Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Friday, March 14, 2008
"A FEMALE MANIFESTO" ~ White Female Tells The Truth
A FEMALE MANIFESTO
By June Griffin
To Whom It May Concern:
I, June Griffin, an American woman, am mad at the Blacks. This morning after reading the Scriptures and thinking of all that has happened to our nation in the last 50 years, I reached the firm conclusion that of all the entities which are used by a licentious and alcohol-dealing press, that people calling themselves Blacks are the worse fools and pawns.
You have made yourself a tool of that union organizer Baptist preacher, Michael King alias Martin Luther King, who set an example before you of one who can sin openly, provoke the police by his uncomely behavior, laying in the streets, and when he reacts, use his white ACLU lawyer to sue for his legal fees to be paid out of my taxes. The ACLU take away my right to teach little children the Bible, post the Ten Commandments and every normal practice which we have had since this nation was civilized in 1620.
See Title 42 USC 1988 - proviso in the so-called 'civil rights act.'
You have followed after vile comedians who drew awful mental pictures of those who stood by the Bill of Rights which Almighty God who created you gave to our forefathers. You have called those who stood by the Bill of Rights and their traditional practice of historically showing their State flag - those you have called by the non-word 'racist' and made them feel guilty for doing what is normally and traditionally American.
Your music is awful, for instead of the beautiful hymns which our forefathers taught you in Methodist Sunday Schools, you have turned to the filthy and unclean authors of confusion from New Orleans and called it a good sound.
Your laws are oppressive. The Affirmative Action which has forced and
intimidated good employers into bankruptcy rather than give in to the tyranny has swelled the government bureaucracies to the breaking point, with its attendant MANDATED ECONOMY..
Your labor union organizers, including government employee unions, have
so corrupted the Democratic Party until what good people might be left want to flee in horror. Now you are looking to another union organizer whose middle name is Hussein or to a woman whose licentious husband debauched the holy name of President of the United States, while she did nothing to restrain him, neither denounced his unspeakable behavior.
Your so-called integration is nothing more than a segregated voting block and a combine of collectivists.
Your leaders have brought no salvation by the American standard. Where is the individual among you who would stand up and say: "I hold to the pillars of this Republic. I will stand by the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, so help me, God." And while public schools are now the stronghold of Darwin, Freud and Marx, and white teachers have to hide to say a simple prayer, your schools in black neighborhoods boldly pray when they want to and proclaim whatever they want to, unmolested. Where is the equality in this?
To add to all these transgressions, you have now joined yourselves with
the clarion cry of the Bolshevik: "Minority Rule" which includes the lawless invader, the alien from Mexico who breaks down our immigration walls, helps himself to your socialistic food stamps, hospital care and we are to 'push one for Spanish.'!.
All these things you have liberty to do and we have taken them. You are free to do whatever you please.
Why didn't you listen to the Julia Browns in the 1960's who tried to warn you about your polluted leadership and Bolshevik leaders?
The licentious press is saying that it was women who voted for Hillary Clinton. HOWEVER, do not include me, an American woman, in your push to be a part of the minority-majority. I have given my life that your children may hear the Gospel and be saved from their sins. My work traveling the whole State of Tennessee against the Bolshevik ACLU for our God-given right to post the Ten Commandments cost you nothing. I did not sap off the IRS and their jaded tax-exemptions. The work was done out of pure love for the God of our Fathers and Godly people paid for this out of their own pockets.
I have sought to do business with the Black people and have suffered long with them, often enduring their late payments, accepting their excuses and praying with them to be prospered to pay their mortgage. I have been tolerated in their shops because I wanted them to prosper as private owners. A church of black people welcomed me to their pulpit when I urged them to beware of the sodomite laws which will bring upon them the worst diseases. And going from one black church to another warning them about the evils of voting for lottery.
Furthermore, I have traveled with other godly American women as far away
as Buffalo, New York and Atlanta, Georgia to bring testimony before the Pew Foundation that all of us may enjoy a Social Security rebate of full payment with interest, and make this system voluntary. Did your partial press ever publish one word of this potential windfall and liberty? When I rescinded my so-called 'social security number' in order to give liberty to untold millions who are slaves of this system and to show them the power of God to take care of us in our old age, what was my reward? Title 42 USC 666 took away my right to drive, work, fish or hunt
without giving a social security number, all at the hands of your jaded benefactor, so-called "Health and Human Services."!!!!! And my privately-funded lawsuit in Chancery Court brought down the wrath of the entire Department of Safety on my head. Why, why, I say? Why should good people live in jeopardy of their God-given liberties? You are not exempt from these liberties? Where were you? I have not done these things in a corner.
Enough is enough. If you are going to join another mob to out-vote the traditional majority, don't include me in your Diversity Club of blacks, Hispanics, sodomites, Orientals and whatever collectivists want the groupie coverage. Leave the women out of it and particularly leave me out of it.
I am a woman. An American Christian and a woman. I want to be prospered in my business. I want to run my home and drive my car without your forced safety devices and mandated economy. I refuse to be promoted or favored because God made me a woman. To do so would demean my own abilities and skills and destroy my incentive. I will not be destroyed by your unholy collective. To do so would be to fly in the face of what the Lord gave me, Bible Rights, the Bill of Rights, and liberty unheard of in the history of the world.
What will I do with my anger? I am not going to speak to you except as a
group. There is an old true saying:: the exception proves the rule. If you want to come out from the collective of deluded women and stand for what is good and right, and leave me out of your minority-majority, then we will be friends and fight evil together.
As for the rest of you, I am mad at you and I am going to tell my Heavenly Father on you. I will do as the woman in the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. I will go before Jesus Christ the Righteous Judge and ask Him to avenge me of my adversary. And to sanctify Godly women to the place of honor and holiness which such Christian women deserve. And I will continue to preach and teach Americanism.
Will not the Judge of the Whole Earth do Right?
Labels:
Hate speech,
Illegal Immigrantion,
Media,
Mexicans,
Racism
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Holocaust "Surviver" Admits Story is a Fraud.
A woman's best-selling account of how she lost her parents to the Holocaust and survived by living with wolves in the forests of Europe has been exposed as a fabrication.
"Surviving with Wolves", first published 11 years ago, has been translated into 18 languages and was recently turned into a film.
But in a statement issued by her lawyers, Misha Defonseca, who was born Monique De Wael, confessed that while her parents, members of Belgium's resistance, were killed by the Nazis her family was not Jewish and most of the events of the book were made up.
"Ever since I can remember, I felt Jewish," she said. "There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world. The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality - it was my reality, my way of surviving."
"At first, I did not want to publish it, but then I was convinced. I ask for forgiveness for all those who feel betrayed but I ask them to put themselves in the place of a small girl of four years old who has lost everything and who has to survive."
In her book, Mrs Defonseca describes being taken in by the De Wael family as a young girl.
"She was given a new name, a new home, and forced into a new religion," claims publicity for her book.
Knowing only that her parents had "gone East", the young Misha sets out to find them equipped only with a tiny compass.
After crossing Belgium, Germany and Poland alone on foot, close to starvation in a vast forest, she was adopted by a family of wolves.
Mrs Defonseca's book became a runaway bestseller after its publication in Italy and France and has made her a millionaire.
But suspicions were aroused in Belgium's Jewish community and some of her old school friends from the Anderlecht district of Brussels recognised her.
They insisted that she was born and raised a Catholic by the De Wael family and lived with her grandfather after her parents were deported.
"She belonged to a very good family and lived in the most beautiful house on the street," one former friend told La Meuse newspaper.
"Monique was always 'special'. She wanted to be the 'star' where ever she went."
Despite growing evidence in recent weeks of inconsistencies in her story, including a birth certificate showing she was not Jewish, Mrs Donfonseca insisted she was telling the truth until she released her statement.
At the film's premiere in France last month she even turned up with a little compass, "my most precious talisman", which she said had helped her find her way on her journey east through the forests of occupied Europe.
Vera Belmont, the director of the French film "Survivre avec les Loups" has taken the revelations well.
Her spokeswoman said: "The movie is a fiction from the book. No matter if it's true or not - she believes it is, anyway - she just thinks it's a beautiful story."
Jane Daniel, the publisher Mrs Defonseca claims persuaded her to write the book, is less forgiving after being sued by the author in a breach of contract case for £11 million.
She now intends to challenge the judgment on the grounds that Mrs Defonseca's original contract had warranted the truth of the story.
"Surviving with Wolves", first published 11 years ago, has been translated into 18 languages and was recently turned into a film.
But in a statement issued by her lawyers, Misha Defonseca, who was born Monique De Wael, confessed that while her parents, members of Belgium's resistance, were killed by the Nazis her family was not Jewish and most of the events of the book were made up.
"Ever since I can remember, I felt Jewish," she said. "There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world. The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality - it was my reality, my way of surviving."
"At first, I did not want to publish it, but then I was convinced. I ask for forgiveness for all those who feel betrayed but I ask them to put themselves in the place of a small girl of four years old who has lost everything and who has to survive."
In her book, Mrs Defonseca describes being taken in by the De Wael family as a young girl.
"She was given a new name, a new home, and forced into a new religion," claims publicity for her book.
Knowing only that her parents had "gone East", the young Misha sets out to find them equipped only with a tiny compass.
After crossing Belgium, Germany and Poland alone on foot, close to starvation in a vast forest, she was adopted by a family of wolves.
Mrs Defonseca's book became a runaway bestseller after its publication in Italy and France and has made her a millionaire.
But suspicions were aroused in Belgium's Jewish community and some of her old school friends from the Anderlecht district of Brussels recognised her.
They insisted that she was born and raised a Catholic by the De Wael family and lived with her grandfather after her parents were deported.
"She belonged to a very good family and lived in the most beautiful house on the street," one former friend told La Meuse newspaper.
"Monique was always 'special'. She wanted to be the 'star' where ever she went."
Despite growing evidence in recent weeks of inconsistencies in her story, including a birth certificate showing she was not Jewish, Mrs Donfonseca insisted she was telling the truth until she released her statement.
At the film's premiere in France last month she even turned up with a little compass, "my most precious talisman", which she said had helped her find her way on her journey east through the forests of occupied Europe.
Vera Belmont, the director of the French film "Survivre avec les Loups" has taken the revelations well.
Her spokeswoman said: "The movie is a fiction from the book. No matter if it's true or not - she believes it is, anyway - she just thinks it's a beautiful story."
Jane Daniel, the publisher Mrs Defonseca claims persuaded her to write the book, is less forgiving after being sued by the author in a breach of contract case for £11 million.
She now intends to challenge the judgment on the grounds that Mrs Defonseca's original contract had warranted the truth of the story.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Writer’s Strike Over! Who Cares?
The media has been covering the story of the Hollywood writer’s strike as though it is something important. The writers of the big network television shows haven’t worked in months and this is supposed to have an effect on the general public? I don’t think so. Their shows are typical garbage re-hashed for the last 30 years. The lemmings that enjoy this crap wouldn’t notice if you just re-ran gilligan’s island or sanford & son for the next 5 years. If anything, the strike has shown how talent-less our media ‘talent’ has become. If late night hosts can’t come up with witty monologues on their own they don’t deserve their high-paying jobs. They are as talentless as Milli Vanilli.
Here’s the mainstream article:
NEW YORK - Now that we’re done celebrating the end of the writers strike, it’s time to cart the empties out to the curb, clear our heads, and take stock of what we learned the past three months
Above all, we learned that writers are important to television.
This is no scoop, but it was never so evident to most of us before.
Maybe that’s because, as viewers, we typically overlook writers. We do it in the same spirit we set aside our knowledge that Teri Hatcher and Felicity Huffman aren’t really neighbors on Wisteria Lane. Or that all those people on “Lost” aren’t stranded in the middle of nowhere. Or that the droll, British-born Hugh Laurie isn’t a cranky American doctor with a limp.
The same “willing suspension of disbelief” that enables an audience to buy into a comedy or drama also calls for our fooling ourselves into thinking that the action is determined by the on-screen characters.
Even lots of TV series that are labeled "unscripted" or "reality" have writers behind the scenes, as we were also reminded during the strike. The fact that they aren't members of the Writers Guild of America and therefore weren't on strike doesn't mean what they do isn't writing. And the fact that they may toil in total anonymity doesn't make them any less essential to a project that officially denies they exist.
The necessity of writers was brought home during their previous strike, in 1988, when NBC head Brandon Tartikoff struck back by threatening to unearth decades-old TV scripts and shoot them again. "American Revivals," he was going to call them.
It never came to that.
Nor did it this time, of course. The networks had too many other ways to plug the holes.
For instance, all those reality shows. Like "My Dad is Better than Your Dad," which, premiering Monday on NBC, pits dads against one another in idiotic stunts ostensibly to win their kids' approval.
Grown men bobbing for snakes or wallowing in green goo in front of their families, not to mention America — this ill serves the dignity of fatherhood. But fathers are fated to play the fool on TV. We didn't need the strike to tell us that.
The networks have seized on other stopgaps. NBC reclaimed "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," the drama it had previously banished to its cable-network sister, USA.
NBC also announced plans to air episodes of two other USA series, "Psych" and "Monk."
And starting Sunday, CBS will recycle the first season of "Dexter," the drama about a serial murderer that originates on Showtime, CBS' premium cable network.
Hmmmmm. We're talking American Revivals here.
What other wisdom does the strike leave us with?
Well, we know to keep our expectations low for network news.
Last month, "Dateline NBC" took a break from baiting pedophiles for a two-hour infomercial about the Golden Globes. This was part of the network's Golden Globes "coverage" cobbled together after the gala awards ceremony, which NBC had bought the rights to broadcast, fell prey to the strike and was canceled. "Dateline" bounced back with the sprightly titled "Going for Gold," hosted by "Today" anchor Matt Lauer. The result was interviews-and-clips fluff trading on what's left of NBC News' stature.
But those of us who were surprised by such a display had only ourselves to blame. By now we all know (or should) that network news has a fiduciary duty to serve the business interests of the rest of the company. For us to assume otherwise is naive, and, if we did before, the strike-afflicted Golden Globes set us straight.
The strike threw us a curve in late-night. Even without writers, Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" stayed ratings champ against David Letterman's "Late Show," whose writers returned in January thanks to an interim agreement with the guild.
All the more remarkable: Night after night, Leno somehow turned out a monologue written without his staff.
Most remarkable of all: Leno's show, however lousy, was no worse than it had ever been.
What this tells us is hard to say. But the strike has left many questions unanswered.
One of the thorniest: What does TV's future look like amid more and more viewing options?
NBC's strike-spurred acquisitions included "quarterlife," a drama series about attractive singles in their twenties trying to chart their lives and careers. It was created by acclaimed TV veterans Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz ("thirtysomething," "My So-Called Life"), who introduced it online last November on its own eponymous Web site.
Beginning Feb. 26, "quarterlife" migrates to broadcast TV. On NBC it can spread the word that the Internet that spawned it is a breeding ground for worthwhile entertainment — and that, more and more, the Web is an alternative to watching TV.
Yet another lesson in the strike's aftermath.
Here’s the mainstream article:
NEW YORK - Now that we’re done celebrating the end of the writers strike, it’s time to cart the empties out to the curb, clear our heads, and take stock of what we learned the past three months
Above all, we learned that writers are important to television.
This is no scoop, but it was never so evident to most of us before.
Maybe that’s because, as viewers, we typically overlook writers. We do it in the same spirit we set aside our knowledge that Teri Hatcher and Felicity Huffman aren’t really neighbors on Wisteria Lane. Or that all those people on “Lost” aren’t stranded in the middle of nowhere. Or that the droll, British-born Hugh Laurie isn’t a cranky American doctor with a limp.
The same “willing suspension of disbelief” that enables an audience to buy into a comedy or drama also calls for our fooling ourselves into thinking that the action is determined by the on-screen characters.
Even lots of TV series that are labeled "unscripted" or "reality" have writers behind the scenes, as we were also reminded during the strike. The fact that they aren't members of the Writers Guild of America and therefore weren't on strike doesn't mean what they do isn't writing. And the fact that they may toil in total anonymity doesn't make them any less essential to a project that officially denies they exist.
The necessity of writers was brought home during their previous strike, in 1988, when NBC head Brandon Tartikoff struck back by threatening to unearth decades-old TV scripts and shoot them again. "American Revivals," he was going to call them.
It never came to that.
Nor did it this time, of course. The networks had too many other ways to plug the holes.
For instance, all those reality shows. Like "My Dad is Better than Your Dad," which, premiering Monday on NBC, pits dads against one another in idiotic stunts ostensibly to win their kids' approval.
Grown men bobbing for snakes or wallowing in green goo in front of their families, not to mention America — this ill serves the dignity of fatherhood. But fathers are fated to play the fool on TV. We didn't need the strike to tell us that.
The networks have seized on other stopgaps. NBC reclaimed "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," the drama it had previously banished to its cable-network sister, USA.
NBC also announced plans to air episodes of two other USA series, "Psych" and "Monk."
And starting Sunday, CBS will recycle the first season of "Dexter," the drama about a serial murderer that originates on Showtime, CBS' premium cable network.
Hmmmmm. We're talking American Revivals here.
What other wisdom does the strike leave us with?
Well, we know to keep our expectations low for network news.
Last month, "Dateline NBC" took a break from baiting pedophiles for a two-hour infomercial about the Golden Globes. This was part of the network's Golden Globes "coverage" cobbled together after the gala awards ceremony, which NBC had bought the rights to broadcast, fell prey to the strike and was canceled. "Dateline" bounced back with the sprightly titled "Going for Gold," hosted by "Today" anchor Matt Lauer. The result was interviews-and-clips fluff trading on what's left of NBC News' stature.
But those of us who were surprised by such a display had only ourselves to blame. By now we all know (or should) that network news has a fiduciary duty to serve the business interests of the rest of the company. For us to assume otherwise is naive, and, if we did before, the strike-afflicted Golden Globes set us straight.
The strike threw us a curve in late-night. Even without writers, Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" stayed ratings champ against David Letterman's "Late Show," whose writers returned in January thanks to an interim agreement with the guild.
All the more remarkable: Night after night, Leno somehow turned out a monologue written without his staff.
Most remarkable of all: Leno's show, however lousy, was no worse than it had ever been.
What this tells us is hard to say. But the strike has left many questions unanswered.
One of the thorniest: What does TV's future look like amid more and more viewing options?
NBC's strike-spurred acquisitions included "quarterlife," a drama series about attractive singles in their twenties trying to chart their lives and careers. It was created by acclaimed TV veterans Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz ("thirtysomething," "My So-Called Life"), who introduced it online last November on its own eponymous Web site.
Beginning Feb. 26, "quarterlife" migrates to broadcast TV. On NBC it can spread the word that the Internet that spawned it is a breeding ground for worthwhile entertainment — and that, more and more, the Web is an alternative to watching TV.
Yet another lesson in the strike's aftermath.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
San Diego Gang-Rape Case Coverage Colorless–Except When “Racism” Is In Question.
This story, which is about the forcible rape of white female college students by black criminals, does not contain the words black or white. I guess they just don’t think anyone would be interested in facts like that.
A group of college students was hanging out at a Mission Beach condominium in 2006 when they were attacked by several men who entered through an unlocked door, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
The University of San Diego students – two women and two men – were terrified by the intruders, who forced them to participate in sexual acts and stole items from the two-story condo.
Given the names of the alleged rapists, (Willie Louis Watkins, 32, Donald Duante Smith, 20, and Antonio Washington, 19) we might make a shrewd guess, based on our knowledge of differential naming conventions, at the race of the suspects, but reporter Dana Littlefield [Email him] and the Editors of the San Diego Union-Tribune [Email their readers representive] don’t want us to know.
But here’s a story that does contain this information, (and a photograph of the alleged rapists) because the judge is asking jurors if they’re able to be impartial in a case like this:
Fifty [prospective] jurors were being questioned at the San Diego County Courthouse on Thursday. Judge John Einhorn addressed the juror pool, saying that race is an issue because the defendants are black and the victims are white. The judge has been asking jurors if that would affect their ability to be fair and impartial in the case — can they concentrate on the evidence, not skin color. [Judge: Race An Issue In Mission Beach Rape Case, NBCSanDiego.com, January 24, 2008]
By the way, even when the Judge isn’t channeling To Kill A Mockingbird, it frequently happens that local TV stations are the place to go for the information that the AP Stylebook says isn’t pertinent. Even if they wanted to ignore the issue, they can’t–they always have photographs of the suspects.
A group of college students was hanging out at a Mission Beach condominium in 2006 when they were attacked by several men who entered through an unlocked door, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
The University of San Diego students – two women and two men – were terrified by the intruders, who forced them to participate in sexual acts and stole items from the two-story condo.
Given the names of the alleged rapists, (Willie Louis Watkins, 32, Donald Duante Smith, 20, and Antonio Washington, 19) we might make a shrewd guess, based on our knowledge of differential naming conventions, at the race of the suspects, but reporter Dana Littlefield [Email him] and the Editors of the San Diego Union-Tribune [Email their readers representive] don’t want us to know.
But here’s a story that does contain this information, (and a photograph of the alleged rapists) because the judge is asking jurors if they’re able to be impartial in a case like this:
Fifty [prospective] jurors were being questioned at the San Diego County Courthouse on Thursday. Judge John Einhorn addressed the juror pool, saying that race is an issue because the defendants are black and the victims are white. The judge has been asking jurors if that would affect their ability to be fair and impartial in the case — can they concentrate on the evidence, not skin color. [Judge: Race An Issue In Mission Beach Rape Case, NBCSanDiego.com, January 24, 2008]
By the way, even when the Judge isn’t channeling To Kill A Mockingbird, it frequently happens that local TV stations are the place to go for the information that the AP Stylebook says isn’t pertinent. Even if they wanted to ignore the issue, they can’t–they always have photographs of the suspects.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Attorney Claims Bloggers Have Prejudiced Channon Christian Case
By GRAHAM GREIG
BRUTAL, unprovoked and pointless murders have always generated public response. Revulsion at the crime draws on the well of primitive responses that include fear, anger and fascination. The person accused can expect little respite from outrage from the moment he or she is identified as a suspect. The worse the crime the less reality there is in the public mind to the legalistic concept of presumption of innocence.
For most of the 20th century, newspapers understood sales could be built on extensive reporting of court cases. So most of the 20th century also saw a steady extension of the restrictions on reporting that might prejudice prospective jurors or influence the evidence of witnesses when a case came to trial.
Trainee journalists were required to learn the detail of the law on contempt of court. Judges liked to summon an editor from time to time and threaten him with a spell in the cells pour encourager les autres. The editors didn't like that, as a careless reporter would learn when the boss got back to the office.
In the last 20 years, the mainstream media – newspapers and television – have largely tired of the old style of verbatim court reporting. The press benches in most courtrooms are entirely unoccupied. They came to prefer taking part in the investigation or second-guessing the outcome: shadowing the police, taking pride in getting to witnesses and identifying suspects. National news editors press their reporters to analyse a trial in advance. Only the most notorious trials warrant daily reports on the evidence as it unfolds. The contempt of court defences are daily probed.
Among the tabloids, the criminal justice system itself often appears to be on trial. As for defence lawyers, they may get credit in TV dramas for snatching the innocent from the jaws of punishment but, in the real world, their standing is in the basement of public esteem, with traffic wardens and politicians.
Even that change in the style of mainstream media reportage has been overtaken by the unregulated content on the internet, where material that is prejudicial by any definition appears on countless sites, hit by millions of visitors. The dividing lines between fact, allegation, rumour, fiction and deliberate fabrication are completely blurred. The courts seem paralysed and unable to acknowledge the internet is in danger of overwhelming the old defences against publication of prejudicial material.
In December, in the first case of its kind, a defence lawyer in Tennessee attempted to have the venue for the imminent trial of his client moved because false and fabricated accounts of the facts of the case on YouTube and blogs may have prejudiced prospective jurors and witnesses. Attorney Philip Lomonaco of Knoxville, Tennessee, had his first application to the Eastern District Court dismissed. The appeal outcome is awaited.
The case is connected to an appalling murder of Hugh Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian in Knoxville on 7 January 2007. The young couple were apparently carjacked, abducted and both were beaten and raped before being murdered. Christian was strangled and Newsom was shot.
Three men and a woman have been arrested in connection with the rape, assault and murder and await trial later this year. Lomonaco's client is Eric deWayne Boyd, who was not involved in the initial crime but is accused of subsequently attempting to hide one of the accused.
The crimes generated understandable public outrage and considerable media coverage. They also provoked an explosion of internet attention with hundreds of blogs passing off rumour and deliberate falsehood as fact. The fact the victims were white and the suspects were black led to various white supremacist groups holding rallies at which the crowds were told gruesome but entirely false stories about mutilations of the victims. The speeches were filmed and dozens of clips uploaded onto YouTube.
Lomonaco says: "The blogs spread lies and helped create an urban legend surrounding the details of the final state of the victims' bodies – details meant to outrage and taint any jury pool. These untruths have created a fog of prejudicial publicity."
Lomonaco acknowledges the internet is accessible from anywhere but says the crucial fact is Knoxville, with a population 130,000, is too small to allow a reasonable chance of finding jurors whose views have not already been formed on the facts of the case. He would prefer the case to be relocated to Memphis.
While there have been no such attempts in the UK to claim mistrial on the basis of prejudicial internet material, the time may not be far off. In Scotland, Donald Findlay QC is disturbed at the reluctance of legal authorities to acknowledge the serious problem that arises not only in high profile trials but in mundane cases where a Google search will produce assertions about key evidence that the jury will have to decide in court.
"The establishment position is based on what might be the case in the old-style media: that it would be open to any individual prospective witness or juror to go along to The Mitchell Library and read up back copies," he says. "They say the internet is no more than an extension of that. This misrepresentation is combined with steadfast insistence that the juries are able to do what they are instructed by the trial judge when he tells them to disregard all other accounts they may have heard.
"I don't think that's good enough. Prejudicial publicity is our real problem in the criminal courts these days. It's very serious. And the biggest part of the problem is the internet. For example the courts go to great lengths to excise any material that may refer to previous convictions of the accused. But it's not the rare obsessive going to the Mitchell Library that makes a mockery of that. The fact is anyone can put the name of the accused into Google and come up with a complete history of the investigation and all the accused's previous convictions in a second. Don't tell me jurors don't do it when they get home after the first day of a trial."
Findlay has been involved in many of the trials following the most notorious crimes in Scotland for quarter of a century. One of the grounds of the Luke Mitchell appeal to be heard next month cites the refusal to move the trial away from Edinburgh. Findlay is not impressed by the reluctance of the courts to admit there is a problem.
"They use the slippery slope argument," he says. "Once it is acknowledged juries may form views about a case based on information that is not led in court then where will it all end? But that leads to the nonsense that if the editor of a newspaper published on the morning of a trial the name of the accused with a list of previous conv
ictions and suggestions for other nefarious activities he may have been involved in then the editor would go to jail. But if someone puts the material on the internet then nothing happens."
Lomonaco also draws attention to the difference between the internet and mainstream media. Printed newspaper stories, even with inaccurate or prejudicial content, have a short currency.
Is there an obvious answer? Findlay's view is robust: "People have been saying they're 'looking into it' for years now. But that's like me looking into a hole in the road outside my house. What I really want is for someone to come and fill it in.
"I don't have an easy answer but I do think if we accept we can't control or stop the internet then maybe we have to think again about how we manage juries. Jury vetting. What I do know is pretending the internet doesn't exist won't serve the interests of justice."
BRUTAL, unprovoked and pointless murders have always generated public response. Revulsion at the crime draws on the well of primitive responses that include fear, anger and fascination. The person accused can expect little respite from outrage from the moment he or she is identified as a suspect. The worse the crime the less reality there is in the public mind to the legalistic concept of presumption of innocence.
For most of the 20th century, newspapers understood sales could be built on extensive reporting of court cases. So most of the 20th century also saw a steady extension of the restrictions on reporting that might prejudice prospective jurors or influence the evidence of witnesses when a case came to trial.
Trainee journalists were required to learn the detail of the law on contempt of court. Judges liked to summon an editor from time to time and threaten him with a spell in the cells pour encourager les autres. The editors didn't like that, as a careless reporter would learn when the boss got back to the office.
In the last 20 years, the mainstream media – newspapers and television – have largely tired of the old style of verbatim court reporting. The press benches in most courtrooms are entirely unoccupied. They came to prefer taking part in the investigation or second-guessing the outcome: shadowing the police, taking pride in getting to witnesses and identifying suspects. National news editors press their reporters to analyse a trial in advance. Only the most notorious trials warrant daily reports on the evidence as it unfolds. The contempt of court defences are daily probed.
Among the tabloids, the criminal justice system itself often appears to be on trial. As for defence lawyers, they may get credit in TV dramas for snatching the innocent from the jaws of punishment but, in the real world, their standing is in the basement of public esteem, with traffic wardens and politicians.
Even that change in the style of mainstream media reportage has been overtaken by the unregulated content on the internet, where material that is prejudicial by any definition appears on countless sites, hit by millions of visitors. The dividing lines between fact, allegation, rumour, fiction and deliberate fabrication are completely blurred. The courts seem paralysed and unable to acknowledge the internet is in danger of overwhelming the old defences against publication of prejudicial material.
In December, in the first case of its kind, a defence lawyer in Tennessee attempted to have the venue for the imminent trial of his client moved because false and fabricated accounts of the facts of the case on YouTube and blogs may have prejudiced prospective jurors and witnesses. Attorney Philip Lomonaco of Knoxville, Tennessee, had his first application to the Eastern District Court dismissed. The appeal outcome is awaited.
The case is connected to an appalling murder of Hugh Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian in Knoxville on 7 January 2007. The young couple were apparently carjacked, abducted and both were beaten and raped before being murdered. Christian was strangled and Newsom was shot.
Three men and a woman have been arrested in connection with the rape, assault and murder and await trial later this year. Lomonaco's client is Eric deWayne Boyd, who was not involved in the initial crime but is accused of subsequently attempting to hide one of the accused.
The crimes generated understandable public outrage and considerable media coverage. They also provoked an explosion of internet attention with hundreds of blogs passing off rumour and deliberate falsehood as fact. The fact the victims were white and the suspects were black led to various white supremacist groups holding rallies at which the crowds were told gruesome but entirely false stories about mutilations of the victims. The speeches were filmed and dozens of clips uploaded onto YouTube.
Lomonaco says: "The blogs spread lies and helped create an urban legend surrounding the details of the final state of the victims' bodies – details meant to outrage and taint any jury pool. These untruths have created a fog of prejudicial publicity."
Lomonaco acknowledges the internet is accessible from anywhere but says the crucial fact is Knoxville, with a population 130,000, is too small to allow a reasonable chance of finding jurors whose views have not already been formed on the facts of the case. He would prefer the case to be relocated to Memphis.
While there have been no such attempts in the UK to claim mistrial on the basis of prejudicial internet material, the time may not be far off. In Scotland, Donald Findlay QC is disturbed at the reluctance of legal authorities to acknowledge the serious problem that arises not only in high profile trials but in mundane cases where a Google search will produce assertions about key evidence that the jury will have to decide in court.
"The establishment position is based on what might be the case in the old-style media: that it would be open to any individual prospective witness or juror to go along to The Mitchell Library and read up back copies," he says. "They say the internet is no more than an extension of that. This misrepresentation is combined with steadfast insistence that the juries are able to do what they are instructed by the trial judge when he tells them to disregard all other accounts they may have heard.
"I don't think that's good enough. Prejudicial publicity is our real problem in the criminal courts these days. It's very serious. And the biggest part of the problem is the internet. For example the courts go to great lengths to excise any material that may refer to previous convictions of the accused. But it's not the rare obsessive going to the Mitchell Library that makes a mockery of that. The fact is anyone can put the name of the accused into Google and come up with a complete history of the investigation and all the accused's previous convictions in a second. Don't tell me jurors don't do it when they get home after the first day of a trial."
Findlay has been involved in many of the trials following the most notorious crimes in Scotland for quarter of a century. One of the grounds of the Luke Mitchell appeal to be heard next month cites the refusal to move the trial away from Edinburgh. Findlay is not impressed by the reluctance of the courts to admit there is a problem.
"They use the slippery slope argument," he says. "Once it is acknowledged juries may form views about a case based on information that is not led in court then where will it all end? But that leads to the nonsense that if the editor of a newspaper published on the morning of a trial the name of the accused with a list of previous conv
ictions and suggestions for other nefarious activities he may have been involved in then the editor would go to jail. But if someone puts the material on the internet then nothing happens."
Lomonaco also draws attention to the difference between the internet and mainstream media. Printed newspaper stories, even with inaccurate or prejudicial content, have a short currency.
Is there an obvious answer? Findlay's view is robust: "People have been saying they're 'looking into it' for years now. But that's like me looking into a hole in the road outside my house. What I really want is for someone to come and fill it in.
"I don't have an easy answer but I do think if we accept we can't control or stop the internet then maybe we have to think again about how we manage juries. Jury vetting. What I do know is pretending the internet doesn't exist won't serve the interests of justice."
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Truth In Knoxville.
Remember when elements of the liberal media were claiming that “racists” were exaggerating the horrific Christian & Newsom murders? Remember when they said that claims of sexual torture and mutilation were false and invented by “racist websites,? Remember when the left-wing media outlets universally claimed that it was simply a carjacking gone wrong and not racially motivated?
How much, in a prosecutor's view, does a suspect in the fatal carjacking of a Knox County couple deserve death?
Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols is counting the ways - eight of them, to be exact.
Nichols' office on Friday filed a notice of the state's intent to seek the death penalty if Letalvis "Rome" Cobbins, 25, is convicted in the January slayings of University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23.
Cobbins is the first of four suspects in the killings to face trial, the likely explanation for why he is the first to draw a death notice. For now, prosecutors are keeping mum on the possible sentencing fate of Cobbins' alleged conspirators in the fatal carjacking, including alleged ringleader Lemaricus "Slim" Davidson, who is Cobbins' brother.
John Gill, special counsel to Nichols, declined to comment on when, or if, the remaining three suspects will be placed on notice that the state will demand their lives upon conviction.
Cobbins' attorney, Kimberly Parton, could not be reached immediately for comment late Friday afternoon. The death notice automatically will garner her a legal sidekick, slightly increase the amount of money she will be paid by taxpayers to defend the indigent Cobbins and provide some money for the services of expert witnesses and independent forensic testing and investigation.
It also could delay the May 12 trial date currently set for Cobbins.
The state needed only to allege one legal factor for designating the allegations against Cobbins as a capital murder case. Nichols cited eight, however.
The grounds he cited:
# Cobbins was a violent criminal before the carjacking turned kidnapping, rape and slaying, having racked up "one or more felonies" involving "the use of violence to the person," the notice stated.
# Newsom was tortured.
# Christian was tortured.
# Newsom was slain to cover up Cobbins' alleged role in the carjacking, kidnapping, rape and robbery.
# Christian was slain to cover up Cobbins' alleged role in the carjacking, kidnapping, rape and robbery.
# Newsom's slaying came during the commission of crimes against Christian.
# Christian's killing came during and after the commission of crimes against Newsom.
# Cobbins' allegedly "mutilated the body of Chris Newsom after death," the notice stated. Newsom's body was set afire after he was shot to death.
Christian and Newsom had been out on a date when they encountered armed carjackers who wound up taking the couple along with Christian's Toyota 4-Runner. Authorities said the pair were robbed and taken at gunpoint to a house on Chipman Street where Davidson had been living.
The couple was beaten, tortured and repeatedly raped, according to authorities. Newsom was slain first, with Christian held and victimized several more hours before she was strangled and her body discarded in a large trash can inside the house.
Newsom's body, dumped alongside railroad tracks, was found less than 24 hours after the couple was reporting missing. It would be another two days, however, before Christian's body was discovered.
It's not clear why Cobbins is being tried first. Assistant District Attorney General Leland Price announced the trial lineup earlier this year. In any case involving more than one suspect, the order of separate trials is typically a trial strategy in and of itself.
Cobbins' girlfriend - Vanessa Coleman, the lone female suspect in the case - is being tried second. Davidson is third, followed by George "Detroit" Thomas.
Before any of those suspects faces a state court jury, however, a federal jury will get the first glimpse at a case where details have been kept tightly under wraps. That's because an alleged accessory to the carjacking, Eric Dewayne "E" Boyd, is set to stand trial in U.S. District Court in February for allegedly helping hide out Davidson after the slayings.
Federal prosecutors David Jennings and Tracy Stone have said that to convict Boyd as an accessory, they first must prove Davidson's role in the fatal carjacking. Boyd faces a maximum 15-year prison term if convicted as an accessory. He is not accused in the fatal carjacking itself.
How much, in a prosecutor's view, does a suspect in the fatal carjacking of a Knox County couple deserve death?
Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols is counting the ways - eight of them, to be exact.
Nichols' office on Friday filed a notice of the state's intent to seek the death penalty if Letalvis "Rome" Cobbins, 25, is convicted in the January slayings of University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23.
Cobbins is the first of four suspects in the killings to face trial, the likely explanation for why he is the first to draw a death notice. For now, prosecutors are keeping mum on the possible sentencing fate of Cobbins' alleged conspirators in the fatal carjacking, including alleged ringleader Lemaricus "Slim" Davidson, who is Cobbins' brother.
John Gill, special counsel to Nichols, declined to comment on when, or if, the remaining three suspects will be placed on notice that the state will demand their lives upon conviction.
Cobbins' attorney, Kimberly Parton, could not be reached immediately for comment late Friday afternoon. The death notice automatically will garner her a legal sidekick, slightly increase the amount of money she will be paid by taxpayers to defend the indigent Cobbins and provide some money for the services of expert witnesses and independent forensic testing and investigation.
It also could delay the May 12 trial date currently set for Cobbins.
The state needed only to allege one legal factor for designating the allegations against Cobbins as a capital murder case. Nichols cited eight, however.
The grounds he cited:
# Cobbins was a violent criminal before the carjacking turned kidnapping, rape and slaying, having racked up "one or more felonies" involving "the use of violence to the person," the notice stated.
# Newsom was tortured.
# Christian was tortured.
# Newsom was slain to cover up Cobbins' alleged role in the carjacking, kidnapping, rape and robbery.
# Christian was slain to cover up Cobbins' alleged role in the carjacking, kidnapping, rape and robbery.
# Newsom's slaying came during the commission of crimes against Christian.
# Christian's killing came during and after the commission of crimes against Newsom.
# Cobbins' allegedly "mutilated the body of Chris Newsom after death," the notice stated. Newsom's body was set afire after he was shot to death.
Christian and Newsom had been out on a date when they encountered armed carjackers who wound up taking the couple along with Christian's Toyota 4-Runner. Authorities said the pair were robbed and taken at gunpoint to a house on Chipman Street where Davidson had been living.
The couple was beaten, tortured and repeatedly raped, according to authorities. Newsom was slain first, with Christian held and victimized several more hours before she was strangled and her body discarded in a large trash can inside the house.
Newsom's body, dumped alongside railroad tracks, was found less than 24 hours after the couple was reporting missing. It would be another two days, however, before Christian's body was discovered.
It's not clear why Cobbins is being tried first. Assistant District Attorney General Leland Price announced the trial lineup earlier this year. In any case involving more than one suspect, the order of separate trials is typically a trial strategy in and of itself.
Cobbins' girlfriend - Vanessa Coleman, the lone female suspect in the case - is being tried second. Davidson is third, followed by George "Detroit" Thomas.
Before any of those suspects faces a state court jury, however, a federal jury will get the first glimpse at a case where details have been kept tightly under wraps. That's because an alleged accessory to the carjacking, Eric Dewayne "E" Boyd, is set to stand trial in U.S. District Court in February for allegedly helping hide out Davidson after the slayings.
Federal prosecutors David Jennings and Tracy Stone have said that to convict Boyd as an accessory, they first must prove Davidson's role in the fatal carjacking. Boyd faces a maximum 15-year prison term if convicted as an accessory. He is not accused in the fatal carjacking itself.
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Sunday, January 27, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Another ‘hate crime’ hoax
ODENTON, Md. -- An Anne Arundel County woman said she woke up to an upsetting sight last weekend -- racial and sexual slurs written all over the outside of her house.
Virginia Trotter lives in the 2000 block of Brigadier Boulevard in Odenton. She said that last Sunday, her neighbors told her that there was offensive writing all over her house.
"This is awful. It's terrible," she said. "I didn’t think I had neighbors in the area that would do such a thing."
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Trotter said that she has lived at the home for 17 years and said she'd never had problems before.
Sexual images and racial slurs were written all over her home. But police said the incident is not being investigated as a hate crime because both the victim and the alleged suspects are black.
A female witness told police that she saw four black teens fleeing the scene. Police said they believe neighborhood rivalries were the reason behind it and said because of that, it's being considered vandalism and not a hate crime.
But Trotter disagreed. She said she thought hate crimes were defined by what crime was committed, not by which color the culprits were.
"Red, green, orange -- I don't care what color. I think they should be prosecuted for it," she said. "I take it very personal."
Trotter's home was one of several hit in the neighborhood, police said. Investigators are still looking for the culprits.
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