The Beast as Saint

by Kevin Alfred Strom

The first public sermon that Martin Luther King, Jr. ever gave, in 1947 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, was plagiarized from a homily by Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick entitled "Life is What You Make It," according to the testimony of King's best friend of that time, Reverend Larry H. Williams.

The first book that King wrote, "Stride Toward Freedom," was plagiarized from numerous sources, all unattributed, according to documentation recently assembled by King scholars Keith D. Miller, Ira G. Zepp, Jr., and David J. Garrow.

The four senior editors of "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr." (a publication of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change) stated of King's writings at both Boston University and Crozer Theological Seminary: "Judged retroactively by the standards of academic scholarship, [his writings] are tragically flawed by numerous instances of plagiarism.... Appropriated passages are particularly evident in his writings in his major field of graduate study, systematic theology."

King's essay, "The Place of Reason and Experience in Finding God," written at Crozer, pirated passages from the work of theologian Edgar S. Brightman, author of "The Finding of God."

Another of King's theses, "Contemporary Continental Theology," written shortly after he entered Boston University, was largely stolen from a book by Walter Marshall Horton.

King's doctoral dissertation, "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Harry Nelson Wieman," for which he was awarded a PhD in theology, contains more than fifty complete sentences plagiarized from the PhD dissertation of Dr. Jack Boozer, "The Place of Reason in Paul Tillich's Concept of God."

According to "The Martin Luther King Papers", in King's dissertation "only 49 per cent of sentences in the section on Tillich contain five or more words that were King's own...."

David J. Garrow says that King's wife, Coretta Scott King, who also served as his secretary, was an accomplice in his repeated cheating. ("King's Plagiarism: Imitation, Insecurity and Transformation," The Journal of American History, June 1991, p. 87)

Garrow states on page 89: "King's academic compositions, especially at Boston University, were almost without exception little more than summary descriptions... and comparisons of other's writings. Nonetheless, the papers almost always received desirable letter grades, strongly suggesting that King's professors did not expect more...."

The editors of "The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers" state that "...the failure of King's teachers to notice his pattern of textual appropriation is somewhat remarkable...."

From QuidProQuo

More Teens 'Hook Up'

By AFA Journal
January 14, 2005

Painter Luiz Polidoro, 48, picked up his mother Maria and pitched her over the yard wall during an argument on Thursday afternoon at her house. Two pit bulls tied up in the neighboring yard then savaged her and she died later in hospital, a police spokesman said.

Polidoro told police his mother had jumped over the wall on her own.

One million Rwandans to face killing charges in village courts

Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Saturday January 15, 2005
The Guardian

One million Rwandans - an eighth of the country's population - are expected to be tried for alleged participation in the 1994 genocide, an official said yesterday.

Rwanda today is dotted with sites like this one, a school near Gikongoro in southwestern Rwanda, where thousands of Tutsi were slaughtered in 1994.

Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, executive secretary of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, said the trials, which will be conducted in traditional gacaca village courts, could start next month.

The new estimate of one million indicates the vast scale of the task of bringing to justice those suspected of participating in the killings of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus massacred in Rwanda between April and June 1994.

There are 80,000 people languishing in jail and it is believed many could die before their cases are heard at the current slow pace.

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Rwandan children suffer lasting impact

NEW YORK (April 6, 2004) —By the end of the genocide in 1994, 95,000 children had been orphaned.

"The children of Rwanda witnessed unspeakable violence. Thousands were victims of horrific brutality and rape. Many were forced to commit atrocities."

Rwanda is home to one of the world's largest proportions of child-headed households, with an estimated 101,000 children living in 42,000 households. These children are on-their-own either because their parents were killed in the genocide, have died from AIDS, or have been imprisoned for genocide-related crimes.

Two thousand women, many of whom were survivors of rape, were tested for HIV during the five years following the 1994 genocide. Of them 80 percent were found to be HIV positive, and many were not sexually active prior to the genocide.

By 2001, an estimated 264,000 children had lost one or both parents to AIDS, representing 43 percent of all orphans. This figure is expected to grow to over 350,000 by 2010.

More than 400,000 children are out of school.

Rwanda has one of the world's worst child mortality rates - 1 in 5 Rwandan children die before their fifth birthday.

Herpes spreads to mat

By Don Hunt
For the Tidings

A handful of wrestlers at Crater and Grants Pass high schools have been diagnosed with herpes, athletic directors at both schools confirmed Thursday.

The Crater wrestlers apparently contracted the viral infection while competing at a tournament in Fresno, Calif., Dec. 11-12 and then spread the disease to the Grants Pass team when they met for a dual match on Dec. 16.

The wrestlers are thought to have contracted the infection caused by Herpes Simplex Virus-1, commonly known as oral herpes. The virus usually features lesions or "cold sores" on the lips, nose and surrounding areas.

Diseases such as bacteria-based impetigo and fungus-based tinea, or "ringworm," are not uncommon on wrestling teams, where the participants are in constant close proximity with one another and work out in warm, humid areas.

If I had a shiny gun,

I could have a world of fun

Speeding bullets through the brains

Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,

I could make the moments pass

Bumping off a number of

People whom I do not love.
But I have no lethal weapon-

Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!

So they still are quick and well

Who should be, by rights, in hell.
	-- Dorothy Parker

86 YEARS AGO TODAY

January 15. 1919

Twenty-one people, a dozen horses and at least one cat drown in a tsunami of molasses. 

The sticky liquid was stored in a massive dockside tank in Boston's crowded North End. Ninety feet in diameter with a capacity of 2.3 million gallons, the tank had been hastily constructed in 1915 by a subsidiary of the United States Industrial Alcohol Company.

Construction of the tank had been overseen by Arthur Jell, a bean counter with no technical background who was unable even to read blueprints. Anxious to complete the tank in time for the arrival of the first molasses shipment, Jell forwent the elementary precaution of filling it first with water to test for leaks. Once molasses was pumped in, the tank leaked so copiously at the seams that neighborhood kids collected the drippings in cans. When an alarmed employee complained, Jell's response was to have the tank painted brown so the leaks wouldn't be so noticeable.  

With the war ending and demand for industrial alcohol plummeting, USIA decided to distill molasses into grain alcohol for liquor before Prohibition killed the market for good.

On January 12 and 13, 1919, a tanker filled the huge vessel almost to the brim. Two days later, at about half past noon, a sudden thunderous cracking sound was heard. The tank gave way with a roar, sending a wave of molasses in all directions.

The actual wall of molasses was estimated to be from 15 - 30 feet high and moved at 25-35 miles per hour in the area around the tank. The depth was only several feet in the surrounding area. You could not outrun this thing. 

There was no chance of saving anyone in its destructive path. Anyone that attempted to go near the sticky goo got stuck in it themselves and could have been cooked alive. It could suck your boots right off your feet.

The flood killed twenty-one people and injured an additional 150. Some were suffocated, some cooked, and others were swept by the wave into the harbor.

Homes and warehouses were swept off their foundations and destroyed. Many nearby were crushed when buildings fell on them. A massive hunk of the steel tank was flung into an elevated rail line, collapsing the tracks only seconds after a train had passed.

Rescuers were hampered by the knee-high tide of congealing goo.

They could not remove the trapped horses from the sticky mess, so they had to shoot them to death. Freshwater from the fire hydrants would not wash away the molasses, so salt water from the harbor had to be sprayed on the land.

The last victim, a deliveryman, wasn't found for 11 days--he and his truck had been swept into the harbor.    

It took over six months to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes. The Boston Harbor was also stained brown for six months. 

There were reports that the molasses would actually continue to creep out of the ground and cracks in the sidewalks for 30 years. For decades afterward it was claimed that central Boston smelled like molasses.

-http://www.straightdope.com/columns/041231.html

-http://www.boston-online.com/bizarro/disasters.html

-http://members.tripod.com/~earthdude1/molasses/molasses.html

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