By Karla Fetrow

Conditioned Brutality
Police brutality… We hear about it all the time.  It has become the great expectation; if you are confronted by the police, surrender your rights because he does not recognize them.  Of all the domestic violence offenders, the police place first on the list.  According to a report on The Impact of Police-Perpetrated Domestic Violence, “The characteristics and skills developed in training to produce competent officers are those that, when used in an intimate relationship, make police officers the most dangerous abusers.

Police officers use professional skills, police equipment, and the mobility of the job to keep their partners under surveillance. They run license plates of her friends and have access to information about anyone with whom she associates. They follow in their squad cars, park their squads or unmarked cars outside the victim’s home for hours on end. They install recording devices in the victim’s home or on her telephone. They use binoculars to observe the victim’s activities from a distance. These methods serve as a constant reminder to the victim that she is always within the abuser’s reach. He comes to be seen as omniscient and omnipotent, almost god-like.”

Many carry this sense of omniscience beyond the victims of partner relationships.  They choose their victims from those who are vulnerable; people who frequent bars, teenagers hanging out in malls, those too poor to legally fight back, women without partners, minorities and people they just don’t like.  Because they are well acquainted with the courts and documentation of evidence, an abusive policeman can commit his crimes against citizens with impunity.

The two most common charges attached to the revolving door system are, “resisting arrest” and “assault on a police officer”.  The curious part of this is that in seven out of ten cases, there are no other charges involved.  In other words, if a policeman walks up and says, “let’s go, buddy,” it’s best to just comply because to question his motives is to resist arrest.  If you become belligerent, it’s an assault on an officer.  It makes no difference whether or not you struck out at him.  The abusive policeman doesn’t need a reason for accosting you.  He only needs for you to show some form of hostility or resistance and you will land in jail.

What Isn’t Talked About

It gets scarier.  There is another type of police brutality that generally stays under wraps for a very long time before it ever begins to surface; if it does.  This brutality remains so secretive only the combined efforts of the victims lend it any credibility at all.  This is the policeman who rapes.  Most women will not report her attacker.  She has already been humiliated, undressed, forced behind bars and subjected to the whims and caprice of her captors.  She has no reason to believe anyone will come to her defense.

On the day I stood before a judge to plead guilty to one account of misconduct with a controlled substance, a far more spectacular case was rocking the courtroom.  Anthony Rollins, an ex-police officer, entered a plea of “not guilty” to fourteen felony counts, most of them involving rape or assault, and to six misdemeanor charges of official misconduct.  The investigation began in April 2009, when the victims’ agency, “Standing Together Against Rape”, filed a report that Rollins had sexually assaulted a woman while on duty.  Rollins was placed on paid leave, while five other victims came forth to say they had been raped.  On July 15, 2009, Rollins was indicted, arrested and suspended without pay.

In a telephone interview later, Sgt. Derek Hsieh, president of the Anchorage police union, said fellow officers are disappointed and worried that Rollins’ indictment will affect the way they are perceived by the people they serve.

The problem is, this group mentality of standing up for their own allows police misconduct to become commonplace.  It isn’t an isolated incident.  It is a behavior that hides itself behind bars, behind the protective uniform of the badge, and only occasionally receives attention.  It is a part of the ongoing machinery diligently churning out the sociopath society.

The Subtle Sociopath

While it’s true my vacation land did not contain such blatant misuse of power, its undercurrents of false accusations, assumptions of guilt and categorizing without examining mitigating circumstances, still contribute to sociopath behavior.  A sociopath might be very pleasant on the outside, but will lie and manipulate for his own self-serving purposes.  He might not actually break the law, but will use it to serve his own ends.

While I was incarcerated, I became very fond of our house mouse, our little orderly mother who kept the pod running smoothly.  Janice had that type of soft, open face and studious expression you would expect from a teacher or a counselor.  She rarely exercised her authority, allowing the other girls the run of the television and their choice of obligatory chores, but when she did, her word was law.  You did not clam the door or stand in your room and shout.  To do so would mean the entire house would lose its privileges to the microwave and television.  She was determined this was not going to happen.

Only once did she try to exercise her authority with me.  She wanted me to attend church with the other girls on Easter morning.  I told her no.  When she asked me why not, I told her, “I take my spirituality very seriously.  In Mexico, I saw people die for their moral convictions.  They were people of God.  I am not so impressed with someone who stands at a pulpit and lectures simply because it feels good.”

“Oh,” she said, and that was the end of that, but the beginning of our friendship.  I finally asked her one day how she ended up in jail.  “I stole,” she admitted honestly, then added, “but I didn’t steal from people’s houses.  I didn’t steal from regular folk.  I stole from big chain stores.  They have the insurance to cover it.”

I laughed.  “You’re a revolutionary!”

I found it odd that she continued to remain in the hole while other long-term inmates had moved into houses with greater liberties.  I finally asked her about it.  “They hate me,” she said at first.  Finding her a very difficult person to hate, I told her maybe it was because she did her job as the house mouse so well.  “No,” she said firmly.  “They hate me.”

She paused a bit as though debating whether or not to trust me, then said, “In February, I pushed a girl into a snowbank.  I don’t know why I did it.  She was making fun of me and I got irritated.  She was carrying her property box at the time, going to one of the better houses.  She stumbled backward into the snowbank, but she wasn’t hurt, and I didn’t hit her.  Still, she told an officer about it.

Two days later, I was charged with a major infraction, a B6, which is assault on a prisoner by another prisoner.”  The following week, Janice was brought before the disciplinary board, which even the officers call the kangaroo court.  Without allowing her to give her side, they found her guilty of the assault, and gave her thirty days of segregation in the hole, suspending it for 180 days, provided she was not given another write-up.

Janice planned to appeal the write-up, but the next day, she was once again called before the board.  “I heard from three different inmates that you were having relationships with a female officer,” said Lieutenant Johnson, the board director.  “I need to know who this officer is.”

“I had no idea what she was talking about,” said Janice, “and told her so.”

The lieutenant persisted.  “Whether the allegations can be proven or not, we can still house you in the hole for the remainder of your sentence, so you might just as well make things easier on yourself.”

Again Janice told her she had no idea what the lieutenant was talking about.  After returning to her room, she filed an appeal, stating the allegations had no basis in fact.  The next day, the paperwork was returned to her with “denied” stamped on it.  In the denial, it was claimed they had a video clip and a recorded phone call as evidence that Janice had been with a female officer.  When Janice asked to see the evidence, she was denied.

Once Janice had been designated to the hole, she was denied her furlough, admission to the half-way house, or an ankle bracelet monitor so she could be released to work.  She has been refused all visitors, including her husband, and refuse to allow him to put money on her books.  They have decided not to drop the assault charge, and still have not shown evidence of her misconduct.

I don’t believe Janice was lying.  She was candid about her theft and about pushing the girl.  She was a victim of the sociopath society.

When We’ve All Gone Through the Door

The sociopath feels no guilt, no remorse, has no conscience.  Two very tragic homicides followed closely on each other this last winter.  One was a young barrister of a drive through coffee shop, the other involved a young airman on leave.  The barrister was abducted from her place of work; the video cameras proved this, while the airman’s where about’s were uncertain for several days.  In both cases, it was weeks before their bodies were found.

The fathers of the barrister and the airman recently went out to drink together.  Understandably, they were inconsolable.  Late in the evening, an employee of the bar, noticing  the barrister’s father was about to get into his truck inebriated, offered to call a cab.  The bereaved man told the employee to get away from his truck or meet his 1911, which was assumed to refer to a family of .45 caliber pistols.  The bar employee called the police stating the two men had left drunk, but that he could not stop them because he feared for his life.  This was in compliance with a law that states those serving alcohol must not allow a person to leave their premises and drive drunk unless they fear for their lives.

The police entered the premises of the barrister’s father, where they found both men.  The barrister’s father was charged with a DUI, even though he was home by then and there had been no mishaps on the highway.  He was charged with assault on an officer for refusing to take a breath test.  He was charged with misconduct with a firearm after a search of his vehicle uncovered a 1911 Ruger in his console that he had not pulled out and had not used.  His 2012 truck was impounded and he was placed under $4,000 bail, along with a $2,000 appearance bond and a $2,000 performance bond.  In a kinder era, there would have been more understanding for the grieving man, but this is the year of the letter of the law and the law is carried out without guilt, remorse or conscience.

The sociopath has a limited range of emotions.  A person in prison learns to behave pleasantly, regardless of personal feelings.  She must show no anger, no disappointment, no impatience, no tears.  She learns strict obedience to the rules no matter how unfair they might seem.  She learns not to anticipate.  You do not anticipate your phone call or a visit because they can be taken away from you.  You learn not to anticipate your release date as it can fill you with too much longing, which invites other strong emotions.  The jails have their own time schedule, separate from the courts.  Some girls were kept as many as three days after their release was ordered, while the jails went through their own system of paperwork.  During that time period, they did not dare to appear anything except pleasant and co-operative, or they could be charged with another infraction.  It was several weeks after I was released before I was able to deal with the full flood of normal emotions again.  Someone who has been incarcerated for months or years is completely overwhelmed by her initial release.

I asked myself many times what the purpose was in this revolving door justice, which rarely gave a great deal of formal time behind bars but that usually gave long months and even years of probation or parole.  Obviously, there is a high profit making mechanism involved.  Your taxes pay for the burgeoning police force, justified by the number of “necessary” arrests, and for the administration of the court system.  The inmate never gets out of jail free.  Even if she has paid no bail or bonds, she must pay for court costs, the $250 an hour public defender and filing fees.  Nearly every inmate is ordered to take anger management classes, drug counseling or both.  These also come out of the inmate’s pockets.

There is also the conditioning to obedience, to compliance without question.  This too became obvious during my stay, yet it wasn’t until I read the standard terms of probation and parole, applied to all released inmates that I began to see a far more sinister reason for the revolving door.  While you are serving your probation or parole, you may not vote, take part in elections or serve on a jury.  For as long as you have a felony record, this part remains.  While you are on probation or parole, you may not own a firearm or any blade over three inches long, with the exception of kitchen knives.  You may not even own a machete for cutting down brush.  While you are on probation or parole, you may not spend more than 24 hours away from your home.  Your travel is restricted to a one hundred mile radius of your home.  You may not consort with others convicted of a felon, not even family members.  The police may come at any time to your home without a warrant and search it, or search your person at any time without cause.  If you are in the company of someone who is arrested, you will be arrested, too.  By creating a revolving door of a populace charged with felonies, every single one of our rights can be removed without ever once tampering with any aspect of the Constitutional amendments.  The United States places more people behind bars than any country in the world, and this is why.  It’s not so much that we are apathetic.  It’s that we are learning to become sociopaths, with no strong connections to each other, no normal emotional range, no self-determination as to right and wrong and complete acceptance that brutality is okay as long as exercised within the legal confines of the law.

http://www.adn.com/2009/07/16/867167/cop-pleads-not-guilty-in-sex-assaults.html

http://www.abuseofpower.info/Article_FBI.htm

By: Grainne Rhuad

By now most of the world is familiar with the picture taken during the May 7^th Russian protests.  The stark contrast of innocence facing down riot police has touched the world.  At the same time the rest of the world is slowly coming to terms with the fact that democracy is a lie and doesn’t work, Russians are protesting hoping to make a change within their system.

On May 7^th as Vladamir Putin was sworn into office, he was not met with the types crowds he had in the past.  In their stead, there were hundreds of protesters outside being corralled by thousands of police.  Putin has been at the helm of Russia since 2000, first as President and Now as Prime Minister.  With this election, he will likely remain there until 2018 with the option to run again.

It is this long-term rule that people in Russia are tired of.

The demonstrators, separated into several groups, were met by helmeted riot police. A total of 120 were detained, including opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

The day before, protests had turned violent when some demonstrators tried to march toward the Kremlin and riot police beat back the crowds with batons and detained more than 400 people.

While Putin has dismissed the Moscow protesters as ungrateful, pampered urbanites and agents of the West, others are taking them more seriously. “The government must understand that the split in society is getting wider, and the anger over unfair elections and the lack of normal dialogue is growing. In this situation, radicalism is inevitable,” Zyuganov said. “Any attempts to shut people’s mouths with the help of a police baton are senseless and extremely dangerous.” (Source: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/07/putin-sworn-in-as-russia-president-after-day-protests/#ixzz1uPDRz700)

This dismissiveness that characterizes Putin is most likely going to be his downfall.  Putin won nearly 64% of the vote. Opposition leaders have denounced the result as “illegitimate”.  It was in response to this supposed discrepancy, that the protests were formed.  Their anger has been fuelled by widespread reports of fraud, including evidence of ballot-stuffing and “carousel voting”, when voters are employed to cast their votes several times at various polling sites.

While OSCE states in their report: “The conditions for the campaign were clearly skewed in favour of one candidate. Also, overly restrictive candidate registration requirements limited genuine competition.” The rest of the report outlines a pretty straight forward election.

Certainly, most countries cannot hope to be any better, it has become an accepted fact that media will pick sides and money will out in such elections.

There is no denying that Putin in the last few years has moved away from the progressive policies of the 1990’s.  He has been more restrictive in response to protest and criticism, both within his country and internationally.  Even recently allowing the statement that Russia will launch pre-emptive strikes if NATO and the U.S.  continues its plans to implement the European Shield.

However, many Russians still believe Putin to be good for Russia, siting his unwillingness to support or excuse the U.S. her meddling in foreign affairs as well as the business he has lately brought to Russia.  Namely huge oil contracts with ExxonMobil for research and development in the Arctic Oil Fields.

But like so many political maneuvers, there is the cost of this deal.  Some believe Mikhail Khodorkovsky is paying that cost.  Khodorkovsky, once head of oil giant Yukos and Russia’s richest man, is now in jail for tax evasion, clearing the way for other oil deals to be made. Putin has also been accused of abusing his hold on energy, allegedly punishing fellow ex-Soviet states like Ukraine with price hikes when they leant towards the West.

It may be Russia’s improved economy that is allowing for protest where before it was impossible.  The cities of Russia are full of work.  With companies and corporations in need of qualified workers at a higher rate than seen in maybe 50 years, as well as supportive services, more people are comfortable.

Comfortable people have more time to think, intellectualize, discuss and ultimately protest.  As it is the city dwellers who are showing up for protests analysts feel it is their increased economic stability that makes them feel they should have more of a say in government.

Perhaps this makes Putin’s “Spoiled” statement make a little more sense.  After all it has been under his leadership that Russia has seen stability and growth.

Political analyst Masha Lipman points out however, “The turning point was the “trading places” trick in that occurred in late September. That was when Medvedev declared he would not run and that Putin would run instead. For his part, Putin said, if elected, he would make Medvedev his prime minister. Medvedev added that they had made this decision several years earlier. It was this contempt of the people that triggered change: the mood became a movement. Elections suddenly mattered: lots of young Muscovites volunteered as election observers and gained first-hand experience with blatant fraud. They changed their electoral behavior and voted for anyone to ensure that the United Russia (the party of Putin’s loyalists) would lose support and seats in the Russian parliament. This activism evolved into mass protests after the December 4 election. It was broadly seen as fraudulent, especially in Moscow where the rigging was especially blatant and the constituency was already more critical of Putin.”

Are protests likely to do any good in a system where one man effectively has control of the government?  The people seem to think so. The opposition leader and member of the Solidarity movement political council, Boris Nemtsov seems to think so stating in an interview, “Russia’s future depends entirely on the level of protest, not Putin. Protests cannot constantly grow. They are not a linear process. The current protests do not amount to a revolution that would lead to explosive changes but the revival of civil activities and development of civil society. This is why there are always ups and downs. Indeed, now the protests are weakening, but this does not mean that they have exhausted themselves.” (Source: http://valdaiclub.com/politics/41601.html )

When asked if he thinks “The screws will be tightened.” (on the protestors) Nemtsov answers, “This depends only on us. If we sit in a kitchen, Lukashization is inevitable. If we take the initiative and protest, things will change. We are witnessing a decline of the Putin regime with all its convulsions, idiotic escapades and provocations. Clearly, it does not have the energy and strength to oppose the nation. But if the people sit quiet, the government will be able to tighten the screws with ease and Putin will turn into a 100% Lukashenko clone. He is 50/50 now.”

In agreement is Alexei Navalny, a crusading anti-corruption blogger and new-wave folk hero. He says: “A revolution is inevitable, and that it won’t be something plotted out ahead of time. It will start with an incident — an arrest, maybe, or a protest — and then snowball unexpectedly and unrelentingly. It will happen,” he told Esquire, “just because most people understand that this system is wrong.”

By Karla Fetrow

How the Citizen’s Informer sets up Deals 

Jennifer, oh Jennifer, how could you be so cruel?  This is not to say all Jennifers are invested with slithering personalities… I know several who are decent, honest, gregarious and kind, but this particular Jennifer; one whose last name I never did learn, throws a stone-packed ice-ball at the good name of Jennifers everywhere.  She used to be my friend; or so I thought.  Apparently friendships are not nearly so valuable to her as saving her skin when it came time to take a dose of federal induced medicine.

In all fairness, I had been forewarned.  A couple months earlier, I had been stopped by two federal agents while on my way to work, told they had a warrant to search my house, and the right to search my backpack.  There was nothing in my backpack except my wallet, camera  and a few of the things women were inclined to incur as necessary items for leaving the house, and nothing in my home except an ounce of marijuana, so I wasn’t greatly concerned.  It’s legal in Alaska to keep a few ounces of weed rattling about in your house for personal use, and I readily admitted to the presence of an ounce when they asked me.

They then proceeded to ask me about the guns, expensive electronic equipment and large sums of cash they insisted I had somewhere in hiding in my home.  This was surprising to me.  All that wealth, and I was living in a ramshackle trailer, with a faulty furnace not generating enough heat to bring the temperature up over fifty degrees in the winter, had to carry water because I had no plumbing, and was walking to work every day in thirty below weather because I had no car.  I asked them why I would be doing this if I had lots of money.

They weren’t impressed.  One of the agents told me he had worked in law enforcement for twenty years and he could tell I’ve been selling pounds of weed.  Pounds of weed!  Whoa!  He must have been mistaking me for the neighbor down the road, or one of at least half a dozen other people within a close vicinity.  I didn’t tell him this, but I did tell him I was lucky to receive two ounces at a time, and that on a front.  “You don’t sell weed?”  He asked.

“No, I answered.

“We have information you just sold an ounce.”

That’s when it occurred to me; there was only one person who had gotten an ounce from me and that was Jennifer.  Figuring she had just gotten popped for the pain killers she liked to peddle to anyone interested and they had found her little stash as well, causing her to squeal like a little stuck pig, I told them, “sometimes, if my friends are looking, I help them out, and if I am  looking, they do me the same favor.  But it isn’t really selling.  It’s just favors between friends.”

They then began asking me questions about my boss, which began to piss me off a little.  “Look,” I told them.  “My boss has cameras all over the store to keep things legal and aboveboard. Nobody conducts illegal transactions from his store.  He wouldn’t stand for it.”

They finally let me go, and I arrived at work with one minute to spare before I was officially late.  I punched in, then decided to tell both my co-workers and my boss what had just happened.  They decided Jennifer was not allowed back in the store.  She was trouble.

She certainly was.  According to the police report, CS11-17; Jennifer; was given three hundred dollars to purchase an ounce of marijuana from me.  The report read that “due to scheduling conflict within the unit, the controlled purchase needed to be moved to a later date.”  There was a scheduling conflict alright, but not with the agents.  Jennifer had been calling me night and day, wheedling and begging for an ounce and I had been ignoring her.  The report went on to say that she was finally escorted to my work place to arrange the purchase, telling the police deals were often set up from there.  It was because she showed up at my work place that I finally caved.  I was very protective of my boss’s small, independent business, and had made it a point to keep business and indulgences separate.  In order to get her off my back, I had told her to come by when I got off work and we’d set something up.

The little snitch was wired the entire time.  She had recorded my agreement to meet her at the house and when she arrived, had recorded our conversation in which I had told her I’d call a friend.  Officially, the arrangements had been made for the feds trafficking case.  And officially, I had just committed a felon when I scored the ounce and turned it over to her for the same price I had paid for it.  We were friends.  I wasn’t interested in capitalizing off her, but apparently, she was very interested in capitalizing off me.

My first meeting with my attorney, I was distrustful.  After all, he was a public defender and public defenders weren’t that interested in winning cases. I told him frankly I wanted a Civil Liberties attorney because the whole thing had been a set-up.

“What do you mean?”  He asked.   So I told him the whole story, adding I knew it was Jennifer because I don’t deal and she was the only one who had come by to ask for ounce.

“She begged me,” I said.  “She had gone to the states for several years, so when she came back, I figured she’d lost touch with her regular dealer.  I used to buy from her at least as much as she bought from me, so I thought I would do her a favor.”

“Then it was entrapment.”   Since it was rather pointless to try and continue hiding her identity, he then told me Jennifer was a citizen informant; a fancy word fora narc, a squealer.  She had agreed to turn in everyone she could so the charges against her would be dropped. “She chose you because you are not dangerous.”

There is a rather outdated viewpoint of the citizen’s informer as a somewhat sympathetic person; someone caught between the forces of lawful and illicit dealings by unfortunate circumstances; the unwilling or unwitting fool trapped by the mafia, the drug addict who would like to get off drugs but finds himself hopelessly entrenched, racketeers who develop a conscience, smugglers who wish to drop out of the game… but there is very little truth to this stereotype.  An informer informs for one reason only; he or she got caught and wants the least amount of sentencing possible.

The modern day informant might do it for money or do it for some kind of weird sense of glory, but a snitch chooses the least likely avenues for retaliation.  When Tim Allen, the oil lobbyist turned informer, welched out a number of Alaskan legislators, he did not mention even one of his oil cronies, who certainly carried their own guilt.  He did set up and ruin the life of one rather guileless representative named Vic Kohring.  I’ve known the Kohring family since my early teenage years.  They were honest and hardworking.  The boys didn’t even get into the usual trouble teenagers are so apt to get into, like staying up all night drinking, then terrorizing the neighborhood with loud noise and fast cars, or sneaking off during school hours to smoke cigarettes and make out with girls.  They were part of the clean cut crowd.

Vic was a junior representative.  He hadn’t even been in politics long enough to cut that many shady deals.  Most likely, when he saw how some of the legislators lined their pockets, he was ripe and eager to get a taste of the action himself.  He was set up, and Tim Allen was the wired informer.

When Ted Stevens beat the corruption charges filed against him, stating that the prosecution had with-held evidence favorable to his case, the feds said the elderly Senator’s case was the exception, not the rule.  Senator Lisa Murkowski disagrees.  She recently began pushing a bill that would require prosecutors to immediately turn over evidence to the defense that could be favorable to the accused.  The American Civil Liberties Union, among other human rights committees, also support the bill, saying this type of problem happens too often.

Special Prosecutor, Henry Schuelke, who produced the court -ordered report on misconduct in the Ted Stevens case states there have been cases with Justice Department errors comparable to the Stevens prosecution.  The same judge who presided over Stevens’ case, for example, in 2009 found that prosecutors improperly with-held important psychiatric records of a government witness who was used in a significant number of Guantanamo cases.

According to Schulke, prosecutors with-hold evidence simply because they want to win.  “The motive to win the case is the principal, operative motive.  I do not believe any of the prosecutors harbored a personal animus toward Senator Stevens.  I don’t believe they sought fame and glory.  They did, however, want to win the case.”

Winning is all it’s really about.  Jennifer did not turn in any of the real dealers, the ones who were moving pounds of marijuana or had growing operations in their back yards, and she certainly didn’t turn in her pharmaceutical contacts.  She turned in someone safe, someone who would not jeopardize her own illicit dealings.   “In fact,” said my attorney, “what the courts really want are the major players.  If you turned in your contacts, they would just set you free… but, I don’t see you as that kind of person.”

“I’m not,” I answered.  “And even if I was, the town is really a very small community.  By now, everyone has heard what has happened.  If I walked out of here and starting knocking on people’s doors, they would shut down tighter than a drum.”

My attorney was willing to take the case to trial, but he cautioned me that the wire tapping was damaging.  “It doesn’t really matter,” he explained.  “That you got her the ounce as a favor.  It doesn’t matter that you made no money from it.  The point they will make is that moving a controlled substance without a medical prescription is a felony.”  He then went on to illustrate just how easy it is to commit a felony.  “If you have a friend with a back-ache and you give her pain pills to relieve it, you’ve just committed a felony.  If your friend has an ear infection, and you give her some left-over antibiotics you happen to have on hand, you’ve just committed a felony. “

There are a number of other ways one can quite effortlessly and randomly commit a felony.  Under the three strikes system, practiced in twenty-six states, you can receive a felony conviction for your third driving under the influence of alcohol offense.  Or how about for a one dollar cup of soda?  A Florida man faces felony charges after refusing to pay $1 for a cup of soda in an East Naples McDonald’s restaurant.  The initial charge was for petty theft. But due to Abaire’s record of prior petty theft convictions, the charge was increased from a misdemeanor to a felony under Florida’s ‘three strikes’ statute.

After throwing a tantrum in school, Selecia Johnson was handcuffed, charged with battery, and kept in police custody for an hour before her parents found out what was going on. Though all charges have been dropped, Salecia — a 6-year-old –  now has an arrest record.

Should I try to beat the feds?  I had to think about this.  People who are sitting in jail do not normally beat a trial by jury.  People who are sitting in jail with a young public defender; even a very sincere and idealistic one; do not normally beat a trial by jury.  “I want a reduced bail hearing,” I said.

Two weeks later, there still was no word that I would be granted a reduced bail hearing.  Five thousand dollars cash or credit bail; called corporate bail; is really an astronomical amount for trafficking a small quantity of weed in a state where marijuana is the primary drug of choice.  In terms of bonded bail, where the bail bondsman covers the main cost, it would amount to $50,000 bail; the type of bail usually placed on more serious crime, like burglary or armed robbery.  It’s to be supposed that somehow, as a corporate, the courts still believed I should be able to cough up five thousand dollars.

So I sat, and read, and took walks in their melting exercise yard.  I also observed.  It wasn’t long before I noticed a particular pattern in the revolving door of detainees.  As soon as a few beds were unoccupied for any length of time, there was a sudden rash of new criminals, and we were filled to maximum capacity again.

I also discovered four other women from my community within the first two weeks I was incarcerated; women I knew on a first time basis; a couple who were long term friends.  Doing the math, I estimated that at this rate, every woman in my home town would have a taste of Highland Vacation Land within the next five years.

I noticed another disturbing trend, the number of girls who had been arrested because of the men who had placed them there.  One young woman, no more than five feet tall and a hundred ten pounds, was arrested after getting into a shouting match with her (male) neighbor and attacking him with her fists.  When she requested a reduced bail hearing, she was denied, because, the neighbor told the court, he feared for his life.  Another was thrown in the day after she broke up with her boyfriend for using his credit card; a card he had given her permission to use until the day of their quarrel.  One woman was thrown in for going to her ex-boyfriend’s house and destroying all the gifts she had given him previously.  The most pitiful case was a woman charged with harboring a fugitive; a man who had not bothered to tell her he was running from the law when he asked permission to stay at her house.

Women represent the fasted growing population in prison. Between 1980 and 1993, the growth rate for the female prison population increased approximately 313%, compared to 182% for men in the same period. At the end of 1993 women accounted for 5.8% of the total prison population and 9.3% of the jail population nationwide.

Incarcerated women are overwhelmingly poor. The majority of women prisoners (53%) and women in jail (74%) were unemployed prior to incarceration.

When women go to prison, it takes a devastating toll on the family. Sixty seven per cent of women incarcerated in state prisons are mothers of children under 18. Seventy percent of these women compared to 50% of men had custody of their dependent children prior to incarceration.

Six per cent of women are pregnant when they enter prison. In almost all cases, the woman is abruptly separated from her child after giving birth.

In the Continental United States, a disproportionate number – 60% – of inmates are black or Hispanic, but in Alaska discrimination favors a separate minority.  While thirty-seven percent of the population is Alaskan Native, approximately 54% of these girls gone wild belong to the Native category.  Most are incarcerated for minor infractions; drinking while driving, disorderly conduct, petty theft, resisting arrest, but generally receive the maximum penalty for their misdemeanors.

Finally, I received another visit from my attorney.  “The judge has offered you a plea bargain.  If you plea guilty to one count of misconduct with a controlled substance, they will give you thirty months of probation.  If you complete your probation without another infraction, the charge will be stricken from the record.  It’s a good deal,” he added hesitantly.  “If you agree, we can go to court Friday and you can walk out of jail.”

Friday was five days away.  Five days away and there had been no bail reduction hearings, no indication that some champion of human rights would come to my rescue, very little contact with the outside world at all.  I had bills to pay, a house in disorder, responsibilities to assume.  All I had to do was report to a probation officer once a month and stay out of trouble.  While a part of me still wanted to fight the good fight, the entire rest of me wanted to be free.  I accepted the deal.

To be Continued

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/1-mcdonalds-bill-leads-felony-charge-florida-resident

http://www.adn.com/2012/03/28/v-printer/2395454/dont-target-all-prosecutors-for.html

http://people.umass.edu/~kastor/walking-steel-95/ws-women-in-prison.html

By: Bill The Butcher

Statutory Disclaimer: This article is a statement of my beliefs and the result of my research and writing. The sources I have drawn from are indicated at the conclusion of this article and are available on the internet for independent consultation. I am not in any way responsible for any fights, disagreements, quarrels or fallings-out arising as a result of discussions of this article on any media on which it, or reference to it, may appear. Thank you.

“This soldier,” Vern Kimmit from Orlando, Florida, wrote, “probably prevented dozens if not hundreds of future terrorist attacks, singlehandedly and on his own initiative. Nice shooting son, I just popped open an icy cold Sam Adams in your honor (sic)!”

This comment was made in the response columns of an article [1] about the celebrated massacre near Kandahar, where sixteen Afghan civilians (including nine children and three women) were murdered in their beds by American occupation forces (whether in the form of a single soldier or a group of them). It was also far from the only comment of this sort – that article, and others on the same topic, are virtually crawling with them. With one more exception, from the same article, I don’t intend to post a selection; the reader can, if interested, check them out for himself or herself. I’d recommend a strong stomach.

Before we go any further, let me declare the names of these dead and injured Afghans, since otherwise, as we shall discuss, nobody will ever get to know of them. They are [2]:

The dead:
Mohamed Dawood son of Abdullah
Khudaydad son of Mohamed Juma
Nazar Mohamed
Payendo
Robeena
Shatarina daughter of Sultan Mohamed
Zahra daughter of Abdul Hamid
Nazia daughter of Dost Mohamed
Masooma daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Farida daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Palwasha daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Nabia daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Esmatullah daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Faizullah son of Mohamed Wazir
Essa Mohamed son of Mohamed Hussain
Akhtar Mohamed son of Murrad Ali

The wounded:
Haji Mohamed Naim son of Haji Sakhawat
Mohamed Sediq son of Mohamed Naim
Parween
Rafiullah
Zardana
Zulheja

These nameless, faceless, Afghan civilians had names, and faces, and lives, and deserve to have those names, faces and lives recorded. But, to an amazing extent, those names, faces and lives have not been recorded. I could barely find another mention of these people anywhere.

And that is what’s so significant. Why is it that those Afghans remain nameless and faceless?

In the course of this article, I shall mention the actual massacre only as a means of discussing this larger question: the reason why the “reactions” focus almost exclusively on the perpetrator/s, not the dead and injured. Since this is far from the first massacre of Afghan civilians by occupation forces, and is likely to be far from the last, the massacre itself is less interesting than the reaction.

Of course, in order to understand the reaction, we need to talk a little bit about the massacre itself.

Since most readers of this article will already be in cognisance of the “facts” (insofar as such a constantly shifting tale [3] can be termed to contain any facts whatsoever) I’ll just go over them quickly: that at or about 0200 on the 11th of March 2012, one or more American soldiers from a base near Kandahar went to two separate villages, where they murdered sixteen Afghan civilians in their homes (including eleven from a single family), and burned their bodies with some kind of inflammable liquid. A few days later, it turned out that the alleged “lone gunman” who had perpetrated the massacre had “turned himself in” on his return to base and was quickly removed from the country, being sent to Kuwait, and when that nation was unhappy with this, to the US itself.

From the beginning, the “lone shooter” theory did not stand up to even casual, let alone serious, analysis. The survivors of the massacre, and other villagers, were unanimous in claiming that there had been “several” soldiers involved, and that one person could not possibly have done all that the killer had been accused of doing [4]. Even though the story had so many holes that nobody in any other circumstances would have taken it seriously, there was an incredible and concerted effort, apparently, in the mainstream media to believe it – to the extent that it’s standard now to read of “an American serviceman” who had “carried out the shootings”. And it’s only natural to wonder why.

As the first days went past, the identity of this “serviceman” was kept secret, to the extent that some of the aforementioned respondents began wondering aloud what the reason for this might be. As one Pookie Sue from Davenport, Iowa said [1]

If the shooter was a white Christian, we would know his name, see his picture, and hear all about him. Who is the shooter? Why is it being kept quiet?… Evidently he is black or a Muslim.

Unfortunately for such people, the identity of the “sole gunman” was later revealed to be a Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a white Christian who immediately became a subject of overt or implied sympathy. He was on his fourth deployment in a war zone, he’d had part of a foot amputated, he’d suffered possible brain damage in a car crash, he’d been suffering marital problems, he’d seen a friend have a leg blown off by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED; a fancy term for a homemade landmine)

only a day or two before, and as his friends said, he was a “nice guy”, a husband and father. Not someone who was really to blame – if there was any blame, it lay elsewhere. Where, nobody seemed to be clear; on the (black, Muslim, Kenyan) President, on the (evil, raghead) Taliban, on “society” – but elsewhere.

Then, things became murkier, as Bales’ personal history came seeping out. He was, it appeared, less of an angel than at first appeared. He had defrauded an investor of over a million dollars, had been involved in an assault on a former girlfriend, and had taken part in at least one massacre in Najaf, Iraq – meaning he was likely a war criminal as well [5].

Now, can you think of a better candidate for a “fall guy” to take the blame? He is either a stressed-out victim of circumstances, not really in control of his own actions; or he’s an intrinsically evil person, who should have been locked up long ago and the key thrown away. Either way, he is the perfect scapegoat – leaving the rest of his colleagues blameless and still eminently worthy of worship.

Worship, did I say? Isn’t that too strong a word?

Not at all; and it’s in the extent to which soldier-worship has become a part of modern Western discourse that the key to the puzzle lies.

Rewind a moment, to the war in Vietnam. Back in those long-ago days, when the smell of napalm hung in the air over the rice paddies, US soldiers had fought and died in another war against a faceless, invisible enemy. There had been massacres there, too, and crazed soldiers running amok, and “free fire zones” where any Vietnamese was fair game. But there were differences – important differences.

In Vietnam, a large majority of the American soldiers in that war were conscripts. These young men, who had been forced into uniform because they could not get student deferments and whose only other options were jail or hiding in Canada, had been sent off into a never-ending war they didn’t understand in a nation they couldn’t find on a map. And when they returned, they came back to find themselves reviled as “baby killers” and worse, by those (as they saw it) with the money and connections to escape the draft that had swallowed them. And, of course, most importantly, the US ended on the losing side in Vietnam.

Today, a different narrative has been quite deliberately created – the narrative of the Heroic Soldier, protecting the Homeland from the Freedom-hating Evildoer. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere on the planet Earth that the American Soldier treads, he’s now no longer a baby-killer; he’s a torch-bearer of freedom, fighting for what used to be called Truth, Justice and the American Way but now goes by the name of Freedom and Democracy. It’s fed by everything from bumper stickers to yellow ribbons, and the myth is as assiduously cultivated as the military-industrial-political multiplex (MIP) is protected and encouraged. Of course, this Heroic Soldier is not, on the surface of it at least, an embittered draftee who couldn’t get out of serving his time; he’s a volunteer who put his life on the line for freedom. The fact that the average military volunteer worldwide has – after the Great War, at all events – been a victim of the poverty draft, joining the military because he has no other option, is neither here nor there in that narrative. Whereas the murderous Vietnam War American soldier was One of Them, the heroic

American soldier of today is emphatically One of Us.

Obviously, the Heroic Soldier cannot be allowed to lose – he has to be supported through thick and thin, at the cost of everything else. The blood he spills is sacred; the sacrifices he makes cannot be allowed to go in vain.

And this is exactly why the media… was quick to follow the lead of “U.S. military officials” who “stressed that the shooting was carried out by a lone, rogue soldier, differentiating it from past instances in which civilians were killed accidentally during military operations.” [6]

Even if one ignores the canard that civilians were killed “accidentally” – the recent history of Afghanistan and Iraq is rife with instances [7] in which civilians were not just killed deliberately but with malice aforethought, as sport – the “officials”, one ought to note, “stressed” that the shooting was carried out by a lone, rogue soldier; meaning, a soldier not under control, and whose actions were not therefore the responsibility of the army which employed, armed, and deployed him.

This, therefore, kills two birds with one stone. For the civilian at home, who has no direct stake in the conflict on the other side of the planet, but whose finances may be suffering from the diversion of money to the Endless War, it provides reassurance; a monstrous act may have been committed, but it was the fault of a lone, out-of-control trooper. It’s possible he was too PTSD’d out to know what he was doing, in which case he needs counselling, not jail. Possibly this provides a bit of cognitive dissonance, because the particular civilian may also be one of those who rail against “liberals” who “mollycoddle” criminals and ignore their victims. But then, he or she can slip easily into the second thread of the narrative; the killer was a vile man, someone who could strip an elderly person of a million and a half dollars and then run for safety into the army. Either way, the suffering the individual civilian, or his family or friends, is enduring isn’t in vain, because it’s a lone bad apple and not the military as a whole.

And for the military, it gives another kind of comfort – it’s not another massacre by an out-of-control group, like the one at Haditha, or the Kill Team, or, earlier, at the unforgettable incident at Mai Lai. Since it’s a single soldier, and “such things happen”, there’s no particular need to do anything about it; the military’s carefully constructed mythology of the Heroic Soldier is not at stake, nor does there have to be any actual action taken on the ground to prevent anything of the like from happening in future. And, as a corollary, the Afghan “government’s” demands to withdraw these troops from villages is not justified, and cannot be agreed to.

In both these cases, it should be noticed, the essential narrative needs to suppress the individuality of the victims. Dead Afghans with names, faces, hopes and lives need to be mourned, and their deaths cry out for justice. Dead Afghans without names or faces are just numbers; nobody really cares about them, even when they say they do. And that slots in with the idea that uncivilised Afghans don’t really mind dying; it isn’t that much to them, since “human life is cheap” there. [8]

A legitimate question can be asked at this point – what about the likes of Mr Vern Kimmit of Orlando, Florida, with whose quote I began this article? Where, with their frantic bloodthirstiness, do they fit in this framework? Aren’t they outside this scenario I have put together?

Answer: no, they aren’t. They are a part of it, all right.

The likes of Mr Kimmit are a subgroup of the people who need constant reassurance that everything that’s going on in the world is someone else’s fault. Like the KONY2012 bandwagon, which provides the believer with an easily hateable figure on whom to blame everything that’s gone wrong with a part of the world, these people have invested a lot of emotion into hating the Other – the Evildoing Muslim Terrorist. They need to keep polishing and buffing up that hate, in order to hold it up so that the reflected light of it can shine in their eyes and keep them from seeing the ugly truth. That’s why those of them who do finally admit the fact that one or more American soldiers can have murdered multiple civilians need to justify that in terms of that hate. Maybe like Mr Kimmit, they claim those children and women were future terrorists and therefore better off dead. Maybe, like others, they seek refuge in claiming that Muslims had killed Americans (in their version of events, no Muslim can be a true American), so this is nothing but turn and turn about. But it’s just twisting and turning on the hook – a way of turning their faces away from the hard light of facts.

And what are those facts? The Afghans, from the start, have not believed the narrative of the single soldier who ran amok, but then, it can be argued, they have equally compelling reasons not to. But they do add to the holes [3] in the official story. For example, they point out [9] that days before the massacre, residents of one of the villages targeted were lined up by American soldiers from the base and threatened with a massacre in retaliation for the bombing in which Sgt Bales’ friend “lost his leg”. They note that the massacre continued for three hours, and that the base in question had complete surveillance over the area and yet utterly failed to stop the so-called “lone gunman” [10]. They point out to all the eyewitness accounts of multiple killers – up to twenty of them, as the chief of staff of the Afghan Army himself declared [11]. In other words, they tell what seems to be a far more believable version of the truth. And to them, flying out the accused killer is all the proof they need that a cover-up is in the works; he’s been taken where he can’t be confronted by witnesses or be subject to a court which isn’t predisposed to believe in the official narrative. Also, going by the fact that earlier cases where American troops were accused (and convicted) of murder and yet got off virtually scot free [12], they have no reason to believe that justice will be done in this case either.

[Source]

But, of course, the official narrative isn’t meant to convince the Afghans, like the man who lost eleven members of his family and has only one son left alive [13]. As I believe I’ve made clear in the course of this article, it’s meant for domestic consumption only, to reassure the people at home that the Heroic Soldier is still a hero, and that the war is still worth fighting, at a time when an increasing majority of the people feel it is not [14]. The Afghans are much more likely to react by joining the insurgency in larger numbers, but they were doing that anyway.

Supposing, therefore, that the massacre was carried out by a group of soldiers, what might their motivation have been? As far as I can see, it comes down to one of two likely possibilities, with a third as a remote chance:

First, and most likely, that the massacre was carried out by a group of soldiers (with or without the knowledge of the rest of the base, but the lack of any effort to stop the massacre indicates that it happened with the knowledge and approval of someone in a position to give orders) in order to “teach the Afghans a lesson”. The burning of the corpses – obviously the shooter/s carried inflammable liquid with malice aforethought – can only be interpreted as a clumsy attempt to cover up the evidence, and supports this idea.

Second, and a little less probably, that it was a “night raid” that went wrong [15]. These “night raids” are, after drones, the lynchpin of the Occupation’s anti-insurgent strategy, and consists of attacking the houses of anyone who is even suspected of being sympathetic to the resistance. Said thought crime is punished by summary execution without trial, and is extremely deeply resented by the Afghans – so much so that even the puppet “President” of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has demanded that they be stopped. It’s certainly not impossible that a group of soldiers sent on a mission to murder suspected Taliban sympathisers ran amok and killed civilians. However, the obviously premeditated attempts to burn the corpses go against this theory. The Occupation normally makes no attempt to cover its tracks where night raids are concerned, because as a terror tactic it makes sense not to cover it up to achieve the maximum impact.

The third and least likely hypothesis is that this was a deliberate action, authorised at the highest levels of the occupation, to try and provoke an Afghan reaction so intense as to provide an excuse to stop the withdrawal of forces as “promised” (if you can believe that) by 2014. However, while the US military commander in Afghanistan, John Allen, has demanded [16] that the “withdrawal” be halted, the NATO vassals are getting out as fast as they can [17] and the Afghan “government” has summoned up the temerity to ask for more control over what happens after 2014 [18] . So, if at all this was a deliberate action, it would seem to have been counterproductive.

Meanwhile…

If I were an Afghan, and if I were to take the “single person shooter” theory of the massacre seriously, then I’d have to conclude I was safer under the Taliban. Could a PTSD’d/deranged/inebriated/brain-damaged (take your pick) foreign soldier wander through villages for hours, entering houses, murder people in their beds and burn their bodies, if the Taliban were around?

I do not think so.

Sources:

[1] http://news.yahoo.com/ap-source-afghan-shooter-stryker-brigade-175222910.html

[2] http://blogs.aljazeera.com/asia/2012/03/19/no-one-asked-their-names

[3] http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/kandahar-massacre-official-story-changes-dramatically/

[4] http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/kandahar-massacre-bales-joined-army-to-avoid-1-5-million-dollar-lawsuit-and-antiwar-publishes-misleading-headline/

[5] http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/03/20/george-packer-and-the-unfathomable/

[6] http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2012/03/american-morlocks-another-civilian.html

[7] http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/03/11/who-are-the-terrorists/

[8] http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/npr_and_nyt_on_americans_v_afghans/

[9] http://news.antiwar.com/2012/03/20/afghan-villagers-were-threatened-by-us-troops-ahead-of-massacre/

[10] http://www.salon.com/2012/03/15/why_did_they_not_stop_the_killings/singleton/

[11] http://www.rt.com/news/kandahar-massacre-counterinsurgency-operation-805/

[12] http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/308-12/9596-marine-accused-in-killing-of-24-iraqis-in-haditha-makes-plea-deal

[13] http://www.npr.org/2012/03/20/148974952/afghan-farmer-lost-11-relatives-in-shooting-rampage

[14] http://news.antiwar.com/2012/03/11/poll-overwhelming-us-opposition-to-afghan-war/

[15] http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/03/22/robert-bales-lone-nut-or-scapegoat/

[16] http://news.antiwar.com/2012/03/22/top-us-commander-in-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal-should-stop-next-year/

[17] http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/NC23Df03.html

[18] http://news.antiwar.com/2012/03/22/karzai-pushes-for-sovereignty-in-post-2014-afghan-security-pact/

Further Reading:

War Crimes and the Mythology of ‘Bad Apples’

The Conflicting Afghan Shooting Reports

“Victimology and the Study of Race as a Means to an End“

by Jennifer Lawson Zepeda

In this day of crime and punishment and black awareness of it, from the Trayvon Martin case, I can’t help but notice the solicitousness of the police in Los Angeles County when addressing black “victims”; and the wholesale neglect of victims of Latino descent.  And yes, I’m talking about the Kendric McDade case in Pasadena.

Is Justice Colorblind?

Absolutely not!  Anyone who observed the Trayvon Martin case and George Zimmerman should have asked how he was first categorized as “white” when he has an obviously “Latino” appearance — a definition (that although isn’t a race), is consistently used by police to describe perpetrators of Latino descent.

Indeed, Zimmerman is one of those South American blends (like me) — with a Peruvian mother and a white father.  With the name Zimmerman, I suppose some people could consider that a white name.  But, unlike me, Zimmerman had a clearly Latino appearance and yet, he was labeled first as white.

So, why would this happen?  The answer lies in the media and their efforts to fuel a long burning ember of racial animosity between Latinos and African Americas to make a story even more interesting.

By labeling this man white, it stirred up some good old fashioned images of the deep south and white racism; and that is exactly what black leaders needed to create the pandemonium to help the Martin family seek justice.   It didn’t help that Zimmerman made his own case against himself by offering up racial slurs during his interview with the police.  Clearly, this man was a racist.

When they concluded Zimmerman was Latino, they could add a new form of hate to that.  The blacks who have jumped on the immigration bandwagon, yelling “Go back to Mexico,”  to all Latinos who they hold responsible for their job loss, also came out to join against Zimmerman.

As a Latino, Zimmerman became more hideous, more evil, more insidious to many blacks for having murdered an innocent young black teenager; because, of the racial tensions between the two cultures.  That he was indeed a racist justified that hatred.  After all, here was one more Latino with what African Americans saw as a stereotypical attitude against blacks.

Even though Zimmerman isn’t an immigrant, he became the target of two issues with blacks:  uppity Latinos with racial intolerance for blacks, and black resentment over Latinos who many blacks see as taking their jobs.

As the debate over illegal immigration in the U.S. escalates, the scenario playing out among day laborers reflects a growing uneasiness among some blacks nationwide.

Many worry that the flood of illegal-immigrant workers crossing the border from Mexico is muscling low-skilled workers, many of them black, out of jobs in a number of industries — from the service sector to construction.

The showdowns are taking place on the streets of cities like Los Angeles, where African Americans have joined demonstrations against illegal immigration.

Some have teamed up with the Minuteman Project, a border-watch group that reports illegal crossings from Mexico into the United States, and whose members some have called vigilantes and racists.

(Source:  Some blacks say Latino immigrants taking their jobs)

Latino-black animosity isn’t a new phenomenon in race relations.  In many communities where blacks and Latinos live side by side they view one another with great suspicion.  There is a basic mistrust between many in the two very different cultures.

For years, Latino leaders have pointed the finger of blame at blacks when Latinos are robbed, beaten and even murdered. Blacks, in turn, have blamed Latinos for taking jobs, for colonizing neighborhoods, for gang violence.

In fact, even though hate-crime laws were originally created to combat crimes by whites against minority groups, the majority of L.A. County’s hate crimes against blacks in 2006 were suspected to have been committed by Latinos, and vice versa, according to the county Commission on Human Relations.

(Source: The black-Latino blame game)

Pasadena Police have another Trayvon Martinesque killing on their hands.  A young black men, named Kendric McDade.  A teen who ran from the police after a report by a victim who has conveniently been labeled by both the black and white communities as an “illegal immigrant” – an easy way to dismiss a man’s word, value or worth in the U.S. today – reported that a black teenager had robbed him of his backpack and computer.

Click to Sign Oscar Carillo's Petition

In short, Oscar Carrillo made a 911 call to report a robbery.  He had been robbed of his backpack containing his computer and  he reported the perpetrator was a “black man with a gun.”

In their investigation, the police noticed Kendrec Mcdade running, and a chase pursued.  Why a young man would run from the police if he were innocent, instead of answering questions, hasn’t been addressed.  But, his efforts to run from the police ended up getting him shot.  Supposedly because of the report that the perpetrator was armed and McDade reached for his waistband to hike up his pants.

Since Oscar Carillo gave a false report that the perpetrator had a gun, to ensure the police would respond sooner, he was arrested on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter for reporting the crime falsely.  The Pasadena Police Department did this as a way to offset the fact that a cop killed a black youth.  Indeed, Oscar Carillo knew for a fact that the man who robbed him did not have a gun.  But, he was not the person that ultimately shot Kendric McDade.

The result of this was that Mr. Carillo was held in detention for a brief time for giving a false report and then, released.  But during this detention, it was discovered that Oscar Carillo was in the country illegally.  And this has fueled an many resentments against Latinos  — who blacks have formed an anti-immigration stance on anyway.

So now, the victim has been held from deportation until the police figure things out.

Blaming the Latino 

None of this is new to Los Angeles.  The blame game between African Americans and Latinos has existed for sometime here.  It even goes as far back as 2007, when black activists marched into city hall to discuss gang violence between the two races; stating that Antonio Villaraigosa had failed to prevent violence by Latino gang members against blacks in South Los Angeles.

“You have one race of people exterminating another race of people,” said one African American woman.

I’m guessing that African American gangs also shooting Latinos wasn’t considered racial extermination by this ‘unbiased’ woman.  The fact that gang violence was considered a one-way issue by this group isn’t completely amazing.  This has been a mindset in many African American communities for decades, ever since Latino families have been moving into predominantly African American enclaves.

On the same day, elsewhere in the city, Latino parents stormed out of a meeting of a Los Angeles Unified School District advisory council. The council had been fighting for months about whether to hold its meetings in Spanish or English — a dispute that got so abusive that district officials felt the need to bring in dispute-resolution experts and mental health counselors. On this particular Friday, the Latino parents walked out after a group of black parents voted to censure the panel’s Latino chairman.

 These two events are certainly not isolated incidents, but they are the most recent examples of the long-running tensions between blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles.

(Source: The black-Latino blame game)

Race not an Issue

I keep hearing people say that race is not an issue in these cases.

I’m calling bullshit on this one!  Race is not only THE issue, it is the reason Police  Lieutenant. Phlunte Riddle chose to address this crime with the Pasadena Community, when other murders never merit this much attention.

It is also the reason the Hutchinson Report aired a Townhall of the Air on Pacifica Network KPFK Radio 90.7 FM, entitled, “Is Kendric McDade Another Trayvon Martin?” The on-air town hall featured invited guests: Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez, Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, Pasadena NAACP officials.  If this wasn’t about race, then why did this happen?

One thing that stands out with me is the fact that the Latino victim, who was robbed of his backpack and computer, has been vilified to satisfy the surge of black anger against Latinos, as the result of two innocent black kids who have been killed.

While we are hearing a great deal about about the dangers young unarmed black men face when they are unfairly perceived as dangerous; there hasn’t been a peep about the dangers young Latinos face each day as they are perceived as Mexicans who should ‘Go home!

Or the attitude of many blacks who feel they have the right to scream that out to any Latino that displeases them.  We haven’t heard of retaliation crimes such as the one in Lancaster.

Palmdale Detectives have identified seven attackers associated with an assault that occurred near Cactus Middle School on March 14, 2012.

The 15-year-old Hispanic victim in this assault was walking home from school near the 3200 Block of East Avenue R-8, when a group of up to ten male Black juveniles approached him and challenged him to a fight.

The suspects surrounded the victim and began punching him while several other juveniles watched.

The victim continued to defend himself from the group of suspects until he fell to the ground. The suspects continued to assault him by punching and kicking him in the face and head. The victim was finally able to get his feet and escape the onslaught of the attackers.

After arriving home, the victim was treated at a local hospital for multiple kicks to his head resulting in swelling and shoe impressions left in his skin. The victim is also undergoing surgery to repair several of his teeth which were kicked out during the attack.

(Source: CAPTURED: Attackers who beat up 15-year-old boy walking home from school)

Note the date of the attack — March 30, 2012, seven days after Trayvon Martin was murdered (March 23rd, 2012) and sentiment was  high against Latinos.

Go Back to Mexico! 

It’s something most of us Latinos and our family members hear on a weekly basis these days, from blacks.

Riding the bus to my medical appointment, a young Latino slides past a heavy set black woman and she grows irritated.  She shoots those words out as if this is socially acceptable, “Go back to Mexico!”  She doesn’t even know if the man is Salvadoran, Mexican, Peruvian or even an immigrant.  But the words ring out just like the words used to ring out against blacks. Her casual acceptance that this is okay, that she doesn’t care who this offends mimics the racial superiority of whites from years past.  It’s the ‘whites only’ attitude now used by many blacks towards Latinos they feel they have to compete with.

So the racial tensions grow.  How many innocent minority victims do we need to stop this?

I’m not condoning Zimmerman for murdering that innocent young man.  Zimmerman’s actions should have led to his arrest, just as the actions of the blacks who beat the Latino in Lancaster led to their arrest.

That there is disparity in whom is arrested and charged, is an issue every minority should be addressing, not just the blacks.  But on the same hand, this ‘Go back to Mexico’ mentality needs to stop.  If you want people to understand your plight, then you need to understand the plight of others.  I’m a bit fed up with hearing blacks feel as comfortable as the KKK in telling any Latino who displeases them, to Go back to Mexico!

Tell me that, and I’ll tell you to go back to Africa, so you can see how it feels!  That’s how it works.  Don’t like it?

Stop it!

To read more from Jennifer on this subject and others, visit her blog @ http://lawsonzepeda.blogspot.com/

By: Bill The Butcher

Once upon a time, in the depths of Africa, there was an ancient empire called Mali. Situated at the crossroads of caravan trails across the Sahara, Mali grew rich from commerce in gold, ivory and slaves. The centre of the ancient empire was the city of Timbuktu, of which you may have heard.

As time went on, the trade declined, the desert advanced, and the great city of Timbuktu shrank to a poverty-afflicted town of fifty thousand. The empire itself faded and died away, to be replaced by a French colony and then, in the fullness of time, one of those nations of Francophone Africa that are nominally independent but still under close control by the puppet-masters in Paris. And this nation, the Republic of Mali, was itself ethnically divided between the Tuareg people of the north, along with others, and the West African population to the south. The Tuaregs, who are spread over several nations, have rebelled several times over the last decades, seeking a homeland called Azawad; and each time they were crushed.

During these years, Mali went through the usual African stages of being a military dictatorship, before one of the officers to stage a coup, for whatever reason, decided to hand over power to an elected civilian government. This officer, Amadou Toumani Touré, later returned as civilian president, and was due to remit office in an election to be held a month from now. Under him, Mali was one of those “bastions of democracy” so beloved of the Empire, and Malian troops were trained by Imperial stormtroopers in “anti-terrorist operations”. As I’ve said more than once before, regimes which receive the approbation of the Empire tend to be less than wholesome when seen up close and personal, so I’ll not exactly fall over myself endorsing Mr Touré.

If you’re reading this article at all, you’ll be aware of the civil war in Libya, and the NATO/Al Qaeda Alliance’s destruction of that nation. You’ll know of the overthrow and murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. You’ll also be aware that the civil war in Libya continues, and that there have been arguably genocidal measures, including ethnic cleansing, taken by the “victorious” Al Qaeda affiliated militia against black Libyans, who are called “mercenaries”. Many of these “mercenaries” were ethnic Berbers and Tuaregs, who had fought for Gaddafi because they had been well aware that under him their rights had been protected.

Now, at the time of the collapse of Gaddafi’s government, Libya was awash in arms, a lot of which was left over from the government’s own stocks, and a lot of others supplied to the “brave freedom fighters” of the Al Qaeda-affiliated NATO-backed militia; everything from armaments to “thousands” of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. And while Libya (as I’d predicted a year ago) disintegrated into a patchwork of militia-controlled statelets, the Tuareg “mercenaries” took these weapons and moved down into northern Mali.

Remember what I’d said about the Tuareg rebellions the Malians had suppressed? Well, guess what happened next.

In January, Tuareg rebel factions united under the flag of a new separatist movement, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). With the help of the weapons flooding south from Libya, in battle after battle they’ve routed the (Empire-trained) Malian army, who are by and large fleeing the battlefield without a fight.

If that sounds interesting – apparently the Empire’s training doesn’t count for much when it comes to fighting a determined and well-armed enemy – there’s more to come. Remember that the Tuaregs are routinely called “Gaddafi mercenaries” by the same shining sources of Western truth as those who called Gaddafi the embodiment of all evil. Also, remember that Gaddafi had cracked down hard on Al Qaeda and on Islamic fundamentalism in general, and that the “brave rebels” fighting him were Al Qaeda affiliated militia, the same people who are now on the ground in Syria, fighting with NATO backing against the anti-Al Qaeda government of President Assad. Well, the MNLA in Mali, the alleged “mercenaries in the pay of Gaddafi”, are affiliated with…guess who.

In a situation which will surprise absolutely nobody, the MNLA’s allies are Al Qaeda In Maghreb (AQIM), the franchise of the basic Al Qaeda which is active in North-Central Africa. AQIM has been active in recent years in the desert regions of northern Mali, and has – by means of attacks on and kidnappings of tourists – virtually ended foreign tourism in Timbuktu. So, the NATO liberators destroyed Libya, handed it over to Al Qaeda, and left widening ripples of consequences all over North Africa.

Some liberation, I must say!

As the MNLA (and its AQIM allies-of-convenience) routed the army of Mali, the aforesaid government of Amadou Toumani Touré was due to cede power after elections at the end of the month. That didn’t happen, because the Malian army (the same Malian army which is getting its ass soundly whipped by the Tuaregs) turned on its own president and overthrew him in a military coup. They blamed Touré for their defeat, which is pretty interesting since he was supposed to be one of the “good guys”, a “democratic ruler” who “cooperated in the War on Terror.” Even more interesting, the coup leader, one Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, was trained by the Empire and can be assumed to be in their pockets.

Wheels within wheels within wheels, did someone say?

As Sanogo suspended the constitution and the West African union, ECOWAS, turned its heat on his new junta, the MNLA continued to blaze its way across the territory the Tuareg claim as their homeland of Azawad. In just three months – their rebellion began on 17 January – they have captured almost all of the territory. The latest city to fall is Timbuktu – yes, the Timbuktu. The Malian army fled without a fight.

Let’s just try and take a moment to make sense of the line-up in Mali:

On one side, there’s, first, the various factions of Tuareg rebels under the MNLA. They, of course, have very legitimate grievances. Like so many other peoples of post-colonial Africa, they are the victims of colonial borders, which have taken no account of their own traditional home territories. Meanwhile the Malians have refused them their rights, neglected their desert home, bombed their refugee camps, and kept them out of the power structure. As the desert has swallowed their settlements and pastures, they have little economic opportunities except gun- and drug-running.

Yes, the MNLA is full of ex-combatants from Libya. Some of them fought for Gaddafi; some of them probably fought against him. One can only speculate how long their internal contradictions will stay buried. Since January, their victory mach has looked unstoppable. But if and when they are fought to a standstill, or even more if they win their independent state of Azawad, how long will it be before they are at each other’s throats?

Going by the history of similar rebellions, not too long.

Then there are the Al Qaeda In Maghreb. If it is true that the bulk of the Tuaregs fought for Gaddafi, they are unlikely to have much sympathy for AQIM. As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t place too much reliance on Western media claims on anything, so I won’t automatically believe that they are allied with the MNLA. But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume they are. At the moment, they are likely to benefit from the chaos and confusion of war, with its attendant breakdown of law and order. But once an independent Tuareg Azawad is established, the first point on the new rulers’ agenda will be to establish control and the rule of law (their law). Guess just who will suddenly metamorphose into their biggest enemies then?

Now, on the other side, there’s the Malian government, or, rather, governments. There’s Touré, who’s still the legitimate president of the country, and whose whereabouts seem to be unknown; at least he doesn’t seem to be in the junta’s custody. There’s Sanogo’s week-old dictatorship, which is opposed to Touré, of course, but which is supposed to share with him the agenda of defeating the Tuareg rebellion. Sanogo is himself opposed, meanwhile, by ECOWAS, which has imposed sanctions on Mali. And in the background is the glowering presence of the Empire, which is largely responsible for creating this mess in the first place; the Empire, which trained Sanogo, which allegedly favours democracy, and which gave Al Qaeda a free hand in Libya.

Does that sound complicated enough? No?

I haven’t even mentioned the other minority populations of Azawad, the Songhai and others who have their own quarrels, buried in history, with the Tuaregs. In an independent Azawad, they will have their own grievances, their own resentments. It’s certain they will feel discriminated against by the Tuareg power structure, and there will be enough other players to fish in troubled waters to make sure they are given the opportunity to act on those grievances.

So, this is what an independent Azawad is likely to look like – deeply impoverished, with absolutely no development or source of income (nobody has discovered oil there yet!), with competing factions jockeying for power, and a slow-burning civil war going on with multiple players and shifting alliances. Meanwhile, Mali, unwilling to reconcile to the loss of the majority of its territory, will continue to provoke border clashes. Overall, it will be very much like the situation in South Sudan, but because there’s no oil involved, nobody will really care very much apart from the people who live there.

Also, the Tuaregs, as I said, don’t all live in Mali – substantial populations inhabit contiguous areas in neighbouring nations. How long after an independent Azawad is established before they begin fighting to secede from those nations and join their ethnic brethren in the new nation? And what happens when those other nations react violently, as they inevitably will? Why do you think that none of the four countries in which Kurds live, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, are willing to consider for a moment the possibility of an independent Kurdish state?

Or maybe, though at the moment it looks highly unlikely, the Tuaregs won’t win. Maybe the Malian army, with or without Imperial or other help, will beat back the MNLA, and reassert control over Azawad. That’s hardly likely to be a better situation, because the Tuareg people have, as Mao Zedong said, “stood up” and will not easily lie down again. standing in the sandy streets of Timbuktu will confirm, it’s obvious that it has not.Battle hardened and well-equipped, they will fight back hard against what they will undoubtedly see as Malian colonial occupation. And in a world where much less deserving secessionist movements have received the Empire’s blessings and aid, it’s difficult to justify leaving them under Malian occupation when they clearly do not want to be.

Ultimately, the fact is that the Mess in Mali is the fault of the Empire and its ceaseless meddling. Actions have consequences, and some of these consequences have further consequences. The anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan spawned Al Qaeda and eventually the Taliban, for example, and you’d have thought even the Empire would have learnt a lesson or two from that.

But as anyone standing in the sandy streets of Timbuktu will confirm, it’s obvious that it has not.

By: Grainne Rhuad

Earlier in the week the Canadian government struck down two old provisions that made working with prostitutes illegal.  While prostitution has been legal for some time in Canada, the services around it like bookkeeping, healthcare, insurance, etc. have not been.  While this could seem like a plus, prostitutes technically did not have to pay taxes, it also had its drawbacks, prostitutes could not plan for their futures or claim any expenses, of which there seems, there are many.

Most public opinion reported was favorable.   “I feel like a citizen.” That’s what Valerie Scott — legal coordinator of the Sex Professionals of Canada organization — said after emerging from a courtroom where the Supreme Court of Ontario struck down two provisions in the criminal code against prostitution.

What this decision also provided was the legalization of brothels or the incorporation of prostitutes in supportive environments and the ability to legally hire support staff.

At a moment in time when in the United States women’s reproductive rights are a huge topic of discussion from Politicians to Women’s Book Clubs.  And  when it seems like the world should be moving forward, The United States has taken a big step back in how it feels about womanhood in general –(Fun fact: Did you know science didn’t know exactly what  a clitoris looked like until 2009?) and Prostitution in particular.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the political field.  Prostitution after all is a matter which is only important to people professing a moral issue with it.

It is an unfortunate truth that the United States has made morality its business.  The small insertion of God’s name by the founding fathers, despite Thomas Jefferson’s many writings to the contrary has given every politician since the idea that the United States government exists to enforce morality on its citizenry.

A funny dichotomy since the very act of being a politician is in essence prostituting oneself to the masses in order to get either a payday or power or both.  In fact political pandering produced more tax sheltered dollars and benefits for the politician than any prostitute can ever hope to earn.

But let’s break the two down a bit more:

On the one hand, a prostitute makes his or her money by agreeing to engage in pre-arranged acts of sexual congress.  Sometimes the script goes off course and they end up doing more than they thought they would and since what they are doing is illegal they have no recourse.  They simply live through it and go to work the next day.

On the other hand, a politician makes his/her money by agreeing to engage in pre-arranged acts of congress and business and special interests.  Very often the script goes off course and since what they are doing is against the constitution and/or laws, they are left with no recourse.  They simply live through it and pass the pain on to their constituents.

See, Politian’s are actually more screwed than prostitutes and by more people.  They also highjack a higher number of people to their “business ventures” and pass along the pain than does your typical prostitute.

None of this really matters to us as a society of course, as most people are perfectly fine with prostitution being legalized.  It works fine in states like Nevada with no apparent shift in the Moral Majority’s standing in that state.  In fact the Moral Majority is alive and well there.  Mormons, who we have heard so much of with Mitt Romney running for president, operate a Temple in the heart of Las Vegas and their membership numbers for the state are 346,677. Nevada also boasts 9 mega churches with a congregation total of roughly 39,681.  This doesn’t include the many other moral majority members less easy to count that belong to smaller congregations.  By comparison the number licensed brothels in the state are 28 which employ on average 300 prostitutes at any given time. (Nevada law does not allow for prostitution outside of brothels) That adds up to roughly 8,400 registered prostitutes, quite a bit less than the moral majority in the state of Nevada. (Source: Wikipedia)

No, in the one state in the Union known for its legalized prostitution, there is no problem with the Moral Majority living side by side with prostitution.  This is because prostitution has in our time become just another sling or arrow to throw at those on the other side of the fence.  It is a galvanizing word and it gets people’s attention because in our society when we say it we think of sexuality.

However, we can and do prostitute everything from our time and talents to our very souls, which if we were actually taking some sort of moral high ground would seem to be of more concern than what we did to blow off steam or meet our physical needs.

But name calling and finger pointing isn’t relegated to prostitutes.  We have a variety of ways to call people names who we don’t agree with. We also call them sluts, whores and liberals. Conversely the other side is quick to call their nemesis names like conservatives, republicans, reporklicans, republicants.  We call them Politicians too.  When people point out our foibles and we don’t like it, we dismiss them by calling them pundits, non-mainstream news, bloggers or even worse; Comedians.  What do comedians know anyway?  This is a tactic recently used by Fox News and affiliates.  As pointed out by Jon Stewart recently on The Daily Show:

It’s a good thing Comedians have a sense of humor as shown by Will Farrell in his “comedy helmet”

Back to Prostitution, it’s a job, like any other job.  Some people may find it distasteful, boring, and morally wrong and those people shouldn’t do that job.  Just like people who find feet gross shouldn’t be podiatrists.  But does it hurt society?  In the words of one person recently (legalizing prostitution) “reduces the cost of war on crime, increases tax revenue, regulates it, and if done properly, can reduce the risk of diseases… hey, people are gonna fuck, legal or not…”

Clearly it does not.  It hasn’t slowed anyone’s moral, spiritual or community growth.  Nevada is a testament to that.  Its legalization protects both those in the sex trade field and those who need to be protected from it, like under aged children who might otherwise be taken advantage of. In fact a Canadian study outlined how keeping prostitution illegal hurt sex industry workers.  It protects the procurers of sex.  They don’t have to worry about being blackmailed or their kept woman keeping other lovers.  The contract is clear from the beginning.

It even protects the politicians.  The ones who rant about the evils of sex (except to procreate- a lot apparently).  Maybe especially the politicians as they are the ones most often caught in prostitution scandals.  Making this legal keeps them on the job, selling themselves to the highest bidder with no worry about skeletons being released.

Sounds like a good deal all around.

By: Bill The Butcher

Statutory Warning: This post is a statement of my thoughts on this subject and my sources are linked to in the body of the text. I am not in any way responsible for any fights/disagreements/fallings out resulting from discussion arising from this post, whether on this site or elsewhere on the internet or other media where it might appear or be referenced. Also, this post is not meant to be an “apology” for “genocide”. If that’s the best you can manage as a counter, you’d probably be better off reading something else

One of the most interesting bits of news I came across in the last few days came not from Syria but from further west, from Libya, scene of an unending civil war stoked and affected by the West, in the shape of NATO, in the name of humanitarian intervention. That little bit of news was that the head of the so-called “government” of Libya, the National Transitional Council, threatened to use force to “unite the nation” – in other words, to compel the eastern part of the country, Cyrenaica, and especially its capital, Benghazi, to abandon its declaration of partial autonomy.

The irony of this situation is delicious. Benghazi – for those who have the attention span and awareness to remember – was the “epicentre” of the so-called “popular uprising” against Muammar Gaddafi, the “evil tyrant” who was bombed out of power by the West and murdered after capture, to the happy laughter of the Evil Empire’s Lucrezia Borgia, someone who I will henceforth refer to as Killary Klingon. It was to “protect the citizens of Benghazi” that a no-fly zone was imposed by a NATO Coalition of the Killing, followed by a “humanitarian” bombing campaign which murdered an unknown number of civilians – NATO, of course, denying any such thing happened.

And now NATO’s own puppet ruler is threatening to attack…Benghazi…in order to “unite the nation” and end an attempt at autonomy. Can anyone tell me exactly how this is different from what Gaddafi was doing? And if the NTC assaults Benghazi and the civil war goes into top gear again instead of merely sputtering along, as it is now, will NATO planes intervene again to “protect civilians”?

Of course not. I know that, you know that, and the Syrians, Russians and Chinese know that.

In fact, the key to understanding the civil war in Syria lies in Libya, where a UN resolution was made into an excuse to intervene in a civil war on one side, and destroy a country and society in order to privatise its oil industry and hand it over to private players. Even countries which didn’t say a word at the time noticed what was going on, and knew what was in store for Syria even when the first inflamed rhetoric began to fly in the air.

This, basically, is why Russia and China have repeatedly and “perversely” blocked resolutions at the UN made by the exact same people who have destroyed Libya: because, while leaving the current government in power may by some standards be bad, the alternative is far, far worse.

This might as well be the place to make another observation: the fact that while the same people in NATO circles of power are itching to start a war against Syria, the same people on the ground are also fighting in Syria. Yes, the same Islamic warriors who fought the Gaddafi government are now part of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA); and its military chief is Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Does that name sound familiar? It should; I have written about him before. Abdelhakim Belhadj, ex-Al Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan and Libya, arrested by the CIA and imprisoned by Muammar Gaddafi, pardoned and released by his son Saif al-Islam, only to restart the rebellion against the Gaddafis with the full support of the same CIA which had shopped him. Abdelhakim Belhadj, military governor of Tripoli, Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist, and leading the Great Hope of Freedom, the Free Syrian Army.

Is this a joke, perhaps? No, it isn’t. It’s interesting to think of why.

Old time Marxists had a term worth remembering: objective allies. It referred to forces, which while apparently at loggerheads, were united, secretly or otherwise, against a common foe. Anyone who has a fair knowledge of current affairs and a mind capable of even basic analysis can hardly come to any other conclusion but that the Empire and Al Qaeda are objective allies.

Look at the actual evidence. With the single exception of Afghanistan in 2001, the regimes overthrown (directly or indirectly) by the Empire in Muslim countries have followed a pattern. They have been secular dictatorships with a strongly socialist economy, where resources were nationalised and religious fundamentalism ruthlessly crushed. Such was the pattern in Iran with the CIA-run coup which overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh. That was the pattern in Afghanistan, where the Empire conspired with Muslim religious fundamentalists to destroy the socialist government of Najibullah. So too it went in Iraq – Saddam, for those readers who have chosen to forget, was a secular dictator under whom Christians and other religious minorities were perfectly safe (oh, by the way, there are some 14 million Christian Arabs in the world, which is more than the planet’s entire Jewish population – those who love to call Arabs uncivilised Muslim ragheads should think about that for a moment.)

Such was also the case in Libya, where Gaddafi had destroyed an Al Qaeda rebellion earlier. Such was the case even in Chechnya, where the West provided full backing for the Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic terrorists who fought the Russians – to this day, surviving Chechen warlords are hosted in London. Even Afghanistan, which I mentioned earlier, is fast slipping back into religious intolerance under the Western-anointed puppet government. In Pakistan, the broadly modern and secular society is under a double threat, from the Empire and the fundamentalists, who seem to work to reinforce each other.

Consider: in every one of these cases, the Empire and Al Qaeda are on the same side. Despite all the “they hate our freedoms” rhetoric, the actual target of Al Qaeda isn’t the Empire – it’s the secular Muslim governments on the one hand, more so if they dare follow socialist policies; and the corrupt and despotic Saudi monarchy on the other. The Saudi monarchy is too vital to the Empire to sacrifice. Therefore, diverting Al Qaeda’s attention to the socialist and secular Arab regimes had a twofold advantage for the Empire: it protected the Saudi royals, and at the same time it furthered the Empire’s double agenda of controlling the world’s oil deposits and strengthening the hand of the Zionazi pseudostate. The elimination of an irrelevant liability named Osama bin Laden, quite likely orchestrated by Al Qaeda itself, is neither here nor there.

What, ultimately, was the effect of the 11/9 attacks on the World Trade Centres? Wasn’t it the opening up of Iraq to Al Qaeda activity, and the energising of Sunni fundamentalist terrorism around the globe? Isn’t “stopping Al Qaeda” the excuse behind virtually every single occupation or intervention the West is running in a Muslim nation today, from Yemen to Somalia, from northern Nigeria to Afghanistan, even where there is no evidence that Al Qaeda even exists?

Let me ask this question: if it were not for the brave resistance fighters who fought the Empire to a stalemate in the streets and alleys of Iraq, would not Shiite, anti-Al Qaeda Iran, and Shiite Alawite-ruled, anti-Al Qaeda Syria, have long since been invaded in their turn? Remember the neocon boast from 2003: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran”? This isn’t the first time lies have been told about Syria, either.

Is it so surprising, then, that the “freedom fighters” of the FSA were attacking civilians and murdering Shia and Christian people in Homs and forcing them to flee? Is it so surprising that the Sunni people of western Iraq, who logically should be on the side of the Sunni people of Syria who are allegedly suffering under a Shiite dictatorship, are strongly against arming the Free Syrian Army? They have seen what Al Qaeda can do, and they have no wish to see it happen again. Car bombs, for instance, have already gone off in Damascus and Aleppo; the “price of freedom”?

Is it, then, surprising at all that Killary Klingon admitted that Al Qaeda and the Empire were on the same side in Syria? It wasn’t. Is it so surprising that Russia and China are deeply suspicious of the Empire’s motives? Not at all.

Of course, the Russians and the Chinese have their own agendas as well. They know perfectly well that – whatever Al Qaeda wants – the ultimate targets of the Empire are their own nations. The Empire isn’t even particularly subtle about it; openly trying to encircle China in the Pacific while denouncing Vladimir Putin’s entirely legitimate election win in Russia (even though the aforesaid Killary Klingon admitted it was legitimate). They know that Syria is meant to be captured as a prelude to the invasion of Iran – the Empire and its Arab vassals have made no secret of their belief that the fall of the legitimate Syrian government of Bashar Assad will be a “major blow for Iran” – and that if Iran falls, the Empire’s stranglehold on most of the world’s oil supplies will be complete. And if Muslim fundamentalism triumphs in West Asia, renewed Islamic terrorism in the Chechen and Uighur areas will be sparked off almost at once; terrorism which the West has historically supported and will enthusiastically support again.

This, then, is the ultimate reason Russia and China have stood firm against NATO bullying and expansionism: Libya was a wake-up call. They simply cannot afford to lose Syria.

Meanwhile, what is happening on the ground in Syria? Another interesting thing about reports from that nation is how many of them are sourced to unnamed “activists”. When those activists acquired names, they have been regularly exposed as being fake identities of people in Britain; the same Britain which took the lead in bombing Libya and which continues to help occupy Afghanistan. And yet these unsourced, unverified “reports” have been made the basis of denunciations of the Assad regime and its alleged genocide of peaceful civilians.

Let me take a moment to say something which might shock some readers: like much of the world’s population, if a “reputable Western media source” says the sun rises in the East, I’d demand independent verification. And after the WMD lies in Iraq, the continuing campaign of calumny against Iran, the whitewashing of the crimes of the Zionazi pseudo state, the lies about Gaddafi’s alleged complicity in the Lockerbie bombing (which led to many Britons in particular supporting the war against him in the name of revenge, just as revenge is now a keyword for intervention in Syria), and on and on and on, I think mine is the logical position. I can barely think of a single substantive issue where, if the West and anyone else differed, the West was proved to have been telling the truth when the facts came out.

As such, I have extreme skepticism about the Western version of events anywhere in the world, least of all in Syria; and I shall continue to maintain said skepticism for the rest of this article.

The epicentre of the Libyan war was, allegedly, Misrata, a city on the way to Benghazi. Misrata held out against Gaddafi’s troops and was later made the springboard for the assault on Tripoli by the so-called “freedom fighters”. In Syria, the epicentre was the city of Homs, where “brave” (which, in Western propaganda, always means Western-backed) “freedom fighters” (in this case, the Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists of the FSA) were fighting the Syrian Army.

Let’s also say something here: the Syrian government would under no circumstances have abandoned Homs. That city has always been the nerve-centre of Syrian revolutionary activity; the Syrians could no more have abandoned it than they’d have abandoned Damascus. This is why both sides went head-to-head in Homs, a battle that only the Army could win.

But the fact that the Syrian Army would inevitably win in Homs wasn’t a factor in the Free Syrian Army’s decision to fight in the city; what they wanted was to try and engineer a Libya-like Western intervention in Syria, and use it as a casus belli. All the actual evidence, including their proved habit of lies and exaggerations. points to that.

Those of you who keep up with the news will remember the reports that kept on repeating that Homs was “pounded again by Syrian artillery” – day after day after day. I don’t know how many have actually taken the time to wonder what said bombardment would mean in real terms. But, if you’ve ever seen the aftermath of a real bombardment, even on TV, you’ll know that pretty much nothing is left of a town but a heap of rubble. An artillery shell is a case of explosives and shrapnel which blasts down walls and shatters everything from trees to streets, blows roofs off buildings, and leaves doors and windows as gaping holes. Think of Stalingrad, or Berlin. Think of Grozny or Fallujah.

So, if the news of the bombardment was to be taken at face value, there shouldn’t have been anything left to be shelled day after day after day. But there was, even according to the “brave freedom fighters”, since they claimed that the hospitals of Homs were converted into torture centres. How these hospitals and other buildings survived the shelling was a mystery nobody seems to have thought to ponder. Did the Assad regime deliberately spare them? Was then the shelling not so indiscriminate after all, or not so intense, or both?

There are reports from the Battle of Homs itself, where Western journalists who entered Syria illegally and embedded themselves with the terrorist gangs were killed or injured. The gangs themselves used these reporters virtually as human shields, and claimed that they were cut off and surrounded by the Syrian Army, which was going to murder everyone unless stopped. Well, what happened?

What happened was that the allegedly “surrounded” FSA units withdrew from Homs. This proves that either Bashar Assad’s regime (in the shape of his “brutal” brother, who commands a division) is foolhardily generous to its defeated opponents, or that the FSA units weren’t surrounded at all. There is no third explanation. Corollary: either way, the FSA is lying. But really that’s not so surprising any longer, is it?

The “bad guys”, also called the Syrian Army

Also, when Homs fell, thirteen French officers were captured there by the Syrian Army. This squares with reports that the same NATO war criminal regimes who bombed Libya and armed terrorist gangs there were on the ground in Syria from as early as December of last year; that the West supports and encourages terrorism against any country like Iran which doesn’t bow to its diktats isn’t even news. Apparently the fate of these thirteen French war criminals is the subject of secret negotiations. Syria would do better to parade them on TV in chains before marching them off to a firing squad. As illegal combatants, they have no rights, and if the situation had been different, the utterly vile Sarkozy regime in Paris would have shown no mercy.

Meanwhile the legitimate Syrian government of Assad held a referendum for a new constitution, ending one-party rule, which was approved of by 80% of the people who voted, which was 57% of the population. Not surprisingly, the Al Qaeda gangs forming the FSA denounced the exercise. No more surprisingly, the West, which only supports democracy when the “right side” wins (look at what happened when HAMAS won a democratic election in Occupied Palestine), also denounced the exercise.

Coming to the aid of the Western propaganda effort are alleged “liberals” like Uri Avnery, a “peace activist” from the zionazi pseudo state who enthusiastically supported the bombing of Libya and now no less enthusiastically longs for Syria to be invaded and regime-changed. Such people are dangerous, because readers look at what they are saying on one topic, for instance, that Palestinians should be treated like human beings, and then are taken in by their regurgitated lies and propaganda on other topics. One telling fact is that Avnery has fallen completely silent on Libya; the fact that the armed militias there are carrying on their own internecine civil war and apparently is of no moment to him. There are also websites like Uruk net, which denounce Syria and Iran and yet supported Gaddafi in Libya; their cognitive dissonance is either so extreme as to be literally blinding, or, just as likely, they are paid agents taking part in a sophisticated propaganda exercise on behalf of those who are anti-Syria and anti-Iran. I’ll leave you to contemplate who those might be.

It’s certainly true that the Assad regime is in many ways unsavoury; but the same West which supports, props up and mollycoddles regimes like the murderous ones in Ethiopia, Bahrain or Yemen, among others, the same West which once supported Assad, as it did Gaddafi, has absolutely no moral leg to stand on when it comes to Syria.

But the fact that they are lying in their teeth won’t stop them. Only Russia and China can do that.

And actual and legitimate governments of Syria, now and in the future, of course.

Further reading:

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About The Syrian Revolution

Somewhere in the scrub forests of East-Central Africa is a man so evil that he is the epitome of all that is wrong with the Universe, a man so utterly vile that tracking him down and bringing him to justice is a Holy Crusade, one that should involve children from around the world.

By: Grainne Rhuad

It was while I was watching Karl Pilkington on “Idiot Abroad-The Bucket List”, that I began thinking about shanty towns and their environmental impact.  Karl in his idiot savant-ish way stated what should have been the obvious to all of us.

“There’s not really much that you can change, is there?  You can come down here, build a new hut, donate some money but in the end, you haven’t changed anything have you?”

He was right.  This problem of displaced humans is bigger than a Unicef jar or a new hut or a batch of collected clothing.  It impacts people, we see that and we have known that for a long time. But it’s also impacting our environment.

Urban poverty poses a great health and environmental risk for everyone, not just those forced to live in it.  Because people are marginalized they are forced to live in areas where nobody else will live and they do not face the possibility of being forced out due to development. Poverty puts pressure on people to engage in unsustainable and ecologically damaging practices.

In most areas of the world this means less than desirable land.  A swampland or flood zone where maladies like malaria is rampant is the setting for a lot of these shanty towns. The South African ghetto of Soweto was actually built next to a sewage facility so that the poor could be close to work.

In Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Recife, the topography has caused much of the urban poor to occupy the hills. Following deforestation, extreme soil compaction and the absence of retaining walls, these dwellings are subject to landslides and dangerous rock falls.

But also to be taken into account is the fact that these towns are extremely DIY.  They aren’t built with good materials and no thought is given to sewage, water cleanliness or anything further than a roof really.

A good number of favelas (Brazilian term for shanty town) are also vulnerable to flooding. In Recife, the drainage systems date to colonial times and are clogged with refuse much of the time. There is thus the problem of sewer overflow that causes flooding of entire districts during the rainy season. In Manila, the same problems, accentuated by deforestation, provoke extreme flooding each year that affects the poorest quarter of the population. Extreme flooding in 1998 left 300 000 homeless. Earthquakes were responsible for the destruction of more than 100 million homes during the twentieth century. Of these, the precariously situated shanty towns were among the most affected. One example is the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, where 1.2 million people lost their homes and virtually all of the 59 million households destroyed in the capital were situated in shanty towns.

Very often industries that are already environmentally unsound and full of  industrial pollutants like refineries, pesticide factories, electronic waste ‘recycling’, battery recycling, foundries, dry cleaners, tanneries, etc. are situated on the outsides of towns.  They uncoincidentally are staffed by people who have little choice in their work because to not work is to not get by.  So here again, the shanty towns are situated close to if not within some of the most toxic areas where environmental safeguards are often non-existent.

LANDSLIDE

Every year Landslides bring death and destruction to the inhabitants of shanty towns from Haiti to Cairo.  Undoubtedly, generational deforestation and other natural disasters such as volcanic activity have contributed to this.  But these encampments for humanities lost and unwanted also add to the problem.

According to a study from 1990, 16% of shanty town dwellers living on the sides of hills in Rio run short- and medium-term risks to their lives and their property (Taschner, 1995). In Caracas, nearly two-thirds of the urban population live on the side of unstable hills where landslides are a permanent danger, a risk intensified by seismic activity in the area (Jiménez Diaz, 1994).

The very fact that the ramshackle townships exist keeps vegetation from re-growing.  The degradation of the soil and land by continued contaminant use most likely ensures that nothing will ever grow there again.  What we are looking at with this spread of the human unfortunate is the beginnings of desert wastelands.  Places that will never again be suitable for habitation and will remain unproductive for centuries.

When this occurs, it is all very well and good to teach the parable of “teaching a man to fish”.  But you can teach someone to plant and grow and they will still be unproductive because they have neither enriched soil nor potable water available.

HEALTH ISSUES

According to health surveys of the urban homeless in Toronto:

• New and old diseases are coming back: tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, lice, scabies, bedbug infestations, Norwalk virus outbreaks, malnutrition.
• The longer a person is on the street the more their health breaks down. Early death of the homeless is very common

(Source: http://votetoronto.ca/~votetoro/en/6/7/166/Homelessness–Social-and-Environmental-Issues.htm)

There are many reasons why homeless people congregating in encampments experience poorer health even than those who visit shelters.  They live in close quarters with poor air quality, oftimes due to their heating and cooking fuels.  Because their encampments are away and on the outskirts for the most part, they are further from health facilities for the poor.  Their diets are poor as is their hygiene by necessity.  They also lack survival skills living in urban areas or are unable to employ them due to lack of resources.

The urban poor of shanty towns face both similar and different obstacles to health.  HIV/AIDS is extremely prevalent in African Ghettos like Lagos, Nigeria and Soweto, South Africa.  This is due to local taboos and practices as well as an inability for aid workers to get to ill people to serve them.  People with compromised immune systems also face myriad other disease due to open sewage and close quarters which speeds the progress of HIV.  The orphanages around these areas abound with children whose parents have been lost to this disease before their 30’s and very often the children are infected as well.

In other parts of the world, notably South American countries, the urban poor deal with malnutrition due both to unavailability of food and their bodies not being used to non-indigenous foodstuff.  This has been a particular problem in Peru.

CLIMATE CHANGE

 Climate change is becoming at this stage of the game a case of Chicken and Egg.  As noted before in reference to landslides, natural disasters attributable to changes in weather patterns such as those seen of late in Haiti, The Pacific Islands and even, one could argue in Louisiana/Mississippi; these disasters leave people homeless and helpless as to their relocation.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 20 million people were made homeless last year as a result of sudden-onset environmental disasters. But that could rise to one billion in the next 40 years as the effects of climate change take hold, testing not only public attitudes but our capacity to provide support and accommodation.

The Pacific island nations, so vocal at Copenhagen, are already experiencing the effects of climate change. Tuvalu experienced a 7 centimeter rise in sea levels in the 13 years leading up to 2005. If this doesn’t sound significant, bear in mind that the highest point of the low lying coral atolls – home to 10,000 people – is just 3.7 meters above high tide. “We live in constant fear of the adverse impacts of climate change,” Prime Minister Saufatu Sopoanga appeals. “The threat is real and serious, and is of no difference to a slow and insidious form of terrorism against us.”

However, once again the relocation is ultimately to areas unprepared for a huge human influx.  Or, it inhibits the natural re-growth that would have occurred if so many people weren’t camped out on land and tromping down new vegetation while contaminating it with substandard services.

SEWAGE

A huge problem with any urban settlement whether it is a homeless encampment or a shanty town, is human refuse.  Humans create a great deal of waste.

In homeless settlements in urban areas this means people will defecate, urinate, bleed, throw away by products of their daily use and vomit all on the asphalt of the city.  In some places some of this waste may be taken care of by sewage systems still running below ground.  This is particularly true of areas like Downtown Los Angeles which currently boast an estimate of 80,000 homeless. (Source: http://www.patbrowninstitute.org/)

In a city like this refuse is also dealt with by maintenance workers both paid and on job release from jail.  However not all of the refuse is caught up and because it is not managed well it gets into water systems and soil degrading the resources available for all life in the area.  Last year the Ventura Stream Team documented over 35 sites of human waste from homeless camping. You can view the pictures HERE.

In the case of shanty towns the problem is worse.  Almost never is a true sewage system available and as a result every by-product of human life available runs in creeks and streams through the towns.

Taking into account how long some of these human settlements have already been in place and how long they are likely to stay in place-a picture of environmental degradation begins to draw itself.

In developed areas of the world we very often have laws that prohibit us from building, digging or using land that has had improperly stored chemicals and has been contaminated.  Yet in these areas not only are huts with dirt floor erected in contaminated places, contaminants like kerosene, oil, chemical cleaners and strippers and industrial waste mix with the human waste flowing through the footpaths.

FIRE

In areas in which people build out of items they have at hand, like cardboard and tossed off paper the danger and advent of fire is very real.  Add to this the fact that there often is either no fire service or at the very least it is difficult to get emergency services into these areas.

Fires in homeless encampments are typically started by lack of survival skills and knowledge.  The most prevalent cause is an unattended or unbanked fire.  Many brush and forest fires across the U.S.  can be attributed to homeless encampments in either wooded areas or abandoned homes.

These fires however pose more than a human threat.  They spark combustible materials releasing them into the environment.

“Their mixture of inflammable dwellings, extraordinary density and dependence upon open fires for heat and cooking is a superlative recipe for spontaneous combustion” (Davis, 2006). Once started, fires, as expected, spread very quickly and firefighters, if they respond, are stopped by nonexistent streets.

In many cases they are the result of irresponsible behavior. In São Paulo, youth make a pastime out of making “Balão”, a kind of mini hot-air balloon that bursts into flames once aloft and then falls back down into the shanty towns.

On the other hand, fire can also be a good strategy for property developers seeking to “clean” shanty lands once they have risen in value.

As contrary as it may seem, seeing as how shanty towns have been deliberately set up in unwanted areas; Cities do expand due to human population  growth and developers will set their sights on this land oftimes setting up manmade disasters to clear the area to develop for higher classed citizens.

GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY

Very often we feel like Urban homelessness is either too big to tackle or a state of being that is none of our business.  While it is true, it is very big to address, what we need to understand is that our collective resources are affected by our inattention.

Also Urban homelessness, or near-homelessness-as in the case of shanty towns is something quite different from rural homelessness.  Rural vagabonds, nomads and gypsies while they have their own struggles, generally do not have such a huge and adverse impact on the land in which they dwell.  Very often they have survival skills for whatever area they live in and understand that caring for their surrounding benefits them.  At the very least their concentration is lower and their impact easier to disperse.

It’s not too late; there are several models for urban sustainability that are economic and easy to switch to.  What is needed is a larger desire on the part of people not already downtrodden to share the load in shifting the model in how we live.

Some would postulate that we are all of us “Homeless” and this is the reason for our mistreatment of the environment.

“The contemporary environmental crisis is closely connected to inherited ways of thinking that have fostered a feeling in us that we are not really at home in the universe. As long as we fail to experience how intimately we belong to the earth and the universe as our appropriate habitat, we will probably not care deeply for our natural environment.”- John F. Haught, Religious and Cosmic Homelessness: Some Environmental Implications

This being so, we can all of us begin to relate to one another under the assumption that we all need to care for one another in order to care for the environment earth and ourselves.