Tag Archives: crime

U.S.

United Police States of America: Puerto Rico gets slammed for excessive force, hundreds injured & killed every year

The unincorporated U.S. territory of Puetro Rico, has one of the worst police violence records in the United States, that’s according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The DoJ report accuses the Puerto Rico Police Department of regularly: “…using force, including deadly force, when no force or lesser force was called for.”

The DoJ report says police officials reasons for the violence does not justify it: “Puerto Rico officials maintain that drug trafficking and social deterioration are fueling the wave of violent crime. However, increasing crime cannot be used to justify continued civil rights violations or the failure to implement meaningful reforms.”

One problem identified in the report was the use of swat teams for standard community policing. Puerto Rico has the second largest police force in in the United States.

Fukushima

Sunflowers absorb radiation!

A Kobe, Japan, private-sector group announced the results of their studies on sunflowers in the contaminated areas of Japan.

They grew sunflowers in 4 fields in Minamisoma City, within 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

They found that soil contamination was reduced between 20% and 50%.  Radiation was absorbed by the sunflowers’ roots.  The problem is that the sunflowers are now considered nuclear waste.

Fukushima

Corporate Incompetence: Radiation pouring into Pacific Ocean three times greater than reported! Airborne radiation not monitored!

Researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Kyoto University and other institutes say the actual radiation pouring into the Pacific Ocean, from Fukushima Daiichi, is at least three times what Tokyo Electric Power Company is officially reporting.

The researchers say that at least 15,000 terabecquerels (1 terabecquerel = 1.0 × 10+12 becquerels) of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137 has entered the ocean!!!  They say TEPCo is not monitoring airborne radiation that falls into the ocean.

 

U.S.

United Police States of America: Audience cheers Christian governor Rick Perry’s Texas execution record, support the fight against these false christians

On September 7, moderator Brian Williams opened up a question for Governor Perry by first reminding him that his state has executed 234 men under his watch, a bodycount much greater than any other governor, but before Williams could get to his question, the crowd broke into applause to laud Perry for his accomplishment.

“Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?” Williams asked Perry.

“No sir,” responded the ‘christian’ governor Rick Perry, “I’ve never struggled with that at all.”

Now realize that Texas has executed innocent people!  Which makes these Texas ‘christians’ even more sick in the head!

Other Texans are going to make sure everyone knows that innocent people have been executed under ‘christian’ Rick Perry’s watch:  The 12th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty is October 22, in Austin at the Texas Capitol.

U.S.

United Police States of America: Maryland cops erase months of family recordings, after man recorded a bloody beating

A woman lay belly-down on the floor of the Pimlico Race Course, handcuffed and beaten bloody by Baltimore Police.  A man recorded the scene on his cell phone camera.  Immediately the police  grabbed the phone and erased the recording, including months of family recordings.

Now, thanks to the 1st Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals, which ruled that police business is public business, therefore can be recorded, the man who lost the recordings is now suing.

The American Civil Liberties Union is also suing: “It is antithetical to a democracy for the government to tell its citizens that they do not have the right to record what government officials say or do or how they behave in public.”-Deobrah Jeon, ACLU

U.S.

United Police States of America: Cops ignore Federal Court ruling, continue to arrest people for recording police, man faces 75 years in prison for recording police harrasment

On August 26, the 1st Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals held that videotaping police in the course of their public duties is “unambiguously” a free speech right protected under the First Amendment!

However, that is not stopping the state of Illinois from trying a man charged with eavesdropping, after he recorded an incident in which he was confronted by police on his mother’s property.

The man is facing five counts of eavesdropping, and could face 15 years in prison for each charge.

In the 1st Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals case Massachusetts police argued that their privacy rights were being violated every time someone recorded them on duty.  The courts ruled that while a police officer is on duty they are no longer living a private life, they are on public duty.  The appellate judges found that citizens have a First Amendment right to record government officials carrying out their duties in a public space!

Here’s something else to think about: If police claim they can not be recorded because it violates their privacy, and is a threat to security, then their own dash cams in their police cars are illegal!  In fact all security cameras are illegal by that reasoning!  Haven’t people tried to fight security camera use using that very reasoning, and lost?  What gives police the special right to be excluded from public video and audio recordings?

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

War on Terror cover for Global Economic War: Invasion of Afghanistan IS about oil, Afghanistan has 80 million barrels of oil, now it all goes to China

State-owned China National Petroleum Corporation won the first oil and natural gas exploration contracts in Afghanistan since the U.S. led invasion in 2001.

It’s estimated that there are 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil in Afghanistan.  The oil fields of Bazarkhami, Kashkari and Zamarudsay (areas under contract with CNPC) contain an estimated 80 million barrels.

In 2007 China got the rights to mine copper in Afghanistan.  Isn’t nice that the U.S. led War on Terror is allowing other countries to get contracts to mine minerals and oil?

Business/Economics, U.S.

United Police States of Corporate America: People with mental problems thrown in prison, unwritten crime of being mentally ill, big money maker for Corporate Prisons

“When I became a judge I had no idea that I was becoming a gatekeeper to the largest psychiatric facility in the state of Florida – the Miami-Dade Jail.”–Steve Leifman, Miami-Dade County judge

Not only does the United States have the most people in prison, in the whole world, but it also has the most people with mental problems in prison.

A National Public Radio report says that the University of South Florida looked at who was the most frequently jailed people in the Miami-Dade County prison system.  It turns out that people with mental problems are the most frequently jailed people: “Over a five-year period, these 97 individuals were arrested almost 2,200 times and spent 27,000 days in the Miami-Dade Jail. It cost the taxpayers $13 million.”-Steve Leifman, Miami-Dade County judge

Most states don’t use mental health facilities, no thanks to former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to cut funding in the 1980s, so most people who commit crimes because of their mental problems end up abused in prisons.

“It seems to me that we have criminalized being mentally ill.”-Greg Hamilton, Travis County Sheriff, Texas

Sheriff Hamilton says because there is little funding for hospitals to care for mental patients, the prison system becomes the default ‘treatment’ center.

The amount of time a person with mental problems stays in a Travis county jail is between 50 and 258 days.

According to a 2009 Corrections Today interview with Judge Leifman, 90% of U.S. hospital beds for mental health patients have been closed, and there’s been a 400% increase in the mentally ill offenders entering prison!

According to a May 2011 Daily Kos posting: “There are three times as many men and women with mental illness in U.S. prisons as in mental health hospitals.”

“The costs of keeping a mentally ill individual in a penitentiary are three to six time what it costs to treat them at an outpatient mental health center.”

“The U.S. prison system had become the largest mental health provider in the country – with nearly 50% of inmates reporting mental health problems.”

“According to the most recent survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 81% of mentally ill inmates currently in state prison, 76% of mentally ill inmates in federal prison, and 79% of mentally ill inmates in local jails have prior convictions.”

“Mentally ill prisoners are more likely than others to end up housed in especially harsh conditions, such as isolation, that can push them over the edge into acute psychosis.”

“…there are powerful economic drivers to keep locking more and more of them up. In fact incarceration and detention has turned into a multibillion dollar growth industry.”

“…the [privately run Corporate] prison industrial complex is primarily motivated by economics, such that a formidable amount of prison industry capital is devoted to creating prisoners…”

In other words the exploding growth of Corporate run prisons demands more prisoners, so that the Corporate run prisons can make the money to pay back investors.  Mentally ill people are easy targets.

 

 

 

U.S.

United Police States of America: Woman forced to undergo forced body cavity search, then cops send her the bill! Blame the War on Drugs

“The human cost of the failed drug war has been enormous – egregious racial disparities, shattered families, poverty, public health crises, prohibition-related violence and the erosion of civil liberties.”-Barbara Lee, U.S. Representative for California’s 9th congressional district

The Metro Narcotics Agency of Las Cruces, New Mexico, forced a woman to undergo a costly medical body cavity search.  A police informant claimed the woman was smuggling drugs inside her body.  The medical search showed no drugs, the woman was forced to pay for the $1,122 search anyway.

The woman was never arrested, but simply ‘detained’, as is now standard practice by the United Police States of America.  There is no limit to how long a person can be ‘detained’.

Similar cases have been happening around the U.S.  A Cleveland, Ohio woman served 16 months in prison before being released in 2008, when defense attorneys discovered that the police informant lied about the woman’s ‘crime’.

The informant was trying to protect his own complicity in a shooting he was involved in.  Not only did the Ohio woman end up in prison, but so did 25 other people who may or may not be guilty.

The problem is that informants, especially drug informants, are usually known criminals, and due to budget cuts, police agencies are relying on unreliable informants more and more.  The result is that more and more innocent people are going to prison.

 

 

 

International, U.S.

World War 3: Kurdish rebels in Iran admit they are being armed by the United States

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Iranian channel, BBC Persian, Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi admitted they are conducting military action against Iran with the help of the United States.

Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi is the boss of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) terrorist group.

He said the PJAK had built tunnels into Iran from Iraq.  They also received new weapons and equipment, including 120mm mortars, from the U.S. consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil.

Currently Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is in battle with the PJAK.  This follows attempts by Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to mediate between the Iranian Kurdish rebels (PJAK) and Iranian government.  The mediation failed after PJAK forces killed two Kurds: “But the PJAK terrorist group paid no heed to the KRG’s appeals and mediation (and) martyred two local Kurdish forces… and this proved to the KRG that the terrorists had ignored its requests.”-Hamid Ahmadi, IRGC Colonel