.

Cuba is reportedly freeing an additional 53 political prisoners as part of the deal, but Diaz-Balart said that was a trick Cuba has pulled several times before. He said thousands of people have been arrested for political purposes this year, so 53 release is a drop in the bucket.

He worried about the signal that he said Obama's move sends to the world.

"This will not only give a green light to Castro to continue to repress the Cuban people, but it is a very dangerous sign to other rogue regimes and terrorist organizations that President Obama will give you whatever you want," he said.

GENESIS 41:

51 And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house.

DEUT. 19:

14 Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.

Al Sharpton Calls For 'Concrete' Action Against Sony Executive For Racist Emails

Al Sharpton

Civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton on Thursday did not call for Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Amy Pascal to step down over racially insensitive emails, despite expectations that he might seek her resignation.

The private emails, leaked through a massive hacking attack on Sony Corp, included joking remarks related to U.S. President Barack Obama and his taste in movies.

Pascal, who has publicly apologized, met with Sharpton Thursday to discuss the emails and perceived racial bias in the film industry. Sharpton's spokeswoman earlier this week had said he was weighing whether to call for Pascal's resignation.

"The jury is still out on where we go with Amy," Sharpton told reporters after the meeting in New York. "We're not going to be satisfied until we see something concrete done."

Pascal did not speak publicly after the meeting.

Sharpton said Pascal agreed to set up a working group to deal with racial bias and lack of diversity in the film industry.

The emails were made public by a hacking group that attacked Sony in retaliation for plans to release "The Interview," a comedy film that depicts the assassination of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

Sony on Wednesday decided not to release the film after several movie chains said they would not show it because of emailed threats of violence aimed at theaters. U.S. government sources said on Wednesday that U.S. investigators had determined that the attack was "state sponsored" and that North Korea was the government involved.

A criminal hack exposed a racist email exchange between Sony co-Chair Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin, and now humiliation tour has begun. Thursday Pascal met with MSNBC’s Al Sharpton. If she was looking for absolution, she didn’t get it. After the 90 minute meeting in Manhattan, Sharpton went before the media and announced that “the jury is still out on where we go.”

The Los Angeles Times suggests there is a silver lining, “Sharpton did not call for Pascal to step down,” but that’s not how Sharpton operates. Now that he has his hooks in a major movie studio, he can abuse that power. The New York Post explains how:

Pascal agreed to let Sharpton have a say in how Sony makes motion pictures, in an effort to combat what he called “inflexible and immovable racial exclusion in Hollywood.”

“We have agreed to having a working group deal with the racial bias and lack of diversity in Hollywood,” said Sharpton.

He said Sony would work closely with his National Action Network, the National Urban League, the NAACP and the Black Women’s Round Table to “see if we can come up with an immediate plan to deal with it.”

The meeting, held behind closed doors at the Greenwich Hotel, also included National Urban League president Marc Morial.

“Our interest is seeing to it that Sony is on the right side of changing Hollywood,” Morial said.

Color of Change, a left-wing civil rights organization has called for Pascal to be fired.

EZEKIEL 13:

2 Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy, and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, Hear ye the word of the LORD;

3 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!

4 O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts.

5 Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the LORD.

MICAH 3:

11 The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.

Sony Execs Were Warned Not to Cast Denzel Washington Because Black Leads Flop Overseas

Denzel Washington

For the last two weeks, Sony has been dealing with the backlash that’s occurred since the emails of high-level executives were hacked and released. From emails calling Kevin Hart a whore to racist comments regarding President Barack Obama’s movie tastes, it’s safe to say that some of these executives are having the worst month ever.

But it’s not over, not by a long shot.

In recently released emails discovered by Radar Online, a Sony executive was on the receiving end of emails from a producer who warned the studio about casting Denzel Washington, stating that Washington should not be cast in films that will be played overseas because he’s black, so they’ll flop.

According to Radar, a producer, whose name was removed from the emails, sent the concerns to Sony Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton. In the emails, the producer suggested that Sony not cast black actors in films with an international market. “No, I am not saying The Equalizer should not have been made or that African-American actors should not have been used (I personally think Denzel is the best actor of his generation),” the producer stated in the email.

“I believe that the international motion-picture audience is racist—in general, pictures with an African-American lead don’t play well overseas,” the producer wrote. “But Sony sometimes seems to disregard that a picture must work well internationally to both maximize returns and reduce risk, especially pics with decent-size budgets.”

Ironically, The Equalizer went on to make $191 million at theaters worldwide, and almost half of the ticket sales were international.

Unlike the previous Sony emails, it’s unknown whether Lynton shared the same sentiments as the unnamed producer. But I’m sure it’ll be only a matter of days before this unnamed producer is actually named.

DEUT. 28:

37 And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.

MARK 4:

22 For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.

Witness who testified before grand jury that she saw Michael Brown charge Officer Darren Wilson is revealed to be 'lying racist bipolar felon'

St. Louis resident Sandra McElroy, 45

A witness who testified before a Missouri grand jury that she saw Michael Brown charge at Ferguson officer Darren Wilson ‘like a football player, head down,’ has been claimed to be a bipolar woman with a track record of lying to the police and making racist remarks.

St. Louis resident Sandra McElroy, 45, told police that she watched the August 9 shooting unfold in front of her as she stood on a nearby sidewalk smoking a cigarette.

She twice appeared before the grand jury giving a version of events that supported Officer Wilson’s statement, before her testimony was eventually discounted after she admitted that it included information she had read online about the shooting.

Prosecutors argued that McElroy had fabricated the entire incident and was not even at the scene the day of the shooting - although she maintained she was.

In grand jury materials McElroy was referred to only as ‘Witness 40’, but her real identify has been revealed by The Smoking Gun after it carried out research into her background which uncovered that she has a history of lying to the police and making racist statements on social media.

According to her grand jury testimony, the divorced mother-of-five was diagnosed as bipolar at 16, but hasn’t taken medication for about 25 years.

McElroy’s legal history shows that along with a variety of civil lawsuits she was arrested in 2007 on two felony bad check charges for which she received a suspended sentence.

The Brown shooting wasn’t the first high-profile Missouri criminal case that McElroy had claimed involvement with. 

In 2007 she had approached the cops claiming to have important information after the case of a boy who had been rescued after four years in captivity – however her claims were dismissed as a ‘complete fabrication’ by the police, according to The Smoking Gun.

On social media platforms such as YouTube, the website claims McElroy was found to have a history of posting racist comments.

On her YouTube page - shared with one of her daughters - she had posted a racial charged comment next to a clip about the disappearance of a white woman who had a baby with a black man.

‘See what happens when you bed down with a monkey have ape babies and party with them,’ she commented. 

On another clip about the sentencing of two black women for murder, she had written, 'put them monkeys in a cage.'

McElroy also used social media to comment on the Brown shooting and on September 13, she had visited a pro-Wilson Facebook page and posted a graphic that included a photo of Brown lying dead in the street.

‘Michael Brown already received justice. So please, stop asking for it,’ read the text beside the image.

It was just two days before that post – and some four weeks after the Brown shooting – that McElroy first approached the police with her claims that she had been witness to it.

On October 22, she went to the FBI field office in St. Louis and was interviewed by an agent and two Department of Justice prosecutors.

The day before her meeting, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had published a lengthy report detailing what Wilson told police investigators about the shooting.

The next day McElroy provided federal investigators with an account that was very similar to Officer Wilson’s version.

However she also recalled the unarmed teenager giving Wilson a ‘What are you going to do about it look,’ before he then ‘bent down in a football position…and began to charge at the officer.’

Brown, she said, ‘looked like he was on something.’ As Brown rushed Wilson, McElroy said, that the cop began firing.

The ‘grunting’ teenager, McElroy recalled, was hit with a volley of shots, the last of which drove Brown ‘face first’ into the roadway.

McElroy’s version of events was met with skepticism by the investigators, who reminded her that it was a crime to lie to federal agents.  

'I know what I seen,' she said. 'I know you don’t believe me.'

When asked what she was doing in Ferguson - about 30 miles north of her home - McElroy said she had been planning to ‘pop in’ on a former high school classmate she had not seen in 26 years but had got lost.

Despite concerns about her version of events, state prosecutors put McElroy in front of the Ferguson grand jury and - under oath – she told her story to the 12-member panel.

When McElroy returned to the Ferguson grand jury on November 3 she brought notes she claimed she had written on the same day that the shooting had taken place.

But her testimony soon began to unravel when she changed her reason for being in Ferguson on the day of the shooting.

Under oath, McElroy claimed that the real reason she had visited the primarily black neighborhood was because she wanted to 'strike up a conversation with an African-American.' 

In her note 'written' on the day Brown had died she had declared: 'Well Im gonna take my random drive to Florisant. Need to understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks N****** and Start calling them People.'

As she testified, McElroy also admitted that her sworn account of the shooting included details she had read online about the incident.

She remained adamant however that she had witnessed the events and had seen Brown ‘going after the officer like a football player’ before being shot to death.

After her testimony, prosecutors suggested that McElroy had fabricated the entire incident and was not even at the scene the day of the shooting and her evidence discounted. 

PROVERBS 19:

5 A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.

PROVERBS 6:

19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

Oldest U.S. black college on verge of financial collapse

The nation's oldest black college, Cheyney University

The nation's oldest black college, Cheyney University, one of Pennsylvania's 14 state-run universities, is on the verge of a financial meltdown that threatens its ability to continue operating, a state official said on Wednesday.

Cheyney's student body has shrunk by two-thirds, to about 1,000, since its 1983 peak, and its four-year graduation rate is just 9 percent. A quarter of students never receive a degree, and student loan defaults are high.

"Cheyney is in dire, dire, dire straits," the state's auditor general, Eugene DePasquale, said. The university has had a deficit for four of the last five years, growing to a cumulative $12.3 million shortfall as of June 30, 2013.

Cheyney's fiscal problems - students who are unable to repay debt and increasing pension costs - were exacerbated by cutbacks in state higher education funding. 

DePasquale called upon the State System of Higher Education - the governing body for the state-owned universities - and the legislature to help Cheyney find a way out of "a vicious, destructive cycle" in which declining enrollment and state funding leads to less money for investments that could attract much-needed students.

Cheyney, located in the Philadelphia suburb of the same name, was founded in 1837 after Quaker philanthropist Richard Humphreys bequeathed part of his estate to build a school to educate descendents of the African race, according to the university's website.

Its alumni include journalist Ed Bradley, state and U.S. elected officials, several National Football League players, a U.S. ambassador to South Africa, and Robert Bogle, chief executive of The Philadelphia Tribune.

Cheyney "has done many good things since 1837," interim university president Frank Pogue said in a statement. "We are doing many good things today, and we will do many good things in the coming years." 

The university has begun to shrink its workforce by 23 percent and to cut offices' discretionary spending in half, DePasquale's audit said.

School officials are planning more aggressive recruitment and will try to improve student retention and graduation rates. They hope to present a new policy to be implemented in January.

Across the country, states have cut higher education spending, especially as they struggled to recover from the 2007-2009 recession. 

From fiscal 2003 through 2012, state funding fell by 12 percent while median tuition rose 55 percent across all public colleges, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report published Tuesday.

ISAIAH 30:

1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin:

2 That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!

3 Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.

2 KINGS 18:

21 Now, behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt unto all that trust on him.

Sydney siege: attacks by lone Islamists growing

The Sydney siege could be the latest in a series of attacks carried out around the world this year by lone radical Islamists, some in response to the West’s battle against the Islamic State 

The Sydney siege could be part of a pattern of attacks this year by jihadists responding to a call to arms by the Islamic State, which has urged “lone wolf” attackers to strike back at the West. 

“We have not seen a huge amount of evidence of Isil cells going abroad from Syria and Iraq but we have seen a number of attacks by people claiming links to the group,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a counter-terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute. 

In May, 29-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche, who was under surveillance by the French police after he returned from fighting for Isil in Syria, launched a gun attack at the Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four. 

In August, David Cameron warned that Isil now poses a direct threat, arguing that if the UK does not “it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.” 

He added: “We already know that it has the murderous intent. Indeed, the first Isil-inspired terrorist acts on the continent of Europe have already taken place.” 

In September, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI put out a joint intelligence bulletin that the Islamic State has the capability to mount attacks on US targets overseas with “little to no warning.” 

In October, Martin Couture Rouleau, 25, ran down two Canadian soldiers in Quebec in his car, killing one of them. Couture Rouleau was known to the authorities as someone who had been radicalised and police had seized his passport in July as he tried to fly to Turkey. 

Investigators also said Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who killed a soldier at the Canadian parliament in Ottawa in October, was also “driven by ideological and political motives”. 

Also in October, the New York Police Department said Zale Thompson, who attacked four officers with an axe, injuring two, regularly visited Isil and Al Qaeda websites. 

“We haven’t heard much about this incident [in Sydney],” said Mr Pantucci “He had up a flag and he looked like he had on another flag, so it looks and feels Islamist.” 

He said Islamists had discussed an attack involving hostages since the Mumbai siege in 2008. “Ever since then, we have seen Al Qaeda and other groups talking about it because it was so high profile and attacted a lot of attention,” he said. 

Mr Pantucci said there is a growing trend for “lone acts of terrorism”, saying: “Isil has pushed the idea even further and it seems to be resonating more intensely. 

“It is a lot harder [to catch] because intelligence relies on setting trip wires that people cross when they communicate with each other. If people are not talking to others and they are plotting attacks with stuff they can find in their household, like knives, it is a lot harder to find them.” 

JOB 18:

11 Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.

12 His strength shall be hungerbitten, and destruction shall be ready at his side.

EZEKIEL 35:

6 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.

7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.

Estimated 15,000 people join ‘pinstriped Nazis’ on march in Dresden

An estimated 15,000 people showed up for Monday's rally against the islamification of Germany.

Its members have been dubbed the “pinstriped Nazis” and they refer to their demonstrations as “evening strolls” through German cities. But on Monday night, an estimated 15,000 people joined Pegida, or Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West, in a march through Dresden carrying banners bearing slogans such as “Zero tolerance towards criminal asylum seekers”, “Protect our homeland” and “Stop the Islamisation”.

Lutz Bachmann, the head of Pegida, a nascent anti-foreigner campaign group, led the crowds, either waving or draped in German flags, in barking chants of “Wir sind das Volk”, or “We are the people”, the slogan adopted by protesters in the historic “Monday demonstrations” against the East German government in the runup to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Associating themselves with the freedom demonstrations has given Pegida protests an air of moral respectability even though there are hundreds of rightwing extremists in their midst, as well as established groups of hooligans who are known to the police, according to Germany’s federal office for the protection of the constitution.

“The instigators are unmistakably rightwing extremists,” a federal spokesman said.

It was the ninth week in a row that Pegida had taken its protest on to the city’s streets in the eastern German state of Saxony.

Its first march, advertised on Facebook and other social media, attracted just 200 supporters. By last week the figure had risen to 10,000. By Monday night it had grown to an estimated 15,000.

“Muslims are plotting to infect our food chain with their excrement,” said a man in his 60s, who refused to give his name.

Another, a middle-aged woman in a red leather jacket, said she was shocked that “asylum seekers in Germany have expensive mobile phones, while I cannot afford such luxury and others still cannot afford to eat properly”.

While avoiding blatantly racist slogans, some told the Guardian of their angst over the “demise of the West” due to the rise of Islam or voiced their distaste of salafists and homosexuals in the same breath, or decried the recent decision by local politicians to increase the number of homes for asylum seekers. One group, knocking back bottles of the local beer, talked openly of their fears of what they call “fecal jihad”.

Mario Lupo, a 40-year-old tourist from Milan, was among the onlookers sipping glühwein at Germany’s oldest Christmas market, the Striezelmarkt.

“We came here for the romance and joviality of the Christmas markets,” he said. “We expected some light-hearted carousing appropriate to this time of year, but didn’t expect to stumble upon these rabble-rousers and police in riot gear.”

Among the groups taking part, according to the police, were two soccer hooligan organisations already known to the police called “Faust des Ostens” (Fist of the East) and Hooligans Elbflorenz (Florence of the Elbe Hooligans), as well as members of the National Democratic Party (NPD). Alongside them were old and young men and women, including families with children in pushchairs, many of whom said they had no political affiliation.

At one of two counter-demonstrations taking place elsewhere in the city centre, participants were keen to counteract the negative publicity the city of Dresden – usually better known for its splendid baroque architecture than its politics – has been receiving of late.

Its participants held banners reading “Act against the right” and “Nazis, no thanks”. The leader of the Green party, Cem Özdemir, who took part in the counter-protest, told the Guardian: “Being in a party whose members took part in the 1989 Monday demos, I take great umbrage at the abuse of the slogan used back then, ‘Wir sind das Volk’.

“We need to be permanently vigilant to ensure that Germany stays as open-minded as it had become in recent years and the government needs to ensure that it doesn’t take for granted that the far right will not make ground.”

Pegida’s growing presence has presented politicians with a dilemma over how to uncouple the strong neo-Nazi element believed to form the core of the protests from ordinary Germans with grievances against the government, who make up the bulk of the protesters.

Almost two-thirds of Germans, according to a poll for news magazine Spiegel by the TNS institute, believe that Angela Merkel’s government is not doing enough to address concerns about immigration and asylum seekers, and 34% think Germany is enduring a process of “Islamisation”.

The chancellor had earlier warned that a right to demonstrate did not extend to “rabble-rousing and defamation” against foreigners.

Merkel said that those participating in the protests should “take care not to be exploited” by radical elements trying to tap into fears of a foreigner takeover in Germany.

Led by Bachmann, a 41-year-old butcher’s son who runs a PR agency, Pegida has spawned clones across Germany. Legida is the name of the Leipzig branch, Bogida the Bonn branch, while in Darmstadt it is known as Dagida.

At a recent rally in Dresden, Bachmann’s hometown, he told his followers that while asylum seekers enjoyed luxury accommodation, many impoverished German pensioners were “unable to even afford a single slice of Stollen” (German Christmas cake).

Bachmann, who has a criminal record for burglary, for which he was sentenced to over three years in prison, and a conviction for drug possession, has claimed he is an insignificant part of Pegida.

“I’m just a small cog in a much bigger wheel,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in a rare interview.

But political scientists have said the group’s presentation of itself as a harmless protest movement is what makes it so insidious.

“Something quite new is brewing here,” said Hajo Funke, a researcher into rightwing extremism at the Free University in Berlin. “We haven’t seen rudiments like these of an extreme rightwing inspired mass movement for years”.

Funke said that even the group’s name was incendiary. “It’s nothing short of a veritable call to arms by far-right populists,” he said, suggesting that the message triggered comparisons to Third Reich propaganda.

But across Germany resentment over a sharp rise in the number of refugees seeking political asylum in Germany, many from war-torn countries including Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, has grown in recent months.

Last Friday, a newly refurbished home for asylum seekers in Nuremberg in southern Germany was badly damaged in an suspected xenophobic arson attack. Anti-foreigner slogans and swastikas were found daubed on the walls.

MATTHEW 24:

6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

ISAIAH 13:

14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.

N.C. teen's hanging death ruled a suicide; mother says it was a lynching

Pierre Lacy and Claudia Lacy, brother and mother of Lennon Lacy, 17,

Lennon Lacy

Bladenboro, North Carolina -- Claudia Lacy says she can accept anything: even that her youngest son committed suicide -- if it's proven and explained to her.

However, she says, local and state investigators have done neither to support their theory that Lennon Lacy hanged himself one summer night.

"That's all I've ever asked for: what is due, owed rightfully to me and my family -- justice. Prove to me what happened to my child," Lacy says.

She says she's long lost confidence in the Bladenboro Police Department and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

Now, the FBI is looking into Lacy's death and the local and state investigations that followed.

Without clear answers, the past few months without him have not been easy.

"I look for him and I don't see him. I listen for him and I don't hear him," Lacy says.

The last time Lacy saw and heard her son was August 28. Lennon, 17, played the lineman position for the West Bladen High School Knights, and was focused on football.

His family says that night, he packed a gym bag, washed his ankle brace and hung it on the clothesline to dry before heading out for an evening walk.

The teen had asthma, his mother says, and a doctor had recommended he exercise outdoors at night when the temperature and humidity dropped. Around 10:30, Lennon left his family's small apartment and headed down a dirt road.

His family never saw him alive again.

Just before 7:30 the next morning, he was found hanging from the frame of a swing set in the center of a mobile home community. According to medical documents, his body was covered in fire ants.

Lennon's mother was called to the scene several hours later, after he'd been placed into a body bag.

"It was unreal. It was like a dream. It was like I was not seeing what I was seeing," Lacy says.

Immediately, Lacy believed her son's death was the result of some foul play.

"He didn't do this to himself," Lacy says.

She believes Lennon was lynched.

"He may have either been strangled somewhere else or been placed there or he was hung there while people were around watching him die," Lennon's older brother, Pierre Lacey says.

However, North Carolina's Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Deborah Radisch declared his death a suicide.

When a state investigator asked Lacy if her son had been depressed recently, she told them he had -- because a relative had died recently. The state medical examiner cited that exchange in the autopsy report. Lacy says she did not mean that her son had been suffering from depression.

"When you just lose someone close to you, you're going to be depressed, upset, in mourning," Lacy says.

The family says Lennon had not changed his routine and was focused on college and football -- and distracted by his girlfriend.

The teen had been dating a 31-year-old white neighbor. The age of consent in North Carolina is 16. Some people in their small, southern town did not like that the two were together. Lacy did not like their drastic age difference.

"I was shocked, disappointed. I also, initially told him how I felt - that I did not approve of it," Lacy says.

In the wake of his death, some wondered whether Lennon had been killed because he was in an interracial relationship.

A week after Lennon was buried, a local teenager was arrested for defacing his grave.

"There are too many questions and it very well could be a lynching or a staged lynching. We don't know -- but what we do know is there has to be a serious and full investigation of these matters," says Rev. William Barber, a national board member for the NAACP.

The NAACP hired Florida-based forensic pathologist Christena Roberts to analyze the case and Dr. Radisch's autopsy, completed for the state.

Roberts' first concern: basic physics. Lennon was 5-foot-9. The crossbar of the swing set frame he was found hanging from was 7-foot-6, according to the NAACP review. With no swings or anything at the scene on which he could have climbed, according to the review, it's unclear how Lennon reached the top.

"His size, his stature does not add up to him being capable of constructing all of this alone - in the dark," Lennon's brother says.

According to the 911 recording and the initial police report, a 52-year-old woman got the 207-pound teen down, while she was on the phone with an emergency dispatcher.

"Dr. Radisch also noted that she was not provided with photographs or dimensions of the swing set. Without this information, she would be unable to evaluate the ability to create this scenario," according to the NAACP review.

Lacy says she told investigators that the belts used to fashion the noose did not belong to Lennon.

"I know every piece and every stitch of clothes this child has -- I buy them, I know. Those were not his belts," Lacy says.

The Bladen County Coroner and Medical Examiner Hubert Kinlaw believed the belts might have been dog leashes.

Radisch thought that "some portion must be missing because there was no secondary cut in either belt. The cut would have been necessary to bring down Lennon's body," according to the review.

Also, the shoes Lennon was wearing when his body was found were not his, according to his family.

Lennon's brother says he left home that night wearing size 12 Air Jordan's. However, he was found wearing size 10.5 Nike Air Force shoes. Those shoes were not with Lennon's body when he arrived at the state medical examiner's office, according to the NAACP review.

"He's going to walk a quarter mile from his house in a pair of shoes that's two sizes too small after he takes off his new pair of shoes - and this is a 17-year-old black kid with a brand new pair of Jordan's on. He's going to take those Jordan's off and just get rid of them and put on some shoes that's not his -- we don't know where he got them from, no laces in them -- and continue to walk down this dirt road late at night to a swing set in the middle of the trailer park and hang himself," Lacey says.

"How can I believe that?" Lacey added.

There are also questions about who first declared Lennon's death a suicide.

"Dr. Radisch noted that her determination of (manner of death) in this case as suicide was based on the information she was provided by law enforcement and the local medical examiner. She would have likely called the (manner of death) 'pending' while awaiting toxicology and investigation but the (local medical examiner) had already signed the (manner of death) as suicide," according to the NAACP review.

However, in the summary of the case, written the day Lennon was found, the local medical examiner asked "did he hang self? Will autopsy tell us?" Kinlaw also left the conclusion on the manner of death "pending."

Local police and state investigators declined to speak with CNN. CNN asked to interview Radisch about the statements attributed to her in the NAACP review. Instead, a department spokesperson confirmed the exchanges through a written statement:

"The comments that were released by the NAACP were a synopsis of a professional exchange between the NAACP's independently-retained forensic pathologist and Dr. Radisch," according to a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Lennon's family believes there was a rush to judgment. And until someone clearly explains and proves how her son died, Lacy says she'll keep fighting until she gets answers.

"I take it one day at a time. That's all I can say," Lacy says.

DEUT. 7:

3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.

4 For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.

EZEKIEL 35:

5 Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:

6 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.

Tea Partiers Protest At White House: 'Hang The Lying Kenyan Traitor'

Tea partiers shouted obscene, racist chants on Wednesday while gathered outside of the White House to protest President Obama's executive actions on immigration.

Right Wing Watch reported that among the shouts, captured on video by one of the activists, protestors could be heard calling for the hanging of Obama.

"Hang the lying Kenyan traitor!" one protester could be heard saying in the video.

"Plenty of trees in the front yard," another said. "Wouldn't be the first one hung on one of them trees."

"We've got rope," said another.

"Don't snap his neck, you pull him up watch him choke to death," someone else said.

The rally was meant to show support for a group of sheriffs who were supposed to meet on the Hill later Wednesday in an effort to voice opposition to the immigration actions, according to the Right Wing Watch. The rally was reportedly only attended by about two dozen people, the site reported. 

Ezekiel 35:

5 Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:

Romans 9:

13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

Pharaohs in Harlem: Ancient Egyptian Kemetic religion opening its first temple uptown.

Harlem couple Jabari Osaze and Anika Daniels-Osaze are opening a Kemetic temple

 

The religion of the Pharaohs is now calling Harlem home.

A husband and wife who practice the Kemetic spiritual rituals of ancient Egypt are transforming their W. 131 St. brownstone into a holy site fit for King Tut.

College sweethearts Jabari (Heru Djeden Ma’at Aten-Ra) Osaze and Anika (Nfr-Ka Ma’at) Daniels-Osaze are putting a modern twist on the 5,000-year-old way of life — anchoring their budding movement in the capital of Black America.

The Center for the Restoration of Ma’At, named after the Egyptian goddess for balance, is searching for its first class of 42 “initiates” to join a 14-week summer conversion course where disciples commit to becoming a Kemite.

“We have a lot of issues in our community. Issues of diet, issues of self-esteem. People don’t have anything to look up to,” said Daniels-Osaze, 39, a Cornell University-educated linguist who is a honcho at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and teaches “medu neter,” commonly known as hieroglyphics.

The pair also has a television show, “Kemetic Legacy Today,” on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and host pro-Kemetic tours in Egypt and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egyptian wing.

 “We have to return to what we used to be; we used to be kings and queens,” the priestess said. “It is unfortunate what we have become.”

Ancient Egypt went by many names before the Greeks colonized it during fourth-century B.C., including “Kemet,” an ancient Egyptian phrase for black soil.

The spiritual-minded prayed to the sun god Ra and goddess of wisdom Ast, later called Isis by the Greeks.

Osaze, 42, learned about the bygone practices as an Africana studies major at Cornell, and introduced his future wife to the complex archaic culture.

“The people who need it the most were taken away from Africa, taken away from who they are,” Osaze said. “We aren’t meant to be in the projects. We are meant to be in the pyramids.”

Harlem’s Kemetic followers of 2014 will have to adhere to a predominantly raw vegan diet that allows only sporadic meat and dairy dishes.

“Constipation is real,” warned Daniels-Osaze, extolling the virtues of the purge.

“You have to cleanse the body in order to live in it,” her husband added. “You find that obesity disappears. Anger disappears.”

Traditional Kemetic garb is also mandatory. Practitioners have to dress in specified colors each day of the week, to honor a specific divine energy. People wear blue and white, for example, on Mondays, which is dedicated to Ast.

Osaze estimates there are only “a few thousand” Kemitic practitioners in New York, though there is no official count.

Still, its style is becoming a pop cultural sensation.

Rihanna rocks a sprawling tattoo of Isis under her bosom. The songstress also has an Egyptian falcon — known as the god Heru, or Horous in Greek, on her right angle.

And Kanye West has sported a pricy Horous pendant around his neck.

“It is speaking to them,” Osaze said. “But they don’t have a guide.”

Isaiah 31:

3 Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When the LORD shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall fail together.

Exodus 11:

7 But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast: that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.