NYPD blames everyone but themselves for Garner’s death

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

You have to admire their willingness to spin bullshit into blame!

In the wake of Eric Garner’s death via cop chokehold, the NYPD is coming under all sorts of additional scrutiny. This is in addition to the appointed oversight ordered by Judge Scheindlin after finding that elements of its infamous stop-and-frisk program were unconstitutional. Scott Greenfield has a very stark recounting of the incident, as well as a recording of Eric Garner’s last moments. (Here’s additional footage, which includes the officer who applied the lethal chokehold waving at the camera, as well as several officers gamely pretending Garner is simply passed out.)

The unexpected happened when the official medical examiner’s report failed to find that the 400-lb Garner (who is heard repeatedly telling officers he can’t breathe) had simply dropped dead of a heart attack or pre-existing health conditions — something that supposedly would have happened with or without a cop applying direct pressure to his windpipe. Instead, the report contained a word rarely found in examinations following in-custody deaths: homicide.

The largest union within the NYPD — the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — couldn’t have been expecting that. But PBA president Pat Lynch still managed to find something spinnable about the entire situation, greatly aided by the convenient arrest of the cameraman on weapons charges.
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Gee

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Now, what do you suppose happened to people over 50 that would make them want to kill themselves? Let me think about that for a minute:

In the United States, the age-adjusted death rate from suicide grew by more than 11% between 2006 and 2011, even as the overall death rate from all causes fell almost 7%. (To put that another way, more Americans now die from suicide than from car accidents.)

The spike has been particularly concentrated among middle-aged Americans, with age-adjusted suicide rates rising by more than 30% over the past decade.

SuicideRate

Given that suicide attempts generally increase in frequency as Americans get older, the aging Baby Boomers are especially at-risk, Rutgers sociologist Julie Phillips wrote in adraft paper she presented last year.

While suicide rates had declined in the early 2000s, Phillips noted that was appearing to reverse “as the large boomer cohort (particularly males) move into the older age ranges with traditionally higher suicide rates and with the development of increasing suicide rates among the middle-aged.”

“The boomers had great expectations for what their life might look like, but I think perhaps it hasn’t panned out that way,” Phillips subsequently told the New York Times. “All these conditions the boomers are facing, future cohorts are going to be facing many of these conditions as well.”

Sanctions never do what they’re supposed to do

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

And besides, the companies who want to sell to Russia will work deals through straw buyers, etc. — just the way Dick Cheney did with Halliburton and Iraq. Poor people suffered, but it didn’t do squat to Saddam Hussein. Seems like sanctions are just political theater to make it look like we’re “doing something”:

The introduction of newly-enhanced US and EU sanctions against Russia, which have now targeted its most important financial institutions and several of its most important energy companies, has compelled some journalists to wonder whether or not its economy is “on the verge of collapse.” Others have started to openly speculate aboutwho would replace Putin in the event that the government collapses or in the event that he is driven from power in a palace coup. These criticisms fold nicely into those delivered by Barack Obama: Russia is a country that doesn’t make anything, that doesn’t support entrepreneurs, and that, quite simply, is place where no one wants to live. Russia, in other words, is doomed.

As someone who has been extremely critical of Russia’s recent policies, I can understand why some of these criticisms are being voiced. It genuinely does seem that, over the past five months, Russia has regressed: it has not only waged a hyper aggressive, Soviet-style, information war against the “Kiev fascists,” it has openly annexed the territory of a neighboring state and subsequently supported separatist forces waging war against its central government. One can both sympathize with Russian interests in Ukraine and criticize the Ukrainian government while also noting that using the military to seize territory is completely and totally unjustifiable.*

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Challenging a militarized police state

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Great article in Counterpunch:

Critics say the DHS represents a classic case of mission creep, expanding its mission into multiple facets of civilian law enforcement, with its overall budget soaring from $29 billion in 2002 to $61 billion in 2014, according to the Journal.

Even former Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was taken aback by the DHS’ evolution.

“They’ve kind of lost their way..,” Ridge was quoted by the Journal. “I’m trying to figure out why these local communities need Humvees…they could probably use a couple of more patrolman rather than another military vehicle.”

Yet, like the DOD-defense contractor revolving door, money is to be made in the business of policing.

Dubbed Tasergate by some pundits, Albuquerque is now engrossed by the news that former Police Chief Ray Schultz negotiated a deal with Taser International to supply his department with nearly $2 million in equipment prior to the chief’s departure from office last year.

Shortly thereafter, Schultz emerged as a paid consultant to the company, according to local media accounts.

Wave of Activism Against Police Brutality

In Albuquerque, police violence has triggered the biggest wave of activism in the New Mexico city since the early 1970s.

Since the shooting of James Boyd, activists have marched in the streets, packed City Council and DOJ meetings, conducted vigils, organized community forums, and prepared petitions to remove the mayor and convene grand juries that will indict officers. Citizens are participating in the DOJ’s current goal of writing a consent decree that will impose new recruitment standards, training, oversight policies, and standard operating procedures on the APD.

Street protests have drawn hundreds of young people who are cutting their teeth in activism and civil disobedience.

At an April forum held at the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, activists formulated nearly 40 short-term and long-term demands. Significantly, the proposals call for the demilitarization of the policing, zero tolerance for racial profiling and citizen oversight of the police department.

Only a few hours away on the U.S.-Mexico border, groups like the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights likewise call for independent oversight of the Border Patrol.

The UNHRC’s report on the state of human rights in the U.S., affords the CBP “an opportunity for comprehensive reform if they’re serious about preventing unnecessary deaths and injuries,” says Regional Center Director Vicki B. Gaubeca.

In the wider context, last month’s Albuquerque meeting highlighted structural changes urgently needed: adequate services for returning veterans and other people with mental health issues; increased funding for social services like substance abuse prevention and treatment; the right to housing; the full funding of schools; and an end to the school-to-prison pipeline.

Two weeks later, speaking at the site where her former student, 19-year-old Mary Hawkes, was shot to death by the APD on April 21, Albuquerque educator Carolina Acuna-Olvera summed up the sentiment of many in the movement:

“We’re already spending billions of dollars going to war around the world, but can’t feed kids.”

The events in Albuquerque bring into sharp focus many fundamental issues as part and parcel of an inseparable package. Whether activists will be successful in winning changes is still far from certain, given the historic impunity connected to police shootings and instances of brutality.

While the City of Albuquerque has paid out nearly $30 million in wrongful death and excessive force lawsuits during the past few years, no police officer has gone to jail for a shooting.  And in the seven weeks following James Boyd’s shooting, the same number of additional officer-involved shootings-three of them fatal-have shaken Albuquerque and nearby Los Lunas.

Besides APD officers, New Mexico state policemen and U.S. marshals have been behind the triggers in the latest shootings.

Still, many residents say the city has a historic opportunity to change the course of police-community relations, reassert democratic controls over law enforcement and respond to a deluge of worsening social problems that threaten to tear society apart.

“This is widespread,” said Nora Tachias-Anaya of the October 22 Coalition, one of the groups participating in the Albuquerque movement. “This is national, and we know it, but I strongly believe New Mexico is going to make the difference.”

Red tide expanding

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Pretty red seaweed washed ashore the beach at dawn

Our ecosystem is out of balance as the water temperatures warm up. Just think of all the economic displacement that will result from these changes:

TAMPA, Fla. — The largest red-tide bloom seen in Florida in nearly a decade has killed thousands of fish in the Gulf of Mexico and might pose a greater health threat if it washes ashore as expected in the next two weeks, researchers said.

The patchy bloom stretches from the curve of the panhandle to the central Tampa Bay region. It measures approximately 80 miles long by 50 miles wide.

Red tide occurs when naturally occurring algae bloom out of control, producing toxins deadly to fish and other marine life. The odorless chemicals can trigger respiratory distress in people, such as coughing and wheezing.

“It could have large impacts if it were to move inshore,” said Brandon Basino, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “It has been killing a lot of marine species, especially fish, as it waits offshore.”

The agency has received reports of thousands of dead fish, including snappers, groupers, flounders and bull sharks, as well as crabs, eels and octopi. This is the largest bloom seen since 2006.

The libertarian fantasy

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Visita de Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman:

More commonly, self-proclaimed libertarians deal with the problem of market failure both by pretending that it doesn’t happen and by imagining government as much worse than it really is. We’re living in an Ayn Rand novel, they insist. (No, we aren’t.) We have more than a hundred different welfare programs, they tell us, which are wasting vast sums on bureaucracy rather than helping the poor. (No, we don’t, and no, they aren’t.)

I’m often struck, incidentally, by the way antigovernment clichés can trump everyday experience. Talk about the role of government, and you invariably have people saying things along the lines of, “Do you want everything run like the D.M.V.?” Experience varies — but my encounters with New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle Commission have generally been fairly good (better than dealing with insurance or cable companies), and I’m sure many libertarians would, if they were honest, admit that their own D.M.V. dealings weren’t too bad. But they go for the legend, not the fact.

Libertarians also tend to engage in projection. They don’t want to believe that there are problems whose solution requires government action, so they tend to assume that others similarly engage in motivated reasoning to serve their political agenda — that anyone who worries about, say, environmental issues is engaged in scare tactics to further a big-government agenda. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, doesn’t just think we’re living out the plot of “Atlas Shrugged”; he asserts that all the fuss over climate change is just “an excuse to grow government.”

As I said at the beginning, you shouldn’t believe talk of a rising libertarian tide; despite America’s growing social liberalism, real power on the right still rests with the traditional alliance between plutocrats and preachers. But libertarian visions of an unregulated economy do play a significant role in political debate, so it’s important to understand that these visions are mirages. Of course some government interventions are unnecessary and unwise. But the idea that we have a vastly bigger and more intrusive government than we need is a foolish fantasy.