Author Archives: Jolie4596sak

The Recent, Hateful History of Attacks on Black Churches

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Churches have long been hubs of organizing and advocacy in the black community, which was one reason they were so often attacked during the civil rights movement. But the violence didn’t end there, obviously. Attacks and threats against black churches and institutions still take place at a greater frequency than you might think. Here is a partial list of church incidents in the past two decades alone:

1996

January 8: Eighteen Molotov cocktails are thrown at Inner City Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. The phrases, “Die N—– Die” and “White is Right” are painted on the church’s back door.

Rep. Larry Hill looks over the remains of Matthews-Murkland Presbyterian Church. Chuck Barton/AP Photo

January 11: Mount Zoar Baptist Church and Little Zion Baptist Church, two black churches within six miles of each other, are burned to the ground on the same night in rural Alabama.

February 8: The Department of Justice launches an investigation into a string of arsons at black churches in rural Tennessee and Alabama.

June 7: Matthews-Murkland Presbyterian Church is set on fire in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1997

March 22: Two men burn down Macedonia Baptist Church in Ferris, Texas. Asked why they did it, according to the US Attorney General’s Office, one of the men responded, “because it was a n—– church.”

June 30: Five white men and women, all between the ages of 18 and 21, burn down St. Joe’s Baptist Church, a small church of 21 worshippers in Little River, Alabama.

2004

January 12: Two white men in Roanoke, Virginia, cause $77,000 worth of damage to the inside of Mount Moriah Baptist Church after breaking into and vandalizing the premises.

2006

July 11: A cross is burned outside a predominantly black church in Richmond, Virginia.

2008

Firefighters work at the scene of a fire at the Macedonia Church of God in Christ. Mark M. Murray/AP Photo

November 4: On the day of President Obama’s first election, three white men set alight Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield, Massachusetts. The church was under construction.

2010

December 28: A white man firebombs Faith in Christ Church in Crane, Texas, in an attempt to “gain status” with the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist gang.

2011

June 23: The FBI investigates a cross burning on the lawn of St. John’s Baptist Church in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.

November 17: Vandals break into Cedar Hill AME Zion Church in Ansonville, North Carolina. They throw chairs through the stained glass windows, burn a cross, defecate on an alter, and dig up the tombstone of a child buried in the church’s historic slave cemetery.

2013

February 25: Vandals break into a day care center housed within a church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; spray paint swastikas on the inside; and set the building alight. One church member said that, several weeks earlier, the church had received a call saying, “We need these n—– to get out of here.”

2014

Members of the destroyed Flood Christian Church hold service in a tent in Country Club Hill, Missouri. J.B Forbes/AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

November 26: Federal officials open an investigation into the arson of Flood Christian Church, the church attended by Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The fire was set the same night the prosecutor in the case announced he would not bring charges against officer Darren Wilson for killing Brown.

July 22: A cross is burned in the parking lot of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee.

2015

Worshippers embrace following a group prayer across the street from the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. David Goldman/AP Photo

June 17: Dylann Roof kills nine people at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

More here – 

The Recent, Hateful History of Attacks on Black Churches

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Recent, Hateful History of Attacks on Black Churches

Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War by Faulty Intelligence. That’s Not What Happened.

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last week, Jeb Bush stepped in it. It took the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate several attempts to answer the most obvious question: Knowing what we know now, would you have launched the Iraq War? Yes, I would have, he initially declared, noting he would not dump on his brother for initiating the unpopular war. “So would almost everyone that was confronted with the intelligence they got,” Bush said. In a subsequent and quickly offered back-pedaling remark—on his way to saying he would have made “different decisions”—Bush emphasized that a main problem with the Bush-Cheney invasion was “mistakes as it related to faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the war.” And as his Republican rivals jumped on Bush, they, too, blamed bad intelligence for causing the war. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), insisting that he would not have favored the war (if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction), commented, “President Bush has said that he regrets that the intelligence was faulty.” And former CEO Carly Fiorina noted, “The intelligence was clearly wrong. And so had we known that the intelligence was wrong, no, I would not have gone in.”

But here’s the truth Jeb Bush and the others are hiding or eliding: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, & Co. were not misled by lousy intelligence; they used lousy intelligence to mislead the public.

Continue Reading »

Read original article:

Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War by Faulty Intelligence. That’s Not What Happened.

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War by Faulty Intelligence. That’s Not What Happened.

Is fracking pollution deforming babies?

Is fracking pollution deforming babies?

Shutterstock

When frackers operate, they produce pollution that’s been linked to birth defects — volatile organic compounds, benzene, nitrogen oxides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, among other nasties.

And now new research has found higher incidences of birth defects in babies born near some fracking areas. 

The Colorado School of Public Health funded research by university and state scientists that looked for any correlations between fracking operations and nearby rates of congenital heart defects, neural tube defects, and oral clefts. The researchers analyzed 124,842 births between 1996 and 2009 in rural Colorado and compared them with locations of known fracking wells.

The results, published late last month by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, suggest that being pregnant near a fracking site is a bad idea.

“[W]e observed an association between density and proximity of natural gas wells within a 10-mile radius of maternal residence and prevalence of CHD [congenital heart defects] and possibly NTD [neural tube defects],” the scientists concluded in their paper.

Mothers who lived near fracking hotspots with the most wells were twice as likely to give birth to a baby with a neural tube defect as were those who lived at least 10 miles from the nearest well. Those same mothers were 30 percent more likely to bear a child with a congenital heart defect. Such birth defects are leading causes of infant mortality.

The research revealed a correlation between fracking operations and birth defects, but stopped short of concluding that the frackers are actually causing the health problems. Still, this aligns with previous findings by other scientists, like research we told you about last month, which found that babies born near fracking sites in Pennsylvania were more likely than others to have a range of health problems.

The NRDC’s Miriam Rotkin-Ellman puts the latest findings into context:

This is the first published peer reviewed study realistically examining whether people living near sites where fracking has occurred are experiencing more health impacts. The fact that it found a statistically significant association is very worrisome, especially in combination with early reports of similar findings from a study in Pennsylvania. Although these types of studies can’t tell us definitively that pollution from oil and gas wells is the cause of the elevated birth defects, the findings of this study are like a flashing light saying something is going on here and we need to take action to make sure our most vulnerable are protected. …

This study confirms that there are serious concerns about health risks of living near fracking sites and that much more research is needed to fully understand the risks and how, and if, they can be mitigated. The findings of this study suggest that the explosion of oil [and] gas development in close proximity to people’s homes and without adequate assessment, monitoring, and pollution controls could be resulting in harm to human health.

That’s fracked up.


Source
Birth Outcomes and Maternal Residential Proximity to Natural Gas Development in Rural Colorado, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
New Study Finds Worrisome Pattern of Birth Defects in Fracking Communities, NRDC Switchboard

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Living

This article is from:

Is fracking pollution deforming babies?

Posted in Anchor, Aroma, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, organic, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is fracking pollution deforming babies?