Cub Scout utensil gets boy, 6, school suspension

First-grader brought it to eat his lunch with; now he’s facing reform school

TODAYShow.com | Oct 13, 2009

By Mike Celizic

A combination fork, knife, spoon and bottle opener is Zachary Christie’s favorite utensil — but it got him in trouble at school. Photo: TODAY

Dressed in a button-down shirt and tie and speaking calmly and articulately, first-grader Zachary Christie hardly looks or acts like the sort of kid who should be spending 45 days in reform school. But, thanks to a zero-tolerance policy, that’s where Zachary’s Delaware school system wants him to go after he made the mistake of taking his favorite camping utensil to school.

A Swiss Army-type combination of fork, spoon, bottle opener and knife, the tool has been Zachary’s favorite ever since he got it to take on Cub Scout camping expeditions. “He eats dinner with it, breakfast and everything else, so it never occurred to him that this would have been something wrong to do,” the 6-year-old’s mother, Debbie Christie, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Tuesday from Newark, Del.

‘Can I have that?’

Zachary, an A student who sometimes wears a shirt and tie to school just because he likes to, told Vieira he put the tool in his pocket on Sept. 29 for a very simple reason: “To eat lunch with. I had absolutely no idea this was going to happen. I wasn’t thinking about this. I was thinking about having lunch with it.”

But when the tool fell out of his pocket on the bus and he walked off the vehicle with it in his hand, a teacher intercepted him. “She said, ‘Can I have that?’ ” Zachary recalled.

What Zachary didn’t realize was that he had fallen afoul of the Christina School District’s zero-tolerance policy toward weapons in school, one of many such policies implemented in the wake of such incidents as the Columbine High School massacre. The policy does not allow teachers or administrators to take into account intentions or the character of the student; if a student has a knife, suspension and subsequent assignment to the district’s “alternative placement school” — aka reform school — is mandatory.

Racial issue

Christina, which, according to its Web site, is the largest school district in Delaware with some 17,000 students, made its policy zero-tolerance because of concerns over racial discrimination. Studies have shown in other districts that when school officials are given discretion over such cases, African-American students are disciplined at a disproportionately high rate.

“The idea was to avoid discriminating against any student and to treat all students the same,” George Evans, president of the Christina school board, told NBC News.

While some experts favor such zero-tolerance policies, others question their efficacy, saying there is no indication that they cut down on violent incidents in schools. One of them, national school safety consultant Kenneth Trump, told NBC News, “The school administrators have to be able to administer consequences and still have some discretion to fit the totality of the circumstances.”

The totality of Zachary’s circumstances was that he had no idea that it was wrong to take his favorite camping tool to class. When the teacher asked for it when he got off the bus, he handed it over, unaware that he was already in serious trouble. He went to class while his principal called his mother.

“She said that I needed to come to the school immediately; that Zachary had brought a dangerous weapon into school, and I needed to come and pick him up. He would be suspended for five days pending a disciplinary action committee hearing. She said that he had a knife,” Christie told Vieira.

When his mother arrived at the John R. Downes Elementary School with her fiance, Lee Irving, Zachary was called from his first-grade classroom to join them.

“When they called my name up, I was like, ‘Uh-oh,’ ” he said.

Home school, not reform school

Zachary was suspended immediately for five school days. At the end of the suspension, he and his mother appeared before the district’s disciplinary action committee, where his principal and others spoke up for his good character. It didn’t matter. The committee’s hands were tied. The rules said he had brought a knife to school and would have to spend 45 days in the reform school.

Christie decided she would not send her son to that school. Instead, she has been home schooling Zachary while waiting for an opportunity to address the district’s board of education, which was to meet Tuesday night.

“I understand why they have it, but I don’t agree with the implementation of it,” Christie said of the zero-tolerance policy. “I think they need to look at the age, maturity, intent, situation; bring in the teachers who know the child or the principal, and allow them to make the first call in these situations,” she said. “Looking at other schools’ codes of conduct in the Delaware Valley, their first step would have been a suspension.”

Christie assured Vieira that her son is well aware of the necessity of not taking anything new to school without first asking and is not a threat to anyone. She hopes the school board will agree with her.

“I hope that they expunge his record and allow him to go back to Downes immediately,” she said of the board. “I think he has had an over-excess of education on this issue. I’m hoping that out of all of this the policy changes and that no other child is affected negatively by what is supposed to keep them all safe.”

Vieira asked Zachary if he’s nervous about the prospect of eventually returning to his school.

“I’m not very nervous,” Zachary said. “I like being home-schooled. It’s happy in some ways; it’s sad in some ways. Sometimes I’m strict, and sometimes I can get into my serious mode. I can get into my happy mode. It’s just kind of fun being home-schooled, but I’m not scared to go back.”

And what has he learned from everything that’s happened to him?

“To always ask before taking something new into school,” he said.

AlterNet | Sep 8, 2009

By Jonathan Cook

Israel has launched an advertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends and relatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying non-Jews.

The Israeli government has launched a television and Internet advertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends and relatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying non-Jews.

The advertisements, employing what the Israeli media described as “scare tactics,” are designed to stop assimilation through intermarriage among young Diaspora Jews by encouraging their move to Israel.

The campaign, which cost $800,000, was created in response to reports that half of all Jews outside Israel marry non-Jews. It is just one of several initiatives by the Israeli state and private organizations to try to increase the size of Israel’s Jewish population.

According to one ad, voiced over by one of the country’s leading news anchors, assimilation is “a strategic national threat,” warning: “More than 50 percent of Diaspora youth assimilate and are lost to us.”

Adam Keller, of Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, said this was a reference both to a general fear in Israel that the Jewish people may one day disappear through assimilation and to a more specific concern that, if it is to survive, Israel must recruit more Jews to its “demographic war” against Palestinians.

The issue of assimilation has been thrust into the limelight by a series of surveys over several years carried out by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a think tank established in Jerusalem in 2002 comprising leading Israeli and Diaspora officials.

The institute’s research has shown that Israel is the only country in the world with a significant Jewish population not decreasing in size. The decline elsewhere is ascribed both to low birth rates and to widespread intermarriage.

According to the institute, about half of all Jews in Western Europe and the United States assimilate by intermarrying, while the figure for the former Soviet Jewry is reported to reach 80 percent.

Israel, whose Jewish population of 5.6 million accounts for 41 percent of worldwide Jewry, has obstructed intermarriage between its Jewish and Arab citizens by refusing to recognize such marriages unless they are performed abroad.

The advertising campaign is directed particularly at Jews in the United States and Canada, whose combined 5.7 million Jews constitute the world’s largest Jewish population. Most belong to the liberal Reform stream of Judaism that, unlike Orthodoxy, does not oppose intermarriage.

One-third of Jews in the Diaspora are believed to have relatives in Israel.

According to the campaign’s organizers, more than 200 Israelis rang a hot line to report names of Jews living abroad after the first TV advertisement was run on Wednesday. Callers left details of e-mail addresses and Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The 30-second clip featured a series of missing-persons posters on street corners, in subways and on telephone boxes showing images of Jewish youths above the word “Lost” in different languages. A voiceover asks anyone who “knows a young Jew living abroad” to call the hot line: “Together, we will strengthen their connection to Israel, so that we don’t lose them.”

The campaign supports a government-backed program, Masa, that subsidizes stays and courses in Israel of up to one year in a bid to persuade Jews to immigrate and become citizens. About 8,000 Diaspora Jews attend its program each year.

The government has been trying to develop Masa alongside a rival program, Birthright Israel, which brings nearly 20,000 Diaspora youngsters to Israel each year on sponsored 10-day trips to meet Israeli soldiers and visit sites in Israel and the West Bank that are promoted as important to the Jewish people.

Although Birthright is regarded as useful in encouraging a positive image of Israel, officials fear it has only a limited effect on attracting its mainly North American participants to move to Israel. Many regard it as an all-paid holiday.

Full Story

mensnewsdaily.com | Aug 31, 2009

By Carey Roberts

Shell-shocked liberals have taken to dubbing conservatives as “Ku Klux Klan folks” and “neo-fascists” toting swastikas to town hall meetings. But ironically, turns out it’s liberals who have engaged in a century-long pas de deux with fascistic ideology.

Take Margaret Sanger – public health nurse, rabid feminist, and avowed socialist. Doing her rounds in New York City’s immigrant ghettos, she became enamored of the biological and political possibilities of birth control. A prolific writer, she churned out numerous books and articles. In Women and the New Race, Sanger ominously expounded: “no Socialist republic can operate successfully and maintain its ideals unless the practice of birth control is encouraged to a marked and efficient degree.”

Margaret Sanger regarded members of both sexes with a decidedly misanthropic disdain. Of men she wrote, “In all of the animal species below the human, motherhood has a clearly discernible superiority over fatherhood….natural law makes the female the expression and the conveyor of racial efficiency.”

Members of the female sex were equally worthy of contempt: “woman has, through her reproductive ability, founded and perpetuated the tyrannies of the Earth. Had she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively.”

In 1921 Sanger established the American Birth Control League, which later assumed the sanitized moniker Planned Parenthood. The League’s co-founder was the anti-Semite Lothrop Stoddard, who would later aver the “Jew problem [is] already settled in principle and soon to be settled in fact by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich.”

Two years later Sanger launched her notorious Birth Control Review. The journal would publish propaganda pieces like “Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need” by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s director of sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. The American counterpart to the Nazi group was the American Eugenics Society, of which Sanger was a prominent member.

In 1939 Sanger created the Negro Project with the avowed purpose of reining in the unchecked growth of the Black population. But her true intentions went beyond mere population control: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she cautioned a friend.

At that time Blacks numbered 12 million persons, representing about one-tenth of the U.S. total.

The acme of Sanger’s career came in 1932 when she unveiled her Plan for Peace. The fascistic manifesto urged the U.S. Congress to “apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of populations whose progeny is tainted” and to “give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.” Sanger’s wide-ranging hit-list included “morons, mental defectives, epileptics,…illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, [and] dope-fiends.”

Sanger admitted these persons constituted an “enormous part of our population,” upwards of 20 million persons. That represented about 15% of the American population.

A mere year after Sanger expounded on her peace plan, Adolf Hitler signed the infamous Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. During the ensuing years, the Nazi regime sterilized an estimated 400,000 persons deemed to be racially, physically, or mentally unfit.

At the Nuremberg Trials, Allied prosecutors recited the horrifying litany of Nazi crimes, including the practice of compulsory sterilization. Without mentioning Sanger by name, the German Socialists defended their harsh population control measures by explaining it was the United States from whom they had taken inspiration.

Over the years, Margaret Sanger used her bully pulpit to call for the segregation or sterilization of 15% of the U.S. population, and the extermination of another tenth of the citizenry. Despite those fascistic designs, Margaret Sanger still occupies a revered position in the pantheon of American liberalism.

Every year Planned Parenthood bequeaths its Margaret Sanger Award to recognize “outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement.” Past recipients include such liberal luminaries as Bella Abzug, Phil Donahue, and Jane Fonda.

Any guesses who carried home the award in 2009? Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Blackwater mercenaries stride through New Orleans

There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath.

Mother Jones | Aug 28, 2009

By James Ridgeway

Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren’t too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely “natural” disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude—a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.

But there’s an even harsher truth, one some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state.

It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce—but private security forces already had boots on the ground. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering masses left behind. According Jeremy Scahill’s reporting in The Nation, Blackwater set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo, Blackwater contractors drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates.

“When asked what authority they were operating under,” Scahill reported, “one guy said, ‘We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.’ Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, ‘He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.’ The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.”

The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as “securing neighborhoods,” as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting “the insurgency in the city.” Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force, told the paper, “This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported that although the city was calm with no signs of looting (though it acknowledged this had taken place previously), “New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers.” The local police superintendent ordered all weapons, including legally registered firearms, confiscated from civilians. But as the Times noted, that order didn’t “apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property…[who] openly carry M-16’s and other assault rifles.” Scahill spoke to Michael Montgomery, the chief of security for one wealthy businessman who said his men came under fire from “black gangbangers” near the Ninth Ward. Armed with AR-15s and Glocks, Montgomery and his men “unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. ‘After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.’”

Malik Rahim, a Vietnam veteran and longtime community activist, was one of the organizers of the Common Ground Collective, which quickly began dispensing basic aid and medical care in the first days after the hurricane. But far from aiding the relief workers, Rahim told me this week, the police and troops who began patrolling the streets treated them as criminals or “insurgents.” African American men caught outside also ran the risk of crossing paths with roving vigilante patrols who shot at will, he says. In this dangerous environment, Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had simply become too perilous for blacks.

Full Story

Harold “Hal” Turner, right, of North Bergen, N.J., leaves Superior Court in Hartford on Monday, June 22, 2009, after he was arraigned on a charge of inciting violence against state lawmakers. (JESSICA HILL / AP / June 22, 2009)

Hartford Courant | Aug 18, 2009

Lawyer: FBI Trained Hal Turner As An “Agent Provocateur”

By DAVID OWENS

HARTFORD — – Internet blogger Harold “Hal” Turner’s attorney said today that Turner’s background as an FBI informant will be a key part of his defense to charges that he incited violence against two state legislators and a state ethics official.

Superior Court Judge David P. Gold on Tuesday authorized Michael A. Orozco, a New Jersey attorney, to represent Turner. Turner did not appear again in court Tuesday because he remains in federal custody without bail in Chicago, where he is accused of threatening three federal judges.

In asking Gold to allow Orozco to represent Turner, Turner’s Connecticut lawyer, Matthew R. Potter, said Orozco has a long-term legal relationship with Turner, plans to bring a complicated First Amendment defense and is familiar with Turner’s background as an FBI informant.

That role as an informant for the FBI is a key part of the defense, Orozco said outside court.

Orozco said Turner was trained by the FBI as “an agent provocateur.”

“Mr. Turner was trained by the FBI,” Orozco said. “He was told where the line was — what he could say.”

In his comments on his blog that brought the state and federal charges, Turner did not cross that line, Orozco said.

Orozco said Turner worked for the FBI from roughly 2002 to 2007.

“His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner that would cause their arrest,” Orozco said.

The comments for which he is charged came after he left the service of the FBI, Orozco said.

Turner stopped working for the FBI on his own, Orozco said. He declined to say who the targets of his comments were.

“If you compare anything he said when he was operating, there’s no difference” to what he posted on his blog that led to the criminal charges, Orozco said.

He is scheduled to go to trial on the federal charges on Oct. 5. His next court date in Hartford is set for October 19.

Letting in a black man

Atlanta Freemason lodge fights for equality

The Sunday Paper | Jul 12, 2009

By Chuck Stanley

An Atlanta Masonic lodge’s struggle to keep its charter in the face of racially charged complaints from fellow Georgia Freemasons has erupted into a public court battle, high-level resignations, and efforts from Masons across the country to show that such prejudices run counter to the fraternity’s principles of equality and brotherhood.

Ever since Victor Marshall’s first dinner with the Masons of Atlanta’s Gate City Lodge No. 2 during the summer of 2007, his experience with the centuries-old fraternity has been almost everything he hoped it might be. His interest in the “craft,” as it is called by Masons, began in his teens and continued to grow as the years passed. He was drawn by the idea of an egalitarian brotherhood free from barriers of class or social status. After researching various Atlanta area lodges, Marshall made up his mind to attend one of the open dinners held by Gate City Lodge No. 2 before each of their meetings at the Atlanta Masonic Center on Peachtree Street.

Marshall spent the next year getting acquainted with the Masons of Gate City Lodge, thus satisfying the prescribed amount of time a Master Mason must know a prospective member before vouching for his candidacy to join. By early 2009, Marshall had passed through the stages of Apprentice and Fellow Craft to be recognized as a Master Mason. The community service, the brotherhood and the discourse on history and philosophy he has participated in since joining have made him happy with his decision.

“I’ve gotten to know a lot of good brothers. I’ve learned a lot,” he says. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”

In February of this year, Marshall, along with Masons from across the state, attended the 275th anniversary of Solomon’s Lodge No. 1. The Savannah lodge traces its origins to Gen. James Oglethorpe, and claims to be the oldest continuously active lodge in the Western Hemisphere. Marshall says he was greeted enthusiastically by his fellow Masons. Shortly after his appearance at Solomon’s Lodge, though, word began to circulate that the Masons of Gate City counted a black man amongst their ranks.

Grand Master James Jennings, who heads the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons in Georgia, sent out a memo dated Feb. 25, 2009, in an apparent attempt to tamp down commentary about Marshall. “To answer any question about Gate City Lodge No. 2 raising a black man in their lodge,” he wrote, “ … Since all requirements in the Masonic Code were met, and no part of our obligation has been violated, he is a regular Mason and should be received as such.”

Nonetheless, Masonic charges meant to revoke Gate City’s charter and expel its leader, Michael Bjelajac, were soon filed by Starling “Sonny” Hicks and Douglass Etheridge, leaders of Georgia’s Philogia Lodge in Conyers and Metro Daylight Lodge in Chamblee, respectively. They accused Bjelajac of raising “a nonwhite man” to the level of Master Mason. Bjelajac’s occupation as a police officer prohibits him from commenting publicly on legal matters, but his attorney and fellow Gate City Lodge member, David Llywellen, says the charges filed by Hicks and Etheridge have no basis in Masonic code.

“It has certainly never been part of our law that you have to be a particular race to be a Mason, and it is un-Masonic to contend otherwise,” Llywellen says. “These charges are like saying, ‘I charge you with the crime of drinking water.’”

In Georgia, Llywellen says Masons of Arab, Persian, South Asian, East Asian and Latin heritage are all represented. Marshall, says Llywellen, is at least the second black man within Gate City Lodge to become a Master Mason, and certainly not the first black Mason in Georgia.

The apparent lack of foundation for the charges filed against Gate City, as well as a fear of losing their charter, led Bjelajac and Gate City to file a lawsuit in DeKalb County to stop the Grand Lodge of Georgia from taking internal action against the lodge and its leader. Llywellen contends that the Grand Lodge had an obligation to dismiss the charges leveled by Hicks and Etheridge as soon as they were filed. Instead, says Llywellen, the Grand Lodge, including a South Georgia attorney named Franklin Aspinwall, who was to chair the Masonic charges and is named in the suit, violated their contractual obligation to Gate City members by putting their charter in jeopardy based on “spurious” charges. Although the internal charges made by Hicks and Etheridge have been withdrawn, the Gate City Masons want some assurance they will not be subject to similar charges in the future before they withdraw their suit.

“We want an order in place to protect us from anyone trying to continue to attack us for doing what is right,” says Llywellen.

The controversy surrounding Gate City Lodge has resulted in two resignations at the state level. David Herman, a member of Gate City Lodge, resigned from his post as district deputy to the Grand Master. He declined to comment on his resignation for The Sunday Paper but, in a post to Gate City’s Web site dated June 20, Herman wrote of his resignation from the state level: “As a District Deputy, I must be the Grand Master’s representative; nothing more and nothing less. Yet, as a Freemason, I could not sit on the sideline and be a passive witness to these events. I resigned so that I might stand with my [Gate City] Brethren.”

Further elaborating on his decision, Herman wrote in this month’s edition of Work and Lectures, a DeKalb County Masonic newsletter: “I found myself unable to remain silent on the sidelines in the face of the charges read against our Worshipful Master, for the actions that we had taken as a lodge. My resignation should not be interpreted as a criticism of the Grand Master or the Grand Lodge.”

Gate City fell under the jurisdiction of District Deputy John Holt, an 82-year-old retired machinist and salesman, when Victor Marshall became a Master Mason. Grand Master James Jennings asked Holt to tender his resignation after the controversy broke. Holt maintains that the Grand Master never expressed dissatisfaction over the induction of a black man into Gate City. However, when complaints and, later, charges against Gate City made their way to the Grand Lodge, he says, Jennings felt “blindsided.”

“I failed to inform the Grand Master of what was going on in that [Gate City] lodge,” says Holt, who says he harbors no ill will over the situation. “That’s my duty and I didn’t do it. So for that reason, I had to resign.”

In retrospect, Holt says, Marshall’s membership in the lodge was “out of the ordinary” (he was not aware of any other black Masons in the district) and therefore should have been relayed to the Grand Master. At the time, though, it never occurred to him to report it.

“It’s just one of those things,” he says, sympathizing with Jennings’ request that he resign. “It’s my job to report on anything out of the ordinary.”

Gate City’s Llywellen says he was contacted by representatives from the Grand Lodge in January, who inquired about Marshall’s membership and whether he was indeed black.

As the drama between Gate City and the Grand Lodge plays out, it is likely to have effects beyond a shake-up of Georgia’s Masonic officers. South Dakota’s Mt. Rushmore Lodge No. 220 has petitioned the Grand Lodge of South Dakota to “issue a formal, public statement that it will not accept racial or religious intolerance, prejudice, or bigotry in any of its subordinate lodges.”

Chris Hodapp, who authored “Freemasons for Dummies” and also runs the book’s companion blog, says electronically connected Masons across the country are closely following the Gate City story.

“It’s humiliating for the rest of the world of Freemasonry,” he says. “I contacted my Grand Master and said, ‘If it turns out that these charges go through and if something happens to Gate City Lodge or its members because of it, I would strongly recommend considering withdrawing recognition of Georgia.’”

Hodapp describes withdrawing recognition as a “nuclear option” that would pit Grand Lodges against each other. Such a move, he says, is only justifiable if a lodge acts in clear contradiction of Masonic principals.

The overflow of Georgia Masonry’s internal squabbles into the public eye, says Hodapp, is “very, very unusual” for the group, which generally prefers to settle its disagreements in-house. The headlines, though, may force Freemasons to address issues of race that have been ignored by Grand Lodges in the past. In a fraternity that clings to centuries-old traditions, says Hodapp, there are some individuals and lodges that may continue to hold on to traditions that existed when the whole of American society was divided by color barriers. Because of the relative autonomy of individual lodges, he adds, it is possible that some have continued an unspoken whites-only policy unbeknownst to members of their respective Grand Lodges. While emphasizing that these individuals and lodges constitute a very small minority in American Freemasonry, Hodapp notes that the problem is not limited to Old Dixie states. While serving as Worshipful Master of his Indiana lodge, Hodapp remembers the backlash that followed the raising of two black men into the lodge.

“I was accused of not only destroying the lodge, but of destroying Freemasonry,” he says. “[Those critics] were a tiny minority.”

Hodapp believes the silence of Georgia Grand Master James Jennings since Gate City filed its suit is evidence that his hands may be tied as far as creating a real solution to the dispute. Gate City wants a guarantee that it will not be the subject of continued charges and attempts to revoke its charter. However, any such guarantee could mean that Gate City is no longer subject to the bylaws of the Grand Lodge. Furthermore, any guarantee made by Jennings is subject to repeal when the Grand Lodge convenes at the end of his term.

“At the annual communication,” says Hodapp, “they review everything [the Grand Master] has done in the course of the year. And they are allowed to say, ‘You blew that, you did that wrong, we’re eradicating your decision.’”

Despite the stickiness of the situation, Hodapp feels there are things the Grand Master could do to resolve deeper problems surrounding the Gate City situation. A statement denouncing racism in Georgia Freemasonry would help erase any confusion over the role of race in Georgia Masonry, says Hodapp. The Grand Lodge, he says, could also move to recognize Georgia’s Prince Hall Freemasons. The predominantly African-American group sprang up as a response to the segregation inherent to nearly all social groups in the United States before the mid-20th century, and is recognized by most Grand Lodges in the U.S. Recognition of Prince Hall Masons by Georgia’s Grand Lodge would make Prince Hall Masons welcome at meetings of Masonic Lodges across Georgia and blur the implied color line that comes from having two separate grand lodges in the state.

James N. Cline, the Roswell attorney representing the Grand Lodge, has stated that representatives from Gate City and the Grand Lodge have been in contact in the hopes of keeping the case out of court. He was unable to comment on any concessions the Grand Lodge might be willing to make, as the two sides are still struggling to reach an agreement.

“We’re meeting and trying to get this problem resolved internally, if we can,” says Cline. “All of this is still up in the air.”

Meanwhile, Victor Marshall, the mild-mannered Army Reservist whose interest in brotherhood, charity and enlightenment unwittingly placed him at the center of a scandal being followed by Masons across the country, remains no less glad to be a Mason. The supportive e-mails he has received from around the country and the solidarity he has witnessed within Gate City Lodge have him convinced that Freemasonry, as a whole, is everything he hoped it would be when he first broke bread with his Gate City brethren nearly two years ago.

“Freemasonry itself is kind of like a life-changing event. There are principals that we’re now supposed to live by, attempt to live by, so it’s a 24-hour ordeal and I welcome it,” Marshall says. “I’m proud to be a Freemason.” SP

Chinese security forces gather in a square in Urumqi, western China’s Xinjiang province, Wednesday, July 8, 2009. China’s president cut short a G8 summit trip to rush home Wednesday after ethnic tensions soared in Xinjiang territory, and the government flooded the area with security forces in a bid to quell emotions in the wake of a massive riot that left at least 156 dead. AP Photo

Military patrols marched in formation past the deserted store-fronts, chanting “Defend the nation, Defend the people”.

AGI | Jul, 8 2009

(AGI) – Urumqi (China), 8 Jul. – Following the enactment of a curfew, thousands of soldiers covered the city of Urumqi – capital of the Xinjiang region of China – in order to calm a wave of inter-ethnic violence which began this Sunday. With a heavy display of force, thousands of soldiers entered Urumqi, during the same hours in which Hu Jintao, with an unprecedented gesture, left the G8 summit in Italy to return to his native country. While Chinese Liberation Army helicopters surveyed from above, soldiers and police officers entered and secured the city.

The forces were armed with automatic weapons, many of them clad in riot-proof gear, and the soldiers quickly took control of the abandoned city streets. During the curfew hours, from 9pm to 8am, military patrols marched in formation past the deserted store-fronts, chanting “Defend the nation, Defend the people”. The situation has yet to pacify entirely. Skirmished continue between the Han population and the Uyghur of the Xinjiang region. According to international media, two Uyghur were assaulted separately by mobs of Han Chinese.

In one of the incidents, nearly 20 Han men armed with sticks assaulted an Uyghur man in the city centre. The attack was stopped after several minutes, when security forces were able to disperse the crowd. In the second incident, a group of Han men passed three Uyghur men on the street and began following them. Two were able to escape, while the third was caught and assaulted by the crowd, which chanted “Hit, Hit”. The victim was kicked and shoved by various men and women, before police were able to save him. There are rumours of others dead. 156 victims were registered Sunday.

Meanwhile, Beijing has blocked tourism in the Xinjiang region, and has blocked access to the internet site Facebook within the country. The website, the most popular social networking site world-wide, has been inaccessible for some hours now. The block is an addition to some restrictions already enacted Sunday, immediately following attacks, such as the ban of Twitter. The country has also blocked access to many foreign sites, most of which are running exceptionally slowly, while sites such as Youtube remain entirely closed. China has the most internet users in the world (more than 300 million) though it enacts amongst the heaviest net censorship, especially during moments of political tension.

Issue headed for Masonic trial and state courts after some lodges sought to revoke the charter of one in Atlanta for admitting 26-year-old African American

UTV | Jul 3, 2009

There is much about Freemasonry that remains shrouded in mystery to the outside world. But a group of members in the US state of Georgia appear to have clarified one thing – the supreme being in which all Masons are required to believe is not likely to be black.

Freemasonry lodges in Georgia are at loggerheads over the admission of a “non-white” member to an organisation that was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment but which is apparently still struggling to catch up with the latter part of the 20th century.

Now the issue is headed for a Masonic trial and the state courts after some lodges in Georgia sought to revoke the charter of one in Atlanta for admitting Victor Marshall, a 26-year-old African-American army reservist, last autumn.

The Atlanta lodge has fought back in the state courts by seeking to block the move on the grounds that is based on “racial animosity and hatred”.

The row blew up after Marshall attended a celebration in Savannah in February to mark the 275th anniversary of a lodge in the city. Although there are other Masons of colour in Georgia, including Asians and Hispanics, some members were disturbed to encounter a black man and laid a complaint that he did not belong.

“There were ill-informed brethren who were surprised that there was an African-American brother,” David Llewellyn, a Freemason and lawyer for the Atlanta lodge, told the New York Times, “and some of them were very upset”.

The stipulations to join the Masons are that members must be male, not slaves, of good character and have faith in a supreme being but no mention is made of racial origin.

The grand master, or leader of the Masons in Georgia, J Edward Jennings Jr, sent an email to members saying that Marshall was a legitimate member and should be treated as such. But that did not quell the row.

Under pressure, Jennings agreed to convene a Masons court to hear a complaint against the head of the Atlanta lodge, Michael Bjelajac, who is accused of violating “moral law”, the “ancient landmarks” and “immemorial usages” of Freemasonry by admitting Marshall.

But the complaint has met with ridicule in part because there are largely black Masonic lodges in the US as well as in African countries such as Ghana.

The objections to Marshall’s membership have been led by Douglas Ethridge and Starling Hicks, both worshipful masters of their respective lodges in Georgia who have both declined to be interviewed.

In court papers, Llewellyn said that when he called Etheridge to discuss the lawsuit, the Mason replied, “To hell with you, buddy”, and hung up.

Freemasonry in the US has a long history of segregation. A black stream of the organisation, known as Prince Hall Masons, was only recognised by mainstream Masons in 1990 and even then several states, including Georgia, refused to do so.

The Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons in Georgia, Ramsey Davis, told the New York Times that he approached the mainstream leaders in the state to discuss recognition but was rebuffed.

“There’s deep-rooted racism in the leadership,” he said. “I’ve had many calls from white Masons to say they cannot understand why things are this way.”Marshall told the Associated Press that while he is disillusioned by the attitudes of some of his fellow Masons he has not lost faith in the organisation.

“I hope we’ll be victorious and that Freemasonry will come out in a more powerful light,” he said. “But of course sometimes the bad side can overwhelm the good side.”

Gordon Brown with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

Guardian | Mar 26, 2009

by Nicholas Watt in Brasilia

White, blue-eyed bankers are entirely to blame for the world financial crisis that has ended up hitting black and indigenous people disproportionately, the president of Brazil declared.

In an outspoken intervention as Gordon Brown stood alongside him, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva pledged to make next week’s G20 summit “spicy” as he accused the rich of forcing the poor into greater hardship.

“This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person,” Lula said after talks with the prime minister in Brasilia to discuss next week’s G20 summit in London.

“This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics.”

Challenged about his claims, Lula responded: “I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker.”

The remarks by Lula, a former trade union leader who had an impoverished upbringing in the poor north-east of Brazil, enlivened Brown’s five-day trip to North and South America. This is designed to pave the way for a global agreement on how to tackle the global downturn at next week’s G20 summit in London, to be chaired by Brown.

The prime minister travelled to Brazil, the world’s 10th largest economy, to talk up his latest initiative to stimulate world trade. Brown wants to win agreement at next week’s summit for a new $100bn global fund to increase credit flows.

Lula lavished praise on Brown for always rallying to the help of Brazil as he made clear that he accepts many of the prime minister’s interventionist ideas for stimulating global growth. But as they stood in the formal entrance to the president’s palace, Brown had to watch as the pugilistic former trade union leader embarked on one of his familiar tirades.

Lula said world leaders had to be prepared for a political fight to ensure no repeat of what Brown called the global financial “power cut”. “This meeting in London has to be a bit spicy because there has got to be a political debate,” said Lula. “I want a London consensus.”

The president indicated that he is uneasy about the US, which has been arguing that the most important measure to take is a further co-ordinated global fiscal stimulus. Lula used a colourful analogy to illustrate his demand for tougher regulation of financial markets.

“We do not have the right to allow this crisis to continue for long. We are determined to make sure the world financial system is vigorously regulated. You go to a shopping mall and you are filmed. You go to the airport and you are watched. I can’t imagine that only the financial system has no surveillance at all.”

The president then turned his fire on the media for demonising immigrants: “The great majority of the poor are still not getting their share of the development that was caused by globalisation. They are the first victims. I follow the press and I see that prejudice is a factor against immigrants in the most developed countries.”

The behaviour of developed countries contrasted badly, he added, with Brazil, which is a member of the “Bric” group of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China. “Here in Brazil, on the contrary, we have made the decision to permanently regulate thousands of Bolivians who were undocumented. We can’t put on their shoulder the responsibility for the crisis caused by very few people.”

Brown looked mildly uncomfortable during Lula’s outburst. He had hoped that their joint press conference would be dominated by his announcement that he will table plans at next week’s G20 summit in London for a new $100bn fund of credit guarantees to boost world trade.

The prime minister said: “The newest fallout from this banking crisis that has hit the world is the reduction in trade. Chinese exports are down 25%, Germany’s exports are down 20%, Japan’s exports are down more than 40%. So we have to act on trade as we are acting on banking reform and on economic growth.

“At the G20 next week we will debate further measures. Ninety per cent of all world trade is financed by credit. Credit has dried up dramatically in recent months, it has increased the costs of trade for businesses in every country. The international community cannot stand aside.”

Army to send Prince Harry on equality course after race row

Guardian | Feb 13, 2009

By  Haroon Siddique

Prince Harry has been ordered to attend an equality and diversity course after he was captured on video calling an army colleague “our little Paki friend”.

The move comes after the prince faced a disciplinary hearing with his commanding officer in the army when the video came to public notice last month after it was obtained by the News of the World.

The video drew criticism of the prince from several senior politicians as well as Muslim commentators.

St James’s Palace issued a public apology, saying the 24-year-old “fully understands how offensive this term [Paki] can be” and suggesting he had “used the term without any malice and as a nickname”.

The prince made the comments in a video diary shot while he was training at Sandhurst in 2006, a year after being forced to make a public apology for wearing a Nazi swastika at a fancy dress party. In the video he also referred to a platoon member as a “raghead”.

A senior military insider said yesterday that the incident would go on Harry’s record but not count against him in his career, according to the Mirror.

Yesterday the Ministry of Defence said the army had concluded its inquiry. A Clarence House spokesman said: “Prince Harry has said sorry … and been subjected to normal army disciplinary procedures. The matter is now closed.”

This week the black comedian Stephen K Amos said on The Wright Stuff, on Five, that the prince had told him at an event in November last year: “You don’t sound like a black chap.”