OT News report about KKK OT

[david lazarus]

Hi Guys

Had a TV news report last night down here in NZ about a resurgence of the KKK in America. It portrayed a very dark side of America, and the prejudice particularly targeted Mexicans. Alabama appeared to be the centre point for this, they interviewed several very VERY scary people (quoting chapter and verse of the bible !!!).

Is this just newsies stiring up things on a slow news day?? Is this being reported locally?

Generally I have found Americans more tollerant and conservative than us down here in the antipodies.

Dave

[Brad Lustig]

Just one KKK member is too many, but I live in the South and haven't seen a bit of activity. My parents have a place in the foothills of the Georgia mountains. There's supposed to be a few up there, but haven't seen that either. I can pretty much promise that it's just the "journalists" trying to make a news story where there isn't one.

[david lazarus]

Hi Brad

Newsies stirring things up...now that would not suprise me. The report stopped me in my tracks. I said to myself that this can not be accurate reporting, so it's good to check out "the real oil" on these claims.

[claybill]

why is it that those wanting to harm or limit others always hide behind the bible.

there are 2 basic theories in the bible...

'an eye for an eye'...old testament.....revenge

and 'turn the other cheek'....new testament....forgiveness

kkk's are scary and hide behind a mask similar to al quaeda

bill

[eric wissing]

They are limited I would guess to a few pockets of nuts. The history of the KKK is interesting. A few guys started it literally as a joke hence the titles such as "Grand Wizard" but it quickly got quite scary. Even here we had marches in broad daylight on oneside of the city that wasn't very open to any minorities. When you see the film of 50,000 marching in Washington you wonder what in the Hell were we up to. Same old story, last ones in want to shut the door behind them. We've come a long way but I imagine someday people will look back and shake their heads. I like the old cars but I wouldn't want to go back to 1950s especially if you were not white ( or whatever we are called . Eric

[Charlie Olson]

Lets not stoop to denigrating the Bible in a car hobby forum. What the heck is the matter with some of you?

[eric wissing]

I didn't think Bill said anything bad about the Bible. I think he was just addressing the misuse of it. My take anyways. Heck a pencil could be used to write a great novel or to put out someone's eye, can't blame the pencil. Eric

[PatS....]

I heard a report last night which said that radical islamists are now very successfully recruiting young black males from the prison system. The number of KNOWN radical terrorist training camps IN THE US has gone from 22 in 2002 to 65 last year. Has the potential to make the KKK look like a boy scout troop.

[eric wissing]

By the early sixties close to 1/4 of the Klan members were FBI informants. After a driveby shooting in Mississippi within an hour the Feds knew who had done it. Getting convictions in the South was difficult but eventually RICO statutes were used against them and many were jailed and they were bankrupted by civil suites. I imagine that there are many informants in these so-called terrorist camps. A country of 300 million is going to have a number of head cases of many stripes. Take a look at your own town, there has to be a few people with some strange ideas. That in itself is allright only when they start promoting violence does and should the government step in.

New Zealand has those radical Hobbits with their funny little huts. Who is watching them? Eric

[Tony_Urwin]

I was already having trouble sleeping, what with the ever-present danger from itinerant Mexican laborers. Now you guys gotta get me all riled up about hobbits and KKK and crazed African-American Al-Queda felons.

I'm thinking about moving to the Arctic and getting in early before the land rush. Global warming and all. I can't even grow tomatoes here in Cincinnati, unless I water twice a day. personally, I think it's a conspiracy. Them illegal aliens brought the weather up with 'em.

[eric wissing]

Tony, do you have a permit to grow thos tomatoes? Eric

[Normspeed]

And Jerry Lewis. Don't forget that darned Jerry Lewis. Nowhere left to run.

I was already having trouble sleeping, what with the ever-present danger from itinerant Mexican laborers. Now you guys gotta get me all riled up about hobbits and KKK and crazed African-American Al-Queda felons.

I'm thinking about moving to the Arctic and getting in early before the land rush. Global warming and all. I can't even grow tomatoes here in Cincinnati, unless I water twice a day. personally, I think it's a conspiracy. Them illegal aliens brought the weather up with 'em.

[Plymouthy Adams]

you don't need a permit to grow tomatos..where the heck you live??? you only need the permit to pick them...

[eric wissing]

I used to grow more tomatoes than a person knew what to do with. I basicly just grew what I needed to make salsa, habeneros, jalapenos, tomatoes, cilentro etc.. Now I just go to the roadside stands, much easier. Our local outdoor market is too orientated to some moneyed class. $4.00 for very small jars of jalapeno jelly. Parking sucks and the veggies don't look that good. No one ever has the "beefeater" tomatoes? those are some good eating. Eric

[Tony_Urwin]

I don't need no stinkin' permit to grow tomatoes. I got a friend named Pedro who comes over and tends my garden. He's kinda worried about his paperwork, though.

[De Soto Frank]

Well, if it's a "slow news day" , the media will go out and make some...

The kkk is apparently still alive in many parts of the USA; they came to local attention in Pennsylvania over the last year when a southern PA "chapter" wanted to hold a rally over the Labor Day holiday, I believe at the Gettysburg Nat'l Battlefield site... there was quite a local flap over whether or not they should be allowed to... eventually, they were granted permission, but were given a specific location, and protesters were kept a safe distance away by park police.

A couple other "surfacings" centered around the NE Penna city if Hazleton, and its mayor's crack-down on illegal immigrants... the kkk offered its "official" approval of mayor Barletta's efforts and offered to come to Hazleton for a display of support. The mayor politely declined their assistance.

I belive we had a similar kkk presence at a recent civil liberties rally in down-town Scranton...

A little further back in local history, in the early 1920's, the Sisters of Mercy were trying to establish a womens' college outside Dallas, PA; a rural, mostly WASP area. There were several crosses burned on the campus property by locals who wanted it known that "papists" were not welcome !

The Sisters of Mercy endured those early indignities, and College Misericordia went co-ed in the early 1980's recently celebtrated it's 75th anniversary, and just this year has achieved university status.

Extremist groups of any flavor can be a frightening crowd...

[Tony_Urwin]

Our local KKK chapter here in Cincinnati applies for a permit for a march every year, sometimes they erect a cross downtown on Fountain Square...

I guess they have the same First Amendment rights as everyone else. They draw quite a crowd of hecklers, and it requires quite a police presence to protect them. Kind of a reversal from the days of Civil Rights marchers...

[Guest jjmorrse]

Illinois nazis....... I hate illinois nazis

[RobertKB]

Another Blues Brothers fan!

[BobT-47P15]

There's a blues band in Kansas City that goes by the name of "Four Fried

Chickens and a Coke".

Even have seen the bro's in Joplin......

(Yours truly on the harp.) (Not sure about those cartwheels tho...)