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Paul Craig Roberts: The safety of citizens lost with unaccountability of government, police

Paul Craig Roberts
Paulcraigroberts.org
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 14:58 UTC
Image
© AP/Jeff Roberson
Riot police in Ferguson, Missouri.
Events in Ferguson unfolded as most aware Americans thought they would. A white prosecutor guided a grand jury to the decision that the white policeman who shot and killed a young black male had just cause and committed no crime.

The black majority but politically powerless community in Ferguson consists of Americans who are constantly harassed and abused by police. The black community responded predictably to the exoneration of the white policeman. The results were riots, looting, and the destruction of property.

This response hardened the whites in their view that black people are criminally inclined and a threat to the safety of the lives and properties of whites.

The issue has been cast as white-black racism.

Actually, the situation is far more serious than racism.

I can remember times when police in America were reliable. They had themselves under control and saw their role as helpful to citizens and investigators of crimes. They took care not to bring charges against innocent people and to kill citizens without cause. Police would put their lives on line in order to avoid making a mistake in the use of their power.

Those times are gone forever. The police have been militarized, especially after 9/11, but even before. Police are taught to regard the public, especially any suspect or traffic offender as a potential threat to the police. The new rule taught to police is to apply violence to the suspect or offender in order to protect the police officer, and to question suspects only after they are safely secured, it they are still alive after being beaten, tasered, or shot.

Comment: Police brutality is on the rise due to the actions of our leaders. As a result, police have become more dangerous to the public than criminals.

See also:
  • Police state: A natural result of collapse of moral leadership at the highest levels

      Read More...
Pistol

Police reveal Cleveland boy shot by cop did not point BB gun at him


RT
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 04:23 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo/Jordan Gonzalez
People display sigs at Cudell Commons Park in Cleveland, Ohio, November 24, 2014 during a rally for Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy shot by police on November 23
The 12-year-old boy fatally shot Saturday by Cleveland police did not point a pellet gun at officers who approached him at a playground, police said. The shooting officer, police added, was only ten feet away from Tamir Rice when he fired at the boy.

Police officers were responding to a 911 call about a "man" with a gun that was "probably fake." The caller added, "I don't know if it's real or not." Cleveland Deputy Chief Edward Tomba said Monday he did not know if the dispatcher passed this information to the officers. The president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association said the officers were not informed that the gun was likely fake, AP reported.

The pair of officers approached Rice, who was told to raise his hands. He was shot twice by one of the officers when he reached for the pellet gun in his waistband. He did not, according to official accounts, point the "airsoft" gun at police or verbally threaten the officers.

"Airsoft" pellet guns are designed to resemble actual firearms, but they shoot round plastic pellets. The fake guns are usually distinguished from real weapons by a strip or spot of orange paint, but police said Rice's toy did not have a safety indicator. An Ohio state lawmaker has already proposed legislation that would require all such airsoft guns to come with bright or obvious fluorescent stripes.

"Our officers at times are required to make critical decisions in a split second," Chief Calvin Williams said. "Unfortunately this is one of those times."

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Snakes in Suits

Drink less and be 'virtuous' and campus sexual assaults will stop says Florida college president

David Ferguson
Rawstory
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 13:41 UTC
Image
© Rawstory/Screengrab
The president of St. Petersburg, Florida's Eckerd College has stirred up controversy by telling students that excessive drinking and casual sex are what leads to on-campus rapes.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Eckerd's President Donald Eastman III urged students in a campus-wide email to "do your part" to prevent sexual assaults by drinking less and being less promiscuous.

"Virtue in the area of sexuality is its own reward, and has been held in high esteem in Western Culture for millennia because those who are virtuous are happier as well as healthier," wrote Eastman in the loftily-worded email on Sunday. "No one's culture or character or understanding is improved by casual sex, and the physical and psychological risks to both genders are profound."

The 69-year-old Eastman went on to say that incidents of rape "are almost always preceded by consumption, often heavy consumption, of alcohol, often by everyone involved in them."

He offered two "fairly simple suggestions" to the 1,800 students at Eckerd.
1. By limiting your own consumption of alcohol, and encouraging your friends to do the same. Socrates included wine at his Symposium, but he did not get drunk.

2. You can be thoughtful about the dramatic and often negative psychological effects that sexual activity without commitment can have. Virtue in the area of sexuality is its own reward, and has been held in high esteem in Western Culture for millennia because those who are virtuous are happier as well as healthier. No one's culture or character or understanding is improved by casual sex, and the physical and psychological risks to both genders are profound.
"I wish each of you good luck in your final weeks of the semester, and a happy, healthy, virtuous 2015," he concluded.

Comment: His 'fairly simple suggestions' would not have helped this college student. This so called 'leader' has been infected by the psychopathic worldview.
"When (normal) human beings fall into a certain state: the psychopaths, like a virulent pathogen in a body, strike at their weaknesses, and the entire society is plunged into conditions that lead to horror and tragedy on a very large scale."
Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

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Bad Guys

SOTT EXCLUSIVE: Mass demonstrations across US, #MikeBrown may be the focus, his murder only part of the cause

BK
Sott.net
Wed, 26 Nov 2014 02:00 UTC
protest nyc
© @NYHarmReduction via Twitter
Crowd has taken over the street in #TimesSquare chanting #JusticeForMikeBrown, riot cops have shown up with flexicuffs
As I write this, three separate protests are happening in NYC, where I live. There's a group in Times Square, another that just blocked off 11th avenue and the Lincoln Tunnel and another group that started in Union Square and marched down 14th Street. There have also been protests in Washington DC, Philadelphia, Oakland, CA and Ferguson, MO. Ostensibly, these are because a grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson of the murder of Mike Brown, however the root cause goes much deeper.
There was a lot to delve through: 70 hours of testimony from 60 witnesses and three medical examiners. Ultimately, the St. Louis County grand jury of nine white and three black members appeared to side with Wilson's view that he was defending himself against a much larger, fast-approaching aggressor.

Said St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch: "The physical and scientific evidence examined by the grand jury, combined with the witness statements, supported and substantiated by that physical evidence, tells the accurate and tragic story of what happened."

Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown at the time of the shooting, disagreed.

"I know exactly what I saw. I was there the whole time, and I definitely saw my friend stop and put his hands up," he told CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront on Tuesday.
Unfortunately we may never know what happened to Mike Brown. There is a lot of reason to believe that the police are lying, that they manipulated evidence, and that the grand jury was only allowed to hear one narrative: Darren Wilson acted in self defense.

There's also the fact that the Ferguson prosecutor's office and the police department have a relationship. It's an obvious conflict of interest, with the prosecutor basically being asked to make against a case 'one of their own'. Anthony Gray, an attorney for Mike Brown's family, made the same point:
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Bug

California psychologist says that low-IQ girls 'suffer less' trauma from sex assault

David Edwards
Rawstory
Mon, 24 Nov 2014 15:48 UTC
Image
© Youtube
Forensic psychologist Dr. Stan Katz
An expert hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) argued in court that a 9-year-old girl seeking damages after she was sexually assaulted would be protected from emotional stress by her low IQ.

Court documents obtained by KPCC investigative producer Karen Foshay detailed forensic psychologist Dr. Stan Katz's 2013 testimony in a trial to determine how much in damages the 9-year-old girl would receive after she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a boy at one of the district's schools.

The girl reportedly had an IQ between 64 and 70, but the boy was not developmentally disabled.

According to the transcripts, attorney David Ring, who represented the girl, asked Katz to explain what he meant when he said that the girl's disability "acts as a protective factor."

"There's a relationship between intelligence and depression," Katz replied. "What happens is the more you think about things, you can ruminate, you can focus on things, you can look at the complexities of the matter and become less depressed."

"So because she may be less intelligent than a general education student, she's going to suffer less depression because of it?" Ring pressed.

"Very possible, yes," Katz insisted.

He did agree that the girl would need therapy to cope with the trauma. But he said that he had interviewed the girl in 2012 - two years after the 2010 sexual assaults - and had determined that the crime was not connected to her emotional distress. Instead, he blamed her problems on a lack of a father in her life, and on her mental disability.

Comment: Thankfully for the 9-year old girl, the jury didn't buy the lie. They recognized that the slime-ball psychologist (and defense attorney) was blaming the victim.

Interestingly, the LA School District seems to choose legal defense teams that artfully blame the victim:

Los Angeles school district fires lawyer who successfully defends them by blaming 14-year old for sexual relationship with teacher

See also:
  • Childhood trauma may induce epigenetic changes

      Read More...
Sheriff

NYPD cop beats unarmed man after 'pepper spraying'

Tom Boggioni
Raw Story
Fri, 21 Nov 2014 20:45 UTC
Man beaten by NYPD
© PIX11
In video captured by a bystander in a Brooklyn subway station, a New York City police officer can be seen hitting a young man in the head with his baton after the young man allegedly attempted to avoid paying the fare by jumping the turnstiles.

According to PIX11 - which obtained the video - the man who filmed the altercation said the struggle began after the officer used pepper spray against the young man, identified as 20-year-old Donovan Lawson of Brooklyn.

Comment: Cops terrorizing their citizens is nothing new. Just this past week in Cleveland Ohio: Apparently New Yorkers are getting fed up with psycho cops that are tasing, pepper spraying, beating, and shooting it's citizens. Police brutality reads like an epidemic these days, as it seems no city is immune.

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Extinguisher

Ferguson in flames: 1 dead after fiery night of protests

Meg Wagner
New York Daily News
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 19:40 UTC
Image
© KTVI
Police found a body inside a car parked near Ferguson’s Canfield apartments Tuesday morning.
At least one person died during a night of fiery chaos in Ferguson.

Police found a body inside a car parked near the Canfield apartment complex in the St. Louis suburb, close to where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead in August.

The victim - an unidentified black male in his 20s - was shot and burned, KTVI reported. Police are investigating the incident as a suspicious death.

It's not clear if he was a victim of Monday's riots, which erupted after a grand jury refused to indict officer Darren Wilson for the August shooting death of the unarmed teenager.

Furious protesters set at least 25 buildings ablaze and looted a slew of local businesses in suburb and greater St. Louis overnight Monday and into early Tuesday.

Comment: This court decision just added more fuel to the fire.

      Read More...
Gold Bar

SOTT EXCLUSIVE: Gold Fever! Now French seek return of their gold

Aeneas Georg
Sott.net
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 16:16 UTC
WOW! That didn't take long. Not three days after the Dutch National Bank announced it had managed to get 122 tons of gold back from Uncle Sam, detailed here, the leader of France's largest party, Marine Le Pen of the National Front, has demanded - via an open letter to the governor of the French central bank - the repatriation of France's gold.

News about this open letter is nowhere to be found on a Google news search (in French), only on the web site of Le Front National.

Marine Le Pen
© Unknown
Marine Le Pen, who would be elected president of France today in a hypothetical election, would like to have French gold audited and back home.
Yes, the mainstream media in France, just like in the US, only tells the people what it wants them to hear - usually via the 'left' and 'right' wings of the one-party oligarchial state system, cleverly presented to electorates as if they were two separate parties. Thus the puppet in France changes from Sarkozy to Hollande, just as in the US it changed from Bush 2 to Obama. Same circus, same BS! And hence no news about this important letter.

Marine Le Pen asked for the full audit of all French gold, including tests for purity, quantity and where it is stored. She would like to see 20% of foreign currency reserves kept in gold, which is what the Swiss are asking for too. She also sees it as decisive for France's future and, unlike the Dutch, is fully aware that 'cold war hysteria' is being used to thwart the 'threat' of the Western countries developing economic ties with the BRICS countries.
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Arrow Down

Louisiana town to kill all pit bulls and rottweilers: Those who don't surrender face police action

John Vibes
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 19:02 UTC
Rottweiller
© thefreethoughtproject.com
Moreauville, Louisiana - A town in Louisiana has recently voted to ban all Pit Bulls and Rottweilers, calling them "vicious breeds" of dogs.

Current owners of these specific breeds have just one more month to either move out of town, or hand their family pet over to the government to be killed.

While there has traditionally been heavy debate over larger breeds of dogs, in recent years the debate has began to die down, because an overwhelming majority of people now agree that like humans, a dog's temperament and personality are largely based on their upbringing and life experiences.

Sadly, town officials in Moreauville, Louisiana are stuck in a very immature state of mind where they are basically prejudice against breeds of dogs.

Dog owners were notified of the recent ordinance by mail, in a letter which stated that the dogs will be taken away by the local government and killed on December 1st.
      Read More...
Books

Cops 101: New high school course in New York City: "What To Do If You're Stopped By The Police"

Kate Briquelet
New York Post
Sun, 23 Nov 2014 02:14 UTC
East Side Community High School is teaching its students how to interact with the NYPD during stop-and-frisks.
Image
© Helayne Seidman
Senior Jason Zaragoza, 18, with a pamphlet from last week’s seminar.
It's Cops 101.

The principal of East Side Community HS invited the New York Civil Liberties Union to give a two-day training session last week on interacting with police.

The 450 kids were coached on staying calm during NYPD encounters and given a "What To Do If You're Stopped By The Police" pamphlet.

NYCLU representatives told kids to be polite and to keep their hands out of their pockets. But they also told students they don't have to show ID or consent to searches, that it's best to remain silent, and how to file a complaint against an officer.

Principal Mark Federman said he brought in the NYCLU because students told teachers they had bad experiences with being stopped by police. He said the training also was relevant to history classes studying the Ferguson, Mo., shooting.

"We're not going to candy-coat things - we have a problem in our city that's affecting young men of color and all of our students," Federman told The Post.

"It's not about the police being bad," he added. "This isn't anti-police as much as it's pro-young people . . . It's about what to do when kids are put in a position where they feel powerless and uncomfortable."

The hourlong workshops - held in small classroom sessions during advisory periods - focused on the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program and how to exercise Fourth Amendment rights when being stopped and questioned in a car or at home.

Comment: "As I write, I googled "videos of US police brutality" and 7,660,000 results appeared in 0.31 seconds. There are more cases of gratuitous police violence, almost always against the innocent, than a person can absorb in a lifetime. Police body slam elderly infirm people, taser cripples in wheel chairs, pepper spray, taser, and mace kids, young women, and mothers with babes in their arms. Just the other day police shot and killed a 13-year-old kid who was walking down the street with a toy rifle doing no harm to anyone. Only the goon cops regarded the 13-year-old as a threat. The goon cops simply couldn't let the opportunity pass to experience the thrill of killing a person."

Goon cops have gone wild all over America

      Read More...
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