Society's ChildS


Black Cat

US DoJ arrests more than a dozen Puerto Rico police on corruption charges


RT.com
Fri, 23 May 2014 18:16 UTC
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© AFP Photo/Robert SullivanPuerto Rican police
The US Department of Justice has arrested more than a dozen Puerto Rico Police Department officers on corruption charges, claiming they were taking part in a "criminal organization, run out of the police department."

According to CNN, Justice Department prosecutors indicted 16 current and former police officers on Thursday, stating they "used their affiliation with law enforcement to make money through robbery, extortion, manipulating court records and selling illegal narcotics."

As noted by Reuters, drug division officers from three separate areas were part of the arrests. Some officers allegedly offered armed protection to drug dealers in exchange for bribes. Others reportedly planted evidence against innocent individuals before extorting them for money and release. US Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez-Velez, meanwhile, said officers also arrested civilians and confiscated drugs that were later sold illegally.

The suspects "not only betrayed the citizens they were sworn to protect, they also betrayed the thousands of honest, hard-working law enforcement officers who risk their lives every day to keep us safe," she told Fox News.

If convicted, the officers could land in jail on life sentences.

The recently announced arrests are yet another blow to a police force that many groups, including the Justice Department, have criticized for various drug- and corruption-related reasons. In 2010, federal officials detained scores of Puerto Rican police in what was billed then as the largest corruption case in FBI history. A total of 130 arrests were made, 89 of which were law enforcement officials.

Comment: Interesting that the US is arresting police for corruption in Puerto Rico while it systematically ignores blatant corruption and brutality on its own shores. Apparently the PRPD is following the example set here:
Police States of America: Americans killed by cops now outnumber Americans killed in Iraq war
Militarization of American police: Skyrocketing SWAT team raids causing needless deaths of innocent suspects
Why have police in America turned into such ruthless thugs?
Police state Amerika: Call the cops at your peril

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Stormtrooper

How troubled officers move on to other police departments

Amanda Warren
Activist Post
Thu, 22 May 2014 00:00 UTC
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© Unknown
Just as someone can omit employment incidents during a job interview to gain employment elsewhere, the same can happen with troubled cops who move on to other departments. But the issue goes way beyond that and can include some forms of collusion with those in control of hiring. Apparently, it's such a widely known occurrence, that those cops are referred to within the profession as "gypsy cops."
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Popcorn

Putin and his martial arts trained security force

Mark Galeotti
Foreign Policy
Thu, 15 May 2014 16:04 UTC
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© AP/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, PoolRussian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, top, seen during a judo training at a sports school in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Dec. 18, 2009.
Why the Russian president is turning to his fellow martial artists to staff an efficient and loyal security force

Vladimir Putin, perhaps the world's most famous judo black belt, is passionate about his sport --and not just in the dojo, but in the Kremlin. Welcome to the age of the "judocracy" in Russia, where the thinking seems to be: Those who spar together, stay together.

The most recent example of this played out on May 12, when Putin appointed Col. Gen. Viktor Zolotov to be the first deputy interior minister and commander of the Internal Troops. A close associate of the president's, Zolotov was the head of his personal security detail for 13 years -- and, of course, he was one of Putin's sparring partners. (So too was Igor Sidorkevich, once president of the St. Petersburg Judo Federation and now head of the military police.) With Zolotov's promotion, Putin brings in the security forces even closer to him, and he is making sure that they are led by a man with the focus and determination he believes judo inspires.

To a judoka, as Putin said in 2012, "success depends on mastering what is within." And that could almost be the motto of Putin's Internal Troops. It is a distinctively Russian force, a parallel army trained and equipped specifically for security operations at home. Its 180,000 troops range from ill-disciplined local reserves that secure nuclear power stations and police soccer matches, to the Independent Special Designation Brigades that bore much of the brunt of the fighting in Chechnya. The Internal Troops's First Independent Special Designation Division is based in Moscow as an elite force for the security of the Kremlin.

Comment:



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Bullseye

Libyan tribes respond to U.S. Ambassador Deborah Jones

Joanne Moriarty
LibyanWartheTruth.com
Wed, 21 May 2014 00:00 UTC
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Joanne Moriarty
Deborah Jones US Ambassador to Libya spoke today at the Stimson Center in Washington DC. Her prowess for mis-statements and lies is unmatched except by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. She states the Libyan people never had a government before the so called "revolution" and that they are not capable of having a large government only of having small pieces of governments. She also states that the Libyan people do not want a great leader it is not in their culture. I am not sure where this woman is appointed as ambassador but it cannot be Libya, she is in some kind of alternate universe.

The Great Tribes of Libya have responded and you will see their response below.
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Bulb

Former Navy Seal has a great idea to immediately fix the VA: Make U.S. senators get their medical care there

Jason Howerton
The Blaze
Wed, 21 May 2014 13:04 UTC
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Marcus Luttrell
Marcus Luttrell, the former Navy SEAL behind the book "Lone Survivor," has a great idea to quickly fix the issues currently facing the Department of Veterans Affairs: Make U.S. senators go through the VA to get their medical care.

"If you had to put people, Senators - if they had to go for their V.A. to get care, it would probably get fixed," Luttrell said on "Fox and Friends" Wednesday morning.

He also suggested a more realistic solution to address the inadequate care some of the nation's veterans are currently receiving.
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Nuke

America's shame - the N-bomb guinea pigs

Peter Calder
New Zealand Herald
Sat, 17 May 2014 12:48 UTC
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The 1954 blast on Bikini Atoll was 1000 times bigger than the bombs used against Japan.
It was, at the time, the biggest bang humans had ever made. The US nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954, was 1000 times larger than the bombs that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That's not in the same league as the fury nature unleashed on Krakatoa or beneath what is now Lake Taupo, but the 15-megaton blast - codenamed Castle Bravo - has been exceeded artificially only once, by the Soviets' 50-plus megaton Tsar Bomba in 1961.

What happened next was one of the great nightmares of the nuclear age. Fallout from Castle Bravo drifted over the inhabited atolls of Rongelap, Rongerik and Utirik.

On Rongelap, children played in highly radioactive incinerated coral, thinking it was storybook snow.

An hour after the explosion, the per-hour radiation level on the islands was 130 roentgen (R); 50 hours on, it was 175R. Normal background exposure is about 20R in a lifetime.
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Snakes in Suits

'The rich think worker insecurity is a good thing': Chomsky on class warfare in the US

Scott Kaufman
The Raw Story
Fri, 23 May 2014 12:45 UTC
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Noted leftist thinker and pioneering linguist Noam Chomsky recently sat down at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for a wide-ranging discussion titled "Propaganda Vs. Reality."

The host of the event, Professor Jan Nederveen Pieterse, began by noting that there would be, the next day, "a party celebrating the 1 percent."

"We live in an era," he continued, "when Hollywood celebrates idiots as culture heroes - The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street. So is there good news for the 99 percent, and [if there isn't] what kind of news would you be looking for?" Pieterse asked.

"The good news is that there are people like you," Chomsky replied. "People committed to overcoming the narrowness of the spectrum of political discussion and the enormous oppression and inequities of society. That there are people trying to end the extremely ominous threat of nuclear war or environmental catastrophe - that is good news."

"But that's always the good news," he continued. "Class war goes on all the time, it's usually just one-sided. The business classes are very dedicated to class war. Constantly fighting it, so the question is whether there will be an opposition."

"When you see rising opposition, that's the good news."

When asked about the fate of those in a capitalist society who are living "a precarious existence," Chomsky said that "from the point of view of those conducting the class war - part of the business classes and the government - the best thing would be to have a population which is living a precarious existence."
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Pistol

Afghan women: The kill list we don't talk about

Sahana Dharmapuri
Portside
Thu, 22 May 2014 08:57 UTC
In the world of pen vs. gun, we would all benefit from putting the Arab proverb "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" to good use. If women's rights are a security threat to violent extremists, then women's rights must be the asset we protect.

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© UN Photo/Eric KanalsteinAfghan women
Osama bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi, Mullah Omar: we know these names because they were on a kill list, a targeted roster the United States uses to pursue and kill people who are a threat to our national security.

But have you heard of Najia Sediqi, Hanifa Safi, or Malalai Kakar? They were on a list we don't talk about, the one that violent extremists use to target people who are a threat to their security.

Sediqi, Safi and Kakar have three things in common: they were women, they were Afghan public officials and they refused to participate in a political project that does not recognize the human rights of everyone. Instead, they held prominent public positions in the new Afghan government as ministers and police.
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Newspaper

US House Bill would stop door-to-door mail for millions

Pauline Jelinek
Yahoo News
Wed, 21 May 2014 08:13 UTC
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© Unknown
Millions of Americans would no longer get mail delivered to their door but would go to communal or curbside boxes instead, under a proposed law.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform debated Wednesday a bill to direct the U.S. Postal Service to convert 1.5 million addresses annually - 15 million over the next decade - to the less costly, but also less convenient delivery method.

"I think it's a lousy idea," said Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. He was joined by some other lawmakers in saying it wouldn't work in urban areas where there's no place on city streets to put banks of so-called "cluster boxes" that have compartments for multiple homes. Under the proposal, waivers could be given to people with disabilities who have difficulty leaving their homes, and people who still want door delivery could pay extra for it - something Lynch derided as "a delivery tax."
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Oscar

Matrix star denounces 'racist' La Marseillaise at Cannes festival opening


The Connexion
Wed, 14 May 2014 07:40 UTC
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© Thetimes.co.uk
Actor Lambert Wilson has waded into La Marseillaise controversy, branding the words of France's national anthem "racist".

The Matrix actor, who will host the opening ceremony at the Cannes Film Festival later today said he thought the lyrics to the anthem were "appalling".

He told RTL Radio: "I am extremely upset that nobody says it's time to change the lyrics of La Marseillaise, which are from another time."

Mr Wilson described the lyrics as "terrible" and "bloodthirsty", and said: "When I hear the line, Let impure blood water our furrows, I am amazed that we continue to sing it."
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