Re: US strike options on TSP

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 31 Dec 2013 08:33

I know of two truck stop dhaba style Punjabi restaurants. One on I-5 near Kettering en-route to Bakersfield and another near Dixon on I-80 en-route to Davis.

my point was the shortage of 200K truck drivers and how desis can fill the gap. In Northern Ca many truck companies are now Indian Punjabi owned.

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 31 Dec 2013 09:09

in 2012 summer, I had dinner at Dhillon's Punjabi Dhaba. their paranthas with butter and achar are to kill for. reminded me of my days in Delhi. I once had nice warm paranthas in Mussourie (trip from Delhi) at 5:30 AM in November. unforgettable. the hot butter on your tongue in that cold weather at that time of the morning is heaven on earth.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 31 Dec 2013 09:18

Ramana, during my last few trips back home the younger drivers on hire did inquire about driving trucks in the US. So the news has spread far and wide there, but may still be dominated by word of mouth recruiting.

g.sarkar · Post by **g.sarkar** » 31 Dec 2013 10:42

ramana wrote:I know of two truck stop dhaba style Punjabi restaurants. One on I-5 near Kettering en-route to Bakersfield and another near Dixon on I-80 en-route to Davis.

Can you give me the address of those two places, so that I can go there?
Gautam
gautam2454 at hotmail dat kam

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 01 Jan 2014 10:25

This is gross
http://benswann.com/warrantless-vaginal ... as-police/

Warrantless Vaginal Searches Conducted By Texas Police

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 01 Jan 2014 18:50

You Won’t See This on TV

A former public defender on the broken gears of American criminal justice.

darshhan · Post by **darshhan** » 01 Jan 2014 21:04

Jarita wrote:This is gross
http://benswann.com/warrantless-vaginal ... as-police/

Warrantless Vaginal Searches Conducted By Texas Police

Wait till you see the following and then you will know the meaning of gross
Cops Subject Man To Rectal Searches, Enemas And A Colonoscopy In Futile Effort To Find Drugs They Swear He Was Hiding

David Eckert, a resident of Deming, NM, was pulled over by police officers after failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. For whatever reason, the officers decided Eckert was hiding something, or perhaps they were unsatisfied that a routine stop hadn't blown up into something bigger.

They asked him to step out of the car and then searched his vehicle (without his consent). Another officer brought in a drug dog which reacted (a relatively worthless indication of anything -- drug dogs can easily be "alerted" by their controlling officers) to the driver's seat. (Eckert's lawyer calls into question this dog's training, presenting documents that claim to show it hadn't received the proper field training and recertification. See exhibits listed under docket item 27.) Then the officer "observed" that Eckert was standing "erect with his legs together" and his "buttocks clenched." This was all the justification the Deming police needed to subject Eckert to the following horrific chain of events at a hospital in neighboring Silver City.

1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers ; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers ; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time . Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.

At no time did Eckert give his consent to these searches. The police did obtain a warrant to rectally search Eckert but that warrant itself was problematic. For one, it was severely lacking in probable cause. For another, it was valid only for Luna County but the searches were executed in Grant County. Third, the warrant was only valid for four hours, up until 10 pm that night. Eckert was held for 14 hours and, according to medical records, prep for the colonoscopy didn't even commence until 1 am the following day.

Why the venue shift? Because the doctor at the Deming hospital told officers the proposed search was "unethical." Drs. Robert Wilcox and Okay Odocha of the Gila Regional Medical Center apparently had no qualms about forcibly "searching" Eckert eight times.

There's more in Eckert's complaint, including the fact that the second x-ray was of his chest, an area completely unrelated to the region where he was supposedly "concealing drugs." In addition to what can be proven from medical records and police reports obtained by Eckert's attorney, there are additional allegations that the officers Chavez and Hernandez mocked him and made derogatory comments about his "compromised position." They also allegedly moved the privacy screen repeatedly to expose him to others in the hospital hallway. This verbal abuse apparently continued during Eckert's ride back to the Deming police station. Understandably, Eckert now claims to be "terrified to leave the house" and does so "infrequently."

There are many lawsuits filed where most details are alleged. This isn't one of them. Most of what's "alleged" by Eckert is documented by the routine paperwork that accompanies medical procedures and search warrants. And, to add insult to injury, KOB4's news team states that the Gila Regional Medical Center is billing Eckert for the invasive, non-consensual medical procedures and has threatened to take him to collections for non-payment.

The only question that remains is why no one involved on the "law" side ever thought that anything past the first step on the list above might be excessive. These officers, along with two shamefully compliant doctors, went as far as they could to humiliate and violate someone simply because they could -- in a collective effort that looks far more like making Eckert pay for the "crime" of making the cops look stupid than any sort of legitimate law enforcement effort.

Welcome to USSA. The land of the craven and home of the slave

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 02 Jan 2014 00:10

ramana wrote:I know of two truck stop dhaba style Punjabi restaurants. One on I-5 near Kettering en-route to Bakersfield and another near Dixon on I-80 en-route to Davis.my point was the shortage of 200K truck drivers and how desis can fill the gap. In Northern Ca many truck companies are now Indian Punjabi owned.

There is a catch. Buying a truck is huge investment. Big Companies like Walmart etc dont hire people but sub contract with individual truck owners and the Wait period is couple of years. Its a dying business with income getting reduced by the year. This might be the reason many good folks are/have and will walk away from this line.

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 02 Jan 2014 09:26

Frightening. The police force in the US has sweeping powers and unlike India where the NGOs and the jhuggi gang can do tamasha in front of police station, I don't believe that is possible in the US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFy8sW9KgOg

A southern New Mexico county announced Tuesday that it reached a $15.5 million settlement to end the legal battle over the case of a man who was held in solitary confinement for two years without a trial and was so neglected that he took out his own tooth.

The settlement stems from mediation ordered by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Dona Ana County was appealing a lower court decision that upheld a $22 million judgment that was awarded last year to former county inmate Stephen R. Slevin."*

A man arrested for a DUI was locked away without a conviction for two years...in solitary confinement. He was severely neglected, and he was forced to take out his own tooth- by the end, he hardly looked like the same man. What kind of justice is this? And should the prison system be reformed?

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 02 Jan 2014 13:58

The American Jewish Cocoon

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 02 Jan 2014 19:15

I Embedded with a Community of Meth Users

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 03 Jan 2014 07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat ... story.html
NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption

In room-size metal boxes, secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled, “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park.The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields like medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission. With such technology, all current forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets.
Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated whether the NSA’s efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. Although the full extent of the agency’s research remains unknown, the documents provided by Snowden suggest that the NSA is no closer to success than others in the scientific community.“It seems improbable that the NSA could be that far ahead of the open world without anybody knowing it,” said Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.The NSA appears to regard itself as running neck and neck with quantum computing labs sponsored by the European Union and the Swiss government, with steady progress but little prospect of an immediate breakthrough. “The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland,” one NSA document states.Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical engineering at MIT, said the NSA’s focus is not misplaced. “The E.U. and Switzerland have made significant advances over the last decade and have caught up to the U.S. in quantum computing technology,” he said.

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 03 Jan 2014 11:43

abhishek_sharma wrote:The American Jewish Cocoon

looks like pressure is building on them too. CT's aside, Israel's future might not be as secure as believed. if the mood is shifting within the WASP circles, Israel will be quite pliable to blackmail and subversion.

johneeG · Post by **johneeG** » 03 Jan 2014 11:51

The power of jews(not all but those at the highest echelons) seems to be that they have control over banks and currency(particularly dollar). If and when this control over banks and currency weakens, they will weaken. It seems to me that jews do help each other and that is another reason for their staying power.

Their major disadvantage is their small numbers. They may be rich and powerful, but their small numbers always puts them in a disadvantage if people are enraged by their riches or power.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 04 Jan 2014 18:21

Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch From America's Most Desperate Town

gakakkad · Post by **gakakkad** » 04 Jan 2014 19:16

things often go way over board in texas..the colonoscopy incident is beyond preposterous ...

Gus · Post by **Gus** » 04 Jan 2014 20:35

in some communities, people are terrified of the cops. while nobody can argue against the need for robust response to violent crimes at an immediate tactical level, the system is rigged that certain people are setup for a life of crime and prison cycle and have no help to escape that. there is a severe dichotomy between people who see this side of law enforcement and justice system, and people who glorify cops.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 04 Jan 2014 22:30

Some of this things explains the foreign policy of uncle

How baby boomers screwed their kids — and created millennial impatience

Philip Larkin’s 1971 poem paints a bit of a dreary picture of parenting. But, sadly, there is some truth in it. The period of Destructive Abundance in which we are currently living is due in large part to the good intentions of our parents and their parents before them.

The Greatest Generation, raised during the Great Depression and wartime rationing, wanted to ensure that their children did not suffer or miss out on their youth as they did. This is good. This is what all parents want — for their children to avoid their hardships and prosper. And so that’s how the Boomers were raised — to believe that they shouldn’t have to go without. Which, as a philosophy, is perfectly fine and reasonable. But given the size of the generation and the abundance of resources that surrounded them, the philosophy got a little distorted. When you consider the rising wealth and affluence of their childhood, combined (for good reasons) with a cynicism toward government in the 1970s, followed by the boom years of the 1980s and 1990s, it’s easy to see how the Boomers earned their reputation as the Me Generation. Me before We.

Putting the protection of ideas and wealth before the sharing of them is now standard. A New Jersey-based accountant told me that he sees a clear difference between his older clients and his younger ones. “My older clients want to work within the confines of the tax code to do what is fair,” he explained. “They are willing to simply pay the tax they owe. The next generation spends lots of time looking to exploit every loophole and nuance in the tax code to reduce their responsibility to as little as possible.”

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When the Boomers started having children of their own, they raised their children to be skeptical of those in charge. “Don’t let people get things from you if they aren’t willing to compensate you for it,” goes the thinking. “Don’t let anything stand in the way of what you want.” Again, all reasonable philosophies if the circumstances today were the same as the 1960s and 1970s. But they aren’t. And so a few good ideas got a little twisted for the Boomers’ kids.

Generations X and Y were taught to believe they could get whatever they want. Gen X, growing up before the Internet, interpreted that lesson as putting your head down and getting to work. An overlooked and forgotten generation, Gen Xers didn’t really rebel against anything or stand for much in their youth. Sure there was the Cold War, but it was the nicer, gentler version of the Cold War that existed in the 1960s and 1970s. Gen Xers didn’t grow up practicing drills at school in case of nuclear attack. Growing up in the 1980s was a good life. The 1990s and the new millennium saw even more boom years. Dot-com. E-commerce. E-mail. E-dating. Free overnight shipping. No waiting. Get it now!

Generation Y is said to have a sense of entitlement. Many employers complain of the demands their entry-level employees often make. But I, as one observer, do not believe it is a sense of entitlement. This generation wants to work hard and is willing to work hard. What we perceive as entitlement is, in fact, impatience. An impatience driven by two things: First is a gross misunderstanding that things like success, money or happiness come instantly. Even though our messages and books arrive the same day we want them, our careers and fulfillment do not.

The second element is more unsettling. It is a result of a horrible short circuit to their internal reward systems. These Gen Yers have grown up in a world in which huge scale is normal, money is valued over service and technology is used to manage relationships. The economic systems in which they have grown up, ones that prioritize numbers over people, are blindly accepted, as if that’s the way it has always been. If steps are not taken to overcome or mitigate the quantity of abstractions in their lives, in time they may be the biggest losers of their parents’ excess. And while Gen Yers may be more affected by this short-circuiting because they grew up only in this world, the fact is that none of us are immune.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 06 Jan 2014 07:14

Losing Aaron

After his son was arrested for downloading files at MIT, Bob Swartz did everything in his power to save him. He couldn’t. Now he wants the institute to own up to its part in Aaron’s death.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 09 Jan 2014 20:42

X-Post...

Ashok Sarraff wrote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/0 ... 49612.html

Amy Chua In 'The Triple Package' Claims Jews and Mormons Produce More Successful People

It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others. Mormons have recently risen to astonishing business success. Cubans in Miami climbed from poverty to prosperity in a generation. Nigerians earn doctorates at stunningly high rates. Indian and Chinese Americans have much higher incomes than other Americans; Jews may have the highest of all.

The New York Post listed the groups worthy of praise:

•Jewish
•Indian
•Chinese
•Iranian
•Lebanese-Americans
•Nigerians
•Cuban exiles
•Mormons

She also identified three traits common to these groups:

- Superiority complex -they think they are the best
- Insecurity- they worry they will be displaced if they falter. Failure is not an option
- Impluse Control- they dont act on their thoughts and fritter away wealth

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 10 Jan 2014 18:37

The Innocent and The Damned

The case against Fran’s Day Care in Austin raised the specter of Satanic conspiracy—just like hundreds of similar controversial child abuse cases across the country.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 10 Jan 2014 20:24

Darshan,I am reliably told by my cat whose "pussy" pal is in tow with a crow whose cousin is down holidaying for the winter,that the bird talk in the capital about the Yanqui diplomutt being expelled, is that he is a habitual substance abuser and likes to hide his "stuff" up the "back alley"! The diplomutt whilke exiting the country should therefore be strip searched and all cavities minutely examined for the same.It would also be prudent to have a "sniffer dog" at hand to locate the offending substances ,if found,reward being a juicy "nibble" at the meat in question!

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 11 Jan 2014 15:39

Tales from the land of milk and honey, equality and justice, the guiding light of the free world and the upholder of human rights .. and yes of poverty, segregation, racial discrimination, slavery, injustice, inequality, etc.

Should Felons Lose the Right to Vote?- The Atlantic - Jan 7 2014

Intergenerational poverty is Richard's status quo, neither good nor bad. Growing up in the land of MLK, it's all he's ever known. The same goes for just about everyone else he encountered growing up in the hood. "That's how Montgomery people is," he says with a shrug, trading his pawn for position.

A generation after the Montgomery bus boycotts purged the city and state of legal segregation, Richard was still riding de facto segregated buses and attending de facto segregated schools right through to senior year—schools where the best imaginable outcome for a youth of his complexion (dreams of NFL greatness aside) was to land a steady job in the trades.
;;
"Our people," in this case, refers to the quarter-million Alabamans—and millions of other impoverished people across the United States—who have lost their citizenship status because of felony convictions. Most are nonviolent offenders and some will never set foot in prison or jail. Nevertheless, their ability to influence the laws under which they live is severely restricted from the moment they are found guilty of an offense, leaving them effectively powerless to change the socio-political conditions under which most of them live.

Although the Constitution is silent on whether people convicted of felonies should have their rights curtailed, most American states have chosen to restrict the franchise in modern times. Nearly 6 million people in 48 states—2.5 percent of the adult population—are currently ineligible to vote because of a prior conviction.

In the four most restrictive states—Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia—all citizens who are convicted of a felony permanently forfeit the right to vote, regardless of the offense. Ten states even disenfranchise citizens convicted of misdemeanors while they are serving time.
;;
There are 2.4 million Americans currently serving time behind bars in local, state, and federal institutions—one fourth of the total prison population worldwide and seven times more than in 1972.
;;
Felon disenfranchisement is not randomly distributed across the population. The large majority of past and present felons who have lost the right to vote were raised and continue to live in poverty.
;;
In racial terms, the disparities are greater still. African Americans constitute around 38 percent of disenfranchised people—five times the rate among non-blacks—because of significantly higher rates of searching, sentencing, and detention by the police. More than one in seven black men is officially disenfranchised nationwide, with rates climbing as high as one in three in certain states. Some scholars assign the racial disparity in felon disenfranchisement to higher rates of criminal involvement among black men—a contested claim—while most agree that there is longstanding institutional bias within the criminal-justice system. Whatever the cause, the consequences for second-class citizens of color caught up in the criminal-justice system are severe.
;;
As Richard further attests, the burden of felon disenfranchisement does not stop at voting for poor and minority citizens. Even after they have finished serving their sentence, former felons in Alabama and many other states are barred from serving on juries and denied access to essential government services, like food stamps, public housing, unemployment insurance, and welfare.
;;
The result is a permanent "second-class" status—what legal scholar Michelle Alexander terms the "American under-caste"—for current and former felons, irrespective of the nonviolent nature of most offenses.
;;
"Don't let the police think you're homeless—they'll pick you up fast." Momma Donna agrees, adding that panhandling is against the law in these parts. She goes on to detail a pair of instances where homeless people she knew got locked up for weeks on end—"for no good reason"—while they awaited trial. "Once you're in, it can be real, real hard getting out," she explains. Shaken, I thank them for the warning and bid the pair goodnight.
;;
Maurice, another homeless man in his fifties whom I interview the following morning, adds a story about panhandling of his own. He says he recently made the mistake of asking a Montgomery policeman for change in front of the store—"to put some gas in my car"—and was arrested on the spot for panhandling. "You know what the policeman did?" he asks, still incredulous. "He took me to jail! Locked me in jail for 21 days for asking for 50 cent!"

sanjaykumar · Post by **sanjaykumar** » 11 Jan 2014 23:13

Thanks for those depressing Atlantic links. However, that is what ultimately is hopeful about America-there are thinking people who are committed to social justice.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 12 Jan 2014 00:06

After reading the drain inspector reports during DK's row I decided to collect the choicest Drain inspector report on the biggest bully of them all and put them in one place. All such reports will necessarily be depressing. Indian and US press do a wonderful job of projecting a positive image of the US to Indian masses. My objective is to shine some light in the dark recesses of US especially on areas Indian press is silent to give Indians a more rounded understanding of the US.

If the mods think that Drain Inspector kind of reports are OT for this thread please suggest an alternative.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 12 Jan 2014 01:10

Cross-post
------------------->>
US to Spend $1 Trillion on Nukes

“Over the next thirty years, the United States plans to spend approximately $1 trillion maintaining the current arsenal, buying replacement systems, and upgrading existing nuclear bombs and warheads,” according to the report, Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad: US Strategic Modernization over the Next 30 Years, which was released by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) on Tuesday.

These costs will not be spread out evenly over the long time period. Instead, the authors of the report — Jon B. Wolfsthal, Jeffrey Lewis and Marc Quint — conclude that “Procurement of replacement platforms and associated warheads will peak during a four to six year window, sometime after 2020.” During this peak period, the United States will have to devote as much as three percent of its annual defense budgets to its nuclear arsenal. This is similar to the percentage of the defense budget that was devoted to modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal during Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, according to the report.

The CNS figures are roughly consistent with those of the Congressional Budget Office, which projected last month that the U.S. will spend $355 billion over the next decade on its nuclear arsenal.

<snip>

The U.S. intends to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad in the coming decades. This in many cases is likely to impose a taxing burden on the Air Force and Navy, the two services responsible for the three legs of the triad. As I wrote last May, “The immense cost of the Ohio-class replacement program to build the United States’ next generation ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) threatens to jeopardize the rest of the fleet.” The U.S. Navy currently envisions purchasing 12 new SSBNs to replace the currently 14 Ohio-class SSBNs that will be gradually retired. Each of the new 12 is projected to cost between $4-6 billion, leaving little additional money in the Navy’s shipbuilding budget.

Why spend $1 Trillion on Nuclear weapons when nealy half the US population is near poverty levels. Form the previously posted Atlantic report

fully half the U.S. population is either poor or "near poor," according to the Census Bureau.

Money spend on weapons that cannot be used in war can better be spent in tackling chronic poverty.

Where is the famed compassion espoused so much by the US on the world stage when it is a question of its own citizens? Where are the scientists of FAS and other assorted alphabet soup clubs? Where are groups that talk of rights of a foreign maid from a turd world country and why are they silent on the rights of every US citizen to a dignified life? Why this double standard?

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 12 Jan 2014 11:17

Mods two (2) of my post from yesterday do not appear in the thread anymore. Perhaps they were moved to some other thread or perhaps they were removed for not meeting the board standard. If I had been informed of issues with those posts I would have made the needful correction.

Posting below the link to the "The Atlantic" article based posts that seem to have vanished!

Poverty vs. Democracy in America

50 years after Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, tens of millions of second-class Americans are still legally or effectively disenfranchised.

Nearly half of them—20.5 million people, including each of the people mentioned above—are living in deep poverty on less than $12,000 per year for a family of four, the highest rate since record-keeping began in 1975. Add to that the hundred million citizens who are struggling to stay a few paychecks above the poverty line, and fully half the U.S. population is either poor or "near poor," according to the Census Bureau.

..
But poverty in the United States is not just an economic or social concern. As this series will explore, the poverty that Andy and Maria, Richard and Malik, and tens of millions of "second-class citizens" nationwide, experience is also political. It is embedded in the structure of American society and maintained by an unequal distribution of political power.

When Good People Do Nothing: The Appalling Story of South Carolina's Prisons

On Wednesday, in one of the most wrenching opinions you will ever read, a state judge in Columbia ruled that South Carolina prison officials were culpable of pervasive, systemic, unremitting violations of the state's constitution by abusing and neglecting mentally ill inmates.

..
The evidence is now sadly familiar to anyone who follows these cases: South Carolina today mistreats these ill people without any evident traces of remorse.

..
That's not just "deliberate indifference," the applicable legal standard in these prison abuse cases. That is immoral.

..
Where was the state's medical community while the reports piled up chronicling the mistreatment of these prisoners? Where was the state's legal community as government lawyers walked into court year after year with frivolous defenses for prison policies? Where were the religious leaders, the ones who preach peace and goodwill?

No one in power came forward. Even as the evidence became more clear and compelling that something horrible was happening inside those prisons.

..
It means that mentally ill inmates are routinely caged for days in their own feces and urine, having to eat literally where they shit.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 12 Jan 2014 11:50

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01 ... cking?lite

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Law enforcement agents in New Jersey have redoubled efforts to fight what they worry could be one of the biggest menaces to come with next month's Super Bowl: sex trafficking.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to descend on New Jersey for the Feb. 2 football game. Many believe the state's sprawling highway system, proximity to New York City and diverse population make it an attractive base of operations for traffickers.

"New Jersey has a huge trafficking problem," said U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who is also co-chairman of the House anti-human trafficking caucus. "One Super Bowl after another after another has shown itself to be one of the largest events in the world where the cruelty of human trafficking goes on for several weeks."

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 12 Jan 2014 12:24

Tales from the land of the self appointed moral force of the world and the leader of the free world.

How Democracy is subverted American style [My Given headline. I do not agree with every cause espoused by ACLU]

The Voting Rights Act continues to protect the voting rights of millions of voters across the country today. This landmark civil rights legislation is a critical safeguard to ensuring equal access to the ballot and guaranteeing our most fundamental right as Americans.{The fact that need for such an Act was felt and was passed in 1965 should make your wonder.}

..
Poll taxes and literacy tests were among the many discriminatory laws that were enforced to keep African Americans from voting.

..
Section 5 of the Act required jurisdictions with significant histories of voter discrimination to “pre-clear,” or get federal approval from the Department of Justice (DOJ), for any new voting practices or procedures, and to show that they do not have a discriminatory purpose or effect.

..
Although we have made significant gains in voting rights, discrimination at the polls persists today and cannot be dismissed as a relic of the past. Minority voters still face significant obstacles in registering to vote and casting ballots. As we've seen over the last few years in states across the country, efforts to suppress the vote continue and, although the tactics have changed, the goal of disfranchisement remains the same.

In recent years, we’ve seen widespread efforts to suppress the vote targeting minority communities. Modern day voting restrictions like photo ID requirements, restrictions to registration and cuts to early voting target voters who have been historically disenfranchised.

Next time when you hear tall talks of freedom and democracy from a moralizing white please ask him about the record of his own country and state. Do not take my word for it but search the list of 'Red states' and google for "voter supression" + <state> in question.

Added Later:
My googling for "voter suppression florida" yielded the following reasonably reliable links on the 1st page.

Florida Voter Suppression - Huff post
Former Florida GOP leaders say voter suppression was reason they pushed new election law - Palm beach post
Jim Greer, Ex-Florida GOP Chair, Claims Republican Voting Laws Focused On Suppression, Racism - Huff Post
Republicans Admit Voter-ID Laws Are Aimed at Democratic Voters - Daily beast
Opinion: Florida voter suppression is a disgrace - NBC Latino
Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme - Rollingstone
Why Florida Really Changed Its Voting Rules - NYT

Rony · Post by **Rony** » 13 Jan 2014 17:58

X Post

America is still a deeply racist country

Gone is the overt, violent, and legal racism of my childhood in the 1960s. It's been replaced by a subtler, still ugly version

A week after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I walked into my old hometown bar in central Florida to hear, "Well if a nigger can be president, then I can have another drink. Give me a whiskey straight up."

Only one day in the town and I thought, "Damn the south."

I had returned home to bury my father, who had spent much of the 1950s and '60s fighting for civil rights in the south. Consequently, my childhood was defined by race. It was why our car was shot at, why threats were made to burn our house down, why some neighbors forbid me to play on their lawn, why I was taunted at school as a "nigger lover".

It was nothing compared to what the blacks in town had to endure. I was just residing in the seam of something much uglier.

It is also why I left as soon as I could, exercising an option few others had. I eventually moved to New York City to work on Wall Street.

In the next 15 years I thought less about race. It is possible to live in the northeast as a white liberal and think little about it, to convince yourself that most of the crude past is behind. Outward signs suggest things are different now: I live in an integrated neighborhood, my kids have friends of all colors, and my old office is diverse compared to what I grew up with. As many point out, America even has a black man (technically bi-racial) as president.

Soon after my father passed away, I started to venture beyond my Wall Street life, to explore parts of New York that I had only previously passed through on the way to airports. I did this with my camera, initially as a hobby. I ended up spending three years documenting addiction in the New York's Bronx neighborhood of Hunts Point. There I was slapped in the face by the past.

In my Florida hometown, there is a train track that splits the town into two colors. When we passed into the black section of town, even if I were lying in the back of the station wagon, I knew it. The gravel roads would wake me, and I could basically smell poverty through the windows.

Crossing into Hunts Point in New York is the same, complete with a train track. The roads are paved, but feel unpaved. The stench of poverty has not changed much (industrial waste rather than uncollected garbage), nor has its clamor or its destructive power.

Neither has the color of its residents: the poor side of town in New York is still almost entirely dark skinned.

It took me a few months of slow recognition, fighting a thought I did not want to believe: we are still a deeply racist country. The laws on the books claim otherwise, but in Hunts Point (and similar neighborhoods across the country), those laws seem like far away idyllic words that clash with the daily reality: everything is stacked against those who are born black or brown.

We as a nation applaud ourselves for having moved beyond race. We find one or two self-made blacks or Hispanics who succeeded against terrible odds, and we elevate their stories to a higher position, and then we tell them over and over, so we can say, "See, we really are a color blind nation."

We tell their stories so we can forget about the others, the ones who couldn't overcome the long odds, the ones born into neighborhoods locked down by the absurd war on drugs, the ones born with almost even odds that their fathers will at some point be in jail, the ones born into neighborhoods that few want to teach in, neighborhoods scarce of resources.

We tell the stories of success and say: see anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, further denigrating those who can't escape poverty. It plays into the false and pernicious narrative that poverty is somehow a fault of desire, a fault of intelligence, a fault of skills. No, poverty is not a failing of the residents of Hunts Point who are just as decent and talented as anyone else. Rather it is a failing our broader society.

It took me seeing one black teen thrown against a bodega wall by cops, for no reason, to erase much of the image of seeing Obama elected. It took the unsolved murder of a 15-year-old Hunts Point girl, a girl my middle daughter's age, to make me viscerally understand how lucky my children are. It took watching as one smart child grew from dreaming of college to dealing drugs to viscerally understand how lucky everyone in my old office is.

The barriers between Hunts Point and the rest of New York are not as high as they were between the white and black section of my hometown in the 1960s. People can freely pass over them. Practically, however, they are almost insurmountable.

Gone is the overt, violent, and legal racism of my childhood. It has been replaced by a subtler version.

It is a racism that is easier to ignore, easier to deny, and consequently almost as dangerous.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 13 Jan 2014 21:02

^^ one interesting comments among many

DreShelby

12 January 2014 2:17pm
Recommend
6

Sadly the high tech era spawned a desperate quest for educational and economic advantage. Racism is rampant in the San Francisco Bay Region, though it is directed primarily at Hispanics. Forget all the public chatter about equality in San Francisco and look in the kitchens of their so called high class restaurants. Look at the crews of small construction companies, the men who do the yard work, and the women who clean the homes of the well to do. You will find illegal emigrants who are paid very, very low wages. If you say something about it they will all insist they are doing their best to help the poor. Bunk. The per student amount California provides for education is dramatically lower then the average of the other states combined even though average income has soared, and wealthy neighborhoods issue bonds and assess parcel taxes to provide their students with an educational advantage. And no surprise - dramatically increase the prison population to get the poor out of the way.

But hey - young people with the right connections and educational advantage can become billionaires before the age of thirty.
Will the high tech culture one day lose its glamorous luster? I am betting on it, but I don't doubt we will be subjected to more spying and more abuse before we reclaim our dignity.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 13 Jan 2014 22:58

Also Suntory, Japan is buying Jim Beam for $16B

g.sarkar · Post by **g.sarkar** » 13 Jan 2014 23:22

chaanakya wrote: Forget all the public chatter about equality in San Francisco and look in the kitchens of their so called high class restaurants. Look at the crews of small construction companies, the men who do the yard work, and the women who clean the homes of the well to do. You will find illegal emigrants who are paid very, very low wages. If you say something about it they will all insist they are doing their best to help the poor. Bunk. The per student amount California provides for education is dramatically lower then the average of the other states combined even though average income has soared, and wealthy neighborhoods issue bonds and assess parcel taxes to provide their students with an educational advantage. And no surprise - dramatically increase the prison population to get the poor out of the way.
.

Not to mention the agriculture industry in California, where billions are made each year on fruits and nuts, that employs hundreds of thousands of migrant Mexicans who are paid only a pittance and no benefits. Once the season is over they must literally disappear. They have tried to employ US citizens, but no one in their right mind will do such hard work for so little money.
Gautam

Lilo · Post by **Lilo** » 13 Jan 2014 23:24

ramana wrote:Also Suntory, Japan is buying Jim Beam for $16B

^
[quote="Bob in "Lost in Translation" Movie"]
Bob: For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.[/quote]

Now waiting for someone to translate this into Japanese and get Beat Takeshi (in a Miyamoto Mushashi attire) deliver it as an advert in American primetime.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 14 Jan 2014 13:20

"Slavery, segregation and racial discrimination are in the founding DNA of USA. Twelve(12) former presidents of United States where proud slave owners!. E.g Thomas Jefferson.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... nd-Slavery
http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps.htm

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 14 Jan 2014 16:51

BBC News US ‏@BBCNewsUS 4m

Retired police officer "shoots man dead for texting" during film in Florida http://bbc.in/1akYNGD

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 14 Jan 2014 22:07

Cross posting from the India-US thread -

Next time someone brings up the 'caste system is still prevalent' tripe, pliss to be reminding them of nonsense like this - Anti-marijuana laws were based on racism, not science

Writes Szalavitz:

The truth is that our perceptions of marijuana—and in fact all of our drug laws—are based on early 20th century racism and "science" circa the Jim Crow era. In the early decades of the 20th century, the drug was linked to Mexican immigrants and black jazzmen, who were seen as potentially dangerous.

Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!)

Although it sounds absurd now, it was this type of propaganda that caused the drug to be outlawed in 1937—along with support from the Hearst newspapers, which ran ads calling marijuana "the assassin of youth" and published stories about how it led to violence and insanity. Anslinger remained as head of federal narcotics efforts as late as 1962, whereafter he spread his poisonous message to the world as the American representative to the U.N. for drug policy for a further two years.

Before marijuana was made illegal, the American Medical Association's opposition to prohibition was ignored, as was an earlier report on marijuana in India by the British government, which did not find marijuana to be particularly addictive or dangerous. That "Indian Hemp Drugs Committee" reporthad concluded way back in 1894 that, "The moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all."

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 14 Jan 2014 22:08

Also this - Paris liberation made 'whites only'

Many who fought Nazi Germany during World War II did so to defeat the vicious racism that left millions of Jews dead.
Yet the BBC's Document programme has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers - who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces - were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital.

In January 1944 Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, was to write in a memo stamped, "confidential": "It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel.
"This would indicate the Second Armoured Division, which with only one fourth native personnel, is the only French division operationally available that could be made one hundred percent white."
At the time America segregated its own troops along racial lines and did not allow black GIs to fight alongside their white comrades until the late stages of the war.
Morocco division
Given the fact that Britain did not segregate its forces and had a large and valued Indian army, one might have expected London to object to such a racist policy.
Yet this does not appear to have been the case.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 14 Jan 2014 22:22

We also need to present positive news to provide a balanced picture.

In George Bernard Shaw's immortal words about a character in "Major Barbara" he says "One can depend on him to d the right thing for the worng reasons!"

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 14 Jan 2014 22:36

Just started reading the book "The Black Experience in America" by Norman Coombs given that slavery was dragged into the recent India-US spat. The book is available for free download at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67

Not only did white America become convinced of white superiority and black inferiority, but it strove to impose these racial beliefs on the Africans themselves. Slave masters gave a great deal of attention to the education and training of the ideal slave, In general, there were five steps in molding the character of such a slave: strict discipline, a sense of his own inferiority, belief in the master's superior power, acceptance of the master's standards, and, finally, a deep sense of his own helplessness and dependence. At every point this education was built on the belief in white superiority and black inferiority. Besides teaching the slave to despise his own history and culture, the master strove to inculcate his own value system into the African's outlook. The white man's belief in the African's inferiority paralleled African self hate.

Does the above sound familiar in the current context? Replace African with Indian and reread the whole paragraph.