Wednesday, November 30, 2011

30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison

If you live in the United States of America, you live in a giant prison where liberty and freedom are slowly being strangled to death.  In this country, the control freaks that run things are obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that we do.  Nothing is private anymore.  Everything that you do on the Internet is being monitored.  All of your phone calls are being monitored.  In fact, if law enforcement authorities suspect that you have done something wrong, they will use your cell phone microphone to listen to you even when you think your cell phone is turned off.  In many areas of the country, when you get into your car automated license plate readers track you wherever you go, and in many major cities when you are walking on the streets a vast network of security cameras and "smart street lights" are constantly watching you and listening to whatever you say.  The TSA is setting up "internal checkpoints" all over the nation, Homeland Security is encouraging all of us to report any "suspicious activity" that our neighbors are involved in and the federal government is rapidly developing "pre-crime" technology that will flag us as "potential terrorists" if we display any signs of nervousness.  If you are flagged as a "potential terrorist", the U.S. military can arrest you and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything.  Yes, the United States of America is rapidly being turned into a "Big Brother" prison grid, and most Americans are happily going along with it.

The sad thing is that this used to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

So what in the world happened?

A fundamental shift in our culture has taken place.  The American people have eagerly given up huge chunks of liberty and freedom in exchange for vague promises of increased security.

Our country is now run by total control freaks and paranoia has become standard operating procedure.

We were told that the terrorists hate our liberties and our freedoms, and that we needed to fight the terrorists so that we could keep our liberties and our freedoms.

But instead, the government keeps taking away all of our liberties and our freedoms.

How in the world does that make any sense?

Have the terrorists won?

As a country, we have moved so far in the direction of communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany that it is almost impossible to believe.

Yes, turning the United States of America into a giant prison may make us all slightly safer, but what kind of life is this?

Do we want to be dead while we are still alive?

Is this the price that we want to pay in order to feel slightly safer?

Where are the millions of Americans that still yearn to breathe free air?

America is supposed to be a land teeming with people thirsting for independence.  For example, "Live Free or Die" is supposedly the official motto of the state of New Hampshire.

But instead, the motto of most Americans seems to be "live scared and die cowering".

We don't have to live like this.

Yes, bad things are always going to happen.  No amount of security is ever going to be able to keep us 100% safe.

We need to remember that a very high price was paid for our liberty and we should not give it up so easily.

As one very famous American once said, when we give up liberty for security we deserve neither.

The following are 30 signs that the United States of America is being turned into a giant prison....

#1 A new bill that is going through the U.S. Senate would allow the U.S. military to arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without trial.  This new law was recently discussed in an article posted on the website of the New American....

In what may be a tale too bizarre to be believed by millions of Americans, the U.S. Senate appears ready to pass a bill that will designate the entire earth, including the United States and its territories, one all-encompassing “battlefield” in the global “war on terror” and authorize the detention of Americans suspected of terrorist ties indefinitely and without trial or even charges being filed that would necessitate a trial.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is a big supporter of the bill, and he says that it would "basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield".

According to the PPJ Gazette, the following are three things that this new law would do....

1)  Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;

(2)  Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and

(3)  Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.

#2 U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman is asking Google to install a "terrorist button" on all Blogger.com blogs so that readers can easily flag "terrorist content" for authorities.

#3 Most Americans have no idea how sophisticated the "Big Brother" prison grid has become.  For example, in Washington D.C. the movements of every single car are tracked using automated license plate readers (ALPRs).  The following comes from a recent Washington Post article....

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

#4 In some American schools, RFID chips are now being used to monitor the attendance and movements of children while they are at school.  The following is how one article recently described a program that has just been instituted at a preschool in California....

Upon arriving in the morning, according to the Associated Press, each student at the CCC-George Miller preschool will don a jersey with a stitched in RFID chip. As the kids go about the business of learning, sensors in the school will record their movements, collecting attendance for both classes and meals. Officials from the school have claimed they're only recording information they're required to provide while receiving  federal funds for their Headstart program.

#5 Increasingly, incidents of misbehavior at many U.S. schools are being treated as very serious crimes.  For example, when a little girl kissed a little boy at one Florida elementary school recently, it was considered to be a "possible sex crime" and the police were called out.

#6 But what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California earlier this year was even worse....

Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

#7 In the United States today, police are trained to respond to even the smallest crimes with extreme physical force.  For example, one grandfather in Arizona was recently filmed laying unconscious in a pool of his own blood after police rammed his head into the flood inside a Wal-Mart on Black Friday night.  It was thought that he was shoplifting, but it turns out that he says that he was just trying to tuck a video game away so other crazed shoppers would not grab it out of his hands.

#8 Did you know that the government actually sets up fake cell phone towers that can intercept your cell phone calls?  The following is how a recent Wired article described these "stingrays"....

You make a call on your cellphone thinking the only thing standing between you and the recipient of your call is your carrier’s cellphone tower. In fact, that tower your phone is connecting to just might be a boobytrap set up by law enforcement to ensnare your phone signals and maybe even the content of your calls.

So-called stingrays are one of the new high-tech tools that authorities are using to track and identify you. The devices, about the size of a suitcase, spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower.

The government maintains that the stingrays don’t violate Fourth Amendment rights, since Americans don’t have a legitimate expectation of privacy for data sent from their mobile phones and other wireless devices to a cell tower.

#9 U.S. border agents are allowed by law to search any laptop being brought into the United States without even needing any reason to do so.

#10 In the United States of America, everyone is a "potential terrorist".  According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, "homegrown terrorists" represent as big a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.

#11 Most Americans are not that concerned about the Patriot Act, but that might change if they understood that the federal government has a "secret interpretation" of what the Patriot Act really means.  U.S. Senator Ron Wyden says that the U.S. government interprets the Patriot Act much more "broadly" than the general public does....

"We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says."

#12 The FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States.  The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....

If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.

The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.

The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.

#13 The federal government has decided that what you and I share with one another on Facebook and on Twitter could be a threat to national security.  According to a recent Associated Press article, the Department of Homeland Security will soon be "gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes".

#14 What you say on your cell phone is never private.  The truth is that that the FBI can demand to see your cell phone data whenever it wants.  In addition, according to CNET News the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your cell phone and listen to whatever you are saying....

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

#15 In some areas of the country, law enforcement authorities are pulling data out of cell phones for no reason whatsoever.  According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are now using "extraction devices" to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over.  This is taking place even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.

The following is how a recent article on CNET News described the capabilities of these "extraction devices"....

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

#16 The federal government has become so paranoid that they have been putting GPS tracking devices on the vehicles of thousands of people that have not even been charged with committing any crimes.  The following is a short excerpt from a recent Wired magazine article about this issue....

The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.

Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.

The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.

The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds.

#17 New high-tech street lights that are being funded by the federal government and that are being installed all over the nation can also be used as surveillance cameras, can be used by the DHS to make "security announcements" and can even be used to record personal conversations.  The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com....

Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.

#18 If you choose to protest in the streets of America today, there is a good chance that you will be brutalized.  All over the United States law enforcement authorities have been spraying pepper spray directly into the faces of unarmed protesters in recent weeks.

#19 In many areas of the United States today, you will be arrested if you do not produce proper identification for the police.  In the old days, "your papers please" was a phrase that was used to use to mock the tyranny of Nazi Germany.  But now all of us are being required to be able to produce "our papers" for law enforcement authorities at any time.  For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.

#20 According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate "in monthly anti-terrorism drills".  The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends....

Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.

So who in the world ever decided that it would be a good idea for 1st grade students to endure "lockdown" and "active shooter" drills?

To get an idea of what these kinds of drills are like, just check out this video.

#21 With all of the other problems that we are having all over the nation, you would think that authorities would not be too concerned about little kids that are trying to sell cups of lemonade.  But sadly, over the past year police have been sent in to shut down lemonade stands run by children all over the United States.

#22 The federal government has decided to invest a significant amount of time, money and energy raiding organic farms.  The following example comes from Natural News....

It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special "farm to fork" picnic dinner put on for guests -- and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasture-based meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach.

#23 It is an absolute disgrace that all of us (including grandmothers and young children) must either go through body scanners that reveal the intimate details of our naked bodies or endure "enhanced pat-downs" during which our genitals will be touched before we are allowed to get on an airplane.

It is also an absolute disgrace that the American people are putting up with this.

#24 Invasive TSA security techniques are not just for airports anymore.  Now, TSA "VIPR teams" are actively conducting random inspections at bus stations and on interstate highways all over the United States.  For example, the following comes from a local news report down in Tennessee....

You're probably used to seeing TSA's signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

TSA "VIPR teams" now conduct approximately 8,000 "unannounced security screenings" a year at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.

#25 More than a million hotel television sets all over America are now broadcasting propaganda messages from the Department of Homeland Security promoting the "See Something, Say Something" campaign.  In essence, the federal government wants all of us to become "informants" and to start spying on one another constantly.  The following comes from an article posted by USA Today....

Starting today, the welcome screens on 1.2 million hotel television sets in Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotels in the USA will show a short public service announcement from DHS. The 15-second spot encourages viewers to be vigilant and call law enforcement if they witness something suspicious during their travels.

#26 Certain "types" of American citizens are being labeled as potential threats in official U.S. government documents.  An unclassified Department of Homeland Security report published a couple years ago entitled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" claims that a belief in Bible prophecy "could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition and weapons."  The report goes on to state that such people are potentially dangerous.

#27 Back on February 20, 2009, the State of Missouri issued a report entitled "MIAC Strategic Report: The Modern Militia Movement".  That report warned that the following types of people may be potential terrorists....

*anti-abortion activists

*those that are against illegal immigration

*those that consider "the New World Order" to be a threat

*those that have a negative view of the United Nations

#28 As I have written about previously, a very disturbing document that Oath Keepers has obtained shows that the FBI is now instructing store owners to report many new forms of "suspicious activity" to them.  According to the document, "suspicious activity" now includes the following....

*paying with cash

*missing a hand or fingers

*"strange odors"

*making "extreme religious statements"

*"radical theology"

*purchasing weatherproofed ammunition or match containers

*purchasing meals ready to eat

*purchasing night vision devices, night flashlights or gas masks

Do any of those "signs of suspicious activity" apply to you?

#29 Soon you may get labeled as a "potential terrorist" if you are just feeling a little nervous.  A new "pre-crime" technology system that is currently being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will soon be in use all over the nation.  It is called "Future Attribute Screening Technology" (FAST), and it is very frightening.  The following description of this new program comes from an article in the London Telegraph....

Using cameras and sensors the "pre-crime" system measures and tracks changes in a person's body movements, the pitch of their voice and the rhythm of their speech.

It also monitors breathing patterns, eye movements, blink rate and alterations in body heat, which are used to assess an individual's likelihood to commit a crime.

The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) programme is already being tested on a group of government employees who volunteered to act as guinea pigs.

#30 The truth is that nobody puts more people into prison than America does.  The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.

To read about some of the crazy things that the control freaks running things have planned for the future, just check out this article by Natural News: "10 outlandish things the 'scientific' controllers have in mind for you in the near future".

Once again, despite all of this outrageous "security", it is inevitable that a lot of really bad things are going to happen in the United States in the years ahead.

When there are incidents of violence, it is also inevitable that there will be calls for even more "Big Brother" security measures.

We are going to be caught in a never ending spiral of tyranny where the "solution" is always even tighter security.

Eventually, we will have lost all of our liberties and freedoms, and we will probably be even less safe than we are today.

Do not be deceived.  We could put a soldier on every corner, a video camera in every room of every home and an RFID chip in every citizen but that would not make us "safe".

Every single lawmaker that is backing these laws which strip our liberties and freedoms away deserves to be voted out of office.

If you love the United States of America, please stand up and say something while you still can.

Please use this article and other articles like it as tools.  Share them with your friends and your family.  If we can get enough people to wake up, perhaps there is still enough time to turn the direction of this country around.

Will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be mentioned in the same breath as communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany, or will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be the greatest chapters of all?

The choice, America, is up to you.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/30-signs-that-the-united-states-of-america-is-being-turned-into-a-giant-prison

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Chan Lowe, Copyright 2011 Tribune Media Services

Arrested in Germany, David Duke Begs Followers for Money

Globetrotting white supremacist David Duke is asking supporters to send money, and fast, to help him fight unspecified charges stemming from his arrest last Friday in Cologne, Germany.

In a message “composed in a moving Car!” and posted this morning on his website, the former Klan leader claims that he was on his way to deliver a “message of heritage and freedom” when German authorities arrested and imprisoned him “by a gross twisting of travel laws.”

Now, he says, he’s desperate.

“To fight this case will cost a lot of money, time and effort,” he wrote. “The legal system is just as money-driven as it is in the U.S. and I must support myself far from my home during this period, never knowing from one minute to the next when shall come the proverbial knock upon the door. … While most of you will be getting ready for the warmth and love and friendship and family of Christmas, I will be far from home fighting the good fight.”

“My dear friends, I believe you will come through with great generosity even sacrifice at this time, even with all your personal needs during the Christmas season. … Perhaps you could copy this letter and post it on this and other threads so my message is heard by all those who have the inclination to help me in this pressing matter at this difficult time for me.”

Duke has butted heads with European authorities before. In 2009, he was arrested in Prague on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, a crime in the Czech Republic. He was expelled from the country, but charges against him were eventually dropped.

Yet despite the ease with which he avoided punishment for his Prague adventure, his newest plea for help should come as no surprise – for Duke is a veteran scam artist with a long history of persuading supporters to send him a buck. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and mail fraud for ripping off hundreds of thousands of dollars from white supremacist donors who thought they were helping save the white race – money that actually went to finance Duke’s gambling habit. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined $10,000.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/11/28/arrested-in-germany-david-duke-begs-followers-for-money

Iran Protesters Storm UK Embassy in Tehran

Protesters in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have broken into the UK embassy compound during a demonstration against sanctions imposed by Britain.

Militant students are reported to have ransacked offices, burned the British flag and smashed embassy windows.

The move comes after Iran resolved to reduce ties following the UK's decision to impose further sanctions on it.

Iran expressed "regret" over the attack on the embassy. The Foreign Office has summoned an Iranian diplomat in London.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain held the Iranian government "responsible for its failure" to protect the embassy "as it is required to do".

Mr Hague said the Iranian charge d'affaires had been summoned, adding: "Clearly there will be other, further, and serious consequences. I will make a statement updating Parliament on this tomorrow."

Mr Hague said all embassy staff and their dependants had been accounted for.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15936213

Newt Gingrich, The Man Who Changed Washington

The Gingrich campaign has now confirmed a longstanding business relationship that enabled his consulting group to receive between $1.6 and $1.8 million from mortgage giant Freddie Mac. But it wasn't for "lobbying," Newt Gingrich insists. It was for "strategic advice on a wide range of issues."

OK, but then doesn't the payment, AP's Tom Beaumont asked the former House speaker, just remind people that "your background comes from being a Washington insider?"

"It reminds people," Gingrich corrected Beaumont, "that I know a great deal about Washington." And as he continued, "If you want to change Washington, we just tried four [sic] years of amateur ignorance and it didn't work very well, so having some-body who knows Washington might be a really good thing."

Newt Gingrich is certainly right about that. There is no candidate for president who has had more experience in changing Washington than Gingrich. Indeed, there may be no American since James Madison who has had more of an effect in making the institution of Congress what it is today.

For as far too few remember, more than any other living American, it is Newt Gingrich who gave us the current version of our hopelessly dysfunctional Congress — an institution which, according to a New York Times/CBS poll, now has the confidence of 9% of the American people. That monster is his baby, and no one should deny him his parental bragging rights.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/19/opinion/lessig-gingrich-change-washington/index.html

Bush and Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes for Iraq Attack

A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation’s former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of “crimes against peace” and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal — which featured an American law professor as one of its chief prosecutors — has no formal enforcement power, but was modeled after a 1967 tribunal in Sweden and Denmark that found the U.S. guilty of a war of aggression in Vietnam, and, even more so, after the U.S.-led Nuremberg Tribunal held after World War II. Just as the U.S. steadfastly ignored the 1967 tribunal on Vietnam, Bush and Blair both ignored the summons sent to them and thus were tried in absentia.

http://politics.salon.com/2011/11/23/bush_and_blair_found_guilty_of_war_crimes_for_iraq_attack

Monday, November 28, 2011

No Explosion in Isfahan: Iran Official

A top Iranian official has rejected media reports about an explosion being heard in the central city of Isfahan.

Mohammad-Mehdi Ismaili, Isfahan governor's political and security deputy, said on Monday that report was completely baseless and fabricated, IRNA reported.

He added that the Isfahan governor would follow up on the report.

Ismaili made the remarks after certain media outlets reported that a powerful blast had been heard in Isfahan on Monday afternoon.

An official from Isfahan emergency services, Masoud Anayeb, rejected the report as well, saying that there have been no reports of an explosion in the city.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/212682.html

Mystery Explosion Rocks Iran City

A large explosion has been reported in the Iranian city of Isfahan as the regime issued conflicting reports apparently designed to deny any suggestions of a sabotage attack on its nuclear facilities.

Officials gave varying accounts of a "huge explosion" in the ancient city, which hosts one of Iran's main facilities for refining uranium in its nuclear programme.

While some sources told news agencies there had been a blast on military facilities, others said there had been a fireball at a petrol station.

Residents of the city were independently telling relatives and friends overseas that the city had been shaken by a massive blast in the early afternoon.

Isfahan is home to Iran's largest facility for research and development of ballistic missiles. Multiple reports said the blast did not emanate from the nuclear facility.

Alireza Zakeri, the provincial governor of Isfahan, was quoted as saying that the blast took place during military exercises at a military airbase.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8921617/Mystery-explosion-rocks-Iran-city.html

Biggest Recipient of ‘Obamacare’? Texas

The first rule of asking for extra federal dollars in Texas is to never make it seem like you are asking for extra federal dollars.

For Gov. Rick Perry, this is a tricky line to walk. Because as much as the Republican presidential candidate bashes the federal government in his campaign speeches, Texas gets a lot of money from the feds — and a lot of it is going to the health care system he insists Texas can handle on its own.

Perry has repeatedly decried the spending culture of Washington, railing against both President Barack Obama’s health care law and the federal stimulus. But as it happens, Texas has taken a lot of money from both.

More than $380 million in early grants and other aid from the federal health law have already gone to businesses and agencies in the Lone Star State, according to figures from the Department of Health and Human Services, and Texas ended up with $17 billion from the stimulus.

Now, the state is waiting for final approval of a new waiver from federal Medicaid rules that could allow the state to draw down an additional $12 billion in funds from the federal government.

And that’s before the main parts of the Affordable Care Act even kick in, bringing billions of dollars to Texas in extra Medicaid funds and subsidies to help people buy private coverage through a new health insurance exchange.

If the law survives its upcoming review by the Supreme Court, its expansion of Medicaid alone could cost the federal government anywhere from $53 billion to $67 billion in aid to Texas by 2019, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

That’s more than any other state would get under that part of the law. The only other state that comes close is California, which would get between $45 billion and $55 billion in federal Medicaid funds.

“The only word that can describe this is hypocrisy,” said Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman. “These days, federal dollars might as well be counterfeit, they are so dirty — but Texas would not survive without them.”

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/nov/28/biggest-recipient-obamacare-texas

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Pat Bagley, Copyright 2011 Cagle Cartoons

Understanding The History And Purpose Of FOX News

You’d think a thing like FOX couldn’t happen in the United States. Although they’re free to be crazy and free to support the Republican Party, you’d think Americans would be too smart to fall for the made-up outrages, dishonest reporting and relentless appeal to our meaner nature. Unfortunately, many Americans are not as smart as we used to assume: a huge swath of Americans (especially elderly white Southerners) believe FOX is just another news media outlet. They aren’t.

What is FOX? Pensitore Review (8-18-09) pulled no punches in answering that question: “ FOX News is indisputably the most popular cable news channel. And yet in 13 years, Fox has never broken a story. That’s okay, because it is not in the news business. It is in the news-shaping business. Its programming is an admixture of right-wing propaganda and fear-porn for feeble-minded paranoiacs, served up by spokesmodels who have no clue what they are reading.”

Whew! Could that be true? I report/You decide:

Nixon White House aide Roger Ailes in the 1970′s created fake news stories that favored President Nixon. He shipped these pre-mixed video packages to TV stations around the country at the expense of rightwing extremist Joseph Coors. It was all b.s. all the time, but the TV stations, pretending they had a correspondent in Washington, ran this propaganda as straight news. Now that Ailes runs FOX News, his goals are the same: to spread republicanism by altering the news.

FOX is a “relentless agenda-driven 24 hour news opinion propaganda delivery system” ~Jon Stewart

“They’re a Republican brand. They’re an extension of the Republican Party with some exceptions” ~Larry King

‎”[Fox is] widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party: take their talking points and put them on the air, take their opposition research and put it on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news organization like CNN is.” ~Anita Dunn

There are thousands of examples of FOX not just “leaning” in a particular direction on an issue… but actively changing around the words and meanings of interviews to make them seem to say the opposite of what the person interviewed actually said; of lies about what happened; of incorrect graphics…for example, calling Congressman Mark Foley a Democrat when he got caught in gay chatter with pages and calling Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords a Republican when there was an outpouring of sympathy for her after she got shot.

FOX took a sparsely-attended tea-party rally in Washington and spliced in video of a heavily-attended event of an entirely different nature from months earlier.

FOX has gotten caught using image manipulation software to edit the appearance of people they don’t like to make them appear more sinister.

FOX alters poll results to mislead its viewers; in one case, their massacre of a Rasmussen poll on climate change ended up with a poll number of 120%–mathematically impossible, of course, except in FOX world.

On 4-24-09… White House correspondent Wendell Goler cropped a comment by Obama and took it out of context — effectively reversing the statement’s meaning — to falsely suggest that Obama supports creating a health care system “like the European countries.”

A 2010 Ohio State University study of public misperceptions about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” found that viewers who relied on Fox News were 66% more likely to believe incorrect rumors than those with “low reliance” on Fox News ~Wikipedia

A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes showed 67% of Fox viewers believed that the “U.S. has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization” (He wasn’t. He hated, feared and banned them, but you’d never know that by watching FOX).

Wait, it gets worse: For all other networks and news sources, the MORE you watch them, the MORE you know about the actual facts. Those who view CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, & NPR the MOST, have the BEST grasp of the FACTS. With FOX it – is- the – opposite!! Which is what gave birth to the mocking slogan: THE MORE YOU WATCH FOX, THE LESS YOU KNOW.

In the summer of 2003, 34% of Americans who did not follow the news very closely believed evidence had been found that linked Iraq with al Qaeda before the U.S. invasion. 42% of people who were moderate consumers of FOX news had that opinion. Among those who “watched FOX News very closely” … that number was 80% !! ~Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 118, #4 THE MORE YOU WATCH FOX, THE LESS YOU KNOW!

FOX News’ Happening Now cropped clips of Obama from an April 3 speech in France to falsely suggest that Obama only criticized the United States. In doing so, Happening Now joined conservative commentators and Fox News hosts who have cropped or misrepresented Obama’s overseas remarks to falsely suggest, in the words of host Sean Hannity, that Obama was “blam[ing] America first” and, more broadly, that Obama’s earlier overseas trip constituted an “apology tour.”

Fox News presented a clip of Joe Biden criticizing John McCain’s “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” statement…. Problem is, this was something Biden was QUOTING…from SIX MONTHS EARLIER… but it was edited by FOX to make it seem that Biden was stating it as his own opinion. The bogus clip was introduced by Live Desk co-host Martha MacCallum as comments Biden had made in interviews THIS WEEKEND.

FOX pushed the bogus stat that cap-and-trade would cost “every American family $1,761 annually.” PolitiFact.com has labeled the statistic false and noted that the talking point has been pushed by Republicans.

On 9/30/09 FOX Gregg Jarrett said on the air that the Obama Department of Justice “thinks it’s OK to intimidate white people, not OK to intimidate black people at the polls.”

‎”If we went back … to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that was a time this country was in two wars that we had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election what you would have seen were that the biggest stories and the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and a something called ACORN.” ~Anita Dunn

A 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation survey on U.S. misperceptions about health care reform found that Fox News viewers scored lower for factual knowledge than other news viewers – Wikipedia

It’s against the law to lie on television in Canada. Canadian conservatives tried to change that law so FOX could broadcast in Canada. They were unable to get the law changed, so FOX does not operate in Canada!

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/26/understanding-the-history-and-purpose-of-fox-news

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Baptist Church Leaders Cover-Up Sex Scandal

In Colorado, two pastors, a former principal and a teacher have been arrested by the El Paso County Sheriff's Office in a sexual assault case involving a 15 year-old boy.

The alleged sexual abuse involved a teacher at Hilltop Baptist School. First reported in December 2010, the police say that the boy was in a sexual relationship with a female teacher in 2007 and 2008.

Terah Allyn Rawlings, 32, is charged with eight counts of sexual assault on a child by a person in position of trust and obscenity-promotion.

Franklin “Wayne” Knight, 63, is the senior pastor at Hilltop Baptist Church and former superintendent of Hilltop Baptist School. He is charged with failure to report child abuse or neglect and accessory to a crime. He is also the uncle to Terah Allyn Rawlings.

Raymond “Allen” Knight, 57, is the associate pastor of Hilltop Baptist Church and former athletic director at Hilltop Baptist School. He is charged with failure to report child abuse or neglect. He is also Terah Allyn Rawlings' father.

Jan Ocvirk, 51, is the former principal of Hilltop Baptist School. She is charged with failure to report child abuse or neglect.

The alleged relationship occurred in the fall of 2007 and ended when the boy broke it off in the summer of 2008. The two allegedly had sex for the first time in her vehicle in an apartment parking lot. The boy told his friend and showed him pictures of the teacher mostly topless, allegedly.

The pastor of the church, according to the grand jury report, was told about the sexual relationship and did not report it to the police and discouraged other witnesses from going to the police. The pastor allegedly told members of the congregation in effect that they would be expelled from the church if they told police.

The other arrested leaders of the church are alleged to have participated one way of the other with the alleged cover-up. From their own Bible, these leaders need to consider that the all liars will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.

http://technorati.com/lifestyle/article/baptist-church-leaders-cover-up-sex

Friday, November 25, 2011

Naomi Wolf: The Shocking Truth about the Crackdown on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy?newsfeed=true

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Pepper Spray Cop Meme




























The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On

The People’s Library at Zuccotti Park—a collection of more than 5,000 donated books of every genre and subject, all free for the taking—was created not only to serve the Occupy Wall Street protesters; it was meant to provide knowledge and reading pleasure for the wider public as well, including residents of Lower Manhattan. It was also a library to the world at large, since many visitors to the park stopped by the library to browse our collection, to donate books of their own and to take books for themselves.

At about 2:30 am on November 15, the People’s Library was destroyed by the NYPD, acting on the authority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With no advance notice, an army of police in riot gear raided the park, seized everything in it and threw it all into garbage trucks and dumpsters. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s Twitter promise that the library was safely stored and could be retrieved, only about 1,100 books were recovered, and some of those are in unreadable condition. Four library laptops were also destroyed, as well as all the bookshelves, storage bins, stamps and cataloging supplies and the large tent that housed the library.

For the past six weeks I have been living and working as a librarian in the People’s Library, camping out on the ground next to it. I’m an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and I’ve chosen to spend my sabbatical at Occupy Wall Street to participate in the movement and to build and maintain the collection of books at the People’s Library. I love books—reading them, writing in them, arranging them, holding them, even smelling them. I also love having access to books for free. I love libraries and everything they represent. To see an entire collection of donated books, including many titles I would have liked to read, thoughtlessly ransacked and destroyed by the forces of law and order was one of the most disturbing experiences of my life. My students in Pittsburgh struggle to afford to buy the books they need for their courses. Our extensive collection of scholarly books and journals alone would have sufficed to provide reading materials for dozens of college classrooms. With public libraries around the country fighting to survive in the face of budget cuts, layoffs and closings, the People’s Library has served as a model of what a public library can be: operated for the people and by the people.

During the raid, Stephen Boyer, a poet, friend and OWS librarian, read poems from the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (see peopleslibrary.wordpress.com) aloud directly into the faces of riot police. As they pushed us away from the park with shields, fists, billy clubs and tear gas, I stood next to Stephen and watched while he yelled poetry at the top of his lungs into the oncoming army of riot police. Then, something incredible happened. Several of the police leaned in closer to hear the poetry. They lifted their helmet shields slightly to catch the words Stephen was shouting out to them, even while their fellow cops continued to stampede us. The next day, an officer who was guarding the entrance to Zuccotti Park told Stephen how touched he was by the poetry, how moved he was to see that we cared enough about words and books that we would risk violent treatment and arrest just to defend our love of books and the wisdom they contain.

At 6 pm on November 15, a group of writers and supporters of the People’s Library appeared at the reopened park carrying books, and within minutes we received around 200 donations. All night and into the next day folks stopped by to donate to and take from the collection. Because the new rules of the park forbid us from lying down or leaving anything there, Stephen and I stayed up all night to protect the books until other librarians came to take over for us. Frustrated and exhausted, but still exhilarated and eager to maintain the momentum of the movement, we kept the People’s Library open all day in the pouring rain, storing books in Ziploc baggies to keep them dry.

Then at 7:30 pm on November 16, the People’s Library was again raided and thrown in the trash—this time by a combination of police and Brookfield Properties’ sanitation team. The NYPD first barricaded the library by lining up in front of it, forming an impenetrable wall of cops. An officer then announced through a bullhorn that we should come and collect our books, or they would be confiscated and removed. Seconds later, they began dumping books into trash bins that they had wheeled into the park for that purpose. As they were throwing out the books, a fellow OWS librarian asked one of the NYPD patrolmen why they were doing this. His answer: “I don’t know.”

Five minutes after it started, the raid was over and the People’s Library’s collection was once again sitting in a pile of garbage. Yet just as the trash bins were being carted off, a man stepped out of the crowd with a book in his hand to donate to us: Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. We joyously accepted and cataloged it, placing it on display under a new sign for the library that we made right then on a blank sheet of paper. A true people’s library, after all, doesn’t depend on any particular number of books, since it’s ultimately about the way those books are collected and lent out to the public.

We’re still accepting donations and lending books just as we always have, but we’ve reorganized ourselves somewhat. We now have three mobile units staffed by OWS librarians, which we can take anywhere we want. For the November 17 Day of Action, we made sure the People’s Library was there to supply books to anyone who wanted them. All day long, OWS librarians walked among the crowds shouting, “The People’s Library 3.0, mobile and in the streets!” For me, it was easily the most rewarding day in the six weeks I’ve been with the movement. The people we met at our mobile units—Occupiers from New York and other states, friends of the People’s Library, tourists—went out of their way to express their joy that we were still here. They also struggled to articulate their feelings of loss, frustration, anger, disgust and outrage over the seizure and destruction of the library. All we could say in response was, “We’re here to stay! Please take a book! They belong to you!” A group of eight OWS librarians even started a new chant: “Whose books? Your books!” It quickly caught fire with the other marchers.

Libraries are where we learn about things that are new to us. Their books broaden our perspectives, change the way we see the world and, at the most basic level, provide us with free and open access to knowledge and information. Over the two months that the People’s Library has been in operation at Zuccotti Park, we librarians have come to see how vital this mission is to the enrichment of our broader society. What’s more, in the course of our day-to-day work there, we had—and are still having—the best time of our lives. The library provides a space of dialogue, creativity, intellectual and cultural exchange and personal growth. When freshmen and sophomores in college ask me, “What should I be reading to understand what this movement is all about?” I see it as an opening for a great conversation. And when they come back to the library to return the books they took, I love to hear about the new horizons that the books helped to open for them.

Although we often shout, “This is what democracy looks like!” on our marches, it’s also something we can say every day to those who pay a visit to the OWS library. In fact, it’s something that the People’s Library, by its very presence—in any location, in any form, with any number of books—is perfectly capable of saying for itself.

http://www.thenation.com/article/164766/peoples-library-occupy-wall-street-lives

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

John Cole, Copyright 2011 Cagle Cartoons

Campaign Seeks Repeal of Alabama’s Harsh Immigration Law

U.S. congressional leaders and pro-immigrant activists rallied here to demand the repeal of Alabama’s harsh immigration law, a measure one lawmaker said “deserves to be placed on the trash heap of history.”

Gathering Monday night at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, a center of the black civil rights struggle in the 1960s, lawmakers along with civic and religious leaders said that HB 56 does not belong in the United States of the 21st century.

The activists launched a campaign under the slogan “One Family, One Alabama,” promoted by the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, amid applause and the shouting of “Yes we can!” and “We are Alabama!”

More than 3,000 people gathered at the rally inside and outside the church as part of an incipient movement to end discrimination against Alabama’s undocumented, most of them Hispanics.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who led a delegation of congressmen, was received as a hero soon after the visiting lawmakers concluded a hearing at Birmingham city hall.

In a statement to Efe, both Gutierrez and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat, said they will fight in the streets and in the courts until HB 56 is abolished.

“We can’t go back to the past, and we’ll fight until this law is annulled,” Gutierrez said, adding that the testimonies collected Monday will serve “to raise awareness about how harmful this law is.”

During the hearing, the legislators listened to testimonies from state officials, school administrators, parents, teachers, students and activists about the impact of the law, which went into effect Sept. 28.

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) told Efe that the undocumented pay taxes and contribute to society and their persecution in Alabama is not only “dehumanizing” but also “a violation of civil rights and a humanitarian crisis.”

“It is a story that we have unfortunately seen in other times and must not be repeated,” Clarke said.

“HB 56 has devastated Alabama’s immigrant community. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this law has unleashed a human tragedy in Alabama,” Mary Bauer, director of legal affairs at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said.

The congressional delegation focused on the HB 56 provision that allows police to demand proof of legal status of anyone detained and which, according to activists, makes discrimination based on accent or physical appearance legal.

Such was the case of a German manager at the Mercedes-Benz auto assembly plant that has brought thousands of jobs to Alabama, who was detained last Friday because his rental car lacked the required license plate.

The executive was freed when he was able to show his driver’s license and his visa.

Federal courts have blocked several of the more controversial articles of HB 56 while their constitutionality is being reviewed – one of them requires public schools to ascertain the immigration status of new foreign students.

HB 56 has been criticized by businessmen who are losing employees and customers, and Republican state Sen. Gerald Dial is leading a group of legislators who are trying to modify the law, acknowledging that it “has had consequences we didn’t see coming.” EFE

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=446985&CategoryId=12395

Pregnant Woman Miscarries After Being Sprayed With Pepper Spray

"I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in," she says. "I was screaming, 'I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'"

At that point, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach. "Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut," she says.

She was fine for a couple days, until she started feeling sick.

Jennifer went to the doctor and found out her baby had no heartbeat. "They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too."

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/pregnant-woman-miscarries-after-being-sprayed-with

UC Davis Pepper Spray Cop Once Involved in Anti-Gay Lawsuit

The riot-clad police officer who pepper sprayed a row of peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters at a California university last week is a retired U.S. Marines sergeant twice honored for his police work on campus.

Lt. John Pike started working for the University of California, Davis police force in 2001. Now, as one of four lieutenants, he supervises more than one-third of the force including the investigations unit.

Pike has been honored twice for meritorious service, including a 2006 incident when he decided against using pepper spray against a patient in the campus hospital who was threatening his colleagues with scissors.

But an alleged anti-gay slur by Pike also figured in a discrimination lawsuit a former police officer filed against the department, which ended in a $240,000 settlement in 2008.

 

The footage of Pike pepper spraying students has set off a debate about how far law enforcement can and should go to disperse peaceful demonstrators

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57329900/uc-davis-pepper-spray-cop-once-lauded

Texas Court Suspends Judge Taped Beating Daughter

Judge William Adams, who made national headlines after the release of a 2004 video of him beating his then-teenage daughter, has been suspended by the Texas Supreme Court.

The reason for the action was not mentioned in an order of suspension that was made public Tuesday.

Adams, a court-at-law judge in Aransas County, was roundly criticized when his now-adult daughter posted online a video of him beating her with a belt when she was 16.

The video also showed the judge cursing and berating Hillary Adams.

Adams was punishing the girl for using the Internet "to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time," Hillary Adams wrote on the web posting.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/23/justice/texas-beating-video/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Nick Anderson, Copyright 2011 Universal Press Syndicate

'It's a Food Product, Essentially': Fox News Starts Spinning Pepper Spray Cops

Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly got to talking about a UC Davis police officer's appalling use of pepper spray on nonviolent protesters over the weekend. Guess what direction the conversation took!

If you guessed "needlessly deferential to authority and dismissive to the suffering of protesters," you guessed correctly!

"I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," O'Reilly says, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus." God forbid! We'd never want to question Lt. John Pike's decision to generously and indifferently dust peacefully sitting protesters with pepper spray from only a few feet away. Especially given that Davis is, you know, a liberal campus! And, gosh, even if we were going to Monday-morning quarterback the police, shouldn't we remember, as Megyn Kelly tells O'Reilly, that pepper spray is "a food product, essentially"?

Now, look, Kelly and O'Reilly aren't saying the cops did the right thing! God, no! "I agree [the tape] looks bad," Kelly says. It's just that the protesters were sitting in a place where they weren't allowed to sit, so it's kind of their own fault! And in any event what right do we have to judge a cop for spraying a simple food product on the faces of a bunch of liberal college kids doing something criminal? You know? Maybe he was just trying to feed them?

http://gawker.com/5861688/its-a-food-product-essentially-fox-news-starts-spinning-pepper-spray-cops

Waiting to Die: Cervical Cancer in America

Cervical cancer is a hotly-debated political topic in the United States right now - a debate fuelled largely by Republican presidential contenders. The cancer is caused by strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is sexually transmitted. As a result, discourse on cervical cancer centres around whether or not newly available vaccines to prevent the disease encourage promiscuity.

This argument entirely misses the most scandalous fact about cervical cancer in the US: its geography. Where a woman lives in the US largely determines whether she will suffer from the disease - and whether she will die from it.

Cervical cancer is extraordinarily slow-growing, taking 10-15 years for invasive cells to develop. Even without the vaccine, the cancer is completely preventable. Routine Pap tests that cost between $25 and $40 detect abnormal cells, and these cells can then be removed during a visit to a doctor's office. If all American women had these tests and received follow-up care as recommended, cervical cancer would go the way of small pox and polio in the US - eradicated.

But every year 4,000 American women die from the disease, most of them in the South. For instance, a woman in Mississippi is nearly twice as likely to die from cervical cancer as an average American woman. 

Why?

The seemingly obvious answer is that Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, and therefore must have a lot of residents without health insurance. But when Mississippi is compared to a state like California, which has a similar rate of uninsured people, Mississippi's death rate from cervical cancer remains extraordinary: 75 per cent higher than that in California.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111510143426797.html