american anthrax: why secrets, public service, and governance don't mix

ICH |  September 11, 2001, shook the United States to the core, a country that had been nearly untouchable since its democratic inception. However, immediately following this horrific tragedy, another equally as impactful 'terrorist attack' occurred when weaponized anthrax was sent to multiple Congressman and journalists through the U.S. Postal Service.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were both one-time events that happened in two prominent cities. Unlike 9/11, the Anthrax Attacks localized terrorism and spread fear to every corner of American life, where the simple act of getting your mail could prove to be fatal. Five people died as a result of breathing in the deadly anthrax spores, including postal workers and one NY Post reporter. Countless others were infected.

The Bush administration initially tried to link this 'second wave of terrorism' to al-Qaeda with zero proof. Once that talking point out-lived its usefulness, the official narrative began leaning towards Saddam Hussein and his mythological biological weapons program.

Establishment propagandists like John Mccaine and ABC news reporters intentionally spread disinformation to plant the seed in the public mind that the anthrax came from Iraq, which eventually lead to Colin Powell's infamous 2003 WMD speech at the UN. All the while, the U.S. government was fully aware that the anthrax did not come from an external source, because the strain showed tell-tale signs of being a specific anthrax strain that was weaponized and manufactured by the U.S. military.

Regardless, the idea of the Anthrax Attacks being executed by an external terrorist organization remained conventional wisdom the public was conditioned into believing in the aftermath of 9/11. Eventually, two men were accused of being the perpetrators behind the attacks, yet no charges were ever brought to either of them. The first accused individual, Steven Hatfill, ended up being rewarded a multimillion dollar settlement from the government for being wrongly accused before any evidence was presented against him. The subsequent accused individual, Bruce Ivins, allegedly committed suicide while the FBI was trying to break him into confessing.

Ultimately, the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to verify its evidence pointing to Ivins as the main suspect. Instead, the NAS concluded that the DNA in the anthrax sent in the mail was in fact not a match to the anthrax Ivins worked with. Before the National Academy of Sciences finished their independent investigation, the FBI rushed its preestablished conclusions about Ivins's guilt to the press, and the case was closed. To this day, the FBI has never commented on the many glaring contradictions in the official government narrative about the Anthrax Attacks.

100-year old ricin found in NIH lab...,

realclearscience |  The National Institutes of Health said it has uncovered a nearly century-old container of ricin and a handful of other forgotten samples of dangerous pathogens as it combs its laboratories for improperly stored hazardous materials.

The agency began an intensive investigation of all its facilities after a scientist in July found vials of smallpox dating from the 1950s, along with other contagious viruses and bacteria that had been stored and forgotten in one lab on the NIH's campus.

Friday, the NIH said in different facilities, it found small amounts of five improperly stored "select agents," pathogens that must be registered and kept only in certain highly regulated laboratories. All were found in sealed and intact containers, with no evidence that they posed a safety risk to anyone in the labs or surrounding areas, the agency said in a memo to employees. All have been destroyed.

They included a bottle of ricin, a highly poisonous toxin, found in a box with microbes dating from 1914 and thought to be 85 to 100 years old, the memo said. The bottle was labeled as originally containing 5 grams, although NIH doesn't know how much was left.

Ricin has legitimate research uses, the NIH said, but was not studied in this lab.

Also discovered were samples listing pathogens that cause botulism, plague, tularemia and a rare tropical infection called melioidosis.

the just-us system is a gestalt of the attitudes and inherent biases of the uhmurkan majority

Capitalism, Racism, and Entropy

NYTimes |  The racially torn city of Ferguson, Mo., took an important step on Monday when the City Council announced proposals aimed at remaking its troubled court system and creating a civilian review board for the Police Department.

The initiatives, which have yet to be fully explained, speak to longstanding grievances in the black community and are meant to defuse racial tensions that erupted into riots last month after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot to death by a white policeman.

For the reforms to be truly meaningful, they will need to be adopted by neighboring towns in St. Louis County that have similarly unfair legal systems, which appear to single out black motorists for traffic and streets stops. The reform effort also needs a strong push from the State Supreme Court, which should bring the municipal courts into line with state law and United States Supreme Court rulings that make it illegal to jail indigent defendants solely because they are unable to pay fines.

Defense lawyers say that such abuses are common in St. Louis County, where black motorists are often targeted for petty offenses that generate fines, which provide some towns with 40 percent or more of their revenues. When motorists who can’t afford to pay the fines and penalties miss their court dates, arrest warrants are issued — which makes them vulnerable to losing job opportunities and housing.

A Times article on Tuesday said that Ferguson had the highest number of warrants relative to its size in the state. A report by ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit organization, found that last year Ferguson issued roughly three warrants for every household in town.

The City Council seems to have gotten the message. It announced that it would take up a proposal to repeal the offense of “failure to appear” in municipal court so that defendants would no longer be charged or fined for not appearing. Presumably, the new system will allow defendants to explain their absences and permit them to work out payment plans for fines.

The Council also said it would take up proposals that limit court-fine totals to 15 percent or less of the city’s revenue and abolish onerous fees that can have a catastrophic effect on the lives of impoverished defendants. The Council also expressed the hope that municipal judges and prosecutors would explore alternative methods of sentencing, including community service.

The state courts in Missouri are already forbidden by law to jail indigent clients solely because they are too poor to pay. The State Supreme Court should grant a recent request by defense lawyers and legal scholars that expressly states that the same standard applies in municipal courts to indigent defendants, many of whom are racial minorities.

In acting this week, the Ferguson City Council was clearly being mindful that the Justice Department has begun a broad investigation into police practices in Ferguson, focusing on issues like mistreatment of prisoners, use of excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops.

That investigation needs to go forward, not just in Ferguson but in neighboring towns in St. Louis County, which have been similarly bad records. The goal should be to induce those towns to embrace judicial fairness as well.

1% vs 99% apartheid rule of law: militates against de-escalation of police militarization..,

NYTimes |  While questioning by the committee was largely critical, it is not clear whether there is wide support in Congress for changing the programs. President Obama has ordered a governmentwide review of the policies, but that review is in its nascent stages and the president did not publicly set a deadline for completing it.

One of the policies under review is a Pentagon program that transfers surplus military equipment to the local police. Though it played a relatively minor role in outfitting police officers in Ferguson, the program has come under heavy scrutiny since the protests there.

Figures released Tuesday by Congress showed that some police departments with fewer than 10 full-time officers had received large mine-resistant trucks designed to withstand roadside bombs in Iraq. Many police departments received enough automatic rifles, such as M-16s, to give several to each officer.

“Bayonets are available under the program,” said Alan F. Estevez, the principal deputy undersecretary for acquisition for the Defense Department. “I can’t answer what a local police force would need a bayonet for.”

“I can give you the answer,” replied Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. “None.”

Police chiefs know changes will be made to the federal programs, whether from Congress or the administration, according to Jim Bueermann, the president of the Police Foundation, a research group in Washington, who testified Tuesday. He recommended that, before receiving equipment, police departments be required to prove that they informed the public, trained their officers and set policies for using the gear.

Mr. Kamoie, from Homeland Security, noted that his agency’s grants did not pay for weapons. He said infrared, helicopter-mounted surveillance gear bought with federal grants was instrumental in locating Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston bombing.

Mr. Coburn corrected him. Mr. Tsarnaev was discovered not by the police but by a Watertown, Mass., resident named Dave Henneberry who — once the police allowed people to leave their homes — walked outside and noticed a pool of blood in his boat parked in his backyard. Mr. Coburn presented an article from The Boston Globe recounting the events.

Mr. Kamoie seemed surprised. He said his colleagues had credited the helicopter camera. “I look forward to reading that article,” he said.

rule of law: apartheid governance is necessarily secretive and anti-democratic

LATimes |  When the City Council announced the new policies Monday, some observers wondered whether the council had broken Missouri's sunshine law, which generally requires that public meetings and deliberations be accessible to the public.

“When they come up with a proposal that they’re going to implement, one assumes they have been meeting,” said Jean Maneke, an attorney specializing in 1st Amendment law who represents the Missouri Press Assn. “If they haven’t been meeting, it kind of begs the question: How did they come up with these policies and decide they were going to implement them?”

Maneke added, “Something went on here that just smells.”

Although the council's Tuesday night schedule indicated that members would be going through a first reading of the proposed policies -- two readings are generally required under Ferguson statute -- language in a statement the council issued Monday seemed to treat the passage of the new policies as a foregone conclusion.

The statement said that “these changes have been accomplished or are in the process of implementation,” and that the council “will be abolishing” municipal court fees, despite no votes apparently having been taken.

“The overall goal of these changes is to improve trust within the community and increase transparency, particularly within Ferguson’s courts and police department,” City Councilman Mark Byrne said in the statement, which was released through an outside public relations firm. “We want to demonstrate to residents that we take their concerns extremely seriously. That’s why we’re initiating new changes within our local police force and in our courts.”

City Council members could not be reached for comment shortly before the Tuesday's meeting, which, according to a video live feed, had quickly turned into a raucous affair as residents came up to the microphone for public comment.

One resident directly challenged the council on how it came up with its  proposals. “How can you propose a bill for a first reading? Have you been meeting in secret?” the man asked.

One male council member responded, “This is the first reading.... This is our first meeting, first reading,” and didn't elaborate. (The Los Angeles Times was not able to determine which council member was speaking.)

At least two advocates who support those changes said in interviews that they were troubled by how the council introduced them.

“It seems as though they had a closed-door meeting and came up with this stuff,” said Patricia Bynes, a committeewoman for the Democratic Party in Ferguson.

without monsters of the id the militarized overseers can't justify their existence...,

slate |  Did you know Michael Brown was a killer?

Did you know he was a devoted gang member with an extensive juvenile record who routinely robbed convenience stores and committed acts of mayhem? And did you know that when Officer Darren Wilson shot Brown, he wasn’t using unjustified force, he was defending his life? The 6-foot-4, 300-pound 18-year-old fractured Wilson’s eye socket while reaching for his gun, and was killed while charging at Wilson to land another blow.

If this sounds suspect—if it sounds almost unbelievable—then your head is in the right place. Nothing in this narrative is true. Racist innuendo aside, there’s no evidence Brown was a violent gang member, nor is there evidence of any serious wrongdoing—as a juvenile, Brown was never convicted of a felony nor was he facing charges as an adult. And while Wilson was taken to the hospital after his encounter with Brown, he didn’t suffer serious injuries—the fractured eye socket is a myth.

But if you read websites like the Independent Journal Review, dive into far-right media, or explore the world of Darren Wilson support pages, you’ll find plenty of people who buy the fantasy. They reject the mainstream picture of Brown: A typical teenager, struggling to carve an identity and a life out of his beliefs, actions, and missteps. In their minds Brown was a budding criminal, and Wilson a hero. Or, as one Wilson supporter said during a demonstration for the officer, “We’ll all see this in the end that it was a good shooting. You know, it was a good kill.”

We know why the Brown family was quick to give a loving portrait of Michael. Like any parents in their situation, they wanted the world to see their son as they did—a decent boy who didn’t deserve to die.

The question is for the other side: Why attack Michael Brown’s reputation? After all, if the goal is an objective look, there’s no need to explore Brown or Wilson as individuals. Brown could have been Gandhi or he could have been the Unabomber; all that matters for the case is what happened in a few brief moments on the streets of Ferguson.

turns out overseer wilson murdered michael brown straight up, simple, and plain...,

stltoday |  Among the claims that ignited the fury over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown were that Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson chased the unarmed teen on foot, shot at him as he ran away, then fired a barrage of fatal shots after Brown had turned around with his hands up.

Almost all of the witnesses who shared these accounts with media either knew Brown; lived at or near the Canfield Green apartments, where the shooting occurred; or were visiting friends or relatives there.

But there were two outsiders who happened to be working outside at the apartment complex on Aug. 9 — two men from a company in Jefferson County — who heard a single gunshot, looked up from their work and witnessed the shooting.

Both have given their statements to the St. Louis County police and the FBI. One of the men agreed to share his account with a Post-Dispatch reporter on the condition that his name and employer not be used.

The worker, who has not previously spoken with reporters, said he did not see what happened at the officer’s car — where Wilson and Brown engaged in an initial struggle and a shot was fired from Wilson’s gun.

His account largely matches those who reported that Wilson chased Brown on foot away from the car after the initial gunshot and fired at least one more shot in the direction of Brown as he was fleeing; that Brown stopped, turned around and put his hands up; and that the officer killed Brown in a barrage of gunfire.

overseers gone wild in false forfeiture la la land....,

WaPo |  During the rush to improve homeland security a decade ago, an invitation went out from Congress to a newly retired California highway patrolman named Joe David. A lawmaker asked him to brief the Senate on how highway police could keep “our communities safe from terrorists and drug dealers.”

David had developed an uncanny talent for finding cocaine and cash in cars and trucks, beginning along the remote highways of the Mojave Desert. His reputation had spread among police officers after he started a training firm in 1989 to teach his homegrown stop-and-seizure techniques. He called it Desert Snow.

The demonstration he gave on Capitol Hill in November 2003 startled onlookers with the many ways smugglers and terrorists can hide contraband, cash and even weapons of mass destruction in vehicles. It also made David’s name in Washington and launched his firm into the fast-expanding marketplace for homeland security, where it would thrive in an atmosphere of fear and help shape law enforcement on highways in every corner of the country.

Over the next decade, David’s tiny family firm would brand itself as a counterterrorism specialist and work with the departments of Homeland Security and Justice. It would receive millions from federal contracts and grants as the leader of a cottage industry of firms teaching aggressive methods for highway interdiction. Along the way, working in near obscurity, the firm would press the limits of the law and raise new questions about police power, domestic intelligence and the rights of American citizens.

In 2004, David started a private intelligence network for police known as the Black Asphalt Electronic Networking & Notification System. It enabled officers and federal authorities to share reports and chat online. In recent years, the network had more than 25,000 individual members, David said.

“Throughout history law enforcement investigations have been stymied because of law enforcement’s inability to move information and because enforcement entities refuse to work together,” David wrote in a 2012 letter to Black Asphalt members that was obtained by The Post. “This website allows all of us to do that.”

Operating in collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal entities, Black Asphalt members exchanged tens of thousands of reports about American motorists, many of whom had not been charged with any crimes, according to a company official and hundreds of internal documents obtained by The Post. For years, it received no oversight by government, even though its reports contained law enforcement sensitive information about traffic stops and seizures, along with hunches and personal data about drivers, including Social Security numbers and identifying tattoos.

Black Asphalt also has served as a social hub for a new brand of highway interdictors, a group that one Desert Snow official has called “a brotherhood.” Among other things, the site hosts an annual competition to honor police who seize the most contraband and cash on the highways. As part of the contest, Desert Snow encouraged state and local patrol officers to post seizure data along with photos of themselves with stacks of currency and drugs. Some of the photos appear in a rousing hard-rock video that the Guthrie, Okla.-based Desert Snow uses to promote its training courses.  Fist tap Dale.

it's perfectly legal to film cops at work in all 50 states

HuffPo |  Snapping photos of police in Ferguson, Missouri, may have gotten Huffington Post reporter Ryan J. Reilly arrested Wednesday night while he was covering protests prompted by the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was shot to death by a police officer.

Reilly and Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowrey were detained and assaulted after attempting to film a swarm of police officers inside a McDonald’s. An officer slammed Reilly's head into a glass window, and Lowery was shoved into a soda fountain while wearing press credentials around his neck. Both were later released without being charged with breaking any laws.

“They essentially acted as a military force,” said Reilly, who was in the restaurant to charge his phone and computer. “It was incredible.”

In recent years, there have been countless cases of police officers ordering people to turn off their cameras, confiscating phones, and, like Reilly, arresting those who attempt to capture footage of them. Despite a common misconception, it’s actually perfectly legal to film police officers on the job.

“There are First Amendment protections for people photographing and recording in public,” Mickey Osterreicher, an attorney with the National Press Photographers Association, told The Huffington Post. According to Osterreicher, as long as you don’t get in their way, it’s perfectly legal to take photos and videos of police officers everywhere in the United States.

This misconception is pervasive enough that the New York City Police Department circulated a memo last week reminding officers.

“Members of the public are legally allowed to record police interactions,” the memo states, according to the Daily News. “Intentional interference such as blocking or obstructing cameras or ordering the person to cease constitutes censorship and also violates the First Amendment.”

The NYPD’s reminder comes as police activity is in the national spotlight. Just two days after Michael Brown’s death, cops in Los Angeles shot to death an unarmed black man who allegedly struggled with mental illness. And three weeks ago, a New York City police officer put Eric Garner in an illegal chokehold that left him dead after gasping “I can’t breathe!” A bystander caught the entire thing on video.

Those deaths, along with the arrests of Reilly and Lowrey, have raised questions about what, if anything, individuals can do to hold the police accountable for their actions. But one unquestionable right people have is to capture officers on film.

“There’s no law anywhere in the United States that prohibits people from recording the police on the street, in a park, or any other place where the public is generally allowed,” Osterreicher said.

overseers and bullies barely capable of functioning at a 5th grade level don't know the law...,

raisedonhoecakes |  Being a police officer doesn’t give one the right to act like an ignorant bully on steroids.

On August 1, 2008, Maryland State Troopers, members of the Harford County Sheriff’s office as well as other law enforcement agencies arrested a group of anti-abortion protestors from a pro-life, pro-family, Roman Catholic organization called Defend Life for…. well, what they were arrested for is part of the story.

According to the police, the protestors and a judge’s decision in the case, the protestors had set up on a

…grassy shoulder along Route 24, near the intersection of Routes 24 and 924 in Harford County. (Id. ¶ 22.) The demonstrators stood approximately 20 to 40 feet apart from each other and they held signs of varying sizes, between 4 and 5 feet in height and 2 and 3 feet in width that contained pictures and words that conveyed an anti-abortion message.

After receiving calls from motorists complaining that the signs and images the protestors were displaying were “offensive” and “upsetting,” Maryland State Troopers arrived and told the protestors they needed a permit. 

After talking with the State Trooper, the protestors moved 4 miles “up the road,” to a place where they believed they were legally allowed to protest. 

A few minutes later, the State Police, Harford County Police, and police from the City of Bel Air showed up and started to make arrests. Despite asking many and multiple times as to the reason they were being arrested, the law enforcement officers never told them, but kept the protestors along side of the road for 30 minutes. 

During this time, the protestors alleged they were “body searched,” including having female officers look down the shirts of the female protestors, and reaching in the protestors pants to search below the waistline. All of these searches allegedly happened along the side of the road.

The protestors were then taken to a holding cell where they were held without charges for at least 6 hours. The protestors were then moved to a detention center where the females were strip searched by a female officer in a bathroom. The plaintiffs contend the bathroom door was kept open. Still, at this time, no charges had been filed.

Between the hours of 2:30 AM and 9:00 AM, the protestors were interviewed by the Harford County Commissioner, who told them of the charges. All of the protestors were released by 11:00 AM. 

The short story of this is that a group of 18 people were arrested and held by the police without charges for over 7 hours. Even worse, they were arrested for a legal activity. 

How legal?

ode to a f*cked generation

medium |  Hi!! Smile!!

This generation is fucked.

Not just minor-league mini-fucked. Not a little bit cutesy aww Pikachu feels sad levels of fucked. This generation is full on holy bazoly did that really just happen ZOMG WTF kthxbye degrees of fucked.

Here’s what you already know. If you’re under the age of 35ish, you, many of your friends, and most of your acquaintances are probably living at home (or supported by the parentals); underemployed; overeducated; working for peanuts; obeying the orders of sociopathic, high-fiving Neanderthals in handmade suits (who, in case you thought it couldn’t get any worse, by next year will be…robots); at “jobs” that resemble modern-day servitude more than gainful employment, if by “gainful employment” you mean work by which you actually gain something lasting and which makes the most of you.

Like many, they probably wonder: “What the fuck! When will my life…actually begin?”

They feel stuck. Waiting for their first “real” job, home, break, gig, deal, family, career, chance. As if they’ve been marooned. By their elders. By “opportunity” (whatever the fuck that word means, anyways. The chance to clean the toilets of a super-rich asshole with the soul of a serial killer? Wow, thanks for knocking, “opportunity”!!). By the lives they were supposed to have.

They are stuck. They’re probably going to keep waiting. Forever. For most, their lives will never “begin”; in the sense of meeting one’s expectations. This is their life.

Hey you!!! Smile!! Stay positive!!!!!

This is the first generation in the rich world that’s going to be worse off than its parents.

Not just temporarily. Permanently. Barring some kind of minor miracle, like free clean energy; or secret downloads of bitcash from Mars.

By worse off, I simply mean poorer. And by poorer, I simply mean: it will earn less.

are humans wired for bad news, angry faces, and sad memories?

aeon |  I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first? If it’s bad news, you’re in good company – that’s what most people pick. But why?

Negative events affect us more than positive ones. We remember them more vividly and they play a larger role in shaping our lives. Farewells, accidents, bad parenting, financial losses and even a random snide comment take up most of our psychic space, leaving little room for compliments or pleasant experiences to help us along life’s challenging path. The staggering human ability to adapt ensures that joy over a salary hike will abate within months, leaving only a benchmark for future raises. We feel pain, but not the absence of it.

Hundreds of scientific studies from around the world confirm our negativity bias: while a good day has no lasting effect on the following day, a bad day carries over. We process negative data faster and more thoroughly than positive data, and they affect us longer. Socially, we invest more in avoiding a bad reputation than in building a good one. Emotionally, we go to greater lengths to avoid a bad mood than to experience a good one. Pessimists tend to assess their health more accurately than optimists. In our era of political correctness, negative remarks stand out and seem more authentic. People – even babies as young as six months old – are quick to spot an angry face in a crowd, but slower to pick out a happy one; in fact, no matter how many smiles we see in that crowd, we will always spot the angry face first.

The machinery by which we recognise facial emotion, located in a brain region called the amygdala, reflects our nature as a whole: two-thirds of neurons in the amygdala are geared toward bad news, immediately responding and storing it in our long-term memory, points out neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at University of California, Berkeley. This is what causes the ‘fight or flight’ reflex – a survival instinct based on our ability to use memory to quickly assess threats. Good news, by comparison, takes 12 whole seconds to travel from temporary to long-term memory. Our ancient ancestors were better off jumping away from every stick that looked like a snake than carefully examining it before deciding what to do.

urban shield police militarization expo...,

commondreams |  Urban Shield comes amid the ongoing militarization of U.S. police, showcased in Ferguson and enabled by a patchwork of programs facilitating collaboration between police and law enforcement.

The Pentagon's 1033 program, which was established in the 1990s, authorizes the Department of Defense to donate what it considers surplus military equipment to police and sheriff departments in the United States. Meanwhile, the 1122 program allows police to purchase military weapons deemed non-surplus at a reduced price for purposes of "counter-drug, homeland security and emergency response activities." Since September 11, 2001, the federal government spent billions of dollars on grants to assist in the arming of local police departments with military-grade weaponry recycled from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the 2011 findings of the Center for Investigative Reporting.  As a result, combat equipment ranging from Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to grenade launchers to automatic weapons are being used to patrol U.S. streets, enter homes, and crack down on protests — from Boston to Ferguson.

The influx of weapons has led to the heavy arming of paramilitary SWAT teams, which were used increasingly throughout the 1970s and exploded during the onset of the War on Drugs. They are now used for policing activities ranging from drug raids to delivery of warrants. A recent ACLU report found that, between 2011 and 2012, SWAT raids conducted by local, state, and federal police disproportionately target people of color.

A coalition press statement slammed the vast impacts of these programs, which include: "SWAT raids that disproportionately impact the Black community happening 100 times per day in the U.S. often under the banner of the War on Drugs; ICE raids that force immigrants into dehumanizing detention and deportation proceedings; and surveillance and infiltration of mosques and Leftist political organizations."

Tara Tabassi of War Resisters League told Common Dreams via email, "We aim to dismantle all police militarization programs: Urban Shield, UASI, 1033, 1122 and Fusion Centers. Achieving that though, we would still be faced with the mentality of police militarization, domestically and globally. Occupation is not just about weapons, whether in Ferguson or Palestine. It exists because the present social order requires it, and that's why we are seeing a movement growing — from Boston to the Bay — that gets to the roots of the problem by demanding community self-determination."

mass-produced Jesus in throwaway petroleum vessels...,

celebratecommunion |  New Technology Improves Taste & Quality of Prefilled Communion Cups

Celebrate Communion prefilled cups have a delicious, improved taste. Advances in technology and manufacturing process make this unique cup even better than before with nearly twice the shelf-life. As always, this exceptional quality product does not require refrigeration, but now lasts over 10 months when stored in a cool, dry location. This can be a great savings because it allows you to order larger quantities at one time, significantly reducing shipping costs.

Innovative prefilled Communion cups with wafers are an appreciated solution to serving Communion in a convenient, healthy way. The rich 100% grape juice is fresh tasting, naturally sweet and fragrant, without any added sugars or high fructose corn syrup. The wafer stays crisper because this refined packaging process forms a tight vacuum seal. Every batch is inspected with comprehensive procedures for quality control, ensuring a consistent seal and easy-open feature.

Prefilled Communion cups with wafers have gained wide adoption in churches around the world because they are very easy to set up and are more economical since unused portions can be saved and used later.

Need help choosing the right Communion cups for your congregation? Check out our Communion cup comparison chart!

ferguson is not gaza yet?

aljazeera |  the roots of the police violence seen in Ferguson go well beyond the Israel-Palestinian conflict. They lie in Vietnam, inner-cities and the farmlands of California's Central Valley. The militarization of police and the concomitant view that treats minority communities as enemies needing to be pacified rather than citizens to be served professionally began in the 1960s with the confluence of four factors.

First, the assertiveness of the civil rights movement, particularly the shift toward black militancy after urban riots in several black neighborhoods such as Watts, led major urban police departments to search for more powerful tools to control and pacify potentially insurgent populations. Second, the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency tactics employed in Vietnam were brought to bear on the “urban jungles” and the growing anti-war movement, which was considered a major threat to the ongoing prosecution of the war. Third, the government felt the need to police the growing movement for labor rights, as epitomized by the response to the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) strikes in Delano, California, in 1965.

In fact, a special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team was used for the very first time against the Cesar Chavez–led UFW strike of 1965. The deployment inspired Darryl Gates, then an inspector at the Los Angeles Police Department, to push for making SWAT a major part of his unit. It laid a solid foundation for the rise of militarized policing in the United States.

Fourth, the war on drugs, which was launched in 1971 by president Richard Nixon and focused on communities that were already targeted by SWAT teams; the law and order ethos of the Reagan era, which led to the (increasingly privatized) prison industrial complex; and the militarization of the U.S. southern border with the rise of anti-immigrant hysteria exacerbated militarized policing, with truly damaging results for American society. The concept gained even more momentum after 9/11. In 1985 only one quarter of cities with more than 25,000 inhabitants had SWAT teams. By 2005 this number had grown to more than 80 percent, conducting more than 50,000 annual raids, in part because the federal government requires the military equipment given to municipal police departments be used within one year or returned. 

don't talk, just record..,

freethoughtproject |  In a video uploaded to Facebook on September 4, Chicago Police officers are seen violently tossing a woman around,  attacking a man, and inciting general chaos- in typical police fashion.

The video begins with officers standing around with their chests puffed out, while a witness brilliantly reminds everyone not to talk, just to film.

Next thing we know a woman is having her face slammed into the hood of a cop car.

Moments later, after announcing “get out of the street or you’re going to jail”, while pacing around like a bulldog holding his asp, he gets insulted and unexpectedly bashes a man in the face so hard his hat goes flying.

The Chicago PD are no strangers to brutality.  The department has paid out millions to its victims, but up until May of this year they kept all complaints secret.

A study by University of Chicago professor Craig Futterman found that just 19 of 10,149 complaints accusing CPD officers of excessive force, illegal searches, racial abuse, sexual abuse, and false arrests led to a police suspension of a week or more. In more than 85 percent of internal investigations of complaints, the accused officer was never even interviewed, Think Progress reports.

Kudos to all the people we see filming in this video.  With filming of the police on the rise, many abuses that would have otherwise went unseen are being forced into public discussion.  This is the only way we will see true change.

When filming the police, always make sure you are prepared. Check out our guide to make sure you know your rights.

Film the police, because sunlight is the best disinfectant.

is gaza-style israelification the model for large-scale collapse crime?

washingtonsblog |  since police brutality against protesters has been so blatant in recent months, while no top bank executives have been prosecuted – many Americans believe that the police are protecting the bankers whose fraud brought down the economy instead of the American people ….

Some are comparing police brutality towards the Occupy protesters to that used by Israeli forces against Palestinian protesters. Indeed, numerous heads of U.S. police departments have traveled to Israel for “anti-terrorism training”, and received training from Israeli anti-terrorism experts visiting the U.S. See this, this, this, this, this.

Indeed, the Ferguson police chief received training in crowd control in Israel in 2011.

And Gaza residents are literally tweeting info on how to handle tear gas to help Ferguson citizens.

Even the mainstream media is picking up on the militarized police.  USA Today headlines, “Pentagon fueled Ferguson confrontation“.  And Newsweek runs with, “How America’s Police Became an Army.”

But they’re still blaming 9/11 as the reason for the militarization of the police.  As we explained in 2011, that’s not accurate:

Most assume that the militarization of police started after 9/11. Certainly, Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans on September 11th that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.) On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up to today.

But the militarization of police actually started long before 9/11 … in the 1980s.

Radley Balko testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime in 2007:

Militarization [of police forces is] a troubling trend that’s been on the rise in America’s police departments over the last 25 years.
***
Since the late 1980s, Mr. Chairman, thanks to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, millions of pieces of surplus military equipment have been given to local police departments across the country.

We’re not talking just about computers and office equipment. Military-grade semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel vehicles, tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and all manner of other equipment designed for use on the battlefield is now being used on American streets, against American citizens.

Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century.

SWAT teams were originally designed to be used in violent, emergency situations like hostage takings, acts of terrorism, or bank robberies. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, that’s primarily how they were used, and they performed marvelously.

But beginning in the early 1980s, they’ve been increasingly used for routine warrant service in drug cases and other nonviolent crimes. And thanks to the Pentagon transfer programs, there are now a lot more of them.

how municipalities(plantations) profit off of poverty in st. louis county missouri...,

WaPo |  Stories like Bolden’s abound across the St. Louis area. And despite the efforts of the ArchCity Defenders and legal aid clinics like those at Saint Louis University and Washington University, the vast majority of the people swept up into the St. Louis County municipal court system don’t have attorneys to inform them of their rights or to negotiate with judges and prosecutors.

There are 90 municipalities in St. Louis County, and more in the surrounding counties. All but a few have their own police force, mayor, city manager and town council, and 81 have their own municipal court. To put that into perspective, consider Jackson County, Mo., which surrounds Kansas City. It is geographically larger than St. Louis County and has about two-thirds the population. Yet Jackson County has just 19 municipalities, and just 15 municipal courts — less than a quarter of municipalities and courts in St. Louis County.

Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, but they can also include fines for fare-hopping on MetroLink (St. Louis’s light rail system), loud music and other noise ordinance violations, zoning violations for uncut grass or unkempt property, violations of occupancy permit restrictions, trespassing, wearing “saggy pants,” business license violations and vague infractions such as “disturbing the peace” or “affray” that give police officers a great deal of discretion to look for other violations. In a white paper released last month (PDF), the ArchCity Defenders found a large group of people outside the courthouse in Bel-Ridge who had been fined for not subscribing to the town’s only approved garbage collection service. They hadn’t been fined for having trash on their property, only for not paying for the only legal method the town had designated for disposing of trash.

“These aren’t violent criminals,” says Thomas Harvey, another of the three co-founders of ArchCity Defenders. “These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do — speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don’t have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don’t allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can’t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can’t get to court, you get an arrest warrant.”

Arrest warrants are also public information. They can be accessed by potential landlords or employers. So they can prevent someone from getting a job, housing, job training, loans or financial aid. “So they just get sucked into this vortex of debt and despair,” Harvey says.

The death of Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in August and the ensuing protests, crackdowns and violence have drawn lots of attention to St. Louis County, and spawned lots of discussions about issues like race and racism, police brutality, poverty, police shootings, police militarization and the relationship between police departments and the communities they serve.

a church for the poor?

NYTimes |  Pope Francis grabbed headlines recently when he announced that Rome had lifted the block on sainthood for Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador, who was shot dead while saying Mass in 1980. But much less attention was given to another of the pope’s actions, one that underscores a significant shift inside the Vatican under the first Latin American pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Archbishop Romero was assassinated after speaking out in favor of the poor during an era when right-wing death squads stalked El Salvador under an American-backed, military-led government in the 1970s and ’80s. For three decades Rome blocked his path to sainthood for fear that it would give succor to the proponents of liberation theology, the revolutionary movement that insists that the Catholic Church should work to bring economic and social — as well as spiritual — liberation to the poor.

Under Pope Francis that obstacle has been removed. The pope now says it is important that Archbishop Romero’s beatification — the precursor to becoming a saint — “be done quickly.” Conservative Catholics have tried to minimize the political significance of the pope’s stance by asserting that the archbishop, though a champion of the poor, never fully embraced liberation theology.

But another move by Pope Francis undermines such revisionism. This month he also lifted a ban from saying Mass imposed nearly 30 years ago upon Rev. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, who had been suspended as a priest for serving as foreign minister in Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government in the same era. There is no ambiguity about the position on liberation theology of Father d’Escoto, who once called President Ronald Reagan a “butcher” and an “international outlaw.” Later, as president of the United Nations General Assembly, Father d’Escoto condemned American “acts of aggression” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But there is more to the pope’s action than kindness to an 81-year-old man. In a remarkable turnaround, liberation theology is being brought in from the cold. During the Cold War, the idea that the Catholic Church should give “a preferential option for the poor” was seen by many in Rome as thinly disguised Marxism. Pope John Paul II, who had been brought up under Soviet bloc totalitarianism, was determined to crack down on it. On a visit to Nicaragua, he famously wagged a finger at Father d’Escoto’s fellow priest and cabinet minister, Ernesto Cardinal. The Vatican also silenced key exponents of liberation theology, and its founding father, the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, was placed under investigation by the Vatican’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or C.D.F.

what makes people poor?

NYTimes | Let’s imagine for a moment that there are no political pressures distorting our discussion of poverty and that we can look at it as a technical problem, not a moral one.

Maybe we would find that most explanations – left, right and center – are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing.

Before we take this thought experiment further, we should consider the ramifications of new research that provides insight into urban social disorder, worklessness, the rising salience of education and the shortcomings of government policy.

David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. best known for exploring the costs to American workers of automation and trade with China, has recently expanded the scope of his research on unemployment to look at the consequences for men who grow up in a fatherless household.

In a paper published last year, Autor, working in collaboration with a fellow M.I.T. economist, Melanie Wasserman, found that “the labor market trajectory of males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition; employment rates; occupational stature; and real wage levels.” The trends have been much worse for men than women because “the absence of stable fathers from children’s lives has particularly significant adverse consequences for boys’ psychosocial development and educational achievement.”

Autor and Wasserman cite data showing that “after controlling for a host of individual and family characteristics, growing up in a single-parent home appears to significantly decrease the probability of college attendance for boys, yet has no similar effect for girls.” The authors add that when raised with a nonresidential father, “boys perform less well academically than girls.”