Monday, March 30, 2015
Sunday, March 29, 2015
America’s not a force for good: The truth about our most enduring — and harmful — national myth - Salon.com
"Our exceptionalism is a lie, and only an honest accounting of our actual history will allow us to chart a new path"
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Philadelphia Commissioner Steps Into Fray Between Police and Public - NYTimes.com
In Philadelphia, a city with a difficult history of police corruption and brutality against black residents, Commissioner Ramsey, 64, has emerged as an unlikely leader, placing himself in the middle of the tumult surrounding the death of Brandon Tate-Brown, 26, the man killed by the police in December. Moreover, he has moved to the center of a growing — and at times, awkward — national police reform movement.
“I do know this is a problem we’ve got to fix,” the commissioner said in an interview, “because however large or small the community is that doesn’t trust the police, that have these kinds of concerns, we need to address them and address them very, very quickly.”
Philadelphia Commissioner Steps Into Fray Between Police and Public - NYTimes.com
Friday, March 20, 2015
4 Fort Lauderdale Police officers ousted after racist video.This is American as apple pie, "dumb racist police". The average IQ of a police officer is 104. - WSVN-TV - 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Deco
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WSVN) -- Three Fort Lauderdale Police officers have been fired and another has resigned after an internal affairs investigation uncovered an extensive exchange of racially-insensitive material among the law enforcers.
Addressing reporters Friday afternoon, Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Frank Adderley said the investigation revealed 31-year-old Officer Jason Holding, 25-year-old Officer Christopher Sousa and 29-year-old Officer James Wells have been terminated. A fourth officer, 22-year-old Alex Alvarez, has tendered his resignation of his own accord.
Adderley said the officers engaged in "sustained department misconduct and ... conduct unbecoming of a police officer" which "involved racist text message exchange among themselves."
"I am very disappointed, disgusted and shocked by this incident," said Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler. "The inappropriate, racist behavior exhibited by those involved is unacceptable and reprehensible. It violates the trust we place in our law enforcement officers."
"The four officers' conduct was inexcusable, and there is zero tolerance for this type of behavior in the Fort Lauderdale Police Department," Adderley continued.
Adderley added Alvarez was responsible for a video that he described as "racially biased." The iMovie, which according to authorities, Alvarez edited to make it seem like a trailer for a fictitious movie called "The Hoods," came to light in October 2014 and triggered the internal affairs investigation.
When asked to elaborate about the content of the video, Adderley said, "There is someone with hood, KKK, in the video." The clip includes other racially charged images, including a doctored photo of President Barack Obama with grills over his teeth. "I don't think anyone can say that they would not be disappointed who has seen this video," said Adderley. "I think it's a bad video ... and its attempt was to damage the image of this agency."
"When I observed the video, I was disgusted," said Seiler, adding the content in the video was "extremely disrespectful."
The investigation also yielded many pages of test messages between the four officers that are also racially biased and homophobic. One reads, "Jimmy, what would Big Dad do to that [expletive]?"
The reply: "Get that [expletive] from under the wagon and that [expletive] lover in the wagon."
WSVN-TV - 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, DecoEven though Alvarez resigned prior to the firing of the other three officers, Seiler said, "I can promise you, if the other one hadn't resigned, he would have been terminated," said Seiler.
4 Fort Lauderdale Police officers ousted after alleged racist vi - WSVN-TV - 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Deco
Thursday, March 19, 2015
The Cavalier Daily :: University student, Honor Committee member Martese Johnson arrested
Martese Johnson, a third-year student in the College and a member of the Honor Committee and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, was arrested around 12:45 a.m. on Mar. 18 in front of Trinity Irish Pub on the Corner. At the request of University President Teresa Sullivan, a state investigation into the use of force in Johnson's arrest is now underway.
Johnson was charged with resisting arrest, obstructing justice without threats of force, and profane swearing or intoxication in public at 4:21 a.m. The arresting officer was Alcohol and Beverage Control special agent J. Miller.
Miller noted on the arrest record that Johnson “was very agitated and belligerent but [has] no previous criminal history.”
In the course of the arrest, Johnson sustained a head injury requiring 10 stitches.
Johnson was held at $1,500 bail with the specification he be released on an unsecured bond when sober. He was released at 6:01 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Johnson has since retained Richmond attorney Daniel Watkins of the firm Williams Mullen as his lawyer.
An email from Black Dot, signed by “Concerned Black Students,” said the arrest was unprovoked as Johnson was not resisting questioning or arrest. The email included a photo of Johnson bleeding while being held outside Trinity.
“Outside of the doors of Trinity Irish Pub, a mass of University students bore witness to the officer’s animalistic, insensitive, and brute handling of Martese,” the email said. “He was left with his blood splattered on the pavement of University Avenue.”
The email asks for a “swift and thorough investigation on the state, local and University levels.”
The Cavalier Daily :: University student, Honor Committee member Martese Johnson arrested
Monday, March 16, 2015
Michael Douglas: We Can Stop The Madness Of Anti-Semitism
"The first is that historically, it always grows more virulent whenever and wherever the economy is bad. In a time when income disparity is growing, when hundreds of millions of people live in abject poverty, some find Jews to be a convenient scapegoat rather than looking at the real source of their problems.
If we confront anti-Semitism ... if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness.-
A second root cause of anti-Semitism derives from an irrational and misplaced hatred of Israel. Far too many people see Israel as an apartheid state and blame the people of an entire religion for what, in truth, are internal national-policy decisions. Does anyone really believe that the innocent victims in that kosher shop in Paris and at that bar mitzvah in Denmark had anything to do with Israeli-Palestinian policies or the building of settlements 2,000 miles away?
The third reason is simple demographics. Europe is now home to 25 million to 30 million Muslims, twice the world's entire Jewish population. Within any religious community that large, there will always be an extremist fringe, people who are radicalized and driven with hatred, while rejecting what all religions need to preach — respect, tolerance and love. We're now seeing the amplified effects of that small, radicalized element. With the Internet, its virus of hatred can now speed from nation to nation, helping fuel Europe's new epidemic of anti-Semitism.It is time for each of us to speak up against this hate."
Alcohol or Marijuana? A Pediatrician Faces the Question - NYTimes.com
"Marijuana, on the other hand, kills almost no one. The number of deaths attributed to marijuana use is pretty much zero. A study that tracked more than 45,000 Swedes for 15 years found no increase in mortality in those who used marijuana, after controlling for other factors. Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health followed more than 65,000 people in the United States and found that marijuana use had no effect at all on mortality in healthy men and women."
Alcohol or Marijuana? A Pediatrician Faces the Question - NYTimes.com
Alcohol or Marijuana? A Pediatrician Faces the Question - NYTimes.com
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Anger flares up in Ferguson again as 2 arrested in St. Louis during protests | National Monitor
"Anger is again rising in Ferguson, Mo., months after a fatal shooting left an unarmed black teenager dead and resulted in protests across the country.
Two people were arrested this weekend as nightly protests continued over the police killing of Michael Brown, with 50 mostly young demonstrators gathering after sunset at St. Louis’ historic Old Courthouse to march through streets filled with people celebrating St. Patrick’s Day — but this group was in a much less festive mood, according to an NDTV report.
A protester shouted from the steps of the courthouse — the same place where black slave Dred Scott in 1846 had famously filed a historic lawsuit for his freedom, albeit an unsuccessful one — saying that “justice is dead” and people need to “wake it up,” according to the report.
The protesters attempted to hold up traffic in the area but police intervened and arrested two men, one a protester and the other a freelance photojournalist from the website Mashable. The site’s executive editor said via Twitter that he was released shortly after."
Saturday, March 14, 2015
How the Supreme Court is about to explode America’s racial wealth gap - Salon.com
"Conservatives believe that if blacks and Latinos simply work hard, get a good education and earn a good income, historical racial wealth gaps will disappear. The problem is that this sentiment ignores the ways that race continues to affect Americans today. A new report from Demos and Brandeis University, “The Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters,” makes this point strongly. The report shows that focusing on education alone will do little to reduce racial wealth gaps for households at the median, and that the Supreme Court, through upcoming decisions, could soon make the wealth gap explode.
Wealth is the whole of an individual’s accumulated assets, not the amount of money they make each year. As such, in his recent book, “The Son Also Rises,” Gregory Clark finds that the residual benefits of wealth remain for 10 to 15 generations."
Friday, March 13, 2015
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Stop Spying on Wikipedia Users - NYTimes.com
"The notion that the N.S.A. is monitoring Wikipedia’s users is not, unfortunately, a stretch of the imagination. One of the documents revealed by the whistle-blower Edward J. Snowden specifically identified Wikipedia as a target for surveillance, alongside several other major websites like CNN.com, Gmail and Facebook. The leaked slide from a classified PowerPoint presentation declared that monitoring these sites could allow N.S.A. analysts to learn “nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet.”
The harm to Wikimedia and the hundreds of millions of people who visit our websites is clear: Pervasive surveillance has a chilling effect. It stifles freedom of expression and the free exchange of knowledge that Wikimedia was designed to enable."
Monday, March 09, 2015
Half-Million Iraqis Died in the War, New Study Says
"War and occupation directly and indirectly claimed the lives of about a half-million Iraqis from 2003 to 2011, according to a groundbreaking survey of 1,960 Iraqi households. The violence peaked in 2006 and 2007, say public health experts who were part of the study.
On March 19, 2003, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, beginning a ground war that culminated in the rapid capture of Baghdad and overthrow of the regime led by Saddam Hussein. A coalition-led occupation of Iraq lasted until 2011, marked by repeated bombings, an al Qaeda-linked insurgency, militia warfare, and other bloodshed in the nation of 32.6 million people.
In the new PLOS Medicine journal survey, led by public health expert Amy Hagopian of the University of Washington in Seattle, an international research team polled heads of households and siblings across Iraq. The researchers, including some from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, aimed to update and improve past estimates of the human costs of the war and occupation."
"We think it is roughly around half a million people dead. And that is likely a low estimate," says Hagopian. "People need to know the cost in human lives of the decision to go to war."
Race, History, a President, a Bridge - NYTimes.com
About an hour north of where the president spoke was Shelby County, whose suit against the Department of Justice the Supreme Court had used to gut the same Voting Rights Act that Bloody Sunday helped to pass.
His speech also came after several shootings of unarmed black men, whose deaths caused national protests and racial soul-searching.
It came on the heels of the Justice Department’s report on Ferguson, Mo., which found pervasive racial bias and an oppressive use of fines primarily against African-Americans.
It came as a CNN/ORC poll found that four out of 10 Americans thought race relations during the Obama presidency had gotten worse, while only 15 percent thought they had gotten better."
"
Sunday, March 08, 2015
A New Commissioner Joins the Fight Against Discrimination in New York - NYTimes.com
"Every year, thousands of New Yorkers turn to the Commission on Human Rights, the city agency responsible for battling discrimination in the workplace, the housing market and beyond.
They describe sexual harassment and racial discrimination on the job, public accommodations such as schools and stores that remain inaccessible to the disabled and landlords who refuse to rent to people who receive public assistance.
Then they wait. And wait. And wait."
Ferguson Became Symbol, but Bias Knows No Border - NYTimes.com
"Had the shooting occurred three and a half miles to the north, the world’s attention might have turned to the city of Florissant, where in 2013, the police stopped black motorists at a rate nearly three times their share of the population. Less than four miles to the northwest, in Calverton Park, court fines and fees accounted for over 40 percent of the city’s general operating revenue last year.
But it was Ferguson and its government that came under federal scrutiny almost unprecedented for a city of its size, culminating ina Justice Department report last week that described explicit racism among city officials, abusive policing and a system that seemed to view people “less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue.” And it is Ferguson that will almost certainly be forced to make wholesale changes."
Saturday, March 07, 2015
Obama, at Selma Memorial, Says, ‘We Know the March Is Not Over Yet’
"In an address at the scene of what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” Mr. Obama rejected the notion that race relations have not improved since then, despite the string of police shootings that have provoked demonstrations. “What happened in Ferguson may not be unique,” he said, “but it’s no longer endemic. It’s no longer sanctioned by law or custom, and before the civil rights movement, it most surely was.”
But the president also rejected the notion that racism has been defeated. “We don’t need the Ferguson report to know that’s not true,” he said. “We just need to open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not over yet, we know the race is not yet won. We know reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much.”
Friday, March 06, 2015
Ferguson judge back taxes: Ronald Brockmeyer owes $170,000, report says.
According to a recent white paper published by the ArchCity Defenders, the chief prosecutor in Florissant Municipal Court makes $56,060 per year. It’s a position that requires him to work 12 court sessions per year, at about three hours per session. The Florissant prosecutor is Ronald Brockmeyer, who also has a criminal defense practice in St. Charles County, and who is also the chief municipal prosecutor for the towns of Vinita Park and Dellwood. He is also the judge—yes, the judge—in both Ferguson and Breckenridge Hills.
(As I wrote at the time, Brockmeyer's compensation as a prosecutor works out to about $1,500 an hour, which is what you'd make if you worked 40 hours a week at a salary of $3 million per year.)
As it happens, Brockmeyer is now back in the news thanks to the DOJ report, which criticized his work in Ferguson—and thanks to The Guardian, which reveals that Brockmeyer, who, again, makes his living by harshly enforcing the most trivial civic rules, owes the United States government some $170,000 in unpaid taxes.
Ferguson judge back taxes: Ronald Brockmeyer owes $170,000, report says.
The Ferguson Report - Atlantic Mobile
Yesterday the Justice Department released the results of a long and thorough investigation into the killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. The investigation concluded that there was not enough evidence to prove a violation of federal law by Officer Wilson. The investigation concluded much more. The investigation concluded that physical evidence and witness statements corroborated Wilson's claim that Michael Brown reached into the car and struck the officer. It concluded that claims that Wilson reached out and grabbed Brown first "were inconsistent with physical and forensic evidence."
The investigation concluded that there was no evidence to contradict Wilson's claim that Brown reached for his gun. The investigation concluded that Wilson did not shoot Brown in the back. That he did not shoot Brown as he was running away. That Brown did stop and turn toward Wilson. That in those next moments "several witnesses stated that Brown appeared to pose a physical threat to Wilson." That claims that Brown had his hands up "in an unambiguous sign of surrender" are not supported by the "physical and forensic evidence," and are sometimes, "materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time."
Unlike the local investigators, the Justice Department did not merely toss all evidence before a grand jury and say, "you figure it out." The federal investigators did the work themselves and came to the conclusion that Officer Wilson had not committed "prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242."
Our system, ideally, neither catches every single offender, nor lightly imposes the prosecution, jailing, and fining of its citizens. A high burden of proof should attend any attempt to strip away one's liberties. The Justice Department investigation reflects a department attempting to live up to those ideals and giving Officer Wilson the due process that he, and anyone else falling under our legal system, deserves.
One cannot say the same for Officer Wilson's employers.
The Justice Department conducted two investigations—one looking into the shooting of Michael Brown, and another into the Ferguson Police Department. The first report made clear that there was no prosecutable case against one individual officer. The second report made clear that there was a damning case to be made against the system in which that officer operated:
The Ferguson Report - Atlantic Mobile
Thursday, March 05, 2015
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Psychedelic drugs like LSD could be used to treat depression, study suggests | Science | The Guardian
Researchers warn that patients are missing out on potential benefits due to prohibitive regulations on research into recreational drugs
Psychedelic drugs like LSD could be used to treat depression, study suggests | Science | The Guardian
Psychedelic drugs like LSD could be used to treat depression, study suggests | Science | The Guardian
Did John Roberts Tip His Hand? - The New Yorker
"Roberts’s one question may turn out to be extremely important. The issue in the case is whether the Obama Administration, in implementing the Affordable Care Act, violated the terms of that law. The plaintiffs assert that the A.C.A. only authorizes subsidies for individuals who buy health insurance on the fourteen state-run exchanges, or marketplaces. Under their reading of the law, the eight million or so people in the other thirty-six states who currently buy their insurance from the federal marketplace should be denied their subsidies."
Did John Roberts Tip His Hand? - The New Yorker
Did John Roberts Tip His Hand? - The New Yorker
11 alarming findings in the report on Ferguson police | MSNBC
The Department of Justice released a scathing, 102-page report in full on Wednesday, condemning the Ferguson Police Department of routinely violating the constitutional rights of African-Americans living in the St. Louis suburb. The months-long investigation unearthed instances of when money and racial bias factored into the police department’s unlawful activities – here’s a small window into what investigators found:
11 alarming findings in the report on Ferguson police | MSNBC
11 alarming findings in the report on Ferguson police | MSNBC
Darren Wilson Is Cleared of Rights Violations in Ferguson Shooting - NYTimes.com
"Wilson shot and killed Mr. Brown in the street. Many witnesses said Mr. Brown had his hands up in surrender when he died, leading to nationwide protest chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
Darren Wilson Is Cleared of Rights Violations in Ferguson Shooting - NYTimes.com
But federal agents and civil rights prosecutors rejected that story, just as a state grand jury did in November. The Justice Department said forensic evidence and other witnesses backed up the account of Officer Wilson, who said Mr. Brown fought with him, reached for his gun, then charged at him. He told investigators that he feared for his life.
“There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety,” the report said.
The report found that witnesses who claimed that Mr. Brown was surrendering were not credible. “Some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witnesses’ own prior statements with no explanation,” it said.
“Although some witnesses state that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward for a brief moment, these same witnesses describe Brown then dropping his hands and ‘charging’ at Wilson,” it added.
“Those witness accounts stating that Brown never moved back toward Wilson could not be relied upon in a prosecution because their accounts cannot be reconciled with the DNA bloodstain evidence and other credible witness accounts.”
Darren Wilson Is Cleared of Rights Violations in Ferguson Shooting - NYTimes.com
Tuesday, March 03, 2015
Sunday, March 01, 2015
Out of Trouble, but Criminal Records Keep Men Out of Work - NYTimes.com
"Michael Hugh Mirsky landed a temporary job in December rolling stacks of crated milk and orange juice to the loading docks at a commercial dairy in central New Jersey. He’s not making much, and he doesn’t know how long it will last, but after 30 months of unemployment, he counts himself lucky. Mr. Mirsky is a convicted criminal, and work is hard to find."
Out of Trouble, but Criminal Records Keep Men Out of Work - NYTimes.com
Out of Trouble, but Criminal Records Keep Men Out of Work - NYTimes.com
South Korean President Urges Japan to Admit Past Wrongs - NYTimes.com
"SEOUL, South Korea — President Park Geun-hye of South Korea urgedJapan on Sunday to have the “courage and honesty” to admit to its historical wrongdoings against Koreans and other Asians, including its enslavement of Korean women in military brothels during World War II.
South Korean President Urges Japan to Admit Past Wrongs - NYTimes.com
“As Germany and France overcame conflict and mutual enmity and became leaders in building a new Europe, it is time for South Korea and Japan to write a new history together,” Ms. Park said in a nationally televised speech. “But despite their geographical proximity, the two nations could not get close in heart because of tensions surrounding historical issues.”
South Korean President Urges Japan to Admit Past Wrongs - NYTimes.com
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