Positive News from the USA

[Shreeman]

Posters (lokeshc,pankaj,manjgu), keep up the good work. My output is restricted through last week of the month. Am hoping for more hands on input after that. By the way, there is this coming up. Not too many of these actually go to a trial, FYI, if anyone wants to see how this works.

[Haresh]

The heir, the judge and the homeless mom: America's prison bias for the 1%

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... rison-bias

[pankajs]

Fox News ‏@FoxNews 59m

Louisiana bill would name Bible as official state book http://fxn.ws/1kc4yhc

"It's not to the exclusion of anyone else's sacred literature," he told the House committee. Again, later he said, "This is not about establishing an official religion of the state of Louisiana."

...
"I think we're going to open ourselves up to a lawsuit. You can't adopt the Bible and not adopt Christianity," he said.

..
"It's not meant to be offensive," Carmody replied. "There's no requirement that they would have to follow this particular text."

Folks does the the word "Secular" find mention in the US constitution? If not we too in India need to delete this word from our constitution to be truly "Secular" like the US.

[pankajs]

Shocking police overreach haunts Southern city: Racial profiling, quotas and secret “conviction bonuses”
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/10/shockin ... [quote]How a federal grant incentivized a police department to go nuts on drug arrests -- and terrorize its community [/quote]

In recent years, stories like this have come to epitomize heightened concerns that, as Durham becomes a regional center for sophisticated culture and cuisine, the drug enforcement strategies of its police increasingly assign second-class status to the city’s minority communities. Over the past several months, protesters alleging police misconduct have pummeled the city’s police headquarters with rocks and met tear gas along the usually amiable streets of this city of 240,000.

In seeking to understand the roots of the city’s divisive policing, lawyers at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice were astonished by what a recent round of public records requests produced. Not only was a federal grant subsidizing what they regarded as the most perniciously targeted drug enforcement operations of the department, but the grant — with a key “performance measure” emphasizing police report their sheer volume of arrests — also appeared to be incentivizing the department to raise its overall number of drug arrests, which overwhelmingly affect the city’s black community. SCSJ attorneys add that recently revealed evidence also indicates that the federally funded program included an illegal system of secret payments law enforcement made to witnesses who delivered successful drug prosecutions — another sign, they say, that the city’s policing has flown off the rails.

In a national context, such a discovery is not new. Groups like the ACLU have argued for over a decade that the performance measures of America’s largest federal policing grant, known as Byrne JAG, fuels racially biased, quota-driven policing in thousands of jurisdictions across the country.

...
Gupta has ample experience with the destructive effects JAG-funded drug programs can exact on communities of color. In the early 2000s, Gupta worked on a case in Tulia, Texas, where a Byrne JAG-funded program enabled an undercover officer to fabricate testimony in a series of racially targeted drug stings that led to the arrest and imprisonment of roughly 20 percent of the town’s adult black population.

...
The police department recently confirmed that, although whites account for a slightly larger share of the city’s population, blacks compose the “vast majority” of its dramatically ramped-up marijuana arrests. In the years since the large JAG award in 2009, the city saw steady increases in the share of black or Latino motorists subject to vehicle searches in which the police have no probable cause for action.

I think the minorities are being unusually harsh on the police. I mean the arrests and incarceration are just an excuse to provide free food and housing to the minorities. See how considerate the US society in general and US police in particular are when it comes minorities. Good Christians are being tarnished here. These are evil days indeed when the great American sense of charity and justice can be lampooned with such ease!

[habal]

So is this true that chimpanzees have higher IQ than humans ?

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/10/49 ... c-zoo.html

[pankajs]

The Indian Express ‏@IndianExpress 2h

Right to vote under threat in the United States: Barack Obama http://iexp.in/tdt77931

Seriously, the US president needs to step back. Good white Christians are being tarnished here. These are evil days indeed when the great American sense of equality and justice can be lampooned with such ease!

[member_22733]

Down with some nasty flu that has been going around in Montana.

Here is some news to cheer me up:

Only in USofA: Where there is a murder there is a murderer we punish the murderers, and their friends and their relatives and their villagers

[pankajs]

Mulla-i-am “boys will be boys” Yadav's long lost American cousins.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------->>
Accusation in Montana of Treating Rape Lightly Stirs Unlikely Public Fight

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/us/ac ... e]MISSOULA, Mont. — For nearly three years, this college town in the hills of western Montana has lived under the shadow of stories of rapes gone unpunished and complaints that officials minimized or ignored reports of sexual assaults — especially if the suspects played for the University of Montana Grizzlies, the wildly popular football team.

The latest blow landed over the winter when federal investigators released a 20-page report saying the county prosecutor’s office had disregarded sexual assaults to the point that it was placing “women in Missoula at increased risk of harm.” The accusations were vivid and damning: The Justice Department described accounts of a victim who had been told, “All you want is revenge,” and said a prosecutor had told a mother that “boys will be boys” in the wake of an adolescent’s sexual assault of her 5-year-old daughter.

...
But federal authorities said they were simply trying to fix what they described as a litany of problems in the prosecutor’s office, including what they called an “extremely low” prosecution rate for sexual assaults. In one case, a man confessed to raping a woman who was unconscious, but prosecutors from Mr. Van Valkenburg’s office said there was insufficient evidence to file charges, the Justice Department reported.

...
The confrontation has again brought Montana under harsh scrutiny over how its legal system treats women who are sexually assaulted. Seven months ago, in an unrelated case in eastern Montana, Judge G. Todd Baugh was widely condemned for saying a 14-year-old girl had been partly to blame in a statutory rape case involving one of her high school teachers, Stacey Dean Rambold.

...
In late 2011, The Missoulian, which has uncovered many of these stories, published an account from a student who described how she had been sexually assaulted by football players after passing out at a house party. Afterward, a university official sent out an email wondering whether the woman’s public discussion of her case had violated the student code of conduct. No charges were filed in that case.

County prosecutors say they have tirelessly pursued sexual-assault cases, even in the face of skeptical juries that acquitted defendants, like a former Grizzlies quarterback who was acquitted of rape in March 2013. Prosecutors said it was often difficult to persuade 12 jurors if a case did not fit their preconceptions of what constitutes rape: if no brutal force was involved, or if the victim and the assailant had been friendly or intimate in the past.[/quote]

[UlanBatori]

American praised for contributions to journalism awards

[member_28539]

Some more positive news from US of A...so much for moral boasting & welfare gimmicks ....

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/14/po ... in-garage/

[rgsrini]

Fellow protein starved yindoos!!! Our infrastructure sucks. Especially the roadways. On top of it we allow cows to roam freely on our roads.

I want cow free roads like they have in Amrica!!!

[rgsrini]

In the post-colonization era and in the aftermath of Industrial revolution, the US of A managed a mind boggling list of accomplishments, that poor SDRE country like Yindia can only dream of. Here is a curtain raiser on what good governance and sound democratic principles can achieve in a relatively short time of 100 to 150 years.

America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I

[Multatuli]

Much to learn from the exploits of these men (India being a nation of vegetarian rapists and all).

Chief: Suspects wore GPS devices during killings

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Two parolees raped and killed at least four women while wearing GPS trackers, and there may be more victims, a California police chief alleged Monday.

Franc Cano and Steven Dean Gordon, both registered sex offenders, were both wearing ankle bracelets when the women were assaulted and killed last fall and earlier this year, Anaheim police Chief Raul Quezada said at a news conference.

Authorities at the news conference did not explain how Cano and Gordon allegedly managed to carry out the killings while under supervision, but Quezada said data from the GPS devices "was one of the investigative tools we used to put the case together."

http://news.yahoo.com/chief-suspects-wo ... 20619.html

[Multatuli]

Teacher who ‘ordered a hit’ on 7th grader gets fired

Florida’s St. Lucie County School Board officially fired veteran teacher Dru Dehart after their investigation found that she encouraged six 8th grade students to beat up 7th grader Radravious Williams, WPTV NewsChannel 5 reports.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/tea ... 50746.html

[member_22733]

Latest News from Hill-Billy Ville: American Moms doing their duty

Regan cut a lot of govt. funding and most mental hospitals and facilities were shut down. But it did not matter, because we in America dont have mentally ill folks at all.

[member_22733]

We want healthcare costs to be affordable for everyone.

[johneeG]

Why Eyeraqis oppose 'freedom' and 'democracy' exported by amirkhan?

Monsanto

http://www.loosechange911.com/blog/?p=142



One would think that Iraqi farmers, now prospering under “freedom” and “democracy,” would be able to plant the seeds of their choosing, but that choice, under little-known Order 81, would be illegal. “We want to control the world’s food supply” – Quote from a high-level Monsanto spokesman. TIME FOR ACTION Against Monsanto

Monsanto of course is well known for giving us Agent Orange

One would think that Iraqi farmers, now prospering under “freedom” and “democracy,” would be able to plant the seeds of their choosing, but that choice, under little-known Order 81, would be illegal.

But first, it is important to set the context. Most people have never heard of the infamous “100 Orders,” but they help explain why the majority of Iraqis remain opposed to foreign occupation. The 100 Orders allow multinational corporations to basically privatize an entire nation, and this degree of foreign and private control has not been witnessed since the days of the British East India Company and its extraterritoriality treaties.

A few examples of the 100 Orders are illuminating:
* Order 39 allows for the tax-free remittance of all corporate profits. * Order 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, immunity from Iraq’s laws. * Orders 57 and 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector general in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations. (1)

Back to one of the most blatant orders of all: Order 81. Under this mandate, Iraq’s commercial farmers must now buy “registered seeds.” These are normally imported by Monsanto, Cargill and the World Wide Wheat Company. Unfortunately, these registered seeds are “terminator” seeds, meaning “sterile.” Imagine if all human men were infertile, and in order to reproduce women needed to buy sperm cells at a sperm bank. In agricultural terms, terminator seeds represent the same kind of sterility.

Terminator seeds have no agricultural value other than creating corporate monopolies. The Sierra Club, more of a mainstream “conservation” organization than a radical “environmentalist” one, makes the exact same case:
“This technology would protect the intellectual property interests of the seed company by making the seeds from a genetically engineered crop plant sterile, unable to germinate. Terminator would make it impossible for farmers to save seed from a crop for planting the next year, and would force them to buy seed from the supplier. In the third world, this inability to save seed could be a major, perhaps fatal, burden on poor farmers.” (2)

What makes this Order 81 even more outrageous is that Iraqi farmers have been saving wheat and barley seeds since at least 4000 BC, when irrigated agriculture first emerged, and probably even to about 8000 BC, when wheat was first domesticated. Mesopotamia’s farmers have now been trumped by white-smocked, corporate bio-engineers from Florida who strive to replace hundreds of natural varieties with a handful of genetically scrambled hybrids.

Where does such hubris come from? It comes from the entire mission surrounding the invasion of Iraq, which, upon closer inspection, had been planned years in advance by a faction of “neo-cons” who adopted Leon Trotsky’s glorification of the state, his theory “permanent revolution,” and his goal of exporting revolution worldwide. The neo-con revolution aims to alter the economic, political and cultural foundations of nations on the other side of the planet (rejecting old-fashioned notions of self-determination, popular sovereignty and even the nation-state system). This mission includes the transformation of agriculture and the establishment of “food control” over local populations.

Order 81 fits into this revolutionary program, and it is quite diabolical upon closer inspection. First, it forces Iraq’s commercial farmers to use registered terminator seeds (the “protected variety”). Then it defines natural seeds as illegal (the “infringing variety”), in a classic Orwellian turn of language.

This is so incredible that it must be re-stated: the exotic genetically scrambled seeds are the “protected variety” and the indigenous seeds are the “infringing variety.”

As Jeffrey Smith explains, author of Order 81: Re-Engineering Iraqi Agriculture:
“To qualify for PVP [Plant Variety Protection], seeds have to meet the following criteria: they must be ‘new, distinct, uniform and stable’… it is impossible for the seeds developed by the people of Iraq to meet these criteria. Their seeds are not ‘new’ as they are the product of millennia of development. Nor are they ‘distinct’. The free exchange of seeds practiced for centuries ensures that characteristics are spread and shared across local varieties. And they are the opposite of ‘uniform’ and ’stable’ by the very nature of their biodiversity.” (3)

Order 81 comes with the Orwellian title of “Plant Variety Protection.” Any self-respecting scientist knows, however, that imposing biological standardization accomplishes the exact opposite: It reduces biodiversity and threatens species. So Order 81 comes with an Orwellian title and consists of Orwellian provisions.

Jeffrey Smith peels away the layers of mischief behind Order 81, finding it nonsensical that six varieties of wheat have been developed for Iraq:
“Three will be used for farmers to grow wheat that is made into pasta; three seed strains will be for ‘breadmaking.’ Pasta? According to the 2001 World Food Programme report on Iraq, ‘Dietary habits and preferences included consumption of large quantities and varieties of meat, as well as chicken, pulses, grains, vegetables, fruits and dairy products.’ No mention of lasagna. Likewise, a quick check of the Middle Eastern cookbook on my kitchen shelves, while not exclusively Iraqi, reveals a grand total of no pasta dishes listed within it. There can be only two reasons why 50 per cent of the grains being developed are for pasta. One, the US intends to have so many American soldiers and businessmen in Iraq that it is orienting the country’s agriculture around feeding not ‘Starving Iraqis’ but ‘Overfed Americans’. Or, and more likely, because the food was never meant to be eaten inside Iraq at all…” (4)

Just in case Iraqi farmer can’t read, Order 81 enforces the new monopoly on seeds with the jackboot. Order 81 makes this clear in its own text, buried at the bottom of the document, as is most screw-you fine print:
“The court may order the confiscation of the infringing variety as well as the materials and tools substantially used in the infringement of the protected variety. The court may also decide to destroy the infringing variety as well as the materials and tools or to dispose of them in any noncommercial purpose.” (5)

Order 81 is about power and profit, but it disguises itself as humanitarian legislation.

Topping it all off, the entire document puts on rather magisterial airs. It was signed by L. Paul Bremer himself, with his own hand, and presumably with his own pen:
“Pursuant to my authority as Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority…”

Like the Roman Proconsuls, Paul Bremer also spent a year in the provinces, governing the so-called barbarians…

-The above is an excerpt from Andrew Bosworth’s new book: Biotech Empire: The Untold Future of Food, Pills, and Sex, available at Amazon.

-Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Government at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

The French documentary that pulls the covers off all the Monsanto lies, The World According to Monsanto, is now available for sale in English. This long-awaited film by French filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin is now available in the US!

Go to Seeds Of Deception and you will get further information at the Institute for Responsible Technology.

The moment has come when we might finally be able to deliver a deadly blow to the biotech industry. The giant Monsanto corporation is in the lead when it comes to selling and making huge profits from GMO seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.

These are toxic products that are right now in the process of ruining the earth’s ecosystems. They are also in the food we eat, since we are the unknowing guinea pigs for this catastrophic experiment, callously engineered by the biotech companies. We are kept ignorant because GM food is sold without proper labelling. GM cultures are replacing biological and small-scale farming by giant monocultures of genetically modified crops that have clearly verified health hazards, from cancer to skin diseases.

Only through infiltration of agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) by high-level Monsanto employees has this gigantic corporation managed to make its way unhindered to an already well-on-the-way take-over of the world’s agriculture.

While the biotech corporations make billions, small farmers are forced to leave their land, move to city slums where they slowly starve to death with their families. Many commit suicide when they are so deeply in debt to these biotech sharks that they see no way out of their misery.

Read ‘The Monoculture of the Mind‘ about Dr Vandana Shiva, based in Delhi, India.

The moment for action has arrived. Movements are afoot in the world, and not just in India, such as Letter From Langdon: Talking Seeds and Freedom at Mark Twain State Park

Also see Linn Cohen-Cole: “During a world food crisis, Monsanto just raised the price of its corn seed $100 a bag.”

The right to food is one of the most basic human rights. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, says:

In a world overflowing with riches, it is an outrageous scandal that more than 852 million people suffer hunger and malnutrition and that every year over 6 million children die of starvation and related causes. We must take urgent action now.

Jennifer Cohen is an eleven-year old student in Mrs. Simmons’ sixth grade Oradell, New Jersey class. Jennifer conducted an experiment proving aspartame, the artificial sweetener in diet soda, breaks down into two deadly neurotoxins when stored at room temperature and under refrigeration.

This little girl did an experiment to test how fast Aspartame degraded into Formaldehyde and DKP (Diketopiperazine). Reading up on Aspartame, many sources flood the web saying it degrades into neurotoxins and causes all sorts of maladies. Is it nasty stuff? does it degrade into nastier stuff? There are plenty of books on the subject.

Jennifer Cohen is getting the cold shoulder from the industry and it’s mouthpieces. Check out some of their last correspondence.

Dallas – April 23 2007 — A second study conducted by the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) confirms the carcinogenicity of aspartame. The results of this study will be presented today at the Mount Sinai Medical School of New York, where ERF Scientific Director Morando Soffritti will receive the third Irving J. Selikoff Award.

Aspartame was discovered in l965 by Searle chemist, Jim Schlatter. He was developing this drug for another use and after accidentally licking his finger found that aspartame was sweet. Today aspartame is consumed by more than 100 million people in the United States. This chemical (aspartame) has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who said that an individual can safely consume 97 packets of aspartame every day. Aspartame is in many products including some that children use such as diet soda, light yogurt, Flintstone Vitamins, baked goods, puddings, and Winterfresh gum. It has been known to cause headaches, nausea, vision problems, seizures and cancer in its users.

The ingredients in aspartame are aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methyl alcohol. Methyl alcohol is a chemical that breaks down in high temperatures and turns into formaldehyde and DKP (diketopiperazine), two chemicals known to cause problems in the nervous system. Aspartame’s life is 262 days at 77 degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 degrees Celsius. The FDA gets more complaints about aspartame than any other food or drink. The symptoms of aspartame are a lot like the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Ever since aspartame was approved in l985, there has been an increase in brain tumors. There is no direct proof that aspartame caused the brain tumors, but there is enough reason to suspect that, and the television show, “60 Minutes” recently did a report linking the increase in brain cancer to aspartame use.

The FDA reviewed Searle’s studies of this artificial sweetener in which rats were fed aspartame daily with their meals for one year. There were 12 brain tumors in the 320 rats that were fed aspartame and no brain tumors in the 120 rats that were not fed aspartame.

There was also a study done at the University of Wisconsin on rhesus monkeys. they were fed aspartame daily. After day 200 of a one year study the monkeys developed epileptic seizures. After the study ended, the aspartame was discontinued and the monkeys were fully watched for 60 days. The monkeys had no more seizures.

So how did this deadly stuff get into our environment? Donald Rumsfeld, while he was president of Searle, called in his markers to get aspartame, a deadly chemical poison approved when the FDA said no.

Among the many ironies of our modern world is that Gerald Ford awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom-America’s highest civilian honor-to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on January 19, 1977. Just a few weeks later on March 8, Rumsfeld became the CEO of G.D. Searle to take point on a mission to force the Food and Drug Administration to approve for human consumption a known carcinogen and neurotoxic poison.

Consumer advocate attorney Jim Turner, who was instrumental in the 1969 banning of cyclamate in the U.S. for its link to various forms of cancer, met with representatives of aspartame approval petitioner Searle in 1974. The main topic of discussion was neuroscientist Dr. John Olney’s 1971 study which showed that aspartic acid caused lesions in the brains of infant mice. According to Turner, arguably the world’s foremost authority on aspartame’s dubious legal history, Rumsfeld was apparently hired by Searle for one specific purpose: To obtain FDA approval for aspartame.

Betty Martini is the director of Mission Possible, a worldwide consumer advocacy organization formed in 1992 as a voice for those demanding that the FDA reverse its approval of aspartame and order its removal from foods, beverages and medical preparations. Martini is even more bold in her charges against Rumsfeld. Martini believes the Washington insider, former three-term U.S. Rep. From Illinois (1962-1968), secretary of defense (1975-1977) and executive assistant to President Gerald Ford, was hired by Searle because, “He was willing to get a deadly chemical poison, aspartame, approved for human consumption”

Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president January 21, 1981. Rumsfeld, while still CEO at Searle, was part of Reagan’s transition team. This team hand-picked Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., to be the new FDA commissioner. Dr. Hayes, a pharmacologist, had no previous experience with food additives before being appointed director of the FDA. He, like Rumsfeld, did, however, have experience with chemical warfare studies while connected to the Department of Defense. According to The Washington Post, Hayes was, “one of a number of doctors who conducted drugs tests for the Army on volunteers.to determine the effect of a mind-disorienting drug called CAR 301,060,” at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The Post further explained why Hayes was the perfect choice to politically force the approval of aspartame: “According to a declassified 1976 report prepared by the Army Inspector General, Hayes had planned a research study to develop the mind-altering CAR 301,060 as a crowd control agent.”

The report, detailing Hayes activities beginning in 1972, further indicated that Hayes was involved in similar biochemical mind control research studies until being named FDA director.

One of Hayes’ first official acts as FDA chief was to approve the use of aspartame as an artificial sweetener in dry goods July 18, 1981. In order to accomplish this feat, Hayes had to overlook the scuttled grand jury investigation of Searle, overcome the Bressler Report, ignore the PBOI’s recommendations and pretend aspartame did not chronically sicken and kill thousands of lab animals. Hayes, left his post at the FDA in November, 1983, amid accusations that he was accepting corporate gifts for political favors. Just before leaving office in scandal, Hayes approved the use of aspartame in beverages. According to The Post, Hayes’ next job was in the private sector where he served as a high-paid senior medical advisor for Searle’s public relations firm.

Sweet Misery

Within weeks of aspartame’s approval for use in beverages, cans of diet sodas and other sweet drinks were on the market. To help sell Americans on using the artificial sweetener, intense advertising campaigns began programming the public to believe that sugar has lots of calories; calories make us fat and NutraSweet has no calories-therefore it won’t make us fat.

Read MSNBC’s article on it here: Zero calories, same great taste (and heart risks)

Based upon this almost universally-accepted oversimplification of biochemical reality, aspartame has enjoyed 22 years of marketplace success and is now in an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 commonly-consumed products in at least 100 countries. When Searle was absorbed by Monsanto in 1985, Rumsfeld reportedly received a $12 million bonus.

Not surprisingly, the same adverse reactions seen in lab animals in the 60s and 70s are now being seen in the general population. In his first book on aspartame (1990), Dr. H.J. Roberts stated that in five or 10 years we would have a worldwide plague on our hands if we do not remove aspartame from our food supply. With the printing of “Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic (2001), Dr. Roberts declared that the world is, indeed, plagued by a global epidemic of symptoms associated with aspartame use.

Aspartame is being identified by a growing number of researchers and physicians as an underlying cause of chronic ill health in America and other countries throughout the world.

It interacts with other substances such as pharmaceutical drugs to produce adverse reactions.

All metabolites of aspartame (formaldehyde, methanol, diketopiperazine and formic acid) are toxic to the human body and are especially toxic to the brain.

Aspartame comprises over 80 percent of consumer complaints filed with the FDA.

The FDA has generated a list of 92 symptoms associated with aspartame consumption that include nausea, dizziness, irritability, insanity, blindness, deafness, weight gain and death.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that 500,000 people each year simply “drop dead” for no apparent reason from what it labels “sudden cardiac death.”

Dementia among all ages (especially the elderly) and learning disabilities among children, in the U.S. and abroad, have been skyrocketing since 1981.

As of today, the number of scientific and studies showing that aspartame is, indeed, an underlying cause of chronic physical and mental illness and death out number studies proving its safety by at least 400 to zero. Proof of this fact can also be determined by what happens in many cases when people stop using aspartame: Their chronic symptoms disappear.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford-the highest civilian honor in America-on January 19, 1977. A few months later, Rumsfeld became the CEO of Searle to secure political approval for a product that science had proven to be a highly-addictive neurotoxic drug that causes chronic ill health, brain tumors and death. The evidence indicates that FDA approval for aspartame was a high-level political priority undoubtedly connected to its capacity to adversely effect the minds and bodies of those consuming it.

Because Rumsfeld placed politics above public health and safety, hundreds of millions of people throughout the world cannot think clearly and suffer from a variety of chronic illnesses. It is, therefore, fitting that symptoms associated with aspartame use be known as “Rumsfeld’s disease.”
Mission accomplished: Today some 9,000 commonly consumed products are laced with this weapon of mass misery and millions of people live with chronic illnesses linked to the artificial sweetener aspartame. It is our belief at The Idaho Observer that if some guy named Parkinson can have a disease named after him, then Donald Rumsfeld ought to have his own disease, too. Hence the term Rumsfeld disease A.

Today, Donald Rumsfeld is known throughout the world as the zealous U.S. Secretary of Defense who is waging a global “war on terror” in search of “terrorists” and “weapons of mass destruction.” Most people, however, are not aware that Rumsfeld himself unleashed a chemical weapon of mass destruction upon the world in 1981-and it’s still out there destroying people all over the world. That “WMD” is aspartame and it has been scientifically and anecdotally linked to millions of chronic illnesses and deaths.

The evidence shows that, with full knowledge of aspartame’s neurotoxicity and carcinogenicity, Rumsfeld, as the CEO of G.D.

Searle, Co., “called in his markers” to achieve U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the artificial sweetener aspartame, better known by its trade name “NutraSweet.”

Link

[brihaspati]

In the post-colonization era and in the aftermath of Industrial revolution, the US of A managed a mind boggling list of accomplishments, that poor SDRE country like Yindia can only dream of. Here is a curtain raiser on what good governance and sound democratic principles can achieve in a relatively short time of 100 to 150 years.

America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I

You seriously believe this [that this was how USA achieved its "positives"] or are you being sarcastic?

[rgsrini]

^^ Saar. I humbly request you to reintroduce yourself to the purpose of the thread. We are all hear to share the "positives" of the sole sooper power, understand what makes them different, and lament why we Yindians, especially fanatic Yindoos are genetically predisposed to be SDRE, wallow in filth, be corrupt, discriminate each other and not have basic civic sense. On top of it our protein starvation is leading us to r.ape each other as well. What can I say beyond this.

[Tanaji]

^^ You dirty SDRE you.. How dare you forget the impact of caste? That is why we are wallowing in filth while you yes's yay is soopah paowah..

Praise Jeebus..

[brihaspati]

Sorry. Shivji's double entrende's are always misleading. I have never had any great ability to joke about stuff above a certain level of seriousness. I hope "positives" are not being mentioned in sarcasm on things most people are not aware of about the real facts. Because then it simply reinforces the pakiganda (its not merely propa-ganda) and pakiganda doesn;t have to be restricted to official pakiland onlee.

[member_22733]

brihaspati-ji we are playing a version of rickrolling here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling )

Back to regular brogramming.

[pankajs]

ACLU: Arkansas voter ID law is unconstitutional

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/arkansas-vot ... [quote]The voter ID law passed by Arkansas legislators last year is unconstitutional and should be struck down, a new lawsuit claims. If left to stand, the law could affect a crucial Senate race this fall.

...
The measure requires that voters present a limited range of government-approved forms of identification. Out-of-state college IDs, for instance, are not allowed. Voters without ID must cast a provisional ballot, then go to the county clerk to affirm that they’re too “indigent” to afford ID. And unlike some other states’ ID laws, this one does nothing to help voters get ID, such as providing transportation to government offices.

The challengers include three Arkansans who lack the ID needed to vote. One of them, 78-year-old Joe Flakes, also was never issued a birth certificate. That means he’d need to go to court to get a birth certificate, before applying for an ID. Using national estimates, the ACLU of Arkansas says around 10% of state residents lack the necessary ID.[/quote]Most humane state of US i.e Arkansans's most humane laws are being Criticized. How is it that the law that attempts to save millions of voters the trouble of having to go and vote is being branded unconstitutional?

[member_22733]

We are a land of immigrants, home of the very brave and the very white

[SSridhar]

Covert Inquiry by FBI Rattles 9/11 Tribunals - NYT

Two weeks ago, a pair of F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced at the door of a member of the defense team for one of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a contractor working with the defense team at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the man was bound by the same confidentiality rules as a lawyer. But the agents wanted to talk.

They asked questions, lawyers say, about the legal teams for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused terrorists who will eventually stand trial before a military tribunal at Guantánamo. Before they left, the agents asked the contractor to sign an agreement promising not to tell anyone about the conversation.

With that signature, Mr. bin al-Shibh’s lawyers say, the government turned a member of their team into an F.B.I. informant.

The F.B.I.’s inquiry became the focus of the pretrial hearings at Guantánamo this week, after the contractor disclosed it to the defense team. It was a reminder that, no matter how much the proceedings at the island military prison resemble a familiar American trial, the invisible hand of the United States government is at work there in ways unlike anything seen in typical courtrooms.

“It’s a courtroom with three benches,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. “There’s one person pretending to be the judge, and two other agencies behind the scenes exerting at least as much influence.”

Thirteen years after 9/11, nobody has been convicted in connection with the attacks and, because of the F.B.I. visit, a trial could be delayed even longer. But it was only the latest in a string of strange events at Guantánamo Bay that, coupled with the decade-long delay, have undermined a process that was supposed to move swiftly, without the encumbrances of the civilian legal system and its traditional rules of evidence.

Last year, as a lawyer for Mr. Mohammed was speaking during another hearing, a red light began flashing. Then the videofeed from the courtroom abruptly cut out. The emergency censorship system had been activated. But why? And by whom? The defense lawyer had said nothing classified. And the court officer responsible for protecting state secrets had not triggered the system. Days later, the military judge, Col. James L. Pohl, announced that he had been told that an “original classification authority” — meaning the C.I.A. — was secretly monitoring the proceedings. Unknown to everyone else, the agency had its own button, which the judge swiftly and angrily disconnected.
Continue reading the main story

Last year, the government acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside what looked like smoke detectors in the rooms where detainees met with their lawyers. Those microphones gave officials the ability to eavesdrop on confidential conversations, but the military said it never did so.

“At some point, it just becomes silly,” said Glenn Sulmasy, a military law professor at the Coast Guard Academy who supports military trials for terrorism but said problems at Guantánamo Bay have undermined confidence in the system. “I don’t think we’re at that point yet, but at some point it just becomes surreal. It’s like there’s a shadow trial going on and we’re only finding out about it in bits and pieces.”

The court has also been troubled by computer problems. A botched computer update gave prosecutors and defense lawyers access to the other side’s confidential work. And the Pentagon acknowledged inadvertently searching and copying defense lawyers’ emails but said nobody read them.

“These things keep happening,” a defense lawyer, James Harrington, said this week as he asked for an investigation into the F.B.I.’s activities. The other instances seemed like government intrusion, Mr. Harrington said, but lawyers could not prove it. “Here it really happened.”

The F.B.I. would not comment and military prosecutors said they knew nothing about the investigation. But the F.B.I. appears to be investigating how The Huffington Post got ahold of a 36-page manifesto that Mr. Mohammed had written in prison.

The government hopes to start the trial early next year, but it is not clear whether this issue will result in another delay. Mr. Harrington said he wanted Colonel Pohl to question F.B.I. officials and determine whether anyone else on the defense team had been approached by or gave information to the government.

“It’s just a horrible atmosphere to operate in,” Mr. Harrington said Friday. “It’s built on a shaky foundation, and one thing after another happens. I don’t see how anyone can have confidence in this process.”

Christopher Jencks, a Southern Methodist University law professor and a former military prosecutor, said he sympathized with the Guantánamo prosecutors, who appeared to have been just as surprised as defense lawyers by the appearance of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. in their cases.

“You have these military prosecutors who are normally empowered to own their cases. And they don’t here,” Mr. Jencks said. If this were any other country’s system, Mr. Jencks said, “The reaction would be, ‘Oh my gosh. What a kangaroo process.’ ”

[habal]

Another first from USA.

New name has been found for rape.

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/show ... orded.html

Around 15 years ago, Brett Sokolow was touring universities and advising them on how to deal with sexual assault on their campuses. On these visits, he noticed something strange. The schools had policies about rape, and recognized that rape happened. But when it came down to it, they just didn’t want to believe their own students actually raped.

“I trained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hearing boards, and [listened] to them get squeamish about it,” Sokolow said. “The hearing board would say, ‘We’re not willing to label this guy a rapist.’”

Sokolow, the CEO of the consulting and law firm the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, decided colleges needed another word. But on the issue of sexual violence, almost every word is loaded.

“We tried out ‘sexual abuse’ for a few years,” Sokolow explained. “Then the priest scandals in the Catholic Church captured the meaning of that.”

So he came up with something new. It was a word that meant rape but without rape’s stigma. Focus groups loved it. Universities were comfortable with it. In the past five years, the term has exploded. Between 700 and 800 campuses have adopted this language in their policies, Sokolow estimates.

“Nonconsensual sex” was born, and in the world of higher education it has essentially become an industry standard.

As our MUTU/MATA friends say/think, if an American has done so, then it must be for the right reasons. hamaari aukaat kahan inhe aaina dikhane ki... protein-fed walon ki yeh kya kashmakash .. sirf vegetarian ban sakta hain rapist

[johneeG]

X-posting from Modi vs dynasty thread:

Obama quietly reverses Hillary’s ‘get Modi’ policy

Barack Obama has quietly reversed a policy initiated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to "get Narendra Modi" — ostensibly for the 2002 Gujarat riots, but in actuality "for taking stands that may be different from that favoured by the US administration" — in the words of a senior analyst in New York.

"Hillary Clinton likes to operate through NGOs, which are given funding through indirect channels, and which target individuals and countries seen as less than respectful to her views on foreign and domestic policy in the target countries," a retired US official now based in Atlanta said. He claimed that "rather than US NGOs, (the former) Secretary of State Clinton favoured operating through organisations based in the Netherlands, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries, especially Norway" as these were outside the radar of big power politics. These NGOs were active in the agitation against the Russian nuclear power plant at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, with "funding coming mainly from a religious organisation based in Europe that has close links with France".

Incidentally, French companies are in direct competition with Russian rivals in seeking to expand the market for nuclear reactors in India. The senior official, now on a visit to India, claimed that "your (i.e. the Manmohan Singh) government has full details of the religious organisation involved in funding the Kudankulam protests, but is keeping this secret as the organisation has high-level backers" in the UPA.

These present and retired officials claimed that "during the tenure in office of Secretary Clinton, several expert teams in the guise of NGOs were sent to Gujarat to try and find mass graves". The purpose was to then take the matter to the Office of the UN Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva as an example of genocide. "In 2011, some bones were discovered in a Gujarat field by one of the search teams and there was much excitement, but these were later found to be buffalo bones", an official said. The official added that "no evidence whatsoever of mass graves was uncovered in Gujarat despite six years of clandestine searching for them" by undercover experts posing as representatives of NGOs. He added that "five politicians, three from the state and two in Delhi, assisted the search teams, but the information given by them proved unproductive".

Finally, "now that Secretary Clinton had stepped down from office, by end-2012 orders were given to stop wasting time on the search for mass graves in Gujarat, much to the dismay of those NGOs who were getting significant funding as a consequence of the search operations". Interestingly, the senior official claimed that because of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's inability to water down the Nuclear Liability Act and Defence Minister A.K. Antony's decision to prefer the French Rafale fighter to its US rival, "orders were given to activate the Khalistan file so as to create embarrassment for Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh".

Another official, now retired, claimed that "since 2011, several search teams have been active in Punjab, seeking human remains in suspected mass graves". According to them, "key politicians in Punjab have assisted these search teams and on occasion even provided logistical facilities for them".

These officials claim that the recent decision by the US Aviation Authority to ban extra flights into the US by Indian carriers was "directly linked to US displeasure over the strong Indian response to the Devyani Khobragade episode, especially as they had been privately assured by senior officials that the fallout of an arrest would be routine and perfunctory".

Another example of misuse of public interest bodies cited was the recent decision by the UK Automobile Safety Authority to classify five India-produced small car models as unsafe, "or exactly the same models that are offering competition to European and US vehicles in the European market". They said that such steps were "protectionism in the guise of safety" and that "the Manmohan Singh government's passivity in responding to such unilateral measures encouraged more of them to get slapped on India".

Coming back to the BJP's PM candidate Narendra Modi, these sources say that the Obama administration has dialled back on the hectic efforts by Hillary Clinton to paint the Gujarat CM as guilty of mass murder and even genocide. "This is clear from the latest report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has sharply scaled back its criticism of the Modi government as compared to earlier reports".

According to a senior official, "President Obama does not share Hillary Clinton's confrontational approach and her preference for Sonia Gandhi, and is looking to establish a pragmatic partnership with India should Modi become the Prime Minister". Hence the search "for a US envoy who would be different from (former ambassador) Nancy Powell's Clinton-style hostile approach to Modi, and to find an individual who could be expected to bond with the new PM and his team".


According to these sources, President Obama "is alarmed at the steep downslide in India-US ties caused by Hillary-style crusades, and wants the relationship to be even better than what it was under the Bush presidency".

[SSridhar]

US Militias Await Next Call - Japan Times

Flat on his belly in a sniper position, wearing a baseball cap and a flak jacket, a protester aimed his semi-automatic rifle from the edge of an overpass and waited as a crowd below stood its ground against U.S. federal agents in the Nevada desert.

He was part of a 1,000-strong coalition of armed militiamen, cowboys on horseback, gun rights activists and others who rallied to Cliven Bundy’s Bunkerville ranch, about 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Las Vegas, in a standoff with about a dozen agents from the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The rangers had rounded up hundreds of Bundy’s cattle, which had been grazing illegally on federal lands for two decades. Bundy had refused to pay grazing fees, saying he did not recognize the government’s authority over the land, a view that attracted vocal support from some right-wing groups.

Citing public safety, the BLM agents retreated, suspending its operation and even handing back cattle it had already seized.

No shots were fired during the standoff, which Bundy’s triumphant supporters swiftly dubbed the “Battle of Bunkerville.” But the government’s decision to withdraw in the face of armed resistance has alarmed some who worry that it has set a dangerous precedent and emboldened militia groups.

“Do laws no longer apply when the radical right no longer agrees?” asked Ryan Lenz, a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors militia group activity.

Armed Americans using the threat of a gunfight to force federal officers to back down is virtually unparalleled in the modern era, experts on the militias said. But the BLM, which says it is now pursuing legal and administrative options to resolve the dispute, has won praise for stepping back and avoiding violence.

Energized by their success, Bundy’s supporters are already talking about where else they can exercise armed defiance. {AoA} They include groups deeply suspicious of what they see as a bloated, overreaching government they fear wants to restrict their constitutional right to bear arms.

Alex Jones, a radio host and anti-government conspiracy theorist whose popular right-wing website, Infowars, helped popularize Bundy’s dispute, called it a watershed moment.

“Americans showed up with guns and said, ‘No, you’re not,’ ” before confronting the armed BLM agents, Jones said in an interview. “And they said, ‘Shoot us.’ And they did not. That’s epic. And it’s going to happen more.”

In interviews militia experts said they could not think of another example in recent decades where different militia groups had banded together to offer armed resistance to thwart a law enforcement operation.

Few people had heard of Bundy and his ranch until a few days before the standoff. Right-wing websites and advocacy groups such as Americans for Prosperity, founded by one of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, cast his tale in a folksy David and Goliath light and helped spread it online.

Someone who has known Bundy since his early 1990s fall-out with the BLM is Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who founded the militia group Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. Mack is also a prominent member of Oath Keepers, a similar group of serving or former soldiers, police and firefighters who view themselves as defenders of the Constitution. More than 100 Oath Keepers headed to the desert, Mack said.

Mack, who proposed putting women on the front line of the standoff with the agents, said armed resistance was a justified response to a “totally unnecessary” show of force by the BLM.

“It was so obvious it looked like it was going to be another Waco or Ruby Ridge,” Mack said, referring to two bloody sieges in the 1990s involving federal agents and armed civilians that fueled the militia movement. “We weren’t going to let that happen again.”

A number of Bundy supporters wearing military fatigues and carrying rifles and pistols had traveled from California, Idaho, Arizona, Montana and beyond. Most kept their handguns in their holsters. Mack, who wore his gun on his hip, and other Bundy supporters interviewed said they would not shoot first but would retaliate if fired upon.

“We did not want anything to get out of hand,” Mack said.

The showdown last weekend marked the latest resurgence of violent, anti-government sentiments that have existed in rural U.S. regions for centuries, said Catherine Stock, a history professor at Connecticut College who specializes on the subject.

“The question is whether we’re going to see sustained flame-up now. We could see more of that if they actually think that the federal government is going to stand down,” she said. “It’s not the groups, it’s not their concerns, it’s not their anger, all of that is old, but the federal government backing down? I was like, wow! Seriously?”

Stock said the rise of right-wing media outlets and websites and the election of Republican politicians who have shifted the party further to the right have given a new legitimacy to groups that were once dismissed as being on the fringe.

[johneeG]

AAPTards are using the same map which ASHA group ( now known as Berkley Hass Business group) was distributing in 2007 Indian Independence Day Celbrations. Sorry i dont know how to resize the Photu.

Khujali had an entourage of 359 turds from dilli (according to the breakfast bill at a certain dhabha
the crowd inclusive of the tent walla mike walla was 1800, mind you Cawnpore is just an hour away from
lucknow it has been raining in luknow and Cawnpore and Pryag since a week ago
inspite of this NaMo had 700thousand plus Mulayam had 150thousand plus and AK had 1800.
now tell me who should be shivering in their pants? let kejari contest in Benaras he will lose his deposit at best
at worst his head will be rolling on the streets such is the power of TsuNaMo

Saarji,
Fordri's strength seems to be e-v-m.

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About the topi:
isn't that topi lucknawi malsic style? It seems that style was adopted by chacha who used to dress like a lucknawi shahzada/nawab(complete with a rose). And that topi got incorporated into kongi culture. So, that particular type of topic seems to have its origin in lucknow malsI.

And broom:
Campaign movie released just a few months before Fordriwal's party.


BTW, please note how similar this movie promo is to the kongi/pappu's campaign:
a) women's rights
b) ideas/visionary/dreamer
c) multicultural(secularism/inclusive growth)

No mention of growth, jobs, development, inflation, infrastructure, less corruption...etc in either the promos in the movie or kongi campaign.

BTW, the broom party/candidate in that movie is created by few rich guys to stand against an established players(who was also funded by the rich guys previously). Fits perfectly into Fordriwal & kongi scheme of things. And a broom candidate is actually an inept guy who is managed by a sauve manager. Again fits the Fordriwal perfectly. The reason they don't talk about jobs/development in that promo in the movie is because the rich guys want those jobs to be outsourced to the cheap chinese labour in the movie.

http://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajee ... 140303.htm

The time will come when America can dictate to India, and expect to be obeyed
' Rajeev Srinivasan

Thus, it is a matter of great concern when Americans want to fix India. Much of the time, India is peripheral to the US foreign policy establishment, except when they are annoyed with it (as in the Nixon-Kissinger days) or they are trying to sell some snake oil to it (as in the much-ballyhooed case of the 'nuclear deal', which was, to digress for a minute, a selling out of India's national security in exchange for virtually nothing).In fact, India does much better when it is not on the radar of America's self-styled do-gooders.Therefore, it is alarming that a group at the University of California, Berkeley's business school is toiling on a project to 'create a policy and protocol framework for protecting people's rights in situations of internal armed conflict and mass violence' in India.Which is amazing, considering that there is less violence and conflict in India than in any of the countries mentioned above, and that, anyway, there has been low-level insurgencies in India for decades.

This leads me to wonder, does the Berkeley group know something that the rest of us don't?
The context, of course, is that there have been persistent rumours that the US has 'assets' high in the Indian government. The long-sustained (but just-lifted) boycott of Narendra Modi (allegedly because a group of leftists and Muslims in the US were upset) is another indication that the US does have an interest in the 2014 Indian election: They do have a dog in this fight.There is also the surprising and widespread white noise in support of the Aam Aadmi Party by such establishment stalwarts as The New York Times and The Economist, among others. It is hard, prima facie, to believe the Americans would genuinely embrace a self-proclaimed anarchist group with far-Left views on almost everything. Nevertheless, there they are, with their front foundations merrily giving away all sorts of awards and money to the AAP.This fits in with an observed tactic on the part of the West to encourage leftist, nihilist dissident groups in other countries. It is rather evident by now that a Narendra Modi-led government would not be particularly easy to bribe or manipulate -- it does appear that he neither forgives nor forgets -- and that it would be, as with Shinzo Abe's administration in Japan, prone to care about the national interest, not America's.
This, of course, is anathema to the American world view based on George Kennan's Cold War views on hegemony.Thus, as a first approximation, a plausible American tactic would be to try and prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi from coming to power by splitting the anti-Congress vote using the AAP, and in case that fails, to follow up with a Plan B to make India ungovernable, to create mass conflict through their agents.This is not theoretical: ..The concern about the Berkeley group is magnified if you look at their Web site. Grandly claiming that an aim of this 'Armed Conflict Resolution and People's Rights Project' is to 'engage with affected communities, and periodically engage with members of the Government of India,' it identifies J&K, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, and specifically Gujarat and Odisha as having been 'impacted by far-reaching violence on minority communities in recent history.'In other words, the usual anti-Modi rhetoric about the Gujarat riots in 2002, with a few other topics thrown in for the sake of camouflage. Old wine in new bottles.

The impression that there is more to this group, attached to the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, than meets the eye, is strengthened by a perusal of the list of principals. One is a notable purveyor of anti-India ideas, who was implicated in the Faigate scandal as an unregistered lobbyist for Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence. Another is now out on bail on charges of embezzling funds from victims of violence. Another is attached to the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, which deals with nuclear weapons!Many of the others are old war-horses from the FOIL (Forum of Indian Leftists which transmogrified one fine day into the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists), a group that is reflexively and viscerally opposed to many things in India, especially to right-leaning Hindus.There are enough people with a known history of antipathy to Modi in this group to strengthen the impression that this whole thing is another exercise for Modi's benefit.What is particularly sinister is that there is circumstantial evidence that seems to indicate that people like FOIL have, in the past, 'known' about certain events before they happened. Which, by Occam's Razor, would suggest that these events were not random, but were planned, and that the leftists were in the know.Are they planning to just study conflict, or is there more?Furthermore, if the objective is to study conflict, why does the focus lie entirely on India, with almost all the members of the working group being of Indian origin?
As I pointed out above, there is actual armed conflict in many other places right now, so why India alone? The implication is that this group may well be witting or unwitting participants in a conspiracy to create violence in India.There is an implicit American project going on regarding India anyway: Many American maps show the entire North-East detached from India, in addition to all of Jammu and Kashmir. There has been much pressure on India to give away the Siachen Glacier to Pakistan.And given the fact that India has now become the biggest buyer of American arms, the time will come when America can dictate to an Indian government, and expect to be obeyed.It looks as though the Berkeley group may be planning to add internal pressure as well to the mix to discomfit an Indian government. This is a matter of serious concern, and it is not too far-fetched to consider this a conspiracy to overthrow a future Indian government. In my book, that would be considered seditious, and it should be treated accordingly.

AAP founding member revolts, says party has CIA links

Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, a member of the AAP National Council, suspects his party — or its leadership at least — has connections with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Upadhyay is addressing a Press conference at 2 pm at the Press Club of India on Wednesday. Earlier, he contacted this correspondent on several occasions over the phone saying he wished to get in touch with all founding members of the party who were dissatisfied with the way the party had been functioning (about 50 of the 300 National Council members are either sulking or have resigned).

How Arvind Kejriwal fooled his supporters

It now transpires that Upadhyay is not a ticket seeker who is cross with the party for being denied a chance to contest in the coming Lok Sabha elections. His email addressed to the Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Minister for Home Affairs among others, shows that his concern is nationalistic.

Titled, ‘Antinational activities of CIA, ISI, Ford Foundation & foreign funded Indian NGOs & Individuals’, Upadhyay’s email dated March 4 reads (unedited),

Dear Sir,

» Many Indian NGOs & Individuals are directly or indirectly funded by American CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, USA based NGO Ford Foundation, NGOAavaz&also funded by many other foreign countries.

» Many of the Ford Foundation / Foreign Funded Indian NGOs & Individuals are Pro-Separatist, Pro-Naxal, Pro-Maoist, Pro-Terrorist and directly or indirectly involved in antinational activities.

» These Ford Foundation / foreign funded NGO people & individuals are mobilizing people on Caste, Creed, Religion & Social issues &weakening our social unity& integrity of the nation.

» American CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, Ford Foundation and foreign funded NGO people & individuals are very serious threat for our democracy, sovereignty and internal security of nation.

» Many Ford Foundation / foreign funded NGO people & individuals are contesting Parliament & Assembly election as a part of major conspiracy of American CIA & Pakistan’s ISI.

» It’s well known truththat American CIA / Pakistan’s ISI used to send their agents in USSR as a Social Activists / Research Scholars&Ford Foundation played a key role in collapse of USSR.

» It is in public domain that American CIA / Pakistan’s ISI is dividingunity of society && weakening Integrity of the Nation thru Ford Foundation / Foreign Funded Indian NGOs& individuals.

» Entire nexus can be busted & truth will come out by enquiring Ford funded Social Activists &their family, Ford team members& Ford Foundation India representatives since 2000-2012.

Dear Sir,

» Pl order a time bound CBI/SIT / Judicial Commission enquiry against Indian NGOs & Individuals,who are directly or indirectly funded by Ford Foundation,Aavaz, CIA, ISI & foreign countries.

» Pl publish the list of Indian NGOs & individuals within 30 days, who are directly or indirectly funded by CIA, ISI, NGO Ford Foundation, NGO Aavaz&other foreign countries in last 10 years.

» Pl bring an ordinance to close the Ford Foundation and Foreign NGO offices in India & ban the CIA, ISI, Ford Foundation & foreign funded Antinational Social Activists from contesting election.

Regards

Hours after the email above, Upadhyay sent an email addressed to party national convener Arvind Kejriwal with copies to other senior members of the party. It is titled ‘National First (sic) Party Next and Self Last.’ It reads (unedited):

Dear Arvind Ji,

» Many National Council & founder members requested for 2-3 days National Council meet but it was held just for 1 day i.e. 31st January and entire time spent in speech only & time not given to National council & founder members to put their views.

» I tried to meet you many times after national council meet to discuss these issues with you personally but you couldn’t spare 10 minutes time for this.

» I emailed you 6 letter after the national council meet but you not replied any one. Then I mailed you again these and CC to national executives also.

» National First Party Next and Self Last is my conviction of life. Now I am putting my letters in public domain. PFA my letters dated 1st, 4th, 6th, 8th, 11th & 13th.

Regards

About an hour prior to the above email, he had written another to the AAP leadership with similar content. He thought his address to the high command was not being taken with the seriousness it deserved. Hence, he sent another.

A copy each of Upadhyay’s emails is in the possession of this correspondent.

Upadhyay was apparently trying to forge a lobby within the party. A lawyer by profession, he has been inviting frustrated and disgruntled elements of the party to his chamber at the Supreme Court campus. Now that internal pressure has failed to work on the AAP high command, he has decided to bring the issue out in the public domain.

Modi has a case, Kejriwal does not

However, Upadhyay clarified to this correspondent that today’s Press conference addressed by him is to stage an open protest against the AAP’s act of giving election tickets to ‘anti-nationals’ like Raja Muzaffar Bhat, who had protested the hanging of Parliament House attack convict Afzal Guru, in Kashmir and Maoist leader Sabyasachi Panda in Odisha.

Upadhyay will hold another Press conference by the end of this week to cover the issue of the AAP’s suspected CIA connection. He has been associated with Arvind Kejriwal’s NGO Parivartan and Manish Sisodia’s NGO Kabir since their formative days.

The AAP national council comprises all its founding members who attended its national convention held on November 24, 2012 to adopt the party constitution. Begun with a strength of 300, its numbers are now fluid, as every now and then some or the other founding member is resigning.

Link

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Breaking India
Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines
Publisher: Amaryllis. Pages: 640. Price: 695 INR/$15.00 US

India’s integrity is being undermined by three global networks that have well-established operating bases inside India: (i) Islamic radicalism linked with Pakistan, (ii) Maoists and Marxist radicals supported by China via intermediaries such as Nepal, and (iii) Dravidian and Dalit identity separatism being fostered by the West in the name of human rights. This book focuses on the third: the role of U.S. and European churches, academics, think-tanks, foundations, government and human rights groups in fostering separation of the identities of Dravidian and Dalit communities from the rest of India. The book is the result of five years of research, and uses information obtained in the West about foreign funding of these Indian-based activities. The research tracked the money trails that start out claiming to be for “education,” “human rights,” “empowerment training,” and “leadership training,” but end up in programs designed to produce angry youths who feel disenfranchised from Indian identity.

The book reveals how outdated racial theories continue to provide academic frameworks and fuel the rhetoric that can trigger civil wars and genocides in developing countries. The Dravidian movement’s 200-year history has such origins. Its latest manifestation is the “Dravidian Christianity” movement that fabricates a political and cultural history to exploit old faultlines. The book explicitly names individuals and institutions, including prominent Western ones and their Indian affiliates. Its goal is to spark an honest debate on the extent to which human rights and other “empowerment” projects are cover-ups for these nefarious activities.

Link

This book has emerged as a result of several experiences that have deeply influenced my research and scholarship over the past decade. In the 1990s, an African-American scholar at Princeton University casually told me that he had returned from a trip to India, where he was working with the ‘Afro-Dalit Project’. I learnt that this US operated and -financed project frames inter-jati/varna interactions and the Dalit movement using American cultural and historical lenses. The Afro-Dalit project purports to paint Dalits as the ‘Blacks’ of India and non-Dalits as India’s ‘Whites’. The history of American racism, slavery and Black/White relations is thus superimposed onto Indian society. While modern caste structures and inter-relationships have included long periods of prejudice toward Dalits, the Dalit experience bears little resemblance to the African slave experience of America. But taking its cue from the American experience, the Afro-Dalit project attempts to empower Dalits by casting them as victims at the hands of a different race.

Separately, I had been studying and writing about the ‘Aryans’, as to who they were, and whether the origin of Sanskrit and Vedas was an import by ‘invaders’ or indigenous to India. In this context, I sponsored numerous archeological, linguistic and historical conferences and book projects, in order to get deeper into the discourse. This led me to research the colonial-era construction of the Dravidian identity, which did not exist prior to the nineteenth century and was fabricated as an identity in opposition to the Aryans. Its survival depends upon belief in the theory of foreign Aryans and their misdeeds.

I had also been researching the US Church’s funding of activities in India, such as the popularly advertised campaigns to ‘save’ poor children by feeding, clothing and educating them. In fact, when I was in my twenties living in the US, I sponsored one such child in South India. However, during trips to India, I often felt that the funds collected were being used not so much for the purposes indicated to sponsors, but for indoctrination and conversion activities. Additionally, I have been involved in numerous debates in the US with think-tanks, independent scholars, human rights groups and academics, specifically on their treatment of Indian society as a sort of scourge that the west had to ‘civilize’. I coined the phrase ‘caste, cows and curry’ to represent the exotic and sensational portrayals of India’s social and economic problems and their interpretation these as ‘human rights’ issues.

I decided to track the major organizations involved in promulgating these various theories, as well as those spearheading political pressure, and eventually the prosecution of India on the grounds of human rights violations. My research included following the money trail by using the provisions of financial disclosure in the US, studying the promotional materials given out by most such organizations, and monitoring their conferences, workshops and publications. I investigated the individuals behind such activities and their institutional affiliations.

What I found out should sound the alarm bell for every Indian concerned about our national integrity. India is the prime target of a huge enterprise—a ‘network’ of organizations, individuals and churches—that seems intensely devoted to the task of creating a separatist identity, history and even religion for the vulnerable sections of India. This nexus of players includes not only church groups, government bodies and related organizations, but also private thinktanks and academics. On the surface they appear to be separate and isolated from one another, but in fact, as I found, their activities are well coordinated and well funded from the US and Europe. I was impressed by the degree of interlocking and cooperation among these entities. Their resolutions, position papers and strategies are well articulated, and beneath the veneer of helping the downtrodden, there seem to be objectives that would be inimical to India’s unity and sovereignty.

A few Indians from the communities being ‘empowered’ were in top positions in these Western organizations, and the whole enterprise was initially conceived, funded and strategically managed by Westerners. However, there are now a growing number of Indian individuals and NGOs who have become co-opted by them, and receive funding and mentorship from the West. The south Asian studies in the US and European universities invite many such ‘activists’ regularly and give them prominence. The same organizations had also been inviting and giving intellectual support to Khalistanis, Kashmir militants, Maoists, and other subversive elements in India. So I began to wonder whether the campaigns to mobilize Dalits, Dravidians and other minorities in India were somehow part of the foreign policy of certain Western countries, if not openly then at least as an option kept in reserve. I am unaware of any other major country in which such large-scale processes prevail without monitoring or concern by the local authorities. No wonder so much has to be spent in India after such a separatist identity gets weaponized into all out militancy or political fragmentation.

The link between academic manipulations and subsequent violence is also evident in Sri Lanka, where manufactured divisiveness caused one of the bloodiest civil wars. The same also happened in Africa where foreign-engineered identity conflicts led to one of the worst ethnic genocides ever in the world.

About three years ago, my research and data had become considerable. Moreover, many Indians are simply unaware of the subversive forces at work against their country, and I felt that it ought to be organized for wider dissemination and debate. I started working with Aravindan Neelakandan, based in Tamil Nadu, to complement my foreign data with his access to the ground reality in India’s backwaters.

This book looks at the historical origins of both the Dravidian movement and Dalit identity, as well as the current players involved in shaping these separatist identities. It includes an analysis of the individuals and institutions involved and their motivations, activities, and desired endgame. While many are located in the US and the European Union, there are an increasing number in India too, the latter often functioning like the local branch offices of these foreign entities.

The goal of this book is not to sensationalize or predict any outcomes. Rather, it is to expand the debate about India and its future. Much is being written about India’s rise in economic terms and its implications to India’s overall clout. But not enough is written on what can go wrong given the rapidly expanding programs exposed in this book and the stress they put on India’s faultlines. My hope is that this book fills this gap to some extent.

Rajiv Malhotra Princeton, USA January 2011

Link

----

^^^ The Goras have identified Hindu cultural traditions as the glue that keeps the society together, and are attacking it with full force. An example being this lesbian/Gay legalizing thing. Then they were organising kissing festivals in India where random men and women were supposed to come together and give kisses to each other. They are hell bent on wrecking the institution of marriage through lopsided laws so live-in relationships become safer and more convenient for men. Soft ***** in newspapers, TV serials denigrating social customs ... Jains being declared non-Hindus ... Gay parades ... it is all part of an elaborate plan for social engineering. Congress party is the main agent through which this agenda is being implemented, and they are in a hurry.

And 'slut-walks'!!! Imagine telling to Bhaaratheeya women that they are supposed to take pride in being a 'slut'.

Pappu's 'women empowerment', Fordriwal's anarchy and 'slave-traffick charges on DK' have the same end goal:

Western elites pushing to destroy India with feminism
Aug 23rd, 2013
by Brett Stevens.

western_media_alarmism
How do you backdoor Social Marxism into a country? The same way you’d do it here to a small community: invent a pressing problem with a protect victim — gays, women, minorities, children — and demand investigations, public dialogues and other tools designed to make the people there hate themselves.

Then they’ll be grateful when you come in to saveTM them “from themselves.”

Right now, the Western liberal elite media is hive-minding about rape in India. See here, here, here, here, and here (CNN reporting on its own crowd-sourced report).

This fits into the modern narrative of “putting out fires”: overworked, we soldier on, but then we notice a problem so urgent that we must even break out of the normal drudgery of modern life. Rape! That’s as bad as racism… wait, nothing is as bad as racism… it might be racist, but at least one of these victims is white, so… almost as bad as racism. But still very bad.

Finding a problem like this justifies our intervention. It justifies summoning up ten thousand Slutwalks, several Public Dialogues, many collaborative art projects, thousands of investigative journalism pieces, at least a dozen public speeches, and perhaps the sale of 1.2m self-help books about rape, how to avoid it, and how feminism will save us.

And that last point is worth noting: how feminism will save us. The point is to use this justification for action as a backdoor to bring in Western liberal elite-style feminism, which requires a backdrop of Social Marxism, which in turn requires the liberal concept of progress and with a few quick steps, we can dominate this society with our neurosis too.

Cynics like myself think that the point of this expansion is power, with a side dose of “misery loves company.” Or in other words, we’re not going down alone. Everyone must join us in our maniacal quest for Ideological purity and if it destroys us, it will destroy them, and we’ll all be equal in destruction.

But how real are these claims? A helpful BBC article provides some statistics:

It says that the city of Delhi, home to 7.5 million women, recorded 585 cases of rape in 2012, compared with a total of 484 cases from the cities of Mumbai (232 cases), Calcutta (68), Chennai (94) and Bangalore (90 cases). Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta are megacities with populations of more than 10 million people.

Let’s compare that to statistics from major American cities. New York had 1,092 rapes in 2011. Los Angeles had 828 rapes in 2011. Chicago had 1,439 rapes in 2009 (the most recent year they reported statistics). Houston had 771 rapes in 2011.

In other words, Delhi probably has fewer rapes than most big American cities. Where’s the outrage? Oh, we already have feminism. Time for another Slutwalk.

Western elites spread their cancerous liberalism through jihads such as the manufactured “India rape crisis.” By ignoring statistical evidence, and instead picking a few of the inevitable crimes of a big city, the media can make it appear as if a crisis appears where none exists.

The audience for this media, naive in the belief that the news somehow reports on factual reality, will see the increasing frequency of stories and assume that there is an increasing frequency of crime, when in fact the rate of crime is lower than where they live.

However, this gives the left their true source of power, which is socialization. In every chattering circle, people can talk about rape in India as if they knew something. This embarrasses Indians, and motivates them to atone for that by importing Western-style liberalism and with it, cultural Marxism and other forms of social control.

It’s time to hold our press accountable for the vast amount of damage they do in the name of their own holy jihad of spreading the religion of liberalism to every corner of the globe.

Link

Remember, Fordriwal had also benefited from the anti-rape protests in Dilli! This puts in context the 'women-empowerment' droning by Pappu.

^^So it's quite clear from yesterday's RaGa's interview that he was signalling to non-vocal but listening urban women voters. Women may not be as vocal about their political choices but may exercise an independent choice at the ballot box.

Link

The vote catching capability of 'women empowerment'(which in many cases is implemented as breaking the families/marriages/society) or 'gay-rights' is very limited. All women need not support such initiatives because women are not just women, they are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and so on. So, they would have multiple interests. Similarly, all men need no oppose such things, because they also don multiple roles of father, brother, friend, husband, ...etc.

Infact, many a times, its the men who are the most vocal and majority supporters of such schemes because they are naive or opportunistic. Some women are used as token supporters. This is similar to Dhalith activism, which is again prominently funded, sponsored and supported by the elites with a token dhalith(s) as a face(s).

When a harsh dowry harassment law is used to blackmail or victimize an innocent man and his family, are not the womenfolk of his household also victims? Will they support 'women empowerment' laws? Similarly, if a cunning women and her family want to extort money through such one-sided and unfair laws, then the cunning and greedy menfolk of her household may support such laws.

If the sarkaar gives incentives to the women to get divorced, will that loophole not be exploited by atleast some percentage? If divorce gets incentivized for men/women, then atleast some people from that particular group will use marriage as a legal method of hustling. What will the other group do then? They will simply avoid marriage. Whats the end result? Breakdown of marriage system. Once the marriage itself is broken, the clan, community, ...etc networks will also break down. That leaves each man and woman for himself/herself completely dependent on whims and fancies of corporations and sarkaar. Then, they can institutionalize any and every law, yep including cavity search and literally legally rape you!

It seems the end goal of 'slave-trafficking', 'women's empowerment', 'gay-rights', 'anti-corruption' is color revolution or vestern intervention. It seems the thing is they know they are going down and are unable to recover. So, they want to create troubles for others to stop them from coming up. The BRICS are the ones poised to take over from the vest. So, they are being targeted.

Russia and Brazil seem to be taking many steps to keep themselves protected from such operations. Don't know about Cheen. Bhaarath seems to have unfortunately allowed the lackeys of vest to come to power and take over public space in many ways. And they are trying to push these things that will do long term damage to Bhaarath to hamper the forward march of the dhesh. Despite the damage done by these lackeys(specially economically) for past decade, dhesh is still has a very good potential to rise as a real challenger within a decade. So, all sorts of games are being played on the country.

[pankajs]

Why President Obama must act on mass incarceration

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-mass-i ... commission

The United States has 5% of the world’s population – but 25% of its prisoners.

Fortunately, at a time of great partisan divide, prison reform is one area with bipartisan consensus. Officials ranging from President Obama to Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul have publicly acknowledged that our country faces a criminal justice crisis. An increasing number of Americans understand there’s no reason we should have the world’s most gigantic prison population. That is why Obama should act now, with bipartisan support and momentum, to tackle the growing problem of mass incarceration.

[pankajs]

Food insecurity is at historic highs and getting worse

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hunger-the-us-historic-highs

There is a hunger crisis taking place across the United States, and it is likely to get even worse. As of 2012, 49 million Americans suffer from food insecurity, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as lack of access to “enough food for an active, healthy life.” Nearly one-third of the afflicted are children. And millions of them don’t even have access to food stamps, according to a new report from the anti-hunger organization Feeding America.

The report, called “Map the Meal Gap,” tracks food insecurity by county and finds some regions of the country where the child food insecurity rate can go as high as 41%.

[pankajs]

South Carolina police chief allegedly fired for being gay: “I can’t believe that we still have no equal rights”

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/21/south_c ... al_rights/

The Latta Town Council has voted to make their small South Carolina community “council strong/mayor weak” in response to Mayor Earl Bullard’s decision to fire Police Chief Crystal Moore — a 20 year veteran of the force who was also the town’s first openly gay police chief. Many say the move had nothing to do with Moore’s job performance, but was driven by Bullard’s homophobia.

[member_22733]

We cure bullying by out-bullying the bully.

[johneeG]

WoW! This is really heart-wrenching and chilling.

Teen indefinitely detained in psych ward after parents seek 2nd medical opinion
“I truly believe she is being used as a guinea pig for medical experiments."

Posted on December 17, 2013 by O.D. in News

NOTE: Story has been updated. View updates chronologically at bottom of text.
Justina's is only allowed 2 family members per visit, once per week, for one hour. Source: (freedombytes.info)

Justina’s is only allowed 2 family members per visit, once per week, for one hour.
Source: (freedombytes.info)

BOSTON, MA — A judge has ruled that a Boston teen may continue to be held captive in a hospital and forcibly drugged… indefinitely. The tragic series of events began when a doctor discarded an earlier medical diagnosis and declared another, prompting objections from her parents and threats to discharge her from Boston Children’s Hospital to take her to get a second opinion. An epic battle of egos ensued, and the hospital decided that the parents’ insolence in challenging the doctor was tantamount to child abuse. Without a trial or having broken a specific law, the girl was stripped from her parents’ custody and the state of Massachusetts has kept her indefinitely detained in a hospital since February 2013. Based on the latest ruling, the girl may very well be locked in a psychiatric ward until she turns 18 years old.

http://www.freejustina.com
countup

A Difference of Opinion

Justina Pelletier is a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl who lived with her parents, had friends, went to school, and enjoyed ice skating and hiking. She was diagnosed three years ago by respected medical experts from Tufts Medical Center with mitochondrial disease, which causes muscle pain, weakness and loss of coordination. Despite her condition, she led the active life of a normal teenager.
Justina Pelletier enjoyed ice-skating before being confined to Boston Children's Hospital. (Source: Daily Mail)

Justina Pelletier enjoyed ice-skating before being confined to Boston Children’s Hospital.
(Source: Daily Mail)

That was before February 2013, when Justina came down with the flu and was admitted to Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) to see her gastroenterologist, who had recently transferred from Tufts. A mere three days later, other doctors — primarily neurologist, Dr. Jurriaan Peters — dismissed her previous diagnosis of mitochondrial disease, and declared that her symptoms of difficulty eating and walking, were mostly psychological in origin. He diagnosed her with somatoform disorder, changing her diagnosis from a physical condition to a stress-related mental illness — a psychiatric disorder that causes sufferers to feel pain, although there is no physical cause.

When Justina’s parents, Lou and Linda Pelletier, challenged the diagnosis by insisting on a second opinion, they were told that they could not take her from the hospital. A swarm of hospital security guards gathered to remove them. Lou Pelletier actually called 9-1-1 when he sensed things were going abysmally wrong. “I told them ‘my daughter is about to be kidnapped by Boston Children’s Hospital,’” he said to the Blaze. Four days later, a judge awarded custody of Justina to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF).

Doctors and hospital psychiatrists wield such power that merely suggesting that a patient’s problems are more psychiatric than physical paves the way for the hospital to call in the state child-protection agency. Once medical child abuse has been alleged, the state agency is legally obligated to investigate all complaints — and is all too willing to seize children from their families. As the Boston Globe points out:

“Many parents and their advocates complain, however, that the state agency, because of its lack of in-house medical expertise and its longstanding ties with Children’s, is overly deferential to the renowned Harvard teaching hospital.”

“Kidnapped”

“They came in, and they said we cannot take Justina out of the hospital. They called DCF,” says Linda Pelletier, Justina’s mother. “It is kidnapping,” says Lou Pelletier, “We don’t even know what they are doing to her. No one will tell us about her treatment. They have kidnapped her, taken her off medications that worked and left her to suffer in pain.”
Justina Pelletier's sisters: From left to right, Julia, Jennifer, and Jessica. (Source: listwns.com)

Justina Pelletier’s sisters: From left to right, Julia, Jennifer, and Jessica.
(Source: listwns.com)

Ironically, the Pelletiers say Boston Children’s accused them “overmedicalizing” their daughter before taking her from them and restricting their access to her. Yet, behind the scenes, the hospital called DCF immediately after Justina’s parents challenged the somatoform diagnosis, alleging that they had abused or neglected her. “They were actually being accused of being too active in pursuing health care matters for their child,” West Hartford psychologist Dean Hokanson, who has worked with Justina for five years, told WTIC.

According to FOX CT, a report written in April by a Boston Children’s Hospital physician shows that Justina was taken off of her previously prescribed medication when she entered the hospital:

“Due to concerns regarding Justina’s regressive behavior changes around her family, the multiple medical procedures and care episodes she has been through … and both parents’ resistance towards recommended treatment plans for Justina … a child protection team was convened.”

The Pelletiers insist, and medical paperwork from Tufts Medical Center confirms, that every surgical procedure and medication that Justina received was approved by doctors. “All we want is Justina back. We don’t even know what we are supposed to have done wrong. They say we overmedicated her and forced her to have unnecessary procedures. But all we ever did was follow her original doctors’ orders.”
Justina Pelletier's family is only allowed two twenty-minute phone calls with her per week. Source: (boston.com)

Justina Pelletier’s family is only allowed two twenty-minute phone calls with her per week.
(Source: boston.com)

Justina’s original doctors have now been “cut out of the loop” in exchange for a new team that specializes in Somatoform Disorder. They moved quickly to dispute Dr. Korson’s working diagnosis of mitochondrial disease for Justina and accused her parents of medical child abuse. Dr. Korson’s requests to be included in the discussions regarding his patient would be subsequently ignored by both Boston Children’s and the state (DCF). Justina’s former doctor, Tufts Medical Center specialist Dr. Mark Korson sent an email to the Pelletier’s attorney regarding Boston Children’s Hospital, their team of doctors and the somatoform diagnosis:

“I am dismayed. … It feels like Justina’s treatment team is out to prove the diagnosis at all costs. … The (Boston Children’s Hospital) team has demanded that Justina be removed from the home. … This represents the most severe and intrusive intervention a patient can undergo … for a clinical hunch,” Dr. Korson wrote.

Locked in “Bader 5″
Justina Pelletier with her mother during one of her weekly visits allowed by the hospital.

Justina Pelletier with her mother during one of her weekly visits allowed by the hospital.

In April of 2013, Justina was moved from her previous room in the hospital to an area of the hospital called Bader 5, the psychiatric ward. Though she vehemently opposed the transfer, Boston Children’s informed Justina that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — not her or her parents — would be making all choices regarding her future. Sadly, if the judge hearing her case does not put her custody back in the hands of her parents soon, then Justina may be forced to remain at the hospital until she turns 18 and can legally determine her own destiny. By July, the Pelletiers were informed that the hospital was ready to release Justina, still 14-years-old at the time, from the hospital, though not to them. The new team of doctors “demanded” that Justina be removed from the home and severe restrictions imposed on contact with her parents.

“I truly believe she is being used as a guinea pig for medical experiments.”

As the Pelletiers battle for custody of Justina, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families only allows her parents to visit for one hour and make two twenty minute phone calls per week, and even those are monitored by hospital staff. Her older sister, Jennifer, claims that Justina says, “psychiatric staff have told her she is never coming home. They have apparently told her not to plan any homecoming parties because she isn’t going home. I don’t know exactly when or how many times she has been told this but Justina believes she is going to die in there.”
BCH issued the Pelletiers "guidlines" for their daughter's care which include "No Second Opinions." Source: (dailymail.co.uk

BCH issued the Pelletiers “guidelines” for their daughter’s care which include “No Second Opinions.”
(Source: Daily Mail)

In the ten months since she was admitted to Boston Children’s Hospital, Justina’s condition has deteriorated to the point where her family says she no longer walks on her own and is now bound to a wheelchair. Her sister, Jennifer, says, “I don’t know what they are trying to do to her but they have destroyed her hope and trust. All we have ever wanted for Justina is for her to get better but she is getting worse.” If she didn’t exhibit the symptoms of Somatoform before she was admitted, her family says that she now does; “She is certainly listless and depressed now – it is like they have created those symptoms to suit their own ends.” Her father added, “I truly believe she is being used as a guinea pig for medical experiments.”

If this all seems a bit Kafkaesque, know that this is not the first time that Boston Children’s Hospital has used its child protection team to threaten parents with state investigations in order to get their way. The Boston Globe report on Justina Pelletier’s case claims at least five instances of “unusually contentious cases over the last 18 months involving Children’s Hospital and the Department of Children and Families.”
“Psychiatric staff have told her she is never coming home. They have apparently told her not to plan any homecoming parties because she isn’t going home. I don’t know exactly when or how many times she has been told this but Justina believes she is going to die in there.”

The DCF should be there to mediate between the two parties, but their lack of medical knowledge puts them at the mercy of the hospitals’ vastly larger experience pool. This would seemingly create a conflict of interest for the DCF when considering the allegations of medical abuse made by doctors and psychologists against parents and legal guardians. What must have begun as a well-intentioned plan to identify cases of medical child abuse and intervene on behalf of the patient has predictably expanded into a bureaucracy of “child protection specialists” who sling charges at parents simply because they disagreed with the hospital’s diagnosis and wanted to take their child elsewhere for treatment.

Parents, like the Pelletiers, are at the mercy of doctors who, according to Dr. Eli Newberger, “have enormous and really unchecked power.” Parents accused of medical child abuse risk losing custody of their children with little to no recourse against the byzantine state agency, all because an overzealous hospital staffer with an inflated job title just didn’t like them.

This case has pitted hospital against hospital, doctor against doctor, and parents against the state, with the life of a child hanging in the balance. There will not be any winners now, nor in the future, until the primacy of individual rights is restored to every citizen of every age in this country. Milton Friedman quoting John Stuart Mill perfectly embodies the plight of Justina Pelletier:

“The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good.”

She wants to go home; she deserves to go home.

UPDATE (12/20/2013): Court Rules Indefinite Detention May Continue

The Pelletiers react to a judge's decision to keep Justina locked away indefinitely in a psych ward. (Source: The Boston Globe)

The Pelletiers react to a judge’s decision to keep Justina locked away indefinitely in a psych ward. (Source: The Boston Globe)

This Friday, December 20, Judge Joseph Johnston delivered a shocking blow to the Pelletiers, declaring that the state had met its burden for maintaining custody of Justina, and she will remain in their “protective” care indefinitely until the government rules otherwise. Justina will not be home for Christmas, as her parents had desperately hoped. She may not be coming home for a long time. Emotions were high, and the judge’s decision prompted angry outbursts of “Evil!” in the courtroom, according to the Boston Globe.

“I don’t understand how they can do this. I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Linda Pelletier as she left the courtroom, sobbing.

“It’s a ******* corrupt state” said her red-faced father, Lou, as he left.

The judge appointed a new guardian ad litem for Justina, and another hearing is scheduled for January 10th, 2014.

UPDATE (1/18/2014): Justina Transferred

The Boston Globe reports that Justina has been transferred out of the psych ward in Boston Children’s Hospital and into a residential program at Wayside Youth and Family Support Network, in Framingham, Massachusetts.

She remains in the custody of DCF and the court hearings are being shrouded in secrecy.

UPDATE (2/17/2014): Desperate Parents Break Gag Order, Allege Torture

Justina Pelletier (Source: Facebook)

February 14th marked a full year that Justina has been held hostage by Massachusetts social workers. Her parents — emotionally and financially drained — are growing increasingly disillusioned and vocal about the situation. There seems to be few legal and peaceful options left for them to reunite their family.

In desperation, Justina’s father has broken the court’s gag order on him talking about the oppression of his family. Lou Pelletier disclosed to the Blaze how his daughter is being punished by her captors if she passes too much information to her parents.

For a while Justina would write secret messages inside of the cards that she sent to her parents. She would write on the underside of the flap of a card in small lettering so the captors wouldn’t detect it. Mr. Pelletier said she would be “tortured” in ways that the doctors called “behavioral modification.”

“That’s what Kim Jong Il’s doing in North Korea, behavior modification. … No, no, no, no. It’s torture,” he said.

Lou revealed that the day his daughter was seized, he called 9-1-1 as hospital security guards gathered before taking his daughter. To his dismay, the police he called for help condoned the kidnapping.

“I told them ‘my daughter is about to be kidnapped by Boston Children’s Hospital,’” he said.

Mr. Pelletier says that even if Justina is released, she will not be the same. He and his wife worry that her listless, diminished condition could be “irreversible.”

“She needs physical therapy. She needs to be back on the vitamin cocktail. She needs to be treated for the goddamn diagnosis she had from the beginning,” Lou said. “I need to save my daughter. If we don’t do something, she is going to die.”

The family says their visitation has been reduced to one 20-minute phone call and one hour-long visit per week.

“Now we go back the 24th, a week from today, and I want to have all my guns blazing. We’re not going to make it much more,” Lou Pelletier said to the Blaze.

Justina passes handwritten notes to her family via origami art. Source: (dailymail.co.uk)

UPDATE (2/18/2014): Lou Pelletier Charged with Contempt of Court

Lou Pelletier’s calculated risk of going public has had the benefit of reaching the audience of Glenn Beck, and has been met with the financial assistance of concerned viewers of the interview. However, the vengeful, family-destroying Massachusetts Department of Children & Families (DCF) filed charges against Mr. Pelletier for doing the interview and breaking his government-imposed silence.

Whether Judge Joseph Johnston follows through with his threats to punish the Pelletier family for speaking about their own situation remains to be seen. The charges against Lou Pelletier will be weighed in court, and if sustained, he could face additional fines or even jail time.

READ MORE: Father charged for speaking about his daughter’s kidnapping

UPDATE (2/24/2014): Justina to go to Foster Care Instead of Parents

Linda is loaded into an ambulance after fainting at the news her daughter would be given to another family. (Source: Beau Berman / Twitter)

A court ruled that Justina will leave the hospital, and go to a new set of parents, inflaming an emotional situation that has reached national attention.

Lou and Linda Pelletier appeared devastated upon hearing the decision. Lou shouted in anger and covered his face in his hands. Linda wept, had to be hospitalized after she collapsed after leaving the courtroom.

Justina’s father says that the family has been “teased with a carrot” with the hope that they could get Justina back. With her remaining in DCF foster care, it appears the court has been playing playing with the family’s emotions as much as it has been playing with Justina’s fate.

Justina’s father spoke out the following day on national television. “Our whole family was enraged with what went on,” he said.

“Everything we were hoping for to happen yesterday blew up,” said Mr. Pelletier. “From finding out the new medical facility — the people that were going to be in charge of her medical care — weren’t going to be her Tuft’s doctors… instead its going to be UMass Memorial in Worcester, Massachusetts, who know nothing about her.”

“Number two,” he listed, “the constitutional lawyers we had brought in to assist us were being blocked from seeing her.”

“Number three, which was crushing, to find out she is being moved from the facility she is in… to a DCF-run facility in Merrimack, Massachusetts, called the Shared Living Collaborative, which is a purely psych facility– no medical.”

Lou said after the emotional court session and his wife fainting in the hallway, he stormed back into the courtroom and shouted angry words at the judge.

“How can you look yourself in the mirror?!” he asked the judge.

He said that Justina’s health is critical. During a recent supervised visit — which include 2-5 DCF workers and police presence — he said Justina’s shirt lifted slightly to reveal “severe dark red lines coming out from where her port was, from her cecostomy tube. And that’s either a sign of poisoning, sepsis getting to the system, or some other critical thing. If we hadn’t seen it and raised a red flag, she could be dead today.”

UPDATE (2/27/2014): State Legislators Finally Speak Up

After more than a year of torment for the Pelletier family, two Massachusetts state legislators have finally spoken out against the injustice, and a resolution to release Justina from DCF custody will be introduced next legislative session, reported MyFoxBoston.

“The self-stated goal of the Department of Children and Families is to strengthen the link between families. Removing a child from her family is reserved for only the most egregious circumstances where evidence of malicious intent, negligence or the blatant inability to care for the child is present. No such findings are present in this case,” said Marc Lombardo (R-Billerica) said in a press release.

“The Pelletier case is a dispute between conflicting medical opinions,” said Jim Lyons (R-Andover) in his own release. “In my opinion, the decision on which medical treatment to adopt should rest with the parents, not with DCF. The Department’s heavy-handed, unjustified interference with the rights of these parents is an example of what is wrong with this agency.”

Additionally, the Shared Living Collaborative wisely declined to accept Justina as a patient, citing the national controversy. So for now, Justina remains in Framingham under the same conditions which she has been held.

UPDATE (3/16/2014): Interview with Dr. Phil

The Pelletier family was interviewed on the Dr. Phil show. This exhibits the demeanor of the family, some reactions by outside experts and the host, and provides some insights by Justina’s sisters who suffer from the same mitochondrial disease.

UPDATE (3/25/2014): Justina Ruled a PERMANENT Ward of the State of Mass.

The Pelletiers’ unbelievable saga is not going to come to a happy conclusion anytime soon. A Massachusetts court has officially ruled that Justina will be left in the custody of the Massachusetts DCF — permanently.

Justina will be a ward of the state until she turns 18 years old or until her captors are pressured into releasing her. She may spend (additional) years as a prisoner, drugged, isolated, developmentally stunted, and losing out on the rest of her childhood.

Even though they have not been charged or found guilty of neglect — or any crime — the judge ruled that they were unfit parents and that they should be permanently separated from their daughter. The power of the government to destroy families is truly chilling and provides irrefutable evidence that we live in a police state.

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stories that remain conspicuously ignored by the national mainstream media, and your generous support is essential
to effectively distributing this message. Many victims of government-sanctioned violence offer their gratitude.

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Help the Pelletiers as they try to keep up with legal fees: www.freejustina.com

Please put pressure on those who can make a difference and help to return Justina home.

DCF Commissioner Olga I. Roche
DCF Website
600 Washington Street Boston, MA 02111
Phone: 617-748-2000
Email: dcfcommissioner@state.ma.us

Judge Joseph Johnston: LinkedIn

Child Protection Program Office: 617-355-7979



Originally responsible for encouraging Justina being taken from her parents (although she has now been transferred) :

Boston Children’s Hospital
Facebook: BostonChildrensHospital
Boston Children’s Hospital
300 Longwood Avenue Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617-355-6000

Dr. Jurriaan Peters
300 Longwood Ave. Boston, MA 02115
Phone: (617) 355-6117 (Office)

Link

[Raja Bose]

AoA! Bojitive Neuj!

New York Police Department holds Twitter photo contest which shows benevolent side of police in the United States

The New York Police Department attempted to harness Twitter to drum up support today, but things haven't exactly gone as planned. Earlier today, the official NYPD Twitter account asked followers to tweet photos of themselves with NYC police officers under the hashtag #myNYPD — but so far, many users have jumped on that hashtag to flood it with images of police aggressively apprehending apparent suspects.

Phree neck massage to get rid of that sore throat


Helping a black birather boogie


Complimentary leg massage using motorized roller after a hard marathon

[member_22733]

Here is a 'colored' version of the above:



from here: https://twitter.com/OCongress/status/45 ... 96/photo/1

[johneeG]

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Police Officer Fired for Leaking Ticket Quota Reality

by Daniel G. J.
July 30th, 2013
Updated 07/30/2013 at 5:51 pm
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A police officer has been fired after going against a city policy that encouraged cops to write needless tickets and harass citizens. Justin Hanners alleged that the police in Auburn, Alabama, were encouraged to write frivolous tickets in order to raise revenue for the city.

Photo of police officer writing a ticket.Auburn police officers were rewarded for writing a specific number of tickets and making a set number of arrests, Hanners alleged. Hanners said his commanding officer, Sgt. Trey Neal, told him that officers had to have a minimum of 100 “contacts” a month. The term contact is a euphemism for ticketing or arresting an individual.

Officers that didn’t get the 100 contacts were punished with mandatory overtime and threatened with job loss, Hanners charged. Cops that wrote more tickets were rewarded with gift certificates for steak dinners and other incentives.
Tickets Used to Raise Revenue

Hanners believes the motivation for the policy was to raise revenue for the city in the form of fines. He believes the quota system is a perversion of police work.

The system distracts officers from dealing with serious crime, Hanners said. He believes officers would not be able to investigate crime because they were too busy writing tickets.

Hanners also believes the quotas are unfair to lower income people, who are more likely to have contact with police. The officer noted that fines of several hundred dollars can devastate a lower income family. He said he was encouraged to write tickets with large fines in order to raise money for the city. Hanners didn’t say it, but the policy could also be construed as racist because African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be lower income and targeted by police.
A Scary Video

A Reason TV video about Hanners and his complaints has received well over a hundred thousand views on YouTube. Even before the video was posted online, Hanners was fired by the Auburn Police for violating a gag order. It is clear that the department violated his First Amendment Rights.


Hanners said his superiors tried to bribe and threaten him to keep him from going public with his complaints. The City of Auburn has denied his charges, but the video contains a quote from Sgt. Neal that sounds like a threat.

In one part of the video, Hanners alleges that he and other officers were encouraged to go out and arrest people who were drunk but not violating the law to fill their ticket quotas. Auburn is a college town, so they had no shortage of drunks to pick up on Saturday night. Such a scenario reminds us of the young college girl who was assaulted by six alcohol agents attempting to bust her for buying bottled water, as Anthony Gucciardi reported early this month.
Far from Alone

Hanners also learned that he is far from alone in complaining about such policies. When he approached the Police Benevolent Association (a union) for help, Hanners learned that the association had received similar complaints from many other cops on different departments.

Hanners’ complaints are frightening because they show how law enforcement is being corrupted and perverted in America. Small towns have long used ticket writing and speed traps to raise revenues, but now the practice is spreading to larger communities; Auburn is a small city of 50,000 people. Even more frightening is his allegation that fines are now being used as a source of revenue.

Worse, a good case can be made that such quotas are a method of driving lower income people and minorities out of town. Poor people that cannot pay the tickets will avoid gentrified communities. Similar policies include the City and County of Denver’s ban on camping in public (directed against the homeless) and New York’s policy of stopping and frisking anybody officers think is suspicious.

Another problem that Hanners points out is that quotas effectively drive intelligent and conscientious police officers off the force. Such individuals quit because they are disgusted with the policies, leaving only bureaucrats and crooked cops on the force.

Officer Hanners is to be commended for exposing this terrible policy. Hopefully some community that wants real law enforcement will give him a job. One has to wonder how many other law enforcement agencies have implemented this horrendous quota system.

Link

Manufacturing Low Crime Rates at the NYPD: Reputation Versus Safety Under Bloomberg and Kelly
The practice of manufacturing artificially low crime rates increased substantially after 2002 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner Raymond Kelly. New research based on interviews with 2,000 retired police officers from the NYPD reveals pervasive, system-wide corruption of criminal records and police practices. This research suggests that concern with the department's reputation for reducing crime, much more than with public safety, drives police policy.

Mountains of scientific evidence supporting this are explored in The Crime Numbers Game. The bulk of the book's evidence came from a survey of 500 retired police officers ranked captain and above, as well as from in depth interviews with over 40 retired and active officers.

A new survey of former NYPD officers includes 10 police chiefs, 36 inspectors, 63 captains, 262 lieutenants, 382 sergeants, and 1,154 patrol officers and detectives. The survey asked officers if they had witnessed words being changed in crime reports or observed other unethical efforts to downgrade serious crimes to lesser offenses. Using the officers who retired before 1995 as a baseline, the survey found that 25 percent of those officers had personally observed unethical crime reporting. Only 28 percent of those who retired between 1995 and 2001 had observed these activities.

However, in the Kelly/Bloomberg era (2002 and after) over half the officers -- 51 percent -- had observed the intentional misclassification of serious crimes as petty offenses and other unethical practices, typically multiple times. Officers also reported that since 2002 they had experienced unusually strong pressures from supervisors to downgrade crimes and keep crime numbers low.

The consequences of downgrading or not reporting crimes can be severe. For example, in 2010 recently retired Detective Harold Hernandez revealed to Village Voice reporter Graham Rayman that a series of sexual assault-robberies in Washington Heights had been downgraded from serious felonies to misdemeanors. As a result, the NYPD missed the crime pattern and allowed a sexual predator to remain at large for at least two months and to commit six more rapes.

More evidence came from numerous NYPD whistleblowers. Since 2010 officers Adrian Schoolcraft, Craig Matthews, Frank Polestro, Adyl Polanco, and Vanessa Hicks have talked openly to reporters and TV cameras about the routine downgrading of crimes and the use of illegal arrest quotas by the NYPD. Not surprisingly, they have been punished by the department for doing so. Other officers have discussed confidentially the pressure to keep numbers low with reporters and researchers (including the authors).

It is important to understand that the official crime rate is a powerful indicator of crime in New York and a broader gauge of how the city is doing. The mayor and other officials, the real estate and tourist industries, and the top brass at the NYPD all have a strong interest in keeping the crime numbers low.

This research also indicates that the corruption of crime reports is a consequence of the misuse of Compstat (the NYPD's computerized crime reporting and mapping system introduced in 1995). Ironically, this innovative management accountability system, which was designed to reduce crime, has become twisted. Compstat now serves as a powerful mechanism to ensure that downgrading permeates the whole department.

At weekly Compstat crime strategy meetings, commanders are held accountable for crime in their precincts. When used in a community-oriented and problem-solving fashion, this makes great sense. But when the upper echelon's ability to keep tabs on the crime rate and closely monitor officers and precincts is coupled with pressure to keep crime numbers low, the Compstat system is turned on its head.

There is now a clear message emanating from the top commanders at police headquarters: make many stop and frisks, write many summonses, make many arrests for petty offenses, and downgrade serious crimes. In other words, the NYPD seeks to keep the serious crime numbers low while showing lots of officer activity. The NYPD's 50,000 marijuana arrests, 600,000 summonses, and nearly 700,000 stop and frisks do little or nothing to make the city safer. Indeed, this unnecessary activity alienates communities and hurts the NYPD's ability to fight serious and violent crimes.

This strategy does not involve intelligence gathering, surveillance, or community involvement -- nor does it make good use of Compstat. This is a policy created to maintain appearances, not to catch dangerous criminals. When the NYPD protects and serves its reputation for reducing crime, it does not protect and serve the people of New York; these are conflicting priorities.

In the next year New Yorkers have an opportunity to effect change. The mayoral race is heating up as opposition to the NYPD's racially-biased stop and frisks, marijuana arrests, and other practices intensifies. As the New York Times and others have suggested, this is an excellent time to install a federal monitor or inspector general with powers to investigate and supervise the NYPD's practices.

_____________ 
Eli B. Silverman is coauthor of The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation and professor emeritus John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

John A. Eterno is coauthor of The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation and professor and associate dean of criminal justice at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York.

Jesse P. Levine is a researcher for the Marijuana Arrest Research Project and a student at City University of New York School of Law.

Link

NYPD Does Use Quotas: Jury

First Posted: 02/21/11 10:41 AM ET Updated: 05/25/11 07:35 PM ET

The verdict is in on whether the NYPD is influenced by quotas when arresting suspects.

A jury of six men deciding a civil case brought by Carolyn Bryant, determined that police do indeed have a policy "regarding the number of arrests officers were to make that violated plaintiff's constitutional rights and contributed to her arrest."

From the New York Daily News:

Jurors came back with an invalid verdict, deciding there was no false arrest. But they still awarded punitive damages, prompting Bryant to accept a $75,000 out-of-court settlement.

Seth Harris, Bryant's lawyer, said the jury's decision could affect future litigation because, "other lawyers can now argue convincingly that the issue of quotas has been decided."

The city's lawyer, Zev Singer, refuted the claim that New York police utilize quotas.

"We are gratified that the jury found this was a lawful arrest," Singer said. "However, the New York City Police Department does not use quotas."

Bryant claimed she was injured when she confronted police who were arresting her son for drugs.

"I'm very happy justice was served," Bryant said.

Last year, secret recordings reveled that officers in Brooklyn's 81st precinct were being influenced by a quota system. In September This American Life profiled Adrian Schoolcraft, the officer who exposed the practice of false reporting and downgrading serious arrests to keep crime stats low.

Link

NYPD officers say they had stop-and-frisk quotas
By Marina Carver, CNN
March 26, 2013 -- Updated 1615 GMT (0015 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

New York (CNN) -- The first week of a lawsuit seeking to reform New York's stop-and-frisk policy featured emotional accounts from men who say police stopped them for no reason and NYPD officers who say mandated quotas forced them to make unnecessary stops.

The federal class-action lawsuit, Floyd v. City of New York, claims police routinely stop minority men without a legal reason. It was filed in 2008.

Officer Adhyl Polanco, an eight-year veteran of the NYPD who works in the Bronx, testified Tuesday that he was told at a daily roll call that he had to log at least five stop-and-frisks, make one arrest and write 20 tickets each month, according to CNN affiliate NY1.

"They said, 'You do it or you are going to become a Pizza Hut deliveryman,'" Polanco said. "I started recording it because I could not believe what I was hearing."

NYPD report: Most of those 'stopped and frisked' are minorities

The practice in which police stop, question and frisk people they consider suspicious has been widely criticized, but the police department says it is used to deter crime. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the NYPD logged its 5 millionth stop-and-frisk under Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week.

Bronx Police Officer Pedro Serrano also taped discussions with supervisors during the daily roll call starting in 2010. Both officers said it was during these roll calls that their supervisors would urge them and their fellow officers to write more summonses, make stop-and-frisk stops and make arrests.

In the recordings, which were played in court by the plaintiffs' lawyers, supervising officers can be heard saying they want "more 250s," referring to the form that officers fill out when they conduct a stop, question and frisk.

"If you don't want to be on a foot post, get a collar (an arrest)," supervisors also said in a recording played on Thursday.

Lawyers for the city dismissed the talk of quotas. During cross-examination they pointed to the fact that police supervisors suggested Polanco and other officers might be slacking off on the job.

In a recording Serrano made in February 2013, an inspector can be heard talking about stop-and-frisks, saying that officers need to stop "the right people at the right time in the right location."

Later in the recording, Serrano and his superior have a conversation about Mott Haven, a notoriously high-crime area in the south Bronx that the inspector says has had many problems with robberies and grand larcenies. He continues to say, "The problem was what? Male blacks. And I told you that at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this: male blacks 14 to 20."

City attorneys say that officers operate within the law, going where the crime is, and that crime happens to be higher in minority neighborhoods.

Department Deputy Chief Michael Marino testified Friday that when he was overseeing the 75th precinct in Brooklyn, he had to set a goal of 10 summonses and one arrest per month because the officers were performing poorly.

"Department managers can and must set performance goals," Marino said.

While performance goals are legal, under a state law that was revised in 2010, quotas are not.

Serrano, a nine-year police veteran, got choked up when asked why he came forward with the allegations of stop-and-frisk quotas in the NYPD.

"As a Hispanic walking in the Bronx, I've been stopped many times, and it's not a good feeling," he said. "As an officer, I said I would respect everyone to the best of my abilities. I just want to do the right thing."

Serrano said he faced retaliation from his superiors for refusing to meet the quotas.

"I would have a day off and they'd give me forced (overtime)," he said to the court. "I would get yelled at, get low evaluations, they would deny days off."

And after he complained about this alleged treatment to internal affairs, he said fellow officers plastered his locker with stickers of rats.

Earlier in the week, teen witness Devin Almonor testified that when he was 13 he was illegally stopped, questioned and frisked, according to NY1.

"I want to be a voice to fight against the injustices of some of the NYPD," Almonor said.

Nicholas Peart, 24, testified that he has been stopped multiple times, once in 2011 while walking to the store to get some milk. He said he feared for the safety of his siblings after the officers took his keys and went into his apartment building.

According to plaintiffs' attorneys, the lawsuit is not about putting an end to stop-and-frisk, but examines how the police department conducts those stops and whether it stops blacks and Hispanics in violation of the Constitution.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit civil rights law practice, is arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs. The lawsuit seeks to reform stop-and-frisk under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor.

The lead plaintiff in the case is David Floyd, a medical student who was stopped twice, once in the middle of the afternoon when he was in front of his home in the Bronx, according to the suit.

"We need somebody to look over the shoulder of the police department, not in an overly aggressive way, but in a limited way to make sure that this practice is being done in a constitutional fashion," said plaintiff attorney Jonathan Moore.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said this week that council members have reached a "broad agreement" on a bill to have an office within the city's Department of Investigation that would be allowed to subpoena police officials and documents.

The trial is expected to last four to six weeks and is scheduled to reconvene on Wednesday. The outcome will be decided by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin.

Link

Former Detective: NYPD Planted Drugs on People to Meet Drug Arrest Quotas
According to a former officer who testified at trial yesterday, New York City police regularly planted drugs on innocent people to meet quotas.

The NYPD has been under fire in recent months for illegal searches resulting in thousands of low-level marijuana arrests, mostly of people of color. As corrupt as this practice is, testimony from Stephen Anderson, a former NYPD narcotics detective, shows it's just the tip of the iceberg.

According to Anderson, who testified at trial Wednesday, New York City police regularly planted drugs on innocent people to meet quotas. Anderson should know. He was arrested in 2008 for planting cocaine on four men in a bar in Queens. His statements are the first glimpse into a culture of set-ups at the Brooklyn South and Queens Narc squads where eight corrupt cops were arrested.

Anderson says his own stunt was a tactic to help officer Henry Tavarez meet his buy-and-bust quota. But the incident was not limited to a handful of men. According to Anderson, “It was something I was seeing a lot of, whether it was from supervisors or undercovers and even investigators.”

Anderson's case suggests the set-ups are a response to the pressure bosses force on police to make drug arrests.

"Tavarez was ... was worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case," Anderson said at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

Having just made two legitimate arrests himself, "I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy," Anderson testified.

"As a detective, you still have a number to reach while you are in the narcotics division," Anderson added.

Clearly, the NYPD was requiring officers to fill quotas. The problem, it seems, was not lazy officers, but a lack of the guilty. The undue attention officers place on drug arrests is cause for alarm. This is not the first allegation of widespread corruption at the NYPD. Disturbing data uncovered by the Drug Policy Alliance and Queens College sociology professor Dr. Harry Levine shows many incidences of abuse of police authority. In fact, the evidence was so strong and stunk of such wrongdoing that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly actually issued an internal memo last month, ordering officers to stop charging people based on improper searches.

Possession of small amounts of marijuana is decriminalized in New York. But to slap youths with a criminal charge that can take away their opportunity to obtain student loans and public housing, officers conduct "stop-and-frisks" by which they demand people to empty their pockets. They are then arrested for marijuana "in public view" which, like public smoking of the plant, is not decriminalized. Of course, the marijuana was not in public view until the cops themselves put it there.

Since 2002, there were 35,000 low-level marijuana arrests in New York City, adding up to 15% of all arrests in the city. Shockingly, 86% of those arrested are people of color. And they are mostly youths from poor neighborhoods. That's a lot of lost futures. But how many others have corrupt cops destroyed?

The stop-and-frisk marijuana arrests and evidence of drug-related setups give the NYPD two counts of falsification. But what about the rest of the country? How many behind bars are victims of the drug war?

The rhetoric surrounding the war on drugs promises that drug arrests keep the population safer. But planting substances on innocent victims and subjecting them to years locked inside of a cage where violence, illness, and despair are rampant does not increase safety, nor does it maintain sound community relations. What's more, when drug arrests may nay not even be legitimate, the "fairness" ideal used as an excuse for denying drug arrestees access to public benefits becomes completely void.

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Police Made More Arrests For Drug Violations Than Anything Else In 2012

By Nicole Flatow September 17, 2013 at 2:41 pm Updated: September 17, 2013 at 5:03 pm
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"Police Made More Arrests For Drug Violations Than Anything Else In 2012"

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arrests (3x2)Drug offenses remained the single most common cause of arrest in 2012, mostly for offenses involving mere possession, according to newly released FBI estimates. Of the 12.2 million estimated arrests 1.55 million were for “drug abuse violations.” Some 82 percent of those were for possession offenses, and 42.4 percent for marijuana possession. That is the equivalent of a drug arrest every 20 seconds, and a marijuana arrest every 42 seconds, according to calculations by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of law enforcement officials who support the regulated legalization of drugs.

“These numbers represent a tremendous loss of human potential,” said LEAP Executive Director Neill Franklin, who was a police officer for 34 years. Each one of those arrests is the story of someone who may suffer a variety of adverse effects from their interaction with the justice system.” Among those effects are ineligibility for federal student loans, which applies only to convictions for drug offenses, or involuntary civil commitment for a sexual offense.

“Commit a murder or a robbery and the government will still give you a student loan,” Franklin said. “Get convicted for smoking a joint and you’re likely to lose it. This is supposed to help people get over their drug habit?”

Emphasis on drug abuse arrests also detracts from resources for solving other violent crimes. Over the past half century, the rate of unsolved homicides has skyrocketed. And a recent study by the Drug Policy Alliance found that the New York Police Department spent 1 million hours over the last decade just on marijuana arrests. An FBI chart accompanying last year’s annual crime statistics tracks the increase in marijuana arrests, as violent crime arrests decreased:



Murders and other complex crimes are difficult to solve. But when law enforcement officers face arrest quotas, or are feeling pressure to demonstrate the fruits of their efforts, drug possession arrests provide an easy route to success. In New York, for example, the aggressive NYPD stop-and-frisk program has been touted as a way to net illegal guns. But among the small fraction of stopped New Yorkers who are arrested for anything at all, marijuana is the number one offense. This is so even though marijuana possession is decriminalized in New York, except when it is in public view. New York police officers reportedly ask subjects to take marijuana out of their pockets in the course of a frisk, and then arrest them for marijuana in public view.

Police also stand to profit from seizing money and assets they believe are associated with drug crimes. And once arrested, drug defendants face stiff mandatory minimum sentences, unless they take a plea deal, or barter with law enforcement by serving as a snitch or ensnaring other drug defendants. As a consequence, drug offenders fill our jails at enormous taxpayer expense.

While arrests for all drug offenses went up since 2011, marijuana arrests have gone down slightly, likely because of a barrage of state reforms. But these arrest still fall disproportionately on minorities. A recent American Civil Liberties Union report found that blacks were four times as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana, despite similar rates of marijuana use.

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Overcriminalization Begets Stop & Frisk-Gate: New York’s Police Union Worked With the NYPD To Illegally Set Arrest And Summons Quotas
In Uncategorized on March 20, 2013 at 1:03 pm

https://electedface.com/images/Artical_ ... pgOldspeak: “Behold! The fruits of Prison Industrial Complex Overcriminalization! Specific targeting of communities of color for “Law Enforcement”, like suspicion-less stop and frisks, bogus arrests and baseless summonses to meet “performance goals”. All while the police union denies it’s even happening. At a time when crime in NYC is at record lows, police are still being pressured to make more arrests and issue more summonses, mostly to people who’ve done nothing wrong. Not meeting “activity goals” = bad cop. This opens them up to various forms of retaliation and punishment. Why? The Prison Industrial Complex needs fuel to keep stay in business, grow larger and larger with profits. That fuel must be extracted at all costs. Poor people of color are its fuel. It is why more black men are in prison now, than were slaves in 1865. It’s why black and brown people are overrepresented in the U.S. prison system. It’s why brown people are being stopped, seized, detained and deported at historic rates. It is why America accounts for 5% of world population, but close to 25% of the worlds prison population and imprisons more people than any nation on earth. Law enforcement and mass incarceration is big business in America. And rank and file officers sadly are stuck in the middle. Being encouraged by superiors to make bogus stops, arrests and summons at the end of their shifts to collect overtime, thus engaging in fraud to meet “activity goals” and make more money. Being forced to act unlawfully and untruthfully to keep ‘the numbers game’ going. You can bet that this practice is not particular to New York. This revelation should provide powerful grounds for stopping NYPD’s racist and illegal Stop and Frisk policy.”

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AUDIO: New York’s Police Union Worked With the NYPD to Set Arrest and Summons Quotas.
Stopped and frisked for being a mutt



The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy

By Ross Tuttle @ The Nation:

Audio obtained by The Nation confirms an instance of New York City’s police union cooperating with the NYPD in setting arrest quotas for the department’s officers. According to some officers and critics of quotas, the practice has played a direct role in increasing the number of stop-and-frisk encounters since Mayor Michael Bloomberg came to office. Patrolmen who spoke to The Nation explained that the pressure from superiors to meet quota goals has caused some officers to seek out or even manufacture arrests to avoid department retaliation.

The audio could be included as evidence in the landmark federal class action lawsuit Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., which opened yesterday in US District Court for New York’s Southern District and which was brought forward by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The audio, recorded in 2009 by officer Adhyl Polanco, is part of a series of recordings originally released to the media that year, and a selection first aired on WABC-TV in 2010. But WABC-TV used only a small portion of the recordings, and did not air the union representative’s explosive admission.

“I spoke to the CO [commanding officer] for about an hour-and-a-half,” the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association delegate says in the audio recording, captured at a Bronx precinct roll call meeting. “twenty-and-one. Twenty-and-one is what the union is backing up…. They spoke to the [Union] trustees. And that’s what they want, they want 20-and-1.”

“Twenty-and-one means twenty summonses and one arrest a month,” says a veteran NYPD officer who listened to the recording, and who spoke to The Nation on the condition of anonymity. Summonses can range from parking violations, to moving violations, to criminal court summonses for infractions such as open container or public urination.

“It’s a quota, and they [the Union] agreed to it,” says the officer. “It’s crazy.”

“Many officers feel pressure to meet their numbers to get the rewards that their commanding officer is giving out,” says John Eterno, a former police captain and co-author of The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation. But if an officer’s union delegate is also pushing the numbers, “this puts inordinate pressure on officers, getting it from the top down and getting it from the union.”

The plaintiffs in the Floyd case allege that the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy results in unconstitutional stops based on racial-profiling. The department’s emphasis on bringing in arrest and summons numbers has caused officers to carry out suspicion-less stops in communities of color.

As Polanco explained in court today, his superiors would often push him to carry out this specific number of summons and arrest stops per month: “20-and-1, they were very clear, it’s non-negotiable, you’re gonna do it, or you’re gonna become a Pizza Hut delivery man.”

“There’s always been some pressure to get arrests and summonses,” says Eterno. “But now it’s become the overwhelming management style of the department. It has become a numbers game. They have lost the ability to see that communities are dissatisfied with this type of policing, especially minority communities. They are the ones being overly burdened for doing the same sorts of things that kids in middle-class neighborhoods are doing—only they’re getting records because officers have to make these arrests.”

When asked for comment, Al O’Leary, a spokesperson for the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, said: “The PBA has been consistently and firmly opposed to quotas for police activities including arrests, summonses and stop-and-frisks. These are all effective tools for maintaining order when they are left to the discretion of individual police officers but become problematic when officers are forced to meet quotas. This union has sought and obtained changes to state law making quotas for all police activities illegal. We have sued and forced an individual commanding officer to stop the use of illegal quotas and will continue to be vigilant and vocal in our opposition to police activity quotas.”

* * *

Physical evidence has periodically surfaced of the existence of numerical arrest targets for NYPD officers, though arrest and summons quotas for police have been illegal in New York State since 2010. Precinct commanders defend their right to set productivity goals for their staff—but what the department defines as productivity goals can have the force of quotas when officers are subject to retaliation for not meeting them.

Cops who have spoken to The Nation say that retaliation can take many forms, including denied overtime; change of squads and days off that can disrupt family obligations like taking children to school or daycare; transfers to boroughs far from home in order to increase their commute and the amount they’ll have to pay in tolls; and low evaluation scores.

Officers even reported being forced to carry out unwarranted stops to fulfill the summons and arrest numbers. In a second recording obtained by The Nation, a captain addressing a roll call in the same Bronx precinct illustrated how such retaliation plays out.

“When the chief came in…[he] said: ‘you know what, you really can’t reduce crime much more, the guys are doing a great job,’” the captain can be heard saying in the rough audio. “[He] said that we can…get some of our people who aren’t chipping in to go to some locations [where we are] having problems, and give them [the area’s residents] the business…”

The recording continues: “That’s all we’re asking you to do, that’s all, that’s all. And if we do that, everyone chips in, it’s fine. It’s really nonnegotiable. ’Cause if you don’t do it now, I’m gonna have you work with the boss to make sure it happens.”

“If you don’t meet the quota, they will find [activity] for you,” another veteran officer explained to The Nation. “The sergeant will put you in his car and drive you around until whatever he sees he will stop and tell you to make an arrest or write a summons, even if you didn’t observe what he said it was.”

Sometimes these are legitimate stops, but other times, they’re bogus: “The sergeant told me to write two minorities for blocking pedestrian traffic,” the anonymous officer said, “but they were not blocking pedestrian traffic.”

The pressure for numbers, say cops, is unrelenting, and it’s leading to high anxiety and low morale. And that the union, an organization that is supposed to have officers’ interests at heart, is involved in the setting of quotas is mystifying, says one cop.

It’s all the more problematic given the union’s very vocal and public stance against quotas, such as in their ad campaign, “Don’t Blame The Cop,” which tries to engender sympathy for the officers who are pressured to write tickets and arrest motorists. “Blame NYPD management,” it says.

This development also signals to officers that there is one fewer place they can go to register their concern about departmental policy and practice. “I feel foolish for having gone to my [union] delegate with my complaints,” says one officer who has been unsettled by the continued pressure to meet quotas.

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Adhyl Polanco, the officer who recorded the audio and first brought it to the attention of the press, has since had charges brought against him by the department for writing false reports—the same false reports he pointed out to the department’s Internal Affairs office as evidence of the quota system. Polanco maintains these and other charges against him and other officers who have spoken out are evidence that the department is retaliating against him and others for blowing the whistle.

The NYPD has just surpassed 5 million stop-and-frisks during the Bloomberg era. Most stops have been of people of color, and the overwhelming majority were found innocent of any wrongdoing, according to the department’s own statistics. And though the number of stops may have gone down recently—as pressure on the department and increased awareness of the policy has officers and supervisors thinking twice about how they employ the practice—the existence of quotas ensures that New Yorkers will continue to be harassed unnecessarily by the NYPD.

“The way I think about it,” says a patrolman, “is, say a fireman is told by a supervisor, we need you to put out fifteen fires this month. And if you don’t put out fifteen fires you’re gonna get penalized for it. So if he doesn’t find fifteen fires to put out, is that his fault? It’s not. But the fireman might even go out there and start setting fires, causing fires, just so he’s not penalized or looks bad…. And that’s kind of what the police officers are doing.”

What are the plaintiffs in the Floyd v. City of New York case fighting against? Watch the exclusive video of a stop-and-frisk encounter gone wrong.

Editor’s note: This piece has been edited since publication to reflect the response of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. Voices in the above video have been altered to protect the identities of the officers interviewed.

http://theoldspeakjournal.wordpress.com/tag/arrest-quotas/

Shocking police overreach haunts Durham: Racial profiling, quotas and secret “conviction bonuses”

How a federal grant incentivized a police department to go nuts on drug arrests — and terrorize its community

From Salon

In the late afternoon of Jan. 3, Robin Dean, a 50-year-old county employee, pulled into a Durham, N.C., Burger King parking lot to give a friend a package of frozen chitlins that she had cooked over the holidays. After the transfer was complete, the pair said goodbye and parted ways. Both were subsequently pulled over by Durham Police.

Dean says an officer told her that there was evidence that she had just engaged in an illegal drug transaction, searched her car without her consent, and called for backup. When Dean worried aloud that she had been racially profiled, she says the white officer called her an “idiot,” although the nearly hour-long stop revealed nothing illegal apart from a window-tinting violation that was later dismissed.

In recent years, stories like this have come to epitomize heightened concerns that, as Durham becomes a regional center for sophisticated culture and cuisine, the drug enforcement strategies of its police increasingly assign second-class status to the city’s minority communities. Over the past several months, protesters alleging police misconduct have pummeled the city’s police headquarters with rocks and met tear gas along the usually amiable streets of this city of 240,000.

In seeking to understand the roots of the city’s divisive policing, lawyers at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice were astonished by what a recent round of public records requests produced. Not only was a federal grant subsidizing what they regarded as the most perniciously targeted drug enforcement operations of the department, but the grant — with a key “performance measure” emphasizing police report their sheer volume of arrests — also appeared to be incentivizing the department to raise its overall number of drug arrests, which overwhelmingly affect the city’s black community. SCSJ attorneys add that recently revealed evidence also indicates that the federally funded program included an illegal system of secret payments law enforcement made to witnesses who delivered successful drug prosecutions — another sign, they say, that the city’s policing has flown off the rails.

In a national context, such a discovery is not new. Groups like the ACLU have argued for over a decade that the performance measures of America’s largest federal policing grant, known as Byrne JAG, fuels racially biased, quota-driven policing in thousands of jurisdictions across the country. In this view, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Justice Department doles out annually under JAG acts as a quiet bureaucratic buttress for policing policies like New York’s “stop-and-frisk” that have become intolerable to the communities they target and that have risen to the center of a heated national debate.

“We know that, intentionally or not, the JAG funding sets a tone, highlights priorities and guides the culture of policing in ways that impact what happens on the ground all around the country,” says Vanita Gupta, deputy legal director of the ACLU. Most pressingly, says Gupta, is JAG’s emphasis on police departments reporting their volume of drug arrests as “performance measure” of the grant. As the ACLU documented in a report last year, although there is little racial difference in the national rate of marijuana use, black people are nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested for using pot — a major contributor to the disproportionately high numbers of African-Americans imprisoned within the United States’ exceptionally large prison population.

Gupta has ample experience with the destructive effects JAG-funded drug programs can exact on communities of color. In the early 2000s, Gupta worked on a case in Tulia, Texas, where a Byrne JAG-funded program enabled an undercover officer to fabricate testimony in a series of racially targeted drug stings that led to the arrest and imprisonment of roughly 20 percent of the town’s adult black population.

In the years following Tulia, Byrne JAG fell out of favor in Washington’s budgeting. But in the frenzied days following the financial crash, Byrne JAG made a comeback with an extra $2 billion infusion of stimulus money. In addition to this one-time infusion, Byrne JAG now continues to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to thousands of police departments a year.

In Durham, civil rights attorneys say the city’s big award of stimulus-era Byrne JAG money has corresponded to a major rise in the city’s taste for targeting minorities for low-level drug offenses. The police department recently confirmed that, although whites account for a slightly larger share of the city’s population, blacks compose the “vast majority” of its dramatically ramped-up marijuana arrests. In the years since the large JAG award in 2009, the city saw steady increases in the share of black or Latino motorists subject to vehicle searches in which the police have no probable cause for action.

“The information we get — has it brought us to neighborhoods that are predominately of color? Yeah, I think so,” says Durham police chief Jose Lopez. “But it’s not happening with the intent of just going into these neighborhoods.” Lopez points to the fact that he is himself Hispanic and says that violence in the city’s black neighborhoods needs to be met with vigorous policing. Lopez insists that, when police departments bend to accusations of racial profiling, they can become too reluctant to bring an appropriate level of law enforcement to some neighborhoods of color, which he says can become more violent as a result. Lopez says that he is committed to preventing that from happening in Durham, where he says the overwhelming majority of the city’s homicides last year involved African-Americans.

Lopez rejects any notion the Byrne JAG money has led to an excessive emphasis on low-level drug arrests.

The secret “conviction bonuses” doled out by the city’s JAG-funded confidential informants program, attorneys say, are problematic for two reasons. First, having knowledge of such payment arrangements is essential for attorneys responsible for assessing and testing the validity of witness testimony, and federal law prohibits law enforcement from failing to disclose them, according to Ian Mance, an SCSJ attorney and Soros Justice Fellow who has worked extensively on racial profiling in Durham. Additionally, Mance says, informant bonuses should never be made contingent on witnesses giving police their desired outcome of conviction. The Durham police department has said that its use of the phrase “conviction bonuses” was a mistake, and that it has never actually tied informant payments to the outcome of cases.

According to local news reports, the conviction bonus scandal could lead to the reopening of dozens of cases in Durham. This could be difficult, though, given that some of those whose convictions are now being called into question have already been deported.

Byrne JAG-funded programs have seen mass relitigation in the past. Dozens of people in Tulia, encompassing almost all of those caught up in the JAG-funded drug stings, were eventually released from behind bars.

Given its large scale, Byrne JAG represents a potentially rare opportunity to briskly fix a major institutional driver of the interlocked problems of racially uneven policing and mass incarceration, according to Inimai Chettiar, director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. “You don’t need legislation to do this,” says Chettiar. “The JAG performance metrics could be changed tomorrow. The Department of Justice could do this whenever it wanted at its own discretion.”

The ACLU’s Gupta, who has recently participated in high-level discussions with the divisions within Department of Justice most closely tied to the administration of Byrne JAG, says that the department appears more open than ever to reforming the program. In addition to urging the department to stop indicating that police departments’ performance will be judged based on sheer numbers of arrests made, the ACLU is recommending that the Justice Department require localities to report racial statistics of arrests and to make clear to recipients of the federal money that the elimination of unnecessary incarceration is a federal priority.

“Given the Obama administration’s and attorney general’s commitment to executive action to reduce the federal prison population and end destructive and unnecessary drug enforcement policies, it would only make sense for them to take a close look at the effect Byrne JAG is having on the local level,” says the ACLU’s Gupta. “It would be a huge win for justice.”

Link

Private Prison Sues State for Not Having Enough Prisoners

by ericfein
in Philosophy · Politics
— 12 Dec, 2013

These boys are watched by a corporation, not our government. http://www.nytimes.com

A private prison in Arizona recently sued the state for having a lack of prisoners. For the sake of saving over $16 million in back pay, the state settled by paying the private prison $3 million. Arizona essentially payed a company $3 million because not enough people are committing crimes.

To be fair, it’s a bit more complex than that. In July, 2010 three violent inmates escaped from an Arizona private prison, which prompted officials to stop sending new inmates to the facility. I say good job to the officials for demanding better performance from Management & Training Corp., the company that runs the prison. Unfortunately, a line in the company’s contract with the state guarantees that the prison is at least 97% full at all times. They sued on grounds that the breach of contract caused a dramatic loss in revenue.
private prison


Surprisingly, this type of contractual agreement is the norm. A review from In the Public Interest revealed that out of 60 analyzed contracts between state/local governments and private prisons, 65% contained language mentioning prisoner quotas. This means that state officials have absolutely guaranteed private prisons a profit. And who finances that guarantee? The taxpayers, of course!

The prison bed guarantees range between minimums of 70 percent occupancy in a California prison to 100 percent occupancy requirements at some Arizona prisons. Most of the contracts had language mandating that at least 90 percent of prison beds be filled.

Did you catch that? Some private prisons are guaranteed 100% occupancy, and if they don’t get 100% of the beds filled they still receive a grand payday via our collective paychecks.

In an interview in 2010, former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard pointed out a crucial issue regarding private prisons, saying

I believe a big part of our problem is that the very violent inmates, like the three that escaped, ended up getting reclassified [as a lower risk] quickly and sent to private prisons that were just not up to the job.

A bit skewed, no? http://www.businessinsider.com

This is incredibly irresponsible and dangerous behavior, especially since many private prisons are under-equipped and poorly run. They contain

inadequate patrols and prisoner movement, excessive false alarms, a lax culture, and inconsistencies in visitor screening procedures.

According to Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer and criminal justice expert at the University of Texas School of Public Affairs,

It’s really shortsighted public policy to do anything that ties the hands of the state. If there are these incentives to keep the private prisons full, then it is reducing the likelihood that states will adopt strategies to reduce prison costs by keeping more people out. When the beds are there, you don’t want to leave them empty.

In summation, we are putting unnecessary contractual agreements with a private corporation above the safety and well being of citizens. A 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out that

private prisons are more costly, more violent and less accountable than public prisons, and are actually a major contributor to increased mass incarceration.

This is most apparent in Louisiana, which is the prison capitol of the world and houses a large amount of its prisoners in private prisons. So, why do we have private prisons anyway?
Why Do We Use Private Prisons?
private prison crowded

Prison is so much fun! Just like a sleepover. http://www.latimes.com/

The initial use of private prisons is directly linked to the utter failure that is the War on Drugs. In 1970 Nixon began, and all subsequent presidents continued, to became intensely serious about the war on drugs and started punishing non-violent, hard working Americans for ingesting substances responsibly and safely. From 1960 to 1980 the number of total arrests nationwide rose by 28% while the number of drug related offenses rose by more than 127%, with the number continuing to rise exponentially.

(Nearly 40% of all federal and state inmates are non-violent drug offenders. Moreover, more than half of all drug-related arrests are entirely cannabis related.)

These dramatic rises in arrests left state and local governments scrambling. Hiring a private company to handle the hard work was the obvious answer.

With a burgeoning prison population resulting from the “war on drugs” and increased use of incarceration, prison overcrowding and rising costs became increasingly problematic for local, state, and federal governments. In response to this expanding criminal justice system, private business interests saw an opportunity for expansion, and consequently, private-sector involvement in prisons moved from the simple contracting of services to contracting for the complete management and operation of entire prisons.

The first time a private company was given the job of warden was in 1984, in Hamilton County, Tennessee.
private prison board member

Makes sense… predatorhaven.blogspot.com

It is clear that the mere presence of private prisons has severely hampered any type of progress in reducing the amount of people behind bars. This should be a top priority for the country, since the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world, with more than 1% of the entire population currently behind bars, and an additional 2% of the population on supervision, probation, or parole. That accounts for about 3% of the US population under correctional supervision.

By a large margin, the US has the largest percentage of prisoners based on population in the world. The International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College in London lists some startling statistics:

More than 9.8 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, mostly as pre-trial detainees (remand prisoners) or as sentenced prisoners. Almost half of these are in the United States (2.29m), Russia (0.89m) or China (1.57m sentenced prisoners).

This level of imprisonment is a staggering waste of financial resources.

Taxpayers spent about $68.7 billion in 2008 to feed, clothe, and provide medical care to prisoners in county jails, state and federal prisons and facilities housing legal and illegal aliens facing possible deportation. From 1982 to 2002, state and federal spending on corrections, not adjusted for inflation, rose by 423%, from $40 to $209 per U.S. resident. Corrections spending, as a share of state budgets, rose faster than health care, education, and natural resources spending from 1986 to 2001. The average cost of housing a prisoner for a year was about $24,000 in 2005, though rates vary from state to state.

That gives us some information on the prison system as a whole, but surely private prisons are saving us money. Not at all. In fact, private prisons and jails are a total loss of revenue.

… the benefit to counties where private prisons are built and operated can be quite scant — some receive less than $2 per prisoner per day from the private prison operator…the federal government agreed to pay CCA [one of the largest private prison firms] almost $90 per day for each detained immigrant at a San Diego facility.

Today, private companies imprison roughly 130,000 prisoners and, according to one group, 16,000 civil immigration detainees in the United States at any given time. As states send more and more people to prison, they funnel ever greater amounts of taxpayer money to private prison operators. By 2010, annual revenues of the two top private prison companies alone stood at nearly $3 billion.

Private prisons are a total loss of revenue, profit from crime while encouraging higher incarceration rates, have no incentive to rehabilitate or reform prisoners, and have no responsibility to the well being of the American people. Maybe it’s time to re-think the privatization of prisons and America’s prison-industrial complex as a whole.
private prison number

Yes, you are just a number, a number that begins with ‘$’. http://www.usprisonculture.com



Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 53483.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/3 ... 66311.html

http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/site ... Report.pdf

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/0 ... s-coffers/

http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/17/news/ec ... t.fortune/

http://reason.org/files/corrections_ann ... t_2010.pdf

https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/banki ... 111102.pdf

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/201 ... rison.html

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/sites/defa ... breaks.pdf

http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/pu ... zation.pdf

http://wondergressive.com/news/the-hist ... nabis-use/

http://wondergressive.com/news/war-on-d ... -unabated/

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2767

Link

[chaanakya]

NYPD :- All For you, the Citizen in Need

Has some funny pictures and captions and underlines the citizen friendliness of NYPD.

[pankajs]

Hindustan Times ‏@htTweets 51m

Not #myNYPD afterall: @NYPDnews Twitter campaign backfires badly http://read.ht/dzK

Check out #myNYPD on teetar and you will realize how a first world police force work with the local community.

[pankajs]

Top Catholic official: It’s OK to deny women healthcare because “all you have to do is walk into a 7-11″ to buy birth control

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/21/top_cat ... h_control/