Audio released of Roseanne's first interview following racist tweet
By Sonaiya Kelley
Los Angeles Times
June 24, 2018
One day after Roseanne Barr's eponymous ABC sitcom was cancelled following a racist tweet, the disgraced comedian did a phone interview with spiritual advisor Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. On Sunday, weeks after the cancellation, audio from that conversation was made available to the public.
Though Boteach initially refused to release the interview, the 36-minute conversation was finally uploaded onto the rabbi's Soundcloud account Sunday morning. A transcript of the conversation was also posted to Facebook.
"It's really hard to say this, but I didn't mean what they think I meant," Barr told Boteach in the audio. "And that's what so painful. But I have to face that it hurt people. When you hurt people, even unwillingly, there's no excuse."
Barr came under fire earlier this month for referring to Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to former President Obama and an African American woman, as if the "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby."
"I have black children in my family," she told Boteach. "I can't let 'em say these things about that, after 30 years of my putting my family and my health and my livelihood at risk to stand up for people. I'm a lot of things, a loud mouth and all that stuff. But I'm not stupid, for God's sake. I never would have wittingly called any black person … a monkey. I just wouldn't do that. I didn't do that."
Since her initial tweet and after the Boteach interview, Barr, who has always prided herself on being provocative and controversial, has continued to take shots at Jarrett, and retweeted one post that called Jarrett “pure evil.”
"I’m just so sorry that I was so unclear and stupid," she continued to Boteach. "I’m very sorry. But I don’t think that and I would never do that. I have loved ones who are African American, and I just can’t stand it. I’ve made a huge error and I told ABC when they called me."
Since the tweet, not only has "Roseanne" been cancelled but Barr was dropped from her agency ICM Partners and has had reruns of her show pulled from Paramount Network, TV Land and CMT. Last week, ABC greenlighted a "Roseanne" spinoff "The Conners" without her inclusion.
"You have to feel remorse, not just repentance," Barr told Boteach. "That's just a step towards feeling remorse. And when you feel remorse you have to follow it with recompense," she said. "You have to take action in the world -- whether it's through money or other things -- to correct your sin. After your heart is unfrozen and after it stops being broken from the pain you caused others, you stop being a robot and you've got to come back to God. So it's remorse, and I definitely feel remorse."
"I don't want to run off and blather on with excuses," she continued. "But I apologize to anyone who thought, or felt offended and who thought that I meant something that I, in fact, did not mean. It was my own ignorance, and there's no excuse for that ignorance."
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s a shame that one of the very few Trump-supporting Hollywood celebrities had to put her big mouth in motion on Twitter before putting her brain in gear.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
WE'VE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT POT BEING NON-ADDICTIVE
Marijuana addiction is real but many users don’t realize that
by Christine Vestal
The Washington Post
June 24, 2018
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — For as long as most residents can remember, smoking marijuana has been a part of life here. The fact that California legalized the practice in January went practically unnoticed in this quiet town a half-hour’s drive north of San Francisco, where some say the normalization of America’s marijuana culture got its start.
For Quintin Pohl and other teenagers before him, smoking pot was a rite of passage. It was a diversion from the loneliness he felt at home when his parents were splitting up and a salve for middle-school angst. It was his entire social life in seventh and eighth grades, he said, when social life is everything.
Even though nearly all his friends were using marijuana and seeming to enjoy it, Pohl said, at some point his marijuana use took a turn he never saw coming: He became addicted.
Many people are unaware of marijuana addiction. But in the public health and medical communities, it is a well-defined disorder that includes physical withdrawal symptoms, cravings and psychological dependence. Many say it is on the rise, perhaps because of the increasing potency of genetically engineered plants and the use of concentrated products, or because more users are partaking multiple times a day.
“There should be no controversy about the existence of marijuana addiction,” said David Smith, a physician who has been treating addiction since he opened a free clinic in San Francisco’s drug-drenched Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the 1960s. “We see it every day. The controversy should be why it appears to be affecting more people.”
Although estimates of the number of people who use marijuana vary, the federal government and the marijuana industry tend to agree that total marijuana use has remained relatively constant over the past decade. Increased use in the past three years has been slight, despite increased commercial availability in states that have legalized it.
The percentage of people who become addicted to marijuana — estimated at about 9 percent of all users, and about 17 percent of those who start in adolescence — also has been stable. Some studies report that even higher proportions of marijuana users develop a dependence, which means they experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop using the drug.
Yet here in Northern California, some addiction treatment practitioners say they’re seeing a surge in demand for help, particularly among adolescents.
Marijuana’s estimated rate of addiction is lower than that of cocaine and alcohol (15 percent) and heroin (24 percent). Unlike with opioids and stimulants, marijuana dependence tends to develop slowly: Months or years may pass before symptoms begin to affect a dependent user’s life.
There are no known reports of anyone dying of a marijuana overdose or of the drug’s common withdrawal symptoms: chills, sweats, cravings, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, anxiety and irritability.
According to Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an estimated 2.7 million Americans meet the diagnostic criteria for marijuana dependence, second only to alcohol dependence.
Smith, a visiting physician at Muir Wood Adolescent and Family Services, a treatment center for boys where Pohl eventually got help, speculates that the potency of today’s pot is causing a higher prevalence of problematic marijuana use.
“Back in the day when kids were sitting around smoking a joint, the THC levels found in marijuana averaged from 2 to 4 percent,” Smith said. “That’s what most parents think is going on today. And that’s why society thinks marijuana is harmless.”
But selective breeding has resulted in an average potency of 20 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana. Some strains exceed 30 percent.
Marijuana concentrates and extracts, much more commonly used in the past five years, have THC levels that range from 40 percent to more than 80 percent, according to marijuana industry promotional information and Drug Enforcement Administration reports.
Susan Weiss, who directs research on the health effects of marijuana at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told a group of addiction doctors at the annual meeting of the American Society of Addiction Medicine in April that the federal government is trying to get the message out that marijuana can be addictive.
“But believe it or not,” she told the group, “we’re having a hard time convincing people that addiction exists.”
The National Cannabis Industry Association’s chief spokesman, Morgan Fox, said he’s not surprised the federal government is having a hard time convincing the public that marijuana can be addictive.
“It’s their own fault,” he said of the government. “When people find out they’ve been lied to by the federal government about the relative harms of marijuana for decades, they are much less likely to believe anything they have to say going forward, even if that information is accurate.”
Fox said his organization has no disagreement with the finding that about 9 percent of people who use marijuana become addicted, and his organization urges its members to make that clear in their marketing information. But he disagrees that more-potent forms of marijuana may be causing an increase in addiction. “It just means people need to consume less to achieve the desired effect,” he said.
So far, no scientific studies have shown that stronger pot increases the likelihood of addiction, and large swaths of the general public continue to question the existence of marijuana addiction. But for Quintin Pohl, addiction was real.
Quintin's story
Pohl said his marijuana addiction took years to develop. His mother, Kimberly Thomas, said that once she realized her son was using marijuana frequently, “it was like a roller coaster chugging uphill, chugging, chugging, chugging. You know something is happening,” she said, “and then just within a couple of days, you reach the peak and zoom downhill. It was awful, awful.”
Scott Sowle, executive director of the Muir Wood rehabilitation center, said he gets the same call from parents nearly every day.
“They call and say, ‘My 16-year-old son was doing really well in school. He was interested in sports and involved in extracurricular activities. But suddenly, he’s just not the same kid anymore.’ ”
Pohl recalled that he drank a little, off and on, but that marijuana was his constant obsession. After middle school, he got involved in rowing for a couple of years and took a break from his group of marijuana friends. But after he decided competitive rowing wasn’t for him, Pohl said he started smoking pot again, this time with new friends who smoked all the time.
And then the roller coaster plunged.
His grades plummeted. He stopped going home most of the time and was couch surfing for a while. Finally, he said, his mom called the police on him for stealing her car. “At that point, I was heartless, emotionless,” he said. “I was just kind of a blob taking up space. I was baked 24/7.”
Pohl’s mother said she saw that he was in trouble and demanded that he stay at home every moment he wasn’t in school. (Pohl’s father was living in San Francisco.)
“She told me to come back home. So I did,” Pohl said. “At the time, I wasn’t sure why she did that. I was still in that whole miserable phase, smoking at least an ounce of weed a week — two ounces on a good week.” (One ounce is enough to smoke four to eight joints every day for a week, depending on their size.)
Then early one morning before school, Pohl recalled, two private investigators his mother had hired appeared and took him to Muir Wood.
Pohl said he went through a week of pure misery at the rehab center: angry, in denial and suffering. “I couldn’t sleep for a week. I was cold, and then I was sweating. I hated everything,” he said. “And then the sun hit my face one morning, and it felt great. Things tasted good, smelled better, everything was just enhanced.”
During his six weeks there, Pohl took intensive classes with about 10 other boys and talked to his therapist frequently. His mother spent eight hours a week there, attending parent classes, sharing meals with her son and working with him and his therapist to address the underlying issues that had led him to self-medicate with marijuana.
Pohl says he hasn’t smoked marijuana since he left Muir Wood last July. For the rest of the summer and after school in the fall, he attended classes at a Muir Wood outpatient clinic in San Rafael.
Wearing black pants, a black sweatshirt and a pink skull cap on a cool but sunny day in late May, Pohl smiles broadly when he talks about his future. After his June graduation, he says, he plans to start working full time at the grocery store where he’s had a part-time job for the last year.
He’s thinks he can start smoking marijuana again some day — socially, when he’s an adult.
by Christine Vestal
The Washington Post
June 24, 2018
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — For as long as most residents can remember, smoking marijuana has been a part of life here. The fact that California legalized the practice in January went practically unnoticed in this quiet town a half-hour’s drive north of San Francisco, where some say the normalization of America’s marijuana culture got its start.
For Quintin Pohl and other teenagers before him, smoking pot was a rite of passage. It was a diversion from the loneliness he felt at home when his parents were splitting up and a salve for middle-school angst. It was his entire social life in seventh and eighth grades, he said, when social life is everything.
Even though nearly all his friends were using marijuana and seeming to enjoy it, Pohl said, at some point his marijuana use took a turn he never saw coming: He became addicted.
Many people are unaware of marijuana addiction. But in the public health and medical communities, it is a well-defined disorder that includes physical withdrawal symptoms, cravings and psychological dependence. Many say it is on the rise, perhaps because of the increasing potency of genetically engineered plants and the use of concentrated products, or because more users are partaking multiple times a day.
“There should be no controversy about the existence of marijuana addiction,” said David Smith, a physician who has been treating addiction since he opened a free clinic in San Francisco’s drug-drenched Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the 1960s. “We see it every day. The controversy should be why it appears to be affecting more people.”
Although estimates of the number of people who use marijuana vary, the federal government and the marijuana industry tend to agree that total marijuana use has remained relatively constant over the past decade. Increased use in the past three years has been slight, despite increased commercial availability in states that have legalized it.
The percentage of people who become addicted to marijuana — estimated at about 9 percent of all users, and about 17 percent of those who start in adolescence — also has been stable. Some studies report that even higher proportions of marijuana users develop a dependence, which means they experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop using the drug.
Yet here in Northern California, some addiction treatment practitioners say they’re seeing a surge in demand for help, particularly among adolescents.
Marijuana’s estimated rate of addiction is lower than that of cocaine and alcohol (15 percent) and heroin (24 percent). Unlike with opioids and stimulants, marijuana dependence tends to develop slowly: Months or years may pass before symptoms begin to affect a dependent user’s life.
There are no known reports of anyone dying of a marijuana overdose or of the drug’s common withdrawal symptoms: chills, sweats, cravings, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, anxiety and irritability.
According to Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an estimated 2.7 million Americans meet the diagnostic criteria for marijuana dependence, second only to alcohol dependence.
Smith, a visiting physician at Muir Wood Adolescent and Family Services, a treatment center for boys where Pohl eventually got help, speculates that the potency of today’s pot is causing a higher prevalence of problematic marijuana use.
“Back in the day when kids were sitting around smoking a joint, the THC levels found in marijuana averaged from 2 to 4 percent,” Smith said. “That’s what most parents think is going on today. And that’s why society thinks marijuana is harmless.”
But selective breeding has resulted in an average potency of 20 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana. Some strains exceed 30 percent.
Marijuana concentrates and extracts, much more commonly used in the past five years, have THC levels that range from 40 percent to more than 80 percent, according to marijuana industry promotional information and Drug Enforcement Administration reports.
Susan Weiss, who directs research on the health effects of marijuana at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told a group of addiction doctors at the annual meeting of the American Society of Addiction Medicine in April that the federal government is trying to get the message out that marijuana can be addictive.
“But believe it or not,” she told the group, “we’re having a hard time convincing people that addiction exists.”
The National Cannabis Industry Association’s chief spokesman, Morgan Fox, said he’s not surprised the federal government is having a hard time convincing the public that marijuana can be addictive.
“It’s their own fault,” he said of the government. “When people find out they’ve been lied to by the federal government about the relative harms of marijuana for decades, they are much less likely to believe anything they have to say going forward, even if that information is accurate.”
Fox said his organization has no disagreement with the finding that about 9 percent of people who use marijuana become addicted, and his organization urges its members to make that clear in their marketing information. But he disagrees that more-potent forms of marijuana may be causing an increase in addiction. “It just means people need to consume less to achieve the desired effect,” he said.
So far, no scientific studies have shown that stronger pot increases the likelihood of addiction, and large swaths of the general public continue to question the existence of marijuana addiction. But for Quintin Pohl, addiction was real.
Quintin's story
Pohl said his marijuana addiction took years to develop. His mother, Kimberly Thomas, said that once she realized her son was using marijuana frequently, “it was like a roller coaster chugging uphill, chugging, chugging, chugging. You know something is happening,” she said, “and then just within a couple of days, you reach the peak and zoom downhill. It was awful, awful.”
Scott Sowle, executive director of the Muir Wood rehabilitation center, said he gets the same call from parents nearly every day.
“They call and say, ‘My 16-year-old son was doing really well in school. He was interested in sports and involved in extracurricular activities. But suddenly, he’s just not the same kid anymore.’ ”
Pohl recalled that he drank a little, off and on, but that marijuana was his constant obsession. After middle school, he got involved in rowing for a couple of years and took a break from his group of marijuana friends. But after he decided competitive rowing wasn’t for him, Pohl said he started smoking pot again, this time with new friends who smoked all the time.
And then the roller coaster plunged.
His grades plummeted. He stopped going home most of the time and was couch surfing for a while. Finally, he said, his mom called the police on him for stealing her car. “At that point, I was heartless, emotionless,” he said. “I was just kind of a blob taking up space. I was baked 24/7.”
Pohl’s mother said she saw that he was in trouble and demanded that he stay at home every moment he wasn’t in school. (Pohl’s father was living in San Francisco.)
“She told me to come back home. So I did,” Pohl said. “At the time, I wasn’t sure why she did that. I was still in that whole miserable phase, smoking at least an ounce of weed a week — two ounces on a good week.” (One ounce is enough to smoke four to eight joints every day for a week, depending on their size.)
Then early one morning before school, Pohl recalled, two private investigators his mother had hired appeared and took him to Muir Wood.
Pohl said he went through a week of pure misery at the rehab center: angry, in denial and suffering. “I couldn’t sleep for a week. I was cold, and then I was sweating. I hated everything,” he said. “And then the sun hit my face one morning, and it felt great. Things tasted good, smelled better, everything was just enhanced.”
During his six weeks there, Pohl took intensive classes with about 10 other boys and talked to his therapist frequently. His mother spent eight hours a week there, attending parent classes, sharing meals with her son and working with him and his therapist to address the underlying issues that had led him to self-medicate with marijuana.
Pohl says he hasn’t smoked marijuana since he left Muir Wood last July. For the rest of the summer and after school in the fall, he attended classes at a Muir Wood outpatient clinic in San Rafael.
Wearing black pants, a black sweatshirt and a pink skull cap on a cool but sunny day in late May, Pohl smiles broadly when he talks about his future. After his June graduation, he says, he plans to start working full time at the grocery store where he’s had a part-time job for the last year.
He’s thinks he can start smoking marijuana again some day — socially, when he’s an adult.
Monday, June 25, 2018
IT IS GETTING TO BE WHERE COPS MUST LET A BLACK MAN GET OFF THE FIRST SHOT BEFORE THEY CAN SHHOT AT HIM
Angry protests erupt in Minneapolis after cops shoot armed black man
A week ago cops in East Pittsburgh shot an unarmed black youth who had been involved in a drive by shooting 13 minutes earlier. The death of Antwon Rose sparked outrage in the black community and has led to mass protests. And now protests have broken out in Minneapolis over the police shooting of an armed black man.
On Saturday night, Minneapolis cops responded to a report of a man firing a gun into the air and into the ground. Officers spotted the man, and as they got out of their squad car, he fled on foot carrying a handgun. After a foot chase of several blocks the two cops fired at 31-year-old Thurman J. Blevins, 31, a black man. The handgun was found next to his body.
Once again the black community erupted into outrage with angry street protests in Minneapolis. The fact that Blevins was armed made no difference.
California State Senator Steven Bradford accuses the police of shooting blacks as a form of oppression. He says:
“It always blows me away when law enforcement fear for their life, only when they're facing black and brown people. We don't have a problem with law enforcement, we got a problem with racism in this country.”
“The use of deadly force was only enacted in this country after slavery as another way of suppressing black people in this country. And that mindset has not changed to this day.”
So in order to deal with his perceived racism of cops, Bradford has introduced a bill that is working its way through the California legislature which if passed and signed by the governor would severely restrict the use of deadly force by that state’s law enforcement officers. It raises California's standard for use of deadly force by changing wording in existing law, removing “reasonable force” and changing it to “necessary force.” That will only allow officers to use deadly force if they had no other option.
That’s almost like saying officers would be justified in shooting at someone only after that person got off the first shot at them.
The proposed California bill notwithstanding, with the protests erupting almost every time cops shoot a black man, it’s getting to be where they must let that man get off the first shot before they can shoot at him.
College criminal justice graduates, welcome to today’s world of more dangerous policing.
A week ago cops in East Pittsburgh shot an unarmed black youth who had been involved in a drive by shooting 13 minutes earlier. The death of Antwon Rose sparked outrage in the black community and has led to mass protests. And now protests have broken out in Minneapolis over the police shooting of an armed black man.
On Saturday night, Minneapolis cops responded to a report of a man firing a gun into the air and into the ground. Officers spotted the man, and as they got out of their squad car, he fled on foot carrying a handgun. After a foot chase of several blocks the two cops fired at 31-year-old Thurman J. Blevins, 31, a black man. The handgun was found next to his body.
Once again the black community erupted into outrage with angry street protests in Minneapolis. The fact that Blevins was armed made no difference.
California State Senator Steven Bradford accuses the police of shooting blacks as a form of oppression. He says:
“It always blows me away when law enforcement fear for their life, only when they're facing black and brown people. We don't have a problem with law enforcement, we got a problem with racism in this country.”
“The use of deadly force was only enacted in this country after slavery as another way of suppressing black people in this country. And that mindset has not changed to this day.”
So in order to deal with his perceived racism of cops, Bradford has introduced a bill that is working its way through the California legislature which if passed and signed by the governor would severely restrict the use of deadly force by that state’s law enforcement officers. It raises California's standard for use of deadly force by changing wording in existing law, removing “reasonable force” and changing it to “necessary force.” That will only allow officers to use deadly force if they had no other option.
That’s almost like saying officers would be justified in shooting at someone only after that person got off the first shot at them.
The proposed California bill notwithstanding, with the protests erupting almost every time cops shoot a black man, it’s getting to be where they must let that man get off the first shot before they can shoot at him.
College criminal justice graduates, welcome to today’s world of more dangerous policing.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MOMMIE PEES ON THE PARADE
by Bob Walsh
Chad Jackson is a guest of the people of the state of Florida at the Martin Correctional Institution. HE is now in the hole, not because of anything he did but because his mother is a pain in the ass.
Geraldine Harriel showed up at the prison to protest living conditions there. She wasn't alone. Prison staff issued her and some of her road dogs trespass warnings. She is now barred from seeing her son, at least temporarily. Sonny boy is in until 2020 on drug charges.
Mommie and her friends are fairly serious shit stirrers. Their actions have been linked (kind of interesting word there) to at least one prison riot and one state-wide lockdown. Prison officials say the shit stirrers have been inciting prisoners to violence.
The local S O's records seem to back up the protesters version of where they were (not on prison grounds) and what they were doing (peacefully being bozos). The protesters assert they are being threatened by prison staff and are being told that their family members who are guests of the state will be retaliated against for the protests.
Maybe it's just me and I am only seeing a very small piece of the picture, but it seems to me that the people at the Florida DOC in general and Martin C.I. in particular are a whole lot more worried about people protesting allegedly deficient living conditions than they should be, assuming of course the living conditions are in fact decent.
Chad Jackson is a guest of the people of the state of Florida at the Martin Correctional Institution. HE is now in the hole, not because of anything he did but because his mother is a pain in the ass.
Geraldine Harriel showed up at the prison to protest living conditions there. She wasn't alone. Prison staff issued her and some of her road dogs trespass warnings. She is now barred from seeing her son, at least temporarily. Sonny boy is in until 2020 on drug charges.
Mommie and her friends are fairly serious shit stirrers. Their actions have been linked (kind of interesting word there) to at least one prison riot and one state-wide lockdown. Prison officials say the shit stirrers have been inciting prisoners to violence.
The local S O's records seem to back up the protesters version of where they were (not on prison grounds) and what they were doing (peacefully being bozos). The protesters assert they are being threatened by prison staff and are being told that their family members who are guests of the state will be retaliated against for the protests.
Maybe it's just me and I am only seeing a very small piece of the picture, but it seems to me that the people at the Florida DOC in general and Martin C.I. in particular are a whole lot more worried about people protesting allegedly deficient living conditions than they should be, assuming of course the living conditions are in fact decent.
DISAPPEARING IN BAJA CALIFORNIA
Men and women keep disappearing without a trace in Tijuana, Ensenada and other locations in Baja California
Baja California used to be a pleasant place to visit. You could frolic on the beaches with little fear of being harmed. And men could have a fucking good time in seedy Tijuana. Apparently not any more. Men and women keep disappearing in BC without a trace.
A report in Borderland Beat notes that 14 women and 40 men have vanished, with most of the disappearances occurring in Tijuana. The ages of the women range between 18 and 24 years. The report gives a time frame of from May to date. There were 89 disappearances in Ensenada, but with no time frame given.
The report also notes that about 4,500 people have been dumped into mass graves without their DNA being registered. The report does not state whether those mass graves are only in BC or whether they are throughout Mexico. And again, no time frame is given. The vast majority of those bodies remain unclaimed because even in those cases where relatives do find a loved one buried in a mass grave, they do not have the ability to pay for the body’s exhumation.
Bienvenido a Baja California ….. tu Gringo tonto culo!
Baja California used to be a pleasant place to visit. You could frolic on the beaches with little fear of being harmed. And men could have a fucking good time in seedy Tijuana. Apparently not any more. Men and women keep disappearing in BC without a trace.
A report in Borderland Beat notes that 14 women and 40 men have vanished, with most of the disappearances occurring in Tijuana. The ages of the women range between 18 and 24 years. The report gives a time frame of from May to date. There were 89 disappearances in Ensenada, but with no time frame given.
The report also notes that about 4,500 people have been dumped into mass graves without their DNA being registered. The report does not state whether those mass graves are only in BC or whether they are throughout Mexico. And again, no time frame is given. The vast majority of those bodies remain unclaimed because even in those cases where relatives do find a loved one buried in a mass grave, they do not have the ability to pay for the body’s exhumation.
Bienvenido a Baja California ….. tu Gringo tonto culo!
Sunday, June 24, 2018
MORE FASCISM FROM THE LEFT
by Bob Walsh
It is a basic truism of life. Conservatives believe that Liberals are wrong. Liberals believe that Conservatives are EVIL and that any means to destroy them is acceptable for the greater good.
Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant in Lexington, VA a couple of nights ago for the sole crime of working for the Trump administration. This follows similar unsettling incidents with Trump advisor Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen (who presumably travels with a security detail).
Liberals, it would seem, are often nasty assholes.
It is a basic truism of life. Conservatives believe that Liberals are wrong. Liberals believe that Conservatives are EVIL and that any means to destroy them is acceptable for the greater good.
Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant in Lexington, VA a couple of nights ago for the sole crime of working for the Trump administration. This follows similar unsettling incidents with Trump advisor Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen (who presumably travels with a security detail).
Liberals, it would seem, are often nasty assholes.
HER MOUTH SHOULD HAVE BEEN DUCT TAPED
Ex-Texans Cheerleader Says She Was Duct Taped for Being 'Skinny Fat'
By Jenna West
Sports Illustrated
June 22, 2018
A sixth former Texans cheerleader is suing the team, claiming that she was body shamed, according to NBC News.
In a press conference on Friday, Angelina Rosa claimed that her skin was duct taped without her consent because she was considered "skinny fat" by her coach.
Rosa described how her coach once asked her to stay behind when her teammates went out to the field and then threatened to cut her from the team. Suddenly, a group of alumni and her coach used tape with the Texans logo on it to pull her skin tight. They told her it would "hurt a little."
"My skin was being torn because of the movements," Rosa said. She also said her skin got sweaty and irritated under the tape.
Rosa joins a lawsuit filed earlier this month against the Texans by five former cheerleaders. In the suit, they claimed that they weren't paid for all of the hours they worked and were bullied and sexually harassed.
After the lawsuit was filed, the Texans released a statement saying, "We have reviewed the complaints and look forward to vigorously defending ourselves against these allegations."
This lawsuit is not the only one filed recently by cheerleaders against NFL teams. Last week, a former Cowboys cheerleader filed a suit claiming that the team failed to pay her minimum wage and overtime. She also claimed that she was paid only a quarter of what the mascot made.
Former cheerleaders for the Saints and Dolphins have also filed complaints, claiming that they were sexually harassed and discriminated against.
At the press conference, Rosa described her time with the Texans as a "hostile work environment" and said that she developed unhealthy eating habits. She tried to only eat popcorn and drink water at one point in an attempt to lose weight.
Gloria Allred, the attorney of the six cheerleaders, read a statement at the press conference that she wrote to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell about the allegations.
"The NFL should stand for more than just greed," Allred said. "Mr. Goodell, you dropped the ball. Instead of scoring a goal for women's rights, you retreated back to the locker room with your head down."
Amy Palcic, the Texans' vice president of communications, said the team had no additional comment on Friday.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I do not have any sympathy whatsoever for the NFL cheerleaders, or for the cheerleaders of any other professional sports leagues for that matter.
During the annual tryouts for each team, hundreds of women knock themselves out doing sexually-suggestive gyrations in an attempt to be chosen for the coveted cheerleader positions in which they will wear skin-tight short shorts and boob-revealing halters. And well after their cheerleading came to an end, they’ve come forward and bellyache about how they were treated. Fuck them all!
By Jenna West
Sports Illustrated
June 22, 2018
A sixth former Texans cheerleader is suing the team, claiming that she was body shamed, according to NBC News.
In a press conference on Friday, Angelina Rosa claimed that her skin was duct taped without her consent because she was considered "skinny fat" by her coach.
Rosa described how her coach once asked her to stay behind when her teammates went out to the field and then threatened to cut her from the team. Suddenly, a group of alumni and her coach used tape with the Texans logo on it to pull her skin tight. They told her it would "hurt a little."
"My skin was being torn because of the movements," Rosa said. She also said her skin got sweaty and irritated under the tape.
Rosa joins a lawsuit filed earlier this month against the Texans by five former cheerleaders. In the suit, they claimed that they weren't paid for all of the hours they worked and were bullied and sexually harassed.
After the lawsuit was filed, the Texans released a statement saying, "We have reviewed the complaints and look forward to vigorously defending ourselves against these allegations."
This lawsuit is not the only one filed recently by cheerleaders against NFL teams. Last week, a former Cowboys cheerleader filed a suit claiming that the team failed to pay her minimum wage and overtime. She also claimed that she was paid only a quarter of what the mascot made.
Former cheerleaders for the Saints and Dolphins have also filed complaints, claiming that they were sexually harassed and discriminated against.
At the press conference, Rosa described her time with the Texans as a "hostile work environment" and said that she developed unhealthy eating habits. She tried to only eat popcorn and drink water at one point in an attempt to lose weight.
Gloria Allred, the attorney of the six cheerleaders, read a statement at the press conference that she wrote to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell about the allegations.
"The NFL should stand for more than just greed," Allred said. "Mr. Goodell, you dropped the ball. Instead of scoring a goal for women's rights, you retreated back to the locker room with your head down."
Amy Palcic, the Texans' vice president of communications, said the team had no additional comment on Friday.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I do not have any sympathy whatsoever for the NFL cheerleaders, or for the cheerleaders of any other professional sports leagues for that matter.
During the annual tryouts for each team, hundreds of women knock themselves out doing sexually-suggestive gyrations in an attempt to be chosen for the coveted cheerleader positions in which they will wear skin-tight short shorts and boob-revealing halters. And well after their cheerleading came to an end, they’ve come forward and bellyache about how they were treated. Fuck them all!
THE GUN CONTROL CROWD WILL HATE THIS
‘Drop the gun or I will drop you’: 2 teens arrested in attack on pregnant pizza delivery driver
By Chelsea Prince
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 21, 2018
Two more people are in custody following an attack on a pregnant pizza delivery driver in southwest Atlanta, Atlanta police said Thursday.
A boy and a girl, both 16, face multiple charges in connection with the incident, which occurred just before 9 p.m. Wednesday in the 4100 block of Waits Avenue in southwest Atlanta.
According to police, the driver who was eight months pregnant was delivering a pizza to a home when three people approached her from the rear of the residence.
“The victim advised that one of the males was holding a black handgun,” Atlanta police spokesman Officer Jarius Daugherty said in a statement. “At that time, the male with the gun started to strike the victim with the weapon and demanded the keys to her vehicle.”
The woman refused and ran to a neighboring house before the suspects caught up with her and continued their assault, he said.
Dennis Madaris heard the woman’s screams and went outside with his firearm, Daugherty said.
“When I came around the corner here, I saw three people were beating on this lady. One of them had a gun,” Madaris told Channel 2 Action News. “One of them turned around and he had the gun in his hand. I told him, ‘Drop the gun or I will drop you!’ And they threw the gun down and all three of them took off.”
Officials said the victim suffered cuts and bruises on her face and was taken to the hospital as a precautionary reason due to her pregnancy. Police told Channel 2 Action News she was alert and breathing.
Atlanta police previously detained one man in connection with the crime. He has not been identified.
The teens were captured later on charges of criminal attempt to commit robbery, aggravated assault and obstruction of officers. The boy was also charged with possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and possession of a controlled substance.
Wednesday’s attack occurred 11 days after a 9-year-old boy lured another female pizza delivery driver to same street. Two men then stole her car at gunpoint.
The boy and the men got into the woman’s car, left and are still at large.
By Chelsea Prince
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 21, 2018
Two more people are in custody following an attack on a pregnant pizza delivery driver in southwest Atlanta, Atlanta police said Thursday.
A boy and a girl, both 16, face multiple charges in connection with the incident, which occurred just before 9 p.m. Wednesday in the 4100 block of Waits Avenue in southwest Atlanta.
According to police, the driver who was eight months pregnant was delivering a pizza to a home when three people approached her from the rear of the residence.
“The victim advised that one of the males was holding a black handgun,” Atlanta police spokesman Officer Jarius Daugherty said in a statement. “At that time, the male with the gun started to strike the victim with the weapon and demanded the keys to her vehicle.”
The woman refused and ran to a neighboring house before the suspects caught up with her and continued their assault, he said.
Dennis Madaris heard the woman’s screams and went outside with his firearm, Daugherty said.
“When I came around the corner here, I saw three people were beating on this lady. One of them had a gun,” Madaris told Channel 2 Action News. “One of them turned around and he had the gun in his hand. I told him, ‘Drop the gun or I will drop you!’ And they threw the gun down and all three of them took off.”
Officials said the victim suffered cuts and bruises on her face and was taken to the hospital as a precautionary reason due to her pregnancy. Police told Channel 2 Action News she was alert and breathing.
Atlanta police previously detained one man in connection with the crime. He has not been identified.
The teens were captured later on charges of criminal attempt to commit robbery, aggravated assault and obstruction of officers. The boy was also charged with possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and possession of a controlled substance.
Wednesday’s attack occurred 11 days after a 9-year-old boy lured another female pizza delivery driver to same street. Two men then stole her car at gunpoint.
The boy and the men got into the woman’s car, left and are still at large.
COPS ARE NOT DOCTORS AND HAVE NO BUSINESS GIVING MEDICAL ADVICE
Former acting AG to lead Minneapolis police ketamine probe
By Andy Mannix
Minneapolis Star Tribune
June 23, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS — Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates will lead an independent investigation into whether Minneapolis police officers crossed a line and urged paramedics to inject members of the public with ketamine, a powerful sedative.
"The people of Minneapolis have spoken and we've heard their message loud and clear, which is, we need to get to the bottom of what happened and we need to do it in a transparent and accountable way completely free from any interference from officials in the city," Mayor Jacob Frey said Friday.
Yates was the Justice Department's second-in-command at the end of the Obama administration and acting attorney general under President Donald Trump until he fired her for refusing to defend the travel ban executive order in late January 2017. Last month, she announced she was returning to her old law firm to help conduct investigations.
"She's got a record that's beyond reproach," Frey said. "It speaks for itself. Just a long history of commitment to unearthing the truth and delivering justice, and that's exactly what we need now."
Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said earlier this week they planned to appoint an independent investigator to examine the ketamine cases, following a Star Tribune story that included excerpts from a draft report authored by staff from the city Office of Police Conduct Review.
The draft report cited several examples of police asking paramedics to sedate people with ketamine on calls where both came to the scene, and questioned whether officers should be suggesting medical care.
"Between 2016 and 2017, MPD officers explicitly asked EMS to provide ketamine, either when calling for EMS services or upon arrival of the ambulance eight times," states the report. "Also, MPD officers assisted [EMS workers] while they injected individuals with ketamine" by holding them down while the EMS worker reportedly gave the shot.
Several of these cases cited in the report resulted in serious medical complications, including some needing intubation to breathe.
The report has not been made public, but police command staff in May sent a departmental memo ordering officers not to make suggestions on the use of sedatives.
On Friday, Arradondo said he was concerned to learn about the alleged incidents. "It certainly does not fit into our core values," he said. "The mayor and I immediately had deliberate and intentional conversations on how this could potentially impact the public trust."
Arradondo said it was important to find a skilled investigator who could come with a high degree of credibility and impartiality. He said his role will be to provide Yates and her team with unfettered access to police records and to guarantee the cooperation of his department personnel.
The cost of hiring Yates will "be competitive with others of her caliber," but can't be determined until the investigation begins, Frey spokesman Mychal Vlatkovich said.
Several City Council members said they were "appalled" by the allegations in the draft report. A council committee ordered police oversight staff to complete their report so it can be published by late July, and for an independent review of the report.
Leadership for Hennepin Healthcare also asked for a review of cases involving its paramedics, and a spokeswoman for North Memorial Medical Center said it will also participate.
On Thursday, in a standing-room-only council committee meeting, more than a dozen people criticized the reported police conduct regarding use of ketamine.
In response to some of these comments, Arradondo said he examined data involving ketamine cases over the past five years and found only one example of the person who received ketamine actually being arrested. In the other cases, police responded to the scene along with paramedics, but the incident did not result in an arrest, he said.
"I think that's important, because I need to highlight that these are our community members in a medical crisis and it's not about arrests or suspicious activity or behavior," he said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Why in the fuck is the city going to spend a shitload of money on a study when all the police chief needs to do is order that under no circumstances are his cops to give any medical advice to anyone.
By Andy Mannix
Minneapolis Star Tribune
June 23, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS — Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates will lead an independent investigation into whether Minneapolis police officers crossed a line and urged paramedics to inject members of the public with ketamine, a powerful sedative.
"The people of Minneapolis have spoken and we've heard their message loud and clear, which is, we need to get to the bottom of what happened and we need to do it in a transparent and accountable way completely free from any interference from officials in the city," Mayor Jacob Frey said Friday.
Yates was the Justice Department's second-in-command at the end of the Obama administration and acting attorney general under President Donald Trump until he fired her for refusing to defend the travel ban executive order in late January 2017. Last month, she announced she was returning to her old law firm to help conduct investigations.
"She's got a record that's beyond reproach," Frey said. "It speaks for itself. Just a long history of commitment to unearthing the truth and delivering justice, and that's exactly what we need now."
Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said earlier this week they planned to appoint an independent investigator to examine the ketamine cases, following a Star Tribune story that included excerpts from a draft report authored by staff from the city Office of Police Conduct Review.
The draft report cited several examples of police asking paramedics to sedate people with ketamine on calls where both came to the scene, and questioned whether officers should be suggesting medical care.
"Between 2016 and 2017, MPD officers explicitly asked EMS to provide ketamine, either when calling for EMS services or upon arrival of the ambulance eight times," states the report. "Also, MPD officers assisted [EMS workers] while they injected individuals with ketamine" by holding them down while the EMS worker reportedly gave the shot.
Several of these cases cited in the report resulted in serious medical complications, including some needing intubation to breathe.
The report has not been made public, but police command staff in May sent a departmental memo ordering officers not to make suggestions on the use of sedatives.
On Friday, Arradondo said he was concerned to learn about the alleged incidents. "It certainly does not fit into our core values," he said. "The mayor and I immediately had deliberate and intentional conversations on how this could potentially impact the public trust."
Arradondo said it was important to find a skilled investigator who could come with a high degree of credibility and impartiality. He said his role will be to provide Yates and her team with unfettered access to police records and to guarantee the cooperation of his department personnel.
The cost of hiring Yates will "be competitive with others of her caliber," but can't be determined until the investigation begins, Frey spokesman Mychal Vlatkovich said.
Several City Council members said they were "appalled" by the allegations in the draft report. A council committee ordered police oversight staff to complete their report so it can be published by late July, and for an independent review of the report.
Leadership for Hennepin Healthcare also asked for a review of cases involving its paramedics, and a spokeswoman for North Memorial Medical Center said it will also participate.
On Thursday, in a standing-room-only council committee meeting, more than a dozen people criticized the reported police conduct regarding use of ketamine.
In response to some of these comments, Arradondo said he examined data involving ketamine cases over the past five years and found only one example of the person who received ketamine actually being arrested. In the other cases, police responded to the scene along with paramedics, but the incident did not result in an arrest, he said.
"I think that's important, because I need to highlight that these are our community members in a medical crisis and it's not about arrests or suspicious activity or behavior," he said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Why in the fuck is the city going to spend a shitload of money on a study when all the police chief needs to do is order that under no circumstances are his cops to give any medical advice to anyone.
SORRY ABOUT THAT
Gang leader 'apologized' after Bronx boy, 15, was dragged out of a bodega and butchered in a case of MISTAKEN IDENTITY because attackers confused him for a man in a sex video
By Snejana Farberov
Daily Mail
June 23, 2018
The 15-year-old who was dragged out of a Bronx bodega and brutally slashed to death with a machete may have been the victim of a tragic case of mistaken identity involving a sex video, according to cops - and now gang leaders are apologizing via social media.
Investigators believe Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, 15, could have been mistaken for a man in an online sex tape with a relative of one of the attackers before he was butchered outside the Zesarina Grocery at 11.40pm on Wednesday.
It came as his mother, Leandra Feliz, 48, described her son as a 'sweet' kid with no connections to gangs who had enrolled on an NYPD program to become a police officer.
'His dream in the future was to be a detective,' she told the New York Post. 'Since he was five years old, he told me, "Mommy, I want to be a police".'
The victim's brother in law Derek Grullon, 19, told the New York Daily News that he's received messages on Facebook from men claiming to be part of Trinitarios, a Dominican gang known for violence.
'They said, ‘We had the wrong person",' according to Grullon, who said his wife - the victim's sister - received similar messages.
She got a two-minute video mea culpa via Snapchat, he told the NY Post, in which the gang leader 'said they kicked all of them out of the gang.'
Upon getting the message, 'We cried', Grullon told the Post. 'He was innocent.'
According to the News, the sex tape that started the fracas showed one man rapping while another had sex with a woman whose face was covered in a shirt. It's not clear which of the two men Guzman-Feliz may have been mistaken for.
CCTV video posted by Facebook user Riichy Rich on Friday shows the pack of men forcibly dragging Guzman-Feliz by the hood of his jacket out of the bodega and frantically stabbing and slashing him with a machete before fleeing on foot.
After a few seconds, Guzman-Feliz is seen standing on the street corner with blood pouring from a wound in his neck.
He then runs across the street, heading towards the nearby St Barnabas Hospital.
According to police, the mortally wounded boy never reached the hospital and collapsed a block away.
Another extremely graphic video posted on social media by a different user shows Guzman-Feliz drenched in blood from head to toe, sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the wall.
A woman tries to apply pressure to his neck before police officers and paramedics surround him. Guzman-Feliz succumbed to his injuries at the scene.
Officers said with his dying breath, the 15-year-old asked for some water, according to ABC 7 New York.
Investigators said he had told his mother he was going to the bodega a block away from his house to either repay a debt, or lend $5 to a friend. He never made it home that night.
The victim's sister, Genesis Collado-Feliz, 17, said her younger brother loved playing video games and would come to her for advice about girls. She said Lesandro had recently become friends with a group of older boys, but she insisted he was not in a gang.
'He tried to run into the store because he thought he'd be safe. They dragged him from the store like a dog,' Collado-Feliz told the New York Post. 'They were grown men and he was only 15.'
Guzman-Feliz was a student at the Dr Richard Izquierdo Health and Science Charter School. News 12 The Bronx reported that he had aspired to become a police detective.
Police are searching for at least six suspects in connection to the vicious killing. They were last seen driving away in a white sedan and a dark sedan.
By Snejana Farberov
Daily Mail
June 23, 2018
The 15-year-old who was dragged out of a Bronx bodega and brutally slashed to death with a machete may have been the victim of a tragic case of mistaken identity involving a sex video, according to cops - and now gang leaders are apologizing via social media.
Investigators believe Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, 15, could have been mistaken for a man in an online sex tape with a relative of one of the attackers before he was butchered outside the Zesarina Grocery at 11.40pm on Wednesday.
It came as his mother, Leandra Feliz, 48, described her son as a 'sweet' kid with no connections to gangs who had enrolled on an NYPD program to become a police officer.
'His dream in the future was to be a detective,' she told the New York Post. 'Since he was five years old, he told me, "Mommy, I want to be a police".'
The victim's brother in law Derek Grullon, 19, told the New York Daily News that he's received messages on Facebook from men claiming to be part of Trinitarios, a Dominican gang known for violence.
'They said, ‘We had the wrong person",' according to Grullon, who said his wife - the victim's sister - received similar messages.
She got a two-minute video mea culpa via Snapchat, he told the NY Post, in which the gang leader 'said they kicked all of them out of the gang.'
Upon getting the message, 'We cried', Grullon told the Post. 'He was innocent.'
According to the News, the sex tape that started the fracas showed one man rapping while another had sex with a woman whose face was covered in a shirt. It's not clear which of the two men Guzman-Feliz may have been mistaken for.
CCTV video posted by Facebook user Riichy Rich on Friday shows the pack of men forcibly dragging Guzman-Feliz by the hood of his jacket out of the bodega and frantically stabbing and slashing him with a machete before fleeing on foot.
After a few seconds, Guzman-Feliz is seen standing on the street corner with blood pouring from a wound in his neck.
He then runs across the street, heading towards the nearby St Barnabas Hospital.
According to police, the mortally wounded boy never reached the hospital and collapsed a block away.
Another extremely graphic video posted on social media by a different user shows Guzman-Feliz drenched in blood from head to toe, sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the wall.
A woman tries to apply pressure to his neck before police officers and paramedics surround him. Guzman-Feliz succumbed to his injuries at the scene.
Officers said with his dying breath, the 15-year-old asked for some water, according to ABC 7 New York.
Investigators said he had told his mother he was going to the bodega a block away from his house to either repay a debt, or lend $5 to a friend. He never made it home that night.
The victim's sister, Genesis Collado-Feliz, 17, said her younger brother loved playing video games and would come to her for advice about girls. She said Lesandro had recently become friends with a group of older boys, but she insisted he was not in a gang.
'He tried to run into the store because he thought he'd be safe. They dragged him from the store like a dog,' Collado-Feliz told the New York Post. 'They were grown men and he was only 15.'
Guzman-Feliz was a student at the Dr Richard Izquierdo Health and Science Charter School. News 12 The Bronx reported that he had aspired to become a police detective.
Police are searching for at least six suspects in connection to the vicious killing. They were last seen driving away in a white sedan and a dark sedan.
DISPARITY IN THE SHOOTING OF BLACKS BY COPS IS DUE TO HIGHER CRIME RATES BY BLACKS
Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016
By Joseph Cesario, David J. Johnson, William Terrill
Sage Journals
June 13, 2018
Abstract
Is there evidence of a Black–White disparity in death by police gunfire in the United States? This is commonly answered by comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks and Whites, with odds benchmarked against each group’s population proportion. However, adjusting for population values has questionable assumptions given the context of deadly force decisions.
We benchmark 2 years of fatal shooting data on 16 crime rate estimates. When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. Multiverse analyses showed only one significant anti-Black disparity of 144 possible tests.
Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for Blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings.
For unarmed shootings or misidentification shootings, data are too uncertain to be conclusive.
__________
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT COPS SHOOTING BLACK MEN
6 Facts From New Study Finding NO RACIAL BIAS Against Blacks In Police Shootings
By James Barrett
Daily Wire
July 11, 2016
A new study of over a thousand police-involved shootings found what researcher Harvard Prof. Roland G. Fryer Jr. calls "the most surprising result of my career": There is no racial bias in police-involved shootings. Not only are blacks not more likely to be fired upon by police than whites in tense moments, the study found that, if anything, they are less likely to be shot at.
In what is one of the most comprehensive studies on the issue to date, Fryer — an African-American economist who says he began the study in response to his anger over the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray — examined 1,332 shootings that occurred between 2000 and 2015 in 10 major police departments. By the end of the exhaustive research, Fryer and his teams spent an estimated 3,000 hours poring over the data from Los Angeles, Ca., three cities in Texas (Houston, Austin, and Dallas), and four counties and two cities in Florida (Orlando and Jacksonville).
Rather than a superficial study of statistics, Fryer's team probed deeper into each case to make sure they were conducting an apples to apples investigation. In its summary of the study, the New York Times provides some of the key details of cases the study incorporated in its analysis, including, "How old was the suspect? How many police officers were at the scene? Were they mostly white? Was the officer at the scene for a robbery, violent activity, a traffic stop or something else? Was it nighttime? Did the officer shoot after being attacked or before a possible attack?" Some of the study's driving questions included was a black suspect more likely to be fired upon — in cases where lethal force was justified and when it was unjustified — and did the officer shoot more quickly at black suspects?
To his admitted "surprise," Fryer concluded that the racial bias narrative is demonstrably false when it comes to police-involved shootings. Here are six takeaways from Fryer's study.
1. Police are not more likely to fire on blacks than whites. In fact, blacks are 20% less likely to be fired on.
When Fryer and his team dug into the details of the 1,332 officer-involved shootings, they found that officers were actually less likely to fire on black suspects without having been attacked.
Fryer found the same to be true when he examined cases that did not result in shootings. Using data from the Houston Police Department, Fryer looked at arrests where lethal force might have been justified — where suspects were arrested for serious offenses, like resisting arrest, fleeing, or attack an officer — and found that if a suspect was black, officers were about 20% less likely to shoot. His findings included that blacks were about 24-22% less likely to be shot at when police "might plausibly have fired."
2. Blacks and whites involved in police shootings were equally likely to be carrying a weapon.
As the New York Times highlights, Fryer also found that black and white civilians involved in police shootings "were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon." This conclusion likewise directly undermines the assumption that racial bias is a major factor in officers' use of lethal force, as some have posited that a disproportionate number of blacks were unarmed in police shootings as compared to whites.
3. Blacks are more likely to be treated worse by officers when it comes to physical contact.
While the study found that black men and women were not more likely to be fired upon by officers, according to a study of NYPD stop-and-frisk records from 2003-2013, they were treated worse by officers when it came to physical contact, including "use of hands" (17% more often), being pushed to the wall (18% more), use of handcuffs (16%), having weapons drawn on them (19%), being pushed to the ground (18%), and having a weapon pointed at them (24%), and being pepper sprayed (25% more, though they only assessed 9 cases).
4. The notion that police officers' accounts are biased and unreliable is largely a myth.
Fryer's research revealed that concerns about the reliability of police reports were also largely unfounded, his results being about the same whether or not he referred to the recounting of events provided by officers.
5. Use of mobile video to document alleged police brutality is not impacting policing practices.
Another conclusion of the study was that the use of cell phones and social media to document alleged police brutality does not appear to have changed policing practices, a question that many have posed in recent years following high-profile videos of police encounters.
6. Fryer's study aligns with other research.
Fryer's findings align with other studies that have found that the narrative of racial bias in use of lethal force by police is largely based on de-contextualized data and false assumptions. In 2015, for example, 50% of the victims of police shootings were white, while 26% were black. Some have tried to argue that this is evidence of racial bias against blacks because they represent only 15% of the population; however, as Heather Mac Donald points out, blacks account for a disproportionate percentage of major crimes, including 62% of robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults. Another example of de-contextualized data is that showing a higher percent of unarmed blacks who are shot than unarmed whites, but as both Mac Donald and Fryer found, when the details of the cases are included, such statistics turn out to be misleading.
The reality, as Prof. Fryer and others have found, is that our law enforcement is largely composed of men and women doing their best to protect the lives of citizens, handling what are often life and death situations as fairly and safely as they can.
By Joseph Cesario, David J. Johnson, William Terrill
Sage Journals
June 13, 2018
Abstract
Is there evidence of a Black–White disparity in death by police gunfire in the United States? This is commonly answered by comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks and Whites, with odds benchmarked against each group’s population proportion. However, adjusting for population values has questionable assumptions given the context of deadly force decisions.
We benchmark 2 years of fatal shooting data on 16 crime rate estimates. When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. Multiverse analyses showed only one significant anti-Black disparity of 144 possible tests.
Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for Blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings.
For unarmed shootings or misidentification shootings, data are too uncertain to be conclusive.
__________
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT COPS SHOOTING BLACK MEN
6 Facts From New Study Finding NO RACIAL BIAS Against Blacks In Police Shootings
By James Barrett
Daily Wire
July 11, 2016
A new study of over a thousand police-involved shootings found what researcher Harvard Prof. Roland G. Fryer Jr. calls "the most surprising result of my career": There is no racial bias in police-involved shootings. Not only are blacks not more likely to be fired upon by police than whites in tense moments, the study found that, if anything, they are less likely to be shot at.
In what is one of the most comprehensive studies on the issue to date, Fryer — an African-American economist who says he began the study in response to his anger over the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray — examined 1,332 shootings that occurred between 2000 and 2015 in 10 major police departments. By the end of the exhaustive research, Fryer and his teams spent an estimated 3,000 hours poring over the data from Los Angeles, Ca., three cities in Texas (Houston, Austin, and Dallas), and four counties and two cities in Florida (Orlando and Jacksonville).
Rather than a superficial study of statistics, Fryer's team probed deeper into each case to make sure they were conducting an apples to apples investigation. In its summary of the study, the New York Times provides some of the key details of cases the study incorporated in its analysis, including, "How old was the suspect? How many police officers were at the scene? Were they mostly white? Was the officer at the scene for a robbery, violent activity, a traffic stop or something else? Was it nighttime? Did the officer shoot after being attacked or before a possible attack?" Some of the study's driving questions included was a black suspect more likely to be fired upon — in cases where lethal force was justified and when it was unjustified — and did the officer shoot more quickly at black suspects?
To his admitted "surprise," Fryer concluded that the racial bias narrative is demonstrably false when it comes to police-involved shootings. Here are six takeaways from Fryer's study.
1. Police are not more likely to fire on blacks than whites. In fact, blacks are 20% less likely to be fired on.
When Fryer and his team dug into the details of the 1,332 officer-involved shootings, they found that officers were actually less likely to fire on black suspects without having been attacked.
Fryer found the same to be true when he examined cases that did not result in shootings. Using data from the Houston Police Department, Fryer looked at arrests where lethal force might have been justified — where suspects were arrested for serious offenses, like resisting arrest, fleeing, or attack an officer — and found that if a suspect was black, officers were about 20% less likely to shoot. His findings included that blacks were about 24-22% less likely to be shot at when police "might plausibly have fired."
2. Blacks and whites involved in police shootings were equally likely to be carrying a weapon.
As the New York Times highlights, Fryer also found that black and white civilians involved in police shootings "were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon." This conclusion likewise directly undermines the assumption that racial bias is a major factor in officers' use of lethal force, as some have posited that a disproportionate number of blacks were unarmed in police shootings as compared to whites.
3. Blacks are more likely to be treated worse by officers when it comes to physical contact.
While the study found that black men and women were not more likely to be fired upon by officers, according to a study of NYPD stop-and-frisk records from 2003-2013, they were treated worse by officers when it came to physical contact, including "use of hands" (17% more often), being pushed to the wall (18% more), use of handcuffs (16%), having weapons drawn on them (19%), being pushed to the ground (18%), and having a weapon pointed at them (24%), and being pepper sprayed (25% more, though they only assessed 9 cases).
4. The notion that police officers' accounts are biased and unreliable is largely a myth.
Fryer's research revealed that concerns about the reliability of police reports were also largely unfounded, his results being about the same whether or not he referred to the recounting of events provided by officers.
5. Use of mobile video to document alleged police brutality is not impacting policing practices.
Another conclusion of the study was that the use of cell phones and social media to document alleged police brutality does not appear to have changed policing practices, a question that many have posed in recent years following high-profile videos of police encounters.
6. Fryer's study aligns with other research.
Fryer's findings align with other studies that have found that the narrative of racial bias in use of lethal force by police is largely based on de-contextualized data and false assumptions. In 2015, for example, 50% of the victims of police shootings were white, while 26% were black. Some have tried to argue that this is evidence of racial bias against blacks because they represent only 15% of the population; however, as Heather Mac Donald points out, blacks account for a disproportionate percentage of major crimes, including 62% of robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults. Another example of de-contextualized data is that showing a higher percent of unarmed blacks who are shot than unarmed whites, but as both Mac Donald and Fryer found, when the details of the cases are included, such statistics turn out to be misleading.
The reality, as Prof. Fryer and others have found, is that our law enforcement is largely composed of men and women doing their best to protect the lives of citizens, handling what are often life and death situations as fairly and safely as they can.
Saturday, June 23, 2018
MORE ON NEWLY SWORN-IN COP OPPRESSES BLACK PEOPLE
Antwon Rose was very probably the shooter in the drive by shooting
By Dave Freeman
I am reading on the PoliceOne website, that the officer has 8 years of experience as a police officer with other departments.
After the drive by shooting and the stop, two guns were found in the car which fit the description of the vehicle used in the earlier shooting, and that the back window of the vehicle was shot out. (This is known as a clue.)
Additionally, the dead thug [Antwon Rose], who ran as soon as the car was stopped, had an empty magazine – and no it wasn’t Newsweek – in one of his pockets. This young punk was very probably the shooter in the drive by shooting and certainly was an accomplice in the prior incident.
The question for the courts and the East Pittsburgh police department will be, did the officer have enough information to reasonably assume that he was legally justified in shooting the dirt bag at the time he did so.
In any event the mob doesn’t care if this black punk was the shooter in the drive by. They see an opportunity to riot and to vilify a cop. That’s all they care about.
By Dave Freeman
I am reading on the PoliceOne website, that the officer has 8 years of experience as a police officer with other departments.
After the drive by shooting and the stop, two guns were found in the car which fit the description of the vehicle used in the earlier shooting, and that the back window of the vehicle was shot out. (This is known as a clue.)
Additionally, the dead thug [Antwon Rose], who ran as soon as the car was stopped, had an empty magazine – and no it wasn’t Newsweek – in one of his pockets. This young punk was very probably the shooter in the drive by shooting and certainly was an accomplice in the prior incident.
The question for the courts and the East Pittsburgh police department will be, did the officer have enough information to reasonably assume that he was legally justified in shooting the dirt bag at the time he did so.
In any event the mob doesn’t care if this black punk was the shooter in the drive by. They see an opportunity to riot and to vilify a cop. That’s all they care about.
BUT IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD DAMNIT
by Bob Walsh
A new proposal making its way thru the legislature of the formerly great state of California would, if passed into law, make it illegal for restaurants to "market" sugared drinks to rugrats. Thinks like child's meals would be REQUIRED to be presented with water, milk, almond milk, etc. Sugared soda would be available on request only, and could not be advertised as being available.
A similar proposal is moving thru the legislature that would declare membership in the Republican party to be illegal as Republicans are known to be mean, stupid and nasty. (I am just making this one up. I think.)
A new proposal making its way thru the legislature of the formerly great state of California would, if passed into law, make it illegal for restaurants to "market" sugared drinks to rugrats. Thinks like child's meals would be REQUIRED to be presented with water, milk, almond milk, etc. Sugared soda would be available on request only, and could not be advertised as being available.
A similar proposal is moving thru the legislature that would declare membership in the Republican party to be illegal as Republicans are known to be mean, stupid and nasty. (I am just making this one up. I think.)
MOM FAILED TO SHOW DAUGHTER THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ACCELERATOR AND BRAKE PEDAL
Teen learning to drive crashes SUV into George Junior High School, police say
By Cory McCord
Click2Houston
June 22, 2018
RICHMOND, Texas - An SUV crashed into George Junior High School on Friday around 8:30 p.m., according to police.
Police said a mother was teaching her teenage daughter how to drive when the teen got the pedals confused and hit the accelerator instead of the brake pedal.
The SUV crashed through a glass wall and went into the cafeteria, police said.
No one was injured.
By Cory McCord
Click2Houston
June 22, 2018
RICHMOND, Texas - An SUV crashed into George Junior High School on Friday around 8:30 p.m., according to police.
Police said a mother was teaching her teenage daughter how to drive when the teen got the pedals confused and hit the accelerator instead of the brake pedal.
The SUV crashed through a glass wall and went into the cafeteria, police said.
No one was injured.
ISRAEL MADE A ‘FOOLISH MISTAKE’ BY ITS DISENGAGEMENT FROM GAZA
Israel deploys cutting-edge lasers, sensors to combat kite terrorism
By Nikki Guttman, Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff
Israel HAYOM
June 22, 2018
Tensions on the Israel-Gaza Strip border ran high Friday, in the wake of Wednesday's rocket salvo on southern Israel and ahead of yet another Hamas-orchestrated demonstration on the security fence.
Hamas officials urged Gazans to amass at the fence in honor of those killed and wounded in the border riots campaign since it was launched on March 30. Organizers said they plan to hold memorials for the 120 Palestinians killed near the security fence over the past three months.
The Israeli military deployed additional troops near the border, including special forces, snipers and sappers and, for the first time, it plans to use cutting-edge lasers and sensors to combat the kite terrorism that has been wreaking havoc on the Gaza-vicinity communities for weeks.
The new sensors are designed to spot particularly small targets like incendiary kites and balloon, which usually evade the radar systems deployed in the area.
Once a sensor identifies a flaming object, military drones will be launched to intercept it.
The IDF's Southern Command and GOC Army Headquarters are collaborating with several defense contractors in their effort to devise a solution for kite terrorism.
Palestinian arson terrorism continued to rage Thursday, as 20 fires erupted as a result of incendiary kites and balloons sent over the border.
Authorities say that over 8,000 acres of forest and agricultural land on the Israeli side of the border have been reduced to ash over the past six weeks, causing tens of millions of shekels in damage.
With incendiary kites and balloons posing a growing threat to the safety and livelihoods of residents in Israeli communities near the border, as well as to local wildlife and vegetation, there has been a growing demand from the residents for the IDF to intensify its response against terrorist kite cells.
While some politicians and defense officials have advocated surgical strikes against such cells – a policy the IDF employs against terrorists firing rockets at Israel – the military has cautioned that targeting kite flyers, most of whom are teenagers, would lead to a rapid security escalation opposite the Gaza Strip that, in turn, is likely to lead to a full-fledged military campaign.
Also on Thursday, the Katif Center in the border-adjacent community of Nitzan dedicated an electronic memorial commemorating soldiers and civilians killed in the area.
Deputy Defense Minister Eliyahu Ben-Dahan (Habayit Hayehudi) spoke at the ceremony, saying that the tensions on the border prove that the 2005 disengagement from Gaza was a mistake.
"Anyone in their right mind that looks at what is happening now can see that we made a foolish mistake. We may have thought we were promoting a new Middle East, but today we see exactly how untrue that assumption was."
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid visited the Gaza-vicinity communities Thursday and said, "It's not just the fields that are burning here, it's Israeli deterrence. Hamas has to be made to pay a price."
Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders, for their part, warned Thursday that any Israeli strike on the coastal enclave will be met with rocket fire on Israel.
EDITOR'S NOTE: It would be even much more foolish for Israel to disengage itself from the West Bank.
By Nikki Guttman, Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff
Israel HAYOM
June 22, 2018
Tensions on the Israel-Gaza Strip border ran high Friday, in the wake of Wednesday's rocket salvo on southern Israel and ahead of yet another Hamas-orchestrated demonstration on the security fence.
Hamas officials urged Gazans to amass at the fence in honor of those killed and wounded in the border riots campaign since it was launched on March 30. Organizers said they plan to hold memorials for the 120 Palestinians killed near the security fence over the past three months.
The Israeli military deployed additional troops near the border, including special forces, snipers and sappers and, for the first time, it plans to use cutting-edge lasers and sensors to combat the kite terrorism that has been wreaking havoc on the Gaza-vicinity communities for weeks.
The new sensors are designed to spot particularly small targets like incendiary kites and balloon, which usually evade the radar systems deployed in the area.
Once a sensor identifies a flaming object, military drones will be launched to intercept it.
The IDF's Southern Command and GOC Army Headquarters are collaborating with several defense contractors in their effort to devise a solution for kite terrorism.
Palestinian arson terrorism continued to rage Thursday, as 20 fires erupted as a result of incendiary kites and balloons sent over the border.
Authorities say that over 8,000 acres of forest and agricultural land on the Israeli side of the border have been reduced to ash over the past six weeks, causing tens of millions of shekels in damage.
With incendiary kites and balloons posing a growing threat to the safety and livelihoods of residents in Israeli communities near the border, as well as to local wildlife and vegetation, there has been a growing demand from the residents for the IDF to intensify its response against terrorist kite cells.
While some politicians and defense officials have advocated surgical strikes against such cells – a policy the IDF employs against terrorists firing rockets at Israel – the military has cautioned that targeting kite flyers, most of whom are teenagers, would lead to a rapid security escalation opposite the Gaza Strip that, in turn, is likely to lead to a full-fledged military campaign.
Also on Thursday, the Katif Center in the border-adjacent community of Nitzan dedicated an electronic memorial commemorating soldiers and civilians killed in the area.
Deputy Defense Minister Eliyahu Ben-Dahan (Habayit Hayehudi) spoke at the ceremony, saying that the tensions on the border prove that the 2005 disengagement from Gaza was a mistake.
"Anyone in their right mind that looks at what is happening now can see that we made a foolish mistake. We may have thought we were promoting a new Middle East, but today we see exactly how untrue that assumption was."
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid visited the Gaza-vicinity communities Thursday and said, "It's not just the fields that are burning here, it's Israeli deterrence. Hamas has to be made to pay a price."
Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders, for their part, warned Thursday that any Israeli strike on the coastal enclave will be met with rocket fire on Israel.
EDITOR'S NOTE: It would be even much more foolish for Israel to disengage itself from the West Bank.
SHARIA
Basic Features of Islamic Criminal Law
By Prof. Dr. Christine Schirrmacher
Europe News
January 19, 2016
Islamic theology regards Sharia law as perfect, God-given legislation not of human origin and therefore beyond question. Muslim apologists claim the world-wide application of the Sharia would result in universal freedom and justice. God’s commands were communicated to the Prophet Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel and recorded in the Koran and traditional Islamic texts. The relevant legal texts have been interpreted by renowned theologians, among whom the lawyers of the early centuries of Islam are regarded as particularly authoritative.
The Sharia covers the whole spectrum of Islamic jurisprudence: laws regulating religious practice (the daily ritual prayers, fasting in Ramadan, pilgrimage to Mecca, the ceremonies at religious feast days, and more), marriage, family and inheritance law, property laws, the criminal code and laws covering religious foundations. The Sharia thus determines a person’s relationships to God, to his family and to society.
An important part of the Sharia is undoubtedly that dealing with family and inheritance law. Sharia law forms the main if not sole basis of family law and therefore of civil jurisprudence not only in all Muslim countries (with a few exceptions), but also in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. One outstanding exception is Turkey. When the Ottoman empire gave way to the Turkish Republic under Kemal Atatürk in 1926, laws pertaining to marriage and the family were modelled on the Swiss Civil Code and the Sharia was completely abolished as a basis of law. A kind of shadow jurisprudence nevertheless remains in that, for instance, polygamy, forbidden under Turkish law, continues to be practised in rural areas, and the issue of such “clerical marriages” is regularly declared legitimate and the marriages themselves are retroactively granted State recognition.
The Sharia has remained an ideal law which has never actually been completely and consistently applied. The “return to Sharia” proclaimed by some countries today in fact means little more than that marriage and family law are being more closely modelled on Koranic precedent. Modern jurisprudence in Muslim countries tends to be a composite of Koranic commandments, elements of Islamic traditions, customary law, vestiges of pre-Islamic Persian or Roman codes and elements of European legal provisions let over from the colonial period. The rapid expansion of the Islamic empire in the centuries following Muhammad’s death saw the need to expand the relatively few decisions he made in the early Islamic community and recorded in the Koran and traditional texts, into a workable legal corpus based on Islamic principles. As a result various schools of jurisprudence emerged, four of which, the Shafi’i, Hanbali, Hanafi und Maliki schools, achieved permanent status. These four schools agree on the basic features of Islamic criminal law, which is binding for contemporary orthodox Sunni Islam.
Three classes of crimes are usually distinguished, differing substantially as to rules of evidence and the penalties inflicted.: capital crimes, crimes of retaliation and discretionary crimes.
The most serious cases, denoted capital (Arabic hadd) crimes, comprise those classed by the Koran or tradition as capital offences and for which they prescribe a fixed penalty. Since Islam regards such crimes as committed against God and not man, a charge may no longer be dropped once has been brought, nor is an amicable out of court settlement permitted until punishment has been inflicted on the guilty. Hadd-crimes comprise:
(1) Adultery and immorality: Surah 24:2-3 prescribes 100 lashes for both man and woman. In Islamic law the idea has come to prevail that whereas unmarried women should be whipped, married women deserve death by stoning in accordance with Islamic tradition. The Koran warns explicitly against pity for offenders. However the testimony of four (usually male) witnesses or a confession is required as evidence of guilt. It is not customary to admit circumstantial evidence, which is regarded as furnishing insufficient grounds for a conviction, unlike the pregnancies cited as evidence against unmarried women recently accused in Nigeria and the Sudan of offences punishable by stoning.
The requirement of four male witnesses makes it virtually impossible for women in countries like Pakistan to establish a case of rape, since such witnesses will never be never forthcoming. Not a few women, mainly from the underprivileged Christian minority who are virtually deprived of recourse to due process, have tried to bring cases of rape and have subsequently been themselves charged with bringing a slanderous accusation of adultery (cf. 2) against the man involved and punished by lashes.
(2) Slanderous accusation of adultery: Surah 24:4 prescribes 80 lashes for those found guilty.
(3) Serious theft: According to Surah 5.33:38 this is punishable by amputation of the right hand and, for a second offence, of the left foot. Islamic lawyers have specified certain conditions to be fulfilled before a case of theft can be included in this category, such as a minimum value, safe custody and an undisputed title of the stolen goods, but amputation still affords the victim no compensation whatsoever and turns the offender into a cripple, who, generally unable to find employment, ends up as a burden to the community.
(4) Armed or highway robbery is punished, depending on the severity of offence, by a prison term, amputation, execution or crucifixion.
(5) Use of alcohol: the Koran does not mention a specific penalty but the tradition lays down 40 to 80 lashes for anyone found partaking of intoxicating liquor. The second category, crimes of retaliation (Arabic qisas) are those in which the offender or his family are required to make reparation. The most important crimes in this category are doubtless grievous bodily harm and manslaughter. The victim’s family can insist on a comparable injury (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) or the death of a equivalent member, where possible, of the offender’s family (a man for a man, a slave for a slave). In lieu of the offender’s death, the victim’s family may accept financial compensation and the performance of a religious penance such as a supplementary fast. By far the most numerous offences fall into the third discretionary (Arabic ta’zir) category, where the penalty is imposed at the judge’s discretion and which include cases of embezzlement, blackmail, forgery etc.
Islamic law originated in the legal precedents of Muhamad’s early Muslim community on the Arabian peninsula in the 7th Century AD, a jurisprudence shaped by specific circumstances and therefore limited to individual cases. Not only is it scarcely compatible with the requirements of a modern, technological society, although still regarded by many theologians as divinely given and therefore beyond question, but a consistent application of its drastic forms of corporal punishment (amputation, lashing, execution, crucifixion, retribution) results in torture, crippling or inhuman forms of execution. The application of the Sharia is particularly nefarious where inbuilt curbs such as the requirement of four witnesses or due process are set aside and influential potentates employ it as a means of repression against impotent, often Christian, minorities.
EDITOR'S NOTE: I especially like the part that says theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand and, for a second offence, of the left foot. I also like the stoning of women. Just kidding!
By Prof. Dr. Christine Schirrmacher
Europe News
January 19, 2016
Islamic theology regards Sharia law as perfect, God-given legislation not of human origin and therefore beyond question. Muslim apologists claim the world-wide application of the Sharia would result in universal freedom and justice. God’s commands were communicated to the Prophet Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel and recorded in the Koran and traditional Islamic texts. The relevant legal texts have been interpreted by renowned theologians, among whom the lawyers of the early centuries of Islam are regarded as particularly authoritative.
The Sharia covers the whole spectrum of Islamic jurisprudence: laws regulating religious practice (the daily ritual prayers, fasting in Ramadan, pilgrimage to Mecca, the ceremonies at religious feast days, and more), marriage, family and inheritance law, property laws, the criminal code and laws covering religious foundations. The Sharia thus determines a person’s relationships to God, to his family and to society.
An important part of the Sharia is undoubtedly that dealing with family and inheritance law. Sharia law forms the main if not sole basis of family law and therefore of civil jurisprudence not only in all Muslim countries (with a few exceptions), but also in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. One outstanding exception is Turkey. When the Ottoman empire gave way to the Turkish Republic under Kemal Atatürk in 1926, laws pertaining to marriage and the family were modelled on the Swiss Civil Code and the Sharia was completely abolished as a basis of law. A kind of shadow jurisprudence nevertheless remains in that, for instance, polygamy, forbidden under Turkish law, continues to be practised in rural areas, and the issue of such “clerical marriages” is regularly declared legitimate and the marriages themselves are retroactively granted State recognition.
The Sharia has remained an ideal law which has never actually been completely and consistently applied. The “return to Sharia” proclaimed by some countries today in fact means little more than that marriage and family law are being more closely modelled on Koranic precedent. Modern jurisprudence in Muslim countries tends to be a composite of Koranic commandments, elements of Islamic traditions, customary law, vestiges of pre-Islamic Persian or Roman codes and elements of European legal provisions let over from the colonial period. The rapid expansion of the Islamic empire in the centuries following Muhammad’s death saw the need to expand the relatively few decisions he made in the early Islamic community and recorded in the Koran and traditional texts, into a workable legal corpus based on Islamic principles. As a result various schools of jurisprudence emerged, four of which, the Shafi’i, Hanbali, Hanafi und Maliki schools, achieved permanent status. These four schools agree on the basic features of Islamic criminal law, which is binding for contemporary orthodox Sunni Islam.
Three classes of crimes are usually distinguished, differing substantially as to rules of evidence and the penalties inflicted.: capital crimes, crimes of retaliation and discretionary crimes.
The most serious cases, denoted capital (Arabic hadd) crimes, comprise those classed by the Koran or tradition as capital offences and for which they prescribe a fixed penalty. Since Islam regards such crimes as committed against God and not man, a charge may no longer be dropped once has been brought, nor is an amicable out of court settlement permitted until punishment has been inflicted on the guilty. Hadd-crimes comprise:
(1) Adultery and immorality: Surah 24:2-3 prescribes 100 lashes for both man and woman. In Islamic law the idea has come to prevail that whereas unmarried women should be whipped, married women deserve death by stoning in accordance with Islamic tradition. The Koran warns explicitly against pity for offenders. However the testimony of four (usually male) witnesses or a confession is required as evidence of guilt. It is not customary to admit circumstantial evidence, which is regarded as furnishing insufficient grounds for a conviction, unlike the pregnancies cited as evidence against unmarried women recently accused in Nigeria and the Sudan of offences punishable by stoning.
The requirement of four male witnesses makes it virtually impossible for women in countries like Pakistan to establish a case of rape, since such witnesses will never be never forthcoming. Not a few women, mainly from the underprivileged Christian minority who are virtually deprived of recourse to due process, have tried to bring cases of rape and have subsequently been themselves charged with bringing a slanderous accusation of adultery (cf. 2) against the man involved and punished by lashes.
(2) Slanderous accusation of adultery: Surah 24:4 prescribes 80 lashes for those found guilty.
(3) Serious theft: According to Surah 5.33:38 this is punishable by amputation of the right hand and, for a second offence, of the left foot. Islamic lawyers have specified certain conditions to be fulfilled before a case of theft can be included in this category, such as a minimum value, safe custody and an undisputed title of the stolen goods, but amputation still affords the victim no compensation whatsoever and turns the offender into a cripple, who, generally unable to find employment, ends up as a burden to the community.
(4) Armed or highway robbery is punished, depending on the severity of offence, by a prison term, amputation, execution or crucifixion.
(5) Use of alcohol: the Koran does not mention a specific penalty but the tradition lays down 40 to 80 lashes for anyone found partaking of intoxicating liquor. The second category, crimes of retaliation (Arabic qisas) are those in which the offender or his family are required to make reparation. The most important crimes in this category are doubtless grievous bodily harm and manslaughter. The victim’s family can insist on a comparable injury (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) or the death of a equivalent member, where possible, of the offender’s family (a man for a man, a slave for a slave). In lieu of the offender’s death, the victim’s family may accept financial compensation and the performance of a religious penance such as a supplementary fast. By far the most numerous offences fall into the third discretionary (Arabic ta’zir) category, where the penalty is imposed at the judge’s discretion and which include cases of embezzlement, blackmail, forgery etc.
Islamic law originated in the legal precedents of Muhamad’s early Muslim community on the Arabian peninsula in the 7th Century AD, a jurisprudence shaped by specific circumstances and therefore limited to individual cases. Not only is it scarcely compatible with the requirements of a modern, technological society, although still regarded by many theologians as divinely given and therefore beyond question, but a consistent application of its drastic forms of corporal punishment (amputation, lashing, execution, crucifixion, retribution) results in torture, crippling or inhuman forms of execution. The application of the Sharia is particularly nefarious where inbuilt curbs such as the requirement of four witnesses or due process are set aside and influential potentates employ it as a means of repression against impotent, often Christian, minorities.
EDITOR'S NOTE: I especially like the part that says theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand and, for a second offence, of the left foot. I also like the stoning of women. Just kidding!
Friday, June 22, 2018
NEWLY SWORN-IN COP OPPRESSES BLACK PEOPLE
East Pittsburgh cop shoots unarmed fleeing black youth hours after being sworn in
California State Senator Steven Bradford calls the use of deadly force by police a form of oppression of black people. On Tuesday evening, an East Pittsburgh cop oppressed black people only hours after being sworn in. He shot and killed an unarmed black youth who was fleeing from a car suspected in a drive-by shooting.
East Pittsburgh police stopped a vehicle that fit the description of a car from which nine shots were fired at a man in North Bradford borough. 17-year-old Antwon Rose II jumped out of the car and fled. One of the cops chased Rose and fired a volley of shots at the fleeing black youth. Rose was hit three times and died. He was unarmed, but two guns were found in the car. The shooting has sparked outrage and led to mass protests.
SCOTUS ruled long ago that police cannot shoot a fleeing suspect – and here is the catch – unless that suspect poses a serious threat to the public if he escapes.
The problem here is that at the time Rose was shot, the cops had no proof that this was actually the car involved in the drive-by shooting. Thus the oppressor of black people had no reason to believe Rose posed a serious threat to the public if he escaped.
Reports do not say if this was a rookie cop or if he had just been sworn in after serving on another police department. In any event, look for this cop to end up in the Graybar Hotel.
California State Senator Steven Bradford calls the use of deadly force by police a form of oppression of black people. On Tuesday evening, an East Pittsburgh cop oppressed black people only hours after being sworn in. He shot and killed an unarmed black youth who was fleeing from a car suspected in a drive-by shooting.
East Pittsburgh police stopped a vehicle that fit the description of a car from which nine shots were fired at a man in North Bradford borough. 17-year-old Antwon Rose II jumped out of the car and fled. One of the cops chased Rose and fired a volley of shots at the fleeing black youth. Rose was hit three times and died. He was unarmed, but two guns were found in the car. The shooting has sparked outrage and led to mass protests.
SCOTUS ruled long ago that police cannot shoot a fleeing suspect – and here is the catch – unless that suspect poses a serious threat to the public if he escapes.
The problem here is that at the time Rose was shot, the cops had no proof that this was actually the car involved in the drive-by shooting. Thus the oppressor of black people had no reason to believe Rose posed a serious threat to the public if he escaped.
Reports do not say if this was a rookie cop or if he had just been sworn in after serving on another police department. In any event, look for this cop to end up in the Graybar Hotel.
NOTABLE DEATH(S)
by Bob Walsh
Both Charles Krauthammer and Koko the gorilla died yesterday. Charles Krauthammer was one of the great minds of his time. He was paralyzed from the neck down as a young man in a diving accident. He went on to graduate from Harvard medical school and became a practicing psychiatrist. He was a bright, articulate man who had a great sense of humor and was unfailingly civil. He was a regular on various FOX news programs.
Koko was a gorilla who liked kittens and could communicate tolerably well with sign language.
I wonder which one will get the most exposure in the MSM. (Actually, I don't wonder.)
Both Charles Krauthammer and Koko the gorilla died yesterday. Charles Krauthammer was one of the great minds of his time. He was paralyzed from the neck down as a young man in a diving accident. He went on to graduate from Harvard medical school and became a practicing psychiatrist. He was a bright, articulate man who had a great sense of humor and was unfailingly civil. He was a regular on various FOX news programs.
Koko was a gorilla who liked kittens and could communicate tolerably well with sign language.
I wonder which one will get the most exposure in the MSM. (Actually, I don't wonder.)
THERE ARE MANY DANGEROUS ASSHOLES LOOSE IN THE WORLD
by Bob Walsh
A couple of days ago Jeremy Webster, 23, got pissed at a woman who was driving her two rugrats to a dentist appointment in Denver, Colorado. So he followed their car into the parking lot and opened fire on the woman and her two sons. Meghan Bigelow, 41, was shot several times but survived. Her oldest son, 13, was not so lucky. The youngest son, 8, was also seriously injured. Her 12-year old was not hit. Webster also opened fire on a witness who was nearby in a pickup truck with his daughter. The man was wounded but the daughter was not. Webster then fled.
The mother was smart. She was able to take a a photo of the license plate on Webster's car. The cops used this photo to apprehend Webster.
Webster is currently being held without bond. He has admitted to the shooting, asserting that he has unspecified mental health issues.
A couple of days ago Jeremy Webster, 23, got pissed at a woman who was driving her two rugrats to a dentist appointment in Denver, Colorado. So he followed their car into the parking lot and opened fire on the woman and her two sons. Meghan Bigelow, 41, was shot several times but survived. Her oldest son, 13, was not so lucky. The youngest son, 8, was also seriously injured. Her 12-year old was not hit. Webster also opened fire on a witness who was nearby in a pickup truck with his daughter. The man was wounded but the daughter was not. Webster then fled.
The mother was smart. She was able to take a a photo of the license plate on Webster's car. The cops used this photo to apprehend Webster.
Webster is currently being held without bond. He has admitted to the shooting, asserting that he has unspecified mental health issues.
THREE N M ESCAPEES BACK IN CUSTODY
by Bob Walsh
The three prisoners who escaped from the Curry County Jail were taken into custody in Clovis Tuesday evening. Somebody ratted them out and there were some shots exchanged between the three and the Clovis P D SWAT team, but nobody was hurt.
The cops originally contacted the legit occupant of the apartment, Jon Hausmann, 38. He denied he had any guests. He lied. Hausmann was arrested for three counts of harboring a felon.
Jailer Sarina Dodson, 28, who is in custody for aiding the escape, knew one of the prisoners before she came to work at the jail. She admits to letting Serna use here cell phone, allegedly to call his mother. Dodson also allegedly turned in a faked count in an attempt to conceal the escape of the prisoners. The facility captain got suspicious and did a recount, finding the three men missing. Dodson was working in control at the time and allegedly opened doors, silenced alarms and directed the escapees with the internal P A system as the moved.
The three prisoners who escaped from the Curry County Jail were taken into custody in Clovis Tuesday evening. Somebody ratted them out and there were some shots exchanged between the three and the Clovis P D SWAT team, but nobody was hurt.
The cops originally contacted the legit occupant of the apartment, Jon Hausmann, 38. He denied he had any guests. He lied. Hausmann was arrested for three counts of harboring a felon.
Jailer Sarina Dodson, 28, who is in custody for aiding the escape, knew one of the prisoners before she came to work at the jail. She admits to letting Serna use here cell phone, allegedly to call his mother. Dodson also allegedly turned in a faked count in an attempt to conceal the escape of the prisoners. The facility captain got suspicious and did a recount, finding the three men missing. Dodson was working in control at the time and allegedly opened doors, silenced alarms and directed the escapees with the internal P A system as the moved.
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