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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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‘Prices Go Up’: Economist Mocks Treasury Secretary’s ‘Empty Shelves’ Position

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A prominent economist is challenging U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s claims about the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariff war on Americans’ ability to access goods in stores and online.

Bessent, a hedge fund manager and Trump donor and fundraiser, was asked on Monday if he’s worried about the possibility of empty shelves.

“Not at present,” Bessent told Fox News. “We have some great retailers. I assume they preordered.”

Appearing to mock Bessent, Wolfers paraphrased the Treasury Secretary: “If I hurt the American consumer enough, we’ll see how quickly the Chinese want to deescalate.”

READ MORE: ‘Great Jobs of the Future’ Are Generations of Family Factory Work Says Commerce Secretary

“Well,” Wolfers continued, “I’m not sure which side’s meant to be looking out for us right now,” he told MSNBC’s Katy Tur.

“Bessent might be right to say that shelves aren’t going to be empty,” Wolfers explained, “but the reason that would be is, if we have less stuff coming into the country and we’re not making more stuff, the only way that the shelves don’t empty is if the prices go up.”

“So, I think at this point, any economist is forecasting, either the shelves empty or the prices go up a lot. I’m actually in camp prices go up, but these are two pretty terrible flavors.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Wolfers appeared to mock several top members of the Trump administration.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “says he’s relying on Bessent to get a deal done with China, but on Sunday Bessent said he didn’t know whether or how often Trump has been calling Chinese President Xi, and Trump said he’s calling, but Xi said he’s not getting through,” Wolfers explained before asking, “Is anyone working on this?”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Lying Again’: Hegseth Ripped for Ending ‘Woke Biden Initiative’ Trump Signed Into Law

 

Image via Shutterstock

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‘Great Jobs of the Future’ Are Generations of Family Factory Work Says Commerce Secretary

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In the wake of President Donald Trump moving to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, his Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, says the “great jobs of the future” will be generations upon generations of Americans working in factories.

“It’s time to train people, not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future,” Lutnick, a billionaire, told CNBC on Tuesday afternoon (video below). “You know, this is the new model, where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here and your grandkids work here.”

“You know, we let the auto plants go overseas,” continued Lutnick, the former president and chief executive officer of the major financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. “Right now, you should see an auto plant. It’s highly automated, but the people, the four, five thousand people who work there, they are trained to take care of those robotic arms. They’re trained to keep the air conditioned system.”

The Commerce Secretary began by saying that the “key is, where are you gonna find the people to work here, right?”

READ MORE: ‘Lying Again’: Hegseth Ripped for Ending ‘Woke Biden Initiative’ Trump Signed Into Law

“You go to the community colleges, and you train people, so all the community colleges around here,” he added, “all these community colleges here are training people right now, technicians, and these are really good paying jobs.”

Lutnick described the starting pay for these jobs as in the $70,000 to $90,000 range.

Professor of Economics Justin Wolfers asked, “Do you think Lutnick wants *his* kids and grandkids spending their lives in a manufacturing plant, or are these just aspirations for ‘other people’?”

Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic & Policy Research, declared, “It’s amazing how off the wall this guy is. Does Lutnick really know nothing about the economy?”

Media Matters for America’s Matthew Gertz added, “‘People don’t want upward mobility for their kids and grandkids’ is an interesting take from a billionaire whose parents were college professors.”

“This isn’t how modern manufacturing works,” noted podcaster Fred Wellman. “They don’t even turn on the lights. These lunatics are disconnected from reality.”

READ MORE: Just 100 Days in and Trump White House Is Already Prepping for Impeachment: Report

Philosopher and theologian Jay Mallow observed: “Man who has never worked a factory job ignores the historical reality that entire generations worked factory jobs so their children WOULDN’T work those same jobs.”

“The reason those jobs were once so desirable was because the workers had unions and collective bargaining,” wrote economics journalist Patrick W. Watson. “Lutnick and Trump have no interest in restoring that part.”

CNN’s Rachel Sklar, commenting on Lutnick’s remarks, said simply, “You first.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Heads on Pikes’: Trump White House Accused of ‘Vaguely Fascist’ Display

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Lying Again’: Hegseth Ripped for Ending ‘Woke Biden Initiative’ Trump Signed Into Law

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is being criticized after declaring he ended execution of a federal law promoting women, peace, and security that he described as “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative” — which was promoted by current top members of the Trump administration and signed into law in 2017 by President Donald Trump.

This morning, I proudly ENDED the “Women, Peace & Security” (WPS) program inside the @DeptofDefense,” Secretary Hegseth bragged on Tuesday. “WPS is yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING.”

“WPS is a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it,” he claimed. “DoD will hereby executive [sic] the minimum of WPS required by statute, and fight to end the program for our next budget. GOOD RIDDANCE WPS!”

In 2019, the Trump White House lauded the WPS program:

“The Trump Administration is committed to advancing women’s equality, seeking to protect the rights of women and girls, and promoting women and youth empowerment programs. The United States Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS Strategy) responds to the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, which President Donald J. Trump signed into law on October 6, 2017.”

READ MORE: Just 100 Days in and Trump White House Is Already Prepping for Impeachment: Report

“This is the first legislation of its kind globally, which makes the United States the first country in the world with a comprehensive law on WPS, and de facto, the first with a whole-of-government strategy that responds to such a domestic law. The WPS Strategy recognizes the diverse roles women play as agents of change in preventing and resolving conflict, countering terrorism and violent extremism, and building post conflict peace and stability.”

Critics blasted Hegseth, while reporters were quick to correct the record with fact checks.

The Washington Post’s military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe noted that Marco Rubio, now Trump’s Secretary of State, and Mike Waltz, now Trump’s National Security Advisor, were supporters of the Women, Peace, and Security Act.

Punchbowl News senior congressional reporter Andrew Desiderio added: “Marco Rubio was the lead Senate sponsor of WPS. Kristi Noem was the lead House sponsor. And Mike Waltz chaired the House’s WPS caucus.”

In addition to Secretary of State Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Noem, and National Security Advisor Waltz, Senior White House Advisor Ivanka Trump was also part of the U.S. strategy for implementing the Women, Peace, and Security Act.

Politico’s deputy managing editor of global security, Dave Brown, responded to Hegseth’s post, noting U.S, Secretary of State Marco Rubio just 28 days ago wrote: “President Trump also signed the Women, Peace, and Security Act, a bill that I was very proud to have been a co-sponsor of when I was in the Senate, and it was the first comprehensive law passed in any country in the world – the first law passed by any country anywhere in the world – focused on protecting women and promoting their participation in society.”

READ MORE: ‘Heads on Pikes’: Trump White House Accused of ‘Vaguely Fascist’ Display

CNN’s Pentagon reporter Haley Britzky pointed to a West Point Modern War Institute article that states, “the United States’ WPS Strategy…acknowledges that this inclusion is not a political human rights or social justice agenda, but a framework that advances US competitive advantage, allowing it to achieve national security objectives through harnessing women’s distinctive aptitudes, diversity of thought, and unique access to areas where women have specific roles in certain societies.”

“You are lying again,” responded Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot and former Democratic candidate. “WPS was enacted by Trump during his first admin. It’s not divisive. It’s a small program for DOD but one based on real data, so it doesn’t fit your cave man style understanding of security. Troops don’t hate it. Most don’t even know it exists.”

The Economist’s defense editor Shashank Joshi called Hegseth’s remarks “rank ignorance.”

RELATED: ‘Rank Incompetence’: Trump Says Hegseth Is ‘Safe’ Just Before Navy ‘Loses’ $60 Million Jet

 

Image via Reuters 

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