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News Stories Which Highlight the Structure of the System

Started by Telarus, February 16, 2012, 01:06:06 PM

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Mesozoic Mister Nigel

The thing that is most telling to me is that they're not even really bothering to try to pretend they're on the side of the people anymore.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Cain

This story is educational, but in a different way from how it may initially seem:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17636776

QuoteMetropolitan Police criticised after racism inquiry

Two former senior Scotland Yard bosses have criticised the Metropolitan Police after eight officers were suspended over allegations of racism.

Retired Flying Squad commander John O'Connor said managers should have been pro-active after the force was accused in 1999 of "institutional racism".

Former Det Ch Insp David Michael said the force had to demonstrate its commitment to tackling the issue.

The force has said racist language is "abhorrent" and not tolerated.

In total, 18 officers and one civilian staff member are being investigated in relation to 10 claims of racism.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is investigating the claims which include bullying, abuse and physical assault.

What it's not talking about is all the non-white deaths while in police custody in the UK.

Because, in the modern world, it seems so long as you can make a stand against intolerant language and verbal abuse, it doesn't matter if you actually act like a sociopathic monster.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Cain on April 06, 2012, 04:07:15 PM
This story is educational, but in a different way from how it may initially seem:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17636776

QuoteMetropolitan Police criticised after racism inquiry

Two former senior Scotland Yard bosses have criticised the Metropolitan Police after eight officers were suspended over allegations of racism.

Retired Flying Squad commander John O'Connor said managers should have been pro-active after the force was accused in 1999 of "institutional racism".

Former Det Ch Insp David Michael said the force had to demonstrate its commitment to tackling the issue.

The force has said racist language is "abhorrent" and not tolerated.

In total, 18 officers and one civilian staff member are being investigated in relation to 10 claims of racism.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is investigating the claims which include bullying, abuse and physical assault.

What it's not talking about is all the non-white deaths while in police custody in the UK.

Because, in the modern world, it seems so long as you can make a stand against intolerant language and verbal abuse, it doesn't matter if you actually act like a sociopathic monster.

:x
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


hirley0

pro-active
YES:
But only in the case of Tropical STORMS{subs) & Volcanoes{air&ground

Cain

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17651797

QuoteThe UK government approved the 2004 rendition of a terror suspect to the Gaddafi regime, the BBC can reveal.

A letter from an MI6 officer refers to Abdel Hakim Belhaj's rendition to Libya. It congratulates the Libyans on the "safe arrival" of the "air cargo".

Mr Belhaj says he was tortured in jail. Successive UK governments have denied complicity in rendition or torture.

But BBC correspondent Peter Taylor says he understands Mr Belhaj's rendition was given ministerial approval.

However it is not clear at what level of government the decision was authorised.

The letter from the senior MI6 officer, Sir Mark Allen, to Col Gaddafi's intelligence chief, Musa Kusa, was found last year in the rubble of Musa Kusa's headquarters, which were bombed by Nato.

As well as congratulating the Libyans on the arrival of the "cargo", it points out that "the intelligence was British".

The letter was sent in 2004 when Mr Belhaj was the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

MI5 believed the group was close to al-Qaeda and involved in recruiting young Muslims in Britain to fight in Iraq.

Our correspondent says it appears MI6 had discovered that Mr Belhaj was in Malaysia and about to head for London in the hope of obtaining political asylum.

MI6 informed its foreign intelligence partners, and as a result Mr Belhaj was intercepted in Bangkok, presumably by the CIA, and rendered to Libya.

Our correspondent says the letter suggests MI6 was complicit in Mr Belhaj's illegal rendition and alleged torture in Libya - but that MI6 was not acting unilaterally.

He says his understanding is that MI6 obtained authorisation from the Labour government of the time for its action.

Jack Straw was the Labour Foreign Secretary in 2004 when the rendition took place. In an interview on BBC Radio 4 last year he said: "We were opposed to unlawful rendition. We were opposed to any use of torture or similar methods. Not only did we not agree with it, we were not complicit in it and nor did we turn a blind eye to it."

He added: "No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time."

His office told the BBC Mr Straw had nothing further to add in the light of the current allegations

Jack Straw, as you may have noticed, is either a liar, or not in control of the UK's intelligence agencies.  I tend towards the former - he was given the role of Foreign Secretary after Robin Cook, a far better man than most in Parliament, resigned in the wake of the Iraq War.  It would make sense for Blair to put a pliant toady in place - which is exactly what Straw was.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

Cain

Tony Blair, amazingly, "doesn't remember" any of this.

Anyway,

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-new-york-cops-in-your-hallways-20120403

QuoteBloomberg, that great crossover Republican, has long been celebrated by the Upper West Side bourgeoisie for his enlightened views on gay rights and the environment, but also targeted for criticism by civil rights activists because of stop-and-frisk, a program that led to a record 684,330 street searches just last year.

Now he's under fire for a program he inherited, which goes by the darkly Bushian name of the "Clean Halls program." In effect since 1991, it allows police to execute so-called "vertical patrols" by going up into private buildings and conducting stop-and-frisk searches in hallways – with the landlord's permission.

According to the NYCLU, which filed the suit, "virtually every private apartment building [in the Bronx] is enrolled in the program," and "in Manhattan alone, there are at least 3,895 Clean Halls Buildings." Referring to the NYPD's own data, the complaint says police conducted 240,000 "vertical patrols" in the year 2003 alone.

If you live in a Clean Halls building, you can't even go out to take out the trash without carrying an ID – and even that might not be enough. If you go out for any reason, there may be police in the hallways, demanding that you explain yourself, and insisting, in brazenly illegal and unconstitutional fashion, on searches of your person.

The easiest way to convey the full insanity of this program is to simply read stories from the complaint. The first account comes from Janean Ligon, a 40 year-old black woman from East 163 St. in the Bronx. She lives with her three sons, J.G., J.A.G., and Jerome, all of whom have been repeatedly stopped and harassed.

According to the suit, Mrs. Ligon in August of last year sent her son J.G. to go to the store to get ketchup. He went to the store, got the ketchup, and started home. Just outside the door to his apartment, he was stopped by four policemen, two in uniform and two in plain clothes. They ask him why he's going into the building. He explains, produces identification, and even shows the police the ketchup in his bag. But that's not enough. After that:

Quote... One officer asked J.G. to identify the apartment in which he lived. J.G. responded, telling the officer his family's apartment number. The officers then rang the bell to Ms. Ligon's apartment. Over the intercom, Ms. Ligon heard a man say that he was a police officer, and he needed her to come down to identify her son.

    Terrified that J.G. was injured or dead, Ms. Ligon ran out of the apartment to find out what had happened to J.G. As she approached the lobby she saw J.G. standing just outside the vestibule near the mailboxes, surrounded by four officers. She collapsed and began weeping. One officer began laughing, asked Ms. Ligon if J.G. was her son, and handed her the ketchup.

In another incident, police stopped three friends of a Bronx resident named Alex Lebron as they were leaving his apartment. Lebron's mother saw the teenagers being interviewed in the stairwell, approached the police and told them she knew them and everything was okay. She then went to her apartment and told her son that the cops were talking to his friends. Lebron, according to the suit, then races downstairs "to prevent their arrest." Here's the rest of the story, according to the complaint:

QuoteMr. Lebron encountered his handcuffed friends and the two police officers in the lobby of his building. He told the officers that he lived in the building and that the teens had been visiting him. The officers responded that it was "too late" and placed the three young men in a police van.... The arresting officers took W.B., J.G., and their friend to the 44th Precinct, where they were locked in a cell. After approximately two hours, they were given summonses for trespassing and released. The trespassing charges against W.B., J.G., and their friend were later dismissed.

This is Michael Bloomberg's New York – where, in a stirring homage to the underappreciated Wayans Brothers classic Don't Be a Menace to South Central (While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood), you really can be arrested for "being black on a Friday night." (Okay, the Lebron incident was actually a Wednesday night – June 15 of last year).

Stories like this "Clean Halls" program are beginning to make me see that journalists like myself have undersold the white-collar corruption story in recent years by ignoring its flip side. We have two definitely connected phenomena, often treated as separate and unconnected: a growing lawlessness in the financial sector, and an expanding, repressive, increasingly lunatic police apparatus trained at the poor, and especially the nonwhite poor.

Juana

What the fuck. I really wish we were over that.


MOAR TERRIBLE THINGS!
U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money
Quote
Philadelphia, Pa. – Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities.

Ciavarella wrote in a letter to the court,

    "Your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame."

The two judges face up to seven years in prison under a plea agreement made with the state.

The companies in question paid the two judges more than $2.6 million dollars to send children to detention.  The companies receive a stipend from the government for each inmate they house.  So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.

According to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group, teenagers were sentenced to detention for simple misdemeanors.

The Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation in U.S. courts. But many of the juveniles appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney because they were told by the probation service that their minor offenses didn't require one.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, estimated that of approximately 5,000 juveniles who came before Ciavarella from 2003 and 2006, between 1,000 and 2,000 received sentences that far outweighed their crimes.  She said the center will be suing the judges and the companies to compensate the victims.

Levick said.

"That judges would allow their greed to trump the rights of defendants is just obscene,"

This nightmare scenario has long been the cry of those trying to end the practice of privatizing prisons in the United States.
Seriously? Fucking seriously?
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on April 16, 2012, 07:57:17 PM
What the fuck. I really wish we were over that.


MOAR TERRIBLE THINGS!
U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money
Quote
Philadelphia, Pa. – Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities.

Ciavarella wrote in a letter to the court,

    "Your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame."

The two judges face up to seven years in prison under a plea agreement made with the state.

The companies in question paid the two judges more than $2.6 million dollars to send children to detention.  The companies receive a stipend from the government for each inmate they house.  So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.

According to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group, teenagers were sentenced to detention for simple misdemeanors.

The Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation in U.S. courts. But many of the juveniles appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney because they were told by the probation service that their minor offenses didn't require one.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, estimated that of approximately 5,000 juveniles who came before Ciavarella from 2003 and 2006, between 1,000 and 2,000 received sentences that far outweighed their crimes.  She said the center will be suing the judges and the companies to compensate the victims.

Levick said.

"That judges would allow their greed to trump the rights of defendants is just obscene,"

This nightmare scenario has long been the cry of those trying to end the practice of privatizing prisons in the United States.
Seriously? Fucking seriously?

Heard about this when the story broke.

Are you actually surprised, Garbo? 

Molon Lube

Juana

I shouldn't be. I still apparently like to think there's a line people won't cross, even though I know better.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on April 16, 2012, 08:06:00 PM
I shouldn't be. I still apparently like to think there's a line people won't cross, even though I know better.

This is 21st Century America™, Garbo.  "Crossing lines" now equals progress!  You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can't move that bottom line without breaking a few children.

NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?
Molon Lube

Freeky

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 16, 2012, 08:07:50 PM
Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on April 16, 2012, 08:06:00 PM
I shouldn't be. I still apparently like to think there's a line people won't cross, even though I know better.

This is 21st Century America™, Garbo.  "Crossing lines" now equals progress!  You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can't move that bottom line without breaking a few children.

NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?

:horrormirth:

Cain

Ah, but such quality of jails they manage to go to!

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/04/photog-hopes-to-effect-policy-with-survey-of-juvenile-lock-ups/

QuoteA 12-year-old in his cell at the Harrison County Juvenile Detention Center in Biloxi, Mississippi. The window has been boarded up from the outside. The facility is operated by Mississippi Security Police, a private company. In 1982, a fire killed 27 prisoners and an ensuing lawsuit against the authorities forced them to reduce their population to maintain an 8:1 inmate to staff ratio.

More pics at the link.

Doktor Howl

Molon Lube