Obsessed with True Crime discussion

I have to ask for your indulgence right now. Saturday I went to DC to march in a protest re: climate change. I got ridiculed for it at work. Which was rather disheartening since I work for an environmental agency. It has me doubting myself and rather depressed. Actually crying if you must know. Hope this is not over sharing. Anyway, the reading must continue right?

So this challenge is a combination of an idea from officer Kristo and myself.

Crimes committed in "defense of the environment", think ECO-TERRORIST.

"How about Freemen-on-the-Land/Sovereign Citizen/Anti-Government type crimes? Might be a new tangent for some people. The thought processes are pretty interesting in some cases. And it could be a fairly wide scope.

Alternatively, ALF/ELF crimes would be interesting."

And my thought, since my mind is on injustice right now, crimes against non-whites that took a monumental effort, sometimes taking years to be investigated/prosecuted or whatever - think "Just Another Indian: A Serial Killer and Canada's Indifference or The Blood of Emmett Till.

If anyone think my suggestion is stupid you can tell me, just be gentle. I'm rather fragile right now.

OK, we have to read one of each? Or choose one of the two? Either way I'm game of course.

And what sort of environmental agency do you work for that you would get ridiculed for protesting environmental problems???

OMG Bella! I wish I could go with you to the protest. I shed a few tears myself when I heard that at a stroke of a pen this guy can do incredible damage to the environment. After all, if we don't have the environment what do we have. If we have no air to breathe or water to drink that is the end of us. Keep up the good work Bel. There are no protests close to me or I would be there too.

Thanks to Andrew Jackson being in the news the last few days I decided to start I book I have had on my shelf for a long time- American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. While its definitely not a true crime book, it has some elements of the challenge: Jackson bought and sold slaves and was responsible for the Trail Of Tears, where American Indians were forced to relocate. I'm just starting this book and it is already infuriating me.

Fishface wrote: "OK, we have to read one of each? Or choose one of the two? Either way I'm game of course.

And what sort of environmental agency do you work for that you would get ridiculed for protesting environm..."

You can do either, I put both because KA wasn't sure how many books were available in the challenge she suggested.

And what can I say, I work with *******

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "Fishface wrote: "OK, we have to read one of each? Or choose one of the two? Either way I'm game of course.

And what sort of environmental agency do you work for that you would get ridiculed for pr..."

Scary stuff, that our president doesn't care about the environment and neither do the people working for it.

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "I have to ask for your indulgence right now. Saturday I went to DC to march in a protest re: climate change. I got ridiculed for it at work. Which was rather disheartening since I work for an envir..."

If you come back to DC anytime let me know and maybe we can get together!

BTW, what is ALF/ELF? As far as I know, ELF stands for Erisian Liberation Front, and their terrorism is not especially about the environment...

Eco-terrorism sounds like a wonderful subject but I'm only finding books on terrorism AGAINST environmentalists, plus a carload of fiction. Can anyone suggest some titles?

I just sent to MelCat for a copy of a book on the slowness of the wheels of justice in a race-related case, I've been meaning to get to, Of Long Memory: Mississippi And The Murder Of Medgar Evers. That one took 40 years to clear up IIRC.

Ones I've already read and can recommend:

Just Another Indian: A Serial Killer and Canada's Indifference
Justice in Mississippi: The Murder Trial of Edgar Ray Killen
No Justice
Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America
Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town
The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three
Someone cry for the children: The unsolved Girl Scout murders of Oklahoma and the case of Gene Leroy Hart


Some of these are about race issues, some not...I wonder if we can count And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic? Or, better yet, Cry Bloody Murder:: A Tale of Tainted Blood or Bad Blood: Crisis in the American Red Cross?

This whole shelf would be way excellent: https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

My own personal favorite on that list would be Leo Frank Case.

I'm thinking of "Tall Man: the Death of Doomadgee" by Chloe Hooper for one of my May books. It's about discrimination against the Aboriginal community in Hawaii by law enforcement. Is it on anyone else's radar?

Fishface wrote: "BTW, what is ALF/ELF? As far as I know, ELF stands for Erisian Liberation Front, and their terrorism is not especially about the environment..."

Quoted from K.A.: "Stands for Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front - underground militaristic semi-organized groups that commit crimes in the name of animal rights and environmental protection. Think 'Monkey Wrench Gang' - a kind of domestic terrorism. Here's some Wiki info if you're interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_L...

But I'm not sure how to find books on either set of topics - I've read a couple, but not a lot. "

Fishface wrote: "Some of these are about race issues, some not...I wonder if we can count And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic? Or, better yet, Cry Bloody Murder:: A Tale of Tainted Blood or Bad Blood: Crisis in the American Red Cross?"https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

I would say yes, even though it is not 'non-white' it is talking about a group that is discriminated against.

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "I have to ask for your indulgence right now. Saturday I went to DC to march in a protest re: climate change. I got ridiculed for it at work. Which was rather disheartening since I work for an envir..."

I'm sorry that happened to you. F-ing ignorance. I stand with you!

Hari wrote: "I'm thinking of "Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee" by Chloe Hooper for one of my May books. It's about discrimination against the Aboriginal community in Hawaii by law enforcement. Is it on anyone ..."

That sounds like a good one. I'm reading Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "I have to ask for your indulgence right now. Saturday I went to DC to march in a protest re: climate change. I got ridiculed for it at work. Which was rather disheartening since I work for an envir..."

I saw the picture of you at the march in Chit Chat before I saw this post. I would have loved to have gone on that march!! For the life of me, I can't think of any reason why they would give you grief about going. Jerks! :)

Seeing all the marches lately has been very reassuring. I think we are going to see a lot more of these. People are being galvanized into action.

I think I found a good one for the environmental challenge:
A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families by Mike Magner. I'm only a few pages in but so far it is riveting.

Well, seriously, if you cant believe Stephen Hawking, who can you believe:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technol...

Koren, you are a genius. I never even thought about mass poisonings swept under the rug! With that in mind we suddenly have a lot more titles to work with:

Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed (discrimination against Native Americans)
From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (against nonwhites and the poor in general)
Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (against nonwhites and the poor in general)
Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor (against nonwhites and the poor in general)
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (against nonwhites and the poor in general)
Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter (discrimination against poor farmers)
(or any other book about Chernobyl)
A Poison Stronger than Love: The Destruction of an Ojibwa Community (discrimination against Native Americans)
The Buffalo Creek Disaster: How the survivors of one of the worst disasters in coal-mining history brought suit against the coal company--and won (discrimination against the poor)
Silent Scourge: Children, Pollution, and Why Scientists Disagree (discrimination against voteless children)
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (against nonwhites)

And I totally forgot about The Slaughter: An American Atrocity, which is about a mass murder of African-American GIs by their white counterparts that officially never happened. Warning: A lot of this book is fictionalized!

Oh, and Something Terrible Has Happened, and Honor Killing: How the Infamous "Massie Affair" Transformed Hawai'i about a notorious case of discrimination against native Hawaiians.

Oh, and the Scottsboro case for crying out loud!

Stories of Scottsboro
Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South
The Scottsboro Boys
Scottsboro, Alabama: A Story in Linoleum Cuts

...and on and on. There must be a dozen or more books on that notorious case of race hate.

Oh, and what about Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims?

And what of the West Memphis Three?

I stumbled across this one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

It's about the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. There must be more than a few books about this -- does anyone know of any really good titles?

I'm not 100% sure the title I've selected is "True Crime" but I am reading Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege by Will Potter.

❀✿ Gem ✿❀ wrote: "I'm not 100% sure the title I've selected is "True Crime" but I am reading Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege by Will Potter."

It looks perfect to me. We are pretty relaxed about the definition of TC here. If its against the law and is nonfiction we pretty much consider it TC.

OK, I have to say this. I grew up during the 70's. I remember the first Earth Day. I love the outdoors and nature. My whole life I have tried to be as conservative about the environment as I possibly can be. But the last few years I have been discouraged and feel like what I do is a drop in the bucket compared to the wastefulness of others, especially big business. It scares the heck out of me. When someone asks why so many people seem to be getting cancer I say "Why doesn't everyone have cancer"? We are constantly surrounded by carcinogens every day. I try to buy all natural products and organic when it isn't too outrageously priced. I garden and grow what I can.

Ok I'm done. Stepping down from my soap box. Thoughts?

My thought is that you're absolutely right. Cancer used to be rare as hen's teeth before the Great War. Now you can't swing a baseball bat without hitting a cancer patient...But it's not just the obvious pollutants like cigarette smoke and roach spray in our food. I never thought I'd see the day when a TV ad for a great new prescription drug had an attached warning saying "Some people who take our great new prescription drug get lymphoma out of the deal; just saying."

Man oh man.

I just got my copy of Of Long Memory: Mississippi And The Murder Of Medgar Evers; it looks great. The total downer here is that I really to wait until after I've read Toilet Training in Less Than A Day. Not as interesting, to say the least.

Fishface wrote: "My thought is that you're absolutely right. Cancer used to be rare as hen's teeth before the Great War. Now you can't swing a baseball bat without hitting a cancer patient...But it's not just the o..."

Great point! We ingest things into our bodies that we have no idea what it is doing to us but if a doctor orders it it must be ok. Sometimes it comes down to what is the lesser of two evils.

Reading, A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families. I do not remember hearing about the ground water contamination at Camp Lejeune in the mid-80's. Some of the pollution was because of the chemicals they used when washing the military equipment. I will never wash my car in my yard again. It was also cause by a dry cleaning business that dumped its chemicals into the sewer system Looking at the photo section there is a group of 13 men who served at Camp Lejeune around the time that the contamination happened. They all developed breast cancer. 13 men!!!!.

Koren wrote: "Fishface wrote: "My thought is that you're absolutely right. Cancer used to be rare as hen's teeth before the Great War. Now you can't swing a baseball bat without hitting a cancer patient...But it..."

Pain is the lesser of two evils if the other choice is becoming an opioid addict.

I forgot a really excellent title for anti-white discrimination contributing to a slow resolution of a case -- Conspiracy of Silence. It should be easy for some of us to get hold of (she said, glancing at Shelley and Rita) as it's a Canadian case.

Finished A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families by Mike Manger. Here is my review:

4 stars

This books should scare the heck out of everyone. From the 60's to the 80's chemicals were being poured, stored in the ground, flushed down the drain at Camp Lejeune. The aftermath wasn't seen until the mid-80's. For me it raises the question: How can people keep on disposing chemicals and think they are just going to disappear and never be seen or heard from again. It makes me wonder how many other places have been contaminated that we don't know about.

I deducted one star because the book started to get tedious and repetitive towards the end. The author has another book, Poisoned Legacy: The Human Cost of BP's Rise to Power. I am going to look for this.

I wanted to share from p. 87 to 89 the different ways the water was contaminated. I'll just hit the high points:
1. Leaking fuel tanks both above and below ground, close to an aquifer.
2. a site on the grounds used for 40 years to dispose of every kind of " hazardous waste imaginable".
3. A chemical dump site on the south side of Camp Lejeuene, used to bury containers of pesticides, waste from transformers and other equipment, cleaning solvents, chemical weapons and gas cylinders.
4. Two lots that were used to dump DDT and transformers that contained cancer-causing PCBs.
5. A pit that was used to dump waste oil and liquids from transformers and other electrical equipment.
6. A burn dump for garbage, industrial waste, and construction debris. It is now covered over and used as a recreational park and fish pond.
7. A parcel of land where about a gallon of mercury was dumped every year between 1946 and 1970.

There are 4 other sites listed but I think you get the drift.

Koren wrote: "Finished A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families by Mike Manger. Here is my review:

4 stars

This books s..."

I recall one of the residents I used to care for telling us he worked for the local power plant probably about 50 years ago. They would pile up the garbage at the lake and then once a year a bulldozer would come and just push it all into the lake. He knows fluorescent lights, which have mercury, were in the pile. It just makes me wonder what they could have been thinking. That it would all just disappear, never to be heard from again?

Yes, probably. Let's not forget the spectacularly bad thinking that led to the Buffalo Creek Disaster. "Let's just make a loose wall of coal chips and gravel to keep back this massive wall of water that's uphill of hundreds of cheaply-built, flimsy homes where our employees live. Who cares if it's been raining for 6 straight weeks? Nothing can go wrong..."

Koren wrote: "❀✿ Gem ✿❀ wrote: "I'm not 100% sure the title I've selected is "True Crime" but I am reading Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege by [author:Wi..."

Thanks!

We've gotten a little off track, I wasn't talking about crimes against the environment, but rather crimes committed in DEFENSE of the environment, such as the one in this article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leighto...

Although I am beginning to think there might not be any books like that.

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "We've gotten a little off track, I wasn't talking about crimes against the environment, but rather crimes committed in DEFENSE of the environment, such as the one in this article. http://www.huffin..."

I'm not terribly far into Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege however there is a lot of background information regarding how ecoterrorism came to be classified as such (by law enforcement) and the early players in the environmental and animal defense movements.

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "Although I am beginning to think there might not be any books like that. "

I've found exactly one: Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "We've gotten a little off track, I wasn't talking about crimes against the environment, but rather crimes committed in DEFENSE of the environment, such as the one in this article. http://www.huffin..."

Oh. Sorry. Well, I read one book and that's all I'm going to do.

Of Long Memory: Mississippi And The Murder Of Medgar Evers, Adam Nossiter

3 stars

This was a good one but not absolutely great. I was a little thrown by all the color and life in the portrait of Byron De La Beckwith -- a fanatical, racist murderer -- contrasted against the flat, unfeeling sketch of his victim, Medgar Evers, supposedly the centerpiece of the story. I also found the author's writing style a little roundabout and disinclined at times to get to the point. But I do know a great deal more about this case than I did before. I'll say that.

EDIT: The author implied, but did not state, that the fact that Beckwith was tried at all was a serious step forward for Mississippi, a state described as so segregated and backward that they didn't even bother to start a KKK branch in the state until well after Evers's killing. (And guess who was one of the charter members -- the guy who murdered him.) The fact that Beckwith got not one, but two hung juries using the typical jurors of the day -- white males from Mississippi -- was also serious progress. The fact that they kept trying at all was a step in the right direction, and after only 26 years of hearings and re-filings and who know what else, they finally nailed him.

Koren wrote: "Scary stuff, that our president doesn't care about the environment and neither do the people working for it. "

Most of us do care, that is why we are in this field, his comment was referring to the fact that my marching wouldn't change #45's mind about anything so why bother.

Koren wrote: "Oh. Sorry. Well, I read one book and that's all I'm going to do. "

You've read more than I have, still working on Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation

Lady♥Belleza★✰ wrote: "Koren wrote: "Scary stuff, that our president doesn't care about the environment and neither do the people working for it. "

Most of us do care, that is why we are in this field, his comment was r..."

Bela, people marched in the 60's and it did make a difference. You are making a difference too.

For a last-minute read, I just found one about a crime that was never really called a crime, let alone addressed, because of racism: White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery And Vengeance in Colonial America.