Lionel Tate’s redemption
The story of Lionel Tate was so much more than the media headlines of his release from prison and his plea agreement to second-degree murder. It was  the story of two mothers who faced great losses with humanity and hope. Deweese Eunick-Paul lost her 6-year-old daughter, Tiffany, in what the court ruled was murder. Kathleen Grossett-Tate lost her 12-year-old son, Lionel, to the Broward County, Fla. criminal justice system as a convicted murderer.

Yet, Ms. Eunick-Paul demonstrated an incredible heart of humanity when she rose above the emotions of her loss and grief and agreed to sign off on the plea agreement that reduced Mr. Tate’s sentence. “There’s no reason to be angry. If you’re that angry, you can’t move on,” she told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper. “For God to bless you, you have to forgive.”

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan addressed the world via satellite and webcast from The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. May 3.

Farrakhan holds world press conference

The death of Gary Webb, a ‘suicide’
Many observers find it hard to believe that the Dec. 10 death of Gary Webb was a suicide, as described by law enforcement. Found in his home with a gunshot to his head, the former San Jose Mercury News reporter is noted for a series of articles that exposed the CIA’s connection to a Nicaraguan drug cartel that brought cocaine into the U.S. to be converted to crack, which has ravaged the communities of people of color, particularly the Black community. His research, which exposed the CIA for aiding and abetting in the destruction of the Black community, was later published in a book, “Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.”

White House temperature’s rising
The political heat was turned up on the Bush administration with the record-breaking June 25 release of Fahrenheit 9/11, a documentary written, directed and produced by Michael Moore. With an estimated three million people flocking to the show its opening weekend, it grossed $21.8 million with only a limited release nationwide, becoming the first political documentary to debut at the box office at No.1.

Mr. Moore delivered a scalding rebuke of the president, following the yellow brick road of propaganda that the Bush administration led the public along after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It presented a piercing examination of the manipulation of those attacks as a pretext for amassing oil profits to the corporate cronies of the Bush family—all at the expense of ignorant and unsuspecting poor, young soldiers looking for a job and an education, the rights of U.S. citizens clinging to patriotic hopes, and the lives of Iraqi civilians praying for peace.

Lee Boyd Malvo and teen executions
To sentence a juvenile to death or not to sentence a juvenile to death—that was the question facing the jury in the Lee Boyd Malvo case. Their deliberation raised questions all over the country about killing juveniles who kill. In the end, the jury spared his life and sentenced him to life in prison for the shooting death of FBI analyst Linda Franklin.Virginia State Delegate Vivian Watts told reporters that the Malvo case gives death penalty opponents a powerful argument: People don’t want to put youngsters to death for even the most egregious crimes. “There is a shift in public attitude,” she said.

Flowchart proves AIDS is man-made
For decades, stories have filtered through the press that AIDS was a man-made virus. For Dr. Boyd Graves, these stories were more than conspiracy theory, for he has persistently maintained—although courts as high as the Supreme Court dismissed his case—that he discovered a flowchart that proves AIDS was manufactured in U.S. laboratories, as well as its cure. His research began in 1992, and in 1999 he discovered the greatest evidence to date of records and reports of the experiments that led to the development of the AIDS virus. That document is the “1971 Flow Chart of the Special Virus Program of the United States.”