In an editorial, New York’s far-left rag excoriates NY cops for being disrespectful to their mayor and for refusing to do their jobs; calls for the Justice Department to determine if the police are guilty of civil rights violations in withdrawing policing from minority communities
The nation’s most far-left news organization supported NY Mayor de Blasio in an editorial and excoriated NY cops in the manner befitting a pack of police-hating sociopaths.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said on PBS Tuesday: “That editorial is crazy. What they’re advocating is basically, go to war with the cops.”
NO JUSTICE, NO POLICE
By The Editorial Board
The New York Times
January 6, 2015
Mayor Bill de Blasio has been in office barely a year, and already forces of entropy are roaming the streets, turning their backs on the law, defying civil authority and trying to unravel the social fabric.
No, not squeegee-men or turnstile-jumpers. We’re talking about the cops.
For the second straight week, police officers across the city have all but stopped writing tickets and severely cut down the number of arrests. The Times reported that in the week ending Sunday, only 347 criminal summonses were issued citywide, down from 4,077 over the same period last year. Parking and traffic tickets were down by more than 90 percent. In Coney Island, ticketing and summonses fell to zero.
The city has been placed in an absurd position, with its police commissioner, William Bratton — a pioneer of “broken windows” policing who has just written a long, impassioned defense of that strategy as an essential crime-fighting tool — leading a force that is refusing to carry it out.
Police union officials deny responsibility for the mass inaction. But Edward Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said officers had talked among themselves and “it became contagious,” apparently like the flu.
Call this what it is: a reckless, coordinated escalation of a war between the police unions and Mr. de Blasio and a hijacking of law-enforcement policy by those who do not set law-enforcement policy. This deplorable gesture is bound to increase tension in a city already rattled over the killing by the police of an unarmed man, Eric Garner, last summer, the executions of two officers in Brooklyn last month, and the shootings on Monday of two plainclothes officers in the Bronx.
Mr. Bratton spoke delicately at a news conference on Monday. He said there could be other explanations, like officers being too busy handling police-reform demonstrations and attending funerals. He promised to investigate — and to “deal with it very appropriately, if we have to.”
Mr. de Blasio’s critics foretold doom when he was elected a year ago. They said graffiti, muggings and other crime would rush back with a vengeance. They were dead wrong — crime rates continued to decline to historic lows in 2014 — but now it seems the cops are trying to help prove them right.
The madness has to stop. The problem is not that a two-week suspension of “broken windows” policing is going to unleash chaos in the city. The problem is that cops who refuse to do their jobs and revel in showing contempt to their civilian leaders are damaging the social order all by themselves.
Mr. de Blasio, who has been cautious since the shootings, found his voice on Monday, saying for the first time that the police officers’ protests of turning their backs at the slain officers’ funerals had been disrespectful to the families of the dead. He was right, but he needs to do more.
He should appeal directly to the public and say plainly that the police are trying to extort him and the city he leads.
If the Police Department’s current commanders cannot get the cops to do their jobs, Mr. de Blasio should consider replacing them.
He should invite the Justice Department to determine if the police are guilty of civil rights violations in withdrawing policing from minority communities.
He should remind the police that they are public employees, under oath to uphold city and state laws.
If Mr. de Blasio’s critics are right and the city is coming unglued, it is not because of what he has done. He was elected by an overwhelming vote, because he promised action on police reform, starting with the end of stop-and-frisk tactics that corralled so many innocent New Yorkers into the criminal-justice system. The city got the mayor it wanted — and then, because of Mr. de Blasio, it got Mr. Bratton.
Mr. Bratton’s faith in “broken windows” needs rethinking. But nothing will be fixed as long as police officers are refusing to do their jobs.
A video emerged this week of a New York cop, apparently with nothing better to do, horsing around on the hood of a squad car, falling off and hitting his head. It would be hard to invent a more fitting image of the ridiculous — and dangerous — place this atmosphere of sullen insubordination has taken us.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
LEFT YOUR SMART PHONE ON THE PLANE?
What a wonderful commercial and what a great way for KLM to return those smart phones to passengers who left them behind when they got off the plane.
THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY IS SET TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE INTERANTIONAL CRIMINAL COURT APRIL 1
The court has a history of hostility against both Israel and the United States
If the Palestinian Authority goes ahead in the International Criminal Court with its announced plans to charge Israel and its government and military leaders with committing war crimes, look for the $400 million annual aid package Palestinians receive from the U.S. to be cut off.
THE GLOBAL COURT AS POLITICAL WEAPON
The International Criminal Court has a dismal record and appears to hold an animus toward the U.S. and Israel
By Michael B. Mukasey
Former Attorney General of the United States
The Wall Street Journal
January 11, 2015
Last week the Palestinian Authority passed a milestone in its campaign to credential itself while delegitimizing Israel. On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed that the Palestinians, who applied Jan. 1 for membership in the International Criminal Court, would join the organization April 1. On Wednesday the ICC’s registrar said that the court’s jurisdiction would extend back to June 13, 2014, the date chosen by the Palestinian Authority. In other words, a date shortly before the outbreak of hostilities between the Israelis and the Hamas terror organization that rules the Gaza Strip—and, in a nice touch, the day after three Israeli teenagers were murdered by Palestinians.
The Palestinian Authority joining the ICC is a more fraught sally into the international arena than its past efforts. Recognition of Palestine as a nation-state by this country or that, or membership in an international agency like Unesco, carries no focused threat to Israel. The ICC is different, as the word “criminal” in its name would suggest.
The tribunal was constituted under a treaty that became effective in 2002 with the U.N. as its depository. The ICC has jurisdiction to hear grave charges in four broad categories: genocide, crimes against humanity (defined as various acts of violence in a widespread or systematic attack on civilians), war crimes (serious breaches of the laws of armed conflict) and aggression (a category not yet in effect).
The process starts with an investigation by a prosecutor who may act upon referral by the U.N. Security Council, on application to the court by a state party to the treaty, or on the prosecutor’s initiative. However, when acting other than at the behest of the Security Council, the prosecutor may investigate only if the violation occurred in the territory of a state that has accepted the court’s jurisdiction. The court’s judges must authorize prosecutor-initiated investigations and confirm decisions to charge based on a finding that there is reasonable basis to proceed.
The court is supposed to function only as a complement to the legal systems of nation-states. Under this principle of complementarity, the court is not supposed to act if a state has a legal system that is willing and able to investigate and, if necessary, to prosecute charges.
How does this system work in practice? Since 2002, of the 21 cases brought before the court, two—against Congolese rebels—have resulted in convictions. All of the cases have been brought in African countries, and the two brought against heads of government—Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir —have failed. The prosecutor had to drop charges against Mr. Kenyatta. Mr. Bashir treats his indictment as a joke, traveling with impunity; the prosecutor has suspended the gathering of evidence in the Darfur region of Sudan, where Mr. Bashir’s crimes were said to have occurred.
Beyond having a dismal success record, the current chief prosecutor, Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, appears hostile to both Israel and the U.S. Consider the case involving the Mavi Marmara, the vessel that set out from Turkey in May 2010 as part of a “humanitarian” flotilla meant to break Israel’s lawful blockade of Gaza to curtail the kind of rocket and tunnel attacks that erupted last summer.
The vessel was owned by a Turkish group with ties to al Qaeda. Intercepted and warned by the Israeli navy that it was entering a blockade area, the vessel did not stop. When Israeli forces tried to land from a helicopter, they were attacked with knives and clubs, among other weapons. The Israelis fired live ammunition after several of them had been wounded. Nine of the would-be blockade runners aboard were killed, and a 10th died later.
Turkey is not an ICC member state, but the vessel’s owner, with cunning foresight, had registered the ship in the Comoros Islands, which is. When Comoros accused Israel of war crimes based on the shipboard deaths, the ICC prosecutor was obligated to consider whether the case was of “sufficient gravity” to fall within the jurisdiction of the court. Not surprisingly, Ms. Bensouda had to conclude, simply based on the scale of injury, that it was not.
Although that determination should have been the sum total of her findings, it wasn’t. Rather, two months ago the prosecutor filed a 60-page report purporting to find, based on a General Assembly resolution and an article by the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, that Israel is an “occupying power” in Gaza—despite having disengaged from that territory in 2005. The report also found “reasonable basis” to believe that the “war crime” of “willful killing” had been committed; absurdly, the question of self-defense was left to later analysis.
More recently, during a recorded interview at a conference in Morocco, Ms. Bensouda dropped the “reasonable basis” mask and said flatly that war crimes had been committed aboard the Mavi Marmara.
Israel is not the only democracy in Ms. Bensouda’s sights. In December she disclosed that she is “assessing available evidence” on “enhanced interrogation techniques” supposedly practiced by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which is an ICC member state. As it happens, such techniques were applied by the Central Intelligence Agency, a civilian agency, and not in Afghanistan. Ms. Bensouda is unlikely to be deterred by such minutiae, any more than she is deterred by what is supposed to be a bedrock principle of the ICC itself: complementarity—that a nation-state with a fully functioning legal system competent to deal with claims of criminality should not be hauled before an international tribunal.
Providentially, the list of 122 countries that have submitted to ICC jurisdiction—from Afghanistan to Zambia—does not include the U.S. or Israel.
U.S. administrations have been careful not to subject U.S. military or civilian officials to the whims of a court deeply enmeshed in world politics. Even as he preliminarily signed the ICC treaty in 2000, President Clinton explicitly declined to submit it to the Senate for ratification unless U.S. concerns were alleviated. When that hadn’t been done by 2002, President Bush withdrew even the modest Clinton endorsement, and Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act to ensure that U.S. military personnel would never be brought before the ICC.
The U.S. has cooperated with ad hoc tribunals that addressed crimes committed in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia, and on a selective basis with the ICC, as with America’s 2010 announcement that it would protect Kenyan witnesses in the ICC’s Kenyatta investigation. But despite facile claims—overseas, and even domestically—that they have committed war crimes, both the U.S. and Israel, as mature, functioning democracies, are obligated as sovereigns to protect their public servants and citizens. Submitting to ICC jurisdiction would compromise those obligations for no more than an irresponsible beau geste.
As to the Palestinian Authority and the ICC, it is no compliment to either to say that at this point they may deserve one another.
If the Palestinian Authority goes ahead in the International Criminal Court with its announced plans to charge Israel and its government and military leaders with committing war crimes, look for the $400 million annual aid package Palestinians receive from the U.S. to be cut off.
THE GLOBAL COURT AS POLITICAL WEAPON
The International Criminal Court has a dismal record and appears to hold an animus toward the U.S. and Israel
By Michael B. Mukasey
Former Attorney General of the United States
The Wall Street Journal
January 11, 2015
Last week the Palestinian Authority passed a milestone in its campaign to credential itself while delegitimizing Israel. On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed that the Palestinians, who applied Jan. 1 for membership in the International Criminal Court, would join the organization April 1. On Wednesday the ICC’s registrar said that the court’s jurisdiction would extend back to June 13, 2014, the date chosen by the Palestinian Authority. In other words, a date shortly before the outbreak of hostilities between the Israelis and the Hamas terror organization that rules the Gaza Strip—and, in a nice touch, the day after three Israeli teenagers were murdered by Palestinians.
The Palestinian Authority joining the ICC is a more fraught sally into the international arena than its past efforts. Recognition of Palestine as a nation-state by this country or that, or membership in an international agency like Unesco, carries no focused threat to Israel. The ICC is different, as the word “criminal” in its name would suggest.
The tribunal was constituted under a treaty that became effective in 2002 with the U.N. as its depository. The ICC has jurisdiction to hear grave charges in four broad categories: genocide, crimes against humanity (defined as various acts of violence in a widespread or systematic attack on civilians), war crimes (serious breaches of the laws of armed conflict) and aggression (a category not yet in effect).
The process starts with an investigation by a prosecutor who may act upon referral by the U.N. Security Council, on application to the court by a state party to the treaty, or on the prosecutor’s initiative. However, when acting other than at the behest of the Security Council, the prosecutor may investigate only if the violation occurred in the territory of a state that has accepted the court’s jurisdiction. The court’s judges must authorize prosecutor-initiated investigations and confirm decisions to charge based on a finding that there is reasonable basis to proceed.
The court is supposed to function only as a complement to the legal systems of nation-states. Under this principle of complementarity, the court is not supposed to act if a state has a legal system that is willing and able to investigate and, if necessary, to prosecute charges.
How does this system work in practice? Since 2002, of the 21 cases brought before the court, two—against Congolese rebels—have resulted in convictions. All of the cases have been brought in African countries, and the two brought against heads of government—Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir —have failed. The prosecutor had to drop charges against Mr. Kenyatta. Mr. Bashir treats his indictment as a joke, traveling with impunity; the prosecutor has suspended the gathering of evidence in the Darfur region of Sudan, where Mr. Bashir’s crimes were said to have occurred.
Beyond having a dismal success record, the current chief prosecutor, Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, appears hostile to both Israel and the U.S. Consider the case involving the Mavi Marmara, the vessel that set out from Turkey in May 2010 as part of a “humanitarian” flotilla meant to break Israel’s lawful blockade of Gaza to curtail the kind of rocket and tunnel attacks that erupted last summer.
The vessel was owned by a Turkish group with ties to al Qaeda. Intercepted and warned by the Israeli navy that it was entering a blockade area, the vessel did not stop. When Israeli forces tried to land from a helicopter, they were attacked with knives and clubs, among other weapons. The Israelis fired live ammunition after several of them had been wounded. Nine of the would-be blockade runners aboard were killed, and a 10th died later.
Turkey is not an ICC member state, but the vessel’s owner, with cunning foresight, had registered the ship in the Comoros Islands, which is. When Comoros accused Israel of war crimes based on the shipboard deaths, the ICC prosecutor was obligated to consider whether the case was of “sufficient gravity” to fall within the jurisdiction of the court. Not surprisingly, Ms. Bensouda had to conclude, simply based on the scale of injury, that it was not.
Although that determination should have been the sum total of her findings, it wasn’t. Rather, two months ago the prosecutor filed a 60-page report purporting to find, based on a General Assembly resolution and an article by the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, that Israel is an “occupying power” in Gaza—despite having disengaged from that territory in 2005. The report also found “reasonable basis” to believe that the “war crime” of “willful killing” had been committed; absurdly, the question of self-defense was left to later analysis.
More recently, during a recorded interview at a conference in Morocco, Ms. Bensouda dropped the “reasonable basis” mask and said flatly that war crimes had been committed aboard the Mavi Marmara.
Israel is not the only democracy in Ms. Bensouda’s sights. In December she disclosed that she is “assessing available evidence” on “enhanced interrogation techniques” supposedly practiced by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which is an ICC member state. As it happens, such techniques were applied by the Central Intelligence Agency, a civilian agency, and not in Afghanistan. Ms. Bensouda is unlikely to be deterred by such minutiae, any more than she is deterred by what is supposed to be a bedrock principle of the ICC itself: complementarity—that a nation-state with a fully functioning legal system competent to deal with claims of criminality should not be hauled before an international tribunal.
Providentially, the list of 122 countries that have submitted to ICC jurisdiction—from Afghanistan to Zambia—does not include the U.S. or Israel.
U.S. administrations have been careful not to subject U.S. military or civilian officials to the whims of a court deeply enmeshed in world politics. Even as he preliminarily signed the ICC treaty in 2000, President Clinton explicitly declined to submit it to the Senate for ratification unless U.S. concerns were alleviated. When that hadn’t been done by 2002, President Bush withdrew even the modest Clinton endorsement, and Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act to ensure that U.S. military personnel would never be brought before the ICC.
The U.S. has cooperated with ad hoc tribunals that addressed crimes committed in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia, and on a selective basis with the ICC, as with America’s 2010 announcement that it would protect Kenyan witnesses in the ICC’s Kenyatta investigation. But despite facile claims—overseas, and even domestically—that they have committed war crimes, both the U.S. and Israel, as mature, functioning democracies, are obligated as sovereigns to protect their public servants and citizens. Submitting to ICC jurisdiction would compromise those obligations for no more than an irresponsible beau geste.
As to the Palestinian Authority and the ICC, it is no compliment to either to say that at this point they may deserve one another.
HOLLANDE DID NOT WANT NETANYAHU TO ATTEND THE PARIS UNITY MARCH AND RALLY
The French president greeted Netanyahu with a limp handshake, but he hugged Abbas in a loving embrace
French President Hollande did not want Netanyahu to attend Sunday’s massive Paris unity march and rally because he did not want the Israeli leader’s presence to call attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At first Netanyahu agreed not to come, but on Saturday he changed his mind. That forced the French government to issue him a last minute formal invitation.
While Netanyahu received a cool reception with a limp handshake from the French president, Abbas was warmly received by Hollande who hugged the Palestinian leader in a loving embrace. Hollande and Netanyahu both attended a Paris synagogue service in memory of the four Jews killed at the kosher grocery store, but when Netanyahu got up to speak, the French president and his entourage got up and left.
Hollande’s contempt for Netanyahu is merely a reflection of the fact that France has been fully siding with the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel.
While the French government was unhappy with Netanyahu, Hamas was unhappy with Abbas for attending the rally. Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar called Abbas a hypocrite for pretending to oppose terrorism.
This is an election season in Israel and Netanyahu is seeking another term as prime minister. The Israeli media, which loves to hate Netanyahu, reported that he was an embarrassment because he muscled his way from the second row to the first row to walk and stand with other heads of state alongside Hollande. That simply was not true.
ISRAEL, HAMAS SLAM ABBAS PARTICIPATION IN PARIS MARCH
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
January 12, 2015
Israel and Hamas found themselves in rare agreement over the participation of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Sunday’s massive anti-terror rally on the streets of Paris.
An estimated two million people took part in the march just days after Islamic terrorists killed 17 people in three separate attacks in the French capital. The event was attended by numerous foreign dignitaries and heads of state, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several of his cabinet ministers.
But Abbas shouldn’t have been there, insisted senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar. “Abbas wants to seem as if he’s fighting terror but he doesn’t know the meaning of terror,” he told Arab media in remarks that were quickly picked up by the Israeli press.
Al-Zahar said that Abbas “thinks that in acting this way, he’s earning the sympathy of world nations. …This behavior is part of the hypocrisy and political acrobatics typical to Abbas.”
Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who was also present at the rally, came to a similar conclusion regarding both Abbas and the emir of Qatar.
“It’s hypocritical of those same Qataris and Arabs who are financing terrorism to come and demonstrate as if against terrorism,” Bennett told a Jewish youth group in Paris. “I don’t accept this. They’re hands are covered in blood.”
It was later revealed that, in fact, it was Netanyahu whom France didn’t want at the Paris rally, and that Abbas was only formally invited as a kind of slap in the Israeli leader’s face.
An unnamed official in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem told Israel Radio and Channel 2 News that France wanted to avoid any mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so asked Netanyahu not to attend the historic demonstration.
Initially, Netanyahu complied with the request, but later decided that it was important for the Israeli prime minister to participate in the world’s largest anti-terror protest. France quickly issued an official invitation to Netanyahu to make it appear as though he’d been welcome all along, but also highlighted that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had likewise been invited.
French President Hollande did not want Netanyahu to attend Sunday’s massive Paris unity march and rally because he did not want the Israeli leader’s presence to call attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At first Netanyahu agreed not to come, but on Saturday he changed his mind. That forced the French government to issue him a last minute formal invitation.
While Netanyahu received a cool reception with a limp handshake from the French president, Abbas was warmly received by Hollande who hugged the Palestinian leader in a loving embrace. Hollande and Netanyahu both attended a Paris synagogue service in memory of the four Jews killed at the kosher grocery store, but when Netanyahu got up to speak, the French president and his entourage got up and left.
Hollande’s contempt for Netanyahu is merely a reflection of the fact that France has been fully siding with the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel.
While the French government was unhappy with Netanyahu, Hamas was unhappy with Abbas for attending the rally. Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar called Abbas a hypocrite for pretending to oppose terrorism.
This is an election season in Israel and Netanyahu is seeking another term as prime minister. The Israeli media, which loves to hate Netanyahu, reported that he was an embarrassment because he muscled his way from the second row to the first row to walk and stand with other heads of state alongside Hollande. That simply was not true.
ISRAEL, HAMAS SLAM ABBAS PARTICIPATION IN PARIS MARCH
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
January 12, 2015
Israel and Hamas found themselves in rare agreement over the participation of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Sunday’s massive anti-terror rally on the streets of Paris.
An estimated two million people took part in the march just days after Islamic terrorists killed 17 people in three separate attacks in the French capital. The event was attended by numerous foreign dignitaries and heads of state, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several of his cabinet ministers.
But Abbas shouldn’t have been there, insisted senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar. “Abbas wants to seem as if he’s fighting terror but he doesn’t know the meaning of terror,” he told Arab media in remarks that were quickly picked up by the Israeli press.
Al-Zahar said that Abbas “thinks that in acting this way, he’s earning the sympathy of world nations. …This behavior is part of the hypocrisy and political acrobatics typical to Abbas.”
Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who was also present at the rally, came to a similar conclusion regarding both Abbas and the emir of Qatar.
“It’s hypocritical of those same Qataris and Arabs who are financing terrorism to come and demonstrate as if against terrorism,” Bennett told a Jewish youth group in Paris. “I don’t accept this. They’re hands are covered in blood.”
It was later revealed that, in fact, it was Netanyahu whom France didn’t want at the Paris rally, and that Abbas was only formally invited as a kind of slap in the Israeli leader’s face.
An unnamed official in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem told Israel Radio and Channel 2 News that France wanted to avoid any mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so asked Netanyahu not to attend the historic demonstration.
Initially, Netanyahu complied with the request, but later decided that it was important for the Israeli prime minister to participate in the world’s largest anti-terror protest. France quickly issued an official invitation to Netanyahu to make it appear as though he’d been welcome all along, but also highlighted that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had likewise been invited.
THE SACRAMENTO BEE’S OBIT ON JEFF ‘PACO’ DOYLE
The news that Jeff passed away came as a terrible shock to me. He gave me the opportunity to vent with my rants on PACOVILLA. His dad has been a friend for ages. We served together in the Riverside Sheriff’s Department.
Here is The Sacramento Bee’s obit on Paco:
POPULAR CALIFORNIA CORRECTIONS BLOG PUBLISHER DIES FROM HEART ATTACK
By John Ortiz
The Sacramento Bee
January 12, 2015
The founder and chief contributor to a well-known, hard-edged blog that covers California correctional issues died suddenly last week from a heart attack.
Jeff Doyle, 55, was the principle voice of the Paco Villa Corrections Blog, which operated under the slogan, “Paco has your back!” Over the last decade it became a go-to source for prison and parole officers who wanted the latest news and gossip about their profession.
Mr. Doyle’s blog combined sometimes-juvenile humor, biting satire and hard-hitting commentary popular with the rank-and-file. It also drew the ire of labor leaders and state officials who took umbrage with the combative tone of Mr. Doyle’s writing and how they, or their policies, were sometimes portrayed on PacoVilla.
“He was a guy who did not like bullies,” said Mr. Doyle’s brother, Greg Doyle, who also was a regular contributor to the blog. “At a very young age he figured he could beat bullies with words, that words had a much greater impact than a punch.”
Born in Riverside, Mr. Doyle was a former California correctional officer and state parole agent who retired in 2009. He served on the board of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America and as a state vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
“Jeff was a loyal supporter of correctional peace officers and he was remarkably passionate about the services that officers provide. He was dedicated and committed to moving our profession forward and he did a wonderful job creating a platform that allowed correctional officers to engage with one another and express their views,” CCPOA President Chuck Alexander said in a statement. “(He) will be sorely missed and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.”
Mr. Doyle launched his blog in 2004 under the Paco Villa pseudonym during a time of growing unrest in the union following the retirement of iconic CCPOA founder and president Don Novey.
“Jeff stayed anonymous for a long time,” his brother said. “The brass tried to get at him” for airing the union’s internal disputes and criticizing his department’s management.
During tumultuous years when the prison officers’ union was at odds with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and its members were working under imposed terms, Mr. Doyle’s blog established itself as a public forum officers to debate issues or simply to vent.
For his part, Mr. Doyle criticized all sides, chiding the Schwarzenegger administration for policies that hit officers’ wallets and mocking the union’s leaders. Then-President Mike Jimenez was a target of Paco’s derision for antics such as refusing to cut his hair or beard until the union had a contract.
After the state excluded prison officers from a leave-cashout program last year, the blog featured an altered picture of the “Soup Nazi” from the “Seinfeld” TV show yelling, “NO CASH FOR YOU!” at a stoic correctional officer. Then Mr. Doyle counseled angry blog users to look on the bright side: “As any retiree will tell you, that fat cashout check you get once the pin has been pulled is a bonus bonanza! I know lots of you could use the cash now but, believe me, you’ll be happy you got the short end of the stick today, come tomorrow.”
Paco’s barbed comments weren’t limited to correctional matters. Last summer he derided Highway Patrol Commissioner Joe Farrow’s comment that viral video of an officer beating a woman by the side of a Southern California freeway revealed the need for more training. More likely, Mr. Doyle said, the incident revealed that CHP needs to upgrade its cadet screening practices and improve how it supervises officers in the field.
“Farrow’s statement exposes a top banana disconnected from the bunch,” Mr. Doyle wrote, “not to mention common sense.”
The blog’s future is unclear, Greg Doyle said, “but I think Jeff’s wife wants to keep it going. Right now it’s a little too early to make that decision. Jeff was Paco.”
Despite his caustic Internet persona, Mr. Doyle was a family man and generous to a near fault, his brother said.
“If one of his parolees was down on their luck,” Greg Doyle said, “Jeff would give them twenty bucks out of his own pocket for food.”
Mr. Doyle lived in Rocklin and was at home last Wednesday when he suffered the heart attack, his brother said. He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Loni Doyle, two daughters and four grandchildren.
Services will be held on Wednesday at Sierra Hills Memorial Park & East Lawn Mortuary, 5757 Greenback Lane in Sacramento at 1:00 p.m.
Here is The Sacramento Bee’s obit on Paco:
POPULAR CALIFORNIA CORRECTIONS BLOG PUBLISHER DIES FROM HEART ATTACK
By John Ortiz
The Sacramento Bee
January 12, 2015
The founder and chief contributor to a well-known, hard-edged blog that covers California correctional issues died suddenly last week from a heart attack.
Jeff Doyle, 55, was the principle voice of the Paco Villa Corrections Blog, which operated under the slogan, “Paco has your back!” Over the last decade it became a go-to source for prison and parole officers who wanted the latest news and gossip about their profession.
Mr. Doyle’s blog combined sometimes-juvenile humor, biting satire and hard-hitting commentary popular with the rank-and-file. It also drew the ire of labor leaders and state officials who took umbrage with the combative tone of Mr. Doyle’s writing and how they, or their policies, were sometimes portrayed on PacoVilla.
“He was a guy who did not like bullies,” said Mr. Doyle’s brother, Greg Doyle, who also was a regular contributor to the blog. “At a very young age he figured he could beat bullies with words, that words had a much greater impact than a punch.”
Born in Riverside, Mr. Doyle was a former California correctional officer and state parole agent who retired in 2009. He served on the board of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America and as a state vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
“Jeff was a loyal supporter of correctional peace officers and he was remarkably passionate about the services that officers provide. He was dedicated and committed to moving our profession forward and he did a wonderful job creating a platform that allowed correctional officers to engage with one another and express their views,” CCPOA President Chuck Alexander said in a statement. “(He) will be sorely missed and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.”
Mr. Doyle launched his blog in 2004 under the Paco Villa pseudonym during a time of growing unrest in the union following the retirement of iconic CCPOA founder and president Don Novey.
“Jeff stayed anonymous for a long time,” his brother said. “The brass tried to get at him” for airing the union’s internal disputes and criticizing his department’s management.
During tumultuous years when the prison officers’ union was at odds with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and its members were working under imposed terms, Mr. Doyle’s blog established itself as a public forum officers to debate issues or simply to vent.
For his part, Mr. Doyle criticized all sides, chiding the Schwarzenegger administration for policies that hit officers’ wallets and mocking the union’s leaders. Then-President Mike Jimenez was a target of Paco’s derision for antics such as refusing to cut his hair or beard until the union had a contract.
After the state excluded prison officers from a leave-cashout program last year, the blog featured an altered picture of the “Soup Nazi” from the “Seinfeld” TV show yelling, “NO CASH FOR YOU!” at a stoic correctional officer. Then Mr. Doyle counseled angry blog users to look on the bright side: “As any retiree will tell you, that fat cashout check you get once the pin has been pulled is a bonus bonanza! I know lots of you could use the cash now but, believe me, you’ll be happy you got the short end of the stick today, come tomorrow.”
Paco’s barbed comments weren’t limited to correctional matters. Last summer he derided Highway Patrol Commissioner Joe Farrow’s comment that viral video of an officer beating a woman by the side of a Southern California freeway revealed the need for more training. More likely, Mr. Doyle said, the incident revealed that CHP needs to upgrade its cadet screening practices and improve how it supervises officers in the field.
“Farrow’s statement exposes a top banana disconnected from the bunch,” Mr. Doyle wrote, “not to mention common sense.”
The blog’s future is unclear, Greg Doyle said, “but I think Jeff’s wife wants to keep it going. Right now it’s a little too early to make that decision. Jeff was Paco.”
Despite his caustic Internet persona, Mr. Doyle was a family man and generous to a near fault, his brother said.
“If one of his parolees was down on their luck,” Greg Doyle said, “Jeff would give them twenty bucks out of his own pocket for food.”
Mr. Doyle lived in Rocklin and was at home last Wednesday when he suffered the heart attack, his brother said. He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Loni Doyle, two daughters and four grandchildren.
Services will be held on Wednesday at Sierra Hills Memorial Park & East Lawn Mortuary, 5757 Greenback Lane in Sacramento at 1:00 p.m.
FARTS CAN BECOME MIGHTY PAINFUL
A 15-year-old boy farted and ended up in a hospital getting eight staples to close a gash on his head
South Richmond High School in Staten Island, New York caters to special needs students. A 15-year-old male student learned the hard way that farts can become mighty painful. On January 5, the boy blew a fart in the direction of Joquasha Rosado, a 17-year old student. Apparently the young lady took offense because she up and thumped the boy over the head with a metal stool and then promptly proceeded to punch him in the face 10-15 times with her closed fists.
The boy ended up in the hospital getting eight staples to close a gash on his head. Joquasha was arrested and charged with second-degree assault, a felony, and possession of a weapon. The NY cops threw in a charge of harassment for good measure. They are not sure of whether the beating occurred inside or outside the school.
This is not the first case of a fart leading to unpleasant circumstances. According to Mail Online, last September a 46-year-old British man was arrested for deliberately farting into the face of a police officer and for calling him a 'terrorist'. And last August, Jessica Cerney, from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, punched 64-year-old Darrell McKnight after he apparently farted in her face.
Deliberately farted into the face of a cop? Now if the cop had shot the bastard, he should have been awarded a medal for shooting him during the commission of a terrorist attack.
As for Joquasha, rumor has it that the McMahon family wants to sign her up for their World Wrestling Entertainment business. They were especially impressed with how Joquasha used a metal stool to smack down on the boy’s head.
Seriously though, the moral of this story is that if you are around other people, pucker up and don’t fart!
South Richmond High School in Staten Island, New York caters to special needs students. A 15-year-old male student learned the hard way that farts can become mighty painful. On January 5, the boy blew a fart in the direction of Joquasha Rosado, a 17-year old student. Apparently the young lady took offense because she up and thumped the boy over the head with a metal stool and then promptly proceeded to punch him in the face 10-15 times with her closed fists.
The boy ended up in the hospital getting eight staples to close a gash on his head. Joquasha was arrested and charged with second-degree assault, a felony, and possession of a weapon. The NY cops threw in a charge of harassment for good measure. They are not sure of whether the beating occurred inside or outside the school.
This is not the first case of a fart leading to unpleasant circumstances. According to Mail Online, last September a 46-year-old British man was arrested for deliberately farting into the face of a police officer and for calling him a 'terrorist'. And last August, Jessica Cerney, from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, punched 64-year-old Darrell McKnight after he apparently farted in her face.
Deliberately farted into the face of a cop? Now if the cop had shot the bastard, he should have been awarded a medal for shooting him during the commission of a terrorist attack.
As for Joquasha, rumor has it that the McMahon family wants to sign her up for their World Wrestling Entertainment business. They were especially impressed with how Joquasha used a metal stool to smack down on the boy’s head.
Seriously though, the moral of this story is that if you are around other people, pucker up and don’t fart!
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN.
Unfortunately, the sign on the front door of a Philadelphia home apparently malfunctioned
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Thus read a sign on the front door of a home in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia.
Just before 11:30 p.m. Saturday, a man’s girlfriend entered the home in the 4600 block of Vista Street and found three men shot to death. One man was lying in the kitchen and the other two were in the living room. All three had been shot in the head. Two of the victims were in their 30s and the other victim was in his 40s.
Unfortunately for the three gunshot victims, the front door sign apparently malfunctioned.
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Thus read a sign on the front door of a home in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia.
Just before 11:30 p.m. Saturday, a man’s girlfriend entered the home in the 4600 block of Vista Street and found three men shot to death. One man was lying in the kitchen and the other two were in the living room. All three had been shot in the head. Two of the victims were in their 30s and the other victim was in his 40s.
Unfortunately for the three gunshot victims, the front door sign apparently malfunctioned.
NYPD CONTINUES TO BE NUMBERS DRIVEN, PHONY NUMBERS THAT IS
The NYPD continues to manipulate crime statistics in order to make the department and the mayor look good
In their book “The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation,” Professors Eli Silverman and John Eterno exposed NYPD’s manipulation of crime statistics in order to make the department and the mayor look good. “Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations,” a recent study conducted by Silverman, Eterno and Arvind Verma, reveals that the crime stat manipulations have continued unabated since Silverman and Eterno’s book was published three years ago.
THE NYPD’S BIGGEST PROBLEM MIGHT ACTUALLY BE AN OVERRELIANCE ON NUMBERS
A recent survey of retired New York City police officers suggests the department's culture has shifted toward data manipulation
By Sarah Goodyear
The Atlantic
January 8, 2015
You can’t fault rank-and-file members of the NYPD for lacking a sense of drama. Over the past two weeks, the city’s police officers have turned their backs on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funerals of two cops shot and killed in the line of duty. They’ve heckled him at the Madison Square ceremony where new officers graduated from the police academy.
The most stunning action, however, has been the department’s unprecedented work slowdown, which started after those officers were killed by a disturbed gunman as they sat in their patrol car on a Brooklyn street. According to the latest figures in the New York Times, in the week from December 28 to January 4, New York City cops wrote just 347 criminal summonses, as compared to 4,077 over the same week a year ago, and the number of arrests has similarly been cut in half. “Most precincts’ weekly tallies for criminal infractions,” according to the paper of record, “were close to zero.”
For a department that over the last generation has built a national and international reputation on its zeal for data and numbers, this sudden drop in arrests and summonses is a shocking about-face. It has even caused some observers to wonder whether the lack of chaos resulting from the action undermines the rationale for the city's overall approach to policing.
Since 1994, when current commissioner Bill Bratton took the job the first time around under get-tough-on-crime mayor Rudy Giuliani, the NYPD has been all about moving numbers—arrests and summonses going up, and crime going down. Starting back then, the department committed to a proactive policing strategy based on the “broken windows” philosophy and data-management tools such as CompStat. That strategy, the department regularly trumpets, led to an 80 percent reduction in crime between 1990 and today. The low number of crimes, the reasoning goes, is the direct result of the high numbers of summonses and arrests for minor violations.
Critics of broken windows say that it has led to racial profiling, civil-rights violations, and alienation within the community. The NYPD’s defense has been simple: it works. Commissioner Bratton and Mayor de Blasio both reaffirmed their support for the approach just a couple of days ago.
But has crime really gone down as much as the NYPD claims? And what has the data-driven approach done to the character of the police department over the last generation?
These are the questions behind an important study, “Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations,” [PDF], recently published in Justice Quarterly that raises sharp concerns about the way this “proactive” policing approach has shaped the department’s relationship with New York’s citizens over the past generation.
The study is based on responses from 1,770 retired New York City police officers to an anonymous online survey about how real-life crimes are turned into publicly available statistics. Respondents were divided into three separate groups: those who retired between 1981 and 1993, before “broken windows”; those who retired during the advent of that policy under Giuliani, from 1994-2001; and those who retired under the data-centric, stop-and-frisk Bloomberg administration, from 2002 to 2012.
Among the first cohort, nearly 70 percent answered “No” to the question, “Based upon your experience do you have personal knowledge of any instance in which crime reports were changed to make crime numbers look better than they were?” In the second group, 65.5 percent answered “No.” But in the Bloomberg era, the majority of respondents—55.5 percent—answered “Yes.”
“We were floored. The extent of it blew our minds,” says Eli Silverman, one of the researchers. Professor emeritus of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Graduate Center at the City University of New York, Silverman has done years of research into the way the NYPD counts crimes. His most recent book is called The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation.
Silverman and his co-authors, John Eterno and Arvind Verma, allowed the survey subjects to submit anecdotal comments as well. The study quotes one respondent, who retired in 2005, as saying, “A [commanding officer] may ‘suggest’ that a burglary complaint was a criminal trespass.” Another wrote, “In some cases, larcenies became ‘lost property’ and values were skewed so they didn’t become grand larcenies. Also complainants were told they must go to the stationhouse or to the precinct of record to report a crime.”
The retired officers also expressed skepticism about the city’s much-vaunted crime reduction. When asked, “Are you confident that major crimes have declined by 80% in New York since 1990s?”, 58.2 percent answered, “No.” One cop who retired in 2007 submitted this comment: “Crime is a constant. To believe that crime has gone down 80% is a joke. I believe eventually if the Feds get involved the truth will come out.”
Now, it's not exactly surprising that individual cops, who deal every day with dangerous and unpredictable situations, are skeptical about the extent to which crime has declined over the last generation. The fact remains that the streets of New York, like those of many other large cities, are significantly safer than they were 30 years ago is undeniable. Are they 80 percent safer? Objective measurement remains elusive without outside analysis, which the NYPD has resisted.
Even more difficult to tease out is the question of how the change happened. Was it because of increased enforcement, as Bratton and de Blasio insist? Is it because of economic factors? Or is the cause something more unexpected, like the elimination of leaded gasoline and paint, as some researchers have suggested?
Regardless, Silverman says, cops on the street feel they bear the responsibility for pleasing the top brass by driving reported crimes down yet further. So he sees data manipulation, which has been alleged by many whistleblowers over the years, as not surprising given the difficulty of pushing numbers ever lower. The initial reductions may have been relatively easy to achieve, but the downward trajectory can’t go on forever. “The analogy I use, it’s like squeezing an orange,” he says. “When you first squeeze it, the juice flows freely. Then the more and more you try to extract the juice from it, the more difficult it becomes.”
The problem in crime measurement is not confined to New York. Recent investigations by the Los Angeles Times into the way crimes are classified by the LAPD led a department official to admit that a significant number of incidents had been downgraded in error.
Silverman points out that the NYPD has long resisted any outside scrutiny of its figures or independent analysis of its methodology. Academia, he suggests, has gone along for the ride, even as the "New York model" has been uncritically emulated around the globe. “A couple of people have talked about this phenomenon, but it in no way pervades the mainstream,” he says. “It hasn’t even pervaded the mainstream in criminology. Because if you think about it, if criminologists were to acknowledge that what we are suggesting is becoming increasingly the case, a lot of their work is based on official statistics. And if you’re challenging that, their foundation may be challenged.”
NYPD spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment on Silverman's findings.
Silverman wonders about the unhealthy long-term effect that an emphasis on numbers has on the way cops police the streets. In their paper, he and his co-authors cite social psychologist Donald Campbell, who wrote this in 1976: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
In New York, says Silverman, stats have been elevated into the holy grail of policing. That, he hypothesizes, has profoundly changed police behavior. “We talk about the pressures,” says Silverman. “We don’t talk about racist cops or anything like that. We talk about how the system compels cops to act in a certain way. The pressure on these guys to keep the numbers going down is incredible. Now no political leader or police leader can acknowledge, sometimes it’s going up.”
Bill de Blasio was elected mayor in part because he articulated New Yorkers’ frustration with the excesses of data-driven stop-and-frisk policing. The greatest crisis of his administration so far has resulted from the fallout from broken-windows policing in the Eric Garner case, and the resulting perception among rank-and-file NYPD officers that they don’t have his support. The long cycle of events that have gotten the city to this place may in fact have its roots in the single-minded chase for another set of numbers: ever-falling crime rates.
“I think there is a circular connection,” says Silverman. “If you just define policing in terms of curbing crime and don’t talk about constitutionality, if you don’t talk about professionalism, if you don’t talk about due process, if that’s not on your radar, it’s not going to be attended to. If you become single focus, you become myopic. That’s part of the problem. Unless it’s a broad approach and the agencies are working well together, and you can have confidence in the agencies, then you’re going to lose the people. And if you lose the community, then that circle is regenerated again.”
In their book “The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation,” Professors Eli Silverman and John Eterno exposed NYPD’s manipulation of crime statistics in order to make the department and the mayor look good. “Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations,” a recent study conducted by Silverman, Eterno and Arvind Verma, reveals that the crime stat manipulations have continued unabated since Silverman and Eterno’s book was published three years ago.
THE NYPD’S BIGGEST PROBLEM MIGHT ACTUALLY BE AN OVERRELIANCE ON NUMBERS
A recent survey of retired New York City police officers suggests the department's culture has shifted toward data manipulation
By Sarah Goodyear
The Atlantic
January 8, 2015
You can’t fault rank-and-file members of the NYPD for lacking a sense of drama. Over the past two weeks, the city’s police officers have turned their backs on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funerals of two cops shot and killed in the line of duty. They’ve heckled him at the Madison Square ceremony where new officers graduated from the police academy.
The most stunning action, however, has been the department’s unprecedented work slowdown, which started after those officers were killed by a disturbed gunman as they sat in their patrol car on a Brooklyn street. According to the latest figures in the New York Times, in the week from December 28 to January 4, New York City cops wrote just 347 criminal summonses, as compared to 4,077 over the same week a year ago, and the number of arrests has similarly been cut in half. “Most precincts’ weekly tallies for criminal infractions,” according to the paper of record, “were close to zero.”
For a department that over the last generation has built a national and international reputation on its zeal for data and numbers, this sudden drop in arrests and summonses is a shocking about-face. It has even caused some observers to wonder whether the lack of chaos resulting from the action undermines the rationale for the city's overall approach to policing.
Since 1994, when current commissioner Bill Bratton took the job the first time around under get-tough-on-crime mayor Rudy Giuliani, the NYPD has been all about moving numbers—arrests and summonses going up, and crime going down. Starting back then, the department committed to a proactive policing strategy based on the “broken windows” philosophy and data-management tools such as CompStat. That strategy, the department regularly trumpets, led to an 80 percent reduction in crime between 1990 and today. The low number of crimes, the reasoning goes, is the direct result of the high numbers of summonses and arrests for minor violations.
Critics of broken windows say that it has led to racial profiling, civil-rights violations, and alienation within the community. The NYPD’s defense has been simple: it works. Commissioner Bratton and Mayor de Blasio both reaffirmed their support for the approach just a couple of days ago.
But has crime really gone down as much as the NYPD claims? And what has the data-driven approach done to the character of the police department over the last generation?
These are the questions behind an important study, “Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations,” [PDF], recently published in Justice Quarterly that raises sharp concerns about the way this “proactive” policing approach has shaped the department’s relationship with New York’s citizens over the past generation.
The study is based on responses from 1,770 retired New York City police officers to an anonymous online survey about how real-life crimes are turned into publicly available statistics. Respondents were divided into three separate groups: those who retired between 1981 and 1993, before “broken windows”; those who retired during the advent of that policy under Giuliani, from 1994-2001; and those who retired under the data-centric, stop-and-frisk Bloomberg administration, from 2002 to 2012.
Among the first cohort, nearly 70 percent answered “No” to the question, “Based upon your experience do you have personal knowledge of any instance in which crime reports were changed to make crime numbers look better than they were?” In the second group, 65.5 percent answered “No.” But in the Bloomberg era, the majority of respondents—55.5 percent—answered “Yes.”
“We were floored. The extent of it blew our minds,” says Eli Silverman, one of the researchers. Professor emeritus of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Graduate Center at the City University of New York, Silverman has done years of research into the way the NYPD counts crimes. His most recent book is called The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation.
Silverman and his co-authors, John Eterno and Arvind Verma, allowed the survey subjects to submit anecdotal comments as well. The study quotes one respondent, who retired in 2005, as saying, “A [commanding officer] may ‘suggest’ that a burglary complaint was a criminal trespass.” Another wrote, “In some cases, larcenies became ‘lost property’ and values were skewed so they didn’t become grand larcenies. Also complainants were told they must go to the stationhouse or to the precinct of record to report a crime.”
The retired officers also expressed skepticism about the city’s much-vaunted crime reduction. When asked, “Are you confident that major crimes have declined by 80% in New York since 1990s?”, 58.2 percent answered, “No.” One cop who retired in 2007 submitted this comment: “Crime is a constant. To believe that crime has gone down 80% is a joke. I believe eventually if the Feds get involved the truth will come out.”
Now, it's not exactly surprising that individual cops, who deal every day with dangerous and unpredictable situations, are skeptical about the extent to which crime has declined over the last generation. The fact remains that the streets of New York, like those of many other large cities, are significantly safer than they were 30 years ago is undeniable. Are they 80 percent safer? Objective measurement remains elusive without outside analysis, which the NYPD has resisted.
Even more difficult to tease out is the question of how the change happened. Was it because of increased enforcement, as Bratton and de Blasio insist? Is it because of economic factors? Or is the cause something more unexpected, like the elimination of leaded gasoline and paint, as some researchers have suggested?
Regardless, Silverman says, cops on the street feel they bear the responsibility for pleasing the top brass by driving reported crimes down yet further. So he sees data manipulation, which has been alleged by many whistleblowers over the years, as not surprising given the difficulty of pushing numbers ever lower. The initial reductions may have been relatively easy to achieve, but the downward trajectory can’t go on forever. “The analogy I use, it’s like squeezing an orange,” he says. “When you first squeeze it, the juice flows freely. Then the more and more you try to extract the juice from it, the more difficult it becomes.”
The problem in crime measurement is not confined to New York. Recent investigations by the Los Angeles Times into the way crimes are classified by the LAPD led a department official to admit that a significant number of incidents had been downgraded in error.
Silverman points out that the NYPD has long resisted any outside scrutiny of its figures or independent analysis of its methodology. Academia, he suggests, has gone along for the ride, even as the "New York model" has been uncritically emulated around the globe. “A couple of people have talked about this phenomenon, but it in no way pervades the mainstream,” he says. “It hasn’t even pervaded the mainstream in criminology. Because if you think about it, if criminologists were to acknowledge that what we are suggesting is becoming increasingly the case, a lot of their work is based on official statistics. And if you’re challenging that, their foundation may be challenged.”
NYPD spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment on Silverman's findings.
Silverman wonders about the unhealthy long-term effect that an emphasis on numbers has on the way cops police the streets. In their paper, he and his co-authors cite social psychologist Donald Campbell, who wrote this in 1976: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
In New York, says Silverman, stats have been elevated into the holy grail of policing. That, he hypothesizes, has profoundly changed police behavior. “We talk about the pressures,” says Silverman. “We don’t talk about racist cops or anything like that. We talk about how the system compels cops to act in a certain way. The pressure on these guys to keep the numbers going down is incredible. Now no political leader or police leader can acknowledge, sometimes it’s going up.”
Bill de Blasio was elected mayor in part because he articulated New Yorkers’ frustration with the excesses of data-driven stop-and-frisk policing. The greatest crisis of his administration so far has resulted from the fallout from broken-windows policing in the Eric Garner case, and the resulting perception among rank-and-file NYPD officers that they don’t have his support. The long cycle of events that have gotten the city to this place may in fact have its roots in the single-minded chase for another set of numbers: ever-falling crime rates.
“I think there is a circular connection,” says Silverman. “If you just define policing in terms of curbing crime and don’t talk about constitutionality, if you don’t talk about professionalism, if you don’t talk about due process, if that’s not on your radar, it’s not going to be attended to. If you become single focus, you become myopic. That’s part of the problem. Unless it’s a broad approach and the agencies are working well together, and you can have confidence in the agencies, then you’re going to lose the people. And if you lose the community, then that circle is regenerated again.”
Monday, January 12, 2015
PROSPECT OF ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE AGREEMENT GETS EVEN DIMMER
Netanyahu and Abbas clash during massive Paris unity march and rally
By Ima Schmuck
The Unconventional Gazette
January 12, 2015
The massive 1.3 million strong Paris unity march and rally that was held Sunday in the wake of the Islamist terrorist attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store, was attended by more than 40 heads of state from all over the world. Notably absent was President Obama. And none of Obama’s top officials, like Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, were there either. Two leaders in attendance were Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Netanyahu and Abbas looked like they were trying to avoid each other, but at one point they accidentally bumped into each other. A heated exchange followed with Netanyahu speaking in Hebrew and Abbas in Arabic. A bystander was able to film the clash with a camcorder and he made the video available to the Unconventional Gazette. Our interpreters were able to translate what was being said. Here is a transcript of that heated exchange:
Warning: This transcript contains graphic language which may not be suitable for all readers.
ABBAS: Watch out where your fat ass is going.
NETANYAHU: You watch out where your fat Fatah ass is going.
A: Fuck you and your hooknosed Jews.
N. Fuck you and your rag-top Palestinians.
A: Fuck you and your Jew pigs.
N: Fuck you and your Palestinian swine.
A: Fuck you, you terrorist.
N: No, fuck you, you terrorist.
A: You fucking terrorist, I’m going to charge your Jew ass with war crimes before the International Criminal Court.
N: Oh yeah, well two can play at that game and you’ll be dancing with 72 virgins in paradise before your sorry fat ass ever sees one shekel of the taxes we collect for you.
A: That did it, you son of a pig (taking up a fighting stance).
N: Good, bring it on, you son of swine.
At this point French President François Hollande had come over and stepped in between the two.
HOLLANDE: Now boys, cut that out! This is not the place and time for this sort of thing. Now shake hands and make up.
A: Fuck you, you French pig.
N: Yeah, fuck you.
On that note of agreement, Abbas and Netanyahu turned around and, with one final 'fuck you' bellowed at each other, parted company. One might ask: John Kerry where were you when they needed you? It should have been Obama’s peacemaker stepping in between Abbas and Netanyahu instead of the frog.
By Ima Schmuck
The Unconventional Gazette
January 12, 2015
The massive 1.3 million strong Paris unity march and rally that was held Sunday in the wake of the Islamist terrorist attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store, was attended by more than 40 heads of state from all over the world. Notably absent was President Obama. And none of Obama’s top officials, like Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, were there either. Two leaders in attendance were Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Netanyahu and Abbas looked like they were trying to avoid each other, but at one point they accidentally bumped into each other. A heated exchange followed with Netanyahu speaking in Hebrew and Abbas in Arabic. A bystander was able to film the clash with a camcorder and he made the video available to the Unconventional Gazette. Our interpreters were able to translate what was being said. Here is a transcript of that heated exchange:
Warning: This transcript contains graphic language which may not be suitable for all readers.
ABBAS: Watch out where your fat ass is going.
NETANYAHU: You watch out where your fat Fatah ass is going.
A: Fuck you and your hooknosed Jews.
N. Fuck you and your rag-top Palestinians.
A: Fuck you and your Jew pigs.
N: Fuck you and your Palestinian swine.
A: Fuck you, you terrorist.
N: No, fuck you, you terrorist.
A: You fucking terrorist, I’m going to charge your Jew ass with war crimes before the International Criminal Court.
N: Oh yeah, well two can play at that game and you’ll be dancing with 72 virgins in paradise before your sorry fat ass ever sees one shekel of the taxes we collect for you.
A: That did it, you son of a pig (taking up a fighting stance).
N: Good, bring it on, you son of swine.
At this point French President François Hollande had come over and stepped in between the two.
HOLLANDE: Now boys, cut that out! This is not the place and time for this sort of thing. Now shake hands and make up.
A: Fuck you, you French pig.
N: Yeah, fuck you.
On that note of agreement, Abbas and Netanyahu turned around and, with one final 'fuck you' bellowed at each other, parted company. One might ask: John Kerry where were you when they needed you? It should have been Obama’s peacemaker stepping in between Abbas and Netanyahu instead of the frog.
RESERVE POLICE OFFICERS
Reserve or auxiliary cops serve their communities with distinction while holding down a full-time civilian job despite being treated by management as second-class members of the police department
By Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 11, 2015
I have always held a high regard and a special place in my heart for reserve police officers, that is why I accepted the invitation to sing at their Christmas parties for so many years. Some reserves eventually became sworn officers, but most held their full time employment in civilian jobs and came out to serve the public for free. In the capacity as a reserve, while on-duty with a sworn officer, our reserves functioned as fully-sworn police officers. They had the same powers of arrest and were under the same scrutiny as their fully-paid partners. Off-duty, however, they were not allowed to carry concealed weapons or act as a peace officer would be able to do.
But there was an unspoken distinction at my agency (I am ashamed to say), particularly visible thirty years ago, that I never participated in or condoned. It was always assumed whenever a reserve showed up to work. From management’s perspective, reserves had to be carefully watched. By comparison to sworn police officers, reserve officers were often viewed as second-class citizens of the Department, in spite of the enormous amount of work and assistance they provided for free to the City. And the beat officer who partnered with a reserve was held responsible for any mistakes made by the reserve. Needless to say, some senior sworn officers made it clear that reserves were not welcome inside their patrol cars.
In fairness to the culture of police work in general, becoming a peace officer is an arduous process of screening, testing, training, and scrutiny. Police managers are always focused on the appearance of things to the public at large. Managers and supervisors police their police officers, insuring that laws are followed and Department policies adhered to, which minimize the liability risks to the City. Reserve officers, by the nature of their part-time participation, are generally less familiar with Department policy than their sworn counterparts. Hence, sworn officers who were partnered with reserves were given an additional limited supervisory role on top of their duty assignments. And some patrol officers resented that responsibility.
I admire reserve officers for their service and devotion to duty in spite of all the aforementioned hurdles they contended with in order to police.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I had the good fortune to often work with one particular reserve officer while I served with the Riverside Sheriff’s Department. Yes, he was a cop wannabe, but he deserved to be one.
Unfortunately, he had a prominent ugly scar on his face. Every time he took the entrance exam he passed with flying colors, but the department refused to hire him because it feared the scar would be a serious detraction while carrying out his duties.
Finally, after trying for years, he was hired. I understand he did quite well as a regular officer.
As for other reserve officers I worked with, some were good and there were some I did not want to work with. But I can say the same thing about regular officers.
By Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 11, 2015
I have always held a high regard and a special place in my heart for reserve police officers, that is why I accepted the invitation to sing at their Christmas parties for so many years. Some reserves eventually became sworn officers, but most held their full time employment in civilian jobs and came out to serve the public for free. In the capacity as a reserve, while on-duty with a sworn officer, our reserves functioned as fully-sworn police officers. They had the same powers of arrest and were under the same scrutiny as their fully-paid partners. Off-duty, however, they were not allowed to carry concealed weapons or act as a peace officer would be able to do.
But there was an unspoken distinction at my agency (I am ashamed to say), particularly visible thirty years ago, that I never participated in or condoned. It was always assumed whenever a reserve showed up to work. From management’s perspective, reserves had to be carefully watched. By comparison to sworn police officers, reserve officers were often viewed as second-class citizens of the Department, in spite of the enormous amount of work and assistance they provided for free to the City. And the beat officer who partnered with a reserve was held responsible for any mistakes made by the reserve. Needless to say, some senior sworn officers made it clear that reserves were not welcome inside their patrol cars.
In fairness to the culture of police work in general, becoming a peace officer is an arduous process of screening, testing, training, and scrutiny. Police managers are always focused on the appearance of things to the public at large. Managers and supervisors police their police officers, insuring that laws are followed and Department policies adhered to, which minimize the liability risks to the City. Reserve officers, by the nature of their part-time participation, are generally less familiar with Department policy than their sworn counterparts. Hence, sworn officers who were partnered with reserves were given an additional limited supervisory role on top of their duty assignments. And some patrol officers resented that responsibility.
I admire reserve officers for their service and devotion to duty in spite of all the aforementioned hurdles they contended with in order to police.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I had the good fortune to often work with one particular reserve officer while I served with the Riverside Sheriff’s Department. Yes, he was a cop wannabe, but he deserved to be one.
Unfortunately, he had a prominent ugly scar on his face. Every time he took the entrance exam he passed with flying colors, but the department refused to hire him because it feared the scar would be a serious detraction while carrying out his duties.
Finally, after trying for years, he was hired. I understand he did quite well as a regular officer.
As for other reserve officers I worked with, some were good and there were some I did not want to work with. But I can say the same thing about regular officers.
ODD SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS UP NIGERIAN MARKET
As many as 20 shoppers were killed and many more were wounded
A suicide bomber walked into a crowded market Saturday in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri and – boom – up to 20 people were dead with many more wounded.
Since Maiduguri is at the center of the Boko Haram insurgency, there is nothing unusual about a suicide bomber blowing him or herself up. Ah, but not so fast. This suicide bombing was different.
The suicide bomber turned out to be a little girl believed to be about 10-years old. Yes, I said 10-years old! The little girl had concealed a powerful explosive device under her Muslim veil. Allahu Akbar!
A suicide bomber walked into a crowded market Saturday in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri and – boom – up to 20 people were dead with many more wounded.
Since Maiduguri is at the center of the Boko Haram insurgency, there is nothing unusual about a suicide bomber blowing him or herself up. Ah, but not so fast. This suicide bombing was different.
The suicide bomber turned out to be a little girl believed to be about 10-years old. Yes, I said 10-years old! The little girl had concealed a powerful explosive device under her Muslim veil. Allahu Akbar!
CRITICALLY INJURED CAR CRASH VICTIM OVERLOOKED BY COPS AND TOW TRUCK DRIVER
After crashing into a utility pole in suburban Dayton, Ohio, the critically injured driver was not discovered until six hours after his wrecked vehicle had been towed away from the crash site
During the early hours of New Year’s Day, a driver crashed into and broke off a utility pole in Harrison Township, a suburb of Dayton Ohio. When first responders arrived, they found electric wires strewn across the car and the pavement. When they got the mess cleared up, the wrecked vehicle was hauled off on a flatbed tow truck.
For some reason, the car was left sitting on top of the tow truck for some six hours. When a worker finally started to remove the wreck from the truck, he heard screams coming from inside the vehicle.
It would appear that Montgomery County sheriff's deputies – oops, very big oops - forgot to look inside the wrecked car while investigating the accident, and neither did the tow truck driver.
The critically injured driver, whose identity has not been released, is now hospitalized in stable condition. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department is trying to figure out how and why its deputies fucked up.
During the early hours of New Year’s Day, a driver crashed into and broke off a utility pole in Harrison Township, a suburb of Dayton Ohio. When first responders arrived, they found electric wires strewn across the car and the pavement. When they got the mess cleared up, the wrecked vehicle was hauled off on a flatbed tow truck.
For some reason, the car was left sitting on top of the tow truck for some six hours. When a worker finally started to remove the wreck from the truck, he heard screams coming from inside the vehicle.
It would appear that Montgomery County sheriff's deputies – oops, very big oops - forgot to look inside the wrecked car while investigating the accident, and neither did the tow truck driver.
The critically injured driver, whose identity has not been released, is now hospitalized in stable condition. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department is trying to figure out how and why its deputies fucked up.
ISRAEL IS THE COUNTRY THAT EVERYONE LOVES TO HATE
It's the cheap way to please Muslim voters in Europe and oil producers in the Gulf
As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has ruefully observed, "There is a standard for dictatorships, there is a standard for democracies, and there is still a third standard for the democracy called Israel."
CAN CHARLIE HEBODO’S SPIRIT INCLUDE ISRAEL?
By Noah Beck
Israel Today
January 9, 2015
The Islamist massacre at Charlie Hebdo has understandably captured global attention because it was a barbaric attack on France and freedom of expression. In a moment of defiant moral clarity, "je suis Charlie" emerged as a popular phrase of solidarity with the victims. Hopefully such clarity persists and extends to those facing similar challenges every day in the Middle East.
Christians and other religious minorities have been beheaded by Islamists for years, but it wasn't until U.S. journalist James Foley was beheaded that the West cared. ISIS raped and slaughtered thousands of Yazidis -- leaving the surviving refugees stranded on Mount Sinjar -- before the West took notice. But one Islamist besieging a cafe in Sydney, killing two, dominated global coverage for the entire sixteen-hour incident.
Western leaders and media must realize that religious minorities in the Middle East are the canary in the coalmine for the West when it comes to Islamist threats. And Israel provides the clearest early warning of all, precisely because -- despite Israel's location in a region of Islamists and dictatorships -- the Jewish state has free elections, freedom of speech, a vigorous political opposition and independent press, equal rights and protections for minorities and women (who are represented in all parts of civil, legal, political, artistic, and economic life), and a prosperous free market economy.
But had Palestinian gunmen similarly attacked Israel's most important daily newspaper and then escaped, would the event inspire such constant coverage or international sympathy? Israel has suffered countless massacres followed by a suspenseful manhunt for the Islamist terrorists; in each of these incidents, the world hardly noticed until Israel forcefully responded and Palestinians died (prompting global condemnation of Israel).
However, when there is an attack in Europe, North America, or Australia, there is widespread grief, solidarity, and an acceptance of whatever policy reaction is chosen. But when Israel is targeted, there is almost always a call for "restraint," as happened last November after fatal stabbings by Palestinian terrorists in Tel Aviv and the West Bank.
If two Palestinians entered a European or North American church and attacked worshipers with meat cleavers, killing five people, including priests, the outrage would be palpable in every politician and journalist's voice. But when Israelis were victims of such an attack, Obama's reaction was spineless and tone deaf. Did Obama condemn the Charlie Hebdo massacre by noting how many Muslims have died at the hands of French military forces operating in Africa and the Middle East? Of course not. Such moral equivocation would be unthinkable with any ally or Western country except Israel.
Similarly, would Secretary of State John Kerry ever suggest that ISIS is somehow motivated by French policies (whether banning Muslim headscarves at public schools or fighting Islamists in Mali)? Obviously not. Yet Kerry did just that sort of thing with Israel when he suggested that ISIS is driven by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And the media's anti-Israel bias is well known but became even more obvious when they couldn't get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct. Compare how The Guardian writes accurate headlines when France or Canada suffers an Islamist car attack but not when Israel does.
Consider all of the justifiable news coverage and outrage over the 2013 Boston bombings, and imagine if one of those happened every week. Would anyone dare suggest that the U.S. make peace with any Islamists demanding changes to U.S. policy? And yet Israel had such bomb attacks almost every week of 2002 and was invariably asked to restrain itself and make concessions to the very people bombing them (as happened again last summer, when Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel).
As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has ruefully observed, "There is a standard for dictatorships, there is a standard for democracies, and there is still a third standard for the democracy called Israel."
Even when compared to Western democracies, what other country gives incredibly forgiving medical care to terrorists and agrees to treat the children of those working to destroy it? Israel is where a Hamas family member finds refuge when he is a gay convert to Christianity but this is yet another inconvenient fact for the mainstream media (as is the fact that some Israeli Arabs supported the IDF's 2014 war against Hamas). Why report what contradicts the one-sided, anti-Israel narrative that the media and groups like Human Rights Watch have adopted? That narrative is only reinforced on college campuses (leftist college history professors openly supported Hamas last summer). Nevertheless, US funding of anti-Israel groups continues to aggravate the misinformation problem.
Israel is still the country that everyone loves to hate. So it's the cheap way to please Muslim voters in Europe and oil producers in the Gulf. But what happens to Israel eventually comes to the West, because Israel is an extension of the West. And just as surrendering Czechoslovakia failed to appease the expansionist appetite and murderous rampage of Nazi totalitarianism, so too will feeding Israel to Islamist totalitarianism fail to appease that movement. In the end, there is no set of concessions -- short of civilizational surrender -- that the Islamists will accept.
Nevertheless, an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the European Union's terror list, even though Hamas is responsible for scores of terrorist attacks that have murdered hundreds of Israelis, North Americans, and Europeans, and has a charter calling for the destruction of Israel. And Western European countries have voted for Palestinian statehood at the UN and in their parliaments, effectively rewarding Palestinian terrorism and intransigence. Europe supports the Palestinian Authority as if Hamas couldn't overthrow it in the West Bank as easily as Hamas did in Gaza Strip in 2007. How can Europe not know that Hamas has designs on the West Bank and that any Israeli withdrawal from that territory will only facilitate such a takeover? And how can Europe believe that Israel could ever make peace with Hamas, which has launched three unprovoked wars on Israel in the last five years (in the decade since Israel withdrew from Gaza)?
Moreover, if lofty concerns about self-determination and human rights are the true motivation behind Europe's vocal support for Palestinian independence (despite its undemocratic and violent record), why is Europe deafeningly quiet on Kurdish statehood? Given that six million Jews were annihilated by a genocide on European soil, Europe's hypocrisy on Israel should embarrass the continent even more.
Worse still, Europe's gestures of appeasement only encourage the Islamists. The best response to the Charlie Hebdo attack is to redouble the free expression Islamists meant to stifle. Similarly, the best response to Islamist attacks on the only Mideast democracy, Israel, is to increase support for it.
As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has ruefully observed, "There is a standard for dictatorships, there is a standard for democracies, and there is still a third standard for the democracy called Israel."
CAN CHARLIE HEBODO’S SPIRIT INCLUDE ISRAEL?
By Noah Beck
Israel Today
January 9, 2015
The Islamist massacre at Charlie Hebdo has understandably captured global attention because it was a barbaric attack on France and freedom of expression. In a moment of defiant moral clarity, "je suis Charlie" emerged as a popular phrase of solidarity with the victims. Hopefully such clarity persists and extends to those facing similar challenges every day in the Middle East.
Christians and other religious minorities have been beheaded by Islamists for years, but it wasn't until U.S. journalist James Foley was beheaded that the West cared. ISIS raped and slaughtered thousands of Yazidis -- leaving the surviving refugees stranded on Mount Sinjar -- before the West took notice. But one Islamist besieging a cafe in Sydney, killing two, dominated global coverage for the entire sixteen-hour incident.
Western leaders and media must realize that religious minorities in the Middle East are the canary in the coalmine for the West when it comes to Islamist threats. And Israel provides the clearest early warning of all, precisely because -- despite Israel's location in a region of Islamists and dictatorships -- the Jewish state has free elections, freedom of speech, a vigorous political opposition and independent press, equal rights and protections for minorities and women (who are represented in all parts of civil, legal, political, artistic, and economic life), and a prosperous free market economy.
But had Palestinian gunmen similarly attacked Israel's most important daily newspaper and then escaped, would the event inspire such constant coverage or international sympathy? Israel has suffered countless massacres followed by a suspenseful manhunt for the Islamist terrorists; in each of these incidents, the world hardly noticed until Israel forcefully responded and Palestinians died (prompting global condemnation of Israel).
However, when there is an attack in Europe, North America, or Australia, there is widespread grief, solidarity, and an acceptance of whatever policy reaction is chosen. But when Israel is targeted, there is almost always a call for "restraint," as happened last November after fatal stabbings by Palestinian terrorists in Tel Aviv and the West Bank.
If two Palestinians entered a European or North American church and attacked worshipers with meat cleavers, killing five people, including priests, the outrage would be palpable in every politician and journalist's voice. But when Israelis were victims of such an attack, Obama's reaction was spineless and tone deaf. Did Obama condemn the Charlie Hebdo massacre by noting how many Muslims have died at the hands of French military forces operating in Africa and the Middle East? Of course not. Such moral equivocation would be unthinkable with any ally or Western country except Israel.
Similarly, would Secretary of State John Kerry ever suggest that ISIS is somehow motivated by French policies (whether banning Muslim headscarves at public schools or fighting Islamists in Mali)? Obviously not. Yet Kerry did just that sort of thing with Israel when he suggested that ISIS is driven by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And the media's anti-Israel bias is well known but became even more obvious when they couldn't get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct. Compare how The Guardian writes accurate headlines when France or Canada suffers an Islamist car attack but not when Israel does.
Consider all of the justifiable news coverage and outrage over the 2013 Boston bombings, and imagine if one of those happened every week. Would anyone dare suggest that the U.S. make peace with any Islamists demanding changes to U.S. policy? And yet Israel had such bomb attacks almost every week of 2002 and was invariably asked to restrain itself and make concessions to the very people bombing them (as happened again last summer, when Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel).
As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has ruefully observed, "There is a standard for dictatorships, there is a standard for democracies, and there is still a third standard for the democracy called Israel."
Even when compared to Western democracies, what other country gives incredibly forgiving medical care to terrorists and agrees to treat the children of those working to destroy it? Israel is where a Hamas family member finds refuge when he is a gay convert to Christianity but this is yet another inconvenient fact for the mainstream media (as is the fact that some Israeli Arabs supported the IDF's 2014 war against Hamas). Why report what contradicts the one-sided, anti-Israel narrative that the media and groups like Human Rights Watch have adopted? That narrative is only reinforced on college campuses (leftist college history professors openly supported Hamas last summer). Nevertheless, US funding of anti-Israel groups continues to aggravate the misinformation problem.
Israel is still the country that everyone loves to hate. So it's the cheap way to please Muslim voters in Europe and oil producers in the Gulf. But what happens to Israel eventually comes to the West, because Israel is an extension of the West. And just as surrendering Czechoslovakia failed to appease the expansionist appetite and murderous rampage of Nazi totalitarianism, so too will feeding Israel to Islamist totalitarianism fail to appease that movement. In the end, there is no set of concessions -- short of civilizational surrender -- that the Islamists will accept.
Nevertheless, an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the European Union's terror list, even though Hamas is responsible for scores of terrorist attacks that have murdered hundreds of Israelis, North Americans, and Europeans, and has a charter calling for the destruction of Israel. And Western European countries have voted for Palestinian statehood at the UN and in their parliaments, effectively rewarding Palestinian terrorism and intransigence. Europe supports the Palestinian Authority as if Hamas couldn't overthrow it in the West Bank as easily as Hamas did in Gaza Strip in 2007. How can Europe not know that Hamas has designs on the West Bank and that any Israeli withdrawal from that territory will only facilitate such a takeover? And how can Europe believe that Israel could ever make peace with Hamas, which has launched three unprovoked wars on Israel in the last five years (in the decade since Israel withdrew from Gaza)?
Moreover, if lofty concerns about self-determination and human rights are the true motivation behind Europe's vocal support for Palestinian independence (despite its undemocratic and violent record), why is Europe deafeningly quiet on Kurdish statehood? Given that six million Jews were annihilated by a genocide on European soil, Europe's hypocrisy on Israel should embarrass the continent even more.
Worse still, Europe's gestures of appeasement only encourage the Islamists. The best response to the Charlie Hebdo attack is to redouble the free expression Islamists meant to stifle. Similarly, the best response to Islamist attacks on the only Mideast democracy, Israel, is to increase support for it.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
LAWYERS WANT EXECUTION OF TEXAS ‘KILLING MACHINE’ STOPPED
Two-pronged appeal for Garcia White, who killed 16-year-ol twins and three others, argues he suffers from “borderline intelligence” and that he may suffer pain from the execution drug
Houston prosecutors referred to Garcia White as a “killing machine” after he murdered five people. He is scheduled to be executed January 28 after having been convicted in 1996 of murdering Annette and Bernette Edwards, 16-year-old twins.
According to the Houston Chronicle, “The girls became incidental victims of a crack cocaine-fueled quarrel between White and their mother, Bonita Edwards, who also was killed. Annette's nude body, stabbed 11 times, was found wrapped in a blanket at her mother's north Houston apartment; her sister was stabbed 18 times.” White also beat a 27-year-old woman to death in 1989 and killed a convenience store clerk during a 1995 robbery.
In their attempt to overturn the death sentence, White’s lawyers have filed a two-pronged appeal with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest appellate court for criminal cases.
The first prong argues that White should not be executed because he suffers from “borderline intelligence” and that he scored low on “tests of adaptive behavior, including one that measures an individual's ability to comprehend society's norms.”
According to the Chronicle, “The appeal cites a 2008 psychological exam that found that White - though technically not mentally retarded and, thus, protected from execution - still has ‘intellectual limitations that are likely to result in social vulnerabilities. Does not the due course of law under (the Texas constitution) mandate that this person, who for whatever reason, the universe has rendered less capable, be given more leniency in their attempts to invoke counsel?’ the new appeal argues.”
The second prong argues that the pentobarbital which will be used in the execution was produced by a compounding pharmacy that is barely regulated and that the lethal drug could contain contaminants which would cause White to suffer constitutionally prohibited pain as he was being put to death. The lawyers want the court to appoint a special master or schedule an evidentiary hearing to ensure that the drug used in executions will not cause White any suffering.
Excuse me while I dab the tears from my cheeks. Poor old Garcia’s intelligence is low enough to prevent him from comprehending “society's norms.” No wonder he killed Annette and Bernette Edwards, their mother Bonita Edwards, plus a 27-year-old woman and a convenience store clerk. And heaven forbid that this borderline intelligent “killing machine” should suffer any pain during his execution. Time to dab some more tears from my cheeks.
Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s spare poor old Garcia’s life and execute those heartless prosecutors instead.
Houston prosecutors referred to Garcia White as a “killing machine” after he murdered five people. He is scheduled to be executed January 28 after having been convicted in 1996 of murdering Annette and Bernette Edwards, 16-year-old twins.
According to the Houston Chronicle, “The girls became incidental victims of a crack cocaine-fueled quarrel between White and their mother, Bonita Edwards, who also was killed. Annette's nude body, stabbed 11 times, was found wrapped in a blanket at her mother's north Houston apartment; her sister was stabbed 18 times.” White also beat a 27-year-old woman to death in 1989 and killed a convenience store clerk during a 1995 robbery.
In their attempt to overturn the death sentence, White’s lawyers have filed a two-pronged appeal with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest appellate court for criminal cases.
The first prong argues that White should not be executed because he suffers from “borderline intelligence” and that he scored low on “tests of adaptive behavior, including one that measures an individual's ability to comprehend society's norms.”
According to the Chronicle, “The appeal cites a 2008 psychological exam that found that White - though technically not mentally retarded and, thus, protected from execution - still has ‘intellectual limitations that are likely to result in social vulnerabilities. Does not the due course of law under (the Texas constitution) mandate that this person, who for whatever reason, the universe has rendered less capable, be given more leniency in their attempts to invoke counsel?’ the new appeal argues.”
The second prong argues that the pentobarbital which will be used in the execution was produced by a compounding pharmacy that is barely regulated and that the lethal drug could contain contaminants which would cause White to suffer constitutionally prohibited pain as he was being put to death. The lawyers want the court to appoint a special master or schedule an evidentiary hearing to ensure that the drug used in executions will not cause White any suffering.
Excuse me while I dab the tears from my cheeks. Poor old Garcia’s intelligence is low enough to prevent him from comprehending “society's norms.” No wonder he killed Annette and Bernette Edwards, their mother Bonita Edwards, plus a 27-year-old woman and a convenience store clerk. And heaven forbid that this borderline intelligent “killing machine” should suffer any pain during his execution. Time to dab some more tears from my cheeks.
Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s spare poor old Garcia’s life and execute those heartless prosecutors instead.
FREED HOSTAGE DESCRIBES STANDOFF AT PARIS KOSHER SHOP
One of the hostages grabbed one of Amedy Coulibaly’s two AK-47s and tried to kill him, but the gun was jammed and he was shot dead instead
Michael B, one of the surviving hostages in the Paris kosher shop described what happened during the store takeover and the subsequent standoff between Islamic terrorist Amedy Coulibaly and the French police.
IT EMERGES ONE SHOPPER AT JEWISH GROCERY STORE WAS EXECUTED WHEN HE GRABBED ONE OF TERRORIST’S GUNS AND IT JAMMED
Hostages killed are named as Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham and Francois-Michel Saada
Mail Online
January 10, 2015
Yohan Cohen, 22, Yoav Hattab, 21, Philippe Braham, in his forties, and François-Michel Saada, believed to be in his sixties, were the four hostages killed in the terrorist attack on the Paris kosher supermarket Friday. One of them is said to have snatched one of the extremist's guns and turned it on the hostage taker - only to find that the weapon had jammed.
The dramatic account was revealed by a survivor who fled the shoot-out as armed police officers and soldiers raided the store yesterday.
Mickael B, as he wishes to be known, was held in the store with his three-year-old son when the fellow hostage suddenly grabbed the weapon which had been left on the counter and tried to fire it at terrorist Amedy Coulibaly.
But, after discovering the gun had been left there because it was malfunctioning, the extremist shot and killed the heroic hostage.
Giving a terrifying account, Mickael said: ‘I was heading for the check-out with the goods in my hand when I heard a bang – very loud. I thought it was a firecracker at first. But turning I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and I knew what was happening.’
‘I grabbed my son by the collar and fled to the back of the store. There, with other customers, we ran down a spiral staircase into the basement. We all piled into one of two cold rooms – our door wouldn’t close. We were terrified.
‘Five minutes later a store employee was sent down by the killer. She said he said we were to go back up otherwise there’d be carnage. I refused to go up.
‘By now my son, understanding nothing, was panicking. Then minutes later the employee comes back down with the same message. This time I decided to follow her up the spiral staircase.
‘At the top a man was dying in a pool of his own blood. The terrorist introduced himself to us. He was strangely calm. "I am Amedi Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State," he told us.'
‘Then he told us to put our phones on the ground. He walked around the store, armed, totally justifying himself, speaking of Palestine, French prisons, his brothers in Syria and many other things.
‘Suddenly one of the customers tried to grab one of his guns which he’d left on the counter. It wasn’t working. The terrorist had put it there because it had blocked after the first shots,' Mickael told Le Point.
‘He turned and shot at the customer who died on the spot.'
Mickael added: 'He then demanded that I call the media, which I did. From then on the phone in the store never stopped ringing. It was mainly journalists. I told them now was not the time. My son started to cry he wanted to go home. He said the terrorist was a bad man.
‘I managed to get my phone out discreetly and got in touch with the police outside while the terrorist was roaming the aisles.
‘A policeman told me that we should be ready to throw ourselves flat on the ground when the assault came, which would be soon.
‘It was obvious that the terrorist was preparing to die. He said it was his reward. He had a weapon in each hand and boxes of cartridges nearby. He suddenly began to pray.
‘My mobile was still on. The police had heard it all. Minutes later the shop grille was lifted. We knew it was the start of the assault.
‘We flung ourselves to the ground. The noise was deafening. He was dead. It was over.’
Michael B, one of the surviving hostages in the Paris kosher shop described what happened during the store takeover and the subsequent standoff between Islamic terrorist Amedy Coulibaly and the French police.
IT EMERGES ONE SHOPPER AT JEWISH GROCERY STORE WAS EXECUTED WHEN HE GRABBED ONE OF TERRORIST’S GUNS AND IT JAMMED
Hostages killed are named as Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham and Francois-Michel Saada
Mail Online
January 10, 2015
Yohan Cohen, 22, Yoav Hattab, 21, Philippe Braham, in his forties, and François-Michel Saada, believed to be in his sixties, were the four hostages killed in the terrorist attack on the Paris kosher supermarket Friday. One of them is said to have snatched one of the extremist's guns and turned it on the hostage taker - only to find that the weapon had jammed.
The dramatic account was revealed by a survivor who fled the shoot-out as armed police officers and soldiers raided the store yesterday.
Mickael B, as he wishes to be known, was held in the store with his three-year-old son when the fellow hostage suddenly grabbed the weapon which had been left on the counter and tried to fire it at terrorist Amedy Coulibaly.
But, after discovering the gun had been left there because it was malfunctioning, the extremist shot and killed the heroic hostage.
Giving a terrifying account, Mickael said: ‘I was heading for the check-out with the goods in my hand when I heard a bang – very loud. I thought it was a firecracker at first. But turning I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and I knew what was happening.’
‘I grabbed my son by the collar and fled to the back of the store. There, with other customers, we ran down a spiral staircase into the basement. We all piled into one of two cold rooms – our door wouldn’t close. We were terrified.
‘Five minutes later a store employee was sent down by the killer. She said he said we were to go back up otherwise there’d be carnage. I refused to go up.
‘By now my son, understanding nothing, was panicking. Then minutes later the employee comes back down with the same message. This time I decided to follow her up the spiral staircase.
‘At the top a man was dying in a pool of his own blood. The terrorist introduced himself to us. He was strangely calm. "I am Amedi Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State," he told us.'
‘Then he told us to put our phones on the ground. He walked around the store, armed, totally justifying himself, speaking of Palestine, French prisons, his brothers in Syria and many other things.
‘Suddenly one of the customers tried to grab one of his guns which he’d left on the counter. It wasn’t working. The terrorist had put it there because it had blocked after the first shots,' Mickael told Le Point.
‘He turned and shot at the customer who died on the spot.'
Mickael added: 'He then demanded that I call the media, which I did. From then on the phone in the store never stopped ringing. It was mainly journalists. I told them now was not the time. My son started to cry he wanted to go home. He said the terrorist was a bad man.
‘I managed to get my phone out discreetly and got in touch with the police outside while the terrorist was roaming the aisles.
‘A policeman told me that we should be ready to throw ourselves flat on the ground when the assault came, which would be soon.
‘It was obvious that the terrorist was preparing to die. He said it was his reward. He had a weapon in each hand and boxes of cartridges nearby. He suddenly began to pray.
‘My mobile was still on. The police had heard it all. Minutes later the shop grille was lifted. We knew it was the start of the assault.
‘We flung ourselves to the ground. The noise was deafening. He was dead. It was over.’
O’REILLY PUT BLAME FOR AMERICA’S RACE PROBLEM SQUARELY WHERE IT BELONGS
Bill O’Reilly blames "race hustlers," Hollywood "Greedheads," "derelict parents," "limousine liberals," and the "disintegration of the African-American family" for America’s race problems
On July 23, 2013, Bill O’Reilly used his Talking Points to blame America’s race problem squarely where it belongs. Although he made these comments back in July 2013, his words ring just as true today as they did then. Here is the transcript of those O’Reilly’s Talking Points:
PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE RACE PROBLEM
President Obama has welcomed some of the worst offenders in that cesspool into his sphere
By Bill O’Reilly
The culture that we have in this country does lead to criminal profiling, because young black American men are so often involved in crime. The statistic's overwhelming. But, here's the headline:
Young black men commit homicides at a rate ten times greater than whites and Hispanics combined. Presented with damning evidence like that, and like the many holocausts in Chicago where hundreds of American Americans are murdered each year, civil rights industry looks the other way or makes excuses. They blame guns, poor education, lack of jobs - rarely, do they define the problem accurately. So, here it is:
The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family.
Right now, about 73 percent of all black babies are born out of wedlock. That drives poverty. And, the lack of involved fathers leads to young boys growing up resentful and unsupervised.
When was the last time you saw a public service ad telling young black girls to avoid becoming pregnant? Has Pres. Obama done such an ad? How about Jackson or Sharpton? Has the Congressional Black Caucus demanded an ad like that? How about the PC pundits who work for NBC News?
White people don't force black people to have babies out of wedlock. That's a personal decision. A decision that has devastated millions of children and led to disaster, both socially and economically. So, raised without much structure, young black men often reject education, gravitate towards the street culture, drugs, hustling, gangs. Nobody forces them to do that. Again, it is a personal decision.
But, the entertainment industry encourages the irresponsibility by marketing a gangsta culture: hip-hop, movies, trashy TV shows, to impressionable children. In fact, Pres. Obama has welcomed some of the worst offenders in that cesspool to the White House, when he should be condemning what these weasels are doing. These so-called entertainers get rich, while the kids who emulate their lyrics and attitude destroy themselves.
And, then, there's the drug situation. Go to Detroit and ask anyone living on the south side of the Eight Mile Road what destroyed their city and they will tell you "narcotics." They know addiction leads to crime and debasement.
But, what do the race hustlers and limousine liberals yell about? The number of black men in prison for selling drugs: "Oh, it's so unfair! It's a non-violent crime, and blacks are targeted!"
That is one of the biggest lies in the history of this country. The thugs who sell hard drugs, no matter what color they are, deserve to be put away for long periods of time. They sell poison. They sell a product that enslaves and kills. They are scum.
When was the last time you heard the Congressional Black Caucus say that? How about Jackson and Sharpton? How about Pres. Obama?
The solution to the epidemic of violent crime in poor black neighborhoods is to actively discourage pregnancies out of marriage, to impose strict discipline in the public schools - including mandatory student uniforms - and to create a zero tolerance policy for gun and drug crimes, imposing harsh mandatory prison time on the offenders. And, finally, challenging the entertainment industry to stop peddling garbage.
Hey, listen up you Greedheads: if a kid can't speak proper English, uses the "F" word in every sentence, is disrespectful in his or her manner, that child will never be able to compete in the marketplace of America. Never. And, it has nothing to do with slavery. It has everything to do with you Hollywood people and you derelict parents. You're the ones hurting these vulnerable children.
You want a conversation? You got it.
On July 23, 2013, Bill O’Reilly used his Talking Points to blame America’s race problem squarely where it belongs. Although he made these comments back in July 2013, his words ring just as true today as they did then. Here is the transcript of those O’Reilly’s Talking Points:
PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE RACE PROBLEM
President Obama has welcomed some of the worst offenders in that cesspool into his sphere
By Bill O’Reilly
The culture that we have in this country does lead to criminal profiling, because young black American men are so often involved in crime. The statistic's overwhelming. But, here's the headline:
Young black men commit homicides at a rate ten times greater than whites and Hispanics combined. Presented with damning evidence like that, and like the many holocausts in Chicago where hundreds of American Americans are murdered each year, civil rights industry looks the other way or makes excuses. They blame guns, poor education, lack of jobs - rarely, do they define the problem accurately. So, here it is:
The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family.
Right now, about 73 percent of all black babies are born out of wedlock. That drives poverty. And, the lack of involved fathers leads to young boys growing up resentful and unsupervised.
When was the last time you saw a public service ad telling young black girls to avoid becoming pregnant? Has Pres. Obama done such an ad? How about Jackson or Sharpton? Has the Congressional Black Caucus demanded an ad like that? How about the PC pundits who work for NBC News?
White people don't force black people to have babies out of wedlock. That's a personal decision. A decision that has devastated millions of children and led to disaster, both socially and economically. So, raised without much structure, young black men often reject education, gravitate towards the street culture, drugs, hustling, gangs. Nobody forces them to do that. Again, it is a personal decision.
But, the entertainment industry encourages the irresponsibility by marketing a gangsta culture: hip-hop, movies, trashy TV shows, to impressionable children. In fact, Pres. Obama has welcomed some of the worst offenders in that cesspool to the White House, when he should be condemning what these weasels are doing. These so-called entertainers get rich, while the kids who emulate their lyrics and attitude destroy themselves.
And, then, there's the drug situation. Go to Detroit and ask anyone living on the south side of the Eight Mile Road what destroyed their city and they will tell you "narcotics." They know addiction leads to crime and debasement.
But, what do the race hustlers and limousine liberals yell about? The number of black men in prison for selling drugs: "Oh, it's so unfair! It's a non-violent crime, and blacks are targeted!"
That is one of the biggest lies in the history of this country. The thugs who sell hard drugs, no matter what color they are, deserve to be put away for long periods of time. They sell poison. They sell a product that enslaves and kills. They are scum.
When was the last time you heard the Congressional Black Caucus say that? How about Jackson and Sharpton? How about Pres. Obama?
The solution to the epidemic of violent crime in poor black neighborhoods is to actively discourage pregnancies out of marriage, to impose strict discipline in the public schools - including mandatory student uniforms - and to create a zero tolerance policy for gun and drug crimes, imposing harsh mandatory prison time on the offenders. And, finally, challenging the entertainment industry to stop peddling garbage.
Hey, listen up you Greedheads: if a kid can't speak proper English, uses the "F" word in every sentence, is disrespectful in his or her manner, that child will never be able to compete in the marketplace of America. Never. And, it has nothing to do with slavery. It has everything to do with you Hollywood people and you derelict parents. You're the ones hurting these vulnerable children.
You want a conversation? You got it.
FORMER MIT PROF FLUNKS ROBBERY 101
Joseph Gibbons, who lectured at MIT from 2002-2010, gets busted for the New Year’s Eve robbery of a Manhattan bank while he was wanted for the November robbery of a bank in Providence, Rhode Island
A former MIT professor who lectured in the prestigious university’s Art, Culture and Technology program from 2002-2010, was arrested Friday for the $1,000 New Year’s Eve robbery of a Capital One bank in Manhattan. Joseph Gibbons, 61, now a filmmaker, used a camcorder to film the robbery. He was already wanted for the November robbery of a bank in Providence, Rhode Island.
According to court records, he handed a teller at the Capital One bank a note asking for a donation to be made to his church. In the Rhode Island robbery, he took $3,000 and told the Citizens Bank teller, “Thank you, this is for the church.”
While waiting in court to be arraigned, Gibbons told another prisoner that he committed the robberies as research for a film he planned to make. Kaylan Sherrard, the other prisoner, told authorities, “He was doing research for a film. It’s not a crime, it’s artwork. He’s an intellectual.”
A bio from MIT stated that Gibbons's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. It also noted that his 2002 film 'Confessions of a Sociopath' was judged to be among the Best Films of the Year by Artforum magazine.
Gibbons once told Big Red and Shiny art magazine that, as research for some of his short films, he tried to cultivate a drug habit. “I was involved in all this research. The romantic idea of the artist getting involved in these kinds of activities as a kind of research, gaining experience.”
This nutty professor either failed to take the Robbery 101 course, or if he did, the intellectual idiot must have flunked out.
A former MIT professor who lectured in the prestigious university’s Art, Culture and Technology program from 2002-2010, was arrested Friday for the $1,000 New Year’s Eve robbery of a Capital One bank in Manhattan. Joseph Gibbons, 61, now a filmmaker, used a camcorder to film the robbery. He was already wanted for the November robbery of a bank in Providence, Rhode Island.
According to court records, he handed a teller at the Capital One bank a note asking for a donation to be made to his church. In the Rhode Island robbery, he took $3,000 and told the Citizens Bank teller, “Thank you, this is for the church.”
While waiting in court to be arraigned, Gibbons told another prisoner that he committed the robberies as research for a film he planned to make. Kaylan Sherrard, the other prisoner, told authorities, “He was doing research for a film. It’s not a crime, it’s artwork. He’s an intellectual.”
A bio from MIT stated that Gibbons's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. It also noted that his 2002 film 'Confessions of a Sociopath' was judged to be among the Best Films of the Year by Artforum magazine.
Gibbons once told Big Red and Shiny art magazine that, as research for some of his short films, he tried to cultivate a drug habit. “I was involved in all this research. The romantic idea of the artist getting involved in these kinds of activities as a kind of research, gaining experience.”
This nutty professor either failed to take the Robbery 101 course, or if he did, the intellectual idiot must have flunked out.
WHITE COPS MUST HAVE DONE IT
Four black men were shot to death inside a stolen car in San Francisco’s trendy Hayes Valley district
Around 10 p.m. Friday, residents of San Francisco’s trendy Happy Valley district called police to report they heard at least 15 shots fired. Responding officers found four black men shot to death inside a car that was believed to be stolen.
Some rounds struck nearby homes with one bullet ending embedded in a refrigerator.
The shooting took place in the 200 block of Page Street, near Laguna Street. The police have few clues to go on and believe the shooting may have been gang related.
Participants in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests are probably convinced that white cops must have done it.
Around 10 p.m. Friday, residents of San Francisco’s trendy Happy Valley district called police to report they heard at least 15 shots fired. Responding officers found four black men shot to death inside a car that was believed to be stolen.
Some rounds struck nearby homes with one bullet ending embedded in a refrigerator.
The shooting took place in the 200 block of Page Street, near Laguna Street. The police have few clues to go on and believe the shooting may have been gang related.
Participants in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests are probably convinced that white cops must have done it.
IT’S TIME TO LOCK THE JERK UP!
George Zimmerman is arrested for the third time since he was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin
George Zimmerman is either a complete jerk or half-baked. To me it appears to be both. He has been arrested three times since he was acquitted of murder for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in a July 2013 jury trial. While I believe the acquittal was clearly justified, this guy is dangerous and should be locked up!
His latest arrest came on Friday when Florida’s Seminole County Sheriff’s Department deputies busted Zimmerman, 31, in Lake Mary for tossing a wine bottle at his girlfriend. He was charged with aggravated assault and is roosting in the John E. Polk Correctional Facility.
During a court hearing Saturday morning, bail was set at $5,000, which in my opinion is way too low for such a dangerous ding-a-ling. As a matter of caution, Judge John Galluzzo ordered Zimmerman to surrender all weapons he owned. He was also ordered to avoid any contact with the alleged victim and to stay out of Volusia County where she lives. His next court hearing is scheduled for February 17.
Here is a list of Zimmerman’s other brushes with the law since he was acquitted of murder:
In September 2013 he was arrested after his estranged wife reported that Zimmerman had attacked her father and pointed a gun at her. The case was dismissed when she declined to press any charges.
In November 2013, Zimmerman was busted for beating up his girlfriend. She also claimed he pointed a gun at her. That case was dismissed because she also dropped the charges.
In September 2014, the jerk was investigated for telling a truck driver “I’ll fucking kill you” during a road rage incident. Zimmerman was not arrested because the truck driver did not wish to file any charges.
Let me reiterate that I believe Zimmerman’s acquittal in the Trayvon Martin shooting was clearly justified. But this half-baked jerk is too dangerous to be running loose on the streets. He should be prosecuted even if his latest victim declines to press the aggravated assault charge. Zimmerman should be kept locked up!
ADDENDUM:
DAs say that when a victim refuses to cooperate, there will not be enough evidence for a successful prosecution. But is that why, in his previous arrests, Zimmerman was not prosecuted? I seriously doubt it.
Even when a victim declines to press charges, the prosecution can still go ahead and try the perpetrator. In those Zimmerman cases, I believe the prosecutors did not have the political courage to face a predictable firestorm of criticism from the right for going after Zimmerman only because he beat the Trayvon Martin wrap.
A friend was dismissive of the latest incident because Zimmerman threw an empty wine bottle at his girlfriend and missed. But what if he had hit her? She could have been seriously injured. His dismissiveness of this incident is the same as blowing off an attempt to kill someone because the shooter missed.
George Zimmerman is either a complete jerk or half-baked. To me it appears to be both. He has been arrested three times since he was acquitted of murder for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in a July 2013 jury trial. While I believe the acquittal was clearly justified, this guy is dangerous and should be locked up!
His latest arrest came on Friday when Florida’s Seminole County Sheriff’s Department deputies busted Zimmerman, 31, in Lake Mary for tossing a wine bottle at his girlfriend. He was charged with aggravated assault and is roosting in the John E. Polk Correctional Facility.
During a court hearing Saturday morning, bail was set at $5,000, which in my opinion is way too low for such a dangerous ding-a-ling. As a matter of caution, Judge John Galluzzo ordered Zimmerman to surrender all weapons he owned. He was also ordered to avoid any contact with the alleged victim and to stay out of Volusia County where she lives. His next court hearing is scheduled for February 17.
Here is a list of Zimmerman’s other brushes with the law since he was acquitted of murder:
In September 2013 he was arrested after his estranged wife reported that Zimmerman had attacked her father and pointed a gun at her. The case was dismissed when she declined to press any charges.
In November 2013, Zimmerman was busted for beating up his girlfriend. She also claimed he pointed a gun at her. That case was dismissed because she also dropped the charges.
In September 2014, the jerk was investigated for telling a truck driver “I’ll fucking kill you” during a road rage incident. Zimmerman was not arrested because the truck driver did not wish to file any charges.
Let me reiterate that I believe Zimmerman’s acquittal in the Trayvon Martin shooting was clearly justified. But this half-baked jerk is too dangerous to be running loose on the streets. He should be prosecuted even if his latest victim declines to press the aggravated assault charge. Zimmerman should be kept locked up!
ADDENDUM:
DAs say that when a victim refuses to cooperate, there will not be enough evidence for a successful prosecution. But is that why, in his previous arrests, Zimmerman was not prosecuted? I seriously doubt it.
Even when a victim declines to press charges, the prosecution can still go ahead and try the perpetrator. In those Zimmerman cases, I believe the prosecutors did not have the political courage to face a predictable firestorm of criticism from the right for going after Zimmerman only because he beat the Trayvon Martin wrap.
A friend was dismissive of the latest incident because Zimmerman threw an empty wine bottle at his girlfriend and missed. But what if he had hit her? She could have been seriously injured. His dismissiveness of this incident is the same as blowing off an attempt to kill someone because the shooter missed.
WARNING TO AMERICANS: STAY OUT OF MEXICO IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE KIDNAPPED OR KILLED
A Tennessee woman and her 2-year-old daughter are the latest Americans thought to have been kidnapped in Mexico after they disappeared in the border city of Matamoros
Even though Kelly Jean Shumake’s husband had been deported to Mexico and the Tennessee woman and her three children were living with him in Matamoros, her disappearance is just one more example of why Americans should stay out of Mexico.
TENNESSEE WOMAN SEARCHES FOR SISTER, NIECE AFTER THEY WENT MSSING NEAR MATAMOROS
by Elizabeth Espinosa
ValleyCentral.com
January 6, 2015
There are more questions than answers for Rosa Farmers.
The Tennessee native is in the Brownsville trying to find out what happened to her sister Kelly Shoemake and her 2-year-old niece Clarabella.
Both of them have been missing for almost a month after coming to Brownsville from Matamoros to seek medical attention.
For the last year, they had been living in Mexico with Kelly’s husband and two older children.
“They don’t know exactly what’s going on but they ask me when I’m going to bring their momma. When I come here, they ask me are you going to bring my momma?"
Rosa told Action 4 News that Kelly's husband had been deported, moving the family across the border.
Kelly’s family last saw her on December 10th.
“She wouldn’t have left her two kids. I know she wouldn’t have left them. That’s all she talks about.”
Brownsville police said Kelly was also going by the name Sabrina, but family doesn’t believe she was involved in any criminal activity.
Investigators said when Kelly went missing; she had all of her children’s birth certificates.
Now Kelly’s other two young children remain in Matamoros with their father.
Even though Kelly Jean Shumake’s husband had been deported to Mexico and the Tennessee woman and her three children were living with him in Matamoros, her disappearance is just one more example of why Americans should stay out of Mexico.
TENNESSEE WOMAN SEARCHES FOR SISTER, NIECE AFTER THEY WENT MSSING NEAR MATAMOROS
by Elizabeth Espinosa
ValleyCentral.com
January 6, 2015
There are more questions than answers for Rosa Farmers.
The Tennessee native is in the Brownsville trying to find out what happened to her sister Kelly Shoemake and her 2-year-old niece Clarabella.
Both of them have been missing for almost a month after coming to Brownsville from Matamoros to seek medical attention.
For the last year, they had been living in Mexico with Kelly’s husband and two older children.
“They don’t know exactly what’s going on but they ask me when I’m going to bring their momma. When I come here, they ask me are you going to bring my momma?"
Rosa told Action 4 News that Kelly's husband had been deported, moving the family across the border.
Kelly’s family last saw her on December 10th.
“She wouldn’t have left her two kids. I know she wouldn’t have left them. That’s all she talks about.”
Brownsville police said Kelly was also going by the name Sabrina, but family doesn’t believe she was involved in any criminal activity.
Investigators said when Kelly went missing; she had all of her children’s birth certificates.
Now Kelly’s other two young children remain in Matamoros with their father.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
LEGALIZATION OF Pot: IT WAS AND IS AWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY
The proponents of legalization are deluding themselves if they believe their supporters were interested in anything else other than making tons of money
The proponents of pot have told us over and over again that if we only legalized marijuana, law abiding citizens would no longer be jailed for smoking a joint, the illegal sales of pot would dry up, the Mexican cartels would go out of business, and the states would reap a bonanza of taxes.
Well, let’s see now. First of all, when possession of pot is illegal, those who smoke a joint are not law abiding citizens, they are lawbreakers. In both Colorado and Washington, the legalization of pot has not dried up the black market. On the contrary, the illegal sales of marijuana have flourished because the pot heads prefer to buy their joints tax free. The Mexican cartels are still doing business as usual, shipping loads of pot to Colorado and Washington. And the millions of dollars in taxes collected by Colorado have been a tiny drop in the bucket when compared to the state’s multibillion dollar budget.
Ah, but the growers and distributors of legal pot in Colorado and Washington have become filthy rich, and that was what the legalization of marijuana was really always all about. And now big investors are getting into the marijuana business. According to the Associated Press:
Founders Fund, the $2 billion San Francisco venture capital firm run by Silicon Valley stars including Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of Paypal, is investing in Privateer Holdings, a marijuana company that owns several pot-related brands.
The companies declined to disclose the size of the investment Thursday, but described it as a "multi-million dollar" participation in a $75 million fundraising effort by Privateer.
Privateer, based in Seattle, owns the Canadian medical marijuana producer Tilray and the pot information service Leafly. It is also launching a brand of marijuana and products with the family of Bob Marley called Marley Natural.
Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis, who is leading the firm's investment in Privateer, said in an interview that he believes the broader legalization of marijuana is inevitable.
So stop kidding yourselves. The legal pot backers are not interested in your right to smoke a joint. They are not interested in drying up the black market. They are not even interested in the medical benefits – questionable as they are - of marijuana. They are only interested in making money. They could care less about the Mexican cartels as long as those criminal organizations do not interfere with their getting filthy rich off of pot. And they know damn well that the taxes collected from the legal sales of pot will not even begin to solve a state’s money problems.
The proponents of pot have told us over and over again that if we only legalized marijuana, law abiding citizens would no longer be jailed for smoking a joint, the illegal sales of pot would dry up, the Mexican cartels would go out of business, and the states would reap a bonanza of taxes.
Well, let’s see now. First of all, when possession of pot is illegal, those who smoke a joint are not law abiding citizens, they are lawbreakers. In both Colorado and Washington, the legalization of pot has not dried up the black market. On the contrary, the illegal sales of marijuana have flourished because the pot heads prefer to buy their joints tax free. The Mexican cartels are still doing business as usual, shipping loads of pot to Colorado and Washington. And the millions of dollars in taxes collected by Colorado have been a tiny drop in the bucket when compared to the state’s multibillion dollar budget.
Ah, but the growers and distributors of legal pot in Colorado and Washington have become filthy rich, and that was what the legalization of marijuana was really always all about. And now big investors are getting into the marijuana business. According to the Associated Press:
Founders Fund, the $2 billion San Francisco venture capital firm run by Silicon Valley stars including Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of Paypal, is investing in Privateer Holdings, a marijuana company that owns several pot-related brands.
The companies declined to disclose the size of the investment Thursday, but described it as a "multi-million dollar" participation in a $75 million fundraising effort by Privateer.
Privateer, based in Seattle, owns the Canadian medical marijuana producer Tilray and the pot information service Leafly. It is also launching a brand of marijuana and products with the family of Bob Marley called Marley Natural.
Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis, who is leading the firm's investment in Privateer, said in an interview that he believes the broader legalization of marijuana is inevitable.
So stop kidding yourselves. The legal pot backers are not interested in your right to smoke a joint. They are not interested in drying up the black market. They are not even interested in the medical benefits – questionable as they are - of marijuana. They are only interested in making money. They could care less about the Mexican cartels as long as those criminal organizations do not interfere with their getting filthy rich off of pot. And they know damn well that the taxes collected from the legal sales of pot will not even begin to solve a state’s money problems.
QUANELL X BEING SUED BY FORMER TEACHER HE ACCUSED OF USING THE N WORD
X falsely accused former Houston elementary school teacher Angela Box of calling President Obama "a fucking nigger and black people dumb ass for voting for him"
Uh oh, looks like Quanell X put his mouth in motion before he put his brain in gear. Former Houston elementary school teacher Angela Box has made some outrageous and inflammatory statements, particularly about Muslims, on ‘Tommy's Garage,’ a local right-wing cable-access show. But she never called Obama “a fucking nigger and black people dumb ass for voting for him." And when X publicly accused her of saying that, he destroyed Box’s teaching career.
FORMER HISD TEACHER WHO CALLED MUSLIMS “THE EVIL OF THE WORLD” SUES QUANELL X FOR DEFAMATION
By Michael Barajas
Houston Press
January 9, 2015
So, former HISD elementary school teacher Angela Box spouted a lot of inflammatory shit during her appearances on the local right-wing cable-access show "Tommy's Garage." An apparent devotee of the Ted Nugent school of public discourse, Box saved some of her ugliest comments for -- you guessed it -- Muslims, with lines like, "Every normal human being in the world thinks that goat-fucking Muslims and boy-fucking Muslims are the evil of the world."
But it's what Box didn't say that's landed community activist Quanell X in trouble. It was Quanell who in November called a press conference outside Ray Daily Elementary, where Box taught third grade, to out Box as a racist and a bigot. But in his press release announcing the event, Quanell alleged that Box called President Barack Obama "a fucking nigger and black people dumb ass for voting for him."
Just one problem: Box never said that. Quanell later admitted his "publicist made a mistake," but the damage was done. (It probably didn't help that Quanell, instead of apologizing, gave Box the bizarre offer of $1,000 to debate him face-to-face.) Quanell's press release and news conference had succeeded in focusing attention on Box's many appearances on Tommy's Garage, putting her xenophobic comments on full display. Box ultimately resigned from her teaching job at HISD last month.
On Thursday Box sued Quanell X for defamation in a Harris County court, also listing as defendants the New Black Panther Nation, the New Black Muslim Movement, and two people described as trustees of the New Black Muslim Movement. Box's lawsuit claims the "malicious and defamatory statements and the press conference at Plaintiff's school - in front of her third grade students - created a hostile work environment and left Plaintiff no choice but to end her employment as a teacher." In her lawsuit, Box laments that she "will likely never be able to find employment as an educator again."
Quanell's n-word allegations, while untrue, set in motion the chain of events that ultimately led to Box's resignation. Soon after Quanell issued his presser, the Houston office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for HISD to launch an independent investigation into whether Box's blatantly anti-Muslim views had bled over into the classroom. The district faced increasing pressure to do something about Box in the weeks that followed.
And Box didn't just sound off against Muslims. In one appearance on the cable-access show, she called former gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis an "abortion barbie" (original, right?) and, following Davis' defeat in the November election, cracked a joke about Davis being "late-term aborted." As for Obama, she remarked, "I'm just going to say what everyone is thinking: can't Ebola just take one for the team and take out Obama." In another exchange, she said: "We have to remember, the Democrats own the ghettos. The Democrats own food stamps. The Democrats own Section 8. The Democrats own welfare." Those tolerant of Muslims she called "communist bitches."
Since her resignation from HISD, Box has set up a gofundme page to pay for legal fees, "public relations, web design" and "management." On the page, she says, "When one person is attacked for speaking the truth, we ALL are attacked."
That rings somewhat true in this case. It certainly seems that when Box speaks "the truth," all are attacked.
Uh oh, looks like Quanell X put his mouth in motion before he put his brain in gear. Former Houston elementary school teacher Angela Box has made some outrageous and inflammatory statements, particularly about Muslims, on ‘Tommy's Garage,’ a local right-wing cable-access show. But she never called Obama “a fucking nigger and black people dumb ass for voting for him." And when X publicly accused her of saying that, he destroyed Box’s teaching career.
FORMER HISD TEACHER WHO CALLED MUSLIMS “THE EVIL OF THE WORLD” SUES QUANELL X FOR DEFAMATION
By Michael Barajas
Houston Press
January 9, 2015
So, former HISD elementary school teacher Angela Box spouted a lot of inflammatory shit during her appearances on the local right-wing cable-access show "Tommy's Garage." An apparent devotee of the Ted Nugent school of public discourse, Box saved some of her ugliest comments for -- you guessed it -- Muslims, with lines like, "Every normal human being in the world thinks that goat-fucking Muslims and boy-fucking Muslims are the evil of the world."
But it's what Box didn't say that's landed community activist Quanell X in trouble. It was Quanell who in November called a press conference outside Ray Daily Elementary, where Box taught third grade, to out Box as a racist and a bigot. But in his press release announcing the event, Quanell alleged that Box called President Barack Obama "a fucking nigger and black people dumb ass for voting for him."
Just one problem: Box never said that. Quanell later admitted his "publicist made a mistake," but the damage was done. (It probably didn't help that Quanell, instead of apologizing, gave Box the bizarre offer of $1,000 to debate him face-to-face.) Quanell's press release and news conference had succeeded in focusing attention on Box's many appearances on Tommy's Garage, putting her xenophobic comments on full display. Box ultimately resigned from her teaching job at HISD last month.
On Thursday Box sued Quanell X for defamation in a Harris County court, also listing as defendants the New Black Panther Nation, the New Black Muslim Movement, and two people described as trustees of the New Black Muslim Movement. Box's lawsuit claims the "malicious and defamatory statements and the press conference at Plaintiff's school - in front of her third grade students - created a hostile work environment and left Plaintiff no choice but to end her employment as a teacher." In her lawsuit, Box laments that she "will likely never be able to find employment as an educator again."
Quanell's n-word allegations, while untrue, set in motion the chain of events that ultimately led to Box's resignation. Soon after Quanell issued his presser, the Houston office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for HISD to launch an independent investigation into whether Box's blatantly anti-Muslim views had bled over into the classroom. The district faced increasing pressure to do something about Box in the weeks that followed.
And Box didn't just sound off against Muslims. In one appearance on the cable-access show, she called former gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis an "abortion barbie" (original, right?) and, following Davis' defeat in the November election, cracked a joke about Davis being "late-term aborted." As for Obama, she remarked, "I'm just going to say what everyone is thinking: can't Ebola just take one for the team and take out Obama." In another exchange, she said: "We have to remember, the Democrats own the ghettos. The Democrats own food stamps. The Democrats own Section 8. The Democrats own welfare." Those tolerant of Muslims she called "communist bitches."
Since her resignation from HISD, Box has set up a gofundme page to pay for legal fees, "public relations, web design" and "management." On the page, she says, "When one person is attacked for speaking the truth, we ALL are attacked."
That rings somewhat true in this case. It certainly seems that when Box speaks "the truth," all are attacked.
NO MORE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS FOR ISLAM IN AUSTRALIA
Political correctness: The liberals among us seek to explain the behavior of terrorists by pointing the finger at the victims
The Australians are getting fed up with Islamic terrorism. No more political correctness down under by sugarcoating Islamic terrorism like the Obama administration does in the U.S.
In the U.S., President Obama and members of his administration are determined to remain politically correct by refusing to call Islamic terrorism for what it is, Islamic terrorism. Woe to anyone in the administration who attributes terrorism to Islamists, regardless of how many times the terrorist shouts “Allah Akbar” or “Allahu Akbar.”
Thanks to human rights activist Dorina Lisson for sending me this article from the Herald Sun of Melbourne.
RADICAL ISLAM AND WESTERN VALUES CANNOT COEXIST PEACEFULLY
LET’S get one thing straight; every attack perpetrated by Islamic extremists is an attack against freedom of speech, whether they’re terrorizing journalists and cartoonists at a satirical magazine in Paris or bystanders having a quiet coffee in Sydney
By Rita Panahi
Herald Sun
January 9, 2015
These callous cowards seek to silence dissenting voices by waging a war of terror against anyone who dares question their twisted, totalitarian worldview.
The time for weasel words and treading on eggshells is over. We owe it to the growing number of victims to open our eyes and acknowledge the unmistakable reality that radical Islam and Western values cannot coexist peacefully.
These extremists despise our way of life; our freedom, openness and diversity are an affront to their despotic, backward attitudes.
We must stop pretending that these incidents have nothing to do with Islam. They quite clearly have everything to do with extremist Islam and the sooner we admit this truth the better we can work to protect our people and values from this ever-present scourge.
Islamic extremism is a global problem that moderate, peaceful Muslims need to unconditionally condemn and help solve instead of engaging in games of deflection.
The viciousness of these subhuman savages was on display on the streets of Paris as they walked up to an injured policeman lying helpless on the ground and shot him dead at point-blank range without missing a step. It mattered not that Ahmed Merabet was himself a Muslim. They didn’t care that his arms were raised in surrender; he was shown no mercy.
These are not people who can be reasoned with or counselled into adopting our values of humanity, tolerance and liberty.
We in the West must stop blaming ourselves for these acts of brutality. There are those among us, the so-called “progressives”, who seek to explain the behaviour of terrorists by pointing the finger at the victims.
According to these enlightened souls, homegrown terrorism is really our fault. We are to blame for not being welcoming enough, for creating an underclass of disenfranchised young men, for being part of the US-led coalition in the Middle East, for supporting Israel’s right to exist, for printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, for raising the terror alert level … indeed, if you rationalise hard enough, any act can be considered provocation to Islamic extremists. For some tyrants, free speech is itself an incitement to violence.
This mass-scale victim blaming is an insult not only to the victims but also the overwhelming majority of Muslims migrants who appreciate the abundant freedoms and opportunities available to them in countries like Australia.
It’s a mistake to presume that all Islamic people want us to change our ways or laws to better fit the values of their homeland.
But there is undoubtedly a minority of troublemakers who seek to change our free societies into the type of place they fled from and, as we have seen around the world, it only takes one radicalised attacker to cause wide-scale mayhem.
The barbaric death cult that is Islamic State has inspired a new legion of radicalised Islamic men, and even some women, to commit atrocities in the name of Allah against Western targets. But let’s not forget that it’s other Muslims who are the biggest victims of Muslim extremism.
On the same day that three heavily armed gunmen butchered 12 innocent people in Paris, there was another terror attack in Yemen where a suicide bomber killed dozens of police recruits outside a station. The death toll stands at 37 and is expected to grow.
However, it’s when these acts of base brutality occur in Western nations that many fully appreciate the threat radical Islam poses to the world. We should feel comfortable to readily call out elements within any culture or religion that are incompatible with our cherished values of equality, freedom and democracy.
It’s time politicians, including the Prime Minister, stopped tiptoeing around issues involving cultural or religious sensitivities for fear that they’ll be labelled intolerant.
Nothing is gained by pandering to extreme elements in the vain hope that we’ll impress upon them that the path to assimilation is preferable to fundamentalism.
The fear of Islamophobia and the illusory nonsense of a redneck backlash against the Muslim community have become a bat to beat down all valid criticism.
It is worth noting that while the French satirical magazine CharlieHebdo poked fun at Islam, it also regularly satirised Christianity and Judaism, and yet there have been no attacks by enraged Catholics or Jews. This reveals the lie that all religions are equally bloodthirsty; in the 21st century only one religion is at the centre of terror attacks around the world.
Only followers of one religion who think they are entitled to butcher those who offend their prophet. Frankly, if your all-powerful deity is so fragile that a cartoon poses a threat then you may want to reconsider your belief system.
The editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, said in a 2012 interview, a year after his magazine’s headquarters were firebombed by Muslim extremists angry with a satirical cartoon, that they would continue “until Islam is made as ho-hum as Catholicism”.
Shamefully, at the time, there was no shortage of progressives willing to blame the magazine and its staff for “inciting” the attack.
In the same interview Charbonnier said: “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.” Tragically, he was among those murdered this week by Islamic extremists.
We cannot be scared into silence or intimidated into self-blame; the problem lies with radical Islam not our Western democratic societies.
The Australians are getting fed up with Islamic terrorism. No more political correctness down under by sugarcoating Islamic terrorism like the Obama administration does in the U.S.
In the U.S., President Obama and members of his administration are determined to remain politically correct by refusing to call Islamic terrorism for what it is, Islamic terrorism. Woe to anyone in the administration who attributes terrorism to Islamists, regardless of how many times the terrorist shouts “Allah Akbar” or “Allahu Akbar.”
Thanks to human rights activist Dorina Lisson for sending me this article from the Herald Sun of Melbourne.
RADICAL ISLAM AND WESTERN VALUES CANNOT COEXIST PEACEFULLY
LET’S get one thing straight; every attack perpetrated by Islamic extremists is an attack against freedom of speech, whether they’re terrorizing journalists and cartoonists at a satirical magazine in Paris or bystanders having a quiet coffee in Sydney
By Rita Panahi
Herald Sun
January 9, 2015
These callous cowards seek to silence dissenting voices by waging a war of terror against anyone who dares question their twisted, totalitarian worldview.
The time for weasel words and treading on eggshells is over. We owe it to the growing number of victims to open our eyes and acknowledge the unmistakable reality that radical Islam and Western values cannot coexist peacefully.
These extremists despise our way of life; our freedom, openness and diversity are an affront to their despotic, backward attitudes.
We must stop pretending that these incidents have nothing to do with Islam. They quite clearly have everything to do with extremist Islam and the sooner we admit this truth the better we can work to protect our people and values from this ever-present scourge.
Islamic extremism is a global problem that moderate, peaceful Muslims need to unconditionally condemn and help solve instead of engaging in games of deflection.
The viciousness of these subhuman savages was on display on the streets of Paris as they walked up to an injured policeman lying helpless on the ground and shot him dead at point-blank range without missing a step. It mattered not that Ahmed Merabet was himself a Muslim. They didn’t care that his arms were raised in surrender; he was shown no mercy.
These are not people who can be reasoned with or counselled into adopting our values of humanity, tolerance and liberty.
We in the West must stop blaming ourselves for these acts of brutality. There are those among us, the so-called “progressives”, who seek to explain the behaviour of terrorists by pointing the finger at the victims.
According to these enlightened souls, homegrown terrorism is really our fault. We are to blame for not being welcoming enough, for creating an underclass of disenfranchised young men, for being part of the US-led coalition in the Middle East, for supporting Israel’s right to exist, for printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, for raising the terror alert level … indeed, if you rationalise hard enough, any act can be considered provocation to Islamic extremists. For some tyrants, free speech is itself an incitement to violence.
This mass-scale victim blaming is an insult not only to the victims but also the overwhelming majority of Muslims migrants who appreciate the abundant freedoms and opportunities available to them in countries like Australia.
It’s a mistake to presume that all Islamic people want us to change our ways or laws to better fit the values of their homeland.
But there is undoubtedly a minority of troublemakers who seek to change our free societies into the type of place they fled from and, as we have seen around the world, it only takes one radicalised attacker to cause wide-scale mayhem.
The barbaric death cult that is Islamic State has inspired a new legion of radicalised Islamic men, and even some women, to commit atrocities in the name of Allah against Western targets. But let’s not forget that it’s other Muslims who are the biggest victims of Muslim extremism.
On the same day that three heavily armed gunmen butchered 12 innocent people in Paris, there was another terror attack in Yemen where a suicide bomber killed dozens of police recruits outside a station. The death toll stands at 37 and is expected to grow.
However, it’s when these acts of base brutality occur in Western nations that many fully appreciate the threat radical Islam poses to the world. We should feel comfortable to readily call out elements within any culture or religion that are incompatible with our cherished values of equality, freedom and democracy.
It’s time politicians, including the Prime Minister, stopped tiptoeing around issues involving cultural or religious sensitivities for fear that they’ll be labelled intolerant.
Nothing is gained by pandering to extreme elements in the vain hope that we’ll impress upon them that the path to assimilation is preferable to fundamentalism.
The fear of Islamophobia and the illusory nonsense of a redneck backlash against the Muslim community have become a bat to beat down all valid criticism.
It is worth noting that while the French satirical magazine CharlieHebdo poked fun at Islam, it also regularly satirised Christianity and Judaism, and yet there have been no attacks by enraged Catholics or Jews. This reveals the lie that all religions are equally bloodthirsty; in the 21st century only one religion is at the centre of terror attacks around the world.
Only followers of one religion who think they are entitled to butcher those who offend their prophet. Frankly, if your all-powerful deity is so fragile that a cartoon poses a threat then you may want to reconsider your belief system.
The editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, said in a 2012 interview, a year after his magazine’s headquarters were firebombed by Muslim extremists angry with a satirical cartoon, that they would continue “until Islam is made as ho-hum as Catholicism”.
Shamefully, at the time, there was no shortage of progressives willing to blame the magazine and its staff for “inciting” the attack.
In the same interview Charbonnier said: “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.” Tragically, he was among those murdered this week by Islamic extremists.
We cannot be scared into silence or intimidated into self-blame; the problem lies with radical Islam not our Western democratic societies.
Friday, January 09, 2015
COMMUNITY ACTIVIST LEARNED NOT TO JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS
After the Freeport, Texas police chief gave Quanell X access to the crime scene and facts gathered in the police shooting of a black man, he told an ugly crowd that the shooting was justified and for them to go home
Quanell X, a controversial Houston community activist, has mouthed off at every police shooting of a minority person, usually either implying or charging that the cops were not justified in resorting to gunfire. He has also surrendered a number of wanted persons to the police. I’ve always looked at him as an Al Sharpton wannabe.
On Wednesday afternoon a white Freeport, Texas police officer shot and killed Ron Sneed, a black man, at his girlfriend’s apartment. Quanell told ABC13 that he heard several different versions of the shooting while he was on his way from Houston to Freeport. By the time he got to Freeport, an ugly crowed of 100 people had gathered in front of the police station. They were angry that the cop shot Sneed instead of using pepper spray or a Taser.
When Quanell arrived in Freeport, the police chief allowed him to see the facts they had gathered and even allowed him access to the crime scene. He then appeared in front of the police station to address the crowd. He told them that in this case, the cop was justified in shooting Sneed and urged them to go home. Here is what he told the crowd:
"Many of these shootings, officers should be indicted for killing these unarmed men, But in a case like this, I don't think protests are warranted, and I think we should pray for the police officer as well as the family involved in this case."
In an interview Thursday with ABC13’s Tracy Clemons, the usually bombastic Quanell was quite humble. He paid tribute to Freeport’s police chief for giving him access to the crime scene and facts gathered by the police:
"I think that police chief in Freeport should be looked at as an example of how to handle a shooting dealing with some young African American male. The way he worked with the community instantly to deal with what was happening, the way he gave me unprecedented access to a lot of the facts that I could see for myself was able to suppress and quell a lot of the anger, the frustration, and the desire to riot."
Quanell recounted that:
"The girlfriend said to me 'Mr. X, when I woke up he had a gun in my face,' And I said, 'Was the gun real?' She said 'Yes it was real.' She said when the police came in, the police told him put the gun down. He said no, then turned the gun back toward her head and pointed at her head. That's when police officer fired the shots to kill him."
Quanell X told Clemons this case taught him that “jumping to conclusions helps no one.” He added:
"It was a learning experience for me to make sure that we as leaders of our people, we have to make sure that as quick as we possibly can gather as much of the facts as we can and be very skeptical of what you hear, investigate the facts for yourself as best you can as quickly as you can, then take a position."
Now, if this shooting had occurred in Houston, Quanell would never have gotten such cooperation from the police. Instead, his ass would have been thrown in the slammer if he had tried to stick his nose into their investigation while it was still going on.
Perhaps there is a lesson in this not only for community activists, but for all police agencies as well.
Quanell X, a controversial Houston community activist, has mouthed off at every police shooting of a minority person, usually either implying or charging that the cops were not justified in resorting to gunfire. He has also surrendered a number of wanted persons to the police. I’ve always looked at him as an Al Sharpton wannabe.
On Wednesday afternoon a white Freeport, Texas police officer shot and killed Ron Sneed, a black man, at his girlfriend’s apartment. Quanell told ABC13 that he heard several different versions of the shooting while he was on his way from Houston to Freeport. By the time he got to Freeport, an ugly crowed of 100 people had gathered in front of the police station. They were angry that the cop shot Sneed instead of using pepper spray or a Taser.
When Quanell arrived in Freeport, the police chief allowed him to see the facts they had gathered and even allowed him access to the crime scene. He then appeared in front of the police station to address the crowd. He told them that in this case, the cop was justified in shooting Sneed and urged them to go home. Here is what he told the crowd:
"Many of these shootings, officers should be indicted for killing these unarmed men, But in a case like this, I don't think protests are warranted, and I think we should pray for the police officer as well as the family involved in this case."
In an interview Thursday with ABC13’s Tracy Clemons, the usually bombastic Quanell was quite humble. He paid tribute to Freeport’s police chief for giving him access to the crime scene and facts gathered by the police:
"I think that police chief in Freeport should be looked at as an example of how to handle a shooting dealing with some young African American male. The way he worked with the community instantly to deal with what was happening, the way he gave me unprecedented access to a lot of the facts that I could see for myself was able to suppress and quell a lot of the anger, the frustration, and the desire to riot."
Quanell recounted that:
"The girlfriend said to me 'Mr. X, when I woke up he had a gun in my face,' And I said, 'Was the gun real?' She said 'Yes it was real.' She said when the police came in, the police told him put the gun down. He said no, then turned the gun back toward her head and pointed at her head. That's when police officer fired the shots to kill him."
Quanell X told Clemons this case taught him that “jumping to conclusions helps no one.” He added:
"It was a learning experience for me to make sure that we as leaders of our people, we have to make sure that as quick as we possibly can gather as much of the facts as we can and be very skeptical of what you hear, investigate the facts for yourself as best you can as quickly as you can, then take a position."
Now, if this shooting had occurred in Houston, Quanell would never have gotten such cooperation from the police. Instead, his ass would have been thrown in the slammer if he had tried to stick his nose into their investigation while it was still going on.
Perhaps there is a lesson in this not only for community activists, but for all police agencies as well.
PARIS ATTACK UNDERSCORES A DEEPER MALAISE
Stratfor Global Intelligence
January 8, 2015
Wednesday's deadly attack against a French satirical publication has the potential to upset relations between European states and their Muslim citizenries. The strategic intent behind such attacks is precisely to sow this kind of crisis, as well as to influence French policy and recruit more jihadists. Even though Islamist extremism is, at its core, an intra-Muslim conflict, such incidents will draw in non-Muslims, exacerbating matters.
Three suspected Islamist militants attacked the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with high-powered assault rifles, killing 12 people. Among the dead are the editor and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier, who was on a hit list appearing in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine for "insulting the Prophet Mohammed." Eyewitness said they heard the attackers shouting, "We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed," and chanting, "God is Great" in Arabic. This is the third such attack in a Western country in less than three months. The Paris incident involves perpetrators who displayed sophisticated small arms and small unit training.
Whether or not these attacks are the handiwork of self-motivated grassroots jihadists and cells or of individuals tied to international jihadist entities, such incidents aggravate tense relations between the Western and Muslim worlds. This is all the more significant in Europe, where states are experiencing the rise of right-wing nationalism and Muslim communities have long experienced disaffection. The jihadist objective is to get the states to crack down harder on Muslim communities in order to further their narrative that the West is waging war on Islam and Muslims.
While Western states go to great lengths to demonstrate that no such clash of civilizations is occurring, right-wing forces engage in rhetoric that reinforces these fears among many common Muslims across the world. More important, there is a longstanding conflict of values — particularly freedom of expression, which is cherished in the West but seen by many Muslims as a license for sacrilege. Though the vast majority of Muslims will not engage in violence in response to speech deemed as blasphemous, there are many who will. In Pakistan, the blasphemy law has been a subject of huge controversy. Many Pakistani citizens have been murdered by their fellow countrymen for speech or behavior deemed objectionable. At the root of this problem is the extreme discomfort many Muslims have with free expression, although this attitude is not universal. The person of the Prophet Mohammed is all the more sensitive because the traditional view is that he cannot be depicted pictorially, let alone in a satirical manner.
Ultimately, this is an intra-Muslim struggle for power and control wrapped in a debate over what it means to be a Muslim in today's world and what the boundaries of justifiable action are. Defining those factors is one tool that can be used to gain power; attacks against the West and its interests, meant to force Westerners to pull out of Muslim lands or to attack Muslims and enforce the jihadist narrative, are another. This issue undermines efforts by moderate and progressive Muslims to advance the notion of freedoms based on an Islamic ethos.
The ongoing intra-Muslim debate gives extremists ample ideological and, by extension, geopolitical space to exploit. The jihadist enterprise deliberately targets non-Muslims, in particular the West, in part as a means to gain ground within the Muslim milieu. This strategy also sucks the Western world into what is essentially a Muslim civil war in order to tackle the security threats posed by Islamist militant actors.
However, Western involvement in this internal debate will not help defeat extremism or ease relations between Muslims and the West. The end of jihadism will come only when Muslims defeat their own deviants on the ideological battleground.
January 8, 2015
Wednesday's deadly attack against a French satirical publication has the potential to upset relations between European states and their Muslim citizenries. The strategic intent behind such attacks is precisely to sow this kind of crisis, as well as to influence French policy and recruit more jihadists. Even though Islamist extremism is, at its core, an intra-Muslim conflict, such incidents will draw in non-Muslims, exacerbating matters.
Three suspected Islamist militants attacked the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with high-powered assault rifles, killing 12 people. Among the dead are the editor and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier, who was on a hit list appearing in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine for "insulting the Prophet Mohammed." Eyewitness said they heard the attackers shouting, "We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed," and chanting, "God is Great" in Arabic. This is the third such attack in a Western country in less than three months. The Paris incident involves perpetrators who displayed sophisticated small arms and small unit training.
Whether or not these attacks are the handiwork of self-motivated grassroots jihadists and cells or of individuals tied to international jihadist entities, such incidents aggravate tense relations between the Western and Muslim worlds. This is all the more significant in Europe, where states are experiencing the rise of right-wing nationalism and Muslim communities have long experienced disaffection. The jihadist objective is to get the states to crack down harder on Muslim communities in order to further their narrative that the West is waging war on Islam and Muslims.
While Western states go to great lengths to demonstrate that no such clash of civilizations is occurring, right-wing forces engage in rhetoric that reinforces these fears among many common Muslims across the world. More important, there is a longstanding conflict of values — particularly freedom of expression, which is cherished in the West but seen by many Muslims as a license for sacrilege. Though the vast majority of Muslims will not engage in violence in response to speech deemed as blasphemous, there are many who will. In Pakistan, the blasphemy law has been a subject of huge controversy. Many Pakistani citizens have been murdered by their fellow countrymen for speech or behavior deemed objectionable. At the root of this problem is the extreme discomfort many Muslims have with free expression, although this attitude is not universal. The person of the Prophet Mohammed is all the more sensitive because the traditional view is that he cannot be depicted pictorially, let alone in a satirical manner.
Ultimately, this is an intra-Muslim struggle for power and control wrapped in a debate over what it means to be a Muslim in today's world and what the boundaries of justifiable action are. Defining those factors is one tool that can be used to gain power; attacks against the West and its interests, meant to force Westerners to pull out of Muslim lands or to attack Muslims and enforce the jihadist narrative, are another. This issue undermines efforts by moderate and progressive Muslims to advance the notion of freedoms based on an Islamic ethos.
The ongoing intra-Muslim debate gives extremists ample ideological and, by extension, geopolitical space to exploit. The jihadist enterprise deliberately targets non-Muslims, in particular the West, in part as a means to gain ground within the Muslim milieu. This strategy also sucks the Western world into what is essentially a Muslim civil war in order to tackle the security threats posed by Islamist militant actors.
However, Western involvement in this internal debate will not help defeat extremism or ease relations between Muslims and the West. The end of jihadism will come only when Muslims defeat their own deviants on the ideological battleground.
HOUSTON LAWYERS ACCUSED OF EXTORTING MONEY FROM MOBSTER IN WINTESS PROTECTION PROGRAM
The attorneys are accused of threatening to reveal a mobster’s true identity if he did not pay up
As many of you know, I think the legal profession as a whole ranks somewhere between a poisonous snake and a stink bug. Of course, in the minds of the lawyers in t his case, there’s nothing safer than trying to extort money from a mobster in the witness protection program. After all, mobsters are not likely to call the cops and if they’re in the witness protection program they do not want active mobsters they ratted on to find them.
LAWSUIT CLAIMS HOUSTON ATTORNEYS THREATENED TO OUT FORMER MOB BOSS LIVING IN WITNESS PROTECTION DURING STRIP CLUB DEAL
By Michael Barajas
Houston Press
January 8, 2015
The saga of a Westheimer strip club and the former mob boss who used to run it has taken another strange turn.
First, a little background: Lisa Hansegard bought the now-shuttered Baby Dolls strip club from the estate of Aris Mylonas, the father of her child, after Mylonas died in 2005, and shortly thereafter entered into an agreement with James Cabella to operate the club -- Cabella already owned a strip joint, the Penthouse Club, across the street and was apparently looking to expand his reach in the local strip-club scene. Hansegard claims in court documents that when she later started negotiating with Cabella to sell him Baby Dolls, she discovered through the strip-joint grapevine that Cabella was really Vincent Palermo, aka "Vinny Ocean," former acting boss of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family. After being indicted in the late 1990s on several federal charges, Palermo admitted to taking part in multiple murders, agreed to help the feds take down the DeCavalcante family, and, after spending two years in prison, entered the federal witness protection program (some have said that Tony Soprano was loosely based on Palermo's life in the DeCavalcante family).
The New York Post and KPRC identified Cabella as Vinny Ocean back in 2009, right around the time the Penthouse Club was suing the City of Houston over its sexually oriented business ordinance. But in 2007, it was still a fairly well-kept secret that a former mob boss was running strip clubs on Westheimer.
According to a lawsuit Hansegard filed in Harris County this week, her then attorneys Howard Steele and Charles Sturm (collectively Steele Sturm PLLC) tried to leverage that bit of information while negotiating the sale of Baby Dolls to Cabella. Unbeknownst to Hansegard, she alleges, Steele Sturm made thinly-veiled threats to publicly out Cabella as Vinny Ocean when he tried to back out of the sale in May 2007.
"In light of this position, we will be filing a lawsuit if our bill is not paid by Friday against Vinnie 'The Ocean' Palermo for fraudulent inducement," Steele wrote in an email to Palmero's then-attorney, Al Van Huff. That seems to have jump-started things, and by summer Cabella, through his wife Debra, agreed to buy the club from Hansegard for $1.3 million paid out over the course of 10 years.
But a couple of months later, when the parties hit a speed bump negotiating the bill of sale, Sturm sent Van Huff another email threatening a lawsuit. "I will send you a courtesy copy of the petition today by courier. It is being filed in 51 minutes, along with a press release, unless I receive a letter from you rescinding the contract before then. (I bet it makes the national news tonight.) Your phone is going to be very busy. Best regards."
"Lisa Hansegard did not authorize the lawsuit or extortion threat," states Hansegard's lawsuit filed against Steele Sturm this week. According to a letter filed as an exhibit to Hansegard's lawsuit, after Cabella again met with Hansegard the summer of 2007 and the two came to a settlement about the sale and how the money would be paid out, Cabella asked Hansegard to agree to this condition: "[I]t is my understanding that Lisa Hansegard and Steele Sturm PLLC ... agree to hold any personal information they may have regarding James Cabella and Debra Cabella confidential without restriction or limitation."
Hansegard's lawsuit accuses Steele Sturm of professional negligence, gross negligence, and breach of fiduciary duty, alleging their handling of her case cost her over $1 million -- once Cabella entered bankruptcy court in 2013, Hansegard only recouped about $350,000 from Cabella for the club, according to her lawsuit. (Steele Sturm didn't respond to multiple requests for comment this week, and Brent Perry, Hansegard's attorney, declined to speak on the record but did confirm and clarify some details raised in Hansegard's petition.)
Hansegard alleges in her lawsuit that Steele Sturm's strong-arming ultimately tanked any settlement with Cabella over payment for the club. Documents she filed with her lawsuit show Cabella's lawyers had in fact sent Steele Sturm an executed bill of sale, a guarantee agreement, and three checks - two for $2,500 for Hansegard and a $10,000 check for Steele Sturm - in June 2007. She alleges she never got those payments or the guarantee agreement.
And, for reasons that still aren't entirely clear, Steele Sturm the following month emailed the former mobster's attorney another ultimatum: Pay $3 million over ten years, or fork over $950,000 in 30 days. According to the lawsuit, negotiations effectively disintegrated after that point.
Hansegard alleges in her suit: "Rather than confirm to Lisa Hansegard that James Cabella agreed to the guarantee and obtain her signature, Steele Sturm deposited the $10,000 check and continued its efforts to extort money from James and Debra Cabella."
As many of you know, I think the legal profession as a whole ranks somewhere between a poisonous snake and a stink bug. Of course, in the minds of the lawyers in t his case, there’s nothing safer than trying to extort money from a mobster in the witness protection program. After all, mobsters are not likely to call the cops and if they’re in the witness protection program they do not want active mobsters they ratted on to find them.
LAWSUIT CLAIMS HOUSTON ATTORNEYS THREATENED TO OUT FORMER MOB BOSS LIVING IN WITNESS PROTECTION DURING STRIP CLUB DEAL
By Michael Barajas
Houston Press
January 8, 2015
The saga of a Westheimer strip club and the former mob boss who used to run it has taken another strange turn.
First, a little background: Lisa Hansegard bought the now-shuttered Baby Dolls strip club from the estate of Aris Mylonas, the father of her child, after Mylonas died in 2005, and shortly thereafter entered into an agreement with James Cabella to operate the club -- Cabella already owned a strip joint, the Penthouse Club, across the street and was apparently looking to expand his reach in the local strip-club scene. Hansegard claims in court documents that when she later started negotiating with Cabella to sell him Baby Dolls, she discovered through the strip-joint grapevine that Cabella was really Vincent Palermo, aka "Vinny Ocean," former acting boss of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family. After being indicted in the late 1990s on several federal charges, Palermo admitted to taking part in multiple murders, agreed to help the feds take down the DeCavalcante family, and, after spending two years in prison, entered the federal witness protection program (some have said that Tony Soprano was loosely based on Palermo's life in the DeCavalcante family).
The New York Post and KPRC identified Cabella as Vinny Ocean back in 2009, right around the time the Penthouse Club was suing the City of Houston over its sexually oriented business ordinance. But in 2007, it was still a fairly well-kept secret that a former mob boss was running strip clubs on Westheimer.
According to a lawsuit Hansegard filed in Harris County this week, her then attorneys Howard Steele and Charles Sturm (collectively Steele Sturm PLLC) tried to leverage that bit of information while negotiating the sale of Baby Dolls to Cabella. Unbeknownst to Hansegard, she alleges, Steele Sturm made thinly-veiled threats to publicly out Cabella as Vinny Ocean when he tried to back out of the sale in May 2007.
"In light of this position, we will be filing a lawsuit if our bill is not paid by Friday against Vinnie 'The Ocean' Palermo for fraudulent inducement," Steele wrote in an email to Palmero's then-attorney, Al Van Huff. That seems to have jump-started things, and by summer Cabella, through his wife Debra, agreed to buy the club from Hansegard for $1.3 million paid out over the course of 10 years.
But a couple of months later, when the parties hit a speed bump negotiating the bill of sale, Sturm sent Van Huff another email threatening a lawsuit. "I will send you a courtesy copy of the petition today by courier. It is being filed in 51 minutes, along with a press release, unless I receive a letter from you rescinding the contract before then. (I bet it makes the national news tonight.) Your phone is going to be very busy. Best regards."
"Lisa Hansegard did not authorize the lawsuit or extortion threat," states Hansegard's lawsuit filed against Steele Sturm this week. According to a letter filed as an exhibit to Hansegard's lawsuit, after Cabella again met with Hansegard the summer of 2007 and the two came to a settlement about the sale and how the money would be paid out, Cabella asked Hansegard to agree to this condition: "[I]t is my understanding that Lisa Hansegard and Steele Sturm PLLC ... agree to hold any personal information they may have regarding James Cabella and Debra Cabella confidential without restriction or limitation."
Hansegard's lawsuit accuses Steele Sturm of professional negligence, gross negligence, and breach of fiduciary duty, alleging their handling of her case cost her over $1 million -- once Cabella entered bankruptcy court in 2013, Hansegard only recouped about $350,000 from Cabella for the club, according to her lawsuit. (Steele Sturm didn't respond to multiple requests for comment this week, and Brent Perry, Hansegard's attorney, declined to speak on the record but did confirm and clarify some details raised in Hansegard's petition.)
Hansegard alleges in her lawsuit that Steele Sturm's strong-arming ultimately tanked any settlement with Cabella over payment for the club. Documents she filed with her lawsuit show Cabella's lawyers had in fact sent Steele Sturm an executed bill of sale, a guarantee agreement, and three checks - two for $2,500 for Hansegard and a $10,000 check for Steele Sturm - in June 2007. She alleges she never got those payments or the guarantee agreement.
And, for reasons that still aren't entirely clear, Steele Sturm the following month emailed the former mobster's attorney another ultimatum: Pay $3 million over ten years, or fork over $950,000 in 30 days. According to the lawsuit, negotiations effectively disintegrated after that point.
Hansegard alleges in her suit: "Rather than confirm to Lisa Hansegard that James Cabella agreed to the guarantee and obtain her signature, Steele Sturm deposited the $10,000 check and continued its efforts to extort money from James and Debra Cabella."
OUR LAWMAKERS ARE ON THE TAKE OF THE LOBBIES
Instead of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have a government of the lobbies, by the lobbies and for the lobbies
Scott Burns observes that the politicians we have elected to the House and Senate are bought and paid for by the lobbies.
THE HIGH COST OF POLITICIANS
By Scott Burns
AssetBuilder
January 2, 2015
We should be glad the cost of politicians isn’t included in the consumer price index. If it were, inflation would soar. The passage of the omnibus spending bill guaranteed hyperinflation for the cost of political influence. It also guaranteed the end of Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Instead, we have a government of the lobbies, by the lobbies and for the lobbies. It is a government funded by the entities with the largest checkbooks. It is time, as some have suggested, that members of Congress wear suits like NASCAR drivers so we can see who their sponsors are.
As discussed in the media, the omnibus spending bill contained more than spending resolutions. Among other intrusions it contained a bill that let us know who owns Congress. Another may raise the cost of owning Senators and Representatives about tenfold.
You can understand by playing a few rounds of Follow the Money with me.
The rider receiving the most attention was H.R. 992. This bill removes the Dodd-Frank restrictions on bank trading of derivatives. These are the strange little instruments that are so profitable for banks some of the time and so devastating at other times. The distinction is that when they are profitable, it’s private profit. But when they are devastating, it brings a public rescue by the Federal Reserve.
The bankers get the mine. We get the shaft. You and I can’t get deals like this, but the Too Big To Fail banks can. When you are Too Big To Fail, you’re also big enough to write the rules.
In fact, the bill wasn’t written by a politician or by his office support staff. It came straight from Citigroup. The original wording was 100 percent Citigroup. As the nation’s third-largest bank it is definitely in the Too Big to Fail category.
Writing the bill wasn’t all. According to opensecrets.org, Citigroup’s political action committee contributed $804,000 to Congressional campaigns in 2014. That's about $5,000 per candidate supported. More to the point, 34 of the 57 Democrats who voted for the bill had received money from this PAC at some time since 2010. Yes, Citigroup spent money on Republicans too, but getting them in favor was less of a struggle.
Willie Sutton robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” Congress is clever: they get their cash as a gift.
You should also know that Citigroup isn’t just any corporation. If we had a “three strikes” rule for corporations, Citigroup would already be in prison for life. Citigroup is a repeat offender in the same way as individuals who are habitual offenders. Citigroup just keeps showing up before the judge.
Here are recent fines and settlements Citigroup has paid or made, as recorded on the Corporate Research Project website:
November 2014:
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fines Citigroup $5 million related to analysts offering favorable research coverage in connection with a planned public offering.
FINRA fines Citigroup $15 million for failing to adequately supervise communications between stock analysts and clients.
The U.S. Commodity Future Trading Commission fines Citigroup $310 million and the British Financial Conduct Authority fines it $358 million to settle charges it (and other large banks) had manipulated the foreign exchange market.
July 2014:
The Justice Department announces Citigroup would pay $7 billion to settle charges due to the banks packaging and sales of toxic mortgage-backed securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
April 2014:
Institutional investors suing Citigroup for its sales of bad residential mortgages win an agreement that the bank will pay $1.13 billion to settle their claims.
That’s just 2014. Actions against this miscreant corporation go back not years, but decades.
As if this isn’t offensive enough, another rider in the Omnibus bill rubs salt in our wound. The bill describes it as “Division N—Other Matters” on page 1599 of the undebated 1603 page bill. The rider increases the sums of money individuals and PACs can contribute to political campaigns. But that's an understatement. Put the changes together and political contributions can be 10 times larger. That's hyperinflation.
Mark Twain once said, “There is no native criminal class except Congress.” Years ago, I thought that was funny. Now I consider it straight reporting.
Scott Burns observes that the politicians we have elected to the House and Senate are bought and paid for by the lobbies.
THE HIGH COST OF POLITICIANS
By Scott Burns
AssetBuilder
January 2, 2015
We should be glad the cost of politicians isn’t included in the consumer price index. If it were, inflation would soar. The passage of the omnibus spending bill guaranteed hyperinflation for the cost of political influence. It also guaranteed the end of Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Instead, we have a government of the lobbies, by the lobbies and for the lobbies. It is a government funded by the entities with the largest checkbooks. It is time, as some have suggested, that members of Congress wear suits like NASCAR drivers so we can see who their sponsors are.
As discussed in the media, the omnibus spending bill contained more than spending resolutions. Among other intrusions it contained a bill that let us know who owns Congress. Another may raise the cost of owning Senators and Representatives about tenfold.
You can understand by playing a few rounds of Follow the Money with me.
The rider receiving the most attention was H.R. 992. This bill removes the Dodd-Frank restrictions on bank trading of derivatives. These are the strange little instruments that are so profitable for banks some of the time and so devastating at other times. The distinction is that when they are profitable, it’s private profit. But when they are devastating, it brings a public rescue by the Federal Reserve.
The bankers get the mine. We get the shaft. You and I can’t get deals like this, but the Too Big To Fail banks can. When you are Too Big To Fail, you’re also big enough to write the rules.
In fact, the bill wasn’t written by a politician or by his office support staff. It came straight from Citigroup. The original wording was 100 percent Citigroup. As the nation’s third-largest bank it is definitely in the Too Big to Fail category.
Writing the bill wasn’t all. According to opensecrets.org, Citigroup’s political action committee contributed $804,000 to Congressional campaigns in 2014. That's about $5,000 per candidate supported. More to the point, 34 of the 57 Democrats who voted for the bill had received money from this PAC at some time since 2010. Yes, Citigroup spent money on Republicans too, but getting them in favor was less of a struggle.
Willie Sutton robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” Congress is clever: they get their cash as a gift.
You should also know that Citigroup isn’t just any corporation. If we had a “three strikes” rule for corporations, Citigroup would already be in prison for life. Citigroup is a repeat offender in the same way as individuals who are habitual offenders. Citigroup just keeps showing up before the judge.
Here are recent fines and settlements Citigroup has paid or made, as recorded on the Corporate Research Project website:
November 2014:
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fines Citigroup $5 million related to analysts offering favorable research coverage in connection with a planned public offering.
FINRA fines Citigroup $15 million for failing to adequately supervise communications between stock analysts and clients.
The U.S. Commodity Future Trading Commission fines Citigroup $310 million and the British Financial Conduct Authority fines it $358 million to settle charges it (and other large banks) had manipulated the foreign exchange market.
July 2014:
The Justice Department announces Citigroup would pay $7 billion to settle charges due to the banks packaging and sales of toxic mortgage-backed securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
April 2014:
Institutional investors suing Citigroup for its sales of bad residential mortgages win an agreement that the bank will pay $1.13 billion to settle their claims.
That’s just 2014. Actions against this miscreant corporation go back not years, but decades.
As if this isn’t offensive enough, another rider in the Omnibus bill rubs salt in our wound. The bill describes it as “Division N—Other Matters” on page 1599 of the undebated 1603 page bill. The rider increases the sums of money individuals and PACs can contribute to political campaigns. But that's an understatement. Put the changes together and political contributions can be 10 times larger. That's hyperinflation.
Mark Twain once said, “There is no native criminal class except Congress.” Years ago, I thought that was funny. Now I consider it straight reporting.
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