Extradition to Yemen?

A diabolical white supremacist laughed at a 21-year-old woman who bravely took the witness stand to testify about how he raped her, shot her five times and then killed her roommate and a 71-year-old man in 2009.

Jurors, reporters and courtroom observers wept on Wednesday as the diminutive woman described how Keith Luke forced his way into her apartment in Brockton, Massachusetts, and violently assaulted her and then shot her in the head, the chest and both arms as she clutched her teddy bear for comfort.

Luke smiled and laughed at his alleged victim as she calmly told her her harrowing ordeal.

The woman survived only by pretending to be dead so that Luke would leave. She felt certain that she was going to die, the Brockton Enterprise reports.

Luke is accused of breaking to the woman's apartment on January 21, 2009 after her roommate, Selma Goncalves, rejected her offer to go out with him.

Selma, 20, came home in the middle of Luke raping her roommate. He opened fire and shot her three times in the back.

She was dead when police arrived. As he fled the scene, he stopped and shot Arlindo Goncalves, 72 - no relation to Selma - as he walked down the sidewalk. The single gunshot wound to the head killed the elderly man, authorities say.

Luke has a history of grabbing attention in horrifying ways during his court appearances. In May 2009, he appeared for a hearing with a swastika carved into his forehead.

He has smiled and laughed several times during his trial as witnesses testified about the horrifying evidence against him.

Luke's victim said that as he raped her, he told her to wipe white powder - possibly drugs from his mouth. He later pulled out a syringe and threatened to plunge it into her arm, she testified.

'He smelled horrible. He stank,' she said.

In the midst of the sexual assault, Selma Goncalves came home. Luke seemed 'really happy' that Goncalves - who had previously rejected his romantic overtures - had arrived.

'He ran into the kitchen. I heard four shots, then he turned and started shooting at me,' the woman testified.

Luke returned to the woman he had just raped and shot her five times as she clutched a giant teddy bear.

She broke into tears and hugged the large bear when she saw it in court on Wednesday, wrapped in an evidence bag. 

'When he shot me in the head, I hugged tight my teddy bear … It was so many shots,' she said.

RIP Phyl the peacock...

Hide your sausages...


Potsdam, New York - John Allison, a 41-year-old Potsdam man, was jailed Wednesday after he allegedly masturbated with a stick of pepperoni at a local grocery store - then put the food product back on the shelf for others to enjoy.

According to New York state police, Allison entered the Hannaford Grocery store at St. Lawrence Plaza, grabbed a stick of pepperoni, and proceeded to rub his penis against it.

After satisfying himself, Allison placed the pepperoni back on the shelf and attempted to exit the store.

A loss prevention officer who witnessed the act over surveillance video called police and provided them with video of what had transpired.

Allison was charged with public lewdness and fourth-degree criminal mischief. He is currently being held in lieu of $1,000 cash bail or $2,000 bond.

Interesting piece by Sarah Kendzior

In 1901, a 28-year-old American named Leon Czolgosz assassinated US President William McKinley. Czolgosz was born in America, but he was of Polish descent. After McKinley died, the American media blamed Polish immigrants. They were outsiders, foreigners, with a suspicious religion - Catholicism - and strange last names.

At a time when Eastern European immigrants were treated as inferior, Polish-Americans feared they would be punished as a group for the terrible actions of an individual. "We feel the pain which this sad occurrence caused, not only in America, but throughout the whole world. All people are mourning, and it is caused by a maniac who is of our nationality," a Polish-American newspaper wrote in an anguished editorial.

It is a sentiment reminiscent of what Muslims and Chechens are writing - or Instagramming  - today, after the revelation that Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, are of Chechen descent. At this time, there is no evidence linking the Tsarnaev brothers to a broader movement in Chechnya, a war-torn federal republic in southern Russia. Neither of the brothers has ever lived there. The oldest, Tamerlan, was born in Russia and moved to the US when he was sixteen. The youngest, Dzokhar, was born in Kyrgyzstan, moved to the US when he was nine, and became a US citizen in 2012.

Despite the Tsarnaevs' American upbringing, the media has presented their lives through a Chechen lens. Political strife in the North Caucasus, ignored by the press for years, has become the default rationale for a domestic crime.

"Did Boston carnage have its roots in Stalin's ruthless displacement of Muslims from Chechnya decades ago?" asked The Daily News , a question echoed by the National Post , the Washington Post , and other publications that refuse to see the Tsarnaevs as anything but walking symbols of age-old conflicts. Blame Stalin, the pundits cry, echoing the argument made every time something bad happens in the former Soviet Union. Blame Stalin, because we can pronounce that name.

In one sense, this sentiment is not new. American Muslims have long had to deal with ignorance and prejudice in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. " Please don't be Muslims or Arabs ", goes the refrain, as unnecessary demands for a public apology from Muslims emerge. This week made it clear that it is Muslims who are owed the apology. After wild speculation from CNN about a "dark-skinned suspect", on Thursday the New York Post published a cover photo falsely suggesting a Moroccan-American high school track star, Salah Barhoun , was one of the bombers. "Jogging while Arab" has become the new " driving while black ".

Later that Thursday, the FBI released photos of two young men wearing baseball caps - men who so resembled all-American frat boys that people joked they would be the target of " racial bro-filing ". The men were Caucasian, so the speculation turned away from foreign terror and toward the excuses routinely made for white men who kill: mental illness, anti-government grudges, frustrations at home. The men were white and Caucasian - until the next day, when they became the wrong kind of Caucasian, and suddenly they were not so "white" after all.

Crucifying the wrong Caucasian

Muslims face prejudice, but Muslims from the Caucasus face a particular kind of prejudice - the kind born of ignorance so great it perversely imbues everything with significance. "There is never interpretation, understanding and knowledge when there is no interest," Edward Said wrote in  Covering Islam , and until this week, there was so little interest in and knowledge of the Caucasus that the ambassador of the Czech Republic felt compelled to issue a press release stating that the Czech Republic is not the same as Chechnya.

Knowing nothing of the Tsarnaevs' motives, and little about Chechens, the American media tore into Wikipedia and came back with stereotypes. The Tsarnaevs were stripped of their 21st century American life and became symbols of a distant land, forever frozen in time. Journalist Eliza Shapiro proclaimed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was "named after a brutal warlord", despite the fact that Tamerlan, or Timur, is an ordinary first name in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Her claim is equivalent to saying a child named Nicholas must be named in honour of ruthless Russian tsar Nicholas I - an irony apparently lost on New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who made a similar denouncement on Twitter (to his credit, Kristof quickly retracted the comment).

Other journalists found literary allusions, or rather, illusions. "They were playing the nihilists Arkady and Bazarov in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ," explained scholar Juan Cole, citing an 1862 Russian novel to explain the motives of a criminal whose Twitter account was full of American rap lyrics. One does not recall such use of literary devices to ascertain the motives of less exotic perpetrators, but who knows? Perhaps some ambitious analyst is plumbing the works of Faulkner to shed light on that Mississippi Elvis impersonator who tried to send ricin to Obama.

Still others turned to social media as a gateway to the Chechen soul. Journalist Julia Ioffe - after explaining the Tsarnaevs through Tolstoy, Pushkin, and, of course, Stalin -  cites the younger Tsarnaev's use of the Russian website VKontakte as proof of his inability to assimilate, then ranks the significance of his personal photos.

"The most revealing image of Dzhokhar is not the one of him hugging an African-American friend at his high school graduation, but the one of him sitting at a kitchen table with his arm around a guy his age who appears to be of Central Asian descent," she writes . "In front of them is a dish  plov , a Central Asian dish of rice and meat, and a bottle of Ranch dressing." Again, it is difficult to imagine a journalist writing with such breathtaking arrogance - why is the Central Asian friend more "revealing" than the African-American one? What, exactly, are they "revealing"? - about the inner life of someone from a more familiar place.

One way to test whether you are reading a reasonable analysis of the Tsarnaev case - and yes, they exist  - is to replace the word "Chechen" with another ethnicity. "I could always spot the Chechens in Vienna," writes journalist Oliver Bulloughs in the New York Times . "They were darker-haired than the Austrians; they dressed more snappily, like 1950s gangsters; they never had anything to do." Now substitute the word "Jews" for "Chechens". Minority-hunting in Vienna never ends well .

Demonising an ethnicity

It is easy to criticise the media, and after this disastrous week , there is much to criticise. But the consequences of the casual racism launched at Chechens - and by association, all other Muslims from the former Soviet Union, who are rarely distinguished from one another by the public - are serious. By emphasising the Tsarnaevs' ethnicity over their individual choices, and portraying that ethnicity as barbaric and violent , the media creates a false image of a people destined by their names and their " culture of terror " to kill. There are no people in Chechnya, only symbols. There are no Chechen-Americans, only threats.

Ethnicity is often used to justify violent behaviour. But no ethnicity is inherently violent. Even if the Tsarnaevs aligned themselves with violent Chechen movements - and as of now, there is no evidence they did - treating Chechen ethnicity as the cause of the Boston violence is irresponsible.

One hundred years ago, the violent act of one Polish-American caused a country to treat all Polish-Americans with suspicion. Now, the Poles have become "white" - which is to say they are largely safe from the accusations of treason and murderous intent that ethnic groups deemed non-white routinely face. When a Polish-American commits a crime, his ethnicity does not go on trial with him.

But this change is not a triumph for America. It is a tragedy that it happened to Poles then, and a greater tragedy that we have not learned our lesson and it happens still - to Hispanics, to Arabs, to Chechens, to any immigrant who comes here seeking refuge and finds prejudice instead.

"I respect this country, I love this country," the suspects' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said in an emotional condemnation of his nephews. "This country which gives chance to everyone else to be treated as a human being."

Chechens and other Muslim immigrants from the former Soviet Union are human beings. They are not walking symbols of violent conflict. Do not look to a foreign country to explain a domestic crime. Look to the two men who did it - and judge them by what they have done, not from where their ancestors came.

Sarah Kendzior is an anthropologist who recently received her PhD from Washington University in St Louis.

In other news: Hornet's top yellow jacket police services advice female Hornets to dress appropriately as to not lure in any more weird Swedish men prompting Hornet Slutwalks all across Hornet nest across the Country. No comment has been reached by Hornet Police Official headquarters at the BuzzBuzz Bureau of protective and nest home security services.

People who are terrified of bees, or the thought of human beings having sexual intercourse with bees, or the thought of dying, please be forewarned that you may find what I am about to tell you highly disturbing. A 35-year-old Swedish man known as “Hasse” was found dead outside of his farm this week in Ystad after having sex with a hornets’ nest. Let that sink in for a moment.

Hasse’s bloated corpse had a total of 146 wasp stings, including 54 on his penis and balls.  At this point you might be thinking to yourself, OK. So this guy got stung to death. That’s awful. It happened Macaulay Culkin in “My Girl” and I bawled my face off. But how did they know Hasse died specifically from having sex with a hornets’ nest? Oh, because they found Hasse’s semen on some of the dead wasps and his pubic hair in their nest.

Will justice be done?

Neo-nazi Beate Zschaepe  delivered a final snub to her alleged victims yesterday – turning her back on their lawyers and relatives as  she entered court for her mass  murder trial.

Then she sat impassively as the marathon case began with prosecution claims  of how she and her psychopathic lovers assassinated immigrants in a bid to build a Fourth Reich in Germany.

Zschaepe, 38, is in the dock with four members of the National Socialist Underground (NSU). It is alleged they believed random executions – nine businessmen and a policewoman over a 13-year period – would lead foreigners to quit Germany forever, leading to a ‘pure race’ like that championed by her idol Adolf Hitler.

A total of 84 court days have been earmarked for the trial but some observers are saying it could last more than two years, with hundreds of witnesses to be called.

Zschaepe, who has been branded the ‘Nazi Bride’ by the German media, walked into court in a black trouser suit and a white blouse with her hair dyed chestnut brown and her arms folded.

She then turned her back contemptuously on the lawyers representing relatives of those she and her helpers allegedly killed, and began chatting with her legal team.

As she sat down, angry demonstrators were outside the courthouse in Munich waving placards calling for justice amid the tightest security for a post-war trial seen in Germany.

Hundreds of police held back a crowd shortly after the hearing began as two Turkish girls tried to storm the building shouting ‘Death, death, death to Fascists’. Some held up photos of the victims and one banner read, ‘Why were the authorities blind?’ Another said, ‘Hitler-child Zschaepe, you will pay for your crimes’.

Manholes were welded shut, airspace over the court building was closed and police sharpshooters took up positions on rooftops.

Zschaepe’s lawyers derailed the first day of proceedings with a motion seeking to dismiss the trial judge because he insists she and her cohorts are searched for weapons before they enter court while the police are not.

The next hearings were postponed to later this month.

When the case resumes it is expected to expose grievous police and intelligence failings in allowing the NSU cell – comprising Zschaepe and her two lovers – to allegedly operate for so long, especially as they were under covert surveillance for much of the time that the murders were under way.

There is a feeling in Germany that the authorities did not take the murders seriously because the victims were foreigners and that the country has been ‘blinded’ to the threat of violent neo-Nazism.

The cell imploded after a botched bank robbery in November 2011, 13 years after they went underground to live from the proceeds of similar heists across the country.

Her male accomplices, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, both died – Mundlos shot Boehnhardt before turning the gun on himself.

Zschaepe is charged with complicity in the murders of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek immigrant and a German policewoman.

She is also accused of involvement in 15 armed robberies, arson and attempted murder in two bomb attacks.

Her lawyers deny she was directly involved in murder. Zschaepe has remained silent during her 18 months in custody. She faces life in prison if convicted.

Her sidekicks on trial are Ralf Wohlleben, 38, and Carsten Schultze, 33, both accused of being accessories to murder in the killing of the nine men. Prosecutors allege they supplied the trio with the weapons used in the killings.

Andre Eminger, 33, is accused of being an accessory in two of the bank robberies and in the 2004 nail bombing in Cologne that injured 22 people. He has a tattoo ‘Die Jew Die’ on his stomach.

The fourth man, Holger Gerlach, 39, is accused of three counts of supporting a terrorist organisation.

Sex with a game console?! Is there anything they won't molest? We will not host the video out of respect for our fans but it can be viewed at this site.

It HAS to be a mental problem right...

A Michigan man who pleaded no contest to having sex with two dogs felt the bite of a wary judge on Monday.

Kurtis Peterson, 36, was sentenced to between one and 15 years by judge Timothy Hicks, according to Michigan Live.

Hicks seemed to be worried the man from Muskegon was a risk to repeat the offense.

“I fear for what he might do in the community,” Hicks said during the sentencing hearing.

The Daily News reports that Peterson was caught in the act twice by Joyce Yeaw, a friend of Peterson's roommate. Once in April 2012 and again in June.

"He was having sex with the dog, it was disgusting," Yeaw testified, according to the paper's website.

After the April incident, Peterson told police he was "just playing with the dog."

Michigan Live previously reported that Peterson's public defender, Fred Lesica, said his client had “mental retardation” and is on psychiatric medication.

Gone but not forgotten..(hat tip : Tom Elay)




In an August 18 meeting of the National Security Council, US President Dwight Eisenhower told Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief Allen Dulles that Lumumba must be “eliminated” so that the Congo would not become “another Cuba.” On August 24, CIA head Allen Dulles cabled station chief Larry Devlin, authorizing the “removal” of Lumumba, up to and including his assassination.

Patrice Lumumba, the leader of the anti-colonial struggle in the Congo and its first democratically-elected prime minister, was removed from prison and murdered in the dark of night by a firing squad acting with the approval of the United States and Belgium. He was 35.

Lumumba and two of his associates, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were tied to trees and gunned down one by one. Weeks later, when questions surfaced over the official version of Lumumba’s death―that he had been killed by enraged villagers after attempting to escape―the Belgians returned, exhumed the bodies, hacked them up, dissolved them in acid, keeping as souvenirs Lumumba’s teeth and bullets removed from his body.

Belgium, which ruled the Congo until 1960, and the US have never been able to wash away the blood from this grisly crime. There was little doubt at the time, and even less now, that Washington was the primary force behind Lumumba’s execution.

The killing exposed not only the savagery and hypocrisy of US imperialism. It illustrated the hollowness of so-called independence for the African nations, whose absurd boundaries―and indeed very existence as modern political entities―had resulted from the predations of the European powers.

Though not a socialist, Lumumba’s demand that the Congo should control its own extensive mineral wealth proved to be his death sentence. The credibility of all the other newly-independent African nations was lessened by his murder; thereafter in every decision the continent’s leaders would have to reckon with Lumumba’s fate.

Nowhere is the failure of formal national independence better expressed than in the Congo. Lumumba’s former aide, Joseph Mobutu, assumed power in separate CIA-backed coups in 1960, when he removed Lumumba from power, and in 1965. A US proxy in the struggle against liberation movements in southern Africa, Mobutu ruled the Congo, which he renamed Zaire, as a kleptocracy, looting an estimated $5 billion before his removal in 1997 at the hands of invading Rwandan and Ugandan forces. The spilling over into the Congo of the Rwandan crisis of the 1990s―itself the legacy of the European-drawn borders in the region―cost as many as 5 million lives over the next decade.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s substantial working class and its tribal populations live in dire poverty. Average life expectancy is but 46 years. Out of every 1,000 live births, 114 Congolese babies will not live to see their first birthday; 195 will not live to the age of five. What little infrastructure exists is in a deplorable state.

Sitting atop this multiethnic and multilingual country of 70 million souls is a tiny layer of multimillionaires who derive their wealth through connections to what is still ranked as one of the world’s most corrupt governments, and through the export of the Congo’s mineral wealth―uranium, copper, gold, tin, cobalt, diamonds, manganese, zinc―for the benefit of European and US corporations.

The rise of Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba was raised in a mud brick house without electricity in the Congolese region of Kasai. He learned to read and write at Catholic and Protestant mission schools, impressing his teachers and positioning himself for a job as postal clerk in Stanleyville (now Kisangani), which he assumed in 1954. It was here that Lumumba entered political life, working to form a labor union and joining the Belgian Liberal Party.

In 1957, Lumumba took a job as a sales manager at a brewery in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), and soon thereafter founded, with other nationalists, the Movement National Congolais (MNC). The MNC agitated for independence from Belgium and sought to unite the sprawling country’s many different tribal groups.

Lumumba quickly established himself as the leading Congolese nationalist, and in spite of his support for the Belgian Liberals, was considered by the authorities to be a dangerous radical. He was known for his eloquence, and by all accounts was a man of courage and conviction. Perhaps because he could not be bought off, like many African leaders, colonial authorities ordered Lumumba arrested and imprisoned in October of 1959 for “inciting riots” in Stanleyville. While in prison he was tortured.

In spite of the repression, it appeared an auspicious time for nationalist movements. In the aftermath of World War II, a revolutionary upsurge of the colonial peoples took shape first in Asia and then spread to Africa. The old colonial powers―Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal―either attempted to crush the anti-colonial movements, as France failed to do in Vietnam and Algeria, or else manipulated formal independence to preserve their interests, as Britain did through the communal partition of South Asia.
African decolonization

With its control over the Congo slipping and mindful of the disaster gripping its neighbor France in Algeria, Belgium agreed at conference held in Brussels beginning January 18, 1960, to recognize the independence of its prized imperial possession. This was to take place at the end of June, after national elections to be held in May. The Belgians were compelled to release Lumumba from prison to attend the conference because his party had gained the most votes in local elections held in December, 1959. In one year less a day, he would be gunned down by Belgian assassins.

Lumumba emerged from the May 11-25 elections, much to the chagrin of the Belgians, as the only truly national figure in Congolese politics. While not winning a majority, the MNC won far more votes and seats in parliament than any other party, and with it the right to form the government. Lumumba was selected as prime minister, while Joseph Kasa-Vubu, the leader of a tribally-based party, was placed in the lesser role of president.

At a ceremony granting formal independence on June 30, King Baudouin of Belgium delivered a patronizing speech lecturing the Congolese on the virtues of maintaining existing colonial structures and presenting the period of Belgian rule as entirely beneficial to the native population. In fact, between 1885 and 1908 as many as eight million Congolese died in the system of forced labor and political terror under the personal rule of Baudouin’s grandfather, King Leopold.

In his speech, Lumumba enraged the Belgian delegation by openly challenging the king. He said of independence that “no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood. We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.”

“We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.... We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon and night, because we are negroes.... We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws, which in fact recognized only that might is right.... We will never forget the massacres where so many perished, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown.”

The destruction of Patrice Lumumba

In the same speech, Lumumba declared that the Democratic Republic of the Congo was now “the equal” of Belgium. Only in terms of vote-counting at the United Nations could such a statement be true. All significant capital, especially the mining industry, remained in the hands of Europeans. In all of the Congo, there were only 30 black college graduates, no black military officers, and only a few black managers in the civil service. This was the result of a deliberate Belgian policy to keep the population in a state of dependence.

Mindful of the lack of trained African officers, Lumumba decided immediately after he assumed office to leave the new national army in the charge of Belgians, enraging Congolese soldiers. The Belgian commander of the Leopoldville regiment, Emile Janssens, provoked the African soldiers, gathering them and writing on a placard, “After independence = before independence.” Lumumba made matters worse by granting raises to all government employees except for the military officers.

By July 5, the army was in open revolt across the country, with Europeans fleeing in droves. Belgium seized on the supposed threat to the settlers to recommence military operations in the nation, in open violation of the one week-old country’s sovereignty. To deal with the disaster, Lumumba determined to reorganize the military as the Armee Nationale Congolaise. He made the fateful decision of placing his secretary, Joseph Mobutu, in charge of the new force.

What Lumumba didn’t know was that Mobutu was a paid Belgian agent, and that as early as the 1960 Brussels conference he had been spotted by US diplomats as a figure to be promoted. Of potential “assets” in the Congo, the US ambassador to Belgium, William Burden, noted, "One name kept coming up. But it wasn't on anyone's list because he wasn't an official delegation member, he was Lumumba's secretary. But everyone agreed that this was ... a man with great potential.”

Within days of Lumumba’s inauguration, Moise Tshombe declared Katanga province independent and immediately received the backing of Belgium and its force of 6,000 soldiers stationed there. Katanga was rich in copper, uranium, tin, zinc and cobalt―mineral wealth dominated by the Belgian mining concern Union Miniere. Soon another secessionist movement developed in another mineral-rich province, Kasai, where a former associate of Lumumba, Albert Kalonji, declared a new nation that he dubbed “Mining State.”

The marionettes in the Congo and in Belgium, a third rate and rapidly declining imperialist power, could not act without the backing of the US.

As continues to be the case in matters of foreign policy today, the New York Times played a critical role in articulating the government line and preparing opinion for the elimination of Lumumba.

Even during the election, its pages were given over to a campaign maligning the young nationalist. In a series of articles, the Times repeatedly referred to Lumumba as a “dictator,” a “ruler,” and a “messiah,” and nearly every report mentioned that he was “once convicted of embezzlement” as a postal clerk. The Times also published unsubstantiated allegations that Lumumba had committed election fraud and had received $200,000 from the Belgian Communist Party.

In an August 18 meeting of the National Security Council, US President Dwight Eisenhower told Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief Allen Dulles that Lumumba must be “eliminated” so that the Congo would not become “another Cuba.” On August 24, CIA head Allen Dulles cabled station chief Larry Devlin, authorizing the “removal” of Lumumba, up to and including his assassination.

This information did not come to light until 2001. It had been revealed to a US Senate Committee by Robert Johnson, who took notes at the meeting. “There was a stunned silence for about 15 seconds, and the meeting continued,” Johnson recalled in secret testimony given to the Church Committee in 1975. The CIA first followed through on the Eisenhower order with an abortive plot to poison Lumumba.

Assassination plans were also afoot in Belgium. Count Harold d’Aspremont Lynden, then minister for African affairs, sent a telegram to Belgian officials in the Congo in October stating, “The main aim to pursue in the interests of the Congo, Katanga and Belgium is clearly Lumumba’s definitive elimination.”

And Britain, fearful for its substantial interests in neighboring Rhodesia, also endorsed assassination. A British Foreign Office document from September 1960 notes the opinion of a top ranking official, who later became the head of MI5, that, "I see only two possible solutions to the [Lumumba] problem. The first is the simple one of ensuring [his] removal from the scene by killing him."

With the US, Belgium, and Britain moving against him and his hold on power disintegrating, Lumumba turned for support to the USSR, receiving Soviet defense minister Georgi Zhukov in Leopoldville on August 26. The Soviet Union supplied Lumumba with a limited amount of aid and “advisors.” This support only clinched his demise.

On September 5, President Kasa-Vubu ordered that Lumumba be removed from office, but this extra-constitutional order failed when Lumumba won two separate votes of confidence in parliament. Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba then each issued separate orders to Mobutu, as head of the loyal military, to arrest the other.

On September 14, Mobutu, acting with CIA backing, placed Lumumba under house arrest in Leopoldville. Two days later, he carried out a full coup, suspending both parliament and the constitution.

UN General Secretary, Dag Hammarskjold.
The UN under General Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld actively collaborated in bringing down Lumumba. UN “peacekeepers,” who Lumumba had naively invited into the crisis, refused to allow loyal Congolese soldiers use of its airplanes for transport, in effect siding with Katanga and other secessionist movements, and after Lumumba’s vote of confidence the UN shut down the capital’s only radio station so his parliamentary victory could not be broadcast to the population. The UN also blocked Soviet planes supporting Lumumba from using its airfields.

On November 22, 1960, the UN General Assembly voted to recognize the delegation of Kasa-Vubu and military strongman Joseph Mobutu, refusing to sit delegates loyal to the democratically-elected Lumumba.

Lumumba being forced to eat a copy of his own speech

On November 27, Lumumba escaped from house arrest and attempted to flee to his political stronghold of Stanleyville. He was captured on December 1 by Mobutu’s forces. En route to his prison from Leopoldville airport, Lumumba was put on display in the back of a truck, hands tied and crowds were invited to taunt him. Bound in front of Mobutu, Lumumba was forced to eat a copy of a speech he had given asserting he was the rightful prime minister of the Congo.

Mobutu announced that the deposed nationalist leader would be tried as a rebel. He was then sent off to a military garrison 86 miles from Leopoldville in Thysville. There it is said that Lumumba nearly won the prison guards to his side.

With much of the population still in support of Lumumba, Count d'Aspremont ordered him transferred from Thysville to the renegade Katanga province and certain death at the hands of Tshombe. The move was first cleared with the CIA. During the January 17 flight to Katanga, Lumumba, Mpolo, and Okite were beaten so badly the pilot complained the plane was in danger of crashing. Later in the day the three were executed.

The murder still haunts the US and Belgium. A parliamentary investigation in Belgium in 2001 acknowledged that Baudouin and colonial authorities desired Lumumba’s death and were aware that he would be killed upon his rendition to Katanga, but it stopped short of admitting responsibility.

Though the US role in the coup and assassination is well-documented, there has never been any official acknowledgment. Frank Carlucci, a prominent Republican with close relations with the Bush political dynasty, who would later rise to defense secretary in the Reagan administration, worked as a covert CIA operative in the Congo under cover of a diplomatic assignment. Carlucci successfully sued to block Lumumba, a film released in 2001, from mentioning his name in the decision to kill the Congolese leader.

Will he be placed on a watch list?

A British internet troll caused ‘hysteria’ in America by posting messages on Facebook threatening to kill hundreds of people in a school massacre, a court heard yesterday.

Reece Elliott, 24, said he would drive to a school in Tennessee and ‘kill at least 200 before I kill myself’.

He suggested someone should call police because ‘I’m on my way’.

Yesterday, after a judge warned Elliott he faces a jail term, his girlfriend said: ‘He only did it for a laugh.’

The father of one, from South Shields, South Tyneside, posted the threat and other offensive comments ‘to see what kind of reaction he could provoke’, Newcastle Crown Court heard yesterday.

As a result, 3,000 children were kept off school on that day in Warren County, Tennessee.

Security was stepped up at schools across the area as the authorities implemented ‘lockdown’, with armed guards on duty and restricted access to schools.

The Facebook threats were made at a time when tension was high in the US following the slaughter of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, last December, by gunman Adam Lanza.

Elliott admitted one count of making threats to kill and eight of sending grossly offensive messages.

He has been held in custody since his arrest in February and was told by Judge James Goss that a prison term was ‘inevitable’. Sentencing was adjourned for reports.

The FBI and Homeland Security traced the culprit to Elliott’s mother’s address in South Shields. He had been staying there following an argument with his girlfriend.

Elliott was ‘well aware that he was wanted’ and handed himself in to police. The threat was made on a tribute site to 17-year-old Caitlin Talley, a popular student at Warren County High School who was killed in a car accident last October.

Using a false name, Elliott wrote: ‘My father has three guns. I’m planning on killing him first and putting him in a dumpster.

Then I’m taking the motor and I’m going in fast. I’m gonna kill hopefully at least 200 before I kill myself. So you want to tell the deputy, I’m on my way.’

He also wrote vile abuse about the dead teenager.

Gary Buckley, prosecuting, said of Elliott: ‘He said he was a part-time troll. He said he decided to post offensive comments to see what kind of reaction he could provoke.

‘He confirmed he did post the postings on Facebook and therefore did make these threats but he didn’t expect the threats to be taken seriously and didn’t expect them to cause the reaction they did.’

Why do whites want to sexualize children at such a young age?

German school children as young as five were given a sex-education book giving graphic advice on how to put on a condom and how to achieve orgasms.

Outraged parents complained when youngsters at a school in Berlin were given the book, called 'Where Do You Come From?', which features explicit cartoon depictions of sex.

The book, which shows a couple called Lisa and Lars engaging in various of stages of intercourse, shows Lisa putting a condom on Lars and another image of the pair having sex.

According to Spiegel Online, the school in the Kreuzberg area of Berlin did not initially respond to parents' complaints.

It was only when the local press got wind of the controversy and complaints were made to the city's governing body, the Berlin Senate, that anything was done.

The book is still said to be available at the school but not readily accessible by pupils.

Parents were not only concerned by the images featured in the book, but also by some of the explicit descriptions used.

The book, aimed at educating children aged five years and upwards, reads: 'When it's so good that it can't get any better, Lisa and Lars have an orgasm,' and 'the vagina and penis feel nice and tingly and warm.'

Politician Dorothee Baer of the Christian Social Union party in Bavaria said: 'Sex education should accompany the development of children, but not speed it up.'

Monika Grutters from the Christian Democratic Union Party told the Die Welt newspaper that she is against 'unnecessary zeal' in sex education.

Where Do You Come From? was first published by Loewe Verlag in association with German family planning group Pro Familia in 1991.

The publishing house said that the book is no longer being produced as some of its messages are out of date and added that it is being replaced with a book called 'Was I in Mummy's Stomach Too?' which the publishers say is less explicit.

The outrage comes as teachers in the UK have been encouraged to introduce pornography into the classroom, using sex education lessons to explain that porn is 'not all bad' and 'hugely diverse'.

The recommendations, included in an educational guide, suggest that teachers confront 'myths' about porn and inform children as young as five about sexualisation.

The guidance could have significant influence in British schools after the Government's decision to keep sex education lessons voluntary, leaving schools to devise their own ways of teaching the subject.

Trained to kill without an "off "switch."

An Army sergeant pleaded guilty Monday to killing four other soldiers and a Navy officer in 2009 at mental health clinic in Baghdad during the Iraq War, describing how he gunned down the men and saying he was in a 'rage' when he began his rampage.

Sgt. John Russell, 48, will avoid a death sentence following the plea agreement in a military court at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

His maximum sentence would be a life term. He testified Monday to persuade Army judge Col. David Conn to accept the agreement and Conn agreed.

Russell - who is from Sherman, Texas - went on a shooting spree at the Camp Liberty Combat Stress Center near Baghdad in May 2009.

It was one of the worst instances of soldier-on-soldier violence in the Iraq war.

In court, Russell said he was in a 'rage' when he opened fire.

'I wanted the pain to stop,' he testified in court at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, talking in a husky voice.

He read a written statement detailing his memories of the killings.

Russell was nearing the end of his third tour when his behavior changed, members of his unit testified in 2009.

They said he became more distant in the days before the May 11, 2009, attack and that he seemed paranoid that his unit was trying to end his career.

On May 8, Russell sought help at a combat stress clinic at Camp Stryker, where his unit was located.

On May 10, Russell was referred to the Camp Liberty clinic, where he received counseling and prescription medication.

The following day witnesses saw Russell crying and talking about hurting himself. He went back to the Camp Liberty clinic, where a doctor told him he needed to get help or he would hurt himself.

Russell tried to surrender to military police to lock him up so he wouldn't hurt himself or others, witnesses said.

Military prosecutors say Russell left the clinic and later returned with a rifle he took from his unit headquarters and began firing.

Russell said he wanted to hurt a doctor who he thought had earlier encouraged him to commit suicide.

He didn't find that doctor, but still carried out the shooting.

Killed in the shooting were Navy Cmdr. Charles Springle, 52, of Wilmington, N.C., and four Army service members: Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr., 19, of Federalsburg, Md.; Dr. Matthew Houseal, of Amarillo, Texas; Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, of Paterson, N.J.; and Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20, of Lenox, Mo.

Of the dead, Russell had interacted only with Springle, who tried to help him a couple of days before the attack.

Yates raised a gun at him after Russell killed Springle and Houseal, but Yates dropped the gun and ran.

Yates 'ran and I ran after him, and I shot him,' Russell said.

Yates' mother, Shawna Van Blargan, joined Springle's wife and son in court.

They held each other tightly as Russell talked about killing their family members.

Van Blargan cried out when Russell described killing her son. She left the courtroom. Russell also remembered finding Barton hiding under a table. Russell shot him in the head.

Bueno-Galdos tried to grab Russell's rifle. Russell testified he shot Bueno-Galdos in the chest, then shot him once more while he lay face down on the ground.

Two evaluations presented during a 2009 hearing said Russell suffered from severe depression with psychotic features and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.

A March 2011 evaluation said the major depression with psychotic features was in partial remission.

The Tacoma News Tribune reported Russell entered his plea while flanked by his two military defense attorneys and his civilian lawyer.

Some family members of Russell's victims have expressed frustration in news reports that it has taken four years to bring the case to trial.

Russell's pretrial agreement includes a contested portion that remains to be argued in court.

He refused to plead guilty to murdering the service members with premeditation. Prosecutors planned to argue that point next month.

When will there be a national debate on this epidemic?

A female high school basketball coach, 22, has been arrested on allegations she fondled and raped a 17-year-old female student, just eight months after she took a job teaching at a Utah high school.

Cortney Louise Jarrell was charged on Friday after the school district in Riverton, Utah, received a complaint last month that she had had sexual contact with one of her female students.

The alleged abuse took place at her home in February or March. Police say she touched the female student's breasts and genitals. 

Jarrell taught math at Riverton High School and coached the sophomore girls basketball team.

KSTU-TV reports that Jarrel was suspended last month when school administrators received a complaint about the sexual abuse. She resigned on Friday after she was arrested. 

She is charged with object rape, a first-degree felony and forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.

Her lawyer says she need the time to concentrate on her legal defense and she plans to plead not guilty. 

'People are ashamed,' Riverton student Jacob Collins told the TV station.

Students and parents liked Jarrell, despite her short time in the school.

'She was really nice what I saw of her, I would’ve never expected this to happen,' student Taylor Nielson said.

KSTU reporters found an eviction notice on her apartment in Salt Lake County when they tried to ask her about the charges. 

Jarrell was a high school softball star and the captain of her basketball team at Davis High School in Kaysville, 30 minutes north of Salt Lake City.

She played softball in college at Utah Valley University and majored in secondary education.

She was released on bail on Friday and is due back in court May 16.

Florida again...

A married 42-year-old Florida woman has been arrested after police say she had sex with two teenage boys, one of them as young as 13 years old, as other children watched.

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office said that Jeanine Shimandale, of Bradenton, is now facing four counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor stemming from an incident that took place last month.

According to detectives, Shimandale had sex with two boys ages 17 and 13 on March 11 while house-sitting in Sarasota during Spring Break.

Another teenage boy and two girls who were also in the house listened to and at times watched the sex acts take place, according to sheriff's officials.

The 42-year-old woman also allegedly bought two bottles of cake- and cookie dough-flavored vodka for the teens, according to an arrest affidavit cited by the Sun-Sentinel.

MyFox Tampa Bay also reported that Mrs Shimandale allegedly threatened to hire a hit man to kill anyone who spoke of what happened between her and the teens. 

She is being held on bonds totaling $100,500, the Bradenton Herald reported. Her arraignment has been scheduled for May 11.       

According to her Facebook page, Shimandale, a Bronx, New York, native, is married and works as a manicurist.

Her husband of more than three years, Tom Shimandale, told MyFox Tampa Bay that he was completely blindsided by his wife's arrest.

‘I'm confused I have no idea what's going on. I'm shocked and I'm saddened,’ he said. ‘You think you know somebody.’

Mr Shimandle recounted that when he met his wife in jail following her arrest, the 42-year-old did not bother to apologize to him for the betrayal, but begged him to bail her out in exchange for a divorce.

Ding dong...



Margaret Thatcher, the most hated British Prime Minister died shortly after 11 am on Monday, 8th April, 2013, in the opulent setting of the Ritz Hotel, London. Even with the semi-sympathetic, Oscar-nominated portrayal of Britain's first female Prime Minister in the Hollywood movie The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep in the leading role, there will be few tears shed in Ireland on the death of Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher is still a hate-figure in Ireland, even in death, primarily due to her callous treatment of the H-Block Hunger Strikers of 1981 and her ill-concealed glee at the deaths of those ten political prisoners. Thatcher's crimes against the Irish working class have never been forgotten or forgiven. The English, Scottish and Welsh working-class will also remain dry eyed, most notably due to her despicable treatment of the Mine workers and her brutal suppression of the mineworkers' union the N.U.M.

The African National Congress is a typical terrorist organisation … Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land’ – Margaret Thatcher, 1987

Internationally, Thatcher was roundly condemned for her leading role in the cold blooded mass murder of hundreds of Argentinian sailors, aboard the General Belgrano in 1982.The General Belgrano was an undefended troop ship, that she personally gave the order to sink during the Falklands War, while it was well clear of any combat zone. Her hyper-cynical and calculating pursuit of war in the Falklands in 1982, unleashed a predicted blast of blind Jingoism that improved her Personal Approval Rating from only 30% pre-Falklands War, to 59% shortly afterwards, according to Mori polls. In life Thatcher was a close ally and confidante of General Pinochet, the genocidal Fascist dictator of Chile and it looks like she has now joined him) in the Hell that all Fascists eventually spend eternity..

As Britain's first female Prime Minister, she quickly earned the nickname the Iron Lady for her obstinacy in government, dictatorial politics and near Presidential-type Prime Ministerial style, while in office. Born Margaret Hilda Roberts, on October 13th, 1925, the old Fascist had a very good innings, dying at the age of 87. Her first degree was in Chemistry, but her husband, Dennis Thatcher and his wealth, enabled Margaret Thatcher, to fast-track herself into legal training and eventually qualifying as a Barrister.

She made her political bones within Toryism as a Right-wing, rabid anti-Socialist, trade union-buster who worshipped at the alter of Monetarism and Laisez-faire Free Market Capitalism. One of her most dispicable acts was as Secretary of State for Education, in the Heath Tory government, when she abolished the provision of a third of a pint of milk for primary school children aged 7-11. For this despicable act, she earned herself the accurate moniker of 'Thatcher the Milk Snatcher!'

During the height of her dictatorial, imperious reign, she infamously sent the SAS to rescue her playboy and of late, African coup-sponsoring son, Mark Thatcher, when he went missing in North Africa in 1982. Renowned upper-class twit and all-round chinless wonder, Mark Thatcher, due to a renowned lack of commonsense and unburdened by even basic driving skills, combined with an inability to read a map or compass, had managed to get himself lost during the well organised Paris-to-Dakkar rally. Ironically, Thatcher spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money and all her government's resources into rescuing her feckless, disorientated son, less than a year after she had used similar resources to callously ensure the deaths of ten Irish Republican mothers' sons in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh concentration camp in Ireland!

The Poll Tax Tyrant..

Her introduction of the controversial Poll Tax, proved one of her most unpopular political measures and the images of the Trafalgar Square Riots were shown all over the world when Socialists, Anarchists and non-aligned, ordinary working class people, took on the armoured goons of the Metropolitan police in the heart of London. The Thatcher government piloted the Poll Tax in Scotland first, with the unintended consequence that it eventually wiped out any real Conservative party representation North of Hadrian's wall! "Cant pay, wont pay" was the slogan adopted by the many anti-Poll tax demonstrations and in Britain the courts gaoled scores of old aged pensioners, principled objectors and the poor, for their inability to pay the hated Poll Tax. Thatcher and her draconian policies made her, without doubt, the most unpopular British politician in modern times!

Thatcher - Hate figure number one..

The IRA's bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton on the 12th of October, 1984, came very close to wiping Thatcher, the entire Tory cabinet and much of the Conservative party off the face of the map! Ironically, the attack happened within a few hours of her birthday (and what a birthday surprise that would have been!) There were 5 fatalities and countless injuries, included in the casualty list was her chief-henchman, the ultra-Right-wing, Norman Tebbit, MP. The next day Thatcher appeared before the hastily assembled party faithful and the world's media, defiantly declaring that they were 'unafraid' of the IRA! However, it was wryly noted by many, that while she uttered these bellicose words of defiance, she was safely surrounded by literally legions of armed police, the British army, including the SAS and she even had a Royal Navy frigate anchored offshore. Needless to say even the most cowardly of individuals would be 'defiant' with that kind of back-up..

Thatcher's reign was aptly described as a 'Festival of Reaction',' unemployment soared to 3.5 million+; the rich got richer and the poor got a lot, lot poorer! The UK became an even more enthusiastic 'client state' of the USA and Thatcher allowed the US air-force to bomb Libya, from airbases in England, in April 1986. She even managed to infuriate her once most ardent admirers within that bastion of reaction, Ulster Unionism, by signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, of 1986, with Irish Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was also a fellow Bilderberg group member and given Thatcher's closeness to other Fascist brethren, all over the world, including Chile's Pinochet, she certainly had no difficulty finding common ground with Fitzgerald, as leader of a party that had direct links to Irelands only Fascist movement, Eoin O'Duffy's infamous Blueshirts..

Thatcher's Fall from Power..

Eventually even her most loyal party colleagues were forced to turn on her and effectively oust her in a palace coup during the second round of a Tory leadership battle in 1990. This hastily penned Imperious communique from the Thatcher press office, announced the end of the reign of Britain's most despised Prime Minister:

"The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Margaret Thatcher, F.R.S., has informed the Queen that she does not intend to contest the second ballot of the election for leadership of the Conservative Party and intends to resign as Prime Minister as soon as a new leader of the Conservative Party has been elected…Having consulted widely among my colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership. I should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated support."

Working class people in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and globally made a much shorter response to the news, in pubs, workplaces and in the media, which could be summarised in two short words:

"Good Riddance!"

Thatcher: The post-Downing Street Years..

In recent years, Thatcher suffered several strokes and had reportedly been suffering from dementia. A friend of Thatcher's daughter Carol, has admitted that her friend's mother's short term memory had completely gone,

The Anarchist group, Class War have arranged a mass party and celebration in London's Trafalgar Square, for the Saturday evening following Thatcher death. No doubt, it will be one of the largest open air parties to be seen within the city of Westminster for many years! In Ireland, in working class Republican areas, there are many flags flying at full mast and impromptu parties are occurring. The current British government announced that Thatcher will receive the speculated State funeral but no doubt English taxpayers will be very much against throwing away their hard earned money commemorating the death of the old tyrant.

It would be debatable due to her deteriorating mental health, whether Thatcher remembered her numerous crimes against working class people, for instance, her role in the deaths of the ten Long Kesh Hunger Strikers. One can only speculate, if she can even recall her vicious repression of the Miners Strike? It is very much doubtful if the untold misery she caused to working class people, in her own country and abroad ever troubled Thatcher's impervious conscience, when she was compus mentus, so it unlikely that it ever troubled her befuddled mind in her latter years.

As the British Prime Minister, who famously stated that there was "no such thing as society", her death has caused unprecedented rejoicing among ordinary English working-class people, not seen since the end of World War Two. In Ireland, Scotland and Wales, many people will make a holiday in their hearts on hearing the news of the death of the cruelest of Imperialist foes. Even Hollywood treatment and Meryl Streep's undoubted superb acting could rescue Margaret Thatcher from the metaphorical funeral pyres many working-class people have already built for the Iron Lady when the inevitable happens.

Those who condemn the undisclosed glee at the death of the Tyrant Thatcher as ghoulish, should recall her own public statement, re-inforced by her then press secretary Bernard Ingam, that people should 'celebrate' the deaths of hundreds of young Argentinian conscripts aboard the Belgrano. Thatcher's undisclosed pleasure at the deaths of the Irish Hunger Strikers, the destruction of the coal industry in England, Scotland and Wales and her vicious offensive against the poor, is ample reason to celebrate the death of a tyrant. Unfortunately, her political legacy of blatantly attacking the most vulnerable sections of society is still continued by her latter-day neo-liberal acolytes in Westminster, Stormont and Leinster House. 

Anybody non-white will do...will the authorities persue these individuals? (hat tip : Mastadon via "PublicShaming")

Two explosives went off at the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15, 2013. There are reported casualties and many more reported injured. Information is still coming in and no one is sure who is behind the attacks. Domestic terrorists? Foreign terrorists? A lone, disturbed individual? WE JUST DON’T KNOW!

But, minutes after the explosions, internet tough guys and girls were already pointing the blame and ready to kill. Posted below are some of the horrible shit that was said online, all posted no more than a couple hours after the tragedy happened. And I stress SOME. Most of the posts on here, I’m able to look through and post the very “best” of the worst. I couldn’t even keep up with all the shitty tweets today.

Blame the Muslims / Arabs / Anyone who looks or sounds Middle Eastern because we are uneducated dimwits:

The weird as hell people who actually think North Korea is behind this. (Dammit, how did we not catch that one guy on the one plane coming in from North Korea!?):

The internet tough guys/girls who really don’t fucking care who did it, whether it be an Arab, a Korean, or Mickey Mouse, they’d just really like to kill:

There’s king of the conspiracy theorists, Alex Jones, who thinks the U.S. government is behind the bombings. Why? To manipulate the American people into submission so those in power can form a one world government for the lizard people to control while Obama simultaneously takes all your guns by personally entering each and every home himself, of course!:

And then, of course, is the “THANKS, OBAMA!” crowd:

“I’m going to talk a lot of tough shit about going to war & then follow it up with the fact that I will not be one of those going to war.”

Too bad he wasn't dumb enough to lick the envelope...

OXFORD, Miss. — A Mississippi man charged with sending ricin-laced letters to the president and other officials was described Thursday as a good father, a quiet neighbor and an entertainer who impersonated Elvis at parties. But accounts also show a man who spiraled into emotional turmoil trying to get attention for his claims of uncovering a conspiracy to sell body parts on the black market.

Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, detailed in numerous Web posts over the past several years the event that he said "changed my life forever": the chance discovery of body parts and organs wrapped in plastic in small refrigerator at a hospital where he worked as a janitor more than a decade ago.

He tried to talk to officials and get the word out online, but he thought he was being railroaded by the government. Authorities say the efforts culminated in letters sent to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a judge in Mississippi. "Maybe I have your attention now even if that means someone must die," the letters read, according to an FBI affidavit.

"He is bipolar, and the only thing I can say is he wasn't on his medicine," his ex-wife, Laura Curtis, told The Associated Press.

Jim Waide, an attorney for the Curtis family, said Paul Kevin Curtis was prescribed medication three years ago. "When he is on his medication, he is terrific, he's nice, he's functional," Waide said. "When he's off his medication, that's when there's a problem."

Waide represented Curtis in a lawsuit he filed in August 2000 against North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, where he had worked from 1998 until he was fired in 2000. Waide said he withdrew from the case because Curtis didn't trust him. The suit, claiming employment discrimination, was dismissed.

"He thought I was conspiring against him," Waide said. "He thinks everybody is out to get him."

Curtis made a brief court appearance Thursday, wearing shackles and a Johnny Cash T-shirt. Attorney Christi R. McCoy said he "maintains 100 percent" that he is innocent. He did not enter pleas to the two federal charges against him. He is due back in court Friday afternoon.

In several letters to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and other officials, Curtis said he was writing a novel about black market body parts called "Missing Pieces."

Curtis also had posted language similar to the letters on his Facebook page. The documents indicate Curtis had been distrustful of the government for years. In 2007, Curtis' ex-wife called police in Booneville, Miss., to report that her husband was extremely delusional, anti-government and felt the government was spying on him with drones.

But Laura Curtis said Thursday that she doesn't believe the allegations about her ex-husband. "He just likes to speak out," she said.

"What they say he did is so unlike him, it's unreal," she added. "Until I hear him say he did it, I would not, I would not, I could not believe it."

During their 10-year marriage, the couple lived in Booneville in north Mississippi. Curtis said she moved to a house next door after the split. Her ex-husband moved to Birmingham but eventually back to Mississippi, most recently the small town of Corinth, where he was arrested Wednesday. Laura Curtis said he would visit their four children – ages, 8, 16, 18 and 20 – almost every day. He recently bought his youngest child a bicycle, she said.

But others say Curtis' behavior was often erratic.

Curtis and his brother worked as Elvis impersonators, and David Daniels, an attorney in Tupelo, said Curtis was in a show he helped organize about 10 years ago. He said that while he had no problems with Curtis' brother, he had an altercation with the man now suspected of mailing threats to three officials.

Daniels said was sitting in his vehicle one night after rehearsal when Curtis walked up. "He started beating on the windows and screaming and hollering," Daniels said. "I thought he was kidding, but he was serious. He was throwing a fit like I've never seen a grown man throw before."

Daniels said Curtis was holding a beer bottle and threatening him with it. Daniels said he pointed the pistol he kept in his car at Curtis. "I told him, `If you try to hit me with that bottle, Kevin, I'm going to shoot you,'" Daniels said.

But he said Curtis stayed by the vehicle for as long as 15 minutes. "He was screaming and ranting and raving about body parts being sold," Daniels said.

Daniels eventually filed simple assault charges, and he said the judge who handled the case was Sadie Holland – one of the three people who received a letter suspected of containing ricin, according to authorities. Records show she sentenced Daniels to six months in the county jail.

Daniels was an assistant district attorney at the time of the encounter with Curtis. "He launched a smear campaign against me, saying I attacked him and tried to shoot him," Daniels said Thursday.

"It made my life miserable for almost two years, having to deal with this guy," he said.

On Thursday, North Mississippi Medical Center confirmed Curtis' employment and said in a statement he was not terminated in response to allegations about the facility.

Under the name Kevin Curtis, multiple online posts describe the conspiracy Curtis claimed to uncover when working there. The posts say the conspiracy began when he "discovered a refrigerator full of dismembered body parts & organs wrapped in plastic in the morgue of the largest non-metropolitan health care organization in the United States of America."

The hospital's statement says it works with an agency that specializes in harvesting organs and tissue from donors, and then immediately transports those organs for donation. The hospital says it does not receive payment for the donated organs.

Curtis wrote in his postings that he was trying to "expose various parties within the government, FBI, police departments" for what he believed was "a conspiracy to ruin my reputation in the community as well as an ongoing effort to break down the foundation I worked more than 20 years to build in the country music scene."

In one post, Curtis said he sent letters to Wicker and other politicians.

"I never heard a word from anyone. I even ran into Roger Wicker several different times while performing at special banquets and fundraisers in northeast, Mississippi but he seemed very nervous while speaking with me and would make a fast exit to the door when I engaged in conversation..."

Wicker said Thursday in Washington that he had met Curtis when he was working as Elvis at a party Wicker and his wife helped throw for an engaged couple about 10 years ago.

Wicker called him "quite entertaining" but said: "My impression is that since that time he's had mental issues and perhaps is not as stable as he was back then."

Early Thursday evening, the FBI said lab tests have confirmed the presence of ricin in the letters mailed to Obama and Wicker. Holland's son, Mississippi state Rep. Steve Holland of Plantersville, said the letter sent to the judge was being tested.

Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological weapons expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, called the process to make ricin elaborate. She said it would not be difficult to create a low-concentration version using instructions from the Internet, but a finer and more concentrated version would require laboratory equipment and expertise, she said.

Laura Curtis said she doesn't think her ex-husband has the knowledge required to make ricin. She said he collects a monthly disability check, and she did not know where he would get ricin.

She said she cried when she heard about the arrest.

"It's more sinking in today, because you see the longer picture," Curtis said. "It's just me and the kids."

Taking advantage of the poor and desperate...

The ratio of women to men can be ten to one, or 'about as close to paradise as you get,' according to a balding Home Counties civil servant on his first visit to Ukraine.

Welcome to the mail-order bride industry in the old Soviet Union, aimed heavily at British and American men who have failed to find love at home.

'A lot of the blokes here think we've died and gone to heaven,' said the tubby 47 year old who works for a Home Office agency as he eyed a gaggle of revealingly dressed young women who would not have seemed out of place on a Parisian catwalk.

Typically men pay between £1,500 and £3,000 to visit several former Soviet cities on tours which are 'designed so that all you have to concern yourself with is meeting as many women as possible.'

Many of the scenes in our pictures are from a 'Romance Tour' to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev but such images are repeated across the old Soviet empire from Volgograd to Veliky Novgorod.

And if Ukraine is known for its basket case economy, the dating market - critics prefer the term 'cattle market' -  appears to be thriving, eased in part by far easier visa rules than to Russia, and a number of other former states in the fallen USSR.

Yet as we will see, a strong backlash is on the way after bloggers posted these and similar images online, leading to readers posing such awkward questions as: 'What does it say about our countries that our women are offered like this to such men, some of them looking like degenerate grandfathers' and 'How can our women humiliate themselves in such a way?'

The men are promised that, at 'Socials' as in the pictures here, they will be in the company of 'sincere, young, beautiful women who believe in family values'.

They are feverishly told to expect to meet 'more beautiful women in 11 days than you will in five years'.

At these occasions, typically some 15 to 25 men will be introduced to 150 to 250 women, often having to communicate via an interpreter. Many of the men are often double the age, or more, of the women.

To ease things along both sexes carry large name tags on their lapels. The women are also numbered - 'like in a slave market', as one blog comment put it.

'Our clients date up to five ladies per day,' boasts the website of 'A Foreign Affair', which offers single Western men tours to a number of locations including Russia and Ukraine.

'The Kiev Romance Tour offers you the unique opportunity to visit one of the most historic cities in all of the former Soviet Union, while at the same time meet thousands of beautiful Ukrainian women,' it states.

'Our Kiev Romance Tours provide you with an extremely effective means to meet as many women as possible so you can find that special one.'

Kiev, they emphasise, 'is an absolutely charming city, its charm is matched only by the women residing there'.

Often such tours include one or two other cities as Western men scour eastern Europe for their perfect match. These can be provincial cities where the standard of living is lower and, say critics, 'our women maybe more likely to fall for a foreigner, however unsuitable he may be'.

As one site says about the backwater of Poltava: 'Both the city and the women are enjoyable.

'Poltava has contributed some of the best Socials our company has ever had the privilege to host.

Beautiful Poltava women with their relaxed an easy-going, smaller city attitude help to make our stay one of the most enjoyable two days on any of our exciting single tours.'

The civil servant - like many on such trips he is is keen on retaining his anonymity - told me: 'I've got a failed marriage behind me and several subsequent relationships did not work out.

'I want a traditional wife and a lot of the other men out here with me say the same.

'At home, our women have been brought up to be independent, live their own lives, and not care for their men in the way our mothers used to.

'Well, that's fine but I want someone who is a traditional housewife. If we have kids, she stays at home looking after them. Is that so wrong?'

He was attracted to pay for his tour by hearing that Russian and Ukrainian women 'are not polluted by all this feminist stuff', he said, before continuing his search for his dream woman.

This is a frequent theme by men at such events.

'I want an old-fashioned girl brought up in a strict family,' admitted Jim DiGregorio, then 68, from Arizona, in a report on the bride searching phenomenon in eastern Europe by Sky News in 2011.

'She should come from a family where maybe Papa was in charge so she's used to a man being in charge. I prefer to be captain of my ship.'

His aim in signing up with another agency, AnastasiaDate.com, was to find a woman as much as a third of his age and he had flown halfway around the world because the women here are 'traditional and sexy'. He is far from alone in such aims.

When one Russian blog posted pictures from such dating sessions, hundreds of angry comments, many unprintable, poured in.

'She sold herself for Coca-Cola,' said one.

'This is a parade of geriatrics,' said another. 'What are these women doing with these old men?'

The web went into overdrive as the pictures were reposted.

One comment from a woman called Nadia under a picture of a large American man and a young, slim woman said: 'How much must you like money to go with THAT?!'

A reply came back: 'Yes, and imagine him getting undressed and letting his tummy go... sorry must stop, I need to vomit.'

Another reply read: 'How desperate must our country be to have its young and beautiful women leaving like that?'

'So sad. They are prostitutes, aren't they, this is what it is really called.'

'Yes, but when you've got a choice of local men abusing alcohol and beating their wives, not wanting to look after children, not wanting to work... these girls will be better off with their elderly foreigners'.

Galyna, 23, who has attended several such sessions in Kiev, said: 'Personally, I went and looked.

The format is quite demeaning - well-off men from the West and poor Ukrainian and Russian girls. Loads more women than men.

'We were expected to parade for them, as well as talk to them.'

At some sessions, the women pose in bikinis, at others they walk balancing a weight on their heads seemingly to show off their figures.

'Yes, I am looking for a foreign partner because I want stability in my life. Here, domestic violence is bad, our men drink themselves stupid, and the divorce rate is bad.

'I think I'm worth more than that. If it means an older partner from abroad, who really wants to share his life, then I'm ready for this even though it breaks my heart to leave my homeland.

'I can see other girls who are after money from this by hooking a rich foreigner.

'As one told me: 'There's no fool like an old fool. I'll grab what I can from him'.'

But marriage agency owner Tatiana Tasueva from Moscow said: 'If the girl is young and pretty why shouldn't she sell herself and make a profit? If she is beautiful why should she be poor?'

One Russian agency has called for curbs on such tours while a spokeswoman for Ukrainian women's rights group La Strada said today: 'Such 'dating parties' are are a form of discrimination against women and such things often lead to the prospering problems we are trying to fight, namely domestic violence and the trafficking of women.

'When a woman has only limited chances of a professional career, and is paid 30 per cent less then men, as is the case with us, she is superficially attracted by offers to try and make a career out of family life.'

She stressed: 'We can't call such 'parties' a good thing. They often end with problems for women, who go to an unknown country, not speaking the language, and knowing nothing about her rights.

'Taking part in such 'Socials' is not necessarily a rational decision for a woman.

'Often they have lacked love and happiness in their lives, and are happy to get any kind of male attention. Marriage agencies often exploit this knowledge and prosper, creating a good platform for women trafficking.'

Another expert at the group, Ekaterina Cherepakha, director of social programmes, said: 'The desire of some women to marry a foreigner and go to live in another country is very understandable.

'Some find their way to foreign bridegrooms online, others turn to marriage agencies. Is it good or bad for Ukrainian women? In certain circumstances it can be good.

'But the point is that such agencies and websites may serve a different purpose as a cover for trade or trafficking in women or their exploitation.

'Sometimes when a woman wants to go and live abroad she has very little idea about the lifestyle in the country she goes to.

'Nor about her rights, or getting residence permits, or what happens in a divorce or how to keep her children after a marriage break-up.

'Potential brides do not even think about possible difficulties and even dangers they can face.

'And recruiters often use all this. When some agencies and recruiters promise she will meet and marry a wealthy man, no-one checks his marital status, mental health, crime record and all the other things.

'It can all end in violence.

'So when a woman seeks help from such agencies she must seriously consider all the possible consequences and especially the risks.'

Against this, the agencies named here claim to be thoroughly respectable and to have had a high rate of success in their clients forging long lasting relationships and marriage with women in Ukraine, Russia and other countries.

........

Adrenaline junkies are being warned that the upsurge in popularity of 'Extreme Kidnapping' could lead to dangerous confusion for the police and public.

Charging $500 for a four-hour 'econo-kidnap', the Detroit-based business has hit the news in recent weeks after the apparent broad daylight abduction of a New York couple turned out to be all a masochistic game.

Simulating a dramatic kidnapping experience complete with electric shocks and water-boarding, people pay anywhere up to $1,500 to be held overnight, with the firm even offering customized plans that even include the possibility of all-girl abductors.

Founded by sometime rapper and entrepreneur Adam Thick/Mr. Scrillion, Extreme Kidnapping was founded 10-years-ago, but now finds that 80-90 percent of its business comes from outside Michigan - mainly from tourists who fly in.

Only the paying customer or customers are allowed to be kidnapped and Thick suggests his clients come to Detroit to act out their fantasy because they will save 'a ton of money'.

'In terms of the industry - kidnapping for entertainment - it's a niche,' he said to MLive.Com. 'If you're another company trying to set something up like us, you can't really compete with us. There's really not much room (in the market) for a business like this.

'You can have a couple, but it's not the type of business where you would probably have five of them operating at one time.'

Inspired by the David Fincher movie 'The Game', Extreme Kidnapping offers clients of the deluxe top of the range experience a torture menu.

The list asks if you are happy to be slapped, water-boarded, stunned by an electric gun and even suspended from the ceiling, while kindly also enquiring if the paying customer suffers any allergies.

Of course, along with the simulated masochistic experience there is a safety word which is agreed beforehand and Extreme Kidnapping even goes as far as to arrange a backstory as to why the client is being abducted.

Suggested story lines include a secret agent on a mission gone wrong, the heir to a large fortune taken for ransom or simply mistaken identity.

Torture techniques used in Extreme Kidnappings scenarios include being made to listen to particular music again and again.

GQ Magazine recently ran a profile on the Detroit firm and their reporter was subjected to Eurythmics 'Sweet Dreams' twenty times in a row until it became 'a really, really annoying mantra'.

Other, more frightening noises were also played, such as a barking dog and huge amounts of water being sloshed and moved around.

The willing abductee found his thighs duct-taped together while his private parts were uncomfortably squeezed between them.

He was exposed to the threat of being burnt by a blow-torch which never materialized and was left for hours on his own in silence.

'Finally my kidnappers came back down and led me back to the chair. Romeo ripped off my eye mask and I got hit with the floodlights,' says the article in GQ.

'Adam sat behind them. This is when my fake kidnapping turned into the world's lamest improv class.'

Running through the fake identities pre-arranged, Adam acts as a frightening kidnapper - but then pulls the rug from under the one-time willing participant.

He claims that the fake kidnapping has now gone awry and is in fact now a real kidnapping - and that the reporter has fallen victim to a scam he has repeated many times before.

However, once the ruse is bought by the now panicked client, Adam quickly relents and winds the scenario up - driving the customer back to their hotel or home and kicking them out of the SUV they were abducted in.

'It’s more or less a thrill entertainment of a kidnapping scenario,' said Shanel Hill, a professional abductor for the Detroit-based company called Extreme Kidnapping.

'Some people come to us because they want to lose control,' Hill said to ABC News.

However, some law enforcement experts say that the all-too-real kidnappings could create real-life danger.

While it turned out to be a hoax staged to celebrate a birthday, NYPD spent days seriously investigating the incident.

'What you’ve done is create a situation where both the police, the victims and the fake bad guy could be harmed,' ABC News analyst and former FBI special agent Brad Garrett said

Why do whites like to film their sexual crimes?

A Connecticut man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing three young girls, including an 18-month-old toddler, and videotaping the acts assaults at his home.

David Csanadi, 36, of Newtown, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in New Haven after entering a guilty plea in November to one count of producing child pornography.

Federal prosecutors say Csanadi abused the children of his friends in 2006 and 2007 and recorded the assaults on video. Officials say he also downloaded child porn from the Internet onto his home computer.

The Connecticut Post reports that Assistant U.S. Attorney Neeraj Patel called Csanadi a ‘monster who crept into the bedrooms of little girls at night.'

‘The monster who visited these girls was not a figment of these little girls' imagination. The monster was real,’ the prosecutor said.

Csanadi also has pleaded guilty to state sexual assault and child pornography charges and is set to be sentenced to a concurrent 20-year prison term on April 2.

After serving his sentence, Csanadi will be subject to 15 years of supervised release

According to prosecutors, the abuse targeting an 18-month-old, a four-and-a-half-year-old and another girl under the age of 12 happened inside Csanadi's Newtown home and in Rhode Island.

The 36-year-old has been jailed since April 5, 2011, when he was arrested on three counts of first-degree sexual assault, risk of injury or impairing the morals of children, illegal sexual contact with a child, and one count of third-degree possession of child porn.

Prosecutors described in court one of the videos recorded by Csanadi depicting his abuse of the 18-month-old baby in her bedroom during a nap.

'She couldn't speak or walk,' US Attorney Patel told Judge Janet Bond Arterton. 'She couldn't run away or tell someone. She couldn't tell the defendant to stop.'

FBI agents working with police identified two other prepubescent girls in the 25 homemade pornographic videos they seized from Csanadi's home in April 2011.

Other recordings depicted young girls playing on the beach, dancing, selling lemonade and stepping off a school bus.

In each of the tapes, the lens zooms in on the children's chest, groin, buttocks and feet. Officials also found 5,000 child pornographic images on his computers, among them S & M scenes.

During Csanadi's sentencing, the judge noted that the defendant abused the children of his friends, with their parents completely unaware of the criminal betrayal of their trust.

Csanadi was arrested in 2011 after officials with FBI's Childhood Exploitation Taskforce investigating a website determined that the 36-year-old man was downloading child pornography.

A search of his Newtown home on April 8 netted the videos showing Csanadi abusing little girls.

Csanadi's attorney Paul Thomas said in court that his client is 'not a monster,' adding that he has feelings of deep remorse for what he had done.

'He is horrified by his conduct,' the public defender said before recommending that Csanadi be sent to a treatment program for sexual offenders in Massachusetts.

Csanadi's father, a retired police officer, addressed the court before his son's sentencing, telling the judge that the 36-year-old man has turned his life around after overcoming a cocaine addiction on his own.

Csanadi's attorney read a statement on his client's behalf, saying in part that he has spent every day thinking about his wrongdoings.

In the course of the hearing, an aunt of one of the underage victims gave a statement, telling the court that the defendant 'acted like a thief in the night' stealing her niece's innocence during a sleepover.

‘Mr Csanadi may have a chance to leave prison one day, but my family and I can never walk away from what happened,’ she said.

The 36-year-old Newtown resident later said in court that he did not know why he committed the horrendous crimes, comparing the accessibility of internet pornography to 'putting alcohol in front of an alcoholic.' 

Uh so whats the problem here?

A black member of the Alabama legislature uncorked a racist tirade in an email this week to a constituent who urged him not to embrace new gun control laws - copying his incendiary language to every member of the state legislature.

Joseph Mitchell, a Democrat who has represented parts of the city of Mobile since 1994 and ran for re-election unopposed in 2010 and 2006, castigated a voter named Eddie Maxwell, a Jefferson County man whom he correctly presumed was white.

'Hey man,' Mitchell wrote. 'Your folk never used all this sheit [sic] to protect my folk from your slave-holding, murdering, adulterous, baby-raping, incestuous, snaggle-toothed, backward-a**ed, inbreed [sic], imported criminal-minded kin folk.'

The email he was responding to asked him, and the other members of the Alabama legislature, to keep state gun laws in step with the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees citizens access to firearms.

'Do not violate your oath of office by introducing additional gun control bills,' Maxwell urged Mitchell, or by allowing those already enacted to remain in the body of our laws.'

The exchange, which occurred during a stretch of two weeks ending on February 13, was first reported by Yellow Hammer Politics, an Alabama-based conservative political blog. Mobile's Press-Register published the complete, unedited email chain Wednesday morning.

Mitchell's reply also suggested that he favored arming black Alabamians before enforcing new gun-control measures, in case they needed to defend themselves from racist white southerners.

'You can keep sending me stuff like you have however,' he wrote, 'because it helps me explain to my constituents why they should protect that 2nd amendment thing AFTER we [blacks] finish stocking up on spare parts, munitions and the like.'

'Bring it,' he concluded. 'As one of my friends in the Alabama Senate suggested – "BRING IT!!!!"'

Maxwell, a retired coal miner, objected to amending the state constitution with new gun laws 'when the change is forbidden by the people.'

'You have sworn to support our constitution,' his initial email read. 'Do not violate your oath of office by introducing additional gun control bills or by allowing those already enacted to remain in the body of our laws.'

After reading Mitchell's race-laden reply, Maxwell sent another follow-up email.

'That's not the type of reply I expect to receive from a state legislator,' he wrote.

'I'm not a racist and I find your reply to be especially offensive considering the position you hold.'

'My parents and grandparents taught me to love God and my fellow man as myself. My father was threatened by members of his church back in 1954 for inviting a black family to attend the church he pastored.

'My father-in-law was threatened when he hired a young negro man to work in his shop back in 1968 in a community where several neighbors were members of the Ku Klux Klan. He didn’t allow those threats to keep him from treating people of all races equally.'

'Racism,' Maxwell concluded, 'is not exclusive to my own people. I learned that before 1955. It is just as ugly now as it was then, regardless of the race of the person who is consumed by it.'

Mitchell kept the thread going, continuing to copy all his legislative colleagues and insisting that it's impossible for a black man to be a racist.

'Historically, violence on Black folk was committed by White folk,' he insisted. 'It's a fact but is it "racist?" It is "racial."'

'A person without the power to exercise a threat cannot be a racist because he or she will be eliminated. A person who can, by merely stepping back on the sidewalk ore [sic] being quiet can support racism and benefit from the ‘first hired,’ affirmative action, preferential treatment fostered by systemic racism and bigotry.'

Mitchell ended his email with the taunting sign-off: 'Lock and load'

Neither MailOnline nor the Press-Register got responses when they reached out to Mitchell's office for comment.

But Maxwell told the Press-Register that he had no regrets about challenging his elected representative.

'It just makes me more determined that we the people need to stay involved," he told the paper in a telephone interview. 'It's up to us as citizens to watch our government.'

Maxwell also told the Press-Register that two other members of the state legislature have reached out to him to register their shock about their colleague's language.

This member hears you loud and clear,' he said Democratic state Rep. Patricia Todd of Birmingham wrote. 'I just received this chain of emails and wanted to let you know that I am with you on the gun issue and am saddened by the tone of my colleague's email. All of us have suffered from the racism of the past and I thank you for your civic and thoughtful response.'

Maxwell added that he was hopeful that Mitchell would be sanctioned by his fellow lawmakers.

Why isn't the media calling this a suicide bombing?

A man blew himself up inside a truck at a western Pennsylvania home on Tuesday, injuring two other people - one of them critically - in what authorities say was a terrifying act of revenge.

Investigators ruled the death of 40-year-old Brad Kollar a suicide resulting from blunt force trauma after the blast shortly before 9am.

His body was discovered inside his truck that was parked outside a home near Patton, about 70 miles east of Pittsburgh. The truck had been loaded with explosives.

The home's owner is 44-year-old William Shaner, Kollar reportedly blamed for a recent arrest.

Sources told The Tribune-Democrat that Kollar packed his car with explosives to get revenge on Mr Shaner, whom he believed had 'snitched' on him and his father, John Kollar, 64, who were arrested last year on possession of a controlled substance and chop shop charges.

The two were arrested on March 6, 2012, after authorities raided their home and found what they believed to be a meth lab. Kollar reportedly believed police had been tipped off by Mr Shaner.

Both the father and son were out on bail, but at the time of the blast, Brad Kollar was due in court for sentencing. He reportedly faced more than 10 years in jail and a fine of up to $100,000.

Mr Shaner was inside the building at the time of the blast and was taken to Altoona Regional hospital and later flown to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he was listed in critical condition.

In an update posted to her Facebook page, Mr Shaner's wife Linda - who had been at work - said that her husband was still in bed and one of their sons was brushing his teeth at the time of the blast.

The son, Ryan Shaner, had gotten out of the home and was helping his father out of the rubble when neighbors and drivers in the area rushed over to help.

Ryan was treated for minor cuts and scrapes, while his father was hospitalized for a skull fracture, six fractured ribs, and two fractured vertebrae. He underwent surgery last night.

Linda Shaner posted: 'It's going to be long road but we will make it through, there is too many on our side!!!! I love you all & again THANK YOU from me & my family !!!!'

The couple's other two children were not in the house, which was leveled by the force of the explosion.

Debris was strewn about the street in the aftermath of the explosion - which has left the neighborhood in shock.

'I just think it's scary, this close to home,' Luke J. Lansberry, whose house faces the destroyed home, told The (Altoona) Mirror.

'There's a bunch of kids that live around here,' added Randy Slovikosky, who owns a nearby landscaping business.

Police and other investigators originally believed a methamphetamine lab might have been to blame for the blast not far from Route 36.

Trooper John Matchik told reporters at the scene that investigators called the agency's Hazardous Device and Explosive Squad from Harrisburg to sift through a large area of debris to determine what leveled the home down to its foundation.

Police are in the process of speaking with the hospitalized men, Matchik said.

'We are following up with information and conducting things very, very methodically,' he told the Mirror.

'We want to make sure we don’t overlook anything.'

Mr Kollar was arrested, along with his father John Andrew Kollar, on March 6, 2012.

Police found stolen vehicles, explosives and chemicals, believed to be the precursors to setting up a meth lab, on the family's property.

The man's father was not available for comment after his son's suicide. 

Bradley Kollar’s mental status had reportedly been a concern for authorities for some time.

Court records show the DA's office tried unsuccessfully to have Kollar's bail revoked after receiving reports that he was contemplating suicide and may have access to explosives, according to the Tribune-Democrat.

Neighbors who lived near Kollar described him as a promising and bright man with a troubled past, according to WJACTV.com.

Notice there is an increasing correlation between pedophiles and those who sexually assault animals...

Life in prison?! How about a trip to Yemen?

An Ohio teenager charged with shooting dead three students at a local school was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole, but not before sparking nationwide outrage and condemnation with his despicable courtroom antics. 

Judge David Fuhry sentenced TJ Lane to life in prison without parole on each of three aggravated murder charges.

Lane's attorney Ian Friedman told the court during a sentencing hearing Tuesday that Lane did not wish his defense team to present any witnesses, statements or other evidence to mitigate his sentence.

The 18-year-old entered the courtroom dressed in a light-blue button down shirt, which he then removed to reveal a white T-shirt with the word 'KILLER' written over the front with a black marker.

Twitter instantly lit up with posts expressing disbelief and shock at the defendant's callous behavior, with many commenters calling Lane 'sickening' and 'not human.'  

When Lane addressed the court, he flipped the middle finger and used profane language toward those in the audience, including the victims' families.

'This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. F*** all of you,' the gunman said, causing those in the audience to gasp in shock.

'Frankly, I wasn't prepared for this,' the prosecutor said moments after Lane's gesture. He said the action was proof that Lane is a 'disgusting human being,' and that the rampage was a 'cold, calculated, premeditated killing,' ABC News reported. 

Prosecutor James Flaiz went on to say: 'He still refuses to offer any explanation for why he did this. The only explanation I can offer the court is he is an evil person.'

Lane's guilty plea on February 26 came on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks. Daniel Parmertor, Russell King Jr., and Demterius Hewlin were killed and three others were wounded, two seriously, including Nick Walczak who is now confined to a wheelchair.

Lane wasn't subject to the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the crimes.

On Tuesday, Lane turned out in court wearing a white T-shirt with the word 'Killer' written on the front - the same word police say the 18-year-old had scrawled on his shirt the day of the deadly shootings.

Lane has never offered a motive for the massacre. Addressing the court during his sentencing, the 18-year-old flipped his middle finger to those who gathered inside the courtroom, among them the victims' families.

'I feel he should be locked up for the rest of his life,' Domenick Iammarino, grandfather of Daniel Parmertor told The Plain Dealer ahead of the sentencing. 'It was a despicable, premeditated act. He should breathe his last breath in prison.'  

Judge David L. Fuhry described the shootings as a 'merciless rampage,' noting Lane's apparent lack of remorse as part of his reasoning for the sentence, CBS21 reported.

'It appears to the court that the defendant simply wished to make a name for himself, to make a big splash, to make front-page news,' the judge said.

The station WAFF reported that after being collared by police following the rampage, Lane was recorded in a squad car saying: 'I shot people.' When asked by an officer why he did it, the teen replied: 'I don't know.'

The defendant smiled and smirked as the victims' loved ones addressed the court with emotional impact statements.

'You are lucky there are so many police in this room,' said the mother of paralyzed student Nick Walczak. 'You can smile all you want. You are evil.'

Danny Parmertor's mother, Dina, told the court that she has spent every day since her son's murder in pain and tears, The Plain Dealer reported.

'You don't deserve to be called human,' the grieving mother told Lane. 'You are a monster. You are a weak, pathetic, vile coward.'

Dina Parmetor also added: 'I want you to be ensured years and years of pain, which in my opinion is not enough. You don't deserve to take another breath while my 16-year-old son lies in the ground because of your cold, disgusting actions.'

Defense attorney Ian Friedman said Lane plans to file an appeal, and has asked the court to appoint him a lawyer for that process.

'The defense is deeply sorry for the families, all of the families’ pain, all of the families that have been affected by this,' Friedman said. 'There’s nothing we can say that’s going to lessen that.'

TJ Lane's sister, Sadie, released a statement to the media following the sentencing, expressing condolences to the families of the victims and revealing that her own family continues to struggle with the aftermath of the tragedy.

'It may be hard for some to understand, but I love my brother, and hope that wherever the sentence and life takes him in the future that he can touch others' lives in a positive way from a point of view that only he can give,' she said.

Addressing her sibling's shocking demeanor during the Tuesday hearing, Sadie said: 'The brother in the courtroom and [the one] that did this is not the brother I knew.'

Will justice be done?

A Canadian porn actor accused of dismembering his Chinese lover and mailing the body parts to political parties and schools has collapsed in court today, during the second week of his preliminary hearing.

Luka Magnotta, 30, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the gruesome slaying and dismemberment of Jun Lin last May.

He is accused of killing the university student and posting a video online that shows him stabbing and having sex with the dismembered corpse.

Wearing a black sweater with colored stripes, Magnotta appeared distressed during a video evidence session this morning. The evidence is subject to a publication ban, until it is determined that there is enough evidence to go to trial.

He held his hand over his mouth and asked the guard in his glass-enclosed defendant's box for a five-minute break.

He stood up and collapsed on the floor just after the judge agreed to an extended lunch break.

According to Canadian Press, he was all of a sudden lying on his right side, crumpled into a fetal position, in the courtroom, still handcuffed and shackled.

'You might want to make room for an ambulance,' the Crown prosecutor, Louis Bouthillier, told the guards outside the courtroom. 'Somebody's collapsed.'

Canadian Press said Magnotta's eyes were fixed on the ground not on the screen where the, presumably gruesome, video evidence was being shown.

When he began covering his mouth, his lawyers came to check on him and 10 minutes into that segment of the hearing he asked the baliff to his side to request the break.

As well as first-degree murder, Magnotta is also facing four other charges relating to the case.

He is accused of dismembering Lin and mailing parts of his body across Canada, before leading police on an international manhunt before he was finally arrested in Germany.

Lin's parents were not in the courtroom on Tuesday morning. His father has attended the preliminary hearing, which began March 11, sporadically but has not stayed in the courtroom when the most graphic evidence has been heard.

The porn actor first appeared in court last Monday as his lawyers unsuccessfully sought to close pre-trial proceedings to the press and public.

Magnotta has observed all hearings from a glass enclosure in the packed Montreal court room.

During the proceedings, which are expected to last another one to two weeks, prosecutors are outlining the case against 30-year-old Magnotta and seek to persuade a judge they have enough evidence for the case to go to trial.

On March 11, appearing for the first time since soon after his June arrest, Magnotta wore a white T-shirt and khaki trousers, leaning back in his chair as he listened to legal arguments.

Also in the courtroom was Diran Lin, father of victim Jun Lin, whose dismembered body parts were mailed to schools and political parties in the Canadian capital Ottawa and Vancouver in a crime that shocked Canada and gained international notoriety.

Magnotta is accused of first-degree murder, interfering with a dead body and other charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

'This is the worst thing a family can endure. We are empty,' the Journal de Montreal quoted Diran Lin as saying in an interview ahead of the hearing. 'We had so much hope for Jun Lin.'

Police say the video, which they believe is genuine, showed a man stabbing his victim to death before dismembering the corpse and then eating part of the body.

Lin's hands and feet were mailed in May to the offices of political parties in Ottawa and to schools in Vancouver.

His torso was found in a pile of garbage behind Magnotta's Montreal apartment, and his head was discovered in a Montreal park in July. Lin was a student at Concordia University in Montreal.

Initial arguments revolved around an unusual defense request to exclude the public and the media, which was denied. The court imposed a publication ban on the evidence presented.