A Miami Herald video appeared to catch Colton Fears shouting at protesters, “Fourteen in the sheets, 88 in the streets,” two numbers commonly used by white nationalists and neo-Nazis to express white power. “Our founding fathers were white nationalists,” Fears told the newspaper in an interview. “Now I’m not saying you have to be a white nationalist, but understanding that it’s OK and it doesn’t make you a racist.”
As a Christian,I don't object to Corbett's bashing of the Christian faith or religion. However, he's a teacher and if just half of what he's reported to have claimed as history is true, he ought to be either removed, disciplined or "re-educated." To claim that the Judeo-Christian tradition or specifically the Christian faith, had nothing to do with the establishment of our nation betrays ignorance at best or indoctrination at worst. It certainly doesn't represent informed study.
(Transcript of the last video from the shooter at UC Santa Barbara)
Hi, Elliot Rodger here.
Well— this is my last video. It all has to come to this.
Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge against humanity. Against all of you.
For the last 8 years of my life, ever since I’ve hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires. All because girls have never been attracted to me.
Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.
I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed a girl.
I’ve been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I’m still a virgin.
It has been very torturous.
College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex, and fun, and pleasure. But in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness.
It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me.
I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.
It’s an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy, and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentlemen.
I will punish all of you for it. (laughs)
On the day of retribution I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB— and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside there.
All those girls that I’ve desired so much, they would’ve all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.
I will take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you.
You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male. (laughs)
Yes, after I’ve annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista, and slay every single person I see there.
All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I’ve had to rot in loneliness for all these years, they’ve all looked down upon me every time I try to go out and join them. They’ve all treated me like a mouse.
Well now, I will be a God compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals. I will be a God, exacting my retribution, on all those who deserve it.
And you do deserve it, just for the crime of living a better life than me.
All you popular kids. You’ve never accepted me, and now you’ll all pay for it.
And girls, all I’ve ever wanted was to love you, and to be loved by you. I’ve wanted a girlfriend, I’ve wanted sex, I’ve wanted love, affection, adoration, but you think I’m unworthy of it.
That’s a crime that can never be forgiven.
If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you. (laughs)
You denied me a happy life, and in turn, I will deny all of you life. (laughs) It’s only fair.
I hate all of you, humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing, to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.
You deserve to be annihilated. And I’ll give that to you.
You never showed me any mercy, and so I will show you none. (laughs)
You force me to suffer all my life, and now I’ll make you all suffer.
I’ve waited a long time for this.
I’ll give you exactly what you deserve.
In Hawaii, the Rainbow Village doomsday cult is building an ark in the middle of the jungle in anticipation of the apocalypse.
Again, the setup gives seemingly pertinent background on other doomsday cults and their leaders, including Jim Jones, David Koresh and Heaven’s Gate. But the group the show chooses to embed with appears more like a loose-knit hippie commune than anything else. Self-proclaimed prophet JeZus doesn’t even seem all that sure of why 40 or more people have chosen to live with him in the jungle and invest in a vision that isn’t much of a vision at all: Stick with him and you might survive the coming floods and destruction. Even JeZus admits his theatrical displays – rants, flailing arms, word-salad revelations – are oftentimes a front: “If you can survive my narcissism, you can pass the test,” he says.
WALL STREET PROTESTS ARE NOT ANTI WALL-STREET, BUT INSTEAD AGAINST WHITES !!!
WHITES AREN’T WELCOME IN AMERICA ANY LONGER !! http://www.youtube.com/user/BostjanAvsec <== OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE RECORDED LIVE IN 2009.
ANTI WALL-STREET PROTESTS ARE ALSO KNOWN UNDER SIONIST "TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP" IN AMERICA !!! TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP FROM HANDS OF WHITE AMERICANS TO SO CALLED "MINORITIES"(COMMUNISM) http://multiculturalismisterrorism.blogspot.com
THEY WERE MURDERING YOU WITH AND INSIDE OF THEIR CORPORATIONS FOR OVER 66 YEARS !!! THEY HAVE CLOSED DOWN ALMOST EVERY SMALL COMPANY(FARMS) IN UNITES STATES OF AMERICA AND NOW, THEY WANT YOU TO GO OUT THERE AND PROTEST FOR THEM AGAINST WALL STREET(because corporations = Wall-street) !!!
THEY CRIME CONTEMPLATED AGAINST US PER EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR OVER 66 YEARS AND NOW, THEY WANT YOU TO RAISE COMMUNIST FLAG UNDER AMERICAN SKY !!! ONE RACE; RAT RACE(Wall street protesters are Obama's raise of the planet Apes army which spread from London per Zionist Washington DC and communist Moscow where new Stalin is in place – PUTIN) !!!
ANTI WALL STREET PROTESTS = TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP = COMMUNISM
IF YOU PROTEST(YOU SHOULD), DISPLAY, "66 YEARS OF GENOCIDE AGAINST WHITES IS NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE" OR GET LOST HOME IF NOT ALREADY HOMELESS(I despise people who starve to death and are afraid to even say truth while protesting)
Sx years ago, Nigerian forces captured the leader of the extremist group Boko Haram and killed him in custody — a move that was to have far-reaching consequences.
Nigeria had exchanged a charismatic preacher named Mohammed Yusuf for the more radical and violent leader, Abubakar Shekau, who steered the movement down a murderous path. His fighters cut the throats of schoolboys, abducted schoolgirls, seized a slice of northeastern Nigeria and finally threatened to spill war across borders to other West African nations.
In his latest video, released Tuesday, Shekau says God commanded that his fighters massacre hundreds of people in the town of Baga in northeastern Nigeria this month in an attack described by human rights groups as the worst so far by the militants.
In a few short years, Shekau has ruthlessly transformed Boko Haram from a militia that mainly attacked army posts and police stations to one that has launched suicide bombings across the country, targeting civilians in markets, bus stations and clubs. Its fighters have swept into dozens of northeastern villages this past year, massacring civilians and burning houses and shops.
He gained global notoriety last year with his menacing grin, as he boasted about abducting 276 schoolgirls whom he vowed to sell as slaves. And along the way his group gained significant resources and arms, often able to outgun Nigeria’s military.
Claiming responsibility for this month’s massacre, Shekau said in the video on YouTube that the devastation in Baga was nothing compared to future attacks he was planning.
“We are the ones who fought the people of Baga, and we have killed them with such a killing as he [God] commanded us in his book,” said Shekau, as Nigeria and its neighbors struggled to deploy a regional force to confront the violent Islamist group.
“This is just the beginning of the killings,” he said. “What you've just witnessed is a tip of the iceberg. More deaths are coming.”
Satellite images released last week show thousands of houses in Baga and neighboring Doron Baga burned down in the attack. An accurate count of how many were killed has not been reached, but estimates range from several hundred to 2,000 people.
More than 7,500 people fled the assault that began Jan. 3, according to the United Nations. Survivors described Boko Haram gunmen shooting people on sight, or dragging them from their homes and killing them.
Shekau, once a headache for Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, now has the presidents of several neighboring countries alarmed — and angry that Nigeria failed to curb the terrorist group earlier. Boko Haram has attacked villages in Cameroon, recruited fighters from several countries and raised the threat of a devastating regional conflict.
Shekau’s birthplace is variously reported as a remote Nigerian village in Yobe state or the neighboring nation of Niger. His parents were peasants. He studied under an Islamic cleric and later attended the Borno State College of Legal and Islamic Studies, where he took Islamic studies and Arabic.
As a student, Shekau was radicalized, became interested in Boko Haram and “began to be abrasive and radical, shunning other students and keeping company of his fellow sect members,” a fellow student, Kayam Bulama, said in an interview last year.
Under his leadership, Boko Haram has wreaked mayhem and chaos in northeastern Nigeria, destroying the economy and agriculture as farmers flee their land, choking off trade between Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon and attacking secular schools. The group, which opposes democracy, is poised to undermine Nigerian elections due next month, with dozens of towns and villages under its control.
The group’s ultimate goal is to impose an Islamic state in Nigeria based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
In this week’s video, Shekau taunted West African leaders who are working to deploy the regional force, and mocked Niger's president, Mahamadou Issoufou, who took part in a recent rally of world leaders in Paris showing solidarity after the terrorist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Baga was to be the headquarters of the 2,800-strong regional force, which was supposed to be launched in November after an agreement involving Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. But before the Jan. 3 attack on Baga, Niger’s soldiers had departed and the Chadian forces had not yet been deployed, leaving Nigerian forces to confront the militants alone and further undermining trust among the neighbors.
Chad sent a force to Cameroon last weekend to help prevent the Boko Haram insurgency from spreading across the region, and the African Union is due to discuss a proposed regional force next week.
Ghanian President John Dramani Mahama, chairman of the Economic Community of West African States, told Reuters news service that the African Union might take over the planned multinational force.
“I do believe that dealing with it collectively is a much better way to go about it, because the threat of Boko Haram goes beyond Nigeria. As you can see currently there are attacks taking place in Cameroon, there have been incidents in Niger and so it is not a Nigerian problem only,” Mahama told local journalists during a visit Wednesday to Germany.
“Terrorism is like a cancer and if we don't deal with it, it will keep going. It threatens everybody in the sub-region. When it comes to terrorism nobody is too far or too near,” he told Reuters last week.
“The increase in strength of Boko Haram reflects our slowness and our inability to put up a robust response,” Niger’s foreign minister, Mohamed Bazoum, told journalists last week.
When Boko Haram seized Baga, it took over the military base, along with weapons and ammunition. Shekau flaunted an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry in the YouTube video and said he was ready for any attack.
“Kings of Africa, you are late,” he said. “I challenge you to attack me even now. I'm ready.”
[Re: a comic about an anti-circumcision superhero names Foreskin Man--I wish I were making that up]
In the comic, the blond superhero takes on "Monster Mohel" — a bearded, black-hatted man wearing a prayer shawl. In the traditional Jewish community, a mohel is a person trained to perform circumcisions. The "Monster Mohel," who leers as he sets after a baby with bloody scissors, is flanked by gun-toting henchmen dressed in the traditional clothes of ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Most of the "good" characters in the book have blond or light-brown hair and features that might be termed Aryan.
The publication of the comic book was first reported Thursday by a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Debra J. Saunders, who asked Hess if he considered it to be anti-Semitic. "A lot of people have said that, but we're not trying to be anti-Semitic," he replied. "We're trying to be pro-human rights."
Jonathan Turley opines that as free speech recedes, silence follows in its wake.
Certainly this is an important point given the incessant effort by liberals to silence those — such as Bill O'Reilly, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh — who are not accepting of their worldview.
Similarly, redistribution of speech would allow the government to restrict speech that it deems harmful. Therefore, if the will of millions of voters were tossed aside by an activist judge, the government could prevent outraged voters from airing their discontent on talk radio by perversely asserting that these unhappy voters were fomenting hatred.
How would our Founding Fathers have felt about those who seek to silence conservatives or anyone else with whom one disagrees? To liberals, the 1st Amendment is just something else that needs to be silenced.
In 1990, Keith Tharpe ambushed and assaulted his ex-wife and shot and killed her sister, Jacquelin Freeman. A few months later, a jury convicted him of those crimes and unanimously voted in favor of a death sentence.
He was set to be executed on Sept. 26 when his lawyers presented to the Supreme Court a statement from Barney Gattie, one of the jurors in Tharpe’s case.
Gattie had spoken to defense lawyers in 1998 and said he saw “two types of black people,” some of whom were “nice black folks” like Freeman and her family. He used the n-word to characterize the others.
“I felt Tharpe, who wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in my book, should get the electric chair for what he did— After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls,” according to Gattie’s statement.
Two letters published in the L.A. Times Travel section in print on Sunday, Dec. 11, and here online did not meet editorial standards. The Times’ Readers’ Representative says the letters weren’t ‘civil, fact-based discourse.’
Japanese internment
I see that writer Carolina A. Miranda has attached herself to the “I feel-good” contingent that feels sorry for the Japanese here in World War II [“ ‘Relevant’ Journey,” Nov. 27]. But this is just another anti-U.S. remake of history.
Remember, this was war for the life of our country. The Japanese had a clear way to land invading forces in California but lost their chance because they did not realize it.
Japanese have an extremely strong attachment to family, and even more so back then. First- generation and, to a lesser extent, Japanese here would have been expected to follow the wishes of their elders in Japan. Some, most or almost all might have refused, but the threat was there.
Had the Japanese been left on the streets of our city they would have been subject to hostility, injury and death at the hands of other citizens whose emotions ran high.
The U.S. government needed to concentrate on the war effort, not keep track of every reported espionage claim leveled against the Japanese. By the way, there were also internments for U.S. Germans though not as extensive as the Japanese.
Virtually everyone in the U.S. was assigned jobs to help the war effort. The Japanese were assigned the job of staying out of the way and not causing complications. Millions of Americans were assigned far worse jobs. Hundreds of thousands were wounded or died.
The interned Japanese were housed, fed, protected and cared for. Many who now complain would not even be alive if the internment had not been done.
I salute the Japanese for doing the part they were assigned during the war as I salute all those that sacrificed for the war effort. I have zero respect for those trying to rewrite history just to make themselves feel good.
Steve Hawes
Sunland
***
Maybe a little bit of balance in Miranda’s article would have been appropriate. You need to read "Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan" by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard to get the balance.
As the U.S. was putting families into the internment housing and feeding them, the Japanese were slaughtering Filipinos by the tens of thousands and U.S. soldiers after hideous torture.
War is evil, but I would have much rather been interned by the U.S. in California than by the Japanese in their captured lands.
One-way reporting is not very effective for the educated public. Please try a little balance next time. It's a lot more effective and honest.
Dick Venn
[Prophet predicts disaster will prevent Obama from taking office.]
'He will not be the next president,' Leland Freeborn warns those who will listen. He and his followers expect nuclear explosions this Christmas season.
"I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the 'riots' that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn't lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said."
These riots, according to his prophecy, will encourage the "old, hard-line Soviet guard" to seize the moment and rain down nukes on the United States, killing at least 100 million of us.
"Prepare now," Freeborn's letter concluded. "We are downwind from Las Vegas. I hope you can survive."
[Kayla Eland and Lindon Pronto say sharing a dorm room hasn't been awkward. The mixing of genders is a generational issue, Pronto says, and "Over the years, this division between men and women, which was so big, is slowly closing"]
What???? A non biological related raging hormone 21 year old male grossly immature to make such a comment. A young inexperienced women has a vagina, a male a penis, when mixed together just inches sleeping in close quarters is a 100% certain formula for rape, sexual harassment, compulsive masturbation and obsessing with a naked women you can hear breathing inches apart. A colossal recipe for disaster, pregnancy, failing grades, depression, emotional chaos that these youngsters won't be able to control, nor understand..biological anthropological reproductive hard wiring mating instincts override immature childlike undeveloped brains. What is with the Fathers of young college girls thinking it's okay for her to sleep with a man and think this will be an uplifting experience free from harm. Sexual drive does not change as these young fools profess, has nothing to do with some imaginary "division". Liberalism is a mental disease.
Love stop saying love you in the name of love love is great but you gay people are abusing the love if love could speak it will tell u to stop using as an excuse for your unacceptable and against morality behavior. love is pure and you guys gays are not.
[Addressing a crowd of 3000 at the Civil Forum on The Presidency]
Warren told his congregation that someone had asked if there was any kind of president he would not vote for.
"I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, 'I don't need God,' " Warren said. "They're saying, 'I'm totally self-sufficient by [myself].' And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It's too big a job."
The faculty on most of our Colleges is already strongly Marxist - Socialist anti-American, anti-Christian, anti- Conservative. Those students in love with this teacher have putty for a brain. I am also certain that most of the other teachers will share the same far left ideological orientation.
. Since when did it be ok to act gay? I pine for the 1950's when life was a lot better than it is today. When men and women married and stayed married. When rearing children was a part of life, and not looked down upon. This country has gone to hell and the California Supreme Court has no authority to overturn something the VOTERS of California passed. BTW, it's not hate, it's FREE SPEECH. But of course, Gay-Rights advocates twist it to fit their views. If I don't agree with you, it's hate, but if you don't agree with me, it's free speech? How does that make sense? It doesn't.
I want to have control over what goes in my son's head, not what's put in there by people who might be on the far left who have their own ideas about indoctrinating kids
Friday's violence occurred as hundreds of thousands of worshipers across Iraq took part in Ashura rites commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of Muhammad who was killed by the army of the Caliph Yazid on the plains of Karbala. Hussein's death in 680 made permanent the schism between Shiites and Sunnis over the succession after Muhammad.
...During a reenactment of Hussein's slaying in Basra, the crowd turned on the actor who was performing the part of his killer and beat the man so badly that he returned with an assault rifle to exact revenge. At least one onlooker was killed in the crossfire when soldiers tried to subdue the man and his relatives, security officials said.
I was watching CNN and one of the "women" featured on "Robin Meade's Morning Express" said that "she" and "her partner" were upholding God's Law. I wonder which one she is referring to -- the one about "an abomination"? Or another one? I can't seem to find in the Bible where God made a law for gays to marry each other. Can anyone help me out?
(Dan Reed is the director of a "documentary" (a hit-piece really) called Leaving Neverland, which is about Michael Jackson and aims to smear him as a predator based on the word of people known for lying.)
(LA Times Question): "Both Robson and Safechuck previously testified in court that Jackson never abused them, and now they say they lied because they have since come to terms with what was done to them. Were you skeptical of their stories going into this?"
(Dan Reed): When Wade told me that he loved Michael, then everything suddenly crystallized and made sense. This is difficult to say, but he had a fulfilling sexual and emotional relationship at the age of 7 with a 30-year-old man who happened to be the King of Pop. And because he enjoyed it, he loved Michael, and the sex was pleasant. I’m sorry, that’s just the reality.
It goes waaaaay beyond this... There is a push to drive out our Christian heritage from the public school system. They are literally rewriting the textbooks. Seperation of church and state is one thing, but you CANNOT rewrite history! There has been a huge increase in religious discrimination lawsuits. The sleeping giant is waking up! I applaud this kids courage! We need more people like him.
Jake inevitably goes native, embraces the eco-faith of Pandora's Na'Vi inhabitants and their tree goddess, the "all mother," and rallies the Pandoran aborigines (not to mention the Pandoran ecosystem itself) against the evil forces of a thinly veiled 22nd century combine of Blackwater and Halliburton...
What would have been controversial is if -- somehow -- Cameron had made a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts.
Of course, that sounds outlandish and absurd, but that's the point, isn't it? We live in an age in which it's the norm to speak glowingly of spirituality but derisively of traditional religion. If the Na'Vi were Roman Catholics, there would be boycotts and protests. Make the oversized Smurfs Rousseauian noble savages and everyone nods along, save for a few cranky right-wingers...
But what I find interesting about the film is how what is "pleasing to the most people" is so unapologetically religious.
If one knows there history, marriage was created by God. The act of joining people through a "holy matrimony" was ordained through God's word and carried out by the church. So... if a gay couple believes in God, why would they want to go against their God's word. (this would be like passing a law that allows theft) If a gay couple does not believe in God, why would they want to take part in a sacred (holy) union created by one they do not believe in. (with civil union, there are no additional benefits, unless the benefit is the rewards of acting like believers, or going against God and believing they win)
LOOK AT (IN GOD WE TRUST)ALL THE MONEY YOU SPEND, FOOL ! GOD IS OUR LORD AND ONLY SAVIOR AND I SUGGEST YOU PICK UP A BIBLE AND READ IT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. I'LLBE PRAYING FOR YOU. CINDY CLAY IN WILDOMAR CA.
These kind of attacks are happening more frequently. If the hatred is not by teens with guns, who hate Christians, the hatred is is then being displayed by teachers that hate Christians. I debate atheists and evolutionists all the time on the internet, and the hatred is clearly there, and it's getting worse. Good for you Chad. I'm backing you all the way. If you're on MySpace, I'd like to add you on my DarwinsMyth profile as a friend. Doesn't anyone else see the connection between God being kicked out of the public schools, and the increase in school violence? Bias teachers like Corbett only add to the problem.
[Regarding the movie "I Am Michael" about gay-activist-turned-"ex-gay" Michael Glatze]
The film has one big lesson for homosexuals: when you start a zero, you can never be less. Hope they all see this film and get inspired by it.
I wonder if Dr. Corbett bashes the Islam faith. I doubt it, he would be too scared he would get his head chopped off. If he wants to degrade a religion try doing it to one that teaches hatred. No matter whether you are a person of faith or not if people would read the Ten Commandments and live by half of them the world would be a better place. Fire this hater.
In Los Angeles County, longtime partners Diane Olson and Robin Tyler were the first and only same-sex couple to obtain a license Monday.
...
Around them were dozens of family and friends and a smattering of protesters quietly holding banners offering varying slogans, including "Homo Sex Is Sin!," but all suggesting that gay marriage invokes God's wrath.
They stood before Reform Rabbi Denise Eger, and their ceremony was both crazed and intimate...From the sidelines, a protester screamed, "Jesus Loves You!"
It seems there was 1 candid honest student post. "" I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. With the "Bush Is A Terrorist" posters around his room, and his propaganda filled lectures,"" The other alleged students are already brainwashed and indoctrinated in far Left radicalism. Those posts eerily sound like they they were all made by the same person OR a Robotic Clone. Did some one dictate what to say? Perhaps the teacher himself posted at least a few f those in favor of himself. Out schools are full of far left radical Socialist, Marxists and far left Liberals.
my two teens have taken ap euro and i have read their books. it is comprised of opinions/studies by academia and is typical of ivory towered professors..the "chiristian version" is factual and a public school teacher's anti christian opinions should be kept in check while he opines in front of a captured audience...bottom line..honors classes are the latest trend in hs...and the teachers in these classes are frustrated college teacher wannabees... those that disagree are the same bozos that insist on cancelling "christmas" themed events at public schools.. you can't have your cake and eat it too... m. antoinette..
California 1879, Preamble We, the People of the State of California , grateful to Almighty God for our freedom... All other states have similar preambles. The USA is definately founded on Christain beliefs as there is no freedom apart from God.
L.A. neighborhood stunned by sledgehammer attacks on Buddha statue. 'We're not going to let this hateful activity win'
For many years, the little traffic island at Jasmine Avenue and National Boulevard in Palms was a local dumping site. [...] “Then literally, one night, a Buddha statue appeared and no one knows where it came from but the community was like, oh OK, there's a Buddha in town,” Wallach said.
[...]
All was peaceful in the Los Angeles neighborhood until one evening last month, when a man in a white sedan pulled over, got out and used a sledgehammer to decapitate the statue. Wallach said two people witnessed the incident but were unable to write down a license plate number.
“He was heard yelling about Al Qaeda and Muslim extremism and things of that nature,” he said. “I think this gentleman is a little confused and obviously a little violent. It's important we find him, educate him and help him.”
[...]
Residents responded by leaving more flowers at the statue. At least one person left a large laminated card with a Buddha quote and urged readers to “please be kind to the Buddha.”
Councilman Paul Koretz, whose district includes Palms, visited the damaged Buddha as a show of support for the community. Wallach said the vandalism was also reported to the Los Angeles Police Department. A senior lead officer for the area could not be reached for comment Tuesday morning.
Eventually, a new Buddha statue was placed at the traffic island. The statue was untouched for a couple of days until last week, when the vandal returned. Because the statue’s head had been reinforced with a metal bar, the man had to make more than one trip to destroy it, Wallach said.
“He just had to pound it a lot but didn't get far, so he returned a night later and on the third time he really went to town and bashed in the face,” he said.
A resident printed a picture of the Buddha’s face and placed it on the statue, Wallach said. The vandal returned a fourth time and nearly decapitated it again. Photos taken over a period of days show the statue’s gradual destruction, as well as flowers and notes of support for the statue. Wallach said there’s an effort to raise $5,000 to replace the damaged Buddha, this time with a metal statue that will include a rock garden and video cameras.
[...]
“We're not going to let this hateful activity win,” Wallach said.
For the nuts who think Christianity is the basis of all evil, if not for Christianity, there would be very few hospitals, schools, and charities. Truth hurts. Who would have created those? Atheists. Yeah, right.
As millions protest systemic racism, Californians could soon have chance to restore affirmative action
The Black Lives Matter movement, galvanized by the police killing of George Floyd, is propelling the once volatile issue of affirmative action onto the November ballot. California voters will likely again be asked, as they were a generation ago, to answer this question: Is affirmative action necessary to attack racial and gender discrimination — or is it itself discriminatory?
The legislation, ACA 5, would repeal Proposition 209, a citizens’ initiative that was approved by a comfortable 9-percentage-point margin after a bitterly fought campaign in 1996.
This was the text of Proposition 209:
“The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the base of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”
But that was 24 years ago. Proposition 209 opponents see a window this year to restore affirmative action in public university admissions, hiring and contracting.
ACA 5 is “going to be awfully tough to beat,” says Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), an outspoken supporter, referring not only to its prospects in the Legislature but on the ballot. Gonzalez, chairwoman of the Legislative Latino Caucus, recently tweeted this strong message to other lawmakers: “I don’t want to see a single one of my fellow legislators post about #blacklivesmatter but not vote on #ACA5…. Black lives matter in government contracting and college admissions, too.”
Both legislative leaders — Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) and Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) — are pushing the proposal.
“I absolutely support giving California voters the opportunity to right this historical wrong,” Atkins emailed me.
The Assembly overwhelmingly passed the measure Wednesday, 60-14, and sent it to the Senate. Representatives of the Black, Latino, women’s, Jewish and LGBTQ caucuses all advocated its passage, denouncing Proposition 209. Weber contended Proposition 209 has “deprived women and people of color of a level playing field” and fostered racial inequality.
Like some other Asian Americans, Assemblyman Steven Choi (R-Irvine) supports 209 and opposes ACA 5.
“Is it right to earn a job just because you’re white or Black or yellow?” Choi asked during the Assembly debate. “We’re talking about legalizing racism and sexism… I came to this country to get away from reasoning like that.”
The chief defender of 209 is retired Sacramento land use consultant Ward Connerly, who is Black. He orchestrated its passage in 1996.
“When you treat people differently based on their race, that’s a racial preference,” Connerly says.
This very likely will be a hot item on the November ballot. Let’s hope it doesn’t stir up ugly politics this time.
Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, an author and self-help guru who will appear on the Democratic debate stage next week, apologized Wednesday night after she attacked mandatory vaccinations as “draconian” and “Orwellian” at a Manchester, N.H., event.
“To me, it’s no different than the abortion debate,” Williamson said at the event, according to a tweet from an NBC News reporter. “The U.S. government doesn’t tell any citizen, in my book, what they have to do with their body or their child.”
After a request for comment from the Los Angeles Times, Williamson acknowledged making the remarks and said she misspoke.
“I understand that many vaccines are important and save lives,” Williamson said. “I also understand some of the skepticism that abounds today about drugs which are rushed to market by Big Pharma. I am sorry that I made comments which sounded as though I question the validity of life-saving vaccines. That is not my feeling and I realize that I misspoke.”
When asked about her stance on religious and personal belief exemptions for vaccinations, Williamson replied through a spokeswoman: “I support vaccines. Public safety must be carefully balanced with the right of individuals to make their own decisions.”
Some states around the U.S., including California, have been debating tightening vaccination requirements for children after low vaccination rates have led to measles outbreaks. The drops in vaccinations have been tied to scientifically disproved beliefs that the shots cause autism.
Williamson has a history of skeptical comments about vaccinations.
“I understand the controversial aspects of vaccinations, and I share many of the concerns,” Williamson wrote in a vague 2011 post on her Facebook page, in which she said she “took down those posts” regarding the issue. “The issue isn’t black and white.”
The same month, school officials in Garden Grove were alerted to a group of Pacifica High School students raising the Nazi salute while singing a Nazi marching song at an off-campus athletic event.
Pacifica High administrators kept their situation quiet — which worked until this week, when the months-old recorded Snapchat video exploded online after it was sent to the Daily Beast.
Since Monday, Garden Grove Unified School District officials have learned of other videos and multiple allegations of students engaged in hate speech. The district has opened an investigation.
The students’ motivation and identities are unclear. But the images in Newport and Garden Grove reflect both a rise in such incidents nationwide and a conflict more specific to Orange County: tension between a rapidly diversifying populace and racist elements deeply seated in its history.
[...]
The eight-second video from Garden Grove shows about a dozen Pacifica High school boys standing in what appears to be a banquet room giving the stiff-armed salute used in Nazi Germany, as the song “Erika,” written by German composer Herms Niel during Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power, plays in the background. At least one of the boys appears to sing the lyrics. One boy gets up and leaves, and another quickly drops his arm and sits down.
The video, taken before the start of an athletics banquet in November 2018, was originally shared among a small group of students on Snapchat. High school administrators learned of the video four months later and addressed the situation internally with the students appearing in the video and their families, Garden Grove Unified spokeswoman Abby Broyles said. School district officials did not know about the video until it surfaced Monday.
The students involved were disciplined, but officials declined to discuss the consequences they faced.
Since Monday, several other videos showing students engaged in hate speech have surfaced. Those videos and the initial one, Broyles said, will be investigated.
[...]
Although the students have not been identified by school officials, Osborne described allegations that they are water polo team members as “misinformation.”
Boy, 16, was given estrogen for behavioral disorder while in L.A. juvenile hall, suit alleges
A 16-year-old boy being held at a Los Angeles County juvenile hall developed enlarged breasts after he was prescribed estrogen to treat a behavioral disorder, a move that baffled doctors who said the treatment defied medical logic, according to a lawsuit filed last month.
The teen, whose identity is being withheld because of his age, was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, or ODD, two days after he was arrested and housed at Eastlake Juvenile Hall in June 2019, the lawsuit said. Medical records reviewed by The Times show that the teen’s testosterone levels were “slightly high” when the doctor who diagnosed him prescribed daily doses of estrogen.
After taking approximately 13 daily doses of the hormone, the teen was diagnosed with gynecomastia, defined as the enlargement or swelling of breast tissue in males whose estrogen level is too high, medical records show.
ODD, a behavioral condition that is sometimes suffered by patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is normally treated with therapy, said James McGough, a professor of clinical psychiatry at UCLA.
“Estrogen is not a treatment for ODD. I can’t be more emphatic about that,” McGough said. “You won’t find a reference anywhere that supports the use of estrogen for ODD.”
The lawsuit described the treatment as “experimental.” The doctor who prescribed the estrogen, Danny Wang, could not be reached for comment.
Probation officials and the teen’s attorney, Wesley Ouchi, declined to say why he was in custody. Ouchi said the boy, now 17, was released in April and will require surgery to treat the physical issues he developed as a result of the estrogen treatment.
Wang prescribed a daily regimen of 2 milligrams of estrogen to be taken in pill form, according to medical records. The boy’s parents were not aware that he had been diagnosed with ODD or was undergoing treatment until late July 2019. Doctors said the treatments should not have been carried out without the parents’ consent.
“When I found out they were giving him the pill, I was like, why didn’t they ask me? When I found out what kind of pill was it, I was like, this is terrible,” the father said. “He’s only 16, and they were forcing him to take it.”
The father said he later confronted Oh, the medical director, over the phone. Oh admitted that Wang had made “a mistake,” the father said. The health services representative declined to comment on Oh’s alleged remark due to the ongoing litigation.
The treatments stopped last July, after the teen began to complain of negative side effects and refused medication, records show. Prior to that, Ouchi said, his client felt compelled to take the pills because he feared that disobeying Wang would have a detrimental effect on his pending criminal case.
Ouchi also alleges the boy was bullied by other youths in custody once his gynecomastia symptoms developed.
“As a teenager, he felt self-conscious already,” Ouchi said. “Going through these changes made it a lot more traumatic for him.”
Sara Coffey, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Oklahoma State University, said ODD is normally diagnosed in children between the ages of 6 and 12. Children diagnosed with the disorder often struggle with authority, in school or in social settings. Common treatments include family therapy or medications that have had success in aiding juveniles with ADHD, including Ritalin and Adderall.
Using hormones to treat ODD might actually worsen the situation, Coffey said.
“The other concern I have, as a psychiatrist, is that we know hormones play a role in mood,” she said. “If his mood got disrupted, that could only further complicate things.”
The boy’s father said the hormone therapy has had a long-term effect on his son, who now scares easily and has become antisocial.
“He’s like a different person. He just wants to be in his room, and he don’t come out for nothing, all day in his room,” the father said. “He was never like that.”