Saturday, January 31, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2015
South Africa grants parole to 'Prime Evil' apartheid killer
PRETORIA (Reuters) - Apartheid death-squad leader Eugene de Kock, dubbed 'Prime Evil' for his role in the torture and murder of scores of black South African activists in the 1980s and early 1990s, was granted parole on Friday after more than 20 years in prison.
Justice Minister Michael Masutha told a news conference de Kock would be released "in the interests of nation-building and reconciliation" and because he had expressed remorse at his crimes and helped authorities recover the remains of some of his victims.
South Africa grants parole to 'Prime Evil' apartheid killer
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Voyage of the Damned - Holocaust Ship of Shame.
"As the St. Louis steamed toward Havana from Hamburg, Germany, with nearly 1,000 Jews fleeing the Nazis aboard, Recha Weiler desperately nursed her dying husband, Moritz. While other passengers enjoyed the elegance of the civilized cruise after the repressions and humiliations of Germany, Weiler spent most of the voyage in her cabin with Moritz. But her efforts failed. The university professor died aboard the ship and was buried at sea.
An estimated half of the passengers were to die later, after both the US and Cuba rejected their pleas for refuge and the cruel 40-day journey sent them back to Europe to face the Nazis. Some 59 years after the St. Louis's desperate passage back and forth across the Atlantic, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and its Survivors' Registry are trying to trace the fates of its passengers, including Recha Weiler, the 61-year-old widow originally from Cologne."
Voyage of the Damned - Holocaust Ship of Shame.
Monday, January 26, 2015
With fewer voices, Auschwitz survivors speak | The Washington Post
"The 70th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi concentration camp could mark the last major commemoration for many Holocaust survivors
Written by Anthony Faiola, Ruth Eglash, Michelle Boorstein
Published on January 23, 2015
There are fewer and fewer of those who still remember.
The Soviet army entered Auschwitz — the network of extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland — on Jan. 27, 1945, liberating the most notorious site of the Holocaust. In the decades since, groups of survivors have gathered to honor that day — including an annual remembrance at Auschwitz itself. This year, they mark the 70th anniversary of liberation on Tuesday — a day that, for a significant portion of remaining survivors, may be the last major remembrance of their lifetimes. The numbers themselves tell the story."
Saturday, January 24, 2015
American Sniper: anti-Muslim threats skyrocket in wake of film's release | Film | The Guardian - Will San Diego arrest the movie producer like that did to an African American rapper whonis innjail for rapping. This was in direct violation of the First Amendment.
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee writes to Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood requesting action as threat complaints triple
Citing what an executive for the group told the Guardian was a “drastic increase” in hate speech on social media, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee wrote letters this week to actor Bradley Cooper and director Clint Eastwood to ask them to speak out “in an effort to help reduce the hateful rhetoric”.
American Sniper: anti-Muslim threats skyrocket in wake of film's release | Film | The Guardian
Citing what an executive for the group told the Guardian was a “drastic increase” in hate speech on social media, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee wrote letters this week to actor Bradley Cooper and director Clint Eastwood to ask them to speak out “in an effort to help reduce the hateful rhetoric”.
American Sniper: anti-Muslim threats skyrocket in wake of film's release | Film | The Guardian
Friday, January 23, 2015
Georgia, Back in the Death-Penalty Spotlight - NYTimes.com
"Death sentences handed down by Georgia provided the basis for both the Supreme Court’s 1972 moratorium on capital punishment and its lifting of that moratorium four years later. In 1987, the court upheld another Georgia death sentence — of a black man convicted of murdering a white police officer — despite statistical evidence showing that the death penalty there was applied far more often when the victim was white rather than black.
Now Georgia is in the spotlight again, as it prepares to execute Warren Lee Hill Jr. Mr. Hill was serving a life sentence for killing his girlfriend when he was convicted of the murder of a fellow inmate in 1991. He is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Jan. 27.
Mr. Hill was scheduled to die in 2012 and 2013, but both times his execution was stayed. In 2013, a state judge stopped it because of constitutional concerns over a new law making the source and composition of Georgia’s lethal-injection drugs a state secret. Mr. Hill has long claimed he is intellectually disabled, with an average I.Q. score of 70. Seven mental health experts have all agreed with him. Three of them, all hired by the state, originally testified that he was competent, but later recanted.
This alone should make Mr. Hill ineligible for the death penalty under a 2002 decision by the Supreme Court, which barred the execution of those with intellectual disabilities."
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police - The Washington Post
"Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.
Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.
Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing."
No Pardon - Young Woman To Serve 30 Years For Miscarriage
"Last week, a young woman in El Salvador who goes by the alias name of 'Guadalupe,' had very high hopes, and was all but assured she would receive a pardon from her 30-year sentence. She had already served seven years, starting in her teens. Her alleged crime? Fetal homicide. She miscarried, and was charged with murder.
Her pardon didn't come. Guadalupe's freedom was one vote short. Her fate was determined by a Right-Wing congressional majority of 43-42. I can't write about something like this and not feel like I've been punched in the stomach again and again. Guadalupe represents every woman. This is what happens when abortion is illegal. El Salvador is known to be one of the worst countries in the world for women's reproductive rights."
French Rein In Speech Backing Acts of Terror - NYTimes.com
This is a little scary to say the least. "PARIS — The French authorities are moving aggressively to rein in speech supporting terrorism, employing a new law to mete out tough prison sentences in a crackdown that is stoking a free-speech debate after last week’s attacks in Paris.
Those swept up under the new law include a 28-year-old man of French-Tunisian background who was sentenced to six months in prison after he was found guilty of shouting support for the attackers as he passed a police station in Bourgoin-Jalieu on Sunday. A 34-year-old man who hit a car while drunk on Saturday, injured the other driver and subsequently praised the acts of the gunmen when the police detained him was sentenced Monday to four years in prison."
Monday, January 19, 2015
Negroes and the Gun: The early NAACP championed armed self-defense - The Washington Post debunking another myth about American history.
When W.E.B. Dubois patrolled his home with a shotgun after the 1906 Atlanta race riot, he was an aberration. But not how you think. Dubois reports that he was unusual among his contemporaries because until that point he did not own a gun.
Dubois’s gun purchase and his aggressive statements following the riot were not passion-of-the-moment things that he would regret. They were part of a continuing engagement of the practice and philosophy of armed self-defense. As editor of the NAACP’s flagship magazine The Crisis, Dubois continued to champion armed self-defense as a core private interest. Indeed, in some instances, Dubois seemed to cast self-defense as a duty.
Negroes and the Gun: The early NAACP championed armed self-defense - The Washington Post
Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did
"My father told me with a sort of cold fury, "Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south."
Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did
Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don't know what my father was talking about.
But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches."
Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Perpetuating Guantánamo’s Travesty - NYTimes.com
“Guantánamo is a betrayal of American values,” the former military officers wrote. “The prison is a symbol of torture and justice delayed. More than a decade after it opened, Guantánamo remains a recruiting poster for terrorists, which makes us all less safe.”
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Friday, January 16, 2015
Undercover officers infiltrate #BlackLivesMatter protest movement in Minnesota; charge leaders
"During the holiday shopping season of 2014, hundreds and hundreds of protestors gathered at the Mall of America outside of Minneapolis in Bloomington, Minnesota, to peacefully demonstrate their desire for justice with local issues and national justice causes surrounding the lack of justice following the deaths of John Crawford, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Darrien Hunt, Tamir Rice, and more at the hands of police.
Unbeknownst to organizers, undercover police, pretending to actually care about the causes, attended planning meetings in an attempt to identify organizers and undermine the movement. Now, it has just been announced, a month later, that ten strangely selected protestors, out of the hundreds who protested, are being charged with crimes including popular law professor, Nekima Levy-Pounds.
Beyond the reality that these demonstrations were completely peaceful, the random selection and charging of these particular demonstrators with crimes makes no real legal sense. Furthermore, the City of Bloomington is now demanding that protestors pay for the "overtime" charges of police. Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson stated:"
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
After Paris Attack, French Authorities Move to Protect Jews - NYTimes.com
"Anti-Semitism manifested its hateful ways again last summer when synagogues and Jewish-owned shops were attacked in and near Paris after Israel’s incursion into Gaza. The destruction of Jewish businesses recalled painful images of past suffering endured by Europe’s Jews, including the violent attacks on Jewish merchants on Kristallnacht, the infamous night of Nov. 9, 1938, which was the beginning of the Nazi pogrom against Austrian and German Jews. In France, 75,000 French Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II."
After Paris Attack, French Authorities Move to Protect Jews - NYTimes.com
After Paris Attack, French Authorities Move to Protect Jews - NYTimes.com
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Prosecutor apologizes for jailing boy, 9, for stealing gum - NY Daily News
Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Barry McHugh said the child had missed two court appearances and meetings in a diversion program after allegedly taking the candy valued at $1.68. But police said the issue was his family's lack of transportation, and the arresting officers even tried to get the warrant rescinded.
Prosecutor apologizes for jailing boy, 9, for stealing gum - NY Daily News
The Shadow of Anti-Semitism in France - The New Yorker
"Poliakov’s multi-volume chronicle, “The History of Anti-Semitism,” is one of the most scrupulous scholarly enterprises of the postwar era. It is also one of the most sickening—and it concludes its narrative in 1933, five years before Kristallnacht. Many of the most shocking chapters are set in Poliakov’s adopted country, France, where, by the nineteenth century, hatred of Jews was a proxy for a generalized revulsion for modernity, secularism, and republican values."
The Shadow of Anti-Semitism in France - The New Yorker
The Shadow of Anti-Semitism in France - The New Yorker
Monday, January 12, 2015
New York City Settles Three Brothers’ Wrongful Conviction Cases for $17 Million - NYTimes.com
"The New York City comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, has agreed to pay $17 million to settle three more claims based on wrongful criminal convictions, his office said on Sunday, part of an emerging strategy to resolve civil rights cases before they are formally filed as lawsuits in court.
The settlements were reached with three defendants whose cases involved Louis Scarcella, the retired homicide detective whose investigative tactics have come under question and whose cases are being reviewed by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office."
The men, Robert Hill, Alvena Jennette and Darryl Austin, who are half brothers, spent a combined total of 60 years in prison — one died there — before their convictions, made in the 1980s, were vacated by a judge in May. The office of Kenneth P. Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, is examining 130 convictions, including 70 cases in which Mr. Scarcella played a key role. Most of the cases under review date to the crime-plagued 1980s and 1990s
New York City Settles Three Brothers’ Wrongful Conviction Cases for $17 Million - NYTimes.com
Friday, January 09, 2015
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
Gone Grimm - The Daily Show - Video Clip | Comedy Central - This is an apt description of Staten Island where I grew up and where I spent the holidays until this past Monday. This is where a lot of police and firemen live. The North Shore where I grew up is becoming more diverse thanks to the immigration of more Mexicans and African Americans but the island is still 77% white. The prosecutor that failed to effectively prosecute the killer cop who murdered Eric Garner on the North Shore is now running for the Congressional seat vacated to due to the fact that Congressman Grimm who just won reelection with over 70% of the vote even though he had 21 felonies pending. He is now going to jail. This former home of Mafia chieftains keeps the spirit of corruption alive with it's police force, elected officials DA and the majority population who elect them.
Gone Grimm - The Daily Show - Video Clip | Comedy Central - This is an apt description of Staten Island where I grew up and where I spent the holidays until this past Monday. This is where a lot of police and firemen live. The North Shore where I grew up is becoming more diverse thanks to the immigration of more Mexicans and African Americans but the island is still 77% white. The prosecutor that failed to effectively prosecute the killer cop who murdered Eric Garner on the North Shore is now running for the Congressional seat vacated to due to the fact that Congressman Grimm who just won reelection with over 70% of the vote even though he had 21 felonies pending. He is now going to jail. This former home of Mafia chieftains keeps the spirit of corruption alive with it's police force, elected officials DA and the majority population who elect them.
Can Kenneth Thompson Restore Brooklyn’s Faith in Justice? The New Yorker
"Just over twenty-four years ago, on January 4, 1991, a man named Nathaniel Cash was shot and killed outside a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. In March of that year, Hamilton was arrested for the murder. He was twenty-seven at the time, and had previously been convicted of manslaughter, but was out on parole. Detectives on the case relied largely on one eyewitness, Jewel Smith, Cash’s girlfriend, to build their case. Although she had told the first detective on the scene that she hadn’t seen the shooting, she ultimately identified Hamilton as the murderer; at trial, he was found guilty, and he received a sentence of twenty-five years to life in prison.
Defense attorneys had focussed their case on alibi witnesses who contended that Hamilton was in New Haven, Connecticut, on the day of the murder. Following Hamilton’s conviction, in 1993, he and his lawyers maintained this narrative—to no effect, even after Smith recanted her testimony. In 2011, Hamilton was released on parole, with his conviction still in place, and in January, 2014, prompted by Hamilton’s lawyers, Thompson’s office began reviewing the case.
One day last year, Mark Hale, the assistant district attorney who runs the Kings County conviction-review unit, visited the scene of the Cash murder. In Smith’s account, which prosecutors had relied on to convict Hamilton, she had said that Hamilton shot Cash in the chest while they were standing in the entrance of the brownstone. She claimed that Cash then walked out of the house and up some stairs, then collapsed on the curb of the sidewalk, where he died.
Hale already had reason to doubt the account. There was Smith’s recantation, for one, and, what’s more, forensic evidence had contradicted her assertion that Cash had been shot in the chest while standing in the building. When Hale saw the brownstone, his suspicions increased. The vestibule was only about six feet wide and five and a half feet deep, a setting inconsistent with ballistics evidence and the medical examiner’s report. Neither Cash’s body nor his clothes had shown evidence of a close-range shooting, and the location of the discharged shell casings indicated that the shooter had stood in the vestibule and shot outward, in the direction of the street. Hale also saw that Cash would have had to walk down a set of stairs, contradicting Smith’s assertion.* Moreover, Cash’s autopsy found evidence of injuries that would have made it impossible for him to walk after the fatal shot.
These problems proved decisive for Thompson. He decided to submit his motion to a judge, and, if the judge assents, Hamilton will become the eleventh person Thompson’s office has exonerated since he took office in January, 2014."
Monday, January 05, 2015
Sunday, January 04, 2015
Saturday, January 03, 2015
No Turned Backs at Officer Liu’s Funeral, Bratton Asks - NYTimes.com
"In his memo, Mr. Bratton acknowledged that tension but told officers “that when you don the uniform of this department, you are bound by the tradition, honor and decency that go with it.”
Tens of thousands of police officers showed up at Officer Ramos’s funeral to pay their respects. When the mayor rose to deliver the eulogy, hundreds of officers standing outside the church turned their backs.
Mr. Bratton described the gesture in his memo as an “an act of disrespect” that distracted from the memory of the two officers. Though not all of the officers on hand participated, he said, “all of the officers were painted by it.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)