Though there is some debate about whether or not Kathryn Johnston was 88 or 92 years old. There is one thing that can’t be debated — she died needlessly at the hands of police.

Ms. Johnston was killed in an encounter with police on Novemember 21st. On that day, police officers, in plain clothes and executing a “no-knock” warrant, burst into Johnston’s home. Johnston, at home alone, allegedly fired at the intruders, wounding three police officers. The police then gunned her down.

The story gets even more strange…

According to the police, Johnston was not the target of the warrant. Instead, the officers said they were looking for a large black man named “Sam” who supposedly sold drugs out of that address. According to the affadavit, this raid should have yielded computers, money, cocaine and other equipment. None of this was found. Instead, the best they could come up with was a small bag of marijauana.

Also, the police do not appear to have done any surveillance on the house prior to the raid. Instead, all this was done based on suspicion from a supposed buy an officer made the day prior to the raid.

Finally, the informant that the police say gave them the name of the suspected dealer has come forward to say that no “Sam” ever existed and this was lie that the police put him up to telling this story to cover their tracks. Relatives say that no one besides Johnston lived in that home.

Now, it has come out that the FBI will be probing this killing.

While I don’t have a great deal of faith in them, either, I trust them to do an investigation over the police department whose officers were involved in the shooting.

Once again, we find a black person dying at the hands of police under very suspicious circumstances. We need to really stay on top of this because this has implications far beyond Atlanta.

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Perhaps people who think like radio host Michael Savage only exacerbate an already testy situatation.

I have found that, in this country, too many people don’t exercise common sense or do any research for themselves in order to understand the world around them. Instead, they operate in narrowminded hate and fear because it’s intellectually-comforting and convenient to do so.

This brings me to Michael Savage and his loyal followers. In regards to the deplaning and detention of 6 Muslim imams in an airport last week (for praying, of all things), rather than say nothing and be thought a fool, he opens his mouth and removes all doubt.

Basically, he calls for making the construction of mosques in the U.S. and the speaking of anything but English in public, illegal. This is just the tip of his stupidity. Here’s more in the clip below:

 

 Michael Savage Anti-Islam rant [2:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 49% [?]

Though it has been nearly a year since the death of Martin Lee Anderson at the hands of Florida boot camp guards, no one has been charged in his death…until now. Yesterday, seven former boot camp guards and one nurse were charged with aggravated manslaughter for this killing.

The nurse was charged because she stood by and watch the whole incident, without interceding or immediately providing him with medical attention.

If convicted, each faces up to 30 years in prison.

The original autopsy report stated he died of the sickle cell “trait” (not the disease), which would have made him the first person in medical history to do so.

A second autopsy found that he died of suffocation at the hands of the guards:

He (the coroner) said the guards’ hands blocked the boy’s mouth, and the “forced inhalation of ammonia fumes” (from ammonia pills the guards used to put him under control) caused his vocal cords to spasm, blocking his upper airway.

The Andserson family has filed a $40 million lawsuit against the Department of Juvenile Justice, which oversaw the boot camp system, and the Bay County Sheriff’s Office, which ran the camp.

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Today, I feel the same as Nicole Paultre in regards to the NYPD officers who killed her fiance and father of her child, Sean Bell, on the day they were to be wed: I believe they may be murderers, also.

Paultre, in a interview on hip-hop radio station Power 105.1 said: “They were murderers, murderers…They were not officers. No one gives anyone the right to kill somebody.”

Bell and two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were driving home at 4am from a Queens strip club, where they were celebrating Bell’s bachelor party.

According to police, they say an argument outside the club sparked the suspicion of an undercover officer in the club who said a member of Bell’s party referred to going to get a gun.

Here’s more from the article:

An undercover officer walked closely behind Bell and his friends as they headed for their car. As he walked toward the front of the vehicle, Bell and his friend drove forward — striking him and an undercover police vehicle, Kelly said.

The officer who had followed the group on foot was apparently the first to open fire, Kelly said.

One 12-year veteran fired his weapon 31 times, emptying two full magazines, Kelly said.

The end result: Bell was killed, Guzman is in critical condition after being hit 11 times and Benefield was hit 3 times but is in good condition and telling his side of the story, which includes the assertion that the undercover officer never identified himself. Oh, by the way, these three men were unarmed.

Okay, here’s some questions I have. There’s an undercover officer in a undercover vehicle at 4am in a spot that police say was not the most savory. Do you think that they might have been spooked thinking that this was some random person trying to kill them? Did the officer even identify himself? Hell, I might have hit somebody if I thought they were trying to take my life.

In the end, a young woman, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, has lost her fiance and a child has lost her father. Perhaps, justice will come but, given the NYPD track record, I don’t hold out hope.

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Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is now telling the world, “Who are you going to believe? Me…or your lying eyes?”

In a genocide where estimates of death range between 200,000 to 400,000+, Bashir says that the actual number of deaths is only around 9,000 and is rejecting a U.N. security council’s resolution to send in 22,500 U.N. troops to take over from the 7,000 African Union troops already in the region.

Bashir is also saying that the aid workers in region are lying about the level of violence in order to keep their jobs there and that the refugee camps in which an estimated 2,000,000 Darfurians find themselves in after having to flee their homes are “perfectly safe”.

I am always amazed at how people in high authority can lie even when the facts point in the totally opposite direction. I can only hope that Bashir’s days in office are numbered.

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I can admit when I’ve been had.

A little over a week ago, I posted a story about Mike Tyson’s plans to become a male prostitute. Supposedly, he was to work at a brothel in Nevada that will be opened by the infamous “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss.

However, according to Fleiss’ publicist, the entire story is a hoax.

So, apologies to Iron Mike. I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Popularity: 34% [?]

The Janjaweed militias, as you know, are primary actors in the genocide going on in Sudan. It is estimated that these militias have killed between 200,000 to 400,000+ Darfurians. If one can’t imagine it, think of everyone inside the city limits of Cincinnati, Ohio being killed. The Janjaweed have also displaced about 2,000,000 people and have raped girls as young as eight years old.

This has all gone on with the blessing and support of the Sudanese government who want the region for both the land leases/rights it could sell to interested bidders and for the oil beneath the land. With riches in the equation, the lives that will be sacrificed to attain them seemingly matter little.

Now, as the eyes of the world focus on Sudan’s government more and more, the Sudanese government has supposedly stop funding and supporting the Janjaweed. However,somebody in Sudan’s government is calling these claims false.

Minni Minnawi, a former rebel leader and current advisor to the Sudanese president, says that the government is still backing the Janjaweed and is calling on his government to desist.

Six months ago, Minnawi was the only rebel leader to sign a peace accord with the government. It appears that he may be regretting that decision as he sees the government does not seem to be interested in ending the genocide and, in fact, has actually made the Janjaweed even more powerful, not less.

It’s a shame. As we continue to was lives and resources in Iraq, just think of the real good we could be doing to help stop a genocide.

Popularity: 26% [?]

If you haven’t seen this video yet, it’s worth a view. It’s Paul Mooney being asked his take on the Michael Richards incident. However, what’s more funny is how he nails the interviewer.

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This may sound funny coming from me but, I sometimes get tired of the call to discuss race after some big racial blowup occurs. In my lifetime, I have seen this call being made after things like the Rodney King incident and subsequent L.A. riots, during the O.J. Simpson trial and verdict, the Abner Louima assault, the Amadou Diallo killing, etcetera, etcetera.

The point is that, for longer than I have been alive, there has been a call to “start” the dialogue on race. At this point, my cynicism says that no substantive discussion on race is going to occur any time soon.

Now, in light of the Michael “Kramer” Richards racist outburst, calls are coming from many corners to “talk about race”.

So, while I appreciate the call, I have to say that I fear that common-sense desires to have a real national discussion on race will still go unfulfilled. However, one did catch my eye so, I’ll highlight it.

If you’re just back from Thanksgiving in Antarctica, let me be the first to tell you that Michael Richards, the actor best known as Cosmo Kramer from “Seinfeld,” let loose a racist tirade on a couple of hecklers at the Laugh Factory in L.A. two Fridays ago. If, like me, you’ve watched this story from the beginning (and really, how could you not—it swept TomKat’s wedding right off the 24-hour-news screens and dominated the blogosphere), then you already know that the spin cycle has begun. Richards apologized on “Letterman,” hired a top PR man and apologized again, this time to the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. By the time you read this, he’ll probably have been booked on “Oprah” or “Good Morning America.” Perhaps he’ll have positioned himself as a victim and checked into rehab. Forgive my cynicism, but we’re in a well-worn groove here.

I was not shocked by Richards’s outburst, and I don’t believe many other African-Americans were, either. We know racism exists both from our own experiences and from the world around us. In California, Mel Gibson was caught in a drunken anti-Semitic rant during a police stop just four months ago. In Virginia, George Allen helped the Republicans lose the Senate when he called one of his opponent’s staffers—a young volunteer of Indian descent—a “macaca,” which is a genus of monkey and is considered by many to be a racial slur. In Tennessee, an anti-Harold Ford Jr. ad featuring a blonde white woman leeringly saying “Harold, call me” was widely seen as racist.

The sweeping story of race in America is, to say the very least, not a happy one. The politics of black and white really began nearly 400 years ago, when, in 1619, Virginia settlers took delivery of slaves from a Dutch man-of-war. In 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln, who did not run as an abolitionist, barely won the presidency, America had 4 million slaves. A century later the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts finally defeated Jim Crow—or at least got the Jim Crow laws off the books. Hearts were (and are) another matter. In 1992, L.A. burned; two weeks ago Michigan voted to ban affirmative action in public employment and in education and state contracts.

Read on and take it in. But, I am afraid that more effort went into the writing of this piece than will go into us, as a nation, addressing the issue.

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When the Democrats take over in January, they have a long list of items to address. However, one glaring item in my book is what they need to do for Black America.

With black congresspeople in charge of key committees, the hope is that issues of particular concern to black America will receive more attention. However, as we know, just having a black face in the mix does not necessarily translate into black issues being addressed.

Black lawmakers are likely to lead key committees in the new, Democrat-led House, and that means issues such as Hurricane Katrina relief, hate crimes and voting problems are likely to get much more attention.

“Within the Congress, their influence went from about a one to a nine,” said David Bositis, who analyzes black politics for the Joint Center for Economic Studies in Washington. “This is by far the peak — ever — for the Congressional Black Caucus.” Members of the group may head as many as five prominent House committees and 17 subcommittees.

With the Democratic majorities slim in the House and slimmer in the Senate, National Urban League President Marc H. Morial cautioned that turning talk into legislation will be tough. And Bositis noted that President Bush “can veto whatever the Democrats do.”

We’ll see how things shake out. Honestly, I have my doubts but, for their survival, Democrats better start addreesing these concerns.

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