Here is a damn good reason not to repeal the death penalty!
KILLER GIVEN DEATH SENTENCE FOR SHOOTING DEAD THREE POLICE OFFICERS
For Pittsburgh cops he was ‘the face of evil’
By Lee Moran
Mail Online
June 29, 2011
A gunman who lay in wait and murdered three police officers responding to a domestic violence call at his house has been sentenced to death.
Richard Poplawski, wearing a bulletproof vest, met the officers at his doorway and shot two of them in the head - gunning down a third who later came to their aid.
His mother called out the police when an argument about his puppies urinating on the floor escalated out of control.
The killer only surrendered because he was bleeding from a leg wound inflicted by one of the officers during the horrific four-hour gun battle on his quiet Pittsburgh street.
A Pittsburgh jury convicted the 24-year-old on Saturday of three counts of first-degree murder, and 25 lesser crimes, for his actions on April 4, 2009.
The three slain officers were Eric Kelly, 41, Stephen Mayhle, 29, and Paul Sciullo II, 37.
Kelly had been on the force for 14 years, while Mayhle and Sciullo had been officers for two years each.
Another officer, Timothy McManaway, was shot in the hand and a fifth broke his leg on a fence.
A mass of rank-and-file officers congregated outside the courtroom during the gunman's sentencing on Tuesday.
'This was an opportunity for them to see the face of Richard Poplawski which, for us, was the face of evil,' said Assistant Chief Paul Donaldson.
The jury spent just 90 minutes deliberating whether to sentence Poplawski to death or life in prison.
The jury rejected attorney for the penalty phase of the trial William Brennan's defence that he had no previous criminal record and had been raised in a dysfunctional home.
Reports at the time of the incident, when he peppered officers with fire from his 12-gauge shotgun, .357 Magnum and AK-47 assault rifle, said more than 100 rounds were fired by elite police teams and Poplawski.
Poplawski will be sentenced for the remainder of his charges, including nine counts each of attempted murder and assault on a law officer, on September 6.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
NOT A JOB FOR SISSIES
‘Why do the police ….. immediately shoot in no-knock raids, even when breaking into the wrong house? You stormtroopers are given the go-ahead to run amok, trampling roughshod over the basic human rights granted to the citizenry by the constitution.’ That’s what some pot head wrote in response to my ‘Law Enforcement for Pedophilia’ (6-22-11) post.
Contrary to what the dopers believe, the cops do not shoot – immediately or otherwise – unless some asshole is perceived as being an imminent threat to the lives of police officers. And cops do not run amok, trampling roughshod over people’s basic human rights. Stormtroopers? What rubbish!
Police involved shootings are really few and far between. When they do occur they always make headlines and may thus appear to be the norm rather than the exception. What is so sad is not that the police kill someone from time to time, but that more and more assholes – including drug users –think it’s open season on cops.
It takes real courage to be a cop. Law enforcement is not a job for sissies.
LAPD OFFICERS DEALING WITH RISE IN ATTACKS
By C.J. Lin
Los Angeles Daily News
June 28, 2011
Echoing a national trend, attacks on police officers in Los Angeles are spiking dramatically this year, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Tuesday.
Assaults on officers are up 42 percent from the same period last year, bringing the total to 97 attacks, Beck said. Officer involved shootings are up by 40 percent.
Among the attacks was the shooting of Officer Steve Jenkins, a K-9 handler who survived being shot in the jaw and shoulder on April 4 by a domestic violence suspect in Sylmar, sending police into a daylong standoff before the suspect was killed.
Jenkins was released from the hospital after three weeks of surgery and recovery.
The year 2010 was one of the deadliest on record for law enforcement deaths nationwide, with 162 officers killed in the line of duty, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The number - which includes traffic accidents and shootings - was a 40 percent spike from 2009, when 117 officers were killed, and the first increase after a two-year decline in officer fatalities.
Shooting deaths were up 24 percent, from 49 deaths in 2009 to 61 in 2010.
So far in 2011, 92 officers have lost their lives across the U.S., with 39 killed by gunfire, according to the NLEOMF.
Meanwhile, violent and property crime rates in L.A. continue to reflect a falling national trend, with homicides down 8 percent and robberies down 12 percent, according to Beck.
Contrary to what the dopers believe, the cops do not shoot – immediately or otherwise – unless some asshole is perceived as being an imminent threat to the lives of police officers. And cops do not run amok, trampling roughshod over people’s basic human rights. Stormtroopers? What rubbish!
Police involved shootings are really few and far between. When they do occur they always make headlines and may thus appear to be the norm rather than the exception. What is so sad is not that the police kill someone from time to time, but that more and more assholes – including drug users –think it’s open season on cops.
It takes real courage to be a cop. Law enforcement is not a job for sissies.
LAPD OFFICERS DEALING WITH RISE IN ATTACKS
By C.J. Lin
Los Angeles Daily News
June 28, 2011
Echoing a national trend, attacks on police officers in Los Angeles are spiking dramatically this year, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Tuesday.
Assaults on officers are up 42 percent from the same period last year, bringing the total to 97 attacks, Beck said. Officer involved shootings are up by 40 percent.
Among the attacks was the shooting of Officer Steve Jenkins, a K-9 handler who survived being shot in the jaw and shoulder on April 4 by a domestic violence suspect in Sylmar, sending police into a daylong standoff before the suspect was killed.
Jenkins was released from the hospital after three weeks of surgery and recovery.
The year 2010 was one of the deadliest on record for law enforcement deaths nationwide, with 162 officers killed in the line of duty, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The number - which includes traffic accidents and shootings - was a 40 percent spike from 2009, when 117 officers were killed, and the first increase after a two-year decline in officer fatalities.
Shooting deaths were up 24 percent, from 49 deaths in 2009 to 61 in 2010.
So far in 2011, 92 officers have lost their lives across the U.S., with 39 killed by gunfire, according to the NLEOMF.
Meanwhile, violent and property crime rates in L.A. continue to reflect a falling national trend, with homicides down 8 percent and robberies down 12 percent, according to Beck.
HOW DARE YOU CALL ME VIOLENT? I'LL KILL YOU!
The Dutch problem with the Religion of Peace is Europe’s problem. Will the U.S. be next?
THE DUTCH ESCAPE DEATH BY STRANGULATION
By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen
politicalmavens.com
June 29, 2011
A Dutch court acquitted populist politician Geert Wilders of hate speech and discrimination last week, Associated Press reported.
Very good news, indeed.
This entire episode, in which the Netherlands’ growing Muslim population tried to tighten its stranglehold on yet another country by wrapping its own laws around its neck, can be a lesson to the world.
The court ruled that Wilders’ “anti-Islam statements, while offensive to many Muslims, fell within the bounds of legitimate political debate.”
The judge said “Wilders’ claims that Islam is violent by nature, and his calls to halt Muslim immigration and ban the Muslim holy book, the Quran, must be seen in a wider context of debate over immigration policy.”
Watch for news of this judge’s murder. I’m just saying.
The court said Wilders’ public statements could not be directly linked to increased discrimination against Dutch Muslims, which was what the Muslims were claiming.
Wilders was accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims through public statements, and with insulting them by comparing Islam with Nazism, which is hilarious, considering the constant, disgusting comparisons the Muslim world makes between Israel and the Nazis.
Outside the courtroom, Wilders called the decision a “victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands. Fortunately you’re allowed to discuss Islam in public debate and you’re not muzzled… An enormous burden has fallen from my shoulders.”
One of the lawyers for the groups that filed the complaints against Wilders reportedly said the “Dutch courts are failing to protect a religious minority from discrimination,” and plans to file an appeal to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. She will likely win there, considering the heavily pro-Muslim stacked deck in that body.
But who cares?
Right won out in the Netherlands.
The Dutch judge was able to recognize that Wilders’ statements about a “tsunami” of immigrants overrunning the country and threatening its culture were “legitimate given the wider context and his further statements that he has no objections to Muslims who integrate and accept Dutch values,” according to reports.
The story notes that Wilders “lives under constant protection due to death threats,” which should, on its face, prove his statements about Islam’s violent tendencies, unless the threats are coming from Anglican nuns or something and are not tied to his focus on Muslims in the Netherlands. But since everyone seems to accept without question that the threats are coming from the Muslims, I think we can assume that also. The story also notes that Wilders has never called for or endorsed violence.
What he says is that Islam is an inherently violent religion, and compares the Quran with Hitler’s anti-Semitic “Mein Kampf,” the story notes.
”The court paid special attention to Wilders’ 2008 film, ‘Fitna,’ Arabic for ‘ordeal’ – a 15-minute series of verses from the Quran juxtaposed against news video of violence and terrorism,” AP reports. It’s a very powerful film that I highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t already seen it.
The film, naturally, prompted angry demonstrations and official protests around the Muslim world. It’s the typical Islamic reaction to almost anything – “How dare you call me violent?! I’LL KILL YOU!”
The judgment noted that “Given the film in its whole and the context of societal debate, the court finds that there is no question of inciting hate with the film Fitna.”
In court, Wilders argued his statements reflect the views of millions of Dutch voters and are protected by laws safeguarding freedom of speech. And even the prosecutors called for his acquittal, A.P reports.
Last April the same court acquitted the chairman of the Arab European League of hate speech charges for publishing a Holocaust-denying cartoon on its website.
The group reportedly published the cartoon knowing it was anti-Semitic and assuming they’d lose in court. The group then reportedly planned to accuse the European media of having a double standard – of being willing to publish cartoons mocking Islam’s prophet Muhammad, but not cartoons about the Holocaust.
I, frankly, see no similarity between denying a historical fact, which insults the survivors and diminishes the memories of those who perished, and lampooning a religion’s long-dead founder. I’m not sure why no one appears to have noted this, but it doesn’t matter.
I guess the radical Islamic propaganda machine will have to go to plan “B” now, whatever that might be.
THE DUTCH ESCAPE DEATH BY STRANGULATION
By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen
politicalmavens.com
June 29, 2011
A Dutch court acquitted populist politician Geert Wilders of hate speech and discrimination last week, Associated Press reported.
Very good news, indeed.
This entire episode, in which the Netherlands’ growing Muslim population tried to tighten its stranglehold on yet another country by wrapping its own laws around its neck, can be a lesson to the world.
The court ruled that Wilders’ “anti-Islam statements, while offensive to many Muslims, fell within the bounds of legitimate political debate.”
The judge said “Wilders’ claims that Islam is violent by nature, and his calls to halt Muslim immigration and ban the Muslim holy book, the Quran, must be seen in a wider context of debate over immigration policy.”
Watch for news of this judge’s murder. I’m just saying.
The court said Wilders’ public statements could not be directly linked to increased discrimination against Dutch Muslims, which was what the Muslims were claiming.
Wilders was accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims through public statements, and with insulting them by comparing Islam with Nazism, which is hilarious, considering the constant, disgusting comparisons the Muslim world makes between Israel and the Nazis.
Outside the courtroom, Wilders called the decision a “victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands. Fortunately you’re allowed to discuss Islam in public debate and you’re not muzzled… An enormous burden has fallen from my shoulders.”
One of the lawyers for the groups that filed the complaints against Wilders reportedly said the “Dutch courts are failing to protect a religious minority from discrimination,” and plans to file an appeal to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. She will likely win there, considering the heavily pro-Muslim stacked deck in that body.
But who cares?
Right won out in the Netherlands.
The Dutch judge was able to recognize that Wilders’ statements about a “tsunami” of immigrants overrunning the country and threatening its culture were “legitimate given the wider context and his further statements that he has no objections to Muslims who integrate and accept Dutch values,” according to reports.
The story notes that Wilders “lives under constant protection due to death threats,” which should, on its face, prove his statements about Islam’s violent tendencies, unless the threats are coming from Anglican nuns or something and are not tied to his focus on Muslims in the Netherlands. But since everyone seems to accept without question that the threats are coming from the Muslims, I think we can assume that also. The story also notes that Wilders has never called for or endorsed violence.
What he says is that Islam is an inherently violent religion, and compares the Quran with Hitler’s anti-Semitic “Mein Kampf,” the story notes.
”The court paid special attention to Wilders’ 2008 film, ‘Fitna,’ Arabic for ‘ordeal’ – a 15-minute series of verses from the Quran juxtaposed against news video of violence and terrorism,” AP reports. It’s a very powerful film that I highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t already seen it.
The film, naturally, prompted angry demonstrations and official protests around the Muslim world. It’s the typical Islamic reaction to almost anything – “How dare you call me violent?! I’LL KILL YOU!”
The judgment noted that “Given the film in its whole and the context of societal debate, the court finds that there is no question of inciting hate with the film Fitna.”
In court, Wilders argued his statements reflect the views of millions of Dutch voters and are protected by laws safeguarding freedom of speech. And even the prosecutors called for his acquittal, A.P reports.
Last April the same court acquitted the chairman of the Arab European League of hate speech charges for publishing a Holocaust-denying cartoon on its website.
The group reportedly published the cartoon knowing it was anti-Semitic and assuming they’d lose in court. The group then reportedly planned to accuse the European media of having a double standard – of being willing to publish cartoons mocking Islam’s prophet Muhammad, but not cartoons about the Holocaust.
I, frankly, see no similarity between denying a historical fact, which insults the survivors and diminishes the memories of those who perished, and lampooning a religion’s long-dead founder. I’m not sure why no one appears to have noted this, but it doesn’t matter.
I guess the radical Islamic propaganda machine will have to go to plan “B” now, whatever that might be.
HIC ... WHAT BODY ... HIC ... OSHIFFER?
Hey, when you’re drunk, you can’t afford to let yourself get distracted while driving.
JAMES JOHN OMAK, DRIVER: WHAT DEAD GUY IN MY FRONT PASSENGER SEAT, OFFICER?
The victim's severed limbs were found on the freeway three miles away
By Richard Connelly
Houston Press Hair Balls
June 28, 2011
When a cop pulls you over because your windshield is shattered, your front end is crumpled and -- as he points out to you -- you seem to have a dead person sitting next to you in the front seat,
what are your options?
a) Ask "What seems to be the problem, officer?"
b) Start madly spinning a tale of escaping an Uzi ambush and trying to find a hospital to take your wounded friend to
c) Admit that yeah, you hit something on the highway a couple of minutes ago, but say you were unaware there was a dead body sitting next to you.
James John Onak, 49, took the third option this morning and now faces criminal charges. "Onak was believed to be under the influence," HPD says, stunningly.
He's facing a felony charge of failure to stop and render aid and a misdemeanor charge of tampering with evidence. A blood test was taken, and further charges may come from it, HPD says. (Update: They've added a DWI charge and felony accident involving injury.)
Police say Onak was driving his Mazda 626 on the Gulf Freeway about 12:30 a.m. when he hit a man who had stopped when his car broke down and was "running back and forth across the freeway." The name of the 32-year-old male victim has not been released.
Onak continued driving until he was pulled over about three miles later by a deputy constable at Beamer Road at Kirkvalley.
"According to the deputy, the Mazda had extensive front-end damage and he observed the deceased victim in the front passenger seat," HPD says. "The driver advised the deputy that he had hit something on the freeway but was not aware the victim was lying in the passenger seat."
Yeah, he might have been under the influence.
JAMES JOHN OMAK, DRIVER: WHAT DEAD GUY IN MY FRONT PASSENGER SEAT, OFFICER?
The victim's severed limbs were found on the freeway three miles away
By Richard Connelly
Houston Press Hair Balls
June 28, 2011
When a cop pulls you over because your windshield is shattered, your front end is crumpled and -- as he points out to you -- you seem to have a dead person sitting next to you in the front seat,
what are your options?
a) Ask "What seems to be the problem, officer?"
b) Start madly spinning a tale of escaping an Uzi ambush and trying to find a hospital to take your wounded friend to
c) Admit that yeah, you hit something on the highway a couple of minutes ago, but say you were unaware there was a dead body sitting next to you.
James John Onak, 49, took the third option this morning and now faces criminal charges. "Onak was believed to be under the influence," HPD says, stunningly.
He's facing a felony charge of failure to stop and render aid and a misdemeanor charge of tampering with evidence. A blood test was taken, and further charges may come from it, HPD says. (Update: They've added a DWI charge and felony accident involving injury.)
Police say Onak was driving his Mazda 626 on the Gulf Freeway about 12:30 a.m. when he hit a man who had stopped when his car broke down and was "running back and forth across the freeway." The name of the 32-year-old male victim has not been released.
Onak continued driving until he was pulled over about three miles later by a deputy constable at Beamer Road at Kirkvalley.
"According to the deputy, the Mazda had extensive front-end damage and he observed the deceased victim in the front passenger seat," HPD says. "The driver advised the deputy that he had hit something on the freeway but was not aware the victim was lying in the passenger seat."
Yeah, he might have been under the influence.
OUT OF GAS
Sister Mary Ann, who worked for a Catholic home health service, was out making her rounds visiting homebound patients when she ran out of gas. As luck would have it, a Texaco Gasoline station was just a block away.
She walked to the station to borrow a gas can and buy some gas. The attendant told her that the only gas can he owned had been loaned out, but she could wait until it was returned. Since she was on the way to see a patient, Sister Mary Ann decided not to wait and walked back to her car.
She looked for something in her car that she could fill with gas and spotted the bedpan she was taking to the patient. Always resourceful, Sister Mary Ann carried the bedpan to the station, filled it with gasoline, and carried the full bedpan back to her car.
As she was pouring the gas into her tank, two Baptists happened to walk by and watched what Sister Mary Ann was doing. Seeing that she was pouring the contents of a bed pan into the gas tank, one of the Baptists turned to the other and said …..
"If that car starts, I'm turning Catholic!"
She walked to the station to borrow a gas can and buy some gas. The attendant told her that the only gas can he owned had been loaned out, but she could wait until it was returned. Since she was on the way to see a patient, Sister Mary Ann decided not to wait and walked back to her car.
She looked for something in her car that she could fill with gas and spotted the bedpan she was taking to the patient. Always resourceful, Sister Mary Ann carried the bedpan to the station, filled it with gasoline, and carried the full bedpan back to her car.
As she was pouring the gas into her tank, two Baptists happened to walk by and watched what Sister Mary Ann was doing. Seeing that she was pouring the contents of a bed pan into the gas tank, one of the Baptists turned to the other and said …..
"If that car starts, I'm turning Catholic!"
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
TEEN COMMUNITY POLICE ADVISORY BOARDS
Not everything done in California is kooky.
LOS ANGELES POLICE EMBRACE ESTABLISHMENT OF TEENAGE POLICE BOARDS ACROSS THE CITY WHICH STARTED IN THE HARBOR AREA; YOUTH CRIME DROPPED AND STUDENTS INVOLVED SAY THE EXPERIENCE CHANGED THEIR LIVES FOR THE BETTER
“Doing the hard right instead of the easy wrong,” motto of the LAPD Teen CPAB.
By Diana L. Chapman
The Underdog for Kids
June 17, 2011
Six years ago, Los Angeles Senior Lead Police Officer Joe Buscaino landed squarely in the heart of two major San Pedro schools where problems abounded.
Fights took place outside Dana Middle and San Pedro High schools frequently. The students flooded the streets when both schools got out at the same time. Drugs were a constant and Buscaino felt somewhat overwhelmed. Then it hit him.
“We just weren’t connecting with teenagers in terms of problem solving,” Buscaino said, who lives in San Pedro with his wife, Geralyn, and two children. “What was a better way than to bring them to the table? It was ultimately the idea to give them access to the police department.
“Often we were just turning a deaf ear to what kids had to say.”
That’s when Buscaino pushed for and received permission to form the Teen Community Police Advisory Board in the Harbor Area. The goal: to establish LAPD relations with teenagers, get them to know and trust police officers and to work with them toward the betterment of the community. The program has been so successful --with youth crime taking such a dip -- that the top brass soon noticed.
Now, Police Chief Charlie Beck ordered that all 21 LAPD areas host teen police advisory boards by the end of July.
“Through the vision and leadership of Joe Buscaino, the Teen CPAB has been very successful,” explained Patrick Gannon, a deputy chief. “Joe brought together a core group of teenagers who were dedicated at addressing serious community issues such as graffiti and bullying in our schools and neighborhood. The insight and the effort that these young people brought to these issues has been tremendous.
“Community policing is all about partnerships and problem solving. Increasing our partnerships with teenagers and then using them to solve problems of mutual concern is a valuable asset as we continue to try and improve public safety.”
Since it originated, youth crime slumped across the Harbor Area. Teen members encourage and help other students to stay away from drugs or other criminal activities. And teen board members conduct public awareness messages – such as anti-bullying videos that will play in the fall at San Pedro High. The bottom line, Buscaino said, is an all out effort to build associations between students and police. The young members also mentor students who are faced with troubles and don’t know where to go, said Kavita Desai, the current teen board’s co-president. The board has 38 members.
“We mentor students one on one,” said 17-year-old Kavita, whose friend, Andrew Andrade, also 17 is a member. “Being teenagers at school, we know who is under a bad influence. Students don’t want to go to adult. They can talk to us and it’s confidential. We basically try to stop them before they do something they regret.”
Since Buscaino’s brainstorm, the teen board has helped influence relationships between hundreds of students and officers for the better and statistics seem to prove that the program – made up of students from the Wilmington, San Pedro, Harbor Gateway and Harbor City – have possibly aided in a large dip in teen crime.
For instance, five youth committed homicides in 2006 versus none in 2010. In the same time frame, aggravated assaults dropped by nearly half, 97 to 45; robbery 105 to 65; grand theft auto dipped 19 to eight, according to LAPD statistics. Burglary, theft and rape numbers stayed about the same, however.
The teen CPAB meets monthly at Boys and Girls Club sites to problem solve, work on issues that are becoming trendy, such as tagging, and to give teens “a voice.” It also heads yearly teen conferences in the spring where about 200 youth from all over Los Angeles gather to give them a voice to law enforcement.
While the program has built quite a bit of steam, in the beginning, Buscaino said students were wary and unsure if they even wanted to join.
“They were very hesitant and distrusting, and rightfully so,” the senior lead said. “What I gained was they never had an opportunity to establish a relationship with the police. They were timid and shy and it was hard to break that.”
But break it he did and the wall came crashing down between some officers and youth, some of whom nicknamed Buscaino “Papa Joe” and said their lives changed for the better.
Gabe Maldanado, who joined as the executive secretary at the age of 16, touts the board left him with the sense that he could accomplish most anything and “puts a face” on police officers. Buscaino, he said, attacked the trouble “from the root” and was “clever” in that he handed over the reins to the students to let them lead the advisory board. He witnessed students involved in the program quit ditching classes and improved their grades. He applauds LAPD’s decision to expand it across the city.
“Teen CPAB taught me to dream bigger every day,” said Maldanado, a 21-year-old graduate from UC Riverside who is now a marketing coordinator. “We went to Sacramento to speak to state legislators. We had teen conferences. It taught me I could do practically anything. I put myself through college. I just got back from Europe. It really changed the way we thought and we were inspired that we could do something for our community.”
Maldando also established a non-profit TruEvolutions, dedicated to help develop youth in academic, artistic and entrepreneurial endeavors. All this, he said, came from his time with CPAB.
Another former board member, Isaiah Alexander, 21, who attends California State University, Sacramento said he’s ecstatic that the LAPD had the vision to expand on such success. Many students, he said, “feel like no one cares about them.” Those involved will change dramatically, as he did, for the better.
Alexander’s family had many gang ties in Long Beach. When he moved to San Pedro, it helped him cleanse away those ties, but serving on the board allowed him to grow and flourish and understand his capabilities.
“We have a lot of students who don’t like police,” Alexander said. “This (expansion) will define and change behaviors. There will be more trust and rapport and less stereotypes. It gave me a different image of police. I saw their human side.
“It gave me the chance to really work with officers and delegates. I had a chance to express myself and go to the capitol. We really took pride in what we did.”
Buscaino believes part of his success was that he was there to listen to the students and he gave them the freedom to run the board. For instance, he said, the teens decide on the topics to discuss at the meetings. Those involved tip Busacaino off to specific problems taking place in schools, which in turn, will be shared with school police and administrators. That can include anything from traffic and gang problems to narcotic issues.
Many issues involving after school problems at Dana and San Pedro were resolved with the use of the teen board along with help from the Safety Collaborative, a board of school officials, police and non-profits in charge of children’s welfare.
Although Buscaino is pleased with his work, he’s proudest of his youth’s work to pull together teen conferences each year which links hundreds of children with officers, including the top brass. The recent conference focused on bullying.
From that April conference teen Angelica Arreola wrote: “When someone asks me what did I learn from this day, I would say, it’s a day never to forget, a bunch of faces I will always remember. The different stories I heard really touched my heart because to know there are people out there going through what I went through makes me feel a bit less lonely. Bullying is one of the worst things to go through…
“Bullies, all they do is feed from our weakness and we should never give them that power. I also believe we are put in this world to make a difference. I want to make a difference in this world, and show kids out there that they are not alone.”
The Teen CPAB seems to have done just that.
LOS ANGELES POLICE EMBRACE ESTABLISHMENT OF TEENAGE POLICE BOARDS ACROSS THE CITY WHICH STARTED IN THE HARBOR AREA; YOUTH CRIME DROPPED AND STUDENTS INVOLVED SAY THE EXPERIENCE CHANGED THEIR LIVES FOR THE BETTER
“Doing the hard right instead of the easy wrong,” motto of the LAPD Teen CPAB.
By Diana L. Chapman
The Underdog for Kids
June 17, 2011
Six years ago, Los Angeles Senior Lead Police Officer Joe Buscaino landed squarely in the heart of two major San Pedro schools where problems abounded.
Fights took place outside Dana Middle and San Pedro High schools frequently. The students flooded the streets when both schools got out at the same time. Drugs were a constant and Buscaino felt somewhat overwhelmed. Then it hit him.
“We just weren’t connecting with teenagers in terms of problem solving,” Buscaino said, who lives in San Pedro with his wife, Geralyn, and two children. “What was a better way than to bring them to the table? It was ultimately the idea to give them access to the police department.
“Often we were just turning a deaf ear to what kids had to say.”
That’s when Buscaino pushed for and received permission to form the Teen Community Police Advisory Board in the Harbor Area. The goal: to establish LAPD relations with teenagers, get them to know and trust police officers and to work with them toward the betterment of the community. The program has been so successful --with youth crime taking such a dip -- that the top brass soon noticed.
Now, Police Chief Charlie Beck ordered that all 21 LAPD areas host teen police advisory boards by the end of July.
“Through the vision and leadership of Joe Buscaino, the Teen CPAB has been very successful,” explained Patrick Gannon, a deputy chief. “Joe brought together a core group of teenagers who were dedicated at addressing serious community issues such as graffiti and bullying in our schools and neighborhood. The insight and the effort that these young people brought to these issues has been tremendous.
“Community policing is all about partnerships and problem solving. Increasing our partnerships with teenagers and then using them to solve problems of mutual concern is a valuable asset as we continue to try and improve public safety.”
Since it originated, youth crime slumped across the Harbor Area. Teen members encourage and help other students to stay away from drugs or other criminal activities. And teen board members conduct public awareness messages – such as anti-bullying videos that will play in the fall at San Pedro High. The bottom line, Buscaino said, is an all out effort to build associations between students and police. The young members also mentor students who are faced with troubles and don’t know where to go, said Kavita Desai, the current teen board’s co-president. The board has 38 members.
“We mentor students one on one,” said 17-year-old Kavita, whose friend, Andrew Andrade, also 17 is a member. “Being teenagers at school, we know who is under a bad influence. Students don’t want to go to adult. They can talk to us and it’s confidential. We basically try to stop them before they do something they regret.”
Since Buscaino’s brainstorm, the teen board has helped influence relationships between hundreds of students and officers for the better and statistics seem to prove that the program – made up of students from the Wilmington, San Pedro, Harbor Gateway and Harbor City – have possibly aided in a large dip in teen crime.
For instance, five youth committed homicides in 2006 versus none in 2010. In the same time frame, aggravated assaults dropped by nearly half, 97 to 45; robbery 105 to 65; grand theft auto dipped 19 to eight, according to LAPD statistics. Burglary, theft and rape numbers stayed about the same, however.
The teen CPAB meets monthly at Boys and Girls Club sites to problem solve, work on issues that are becoming trendy, such as tagging, and to give teens “a voice.” It also heads yearly teen conferences in the spring where about 200 youth from all over Los Angeles gather to give them a voice to law enforcement.
While the program has built quite a bit of steam, in the beginning, Buscaino said students were wary and unsure if they even wanted to join.
“They were very hesitant and distrusting, and rightfully so,” the senior lead said. “What I gained was they never had an opportunity to establish a relationship with the police. They were timid and shy and it was hard to break that.”
But break it he did and the wall came crashing down between some officers and youth, some of whom nicknamed Buscaino “Papa Joe” and said their lives changed for the better.
Gabe Maldanado, who joined as the executive secretary at the age of 16, touts the board left him with the sense that he could accomplish most anything and “puts a face” on police officers. Buscaino, he said, attacked the trouble “from the root” and was “clever” in that he handed over the reins to the students to let them lead the advisory board. He witnessed students involved in the program quit ditching classes and improved their grades. He applauds LAPD’s decision to expand it across the city.
“Teen CPAB taught me to dream bigger every day,” said Maldanado, a 21-year-old graduate from UC Riverside who is now a marketing coordinator. “We went to Sacramento to speak to state legislators. We had teen conferences. It taught me I could do practically anything. I put myself through college. I just got back from Europe. It really changed the way we thought and we were inspired that we could do something for our community.”
Maldando also established a non-profit TruEvolutions, dedicated to help develop youth in academic, artistic and entrepreneurial endeavors. All this, he said, came from his time with CPAB.
Another former board member, Isaiah Alexander, 21, who attends California State University, Sacramento said he’s ecstatic that the LAPD had the vision to expand on such success. Many students, he said, “feel like no one cares about them.” Those involved will change dramatically, as he did, for the better.
Alexander’s family had many gang ties in Long Beach. When he moved to San Pedro, it helped him cleanse away those ties, but serving on the board allowed him to grow and flourish and understand his capabilities.
“We have a lot of students who don’t like police,” Alexander said. “This (expansion) will define and change behaviors. There will be more trust and rapport and less stereotypes. It gave me a different image of police. I saw their human side.
“It gave me the chance to really work with officers and delegates. I had a chance to express myself and go to the capitol. We really took pride in what we did.”
Buscaino believes part of his success was that he was there to listen to the students and he gave them the freedom to run the board. For instance, he said, the teens decide on the topics to discuss at the meetings. Those involved tip Busacaino off to specific problems taking place in schools, which in turn, will be shared with school police and administrators. That can include anything from traffic and gang problems to narcotic issues.
Many issues involving after school problems at Dana and San Pedro were resolved with the use of the teen board along with help from the Safety Collaborative, a board of school officials, police and non-profits in charge of children’s welfare.
Although Buscaino is pleased with his work, he’s proudest of his youth’s work to pull together teen conferences each year which links hundreds of children with officers, including the top brass. The recent conference focused on bullying.
From that April conference teen Angelica Arreola wrote: “When someone asks me what did I learn from this day, I would say, it’s a day never to forget, a bunch of faces I will always remember. The different stories I heard really touched my heart because to know there are people out there going through what I went through makes me feel a bit less lonely. Bullying is one of the worst things to go through…
“Bullies, all they do is feed from our weakness and we should never give them that power. I also believe we are put in this world to make a difference. I want to make a difference in this world, and show kids out there that they are not alone.”
The Teen CPAB seems to have done just that.
AUSSIES FAIL TO FALL FOR PHONY PLEA
Thanks to Dorina Lisson for the heads-up on this report.
‘As an artist, I was obliged to attend the parties and functions of Uday Saddam Hussein in addition to the parties of his father (Saddam),’ That sounds exactly like the ‘I was only following orders’ excuse used by the Nazi soldiers charged with committing atrocities.
ASYLUM FLAGGED FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN’S STOOGE
A FAVOURITE musician of Saddam Hussein's, who wrote propaganda songs for the brutal dictator, has been recommended for asylum in Australia
By Padraic Murphy
Herald Sun
June 29, 2011
The man, who performed at the tyrant's drunken parties, won his case before the Refugees Review Tribunal.
He told the tribunal he would be assassinated by Americans or Iraq security if he were sent home, claims initially rejected by the Immigration Department.
He gave an impromptu concert to the tribunal last month to support his appeal.
The man, who arrived in Australia last August on an entertainment visa then applied for asylum, said other artists had been killed because of their association with Saddam and his goons.
"As an artist, I was obliged to attend the parties and functions of Uday Saddam Hussein in addition to the parties of his father (Saddam)," he told Australian authorities.
"Those evenings and functions became a room for sarcasm, derision and fun-making wherein we watch Saddam Hussein and his son, Uday, binge in saucy and extravagant parties."
Despite his claims, the man admitted to being a member of Saddam's notorious Baath party since 1979.
He became famous with the party's backing, appearing on state TV and performing for the country's elite.
Since Saddam was executed in 2006, the musician claims he has become a wanted man in Iraq.
A shift towards Islamic fundamentalism meant "people in Iraq ... think that art and music is a corrupt activity produced by devils".
Immigration officials noted the man had lived in the United Arab Emirates on and off since 1998.
Despite claiming he was the target of anti-Baathist hit squads, he returned to Iraq at least eight time since 2008.
Immigration officials rejected his application for a protection visa and said "there was no real chance of persecution" in Iraq.
The refugee tribunal also admitted it had some concerns about the man's claims, but said he did not endorse Saddam's regime and was "forced" to provide entertainment.
‘As an artist, I was obliged to attend the parties and functions of Uday Saddam Hussein in addition to the parties of his father (Saddam),’ That sounds exactly like the ‘I was only following orders’ excuse used by the Nazi soldiers charged with committing atrocities.
ASYLUM FLAGGED FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN’S STOOGE
A FAVOURITE musician of Saddam Hussein's, who wrote propaganda songs for the brutal dictator, has been recommended for asylum in Australia
By Padraic Murphy
Herald Sun
June 29, 2011
The man, who performed at the tyrant's drunken parties, won his case before the Refugees Review Tribunal.
He told the tribunal he would be assassinated by Americans or Iraq security if he were sent home, claims initially rejected by the Immigration Department.
He gave an impromptu concert to the tribunal last month to support his appeal.
The man, who arrived in Australia last August on an entertainment visa then applied for asylum, said other artists had been killed because of their association with Saddam and his goons.
"As an artist, I was obliged to attend the parties and functions of Uday Saddam Hussein in addition to the parties of his father (Saddam)," he told Australian authorities.
"Those evenings and functions became a room for sarcasm, derision and fun-making wherein we watch Saddam Hussein and his son, Uday, binge in saucy and extravagant parties."
Despite his claims, the man admitted to being a member of Saddam's notorious Baath party since 1979.
He became famous with the party's backing, appearing on state TV and performing for the country's elite.
Since Saddam was executed in 2006, the musician claims he has become a wanted man in Iraq.
A shift towards Islamic fundamentalism meant "people in Iraq ... think that art and music is a corrupt activity produced by devils".
Immigration officials noted the man had lived in the United Arab Emirates on and off since 1998.
Despite claiming he was the target of anti-Baathist hit squads, he returned to Iraq at least eight time since 2008.
Immigration officials rejected his application for a protection visa and said "there was no real chance of persecution" in Iraq.
The refugee tribunal also admitted it had some concerns about the man's claims, but said he did not endorse Saddam's regime and was "forced" to provide entertainment.
GADHAFI, BUT NOT ASSAD
On Monday the International Criminal Court, also known as the International Court of Justice, issued an arrest warrant Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity for killing civilians who rebelled against his rule.
Meanwhile, Syrian leader Bashar Assad continues to kill civilians who have risen up against his rule.
Will someone please explain why Assad, who has probably killed more civilians than Gadhafi, is not being charged with crimes against humanity.
Meanwhile, Syrian leader Bashar Assad continues to kill civilians who have risen up against his rule.
Will someone please explain why Assad, who has probably killed more civilians than Gadhafi, is not being charged with crimes against humanity.
THE PEOPLE WHO SAIL ON THE GAZA FLOTILLAS
Marilyn Penn puts the lie to those who claim the Gaza blockade running flotillas are humanitarian endeavors. In fact, they are nothing more than an exercise in the politically correct demonization of Israel.
A BOATLOAD OF TRAITORS
By Marilyn Penn
politicalmavens.com
June 28, 2011
Throughout the news this weekend, there were accounts of rape, violence, homicide bombing and the terrors of war committed by Muslims in their own countries as well as others. On Sunday, June 26th, an article in IsraelNationalNews.com reported that in Norway in 2010, there were 86 documented cases of assault-rape - they were all perpetrated by Muslim men on Norwegian women. The Sunday Times reported the following news: Car Bomb Leaves at Least 20 Dead At Hospital in Eastern Afghanistan; Iraqi Feud Brings Government to Standstill; It is not clear that the Taliban want to negotiate or who even represents the organization….the administration now recognizes that a final American withdrawal depends on a political settlement with the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement equated closely with the murderous ideology of Al Qaeda; The Department of Defense has identified 1,620 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.
And while violence continues in Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, there is one place in the Arab world where stability is growing as factories and farms multiply, construction booms and unemployment drops. Ironically, that place is Gaza - the place singled out for international attention as the next flotilla prepares to sail, staffed by leftist loonies bearing solidarity, love and concern for people who are better off than many Americans living in Newark, Detroit, Washington D.C. and New York. These pusillanimous rescuers are not floating off to Darfur, Congo or Sudan where photo-ops are hard to come by and marauding thugs are unfazed by such concerns as respect for interfering faux do-gooders. They are not trudging to Afghanistan where sick people and the medical staff who tend them are marked for murder, nor will they insist on seeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for five years without a single visit by the Red Cross. Their outpouring of compassion exists only for the purported victims of Israeli aggression - there is no credence given to the barbaric tactics of Hamas planting its military operations in the midst of their own civilian populations, or murdering its own domestic opposition, much less targeting Israeli children on school buses for demolition.
The people who sail on this flotilla are neither flighty nor naive. They are familiar, old fashioned anti-semites recycled and costumed in this decade’s politically correct conventional wisdom - that Arab nations, some with vast accumulations of oil wealth, some with vast infusions of western aid are the underdogs in the battle against Zionist imperialism. These people are no different than the populations of Europe who willingly joined their Nazi oppressors in expediting the extermination of Jews and the plunder of their assets. Alice Walker may not want to steal any art work or real estate but she is eager for the opportunity to defame the Jewish state, even when it means allying herself with Arabs who enslaved between 11 and 18 million Africans between the 7th and 20th centuries. The Jewish granny holocaust survivor who will be sailing for the second time joins the list of other self-hating Jews whose miasma remains untouched by the realpolitik of world events in their own lifetimes. Their inability to understand the ideology of hate espoused by groups like Hamas and theocracies like Iran bespeaks a deeper problem that has been analyzed by a growing list of writers and thinkers including Norman Podhoretz, Ruth Wisse, Howard Jacobson, Daniel Greefield, Mark Steyn, Carolyn Glick and Andy McCarthy.
Whatever their motivation, their actions bespeak the cognitive dissonance of the far left and its expression in a revival of fiercely anti-semitic behavior. The flotilla should be recognized as anti-west treachery directed at our ally instead of our acknowledged enemies. It is nothing more or less than an act of treason in a twisted masquerade of humanitarianism.
A BOATLOAD OF TRAITORS
By Marilyn Penn
politicalmavens.com
June 28, 2011
Throughout the news this weekend, there were accounts of rape, violence, homicide bombing and the terrors of war committed by Muslims in their own countries as well as others. On Sunday, June 26th, an article in IsraelNationalNews.com reported that in Norway in 2010, there were 86 documented cases of assault-rape - they were all perpetrated by Muslim men on Norwegian women. The Sunday Times reported the following news: Car Bomb Leaves at Least 20 Dead At Hospital in Eastern Afghanistan; Iraqi Feud Brings Government to Standstill; It is not clear that the Taliban want to negotiate or who even represents the organization….the administration now recognizes that a final American withdrawal depends on a political settlement with the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement equated closely with the murderous ideology of Al Qaeda; The Department of Defense has identified 1,620 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.
And while violence continues in Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, there is one place in the Arab world where stability is growing as factories and farms multiply, construction booms and unemployment drops. Ironically, that place is Gaza - the place singled out for international attention as the next flotilla prepares to sail, staffed by leftist loonies bearing solidarity, love and concern for people who are better off than many Americans living in Newark, Detroit, Washington D.C. and New York. These pusillanimous rescuers are not floating off to Darfur, Congo or Sudan where photo-ops are hard to come by and marauding thugs are unfazed by such concerns as respect for interfering faux do-gooders. They are not trudging to Afghanistan where sick people and the medical staff who tend them are marked for murder, nor will they insist on seeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for five years without a single visit by the Red Cross. Their outpouring of compassion exists only for the purported victims of Israeli aggression - there is no credence given to the barbaric tactics of Hamas planting its military operations in the midst of their own civilian populations, or murdering its own domestic opposition, much less targeting Israeli children on school buses for demolition.
The people who sail on this flotilla are neither flighty nor naive. They are familiar, old fashioned anti-semites recycled and costumed in this decade’s politically correct conventional wisdom - that Arab nations, some with vast accumulations of oil wealth, some with vast infusions of western aid are the underdogs in the battle against Zionist imperialism. These people are no different than the populations of Europe who willingly joined their Nazi oppressors in expediting the extermination of Jews and the plunder of their assets. Alice Walker may not want to steal any art work or real estate but she is eager for the opportunity to defame the Jewish state, even when it means allying herself with Arabs who enslaved between 11 and 18 million Africans between the 7th and 20th centuries. The Jewish granny holocaust survivor who will be sailing for the second time joins the list of other self-hating Jews whose miasma remains untouched by the realpolitik of world events in their own lifetimes. Their inability to understand the ideology of hate espoused by groups like Hamas and theocracies like Iran bespeaks a deeper problem that has been analyzed by a growing list of writers and thinkers including Norman Podhoretz, Ruth Wisse, Howard Jacobson, Daniel Greefield, Mark Steyn, Carolyn Glick and Andy McCarthy.
Whatever their motivation, their actions bespeak the cognitive dissonance of the far left and its expression in a revival of fiercely anti-semitic behavior. The flotilla should be recognized as anti-west treachery directed at our ally instead of our acknowledged enemies. It is nothing more or less than an act of treason in a twisted masquerade of humanitarianism.
GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM!
A retired high ranking law enforcement official sent me part of a Netanyahu interview, as well as some facts about the Jewish presence in Israel and the UN’s position on that presence.
I am familiar with the Netanyahu interview. As for the rest, those are well established facts. But they simply do not impress the Europeans and the worldwide media which continually side with the Palestinians and demonize the Jewish state.
Oh, I forgot to mention that you can count President Obama and his administration among those taking the Palestinian side.
NETANYAHU AT HIS BEST
Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas' shelling of Israel.
The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?" (A nasty question if there ever was one!)
Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"
Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?
Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death
more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children.
Perhaps you have another question?"
IT’S OUR LAND: BRIEF FACTS ON THE JEWISH PRESENCE IN ISRAEL
1. Nationhood and Jerusalem: Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, two thousand (2000) years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand (1000) years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left (many in fear of retaliation by their own brethren, the Arabs), without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The ones who stayed were afforded the same peace, civility, and citizenship rights as everyone else.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that hasnever been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
THE UN ON ISRAEL
1. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
2. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
3. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
4. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
5. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
I am familiar with the Netanyahu interview. As for the rest, those are well established facts. But they simply do not impress the Europeans and the worldwide media which continually side with the Palestinians and demonize the Jewish state.
Oh, I forgot to mention that you can count President Obama and his administration among those taking the Palestinian side.
NETANYAHU AT HIS BEST
Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas' shelling of Israel.
The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?" (A nasty question if there ever was one!)
Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"
Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?
Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death
more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children.
Perhaps you have another question?"
IT’S OUR LAND: BRIEF FACTS ON THE JEWISH PRESENCE IN ISRAEL
1. Nationhood and Jerusalem: Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, two thousand (2000) years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand (1000) years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left (many in fear of retaliation by their own brethren, the Arabs), without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The ones who stayed were afforded the same peace, civility, and citizenship rights as everyone else.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that hasnever been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
THE UN ON ISRAEL
1. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
2. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
3. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
4. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
5. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
CAMERA-SHY (DUMB) COPS
There have been a number of people arrested all over the country for videotaping cops while they were making arrests. I call it the ‘Rodney King Fallout Syndrome.’ I’ll be the first to admit that, as a cop, I would not want anyone to videotape me while I was making an arrest. But is that against the law or grounds for arresting the video-shooter if he is not interfering with the police operation? I don’t think so.
Last month, a cop in Rochester, NY arrested a woman who was videotaping a nighttime traffic stop and vehicle search from her front yard. After she had been arrested, Emily Good uploaded the video to the internet, where it went viral. Here is how the Huffington Post described it:
"I just got out of the house, man, I'm sick, man," the man who has been pulled over says. Other police officers search his car.
Then one of the officers, identified as Mario Masic in the arrest report, turns to the camera and asks, "You guys need something?"
"I'm just -- this is my front yard -- I'm just recording what you're doing. It's my right," Good replies.
"Actually, not from the sidewalk."
"This is my yard," Good says.
"I don't feel safe with you standing behind me so I'm going to ask you go into your house, you understand?" Masic says.
From there, the conversation escalates into a confrontation, with Masic alleging that Good is threatening his safety, and that she expressed other, unspecified anti-police statements before the videotaping began.
"Due to what you said to me, before you started taping, I think, uh, you need to go stay in your house, guys."
There is a dispute over what Good said before she started videotaping but at this point she was busted and charged with Obstructing Governmental Administration. Good is a community activist and thought the cops might have been guilty of racial profiling.
Several neighbors protested Good’s arrest. To compound the stupidity of the arrest, the cops retaliated against the protest by returning to the neighborhood with 12-inch rulers and ticketing every car that was parked more than 12-inches from the curb.
The charge against Good has just been dropped. I suspect that the City of Rochester will soon be faced with a hefty lawsuit.
Here is just one more example of the Rodney King Fallout Syndrome:
In 2002, Harris County (Houston) sheriff’s deputies conducted a drug raid on a house. They arrested two neighboring brothers for videotaping the raid. The brothers sued for $5 million and in 2008 they received a $1.7 million settlement from the county.
According to the lawsuit, Sean Carlos Ibarra grabbed a camera and started shooting photos. When the deputies ordered him to hand the camera over, he refused. A sheriff’s deputy then hit Sean Ibarra and took his camera, according to the lawsuit. After several deputies then burst into the Ibarras’ home, Erik Adam Ibarra grabbed a video camera and started filming. Deputies then drew their guns and threatend to shoot Erik Ibarra, the lawsuit claims. Both brothers were arrested on charges of resisting arrest. Erik Ibarra was also charged with evading arrest. And deputies ended up destroying the photos and video from that afternoon.
Unpleasant as it is to be videotaped while you are doing your job - what you are doing may be readily misinterpreted – there are no grounds for making an arrest unless the person shooting the video is interfering with the police operation.
When cops make such arrests they are using some piss poor judgment. Or could it be that these officers are some of the pot smoking cops I wrote about the other day?
Last month, a cop in Rochester, NY arrested a woman who was videotaping a nighttime traffic stop and vehicle search from her front yard. After she had been arrested, Emily Good uploaded the video to the internet, where it went viral. Here is how the Huffington Post described it:
"I just got out of the house, man, I'm sick, man," the man who has been pulled over says. Other police officers search his car.
Then one of the officers, identified as Mario Masic in the arrest report, turns to the camera and asks, "You guys need something?"
"I'm just -- this is my front yard -- I'm just recording what you're doing. It's my right," Good replies.
"Actually, not from the sidewalk."
"This is my yard," Good says.
"I don't feel safe with you standing behind me so I'm going to ask you go into your house, you understand?" Masic says.
From there, the conversation escalates into a confrontation, with Masic alleging that Good is threatening his safety, and that she expressed other, unspecified anti-police statements before the videotaping began.
"Due to what you said to me, before you started taping, I think, uh, you need to go stay in your house, guys."
There is a dispute over what Good said before she started videotaping but at this point she was busted and charged with Obstructing Governmental Administration. Good is a community activist and thought the cops might have been guilty of racial profiling.
Several neighbors protested Good’s arrest. To compound the stupidity of the arrest, the cops retaliated against the protest by returning to the neighborhood with 12-inch rulers and ticketing every car that was parked more than 12-inches from the curb.
The charge against Good has just been dropped. I suspect that the City of Rochester will soon be faced with a hefty lawsuit.
Here is just one more example of the Rodney King Fallout Syndrome:
In 2002, Harris County (Houston) sheriff’s deputies conducted a drug raid on a house. They arrested two neighboring brothers for videotaping the raid. The brothers sued for $5 million and in 2008 they received a $1.7 million settlement from the county.
According to the lawsuit, Sean Carlos Ibarra grabbed a camera and started shooting photos. When the deputies ordered him to hand the camera over, he refused. A sheriff’s deputy then hit Sean Ibarra and took his camera, according to the lawsuit. After several deputies then burst into the Ibarras’ home, Erik Adam Ibarra grabbed a video camera and started filming. Deputies then drew their guns and threatend to shoot Erik Ibarra, the lawsuit claims. Both brothers were arrested on charges of resisting arrest. Erik Ibarra was also charged with evading arrest. And deputies ended up destroying the photos and video from that afternoon.
Unpleasant as it is to be videotaped while you are doing your job - what you are doing may be readily misinterpreted – there are no grounds for making an arrest unless the person shooting the video is interfering with the police operation.
When cops make such arrests they are using some piss poor judgment. Or could it be that these officers are some of the pot smoking cops I wrote about the other day?
BUT WHOOSE OX IS GONNA GET GORED?
OK, so the government needs to make some drastic spending cuts. But at whose expense? I sure don’t want my Social Security and Medicare benefits cut! And I don’t want families that are stuck in poverty to lose their Medicaid benefits. How can the government make drastic spending cuts without slashing those social safety net benefits?
CAREENING TOWARD THE CLIFF
By Monica Crowley
politicalmavens.com
June 27, 2011
In the last few weeks, two of the major credit rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have warned that unless the federal government does something to reduce the exploding national debt, America’s triple-A rating may very well be downgraded. S&P warned again this week.
Today we get word from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the long-term debt picture has darkened…and quickly. National Journal reports:
“Increasing federal debt will be a growing burden on government action, crowding out lawmakers’ ability to adopt tax and spending priorities in good times and reducing flexibility during recessions, all while making a fiscal crisis more likely and hindering long-term growth, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
“In the annual Long-Term Budget Outlook, the legislature’s budget scorekeepers said that the ratio of debt to GDP this year will be 69 percent, 7 percentage points higher than last year. In 2021, the CBO predicts debt will reach 76 percent of GDP, but under a more dire-and more likely-scenario, the public debt will be 101 percent of GDP 10 years from now, well into the economic danger zone of 90 percent or more.
“Last year, that worst-case scenario predicted a debt-to-GDP ratio of 87 percent in 2020, demonstrating that the public debt picture has worsened considerably.”
Democrats are predictably arguing for tax hikes, which would, of course, kill off this economy for good. But like an addict, they need the hit of ever-growing taxpayer monies to pay for their ever-growing government. The beast needs to be fed.
Actually, the beast needs to be put on a starvation diet. Cut spending drastically, reform entitlements a la Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, and reduce taxes across the board. If those things were done, you’d see a nearly instant turnaround in the economy and in the psychology of most Americans.
The Democrats prefer to plod along with their destructive big government, big spending, big tax policies, hoping that no one catches on to their epic failures.
It’s too late for that, of course, but it’s not too late to prevent the country from sailing over the cliff. The brakes, however, have to be hit now—and hard.
CAREENING TOWARD THE CLIFF
By Monica Crowley
politicalmavens.com
June 27, 2011
In the last few weeks, two of the major credit rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have warned that unless the federal government does something to reduce the exploding national debt, America’s triple-A rating may very well be downgraded. S&P warned again this week.
Today we get word from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the long-term debt picture has darkened…and quickly. National Journal reports:
“Increasing federal debt will be a growing burden on government action, crowding out lawmakers’ ability to adopt tax and spending priorities in good times and reducing flexibility during recessions, all while making a fiscal crisis more likely and hindering long-term growth, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
“In the annual Long-Term Budget Outlook, the legislature’s budget scorekeepers said that the ratio of debt to GDP this year will be 69 percent, 7 percentage points higher than last year. In 2021, the CBO predicts debt will reach 76 percent of GDP, but under a more dire-and more likely-scenario, the public debt will be 101 percent of GDP 10 years from now, well into the economic danger zone of 90 percent or more.
“Last year, that worst-case scenario predicted a debt-to-GDP ratio of 87 percent in 2020, demonstrating that the public debt picture has worsened considerably.”
Democrats are predictably arguing for tax hikes, which would, of course, kill off this economy for good. But like an addict, they need the hit of ever-growing taxpayer monies to pay for their ever-growing government. The beast needs to be fed.
Actually, the beast needs to be put on a starvation diet. Cut spending drastically, reform entitlements a la Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, and reduce taxes across the board. If those things were done, you’d see a nearly instant turnaround in the economy and in the psychology of most Americans.
The Democrats prefer to plod along with their destructive big government, big spending, big tax policies, hoping that no one catches on to their epic failures.
It’s too late for that, of course, but it’s not too late to prevent the country from sailing over the cliff. The brakes, however, have to be hit now—and hard.
IF RICK PERRY THROWS HIS HAT INTO THE RING .....
Texas governor Rick Perry is a man that liberals love to hate. To begin with, he is an evangelical Christian and that is a big no-no to liberals. But Perry is the longest-serving governor in Texas history and is now serving his 11th year in office. So what are Perry’s chances should he decide to throw his hat into the presidential ring?
Here are some excepts from ‘The Time Could Be Right For Perry Presidential Bid,’ an op-ed by George Will that appeared in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle:
Perry is a potentially potent candidate for the Republican presidential nomination because his political creed is uneclectic, matching that of the Republican nominating electorate. He was a "10th Amendment conservative" ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people") before the tea party appeared.
Social issues, especially abortion, are gateways to the Republican nominating electorate: In today's climate of economic fear, a candidate's positions on social issues will not be decisive with his electorate - but they can be disqualifying. Perry - an evangelical Christian, like most Republican participants in Iowa's caucuses and the South Carolina primary - emphatically qualifies.
Obama will not win another term stressing his accomplishments, which consist of an unpopular health care law, a failed stimulus and an anemic recovery. So Obama's campaign must be relentlessly negative, decrying the Republican nominee's "extremism." Democrats have worked that pedal on the political organ frequently - successfully against Barry Goldwater, futilely against Ronald Reagan.
Supposed examples of Perry's extremism evaporate in sunlight. One is that he intimated support for Texas' secession from the Union. After people shouted "Secede!" at a rally, he said he understood their frustration but added: "We've got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it." He signed a law requiring women seeking abortions to be shown sonograms of their babies. Do people objecting to this mandatory provision of information object to the new graphic warnings on cigarette packs?
The Republican contest probably will become a binary choice - Romney and the Not Romney candidate. If Perry becomes the latter, he will do so by his visceral appeal to social conservatives, and by trumping Romney's economic expertise with "Texas exceptionalism":
Between 2001 and last June, Texas - a right-to-work state that taxes neither personal income nor capital gains - added more jobs than the other 49 states combined. And since the recovery began two Junes ago, Texas has created 37 percent of America's net new jobs.
Here are some excepts from ‘The Time Could Be Right For Perry Presidential Bid,’ an op-ed by George Will that appeared in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle:
Perry is a potentially potent candidate for the Republican presidential nomination because his political creed is uneclectic, matching that of the Republican nominating electorate. He was a "10th Amendment conservative" ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people") before the tea party appeared.
Social issues, especially abortion, are gateways to the Republican nominating electorate: In today's climate of economic fear, a candidate's positions on social issues will not be decisive with his electorate - but they can be disqualifying. Perry - an evangelical Christian, like most Republican participants in Iowa's caucuses and the South Carolina primary - emphatically qualifies.
Obama will not win another term stressing his accomplishments, which consist of an unpopular health care law, a failed stimulus and an anemic recovery. So Obama's campaign must be relentlessly negative, decrying the Republican nominee's "extremism." Democrats have worked that pedal on the political organ frequently - successfully against Barry Goldwater, futilely against Ronald Reagan.
Supposed examples of Perry's extremism evaporate in sunlight. One is that he intimated support for Texas' secession from the Union. After people shouted "Secede!" at a rally, he said he understood their frustration but added: "We've got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it." He signed a law requiring women seeking abortions to be shown sonograms of their babies. Do people objecting to this mandatory provision of information object to the new graphic warnings on cigarette packs?
The Republican contest probably will become a binary choice - Romney and the Not Romney candidate. If Perry becomes the latter, he will do so by his visceral appeal to social conservatives, and by trumping Romney's economic expertise with "Texas exceptionalism":
Between 2001 and last June, Texas - a right-to-work state that taxes neither personal income nor capital gains - added more jobs than the other 49 states combined. And since the recovery began two Junes ago, Texas has created 37 percent of America's net new jobs.
Monday, June 27, 2011
LAWYER: 'I JUST DIDN'T SEE IT AS A DEATH PENALTY CASE'
That’s what attorney Gerald Bourque said Thursday right after a Houston jury had sentenced his client to death. The jury deliberated only 2-1/2 hours before deciding that Teddrick Batiste, 23, should die for a coldblooded murder committed on April 19, 2009.
Around 3 a.m., Batiste and a fellow Crips gang member followed Horace Holiday, 26, from a nightclub, intending to steal the chrome spinning rims on his Cadillac. He shot Holiday while they were driving on a freeway, wounding him in the arm and leg. The victim exited the freeway and crashed into a convenience store gas pump. As Holiday was trying to crawl to safety, Batiste followed him to the store, got out of his car and shot him several more times. Batiste then took the Cadillac, but was captured by police after an eight-mile high speed chase.
Only eleven days earlier, Batiste and another Crips member had robbed and killed Black Widow tattoo parlor owner Steve Robbins. Batiste’s crime partners in both murders remain unidentified.
Let me sum this up. Batiste is a member of the notorious Crips gang. He wanted to steal the rims from a Cadillac. After wounding Holiday, he follows him and shoots him several more times as he was trying to crawl to safety. And only eleven days earlier he had killed another robbery victim.
And Gerald Bourque, his lawyer, says: "I just didn't see it as a death penalty case." All I can say is that Bourque must be totally blind. But wait a minute, I could be wrong. Perhaps Bourque believed his client was just performing a mercy killing - trying to put a wounded man out of his misery - when he stood over Horace Holiday and shot him several more times as the bleeding man was trying to crawl to safety.
Around 3 a.m., Batiste and a fellow Crips gang member followed Horace Holiday, 26, from a nightclub, intending to steal the chrome spinning rims on his Cadillac. He shot Holiday while they were driving on a freeway, wounding him in the arm and leg. The victim exited the freeway and crashed into a convenience store gas pump. As Holiday was trying to crawl to safety, Batiste followed him to the store, got out of his car and shot him several more times. Batiste then took the Cadillac, but was captured by police after an eight-mile high speed chase.
Only eleven days earlier, Batiste and another Crips member had robbed and killed Black Widow tattoo parlor owner Steve Robbins. Batiste’s crime partners in both murders remain unidentified.
Let me sum this up. Batiste is a member of the notorious Crips gang. He wanted to steal the rims from a Cadillac. After wounding Holiday, he follows him and shoots him several more times as he was trying to crawl to safety. And only eleven days earlier he had killed another robbery victim.
And Gerald Bourque, his lawyer, says: "I just didn't see it as a death penalty case." All I can say is that Bourque must be totally blind. But wait a minute, I could be wrong. Perhaps Bourque believed his client was just performing a mercy killing - trying to put a wounded man out of his misery - when he stood over Horace Holiday and shot him several more times as the bleeding man was trying to crawl to safety.
JUSTICE THE ISLAMIC WAY
This is an example of the Sharia law that fundamentalist Muslims want to impose on Western society. When Amnesty International questions the fairness of this woman’s trial, that group is referring to fair trials as defined by European and American laws, not by Sharia.
WOMAN FACES DEATH BY BEHEADING IN SAUDI ARABIA FOR CRIME SHE ‘COMMITTED AS A CHILD’
Medieval murder in modern times
Mail Online
June 26, 2011
A young maid is facing death by beheading in Saudi Arabia for a crime she claims she did not commit.
Rizana Nafeek, who alleges she was a teenager at the time of the incident, was arrested in May 2005 on charges of murdering a four-month-old baby who was in her care.
The Sri-Lankan born maid denies murder and claims she desperately tried to save the child, who choked while she was looking after it.
The news comes just days after Indonesia announced it would ban women from travelling to the kingdom for domestic work after another maid was beheaded there.
Saudi Arabia has come under fire from human rights groups for the handling of Nafeek's case after it was revealed there had been a mix-up involving the year she was born in.
The authorities have her date of birth as 1982 however her birth certificate states she was born in 1988 - making her 17 at the time of the alleged incident.
If Saudi Arabia went ahead with the execution it would be in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it has ratified.
Human rights groups claim Nafeek had no legal representation before or during her trial.
Sri-Lankan born Nafeek's mother Rafeena said her daughter moved to the country so that she could send money home to help educate her three
Desperate for work she found a job as a domestic worker but was shocked when she was asked to look after a baby, Naif al-Quthaibi, because she believed she did not have the skills to care for him.
Just weeks into her employment tragedy struck and the infant choked while he was being fed.
Rafeena, who lives in a tiny village, has previously begged King Abdullah to pardon her daughter and asked him to allow her to return home.
According to the Sunday Express, earlier this week Indonesia banned its citizens from working in the oil-rich country after another maid was beheaded for murder.
Ruyati binti Sapub, 54, was executed after she confessed to killing her employer with a meat cleaver because of constant abuse.
The incident caused outrage and Saudi diplomats in Indonesia were forced to apologise for not informing them about the execution beforehand.
If Nafeek's execution goes ahead the now 23-year-old will dressed in a white robe and be marched into a packed town centre.
She will also be blindfolded, shackled and forced to kneel facing Mecca before she is prodded between the shoulders so her head is raised naturally.
Nafeek will then be executed, medieval style, with one sweep of a sharply-bladed sword.
Amnesty International has condemned the conviction and since revealed Nafeek was not allowed to produce her birth certificate which shows her true age during an appeal trial.
The group's Middle East director Malcolm Smart said at the time: 'It would be outrageous if Rizana Nafeek were to be executed for this crime.
'It appears that she was herself a child at the time and there are real concerns about the fairness of her trial.'
WOMAN FACES DEATH BY BEHEADING IN SAUDI ARABIA FOR CRIME SHE ‘COMMITTED AS A CHILD’
Medieval murder in modern times
Mail Online
June 26, 2011
A young maid is facing death by beheading in Saudi Arabia for a crime she claims she did not commit.
Rizana Nafeek, who alleges she was a teenager at the time of the incident, was arrested in May 2005 on charges of murdering a four-month-old baby who was in her care.
The Sri-Lankan born maid denies murder and claims she desperately tried to save the child, who choked while she was looking after it.
The news comes just days after Indonesia announced it would ban women from travelling to the kingdom for domestic work after another maid was beheaded there.
Saudi Arabia has come under fire from human rights groups for the handling of Nafeek's case after it was revealed there had been a mix-up involving the year she was born in.
The authorities have her date of birth as 1982 however her birth certificate states she was born in 1988 - making her 17 at the time of the alleged incident.
If Saudi Arabia went ahead with the execution it would be in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it has ratified.
Human rights groups claim Nafeek had no legal representation before or during her trial.
Sri-Lankan born Nafeek's mother Rafeena said her daughter moved to the country so that she could send money home to help educate her three
Desperate for work she found a job as a domestic worker but was shocked when she was asked to look after a baby, Naif al-Quthaibi, because she believed she did not have the skills to care for him.
Just weeks into her employment tragedy struck and the infant choked while he was being fed.
Rafeena, who lives in a tiny village, has previously begged King Abdullah to pardon her daughter and asked him to allow her to return home.
According to the Sunday Express, earlier this week Indonesia banned its citizens from working in the oil-rich country after another maid was beheaded for murder.
Ruyati binti Sapub, 54, was executed after she confessed to killing her employer with a meat cleaver because of constant abuse.
The incident caused outrage and Saudi diplomats in Indonesia were forced to apologise for not informing them about the execution beforehand.
If Nafeek's execution goes ahead the now 23-year-old will dressed in a white robe and be marched into a packed town centre.
She will also be blindfolded, shackled and forced to kneel facing Mecca before she is prodded between the shoulders so her head is raised naturally.
Nafeek will then be executed, medieval style, with one sweep of a sharply-bladed sword.
Amnesty International has condemned the conviction and since revealed Nafeek was not allowed to produce her birth certificate which shows her true age during an appeal trial.
The group's Middle East director Malcolm Smart said at the time: 'It would be outrageous if Rizana Nafeek were to be executed for this crime.
'It appears that she was herself a child at the time and there are real concerns about the fairness of her trial.'
GUYS, A WOMAN IS A MAN'S BEST FRIEND
And you thought a dog is a man’s best friend. Not so…
A woman will never stand a man up and she will never let him down.
She will reassure him when he feels insecure and comfort him after a bad day.
She will inspire him to do things he never thought he could do; to live without fear and forget regret.
She will enable him to express his deepest emotions and give in to his most intimate desires.
She will make sure he always feels as though he's the most handsome man in the room and will enable him to be the most confident, sexy, seductive and invincible…
No wait...Sorry....
I'm thinking of whiskey. It's whiskey that does all that.
Shit! Never mind…
A dog is still a man’s best friend.
A woman will never stand a man up and she will never let him down.
She will reassure him when he feels insecure and comfort him after a bad day.
She will inspire him to do things he never thought he could do; to live without fear and forget regret.
She will enable him to express his deepest emotions and give in to his most intimate desires.
She will make sure he always feels as though he's the most handsome man in the room and will enable him to be the most confident, sexy, seductive and invincible…
No wait...Sorry....
I'm thinking of whiskey. It's whiskey that does all that.
Shit! Never mind…
A dog is still a man’s best friend.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
HOW TO SELF-DESTRUCT BY TURNING A CHICKENSHIT TRAFFIC TICKET INTO TWO FELONIES
Astronomically speaking, if Bruce was ever a bright star on the horizon he must have been swallowed up by a black hole.
BRUCE CHARLES RHODES’S TRAFFIC-COURT FOLLIES: KICKS A COP IN THE NUTS, TELLS JUDGE HE’S JOINING AL QAEDA
By John Nova Lomax
Houston Press Hair Balls
June 24, 2011
There's no two ways about it: going to traffic court always sucks, and that's even if you walk away with a dismissal. When you lose your case, it's even worse, and it's the mother of all bummers if the violation you were charged with was kinda BS to begin with.
That was just what happened to Bruce Charles Rhodes Wednesday in Dickinson Municipal Court. The 29-year-old Alvin man was convicted of cutting through a convenience store parking lot to bypass a busy intersection and fined $105 and court costs by Judge Richard Cope.
We could forgive Rhodes a little anger there, maybe some eye-rolling, a heavy sigh, some cussing under his breath. That, however, is not the way Rhodes rolls.
Dickinson police Captain Jay Jaekel told the Galveston County Daily News that Rhodes "started talking and telling the judge this was a joke, he didn't have any money, and he wouldn't shut up."
Cope responded the way every judge would: He threatened to cite Rhodes with contempt. But the broke Alvinite was just getting started.
"Basically he told the judge 'F-U,' he was unemployed and was going to leave the country and join al Qaeda," Jaekel told the Daily News.
(Fear not, Gulf Coasters: The FBI cleared Rhodes of any actual Al Qaeda involvement. So far.)
Cope piled an extra $95 onto Osama Bin-Rhodes's original fine, whereupon the would-be terrorist cackled. By then, Dickinson cops had moved in. As he attempted to make his getaway from the court's foyer, Rhodes allegedly kicked one of the cops in the nuts, whereupon he was subdued and taken to jail, newly charged with felony assault on a public servant.
Jaekel said Rhodes had to be restrained for his own safety in the jail, but that apparently didn't stop him from threatening serious bodily harm on a female jailer. Bingo, felony number two: terroristic threat against a public servant.
Which has nothing to do with threatening to become a terrorist, by the way.
BRUCE CHARLES RHODES’S TRAFFIC-COURT FOLLIES: KICKS A COP IN THE NUTS, TELLS JUDGE HE’S JOINING AL QAEDA
By John Nova Lomax
Houston Press Hair Balls
June 24, 2011
There's no two ways about it: going to traffic court always sucks, and that's even if you walk away with a dismissal. When you lose your case, it's even worse, and it's the mother of all bummers if the violation you were charged with was kinda BS to begin with.
That was just what happened to Bruce Charles Rhodes Wednesday in Dickinson Municipal Court. The 29-year-old Alvin man was convicted of cutting through a convenience store parking lot to bypass a busy intersection and fined $105 and court costs by Judge Richard Cope.
We could forgive Rhodes a little anger there, maybe some eye-rolling, a heavy sigh, some cussing under his breath. That, however, is not the way Rhodes rolls.
Dickinson police Captain Jay Jaekel told the Galveston County Daily News that Rhodes "started talking and telling the judge this was a joke, he didn't have any money, and he wouldn't shut up."
Cope responded the way every judge would: He threatened to cite Rhodes with contempt. But the broke Alvinite was just getting started.
"Basically he told the judge 'F-U,' he was unemployed and was going to leave the country and join al Qaeda," Jaekel told the Daily News.
(Fear not, Gulf Coasters: The FBI cleared Rhodes of any actual Al Qaeda involvement. So far.)
Cope piled an extra $95 onto Osama Bin-Rhodes's original fine, whereupon the would-be terrorist cackled. By then, Dickinson cops had moved in. As he attempted to make his getaway from the court's foyer, Rhodes allegedly kicked one of the cops in the nuts, whereupon he was subdued and taken to jail, newly charged with felony assault on a public servant.
Jaekel said Rhodes had to be restrained for his own safety in the jail, but that apparently didn't stop him from threatening serious bodily harm on a female jailer. Bingo, felony number two: terroristic threat against a public servant.
Which has nothing to do with threatening to become a terrorist, by the way.
IF ONLY ISRAEL IS SUBJECTED TO DEMANDS, THE PEACE PROCESS WILL GO NOWHERE
Some prominent statesmen make a lot more sense than Obama when calling for a peace accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
‘ARABS MUST SEEK PEACE FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE’
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
June 23, 2011
Leaders of the Europe-based Friends of Israel Initiative on Wednesday released a statement calling on the Palestinians and the Arab world to seek peace with Israel for the sake of peace alone, and not in order to recover lost land.
The organization lamented that the Middle East peace process has reached a point where only Israel is subjected to major demands, and that the failure of the peace process is always blamed on Israel for insisting on reciprocity.
"If it is only one side that gives in, then there will be no solution, ever," read the statement. "If it is only Israel that is subjected to demands, the peace process will go nowhere."
The Friends of Israel Initiative insisted that "peace between Israelis and Palestinians is not dependent upon a question of territory: it is a matter of unequivocally accepting the other side's right to exist."
The primary demand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the peace process has been that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel's right to exist as the Jewish state. Abbas has refused, and has instead maintained the position that the only question is how much land the Palestinians will receive.
The Friends of Israel Initiative believes Abbas is barking up the wrong tree.
"Israel’s experience with the view that peace can only be achieved by making territorial concessions has not been good," the group pointed out. "Its successive withdrawals from territories that neighbour Israel have only brought about more violence and the need to fight once again to ensure its security."
The Friends of Israel Initiative is headed by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and includes many distinguished members like former First Minister of Northern Ireland David Trimble and former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.
‘ARABS MUST SEEK PEACE FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE’
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
June 23, 2011
Leaders of the Europe-based Friends of Israel Initiative on Wednesday released a statement calling on the Palestinians and the Arab world to seek peace with Israel for the sake of peace alone, and not in order to recover lost land.
The organization lamented that the Middle East peace process has reached a point where only Israel is subjected to major demands, and that the failure of the peace process is always blamed on Israel for insisting on reciprocity.
"If it is only one side that gives in, then there will be no solution, ever," read the statement. "If it is only Israel that is subjected to demands, the peace process will go nowhere."
The Friends of Israel Initiative insisted that "peace between Israelis and Palestinians is not dependent upon a question of territory: it is a matter of unequivocally accepting the other side's right to exist."
The primary demand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the peace process has been that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel's right to exist as the Jewish state. Abbas has refused, and has instead maintained the position that the only question is how much land the Palestinians will receive.
The Friends of Israel Initiative believes Abbas is barking up the wrong tree.
"Israel’s experience with the view that peace can only be achieved by making territorial concessions has not been good," the group pointed out. "Its successive withdrawals from territories that neighbour Israel have only brought about more violence and the need to fight once again to ensure its security."
The Friends of Israel Initiative is headed by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and includes many distinguished members like former First Minister of Northern Ireland David Trimble and former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.
DEADLY BARBIES AND TINKERBELLS
News that should make all feminists proud. These Barbies and Tinkerbells are ‘as deadly as their male counterparts.’
FEMALE ASSASSINS A GROWING PART OF DRUG CARTELS
The Brownsville Herald
June 11, 2011
They are known as “Las Barbies,” “Las Tinkerbells” and “Las Reinas.” But the images they evoke in the criminal underworld in Mexico are far from those of innocent dolls, bells and queens.
According to intelligence reports, the terms are used by drug-trafficking organizations for “mujeres sicarias” — hit women.
Then there are the “Radieras” and the “Halconeras.” They act as lookouts, manning radios at strategic points on the roads and who, like hawks, watch the activity of Mexico’s federal police, military and marines in order to alert the cartels.
The participation of women in cartels for kidnapping, extortion and murder is seen by some as females taking a wider role in general.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, assistant professor of government at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, described it as “a phenomenon in which women are really gaining spaces in different types of activities, not only productive or related to economic development.”
“Women’s participation has certainly grown — even in criminal activities,” said Correa-Cabrera, who studies Mexico-United States border issues, among other subjects. She is currently developing a project about violence on the Texas-Tamaulipas border, focused largely on organized crime.
“Drug trafficking like any other economic activity is now involving an increasing number of women. Globalization, technology and modernization have facilitated the incorporation of women into most productive activities and in nations’ development in general,” she said. “It is not weird, then, to see an increasing participation of women in drug trafficking activities – even as sicarias.”
Then there are “Las Panteras,” one of whose leaders was “La Comandante Bombon.”
Maria del Pilar Narro Lopez, alias “La Comandante Bombon,” was a Zeta when the organization was still the enforcement arm of the Cardenas-Guillen Gulf Cartel. She was detained in early 2009 in an operation that also resulted in the arrest of 10 men in Cancun, Quintana Roo, according to Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense and Attorney General’s Office.
They were charged with weapons violations, organized crime and the killing of Gen. Mauro Tello Quiñonez, infantry Lt. Getulio Cesar Roman Zuñiga and a third man on Feb. 3, 2009.
The other detainees included the plaza boss Octavio Almanza Morales, alias “El Gori 4,” and Francisco Gerardo Velasco Delgado, alias “El Vikingo,” who was the director of public safety for the city of Benito Juarez in Quintana Roo, government records show. Other high-level officials also were charged.
Almanza also was charged in the killing of nine military troops in 2008 in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. They are in jail.
Narro Lopez was the head of a Zetas unit known as “Las Panteras,” said George W. Grayson, author of “Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?” and a longtime professor at the College of William and Mary. Mexico media reports identified her as the head of “Las Panteras” in Nuevo Leon.
“She was as cruel as any Zeta,” Grayson said.
“Comandante Bombon has the reputation of being anything but sweet as her name would apply,” he said.
“The Panteras were involved in getting key figures in compromising positions; a mayor or an army officer or a police comandante and to get them to agree to go east and not west tomorrow or that the police would not have a strong presence in a given area, say Reynosa or Matamoros,” he added.
“They had the skill and the authorization that if their interlocutor did not cooperate, to kill him,” Grayson said, adding that Las Panteras are in every state where the Zetas operate.
Phil Jordan, a former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center and formerly in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Dallas, recalled that during his 30-year career, women played an important role within the cartels, “but that they were mostly used as couriers to transport drugs and money.”
“We are now seeing that they are taking on more of a male-role responsibility. The Colombians and Cubans have utilized this tactic, but now we are seeing the Mexican cartels increase the use of women in their organizations especially with the escalation of rivalries in Mexico,” he said.
Jordan said Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman-Loera’s Sinaloa Cartel also is believed to have sicarias. He said that intelligence sources point to sicaria movements in the states of San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas, with women trained in kidnapping, extortion, torture and killing.
“The cartel bosses like to build them up as their reinas — but they are as deadly as their male counterparts,” Jordan said.
The Mexican government offered numerous rewards in early April for members of the Zetas organization, including 5 million pesos for information leading to the detention of Sarai Fabiola Diaz Arroyo, alias “La Muñeca.” “Muñeca” means “doll.”
She is among more than 80 men and women suspected of a connection to the kidnapping and slaying of nearly 200 people found in early April in graves in the La Joya ranching community near San Fernando, Tamps., about 80 miles south of Brownsville.
On June 2, the Attorney General’s Office, known as PGR, announced that Diaz Arroyo and three other women had been jailed in connection with the San Fernando case.
The others are Julieta Maricela Almaguer Reyes, Yesenia Vianey Lopez Romero and Claudia Veronica Fuentes Martinez, alias “La Popis,” meaning snobbish one.
Another woman, Maria Guadalupe Galvan Hernandez, also was among 16 San Fernando police officers that were detained. PGR said they were suspected of providing the Zetas with protection and with covering up the massacre.
Authorities in Mexico say that the victims were from Central America and Mexico and were traveling in passenger buses headed to the U.S.-Mexico border March 24-29 when they were kidnapped and killed, some for declining to join the Zetas.
Mexican officials have said that the massacre last year of 72 migrants, mostly from Central America, near San Fernando also was the work of the Zetas.
Jordan said that intelligence sources say that young, well-developed women are being recruited at university campuses. “In other words, the woman is a weapon, especially when they want to infiltrate or kill a rival that can succumb to the power of the woman,” Jordan said.
In a video widely circulated in Mexico and reportedly released by the Secretariat of Public Safety in mid-August last year, a member of “La Linea,” the enforcement arm of the Juarez Cartel, said that young, pretty women between 18 and 30 years old are recruited to bait and confuse rival groups. The suspect said that the women have specific instructions as lookouts, sicarias or extortionists.
On the other hand, a source close to the situation in Mexico said that most of the women they have seen acting as lookouts in small communities are poor.
“They need money. They have been left to fend for themselves,” the source observed, noting that many people have left their communities, making it difficult for those who stay to make a living.
“There’s no money coming in,” the source said. “They are threatened to work or die. To be an informant only means to survive.”
By some accounts, 40,000 people have died since 2006 when Mexico President Felipe Calderon launched the initiative against drug-trafficking organizations. According to the United States Congressional Research Service, the initiative has also led to violent succession struggles within the organizations themselves.
The ranks of the organizations have been decimated, a spokesman for Grupo Savant, a Washington-based intelligence firm, said.
“Ever since the cartels starting warring, both sides have had attrition problems. Shooters, killers, kidnappers, a lot have been killed,” the spokesman said, noting that the cartels have adopted extreme measures to staff their organizations.
“They are running out of fighters and are expanding into the female domain,” the spokesman suspects, adding that other methods have been to break into prisons to release their members or to force people to join their ranks by randomly pulling them off buses.
The Grupo Savant spokesman said there has been a “sporadic” presence of women within the cartels’ ranks in the last decade.
“But are there teams of sicarias? I don’t know, but have women been used (to kill)? Yes,” the spokesman said, pointing to a blog site that shows women torturing and killing men.
“It is a very slow evolution. It is a trend that is appearing, but it is not completely solidified as a pattern within the cartels,” the Grupo Savant spokesman observed.
Statements issued by federal government agencies regarding the detention of suspects bearing arms or transporting drugs increasingly include the detention of women.
Some women are recruited by the cartels, but many already within the ranks of criminal organizations are girlfriends, family members or relatives of the men in the cartels, which tend to be family-oriented.
According to intelligence sources, several women were arrested in Monterrey last year after trying to recruit men and women to the ranks.
Women have been used by criminal organizations to lure rivals, a Grupo Savant spokesman said. The spokesman said that one intelligence report reflects that a woman lured rivals to a nightclub in Acapulco in the mid-2000s. That resulted in five human heads being thrown onto the club’s dance floor.
FEMALE ASSASSINS A GROWING PART OF DRUG CARTELS
The Brownsville Herald
June 11, 2011
They are known as “Las Barbies,” “Las Tinkerbells” and “Las Reinas.” But the images they evoke in the criminal underworld in Mexico are far from those of innocent dolls, bells and queens.
According to intelligence reports, the terms are used by drug-trafficking organizations for “mujeres sicarias” — hit women.
Then there are the “Radieras” and the “Halconeras.” They act as lookouts, manning radios at strategic points on the roads and who, like hawks, watch the activity of Mexico’s federal police, military and marines in order to alert the cartels.
The participation of women in cartels for kidnapping, extortion and murder is seen by some as females taking a wider role in general.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, assistant professor of government at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, described it as “a phenomenon in which women are really gaining spaces in different types of activities, not only productive or related to economic development.”
“Women’s participation has certainly grown — even in criminal activities,” said Correa-Cabrera, who studies Mexico-United States border issues, among other subjects. She is currently developing a project about violence on the Texas-Tamaulipas border, focused largely on organized crime.
“Drug trafficking like any other economic activity is now involving an increasing number of women. Globalization, technology and modernization have facilitated the incorporation of women into most productive activities and in nations’ development in general,” she said. “It is not weird, then, to see an increasing participation of women in drug trafficking activities – even as sicarias.”
Then there are “Las Panteras,” one of whose leaders was “La Comandante Bombon.”
Maria del Pilar Narro Lopez, alias “La Comandante Bombon,” was a Zeta when the organization was still the enforcement arm of the Cardenas-Guillen Gulf Cartel. She was detained in early 2009 in an operation that also resulted in the arrest of 10 men in Cancun, Quintana Roo, according to Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense and Attorney General’s Office.
They were charged with weapons violations, organized crime and the killing of Gen. Mauro Tello Quiñonez, infantry Lt. Getulio Cesar Roman Zuñiga and a third man on Feb. 3, 2009.
The other detainees included the plaza boss Octavio Almanza Morales, alias “El Gori 4,” and Francisco Gerardo Velasco Delgado, alias “El Vikingo,” who was the director of public safety for the city of Benito Juarez in Quintana Roo, government records show. Other high-level officials also were charged.
Almanza also was charged in the killing of nine military troops in 2008 in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. They are in jail.
Narro Lopez was the head of a Zetas unit known as “Las Panteras,” said George W. Grayson, author of “Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?” and a longtime professor at the College of William and Mary. Mexico media reports identified her as the head of “Las Panteras” in Nuevo Leon.
“She was as cruel as any Zeta,” Grayson said.
“Comandante Bombon has the reputation of being anything but sweet as her name would apply,” he said.
“The Panteras were involved in getting key figures in compromising positions; a mayor or an army officer or a police comandante and to get them to agree to go east and not west tomorrow or that the police would not have a strong presence in a given area, say Reynosa or Matamoros,” he added.
“They had the skill and the authorization that if their interlocutor did not cooperate, to kill him,” Grayson said, adding that Las Panteras are in every state where the Zetas operate.
Phil Jordan, a former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center and formerly in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Dallas, recalled that during his 30-year career, women played an important role within the cartels, “but that they were mostly used as couriers to transport drugs and money.”
“We are now seeing that they are taking on more of a male-role responsibility. The Colombians and Cubans have utilized this tactic, but now we are seeing the Mexican cartels increase the use of women in their organizations especially with the escalation of rivalries in Mexico,” he said.
Jordan said Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman-Loera’s Sinaloa Cartel also is believed to have sicarias. He said that intelligence sources point to sicaria movements in the states of San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas, with women trained in kidnapping, extortion, torture and killing.
“The cartel bosses like to build them up as their reinas — but they are as deadly as their male counterparts,” Jordan said.
The Mexican government offered numerous rewards in early April for members of the Zetas organization, including 5 million pesos for information leading to the detention of Sarai Fabiola Diaz Arroyo, alias “La Muñeca.” “Muñeca” means “doll.”
She is among more than 80 men and women suspected of a connection to the kidnapping and slaying of nearly 200 people found in early April in graves in the La Joya ranching community near San Fernando, Tamps., about 80 miles south of Brownsville.
On June 2, the Attorney General’s Office, known as PGR, announced that Diaz Arroyo and three other women had been jailed in connection with the San Fernando case.
The others are Julieta Maricela Almaguer Reyes, Yesenia Vianey Lopez Romero and Claudia Veronica Fuentes Martinez, alias “La Popis,” meaning snobbish one.
Another woman, Maria Guadalupe Galvan Hernandez, also was among 16 San Fernando police officers that were detained. PGR said they were suspected of providing the Zetas with protection and with covering up the massacre.
Authorities in Mexico say that the victims were from Central America and Mexico and were traveling in passenger buses headed to the U.S.-Mexico border March 24-29 when they were kidnapped and killed, some for declining to join the Zetas.
Mexican officials have said that the massacre last year of 72 migrants, mostly from Central America, near San Fernando also was the work of the Zetas.
Jordan said that intelligence sources say that young, well-developed women are being recruited at university campuses. “In other words, the woman is a weapon, especially when they want to infiltrate or kill a rival that can succumb to the power of the woman,” Jordan said.
In a video widely circulated in Mexico and reportedly released by the Secretariat of Public Safety in mid-August last year, a member of “La Linea,” the enforcement arm of the Juarez Cartel, said that young, pretty women between 18 and 30 years old are recruited to bait and confuse rival groups. The suspect said that the women have specific instructions as lookouts, sicarias or extortionists.
On the other hand, a source close to the situation in Mexico said that most of the women they have seen acting as lookouts in small communities are poor.
“They need money. They have been left to fend for themselves,” the source observed, noting that many people have left their communities, making it difficult for those who stay to make a living.
“There’s no money coming in,” the source said. “They are threatened to work or die. To be an informant only means to survive.”
By some accounts, 40,000 people have died since 2006 when Mexico President Felipe Calderon launched the initiative against drug-trafficking organizations. According to the United States Congressional Research Service, the initiative has also led to violent succession struggles within the organizations themselves.
The ranks of the organizations have been decimated, a spokesman for Grupo Savant, a Washington-based intelligence firm, said.
“Ever since the cartels starting warring, both sides have had attrition problems. Shooters, killers, kidnappers, a lot have been killed,” the spokesman said, noting that the cartels have adopted extreme measures to staff their organizations.
“They are running out of fighters and are expanding into the female domain,” the spokesman suspects, adding that other methods have been to break into prisons to release their members or to force people to join their ranks by randomly pulling them off buses.
The Grupo Savant spokesman said there has been a “sporadic” presence of women within the cartels’ ranks in the last decade.
“But are there teams of sicarias? I don’t know, but have women been used (to kill)? Yes,” the spokesman said, pointing to a blog site that shows women torturing and killing men.
“It is a very slow evolution. It is a trend that is appearing, but it is not completely solidified as a pattern within the cartels,” the Grupo Savant spokesman observed.
Statements issued by federal government agencies regarding the detention of suspects bearing arms or transporting drugs increasingly include the detention of women.
Some women are recruited by the cartels, but many already within the ranks of criminal organizations are girlfriends, family members or relatives of the men in the cartels, which tend to be family-oriented.
According to intelligence sources, several women were arrested in Monterrey last year after trying to recruit men and women to the ranks.
Women have been used by criminal organizations to lure rivals, a Grupo Savant spokesman said. The spokesman said that one intelligence report reflects that a woman lured rivals to a nightclub in Acapulco in the mid-2000s. That resulted in five human heads being thrown onto the club’s dance floor.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
POT SMOKING COPS
After reading “Slimy Evil ‘Law and Order’ Thug” (6-24-11), a veteran police officer wrote:
“The majority of the younger cops I work with have smoked weed. So much so that they openly discuss smoking pot as teenagers. Recently, I was asked if I ever smoked pot. I replied, "No." No one at the gathering believed me. Granted, I am old enough to be their father but the fact still remains that the vast majority of under 40-year-old cops have smoked pot. I'm sure there are a good many who still smoke it to this day because drug tests are not random. Most agencies will test for drugs if they feel there is evidence of drug use by the officer. Most cops don't believe marijuana is a gateway drug because their pot use did not lead them to use heroin. The way the world looks at marijuana use has changed. Our opinions about the dangers of marijuana use are in the minority.”
I know that my good friend is right. For that matter George Bush and Barack Obama also smoked pot some years back. But those police officers who are still smoking dope are corrupt cops that are breaking their oath of office and this makes them lawbreakers who should be drummed out of the police service, no ifs, ands or buts about it. And that also goes for any correctional officers, parole officers and probation officers who are still smoking dope.
“The majority of the younger cops I work with have smoked weed. So much so that they openly discuss smoking pot as teenagers. Recently, I was asked if I ever smoked pot. I replied, "No." No one at the gathering believed me. Granted, I am old enough to be their father but the fact still remains that the vast majority of under 40-year-old cops have smoked pot. I'm sure there are a good many who still smoke it to this day because drug tests are not random. Most agencies will test for drugs if they feel there is evidence of drug use by the officer. Most cops don't believe marijuana is a gateway drug because their pot use did not lead them to use heroin. The way the world looks at marijuana use has changed. Our opinions about the dangers of marijuana use are in the minority.”
I know that my good friend is right. For that matter George Bush and Barack Obama also smoked pot some years back. But those police officers who are still smoking dope are corrupt cops that are breaking their oath of office and this makes them lawbreakers who should be drummed out of the police service, no ifs, ands or buts about it. And that also goes for any correctional officers, parole officers and probation officers who are still smoking dope.
HUSBAND-SEEKING WOMEN ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS
That 40-year-old woman with all her botox injections and breast enhancements who claims to be 25 or 30 will remain single if the guy she’s trying to catch for a husband gets a saliva test from the cup she just drank coffee out of.
SIMPLE SALIVA TEST DETECTS YOUR ‘REAL’ AGE
Assessment might prove useful in solving crimes and improving care, researchers say
U.S. News & World Report
June 22, 2011
A new test that uses a saliva sample to predict a person's age within a five-year range could prove useful in solving crimes and improving patient care, University of California, Los Angeles geneticists say.
Their test focuses on a process called methylation, a chemical modification of one of the four building blocks that make up DNA.
"While genes partly shape how our body ages, environmental influences also can change our DNA as we age. Methylation patterns shift as we grow older and contribute to aging-related disease," principal investigator Dr. Eric Vilain, a professor of human genetics, pediatrics and urology, said in a UCLA news release.
He and his colleagues analyzed saliva samples from 34 pairs of identical male twins, aged 21 to 55, and identified 88 sites on their DNA that strongly linked methylation to age. They replicated their findings in 31 men and 29 women, aged 18 to 70, in the general population.
The team then created a predictive model using two of the three genes with the strongest age-related link to methylation. When they entered the data from the saliva samples taken from the twins and people in the other group, the test correctly predicted their ages within five years.
"Methylation's relationship with age is so strong that we can identify how old someone is by examining just two of the 3 billion building blocks that make up our genome," study author Sven Bocklandt, a former UCLA geneticist now at Bioline, said in the university release.
The research appears online June 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Physicians might use this test to evaluate patients' risk of age-related diseases, the researchers suggested.
"Doctors could predict your medical risk for a particular disease and customize treatment based on your DNA's true biological age, as opposed to how old you are," Vilain said. "By eliminating costly and unnecessary tests, we could target those patients who really need them."
In addition, police could test traces of saliva found at a crime scene, such as that on a coffee cup or cigarette, to get an idea of a criminal suspect's age.
SIMPLE SALIVA TEST DETECTS YOUR ‘REAL’ AGE
Assessment might prove useful in solving crimes and improving care, researchers say
U.S. News & World Report
June 22, 2011
A new test that uses a saliva sample to predict a person's age within a five-year range could prove useful in solving crimes and improving patient care, University of California, Los Angeles geneticists say.
Their test focuses on a process called methylation, a chemical modification of one of the four building blocks that make up DNA.
"While genes partly shape how our body ages, environmental influences also can change our DNA as we age. Methylation patterns shift as we grow older and contribute to aging-related disease," principal investigator Dr. Eric Vilain, a professor of human genetics, pediatrics and urology, said in a UCLA news release.
He and his colleagues analyzed saliva samples from 34 pairs of identical male twins, aged 21 to 55, and identified 88 sites on their DNA that strongly linked methylation to age. They replicated their findings in 31 men and 29 women, aged 18 to 70, in the general population.
The team then created a predictive model using two of the three genes with the strongest age-related link to methylation. When they entered the data from the saliva samples taken from the twins and people in the other group, the test correctly predicted their ages within five years.
"Methylation's relationship with age is so strong that we can identify how old someone is by examining just two of the 3 billion building blocks that make up our genome," study author Sven Bocklandt, a former UCLA geneticist now at Bioline, said in the university release.
The research appears online June 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Physicians might use this test to evaluate patients' risk of age-related diseases, the researchers suggested.
"Doctors could predict your medical risk for a particular disease and customize treatment based on your DNA's true biological age, as opposed to how old you are," Vilain said. "By eliminating costly and unnecessary tests, we could target those patients who really need them."
In addition, police could test traces of saliva found at a crime scene, such as that on a coffee cup or cigarette, to get an idea of a criminal suspect's age.
FINALLY, SOMETHING JEWS AND MUSLIMS AGREE ON
Jews and Muslims agree that those Kookfornians in San Fransicko are sticking their kooky noses where they do not belong.
JEWS, MUSLIMS UNITE TO FILE SUIT OVER SAN FRAN PROPOSED CIRCUMCISION BAN
Legal strategy is unusual and unorthodox
By Maria L. La Ganga
Jewish World Review
June 23, 2011
Opponents of a measure that would make it a misdemeanor to circumcise male children in San Francisco filed a law suit Wednesday morning to get the initiative stricken from the November ballot.
The plaintiffs called the measure anti-Semitic, a threat to the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims and an infringement on parental and medical rights. But during a news conference on the steps of City Hall, attorney Michael Jacobs said that the group is suing on the grounds that state law prohibits local governments from restricting medical procedures.
That's the job of the state Legislature, said Jacobs, flanked by two Muslim women in head scarves and a doctor in a white coat. He said the California Business and Professions Code contains a "clear" prohibition on "exactly these kinds of ballot measures. … This is not about local control."
Male circumcision, Jacobs said, is safe, sanctioned, and the most widely done medical procedure in the country. The ballot measure is a "distraction" to San Franciscans, parents, Jews, Muslims and doctors.
"To parents and physicians, the law protects you against this proposed initiative, which we feel is so misguided," Jacobs said.
The Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council are among the plaintiffs in the case, along with local doctors and families. According to a statement by the Committee for Parental Choice & Religious Freedom, which is leading the fight against the measure, the entire San Francisco Board of Supervisors opposes the circumcision ban.
The measure, which will be on the November ballot here, would prohibit what it calls the "genital cutting of male minors." Anyone who performed a circumcision would face a fine of up to $1,000 and up to a year in jail.
The SF MGM Bill website says that the measure is necessary to "protect ALL infants and children in San Francisco from the pain and harm caused by forced genital cutting. Damage ranges from excruciating pain, nerve destruction, loss of normal, natural and functional tissue, infection, disfigurement and sometimes death."
Lloyd Schofield, spokesman for the San Francisco measure, did not respond to requests for comment. But in an interview earlier this month, he said that the group had gathered 7,743 valid signatures to get the measure on the Nov. 8 ballot.
"We don't want anybody to be injured" because of what backers of the measure call "male genital mutilation," Schofield said. "There's no religious exemption. … People talk about their religious freedom, but we thought it was discrimination against children to not include protection for everybody."
But Jeremy Benjamin, a plaintiff in the case, called the measure anti-Semitic and said it singles his Jewish family out "as illegal and unwanted in our own city."
The Benjamins' son was circumcised "as Jews have done for thousands of years," he said, with wife Jenny at his side. "This is our city, and we're standing up for ourselves and our family's freedom to live the life that we choose in this city."
Dandling an infant on her hip, plaintiff Letizia Preza told reporters that, while she feels "a sense of ease raising my children here in San Francisco," the measure "would take away my rights as a Muslim to circumcise my male children" and "takes away my rights as a mother."
JEWS, MUSLIMS UNITE TO FILE SUIT OVER SAN FRAN PROPOSED CIRCUMCISION BAN
Legal strategy is unusual and unorthodox
By Maria L. La Ganga
Jewish World Review
June 23, 2011
Opponents of a measure that would make it a misdemeanor to circumcise male children in San Francisco filed a law suit Wednesday morning to get the initiative stricken from the November ballot.
The plaintiffs called the measure anti-Semitic, a threat to the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims and an infringement on parental and medical rights. But during a news conference on the steps of City Hall, attorney Michael Jacobs said that the group is suing on the grounds that state law prohibits local governments from restricting medical procedures.
That's the job of the state Legislature, said Jacobs, flanked by two Muslim women in head scarves and a doctor in a white coat. He said the California Business and Professions Code contains a "clear" prohibition on "exactly these kinds of ballot measures. … This is not about local control."
Male circumcision, Jacobs said, is safe, sanctioned, and the most widely done medical procedure in the country. The ballot measure is a "distraction" to San Franciscans, parents, Jews, Muslims and doctors.
"To parents and physicians, the law protects you against this proposed initiative, which we feel is so misguided," Jacobs said.
The Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council are among the plaintiffs in the case, along with local doctors and families. According to a statement by the Committee for Parental Choice & Religious Freedom, which is leading the fight against the measure, the entire San Francisco Board of Supervisors opposes the circumcision ban.
The measure, which will be on the November ballot here, would prohibit what it calls the "genital cutting of male minors." Anyone who performed a circumcision would face a fine of up to $1,000 and up to a year in jail.
The SF MGM Bill website says that the measure is necessary to "protect ALL infants and children in San Francisco from the pain and harm caused by forced genital cutting. Damage ranges from excruciating pain, nerve destruction, loss of normal, natural and functional tissue, infection, disfigurement and sometimes death."
Lloyd Schofield, spokesman for the San Francisco measure, did not respond to requests for comment. But in an interview earlier this month, he said that the group had gathered 7,743 valid signatures to get the measure on the Nov. 8 ballot.
"We don't want anybody to be injured" because of what backers of the measure call "male genital mutilation," Schofield said. "There's no religious exemption. … People talk about their religious freedom, but we thought it was discrimination against children to not include protection for everybody."
But Jeremy Benjamin, a plaintiff in the case, called the measure anti-Semitic and said it singles his Jewish family out "as illegal and unwanted in our own city."
The Benjamins' son was circumcised "as Jews have done for thousands of years," he said, with wife Jenny at his side. "This is our city, and we're standing up for ourselves and our family's freedom to live the life that we choose in this city."
Dandling an infant on her hip, plaintiff Letizia Preza told reporters that, while she feels "a sense of ease raising my children here in San Francisco," the measure "would take away my rights as a Muslim to circumcise my male children" and "takes away my rights as a mother."
DEFEAT FOR DUTCH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND ISLAMIST LAWFARE
This is not only a defeat for political correctness, but it is also a victory for freedom of speech and a setback for the intrusion of Islamic culture into Western society. Or, as political maven Monica Crowley put it, “It’s also a day that saw a major blow to one of the more insidious tactics of the Islamists: Lawfare, or using Western laws to stifle free speech with regard to Islam.”
DUTCH COURT ACQUITS LAWMAKER OF HATE SPEECH, DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MUSLIMS
Associated Press
June 23, 2011
AMSTERDAM -- A Dutch court acquitted populist politician Geert Wilders of hate speech and discrimination Thursday, ruling that his anti-Islam statements, while offensive to many Muslims, fell within the bounds of legitimate political debate.
Presiding judge Marcel van Oosten said Wilders' claims that Islam is violent by nature, and his calls to halt Muslim immigration and ban the Muslim holy book, the Koran, must be seen in a wider context of debate over immigration policy.
The court said his public statements could not be directly linked to increased discrimination against Dutch Muslims.
Wilders sat stone-faced while the judge read the ruling, but smiled broadly and shook hands with his lawyers after the verdict was announced. He waved to cheering supporters who hugged each other in the public gallery, and grinned as he left the courtroom.
Wilders, one of the most powerful and popular politicians in the Netherlands, was accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims through numerous public statements, and with insulting them by comparing Islam with Naziism.
"I'm incredibly happy with this acquittal on all counts," Wilders said outside the courtroom.
"It's not only an acquittal for me, but a victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands. Fortunately you're allowed to discuss Islam in public debate and you're not muzzled... An enormous burden has fallen from my shoulders," he said.
Groups that filed the complaints against Wilders that ultimately led to his prosecution said they were disappointed with the ruling.
Lawyer Ties Prakken, who represented some complainants, was quoted by local media as saying Dutch courts are failing to protect a religious minority from discrimination. With legal avenues in the Netherlands exhausted, she said she's preparing an appeal to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.
The court found that Wilders' rhetoric was at times on the edge of what is legally permissible.
The judge described his statements about a "tsunami" of immigrants overrunning the country and threatening its culture as "crude and denigrating," but legally legitimate given the wider context and his further statements that he has no objections to Muslims who integrate and accept Dutch values. Wilders, who lives under constant protection due to death threats, has never called for violence or endorsed it.
In speeches and written articles, Wilder said Islam is an inherently violent religion, and he compared the Koran with "Mein Kampf," Hitler's tirade against Jews -- an especially touchy image because of the large number of Dutch Jews handed over to the Nazis in World War II.
The court paid special attention to Wilders' 2008 film, "Fitna," Arabic for "ordeal" -- a 15-minute series of verses from the Koran juxtaposed against news video of violence and terrorism. The film prompted angry demonstrations and official protests around the Muslim world.
"Given the film in its whole and the context of societal debate, the court finds that there is no question of inciting hate with the film Fitna," the judgment said.
In court, Wilders had argued that his statements represent the views of millions of Dutch voters and are protected by freedom of speech law. He accused the court of bias against him and claimed the charges were politically motivated.
Even the prosecutors called for his acquittal. Despite their reluctance to prosecute, the judges ruled last year that the case should be put to a judicial test.
Last April the same court acquitted Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda, chairman of the Arab European League, of hate speech charges for publishing a cartoon on its website questioning the reality of the Holocaust.
The group had intended to spur public discussion about a perceived double standard: that European media are willing to publish cartoons mocking Islam's prophet Muhammad, while cartoons about the Holocaust are taboo.
DUTCH COURT ACQUITS LAWMAKER OF HATE SPEECH, DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MUSLIMS
Associated Press
June 23, 2011
AMSTERDAM -- A Dutch court acquitted populist politician Geert Wilders of hate speech and discrimination Thursday, ruling that his anti-Islam statements, while offensive to many Muslims, fell within the bounds of legitimate political debate.
Presiding judge Marcel van Oosten said Wilders' claims that Islam is violent by nature, and his calls to halt Muslim immigration and ban the Muslim holy book, the Koran, must be seen in a wider context of debate over immigration policy.
The court said his public statements could not be directly linked to increased discrimination against Dutch Muslims.
Wilders sat stone-faced while the judge read the ruling, but smiled broadly and shook hands with his lawyers after the verdict was announced. He waved to cheering supporters who hugged each other in the public gallery, and grinned as he left the courtroom.
Wilders, one of the most powerful and popular politicians in the Netherlands, was accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims through numerous public statements, and with insulting them by comparing Islam with Naziism.
"I'm incredibly happy with this acquittal on all counts," Wilders said outside the courtroom.
"It's not only an acquittal for me, but a victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands. Fortunately you're allowed to discuss Islam in public debate and you're not muzzled... An enormous burden has fallen from my shoulders," he said.
Groups that filed the complaints against Wilders that ultimately led to his prosecution said they were disappointed with the ruling.
Lawyer Ties Prakken, who represented some complainants, was quoted by local media as saying Dutch courts are failing to protect a religious minority from discrimination. With legal avenues in the Netherlands exhausted, she said she's preparing an appeal to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.
The court found that Wilders' rhetoric was at times on the edge of what is legally permissible.
The judge described his statements about a "tsunami" of immigrants overrunning the country and threatening its culture as "crude and denigrating," but legally legitimate given the wider context and his further statements that he has no objections to Muslims who integrate and accept Dutch values. Wilders, who lives under constant protection due to death threats, has never called for violence or endorsed it.
In speeches and written articles, Wilder said Islam is an inherently violent religion, and he compared the Koran with "Mein Kampf," Hitler's tirade against Jews -- an especially touchy image because of the large number of Dutch Jews handed over to the Nazis in World War II.
The court paid special attention to Wilders' 2008 film, "Fitna," Arabic for "ordeal" -- a 15-minute series of verses from the Koran juxtaposed against news video of violence and terrorism. The film prompted angry demonstrations and official protests around the Muslim world.
"Given the film in its whole and the context of societal debate, the court finds that there is no question of inciting hate with the film Fitna," the judgment said.
In court, Wilders had argued that his statements represent the views of millions of Dutch voters and are protected by freedom of speech law. He accused the court of bias against him and claimed the charges were politically motivated.
Even the prosecutors called for his acquittal. Despite their reluctance to prosecute, the judges ruled last year that the case should be put to a judicial test.
Last April the same court acquitted Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda, chairman of the Arab European League, of hate speech charges for publishing a cartoon on its website questioning the reality of the Holocaust.
The group had intended to spur public discussion about a perceived double standard: that European media are willing to publish cartoons mocking Islam's prophet Muhammad, while cartoons about the Holocaust are taboo.
PRAYING AT THE WESTERN WALL
A female CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time.
So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site.
She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.
"Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name?”
"Morris Feinberg," he replied.
"Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?"
"For about 60 years."
"60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?"
"I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop. I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man."
"How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?"
"Like I'm talking to a fucking wall."
So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site.
She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.
"Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name?”
"Morris Feinberg," he replied.
"Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?"
"For about 60 years."
"60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?"
"I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop. I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man."
"How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?"
"Like I'm talking to a fucking wall."
Friday, June 24, 2011
SLIMY EVIL 'LAW AND ORDER' THUG
I also posted ‘Law Enforcement For Pedophilia' (6-22-11) on PACOVILLA Corrections blog. That blog site was quickly swamped with over 30 comments, almost all of them attacking the war on drugs and me personally. That led Bob Walsh to say, “I think you lost a couple of people from your Christmas Card list with this one.”
Paco himself inserted this comment: “I deleted a half dozen comments in this thread. Marijuana advocates are welcome to post comments here but must abide by the rules like everyone else: Publication Policy & Practice. If you are incapable of conversing without insulting others, go away.”
I was dumbfounded by what I was reading because most of Paco’s readers are Correctional Officers and I could not imagine them defending the use of drugs and attacking the police. Then Paco set the record straight by saying, “Those comments are NOT from our regular readers. Your post was picked up by a pro-pot website [DrugWarRant.com by Pete Guither] and that is where the comments are coming from. I say this with absolute certainty as we run WordPress plugins that uses the commentator’s ipaddress to count comments from each.”
It is obvious that those who advocate the decriminalization of drugs and accuse the cops of using draconian tactics to enforce our drug laws do so because they are smoking pot and using other illegal drugs.
Here are just four of the comments posted on PACOVILLA that attacked me personally:
__“Not a single person agrees with your insane comparisons between consensual drug use between non-violent offenders and an adult raping or molesting a child by force. To make such a statement shows the ignorance and idiocy you possess to infinite levels.”
__“Just like most corrupt “law and order,” thugs, you should feel like slime for ever making the comparison [between drug offenses and pedophilia].
__“If you are fighting to legalize child rape then it must be because you think child rape is ok.”
__“You have been a champion of violence and evil your whole adult life, and you've made a nice living at it. One can’t expect moral clarity from one who champions evil, like you. Because only a truly evil person would compare the voluntary, consensual actions of adults [using dope] to the rape of a child. Shame on you. Shame. Shame. Shame.”
I finally got fed up with all that crap and so, this is how I responded to those who attacked me:
I try to maintain a sense of humor when responding to those who are dumping on me, but I’m getting fed up with the crap some of you have been putting out. To begin with, I am fully aware of the difference between drug offenses and the sexual abuse of children and if you believe otherwise that’s your problem. To believe that I would ‘think child rape is OK’ is absolutely absurd.
Some of you say or imply that drug use is not a criminal act. You need to wake out of your drug induced stupor. Like it or not, smoking pot is against the law and that makes it a criminal act. Those of you who disregard the drug laws are like juveniles who like to think that rules were made to be broken. No one has the right to decide for themselves which laws are good and which laws are bad, and then go on to disregard the laws they do not like.
It’s hard for me to believe that those of you ranting and raving against the war on drugs are actually correctional officers. You say that the war on drugs corrupts. Well, if you are a dope smoking CO, then YOU ARE CORRUPT! Didn’t you take an oath to uphold the laws? Dope smoking COs should be drummed out of the correctional service – they are on the wrong side of the bars.
You can continue to say what you like about me. There will be no more responses from me. I have better things to do than to reply to those idiots who believe that I’m the idiot.
__________
“Why do the police routinely plant evidence and fudge reports, much less lie on the stand, with impunity? Why do they immediately shoot in no-knock raids, even when breaking into the wrong house? You stormtroopers are given the go-ahead to run amok, trampling roughshod over the basic human rights granted to the citizenry by the constitution, and it sickens me.”
I added the above comment because it reveals the hatred drug users have for the police. Let me set the record straight. While there are cops who have planted evidence and lied on the witness stand, they are few and far between. Every time I busted someone for possession of heroin I was accused of planting it on him. That was and continues to be a common defense tactic. The cops I worked with just did not do anything like that. And when we did resort to the use of firearms, it was only when we confronted a suspect about to use a deadly weapon against us.
When that jerk wrote about ‘trampling roughshod over the basic human rights,’ he was obviously referring to his self-imposed right to smoke pot or use other illegal drugs.
Finally I want to say that I am proud of our law enforcement officers. Our narcotic officers are only doing their jobs trying to enforce the laws that our recreational drug users choose to violate. Their choice to use drugs is what sustains those violent drug cartels. Cops put their lives on the line every day trying to protect the public and they deserve better than to be vilified by a bunch of dope smoking pukes.
As for me – that slimy evil ‘law and order’ thug – I never lost one second of sleep for busting some doper and I am proud of the work I did in enforcing our drug laws, both as a cop and as a parole agent.
Paco himself inserted this comment: “I deleted a half dozen comments in this thread. Marijuana advocates are welcome to post comments here but must abide by the rules like everyone else: Publication Policy & Practice. If you are incapable of conversing without insulting others, go away.”
I was dumbfounded by what I was reading because most of Paco’s readers are Correctional Officers and I could not imagine them defending the use of drugs and attacking the police. Then Paco set the record straight by saying, “Those comments are NOT from our regular readers. Your post was picked up by a pro-pot website [DrugWarRant.com by Pete Guither] and that is where the comments are coming from. I say this with absolute certainty as we run WordPress plugins that uses the commentator’s ipaddress to count comments from each.”
It is obvious that those who advocate the decriminalization of drugs and accuse the cops of using draconian tactics to enforce our drug laws do so because they are smoking pot and using other illegal drugs.
Here are just four of the comments posted on PACOVILLA that attacked me personally:
__“Not a single person agrees with your insane comparisons between consensual drug use between non-violent offenders and an adult raping or molesting a child by force. To make such a statement shows the ignorance and idiocy you possess to infinite levels.”
__“Just like most corrupt “law and order,” thugs, you should feel like slime for ever making the comparison [between drug offenses and pedophilia].
__“If you are fighting to legalize child rape then it must be because you think child rape is ok.”
__“You have been a champion of violence and evil your whole adult life, and you've made a nice living at it. One can’t expect moral clarity from one who champions evil, like you. Because only a truly evil person would compare the voluntary, consensual actions of adults [using dope] to the rape of a child. Shame on you. Shame. Shame. Shame.”
I finally got fed up with all that crap and so, this is how I responded to those who attacked me:
I try to maintain a sense of humor when responding to those who are dumping on me, but I’m getting fed up with the crap some of you have been putting out. To begin with, I am fully aware of the difference between drug offenses and the sexual abuse of children and if you believe otherwise that’s your problem. To believe that I would ‘think child rape is OK’ is absolutely absurd.
Some of you say or imply that drug use is not a criminal act. You need to wake out of your drug induced stupor. Like it or not, smoking pot is against the law and that makes it a criminal act. Those of you who disregard the drug laws are like juveniles who like to think that rules were made to be broken. No one has the right to decide for themselves which laws are good and which laws are bad, and then go on to disregard the laws they do not like.
It’s hard for me to believe that those of you ranting and raving against the war on drugs are actually correctional officers. You say that the war on drugs corrupts. Well, if you are a dope smoking CO, then YOU ARE CORRUPT! Didn’t you take an oath to uphold the laws? Dope smoking COs should be drummed out of the correctional service – they are on the wrong side of the bars.
You can continue to say what you like about me. There will be no more responses from me. I have better things to do than to reply to those idiots who believe that I’m the idiot.
__________
“Why do the police routinely plant evidence and fudge reports, much less lie on the stand, with impunity? Why do they immediately shoot in no-knock raids, even when breaking into the wrong house? You stormtroopers are given the go-ahead to run amok, trampling roughshod over the basic human rights granted to the citizenry by the constitution, and it sickens me.”
I added the above comment because it reveals the hatred drug users have for the police. Let me set the record straight. While there are cops who have planted evidence and lied on the witness stand, they are few and far between. Every time I busted someone for possession of heroin I was accused of planting it on him. That was and continues to be a common defense tactic. The cops I worked with just did not do anything like that. And when we did resort to the use of firearms, it was only when we confronted a suspect about to use a deadly weapon against us.
When that jerk wrote about ‘trampling roughshod over the basic human rights,’ he was obviously referring to his self-imposed right to smoke pot or use other illegal drugs.
Finally I want to say that I am proud of our law enforcement officers. Our narcotic officers are only doing their jobs trying to enforce the laws that our recreational drug users choose to violate. Their choice to use drugs is what sustains those violent drug cartels. Cops put their lives on the line every day trying to protect the public and they deserve better than to be vilified by a bunch of dope smoking pukes.
As for me – that slimy evil ‘law and order’ thug – I never lost one second of sleep for busting some doper and I am proud of the work I did in enforcing our drug laws, both as a cop and as a parole agent.
MILK, MURDER RELATED
What a bunch of hogwash. If I conducted a study, I could show that milk and murder are related because everyone who commits murder was raised on milk during the first stage of his life.
Capitol Weekly reader Jim Gallagher said it best when he wrote: Wintemute has been a gun control proponent for years and all his "studies" and "analysis" are shaded to show people should not have guns. People that drink to excess shouldn't have a lot of things, beginning with cars, but the operative words here are "willing to engage in risky behavior". Please tell me how Wintemute plans on eliminating "risky behavior" from our society? The fact that he is rehashing "data" he collect in 1996 should tell you something about the purpose of this release. Please tell me the good doctor saw the "critical" information sooner than 15 years after the fact. The gun control crowd is grasping at straws and Wintemute is one of the straws.
UC DAVIS RESEARCH SHOWS GUNS, ALCOHOL RELATED
By Malcolm Maclachlan
Capitol Weekly
June 22, 2011
If there is a link between alcohol and violence, how should society seek to deal with it? New research out of the University of California at Davis suggests one idea: Pass laws that address the intersection of booze and guns.
According to a new analysis of data by Garen J. Wintemute, director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, people who drink heavily and engage in risky behavior like drinking while driving are also more likely to own guns and carry a concealed weapon.
But John Lott — a gun rights blogger, former Yale University researcher and the author of “More Guns, Less Crime” — says Wintemute is conflating legal concealed weapons owners with illegal ones.
Wintemute concedes that the conclusions come from a new analysis of old data: a study conducted in 1996 and 1997 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. No one has done similar surveys on this scale since, he said. His analysis of the data appears in the current edition of the online academic journal “Injury Prevention.”
He noted that the study involved 15,000 people in eight states across the country. And, given how strong the tendency was for people who engage in risky behavior with alcohol to engage in risky behavior with guns, he said, there is little reason to think the correlation between the two would have changed in the years since.
“We know about alcohol as a risk factor for violence,” Wintemute said. “And we know, from a different data stream, the ownership of a gun is a risk factor for violence. But no one had looked at both.”
In addition to his academic role and UC Davis, Wintemute is an emergency room physician at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento — which, he said, is how he got interested in the issue in the first place. Since the center began tracking the data three years ago, one quarter of gunshot wound victims who came through were intoxicated on alcohol. Nationwide statistics show that a third of both suicides and murder victims had alcohol in their systems—and, in the majority of those cases, they met the criteria for being “acutely intoxicated.”
Wintemute laid out a kind of chicken-and-egg relationship between guns and drinking. For instance, gun owners who had taken a firearms safety course were less likely to drink to excess or drink at all. Meanwhile, people who kept a loaded gun in their home or car drank more overall, and were also more likely to drink and drive, binge drink or be classified as a chronic drinker.
All of these factors held true even when Wintemute includes age, sex, race, and state of residence. But even gun owners who didn’t engage in risky behaviors such as carrying a loaded firearm were about twice as likely to drink and drive than non-gun owners. He said he is looking at doing a future paper correlating alcohol and guns with other risky behaviors, such as smoking.
The link, he said, likely has to do with the association of drinking with impulsive behavior.
While his paper is not primarily focused on how to address this connection, Wintemute concludes in his analysis that “Efforts to uncouple the use of firearms from the use of alcohol may have important benefits for the health and safety of the public.” He also suggests more strict controls on bringing guns into bars or restricting gun ownership of people who have been convicted of alcohol-related offenses.
Wintemute noted the case of the United Kingdom, which has high drinking rates, an assault rate noticeably higher than in the United States — and a murder rate that’s far lower. Take the case of Glasgow — a gritty industrial city in Scotland that has long been known as the murder and violence capital of Western Europe. The city has sky-high assault rates, with both victims and perpetrators tending to be young men intoxicated on alcohol. But even in a bad year, the murder rate is less than a seventh of the current U.S. rate, and the weapon in most homicides is a knife.
“A dispute that might end in a fistfight in Glasgow might end with someone getting iced in the United States,” Wintemute said.
But Lott said Wintemute is maligning what Lott described as one of the most law-abiding groups in the country — concealed weapons permit holders.
“There is nothing in this paper's empirical work that differentiates those who have a permit and are legally carrying a concealed handgun and those who are illegally carrying a gun,” Lott said.
DUI rates among legal concealed weapon permit owners are “miniscule,” Lott said. In most states, getting a DUI will immediately lead to revoking or suspending the permit — and getting a DUI while carrying a concealed weapon will get you charged with a crime in many places. Revocation rates for all causes run well under 1 percent annually, Lott said. The state of Texas has 415,000 concealed weapon permit holders, and revoked a single license in 2009 for someone bringing an otherwise-legal weapon into a bar.
Wintemute says he never claimed to differentiate concealed weapons permits holders from those who carried weapons illegally. The surveys, he said, merely asked if someone had carried a concealed gun outside the home for protection from other people at any point in the last 30 days.
Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, painted Wintemute as an anti-gun zealot.
“He’s so anti-gun it’s unbelievable,” Paredes said. He finds a demon under every rock.”
He pointed to 2009 figures from the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center which show that the country’s remaining violent crime problem is largely a gang issue — and that the ranks of U.S. gangs have swelled to over a million members.
Capitol Weekly reader Jim Gallagher said it best when he wrote: Wintemute has been a gun control proponent for years and all his "studies" and "analysis" are shaded to show people should not have guns. People that drink to excess shouldn't have a lot of things, beginning with cars, but the operative words here are "willing to engage in risky behavior". Please tell me how Wintemute plans on eliminating "risky behavior" from our society? The fact that he is rehashing "data" he collect in 1996 should tell you something about the purpose of this release. Please tell me the good doctor saw the "critical" information sooner than 15 years after the fact. The gun control crowd is grasping at straws and Wintemute is one of the straws.
UC DAVIS RESEARCH SHOWS GUNS, ALCOHOL RELATED
By Malcolm Maclachlan
Capitol Weekly
June 22, 2011
If there is a link between alcohol and violence, how should society seek to deal with it? New research out of the University of California at Davis suggests one idea: Pass laws that address the intersection of booze and guns.
According to a new analysis of data by Garen J. Wintemute, director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, people who drink heavily and engage in risky behavior like drinking while driving are also more likely to own guns and carry a concealed weapon.
But John Lott — a gun rights blogger, former Yale University researcher and the author of “More Guns, Less Crime” — says Wintemute is conflating legal concealed weapons owners with illegal ones.
Wintemute concedes that the conclusions come from a new analysis of old data: a study conducted in 1996 and 1997 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. No one has done similar surveys on this scale since, he said. His analysis of the data appears in the current edition of the online academic journal “Injury Prevention.”
He noted that the study involved 15,000 people in eight states across the country. And, given how strong the tendency was for people who engage in risky behavior with alcohol to engage in risky behavior with guns, he said, there is little reason to think the correlation between the two would have changed in the years since.
“We know about alcohol as a risk factor for violence,” Wintemute said. “And we know, from a different data stream, the ownership of a gun is a risk factor for violence. But no one had looked at both.”
In addition to his academic role and UC Davis, Wintemute is an emergency room physician at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento — which, he said, is how he got interested in the issue in the first place. Since the center began tracking the data three years ago, one quarter of gunshot wound victims who came through were intoxicated on alcohol. Nationwide statistics show that a third of both suicides and murder victims had alcohol in their systems—and, in the majority of those cases, they met the criteria for being “acutely intoxicated.”
Wintemute laid out a kind of chicken-and-egg relationship between guns and drinking. For instance, gun owners who had taken a firearms safety course were less likely to drink to excess or drink at all. Meanwhile, people who kept a loaded gun in their home or car drank more overall, and were also more likely to drink and drive, binge drink or be classified as a chronic drinker.
All of these factors held true even when Wintemute includes age, sex, race, and state of residence. But even gun owners who didn’t engage in risky behaviors such as carrying a loaded firearm were about twice as likely to drink and drive than non-gun owners. He said he is looking at doing a future paper correlating alcohol and guns with other risky behaviors, such as smoking.
The link, he said, likely has to do with the association of drinking with impulsive behavior.
While his paper is not primarily focused on how to address this connection, Wintemute concludes in his analysis that “Efforts to uncouple the use of firearms from the use of alcohol may have important benefits for the health and safety of the public.” He also suggests more strict controls on bringing guns into bars or restricting gun ownership of people who have been convicted of alcohol-related offenses.
Wintemute noted the case of the United Kingdom, which has high drinking rates, an assault rate noticeably higher than in the United States — and a murder rate that’s far lower. Take the case of Glasgow — a gritty industrial city in Scotland that has long been known as the murder and violence capital of Western Europe. The city has sky-high assault rates, with both victims and perpetrators tending to be young men intoxicated on alcohol. But even in a bad year, the murder rate is less than a seventh of the current U.S. rate, and the weapon in most homicides is a knife.
“A dispute that might end in a fistfight in Glasgow might end with someone getting iced in the United States,” Wintemute said.
But Lott said Wintemute is maligning what Lott described as one of the most law-abiding groups in the country — concealed weapons permit holders.
“There is nothing in this paper's empirical work that differentiates those who have a permit and are legally carrying a concealed handgun and those who are illegally carrying a gun,” Lott said.
DUI rates among legal concealed weapon permit owners are “miniscule,” Lott said. In most states, getting a DUI will immediately lead to revoking or suspending the permit — and getting a DUI while carrying a concealed weapon will get you charged with a crime in many places. Revocation rates for all causes run well under 1 percent annually, Lott said. The state of Texas has 415,000 concealed weapon permit holders, and revoked a single license in 2009 for someone bringing an otherwise-legal weapon into a bar.
Wintemute says he never claimed to differentiate concealed weapons permits holders from those who carried weapons illegally. The surveys, he said, merely asked if someone had carried a concealed gun outside the home for protection from other people at any point in the last 30 days.
Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, painted Wintemute as an anti-gun zealot.
“He’s so anti-gun it’s unbelievable,” Paredes said. He finds a demon under every rock.”
He pointed to 2009 figures from the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center which show that the country’s remaining violent crime problem is largely a gang issue — and that the ranks of U.S. gangs have swelled to over a million members.
NO HEALTH INSURANCE AND NO MONEY IN THE BANK
A man suffered a serious heart attack while shopping in a store. The store clerks called 911 when they saw him collapse to the floor. The paramedics rushed the man to the nearest hospital where he had emergency open heart bypass surgery.
He awakened from the surgery to find himself in the care of nuns at the Catholic Hospital he was taken to. A nun was seated next to his bed holding a clip board loaded with several forms, and a pen. She asked him how he was going to pay for his treatment. "Do you have health insurance?" she asked.
He replied in a raspy voice, "No health insurance."
The nun asked, "Do you have money in the bank?"
He replied, "No money in the bank."
"Do you have a relative who could help you with the payments?" asked the irritated nun.
He said, "I only have a spinster sister, and she is a nun."
The nun became agitated and announced loudly, "Nuns are not spinsters! Nuns are married to God."
The patient replied, "Perfect. Send the bill to my brother-in-law."
He awakened from the surgery to find himself in the care of nuns at the Catholic Hospital he was taken to. A nun was seated next to his bed holding a clip board loaded with several forms, and a pen. She asked him how he was going to pay for his treatment. "Do you have health insurance?" she asked.
He replied in a raspy voice, "No health insurance."
The nun asked, "Do you have money in the bank?"
He replied, "No money in the bank."
"Do you have a relative who could help you with the payments?" asked the irritated nun.
He said, "I only have a spinster sister, and she is a nun."
The nun became agitated and announced loudly, "Nuns are not spinsters! Nuns are married to God."
The patient replied, "Perfect. Send the bill to my brother-in-law."
Thursday, June 23, 2011
PIMPING PROFESSOR'S TENURE IN JEOPARDY
Another educated idiot runs afoul of the law. Physics professor and pimp – that’s a rather odd combination.
COPS BUST NJ PROFESSOR’S WEB PROSTITUTION RING
Police arrested the professor, who used his university e-mail to create the site
By Andrea Alexander and Marlene Naanes
The Herald News
June 22, 2011
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Fairleigh Dickinson University e-mail address provided police in New Mexico with an important clue that exposed the alleged double life of a physics professor charged with running a virtual house of prostitution though a website with 1,400 members.
David C. Flory, 68, of New York City, who teaches on the FDU-Metropolitan campus in Teaneck, remained in police custody on Tuesday in Albuquerque, N.M., with bail set at $100,000, said Lt. William Roseman of the Albuquerque police. He was arrested Sunday while sitting in a Starbucks and was charged with 40 counts of promoting prostitution.
Authorities knew Flory would be in the area because they had been monitoring postings and discussions on his website, Southwest Companions, Roseman said. About 45 minutes after Flory was taken into custody, police in New York and Teaneck executed search warrants at his home and FDU office to confiscate computer equipment. Authorities plan to send the equipment to an FBI computer forensic lab for review, Roseman said.
Flory's wife, Sharon, declined to comment when reached at her home in New York on Tuesday.
A copy of the New Mexico arrest warrant obtained by The Record on Tuesday and interviews with Albuquerque law enforcement officials provided vivid details of the investigation that led to Flory's arrest.
Flory told police he created the site not to make money but as a "hobby" to provide a venue "for prostitutes and johns so they wouldn't have to worry about being busted by law enforcement," Roseman said.
Flory believed the site was secure. He created three levels of membership and had to approve new users. Flory even chided one prostitute for being too explicit in her advertisement and advised her to use initialisms for sex acts.
"He wanted to avoid being caught in any search engines," Roseman said.
But despite Flory's efforts to keep the site private and hidden from police, authorities had been tracking him for the last six months.
Police were tipped off to the existence of the website through prostitutes and johns who cooperated with investigators to avoid arrest, Roseman said. He said most of the site's users were from the Albuquerque area, though some were from Denver and Phoenix. Flory owned a vacation home in Santa Fe, N.M.
In December, an Albuquerque police officer created a profile on the site with the help of an informant. Police said gaining Flory's trust ordinarily was done by "sleeping with a prostitute." The prostitute would then report to Flory what sexual acts the two had engaged in, as well as how much money was exchanged.
The woman working with police sent the webmaster an e-mail to vouch for the officer so he could gain further access to the site. The webmaster went by the handle David8 and used an e-mail domain of DCF8.org, which matched Flory's initials and was one of the clues mentioned in the warrant.
Police monitored the site for several months. The investigation led to the arrest of an unknown number of prostitutes, and authorities are reviewing Flory's computers to try to obtain the identity of other users of the site, Roseman said.
Authorities established that Flory had hands-on involvement with the site. He took down an advertisement he believed was too graphic and told the prostitute to rewrite it, according to the arrest warrant. He posted tips on how not to get caught and removed profiles of people who had been arrested or were suspected of working with police, the document says.
On May 31, police subpoenaed records from GoDaddy.com, which registered the domain for the website. A few weeks later, police learned that a David Flory of New York owned the website, according to the arrest warrant. Flory used his university e-mail address to start the site, which helped police identify him, Roseman said.
"It was another piece of the puzzle that removed any doubt about who he was," he said.
In a statement, FDU spokeswoman Dina Schipper said that the university "was concerned about these serious charges."
"Since becoming aware of the arrest, the university has cooperated with law enforcement authorities as they seek to gain the most accurate information as part of their ongoing investigation in New Mexico," Schipper said.
She added that Flory's job status "is currently under review in accordance with established university policies." Flory joined the FDU faculty in 1969 and was named professor of physics in 1980, according to the school's website.
COPS BUST NJ PROFESSOR’S WEB PROSTITUTION RING
Police arrested the professor, who used his university e-mail to create the site
By Andrea Alexander and Marlene Naanes
The Herald News
June 22, 2011
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Fairleigh Dickinson University e-mail address provided police in New Mexico with an important clue that exposed the alleged double life of a physics professor charged with running a virtual house of prostitution though a website with 1,400 members.
David C. Flory, 68, of New York City, who teaches on the FDU-Metropolitan campus in Teaneck, remained in police custody on Tuesday in Albuquerque, N.M., with bail set at $100,000, said Lt. William Roseman of the Albuquerque police. He was arrested Sunday while sitting in a Starbucks and was charged with 40 counts of promoting prostitution.
Authorities knew Flory would be in the area because they had been monitoring postings and discussions on his website, Southwest Companions, Roseman said. About 45 minutes after Flory was taken into custody, police in New York and Teaneck executed search warrants at his home and FDU office to confiscate computer equipment. Authorities plan to send the equipment to an FBI computer forensic lab for review, Roseman said.
Flory's wife, Sharon, declined to comment when reached at her home in New York on Tuesday.
A copy of the New Mexico arrest warrant obtained by The Record on Tuesday and interviews with Albuquerque law enforcement officials provided vivid details of the investigation that led to Flory's arrest.
Flory told police he created the site not to make money but as a "hobby" to provide a venue "for prostitutes and johns so they wouldn't have to worry about being busted by law enforcement," Roseman said.
Flory believed the site was secure. He created three levels of membership and had to approve new users. Flory even chided one prostitute for being too explicit in her advertisement and advised her to use initialisms for sex acts.
"He wanted to avoid being caught in any search engines," Roseman said.
But despite Flory's efforts to keep the site private and hidden from police, authorities had been tracking him for the last six months.
Police were tipped off to the existence of the website through prostitutes and johns who cooperated with investigators to avoid arrest, Roseman said. He said most of the site's users were from the Albuquerque area, though some were from Denver and Phoenix. Flory owned a vacation home in Santa Fe, N.M.
In December, an Albuquerque police officer created a profile on the site with the help of an informant. Police said gaining Flory's trust ordinarily was done by "sleeping with a prostitute." The prostitute would then report to Flory what sexual acts the two had engaged in, as well as how much money was exchanged.
The woman working with police sent the webmaster an e-mail to vouch for the officer so he could gain further access to the site. The webmaster went by the handle David8 and used an e-mail domain of DCF8.org, which matched Flory's initials and was one of the clues mentioned in the warrant.
Police monitored the site for several months. The investigation led to the arrest of an unknown number of prostitutes, and authorities are reviewing Flory's computers to try to obtain the identity of other users of the site, Roseman said.
Authorities established that Flory had hands-on involvement with the site. He took down an advertisement he believed was too graphic and told the prostitute to rewrite it, according to the arrest warrant. He posted tips on how not to get caught and removed profiles of people who had been arrested or were suspected of working with police, the document says.
On May 31, police subpoenaed records from GoDaddy.com, which registered the domain for the website. A few weeks later, police learned that a David Flory of New York owned the website, according to the arrest warrant. Flory used his university e-mail address to start the site, which helped police identify him, Roseman said.
"It was another piece of the puzzle that removed any doubt about who he was," he said.
In a statement, FDU spokeswoman Dina Schipper said that the university "was concerned about these serious charges."
"Since becoming aware of the arrest, the university has cooperated with law enforcement authorities as they seek to gain the most accurate information as part of their ongoing investigation in New Mexico," Schipper said.
She added that Flory's job status "is currently under review in accordance with established university policies." Flory joined the FDU faculty in 1969 and was named professor of physics in 1980, according to the school's website.
UPDATE: THERE ARE RELIGIOUS NUT CASES IN EVERY FAITH
Oops, it seems that Dorina Lisson and I were taken in by a hoax, but so were some of the world’s leading media services. It just goes to show that many of us are only too willing to believe what we want to believe. And that goes for the media as well.
DID A JERUSALEM COURT REALLY SENTENCE A DOG TO DEATH BY STONING?
The BBC, Agence France Presse, and Time magazine all erroneously reported that a rabbinical court in Jerusalem had sentenced a dog to death by stoning. How did they fall for it?
By Eoin O'Carroll
Jewish World Review
June 22, 2011
Have you heard the one about the dog who walked into a rabbinical court?
Here's how the BBC reported it: A pooch made its way into a beis din in Jerusalem's fervently-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim. One of the judges, believing the dog to be the reincarnation of a now-deceased lawyer whom the court had cursed some two decades earlier, sentenced the dog to death by stoning, and ordered that the sentence be carried out by children. The dog escaped before the sentence could be carried out. Dog-lovers have filed a complaint against the court.
This story has it all. Religious zealots! Animal rights activists! Blood libel! Children! Ingredients that tend to nourish the more primitive regions of our minds and starve the rest. Best of all, it runs under 200 words and stars a dog.
The story's only deficiency is that it comes up short in the being-factually-true department.
As it turns out, the BBC, along with Agence France Presse, Time Magazine, and a handful other news outlets got the story from Ynet, the website for Yediot Ahronot, Israel's second-largest newspaper. Ynet's story says that the head of the court denied that such an incident had taken place, a detail that was left out of the original BBC, Time, and AFP stories. The paper is also alone in noting that there was no official ruling, just a rabbi telling kids to throw rocks at a dog.
Ynet didn't do any original reporting. They got the story from this in Behadrei Hadarim, a small Hebrew-language news outlet for Israel's fervently-Orthodox community. The Bhadrei Hadarim's reports that it got the story from someone who was present, but it doesn't bother to give that person's name.
Israel's third-largest paper, which doesn't have an English edition, also ran the story. They subsequently ran an apology, noting what the court said actually happened: A dog walked into a courtroom, and someone called the dogcatcher.
How did a story get from a single, unattributed source in a community news outlet to appearing on some of the world's most respected news outlets, with apparently nobody making any attempts to verify it?
After all, it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Just a few weeks ago, The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, BBC, Agence France Presse, and Reuters all reported the discovery of dozens of bodies buried on a farm outside Houston. It turns out that police were investigating a tip from a self-described psychic, who not surprisingly turned out to be completely wrong.
"In the frenzied first 30 minutes of activity, one news organization after another built its wrong reporting upon the wrong reporting of others — The Times citing Reuters citing 'local media' citing, in some cases, nobody," writes media critic Bob Garfield on Mashable.
Garfield has a point: Repeating what has been said by other news outlets doesn't create knowledge. It just remixes it, sometimes with heavy distortion and amplification.
As budgets and news cycles shrink, piggybacking on other people's reporting, however sketchy, becomes inevitable. When this is done without verification, errors become increasingly frequent. So while "rabbi stones dog" may not be a true story, it's a useful cautionary tale for journalists, and that includes us. After all, you know what they say about those who live in glass houses.
DID A JERUSALEM COURT REALLY SENTENCE A DOG TO DEATH BY STONING?
The BBC, Agence France Presse, and Time magazine all erroneously reported that a rabbinical court in Jerusalem had sentenced a dog to death by stoning. How did they fall for it?
By Eoin O'Carroll
Jewish World Review
June 22, 2011
Have you heard the one about the dog who walked into a rabbinical court?
Here's how the BBC reported it: A pooch made its way into a beis din in Jerusalem's fervently-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim. One of the judges, believing the dog to be the reincarnation of a now-deceased lawyer whom the court had cursed some two decades earlier, sentenced the dog to death by stoning, and ordered that the sentence be carried out by children. The dog escaped before the sentence could be carried out. Dog-lovers have filed a complaint against the court.
This story has it all. Religious zealots! Animal rights activists! Blood libel! Children! Ingredients that tend to nourish the more primitive regions of our minds and starve the rest. Best of all, it runs under 200 words and stars a dog.
The story's only deficiency is that it comes up short in the being-factually-true department.
As it turns out, the BBC, along with Agence France Presse, Time Magazine, and a handful other news outlets got the story from Ynet, the website for Yediot Ahronot, Israel's second-largest newspaper. Ynet's story says that the head of the court denied that such an incident had taken place, a detail that was left out of the original BBC, Time, and AFP stories. The paper is also alone in noting that there was no official ruling, just a rabbi telling kids to throw rocks at a dog.
Ynet didn't do any original reporting. They got the story from this in Behadrei Hadarim, a small Hebrew-language news outlet for Israel's fervently-Orthodox community. The Bhadrei Hadarim's reports that it got the story from someone who was present, but it doesn't bother to give that person's name.
Israel's third-largest paper, which doesn't have an English edition, also ran the story. They subsequently ran an apology, noting what the court said actually happened: A dog walked into a courtroom, and someone called the dogcatcher.
How did a story get from a single, unattributed source in a community news outlet to appearing on some of the world's most respected news outlets, with apparently nobody making any attempts to verify it?
After all, it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Just a few weeks ago, The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, BBC, Agence France Presse, and Reuters all reported the discovery of dozens of bodies buried on a farm outside Houston. It turns out that police were investigating a tip from a self-described psychic, who not surprisingly turned out to be completely wrong.
"In the frenzied first 30 minutes of activity, one news organization after another built its wrong reporting upon the wrong reporting of others — The Times citing Reuters citing 'local media' citing, in some cases, nobody," writes media critic Bob Garfield on Mashable.
Garfield has a point: Repeating what has been said by other news outlets doesn't create knowledge. It just remixes it, sometimes with heavy distortion and amplification.
As budgets and news cycles shrink, piggybacking on other people's reporting, however sketchy, becomes inevitable. When this is done without verification, errors become increasingly frequent. So while "rabbi stones dog" may not be a true story, it's a useful cautionary tale for journalists, and that includes us. After all, you know what they say about those who live in glass houses.
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