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23-Year Old Beheaded In Anti-Gay Hate Crime Murder In South Africa

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A 23-year old transgender and gay man was beheaded in his home town of Kuruman, South Africa Friday, in an anti-gay hate crime. Thapelo Makutle, who was crowned Miss Gay Kuruman, was murdered by two men who remain at large. Reports state that police, for reasons of language and training, are not classifying the murder as a hate crime, and do not understand the significance of the attack. On report states the police reject that Makutle was beheaded, but acknowledge his throat was slashed.

Mamba Online reports:

According to the group Legbo Northern Cape, Thapelo Makutle was attacked at his place of work in the John Taolo Gaetsewe district on Friday. The organisation said that there was an argument related to “his sexuality and homosexuality”.

His two attackers are believed to have followed him to the room where he lived and on Saturday cut his throat, decapitating him.

They left his body under a blanket as though he were sleeping.

Makutle, who identified as both gay and transgender, was a volunteer for Legbo Northern Cape. He recently participated in the Kimberley Out In Africa Gay and Lesbian Festival, was known as a beauty queen named Queen Bling and was recently crowned Miss Gay Kuruman.

“It’s so sad. I can’t describe the pain that we are feeling right now,” Shaine Griqua, director of Legbo Northern Cape, told Mambaonline. “We have lost a young, talented, gay man who was open about who he was. The last few days have been like a dark cloud.”

He said that no arrests have yet been made in connection with the murder. He expressed his frustration with the lack of support for LGBT people in the Northern Cape and noted that hate crimes are on the rise in the province.

“We recently had a lesbian stabbed three times in a bar because they said that she should be a woman and not a man. She chose not to press charges because she didn’t want her family involved,” Griqua said.

“The government is not interested in this problem,” he added.

A later report form Mamba Online states:

According to the Mothibistad police, Thapelo Makutle’s body was found lying on the floor of his rented room. It is alleged that the victim has been out with his friends that night. He left unannounced and his friends assumed that he had gone home to sleep.

Shaine Griqua, Director of Legbo Northern Cape, who first reported the attack, said that confusion around the state of the body likely stems from miscommunication due to most people in the area not speaking English as a first language.

Griqua believes that the attack was a hate crime and said that he has information that Makutle was killed as a result of an argument about his sexuality and gender appearance, but police have yet to confirm this, saying that the motive is as yet unknown.

He told Mambaonline that the police in the area are ill-equipped to deal appropriately with a hate crime.

“These people [the police] are not reliable. They don’t even know what a hate crime is. If you ask them if it was related to his sexuality they will say ‘no’ because they don’t understand the context,” Griqua insisted.

Global Post adds:

In a statement, Cosatu’s Northern Cape secretary Anele Gxoyiya condemned “this brutal attack on a young, brilliant and educated soul whose head was chopped off in a hate crime.”

While South Africa is one of the few countries in the world to extend equal rights to homosexuals, and the only nation in Africa to allow same-sex marriage, the reality of life in townships and rural areas for gays and lesbians has been one of often brutal violence.

In a high-profile incident last year, Noxolo Nogwaza, a lesbian activist based in KwaThema township near Johannesburg, was gang-raped and then stabbed and stoned to death, in what the New York-based group Human Rights Watch described as part of an “epidemic” of hate crimes against gays and lesbians in South Africa.

Politics Web published a statement in response to the murder, by Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, Democratic Alliance Parliamentary Leader:

This violent and gruesome assault is yet another reminder that many of our country’s people are still denied the basic rights and freedoms which our Constitution enshrines.

There is a spate of homophobic hate crimes which have recently taken place across our country, including the repugnant and unconscionable crime of so-called “corrective rape” committed against lesbian South African women.

At this time, South Africa needs strong leadership from President Jacob Zuma, and an indication of his commitment to ensuring that all South Africans are able to live their lives free from fear of discrimination or violence.

Unfortunately, the silence from the Presidency has been deafening. This silence is made worse by the fact that President Zuma has in the past shown himself to be prejudiced towards homosexuals.

Last year, the DA welcomed the establishment of a government-led Joint Task Team on a “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Intervention Strategy”, established in September 2011, under the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.

Unfortunately, this task team has yet to make any report on its work.

Meanwhile, the spate of crimes continues.

President Zuma must speak out against this weekend’s horrific murder, and the many others like it, which are in danger of becoming all too commonplace in our country today.

I will today be calling for a debate in Parliament about the prevalence of these crimes in South Africa, and calling on MPs to discuss what can be done by the government to address this ongoing problem.

In addition, I will also be writing to the President to ask what immediate steps his government will be taking to address the violence and intimidation that homosexual South Africans must face on a daily basis.

Such crimes, and the President’s silence on them, cannot be allowed to continue.

Hat-tip: Towleroad

 

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News

‘Every Time You Talk It’s a Campaign Speech’: Judge Blasts Trump’s Lawyer

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November 27, 2023

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The judge presiding over New York’s civil business fraud case against Donald Trump had a “testy exchange” with one of the ex-president’s attorneys, this time over the lawyer’s demand he be allowed to call as a witness the monitor overseeing Trump’s real estate holdings and who may oversee the disgorgment of some of his assets.

Judge Arthur Engoron, who already was forced to impose a gag order on Donald Trump and subsequently the lawyers for the ex-president, criticized attorney Chris Kise on Monday afternoon.

Last year Judge Engoron had appointed former U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones as a monitor for the Trump Organization.

“The Trump family’s lawyer Clifford Robert asked to call her to the witness stand on Monday, a request that Engoron promptly denied,” The Messenger reports. “’Besides being untimely and inappropriate, Judge Jones and her staff are arms of the court,’ Engoron said in a denial from the bench, adding that having her also testify would invite a conflict of interest.”

READ MORE: Johnson Suggests Santos May Resign – Will Indicted Congressman Try to Burn the House Down First?

Trump’s lawyers appear to want to use Jones to rebut Judge Engoron’s pre-trial ruling that Trump is liable for fraud.

Trump Hotels’s chief accounting officer Mark Hawthorn testified that he had had “ongoing conversations” with Jones.

“There were concerns they highlighted that required more and we responded diligently and adequately, but I would say no one from the team communicated to us [that] they uncovered any fraud or irregularities,” Hawthorn said.

The Messenger’s Adam Klasfeld reported on Monday, Trump attorney Chris Kise told the judge, “They’re the only ones in the courtroom jumping up and down claiming there’s fraud. The bank isn’t. The monitor isn’t.”

“Every time you talk, it’s a campaign speech,” Judge Engoron responded.

 

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OPINION

Johnson Suggests Santos May Resign – Will Indicted Congressman Try to Burn the House Down First?

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14 hours ago

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November 27, 2023

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Monday afternoon said he has spoken to U.S. Rep. George Santos, suggesting the embattled and indicted New York Republican might resign rather than face an impending expulsion vote he’s likely to lose. But over the holiday weekend, Santos suggested he was not going to go without a fight, as he appeared to take a page out of another embattled Republican’s book: former U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman reports Speaker Johnson says he has spoken to Congressman Santos “at ‘length’ about his ‘options’ ahead of expulsion vote. Johnson seemed like the house may avoid a vote — which would mean resignation.” (See video below.)

House Republicans allowed Santos to be seated despite news that he had manufactured his resume and even his religion, news that continued after Republicans allowed him to be sworn in. They refused to expel him when he was indicted on 23 federal felonies including for alleged wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and lying to Congress.

READ MORE: ‘How Sick Your Soul’: Conservatives Slammed for Suing Over Program Supporting Pregnant Black Women

But last week’s damning Ethics Committee report provides, in great detail, “overwhelming evidence” of alleged misconduct, and even more evidence of his alleged criminal acts – beyond what even federal prosecutors listed in their indictments. And it has led to public outcry, forcing some House Republicans to rethink their refusal to expel him.

That report alleges Santos used campaign donor cash for shopping trips, Botox, and even the not-safe-for work site OnlyFans.

Over the weekend, Rep. Santos spoke on an audio forum hosted at X, formerly Twitter, and indicated not only would he not resign, he appeared to suggest he might take down some Republicans along the way.

In March of 2022, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), amid mounting scandals, lashed out on a podcast, denouncing what he claimed was the “sexual perversion that goes on in Washington,” and alleged some of his colleagues he grew up looking up to, had used cocaine at “orgies.”

In a similar vein, Rep. Santos on Friday in that audio forum, “said he does not want to continue working with ‘a bunch of hypocrites’ in Congress, whom he accused of committing infractions more severe than his, including being ‘more worried about getting drunk every night’ with lobbyists,” The Washington Post reported. “Santos, without providing evidence, also accused his colleagues of trying to ‘sell off the American people’ and of voting while hung over.”

READ MORE: Trump Serves Up ‘Sarcastic’ Reason Why He Uses Obama’s Name Instead of Biden’s

“Within the ranks of United States Congress, there’s felons galore,” Santos alleged.

But he also declared, “I’m not leaving.” “Come hell or high water … it’s done when I say it’s done,” and yet, admitted he would likely be expelled.

“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”

Santos, also “described himself in the conversation as the Republican ‘It Girl’ as well as the ‘Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress.'”

If he does not resign, Congressman Santos could face an expulsion vote this week.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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News

Trump Serves Up ‘Sarcastic’ Reason Why He Uses Obama’s Name Instead of Biden’s

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17 hours ago

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November 27, 2023

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A little before 7:30 AM on Monday Fox Business News host Maria Bartiromo demanded to know “who’s running the show here?” and asked if President Joe Biden knows “what’s going on or is he being directed by President Obama?”

There is no credible reporting that President Barack Obama is directing President Joe Biden on running the country, nor is there any credible reporting that President Biden needs him to.

But less than 45 minutes after Bartiromo’s baseless attack on President Biden, Donald Trump served up what appeared to be a response to news reports questioning his own cognitive abilities – and suggested he thinks Obama is “having a very big influence” in running the country.

MSNBC’s Brian Tyler Cohen, in a six-minute opinion video in late September, detailed some of Trump’s errors, including suggesting he beat Barack Obama in 2016 and World War II had not happened yet.

READ MORE: ‘How Sick Your Soul’: Conservatives Slammed for Suing Over Program Supporting Pregnant Black Women

Earlier this month, Forbes reported Trump recently has “mixed up” Biden with Obama at least seven times.

Last month, the Biden campaign posted one of Trump’s “flubs,” where he mixed up Biden and Obama.

Mediate reported that in a lengthier version of the audio, “Kilmeade corrects Trump, who then pretends he meant to say ‘Obama’ all along — forcing Kilmeade to correct him again.”

Also last month, Trump’s current top 2024 opponent, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, slammed Trump for apparent errors and confusion.

The mainstream media is taking notice of Trump’s flubs and misstatements as well, and not just of the ex-president mixing up his predecessor and his successor.

“Mr. Trump has had a string of unforced gaffes, garble and general disjointedness that go beyond his usual discursive nature, and that his Republican rivals are pointing to as signs of his declining performance,” The New York Times reported late last month. “In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also told supporters not to vote, and claimed to have defeated President Barack Obama in an election. He has praised the collective intellect of an Iranian-backed militant group that has long been an enemy of both Israel and the United States, and repeatedly mispronounced the name of the armed group that rules Gaza.”

“In recent speeches,” The Washington Post reported two weeks ago, “Trump has incorrectly described Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Turkey and falsely suggested Hungary shares a border with Russia. He has repeatedly referred to the Obama administration when he meant the Biden administration, and at one point he inaccurately suggested he’d beaten Obama — rather than Hillary Clinton — in the 2016 election.”

READ MORE: RNC Tightening Its Belt to ‘Keep the Party From Going Into the Red’: Report

But now, Trump is offering what he claims is his intentional reason for appearing to mix up Obama and Biden.

Sarcasm.

And his suggestion that, like Bartiromo asked, he alleges former President Obama is really in charge.

“Whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden as an indication that others may actually be having a very big influence in running our Country, Ron DeSanctimonious and his failing campaign apparatus, together with the Democrat’s Radical Left ‘Disinformation Machine,’ go wild saying that ‘Trump doesn’t know the name of our President, (CROOKED!) Joe Biden. He must be cognitively impaired,’ ” Trump wrote Monday on his Truth Social account.

He insisted, “I know both names very well, never mix them up, and know that they are destroying our Country.”

Trump then claimed he “just took a cognitive test as part of my Physical Exam, and ACED it.”

READ MORE: ‘Trump Says His Threats Aren’t Threats’: Legal Expert Explains Latest Gag Order Twist

Watch the voice above or at this link.

 

 

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