Relying on text messages between Jackie and one of her closest friends at the time, Eramo’s lawyers argue that Jackie not only fabricated the account of her alleged sexual assault but also created the false persona of her perpetrator, whom she repeatedly identified to her friend as Haven Monahan. Charlottesville police said that no one by that name ever attended U-Va., and extensive efforts to find the person were not successful.
Also, photographs that were texted to one of Jackie’s friends showing the alleged attacker were actually pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a student at a university in another state, confirmed to The Post that the photographs were of him and said he barely knew Jackie and hadn’t been to Charlottesville for many years.
“All available evidence suggests that ‘Haven Monahan’ was a figment of Jackie’s imagination,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in court documents.
Ryan Duffin, who was a U-Va. freshman in 2012 when he came to Jackie’s aid that September night, said in an interview Thursday that he no longer finds much credence in Jackie’s account. She wrote in texts to him that “Haven” had stopped by to apologize to her after the attack and that the attacker had dropped out of school days later; Duffin contemporaneously questioned the account, according to the texts, after students could find no evidence there was ever such a person at U-Va.
“It makes the most logical sense to say that it was fabricated,” said Duffin, who provided hundreds of text messages for the case under subpoena. Duffin said that he read through the messages he sent to Jackie and received from “Haven Monahan” before handing the documents over.
“It was strangely emotional, but I think for all of the wrong reasons,” Duffin said. “For realizing that we probably got duped, and it’s not a good feeling to have.”
Posted inJournalism, Rape|Comments Off on This is the best newspaper in America and it keeps getting better
Is the desire to be a white a delusion produced by capitalism? Or are businessmen tapping into a basic human drive?
From the perspective of Torah text, black is not beautiful while fair skin does equate with beauty.
(CNN) It’s hard to imagine anything more blatant than this.
A new Thai beauty ad claiming white skin is the key to success has unleashed a storm of criticism in Thailand, especially online, where people complain the ad perpetuates damaging, racist ideas.
“Just being white, you will win,” says Cris Horwang, a smiling pale-skinned actress, in the 50-second spot by Seoul Secret, a Thai beauty company.
Without the advertised pill, “the whiteness I have invested in, will just vanish,” she warns.
On screen, the actress’ expression turns despondent as her skin is digitally altered to turn black.
Horwang promises that the product, called Snowz, “will help you not to return to being dark.”
“Eternally white, I am confident,” she adds.
On Friday evening, Seoul Secret pulled the video from its online platforms and issued a statement.
“(We) would like to apologize for the mistake and claim full responsibility for this incident. Our company did not have any intention to convey discriminatory or racist messages,” it said.
“What we intended to convey was that self-improvement in terms of personality, appearance, skills, and professionality (sic) is crucial.”
Washington Post: A televised commercial in Thailand for a skin-whitening product stirred controversy and was eventually withdrawn after a backlash against its perceived racism.
The commercial for Thai cosmetics firm Seoul Secret featured a popular model and singer talking about the merits of having light-colored skin.
“Before I got to this point, the competition was very high,” says Cris Horwang, who is also an Instagram celebrity with some 2 million followers. “If I stop taking care of myself, everything I have worked for, the whiteness I have invested in, may be lost,” she says, according to a translation published by the Guardian.
“The new kids will replace me, will make me a faded star,” says the actress, standing alongside another light-skinned woman. Her own skin then steadily turns darker.
“White makes you win,” intones the video’s narrator, adding that the product, “Snowz,” has special compounds that will help “you not return to black.”
The commercial precipitated a heated response on Thai social media and online forums. The BBC cites one commenter on the Thai-language forum Pantip.com: “I’m perfectly fine being dark-skinned, and now you’re saying I’ve lost? Hello? What?”
“Suggesting people with dark skin are losers is definitely racist,” concludes another.
What’s particularly striking about the commercial is the starkness of its message: “White makes you win.”
Across Asia, from India to Japan, skin-whitening products are huge business. In spite of the diversity of the continent — where a majority of the world’s population lives — anachronistic attitudes surrounding the virtues of fair skin still prevail. Myriad Asian celebrities, including some who otherwise cast themselves as sometimes progressive figures, appear in ads for these skin-whitening products.
A few years back, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan attracted opprobrium in India for continuing to be the face of a product known as “Fair and Lovely.”
“Such irresponsible advertising propagates discrimination among men, women— and even children,” read an online petition at the time.
In a Facebook post that followed the outrage, Seoul Secret offered this somewhat bewildering apology for its crass white vs. black advertisement: “Our company did not have any intention to convey discriminatory or racist messages. What we intended to convey was that self-improvement in terms of personality, appearance, skills and professionality is crucial.”
“Those who are incapable of attaining to supreme religious values include the black coloured people and those who resemble them in their climates. Their nature is like the mute animals. Their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey.” (Maimonides, Guide To The Perplexed, Translation from the Hebrew Version)
In defense of Maimonides, he lived at a time (circa 1200 CE) when such views were common among “civilized” people, and he is not quoting the Torah to back up his claim, meaning his opinion is his own and is not rooted in any Jewish tradition.
Still, it is disturbing that a sage of his caliber would fall prey to such stupidity – stupidity that appears to be anti-Torah.
Posted inBlacks, Whites|Comments Off on Thai beauty ad: ‘Just being white, you will win’
Cruz, 43, grew up in San Luis Obispo, Calif., the daughter of a dentist and dental hygienist who are Seventh-day Adventists.
When she was 5, Heidi’s parents signed her up for piano lessons, and she insisted on practicing an hour and sometimes two each night. At age 8, when her parents first enrolled her in school, a family trip to Washington sparked an interest in politics. By fifth grade, Heidi announced she wanted to go to Harvard Business School.
“I don’t even know how she knew about Harvard Business School. It wasn’t in our world at all,” her mother, Suzanne Nelson, said in an interview. “A good word to describe her is ‘driven.’ I don’t really know what has made her so driven.”
She attended high school at Monterey Bay Academy, an Adventist school in Northern California with a mile-long private beach and strict rules about curfews and interactions between boys and girls. Heidi Nelson was preppy, popular and always studying.
One year, she ran for student body president. Her campaign poster read, “Heidi Nelson, the auspicious choice,” according to classmate Travis Romero.
“I asked her, ‘Nobody knows what the word auspicious is,’ ” Romero said. “She said, ‘Isn’t that great? You get an extra word for your SATs.’”
Despite the slogan, Cruz lost. Romero said he endearingly thought of Cruz when he watched the movie “Election,” in which Reese Witherspoon plays an overachieving student running for class president.
Cruz went to Claremont McKenna College and was active in the college Republicans and interested in appointive political office, said her mentor, Edward Haley. She also was intent on a career in business first. She moved to New York after graduation and worked on emerging markets at J.P. Morgan, an area in which she was interested after spending summers in Africa doing missionary work with her parents. She was put on the Latin America desk and taught herself to speak Spanish between 18-hour work days.
Cruz achieved her dream of attending Harvard Business School but turned down a job at Goldman Sachs to work on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. She told the New York Times in 2001 that she had just broken up with a boyfriend of two years. She planned to “forget boys” and “kill myself on the campaign.”
Posted inAdventist|Comments Off on There was nothing wrong with Ted Cruz that a good Seventh-Day Adventist woman couldn’t fix
A genocide against us is unfathomable and should not be examined with normal academic methods. We are beyond examination. Our suffering is special, mystical, divine. Other genocides are explainable. But we are special.
“It’s probably inevitable — the process of ‘normalizing’ Hitler into just another tyrant, whose words are to be parsed and contextualized,” said Ron Rosenbaum, the author of “Explaining Hitler,” considered one of the definitive examinations of the Nazi dictator’s mind. “Nonetheless, it feels deeply disturbing, especially when Hitler’s image has returned in hate rallies around the world.”
Jewish groups in Germany have been split over the publication. The Central Council of Jews in Germany, which has long warned against further publication of the original work, welcomed the critical edition on Friday as an effort to counter anti-Semitism by placing Hitler’s ideas in historical context. But the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany called for an absolute ban on any new editions.
“For many survivors, a new publication is a fresh slap in the face that damages Germany’s international reputation,” said Rüdiger Mahlo, the German representative of the claims conference. “Such irrational racist slogans should not be spread anywhere, least of all in Germany.”
The introduction to the new edition describes Hitler’s writing as “half-baked, incoherent and difficult to read,” partly because of the many grammatical errors. It goes on to examine how the work laid out the four ideas on which Hitler based his worldview and that later formed the basis of Nazi ideology: race, space, violence and dictatorship.
I suspect most peoples have a similarly strong sense of peoplehood, space, violence and leadership. The Torah certainly outlines these principles for Israel. Jews are to be a people apart and should stay away from the unclean and idolatrous goyim. Jews need their sacred space — the land of Israel. They are commanded by God to commit genocide against the original inhabitants of Israel. And they are to be ruled by a king or by Torah scholars. That’s a dictatorship.
Posted inAdolf Hitler, Holocaust|Comments Off on Ron Rosenbaum Disturbed By Rational Examination Of Adolf Hitler
News: A Steelton man was arrested on Tuesday after police said they found the home he lived in with his 11 children was full of trash, feces, flies, raw meat and more.
Tyree R. Fluellen, 29, was arrested Tuesday on a warrant issued during the summer after officers and Dauphin County Children and Youth Services made the discovery in the home in the 500 block of North Second Street.
Officers found maggots overflowing in trash cans inside the home, police said. And both the toilets and bathtubs in the home were filled with feces.
Six of the children living in the house contracted Shigella, a bacteria that causes diarrhea and can be present when multiple persons live in close quarters with poor sanitation, according to police.
Fluellen has been charged with six counts of aggravated assault and 11 counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
Posted inAbuse, Blacks, Crime|Comments Off on ‘Black male kept his 11 kids living in home filled with feces, maggots, raw meat.’
News: BUFFALO, N.Y. – Three teens from Buffalo have plead guilty to gang raping an 18-year-old woman back in 2014.
Daqwan Morris, 19, plead guilty to rape and criminal sexual act, both in the first degree. Shameek Young, 18, plead guilty to rape and three counts of criminal sexual act. Paul Brown, 18, admitted to rape in the first degree.
Two other men, Dequan Rosenthal and Cornelius Caddele plead guilty for their role in the rape.
According to the Erie County District Attorney’s office, Morris invited the victim to his house in the summer of 2014. Once she arrived, Morris and Rosetnhal overpowered the victim, and then raped and sodomized her. The suspects kept the victim in a third floor attic for nearly four hours while each took turns raping and sodomizing her. Officials say the men recorded the crimes on a cellphone and shared the video on Facebook and Twitter. Investigators were able to obtain the phone, with video of the crimes still on it, from a local attorney, after a judge ordered the attorney to turn over the cellphone.
“Rape is a crime of secrecy and cowardice. Thanks to the courage and strength of the victim, and a methodical and unrelenting police investigation, we succeeded in bringing all of the perpetrators to justice,” says Michael J. Flaherty, Jr., acting Erie County District Attorney in a press release.
Morris and Young face a maximum prison sentence of 40 years in prison when they are sentenced next month. Brown faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.
Posted inBlacks, Crime|Comments Off on ‘Black youths plead guilty to gang-raping woman in Buffalo.’
News: MOORESVILLE, NC (WBTV) – An employee at an assisted living facility in Mooresville was arrested Tuesday and charged with multiple counts of rape against a resident.
Ernest McDonald Beatty, Jr is charged with three counts of second-degree rape and one count of second-degree sexual offense.
Police say the charges involve the assault of a female resident in her early 60s at Crown Colony Assisted Living, on Commercial Drive in Mooresville. Officials said staff called police to report the assault.
Investigators said Beatty was an employee and licensed Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) at the facility.
Iredell County DSS Adult Protective Services was called to help with the investigation.
WBTV contacted Crown Colony Assisted Living Tuesday night, but management declined comment.
Beatty is being held in the Iredell County Jail on a $300,000 bond.
Posted inBlacks, Crime|Comments Off on ‘Black employee repeatedly raped resident at assisted living facility.’
News: A 5-year-old girl was sexually assaulted while her mother was prostituting herself in the next room at a Pleasant Grove home, police said today.
The mother is now charged, as is the convicted sex offender police say assaulted the young girl.
Pleasant Grove investigators launched their probe in December after family members of the girl told them she had reported being inappropriately touched, said Lt. Danny Reid. Family initially reported the incident to Birmingham police, but investigators later determined it happened in Pleasant Grove.
They picked up the mother, a 34-year-old Birmingham woman, and she showed them the house where the assault happened. AL.com is not naming the mother, even though she is charged, because to do so would identify the young victim.
She admitted she was “turning tricks” and had her daughter with her. The incident happened Dec. 8.
Reid said there were two men at the home. While the mother was in one room with a man, another man was sodomizing the girl. According to court records, the mother heard her daughter crying and went to check on her and found the assault in progress. She failed to report it to authorities.
Posted inAbuse, Blacks, Crime|Comments Off on ‘Child sodomized while mom was prostituting herself in the next room.’
