Racial Profiling or Just Bad Police Work?

This post courtesy of Station.6.Underground

The oppression of the modern police-state against the people is something that can't be understated, and seems to only get worse by the day here in America. From criminal cops, to incompetent cops, to flat out bad policy which the police are there to enforce,  it's little wonder that there are more and more Americans who are fed up and speaking out.

Unfortunately, there is a racial dynamic to these problems as well. There are racist people people in our society and therefore it should come as no surprise that a certain amount of that will make it into police forces. But racism and bigotry are not necessarily synonymous either. Racial profiling is not necessarily born of some inherent hatred of people with different levels of melanin. It has been argued by some that, statistically speaking, black people are more dangerous than white people. Even within the black community, a black person is far more likely to be killed by another black person.

To look at it another way, if you happen to be driving a Honda Accord, the police may "profile" you based on the car you are driving. They may give you a little closer scrutiny in a routine traffic stop, ask a few more questions, be a bit more insistent, based on the fact that the Accord is the most frequently stolen car in America. It's not the job of the police to harass Honda owners though simply because they didn't choose to buy American. Which is why a whole host of other factors should go into the formulation of deciding whether or not there is something suspicious going on.

They are probably not as likely to be so suspicious of a woman driving a Accord with two kids in the car on a Sunday afternoon, as they would be of a teenager who was stopped in the middle of the night for driving without the headlights on. It also doesn't rule out the possibility that a mother of two might be driving a stolen Ford around town on a Sunday afternoon either. So from these examples we can see that while profiling may have some basis in general context when an officer conducts an investigation, it is not applicable as the entire basis of an interaction with police. It's just bad police work to be overly focused on any particular profile, all moral considerations aside. This is one good reason why profiling should not be the basis of policy as it is now in places in places like New York City.

An Inside Look at NYPD's 'Stop and Frisk' Policy

Mayor Bloomberg Defends Race Comments on Stop-and-Frisk


While the crap-storm swirls around the racial element of the deluded Mayor's policy and his comments, the core truth of the matter gets completely left out. The race-card has trumped the real flaw in the policy. That flaw is the blatant disregard for the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. The problem is not that the NYPD is stopping and frisking minorities. The problem is that they are stopping and frisking anyone without probable cause or a warrant. The problem is that there is a policy in place that would even allow people to be stopped simply on the basis of their skin color in the first place.

The debate over percentages and numbers is beside the point. If this despicable policy were not in place, then the police could not be stopping and harassing minorities or anyone else. The problem is not that minorities are being targeted by this policy, the problem is the policy itself. While white people may not be stopped as frequently, you can be sure that a white kid low-riding his pants, wearing hip-hop duds and listening to Immortal Technique is just as likely to be harassed by the NYPD. People with tattoos, people with piercings, people living in high crime areas, people driving Honda Accords may all be targeted without actual cause.

Of course, this is not just a NY thing. Black folk often feel that they are being targeted because of their race alone. Sometimes their complaint has some validity. Often times though, it doesn't. Take this case of a man who was arrested for DUI, even though he wasn't drunk.

Sober Man DUI: Arizona Driver Blows 0.000, Gets Penalized

The 64-year old black man was arrested, thrown into the back of a police vehicle and had his car impounded, even though he was not drunk at all. The officer disagreed with the breathalyzer device and decided to make the arrest anyway based on the fact that Jessie Thornton had bloodshot eyes. Keep in mind that alcohol doesn't always cause bloodshot eyes, and that it is just as illegal to drive under the influence of substances like marijuana as it is to drive drunk. Thornton admits his eyes may have looked bloodshot, but says that may have been due to a late night swim at a fitness center.

Mr. Thornton doesn't see a flaw in the law though, and he doesn't complain that the officer was just incompetent and unable to tell the difference between a DUI and a man who just climbed out of a swimming poor. Instead, he believes the officer was a racist.

“It was driving while black,” he said, adding: “I just don’t want any of this to happen to somebody else.”

Was the officer really a racist though? Was he really profiling the driver? It's possible, but there is no real reason to believe that based on the information which Mr. Thornton himself shared with the media in that article. So outside of that, either the officer was utterly incompetent, or he was just a cop harassing a citizen. A bully, which is more often than not the fact of the matter. Those same two options stand in this following case, where a white woman was arrested for being drunk, when she was actually the designated driver and had not touched a drop of alcohol that night.

Heather Squires was arrested for DUI without drinking a drop of alcohol

In short, police are not the spokespersons for "white people" and are not a standing army to protect whites from blacks. It's time we take a step back from the racial issues and take a good hard look at what is happening to our country. All of us, black, white, and all the rest across the board are being targeted by a fascist police-state. We are not so different at all really, we the people that is, and we have a common enemy. Tyranny.

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

-attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the sloth of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Also see:

Papers Please (Checkpoint Video)

Papers Please Incident Makes Cops Looks Like Gestapo

Activists Being Framed With Child Porn

A disturbing trend is unfolding where some entity is attempting to frame prominent anti-establishment activists and alternative media organizations with child pornography.

These activists are being sent emails with malicious attachments containing images of child porn in a seeming attempt to discredit them or set them up for arrest.

Read more and see vids at: Activist Post

Budgeting for Poverty With McDonald's and Visa

This article courtesy Minimum Wage Workers Union of America


McDonald's and Visa have come together in a new initiative which purports to show low-wage workers how to survive, and even thrive financially on their meager earnings.

At their new Practical Money Skills for Life™ website you can find a pdf file sample budget, ostensibly designed to be a framework for workers to use in order to successfully manage their income while working at McDonald's.


It is certainly a good idea to have a budget, to practice good financial techniques, to minimize spending and the like, but no budget will solve the problem of not having enough money to meet the most basic living expenses. This core truth is completely overlooked by McDonald's and their collaborator. This then sets the stage for victim-blaming, rather than making a factual presentation. The premise they present here, is that if a worker is having financial troubles it is the worker's own fault.

The introductory video is immediately condescending to the viewer/worker and assumes that you lack the elementary concepts of basic addition and subtraction arithmetic, or even common sense. While some workers may be woefully uneducated and lacking in life experience, it appears that the true ignorance here rests with the creators of the fast-food giant's presentation.

As an example, almost any worker knows full well that taking a pay-day loan is financially unsound, being both risky and costly. What the creators of the video ignore is that a worker does not need to be taught this point as a lesson, as if it were some great revelation bestowed by a benevolent corporation out of sheer good will. The worker who does take such a costly risk by taking out a pay-day loan does it out of necessity, not stupidity. The payday loan industry thrives on the desperation of the poor, not on people who ant some extra spending money.

The video also encourages the viewer to get direct-deposit for their paycheck, and to have a bank account, in order to save on check-cashing fees. But again we see that the creators have ignored the reality of the situation for many of their workers. Some financial institutions will not let a person with poor credit have an account. Low-wage workers are, of course, more likely than most to have a poor credit rating. In other instances, a bank or credit union may not be easily accessible in their neighborhood or along their travel routes. Banks often require a large minimum balance, leaving substantial funds inaccessible to the depositor.
But most important of all perhaps, is that bank accounts are riddled with costly pitfalls. Visa check-cards exacerbate those dangers to workers who are subject to an array of hidden maintenance, access, and penalty fees.

For many people it is not only easier, but actually wiser to just spend a few dollars to cash their paycheck at a local supermarket, or check-cashing store. In this instance, a former McDonald's worker has been forced to sue for her right to be paid in legal tender, after her employer refused to pay her in any form other than a fee-laden debit card like those issued by Visa.



Even with the best financial practices, no human mistakes, and no unforeseen emergencies, a person still needs enough money to meet basic expenses. A sound budget will never work without enough money to put into that budget in the first place. So let's have a look at what McDonald's sees as a reasonable budget for a worker to, as they put it, "have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it."

Right at the start, McDonald's is admitting that a full-time worker at one of their restaurants does not earn enough to support themselves. Their budget demands from you that you get a second job, if you are lucky enough to find one at all, much less one that is compatible with your full-time and often irregular hours at one of their establishments. If you can't get a second job, for whatever reason, the full-time low-wage worker will be forced to go on welfare, or get at least some sort of public assistance.

What this means is that taxpayers are subsidizing the labor expenses of major corporations like McDonald's. We the taxpayers are now forced to pay a contribution in order to make sure that McDonald's workers actually show up for work in the first place, and that the worker is fed, clothed and healthy enough to perform their task. While these corporations reap billion dollar profits, and the CEO of McDonald's makes about $5,000 an hour, the taxpayers are forced to pay a share of their business expenses. In 2012, Wal-Mart workers were forced to rely on $2.6 billion in taxpayer relief. That directly translates into $2.6B in additional profits for the Walton family, who are more wealthy then the bottom 40% of all Americans combined.

Now let's go ahead and take a look at the person who winds up actually being lucky enough to have two jobs, and is in turn forced to pay taxes to help support the worker standing next to them who works only one full-time job. This budget projects a net monthly income of $2,060. Based on the 2012 IRS tax liability tables, a minimum wage worker earning $7.25 an hour would have to work 76 hours per week in order to have a net monthly income of $2,060. So much for the notion that poor people are lazy. This is essentially two full-time jobs, especially since employers won't usually let a worker hit the 40 hour mark in a week, for fear of having to pay an overtime wage.

This obviously leaves no time for continuing education, and precious few hours to spend with family or trying to raise your children. Contrary to the popular notion, teens do not make up the majority of minimum-wage workers. Roughly 90% are over the age of 20, and about 30% of minimum wage workers are trying to raise a family on that budget. 

But surely a person working two full time jobs, nearly 80 hours a week, must be living fairly well, right? Well, let's have a look at budgeted expenses.

The first line item in that section is savings. Anyone who can afford to save, must actually have an income that exceeds the rest of their expenses. Saving for the future is not only good advice, but absolutely necessary in order to build any sort of future It is even necessary to simply offset an array of inflationary factors which have undermined the American worker since our heydey in the 1950's.

90% of Americans Earn Less Than 1950 Minimum Wage Standard

Unfortunately, this budget is actually completely impractical and that $100 figure is completely unrealistic.

Looking at the next item we see how unrealistic it actually is. $600 for rent is unheard of in most parts of the country. The average rent last year in the US was $1,048 monthly. In New York, it is over $3,000 a month. One might suggest getting a roommate to split the rent, but then again we might also assume that this budget is actually written out for two people working at McDonald's full time, and who decided to move in together to share the bills because they couldn't find a second full-time job for themselves. So even with a roomate or spouse also working full time, this budget is still not practical, as we shall further see. 

(It could also be noted here that forced cohabitation can set someone up for all sorts of costly and life-damaging problems. Roomates can be an annoyance when they interfere with necessary sleep, but you are also vulnerable to thievery, fraud, and even being named as a criminal conspirator if they use the residence as part of an illicit enterprise. This socioeconomic dynamic has also pushed unwed couples to cohabitate prematurely, leaving them trying to force a frustrating and volatile relationship work out of simple economic necessity. This of course, is at the root of so many instances of domestic violence. Problems like these can wind up costing a worker for court fees, time missed from work, and more.)

Their budget does account for a car payment, but that figure is unrealistically low for the actual cost of operating a car. Insurance alone would easily double that figure, not to mention gasoline, maintenance, and repairs. Our own research has shown that the expense for basic auto transportation is roughly $500 a month. Public transportation may not give a significant reduction in transportation costs, and is not often available in many areas.

The next item combines home and car insurance into one item. Renters insurance is an excellent idea, and protects against all sorts of mishaps, like losing everything you own in a fire, or to a break in, but it is not really something that most low-wage workers can actually afford. Insurance for a homeowner is far more expensive than their figure, but we can assume that most people who work at McDonald's do not, and probably never will own their own home. They should not have even included car insurance there, but even for liability only that figure is very low, especially for younger drivers, or someone who may have had an accident. If you are making payments though, you need full coverage, which would be many time more per month than what they have calculated for.

For health insurance they have posted an absolutely absurd figure of $20 per month. Over-the-counter medicine to treat the flu would cost you more than that. McDonald's own basic plan for a single person with no children is $61 a month, with a maximum annual payout of $2000. (See: pdf) The plan also requires you pay a deductible and a single co-pay is $20. That $20 is, as you see, all they have budget for here, but not the actual cost of the insurance. Hardly sound financial advice from these supposed experts who worked on this project with them.

They must also assume that you live in Hawaii where it is practically 75-degrees year-round, because this budget allot for $0 in heating (or air-conditioning) expenses.

Cable and phone at $100 a month. This is possible, but you would not be able to afford a cellphone which is a nice convenience that can actually save you money and is indispensable in an emergency. Someone who is working 76 hours a week would probably choose to have a cellphone and eliminate television entertainment for the few hours that they are actually at home. They can just sit and stare at a wall until they fall asleep.

Their calculation for electric is not entirely unreasonable, but will vary widely from region to region and in different rental units. If there is electric heating for example, that figure could easily be two or three times as much per month. That would obviously wipe out their "other" category instantly. 

At the end of the McDonald's budget we see they have allotted for $27 a day in spending money. Perhaps they expect workers to take all of their meals where they work, as the budget has not accounted for any food or grocery expenses. The health consequences alone would be devastating for a worker who made fast-food the staple of their diet, but $27 a day is not really enough for that anyway. The average cost in the US for a Big Mac value meal is $6.64, though it is often several dollars more in metro areas like NY. This would leave you with about $7 for gas, and nothing to feed your family. You also wouldn't have money for garbage bags, light bulbs, toothpaste, aspirin, haircuts, deodorant. You also wouldn't have money to do laundry, but you don't have a budget to buy clothes anyway, so go ahead an just wear that stinky McDonald's uniform without any underwear on, every single day.

For a much more practical and realistic budget, please see:

Analyzing a Practical Minimum Wage

You can sign a petition at:

Low Pay Is Not Okay

"What if George hadn't gotten out of his truck?"

The question was posed by a spokesman for George Zimmerman, who was recently acquitted of murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman happened upon the scene of a serious motor vehicle crash last Wednesday and jumped into action. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from his truck and then, along with another motorist, rescued a family from their flipped-over SUV.

Read more at:

Daily Caller

Orlando Sentinel

Supreme Court Rules Drug Companies Can't Be Sued

Supreme Court rules Drug Companies exempt from Lawsuits

July 7, 2013. Washington. In case readers missed it with all the coverage of the Trayvon Martin murder trial and the Supreme Court’s rulings on gay marriage and the Voting Rights Act, the US Supreme Court also made a ruling on lawsuits against drug companies for fraud, mislabeling, side effects and accidental death. From now on, 80 percent of all drugs are exempt from legal liability.

In a 5-4 vote, the US Supreme Court struck down a lower court’s ruling and award for the victim of a pharmaceutical drug’s adverse reaction. According to the victim and the state courts, the drug caused a flesh-eating side effect that left the patient permanently disfigured over most of her body. The adverse reaction was hidden by the drug maker and later forced to be included on all warning labels. But the highest court in the land ruled that the victim had no legal grounds to sue the corporation because its drugs are exempt from lawsuits.

Read more at: Whiteout Press

Supreme Court vs. The People: 5-to-4 Does It Again

...In other words, a drug company that kills or maims us by pushing drugs on us through the corrupt health care system and is beholden to profit only, stands protected in law. Yet, these same drug companies fund medical training and "made to order" research, as well as, exert extensive influence on FDA drug approval process. They wine and dine doctors and pay them consultant fees to ghost write on their behalf and become their front-line sales force. We the people take the risks with our lives...

See the full article at: HuffPost Politics


See additional coverage at: Natural News

JP Morgan to Hire 100,000 Strong Army

Hiring Mission

JPMorgan Chase leads the charge to employ 100,000 U.S. military veterans by 2020.

By Jeanne Cotroneo Darrow

NYSE Euronext U.S. Trading News July 2013 #constantcontact http://t.co/mpEoxbF9KN about 15 hours ago Follow Us:

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nyse.com

More than 1 million service members are projected to transition out of the military by 2016 — a statistic that JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) considers an opportunity. In 2011, with 10 other private sector companies, the company launched the 100,000 Jobs Mission, with a goal of hiring 100,000 veterans by 2020. In just two years, 64,628 transitioning U.S. service members and military veterans had found jobs through the program.

What began with 11 companies — JPMorgan Chase plus AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T); Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE: BR); Cisco Systems Inc.; Cushman & Wakefield Inc.; EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC); Iron Mountain Inc. (NYSE: IRM); Modis; NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR); Universal Health Services Inc. (NYSE: UHS); and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) — has grown to 102 companies and evolved into a stable, ongoing initiative to hire veterans and share best practices. We checked in with Maureen Casey, managing director, Military and Veterans Affairs at JPMorgan Chase, about the program’s successes and why more companies should get involved.

Red more at link:

 http://nysebigstage.com/articles/jpmveterans?cid=p_outbrain

Also see:

Breadlines and Foodstamps

3 Cops Caught Talking About Killing Fellow Officers Fired Without Charges

Courtesy of Station.6.Underground

Three officers from the Pigeon Forge, Tennessee Police Department have been fired after recordings revealed they had been discussing killing fellow officers including the department's chief.

The contents of the recordings were revealed when investigators began looking into a harassment complaint.

The officers had been dispatched to check on the welfare of a visitor to the town at a local campground, and made contact with that person's girlfriend. They obtained her information and left, but a short time later she began receiving numerous text messages and Facebook friend requests. She subsequently filed a harassment complaint. During the investigation of that complaint investigators listened to the regular recordings made by equipment installed in the police cars, and heard the officers discussing killing other officers in explicit detail.

The officers were fired for misconduct, but criminal charges were not pursued by the district attorney or the U.S. attorney's office.

District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn excused the officers from criminal wrongdoing saying, "Even though they were sitting there talking about killing people... we haven't found there was any overt action taken. We have to prosecute using the law. No matter what we want it to be, or what we think it ought to be."

He went on to indicate that even though his office has considered a charge of official misconduct, he didn't believe a jury could be convinced there had been a crime.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, children are being treated as terrorists for far less than the overt planning of mass murder.

In one case a teenager was arrested, jailed for a month, and faced 20 years in prison for posting rap lyrics on Facebook. In another case, a teenager has been sitting in jail since February on charges of making terrorist threats stemming from a comment on a Facebook video game. The comment was admittedly violent sounding but also quite clearly meant as sarcasm. In Pennsylvania, school officials alleged that a five-year old made terror threats when she threatened to shoot classmates with a Hello Kitty bubble gun. In New York, a man's guns were confiscated and his permits revoked after his ten-year old son threatened to shoot classmates with a water pistol. Not a water pistol posing as a real gun mind you, just a water pistol. Authorities in Suffolk county have told the man he can't have his guns back until his son is 18 or moves out of the home. 

Even when their own are the target of violence, it seems that police hypocrisy knows no bounds. Time and time again we see that police officers are not held to the same standard of justice as the people, when they should actually be held to a higher standard of justice, not given special privilege in the face of gross wrongdoing.

You can read more on that case at:

WBIR.com

TriCities.com


Also see:

Are American Cops Out of Control?

Top Cop Threatens to Kill After Fellow Officer Gunned Down

Is Boston Bombing Suspect an Imposter?

According to a former wrestling teammate the man who appeared in the court room to answer for the Boston Marathon bombing was not Dzhokar Tsarnaev. More curious details are noted in the video.


Be sure to check out a recap of dozens of other oddities surrounding this case at the following link:

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

Wife Plots Husband's Murder On Video

Sadly enough, cases like this are not particularly rare. This is actually a favored method for women to dispatch of the men in their lives, once they have decided to kill. While men are certainly not immune from hiring a contractor to murder their spouse or partner, often they prefer to take on the task themselves.

Women are more likely to hire someone, or even to manipulate a new lover into getting rid of the disfavored through murder. Often times these crimes will never be uncovered. And even when they are, the crime you see taking place in the videos below are not counted in domestic violence statistics, making those stats biases against males.

Also note how chillingly psychotic the young woman is, wanting an extra week with her husband, not wanting him to suffer, and essentially wanting to kill him because she doesn't want to "break his heart."

MUSKEGON, Mich. — Julia Charlene Merfeld said she wanted her husband killed because “it was easier than divorcing him.” That explanation came in a meeting with a man Merfeld thought she was hiring to do the murder.

Merfeld, 21, of Muskegon didn’t know the man was really an undercover police detective, or that she was being recorded on a hidden video camera.

Merfeld pleaded guilty June 27 to solicitation to murder. Chief Muskegon County Circuit Judge William C. Marietti committed to cap her minimum sentence at six years. The maximum can be anything up to life in prison, depending on Marietti’s decision at her sentencing July 30.

PoliceOne.com

REPEAL the BILL OF RIGHTS, A Petition to Support Obama and NWO

Pentagon Sanitizes Involvement In bin Laden Raid, Documents Purged From Computers

In an unprecedented move to insulate themselves from the facts of the so-called "Bin Laden Raid" the Pentagon has purged documents from their computer systems related to that raid.

Because the outright destruction of those documents would have been illegal, they were all packed up and shipped off to the CIA where they are protected against Freedom of Information requests and even court orders. The legality of the transfer at all is highly questionable and was never even examined before the transfer actually took place. It seems that everyone agrees the move is highly irregular, even if not an outright crime perpetrated on the orders of the Pentagon's top Special Operations Commander.

The sanitizing of Department of Defense computers would have remained secret has it not been for a watchdog group who noted one sentence, referring to the purge of Bin Laden raid documents, in an inspector general's report. There had been an inquiry about whether President Obama may have shared sensitive material with the creators of the movie "Zero Dark Thirty." But even that sentence was purged from the final report.

The Associated Press has raised the alarm on yet another example of the government secrecy shell game in the following artcle:

Bin Laden raid files reportedly purged from Pentagon computers, sent to CIA

Here is an excerpt from that report:

The AP asked the Defense Department and CIA separately for files that included copies of the death certificate and autopsy report for bin Laden as well as the results of tests to identify the body. While the Pentagon said it could not locate the files, the CIA, with its special power to prevent the release of records, has never responded.

This unprecedented level of secrecy, bordering on criminality, begs a single question. Why?

To protect the "dignity" of the world's most sought after terrorist? Refusing to show the pictures of his remains seems hardly reason enough. The Pentagon was clearly not worried about putting American lives in danger, even as we were actively fighting a standing army, when they published images of Saddam Hussein's dead sons. Not to mention the brutal video of the deposed leader's execution.

Besides, if the Pentagon was really that fearful of reprisals from publishing pictures of a dead Bin Laden, perhaps they should have thought about that before they decided to execute the man, rather than putting him on trial and debriefing the world's most wanted terrorist for vital intelligence. The fact that they elected to kill him at all is dubious.

Just as dubious as his burial at sea, that was witnessed by no one, did not conform with Islamic tradition, and served no real purpose at all except to maintain inordinate levels of secrecy. 

Some have excused secrecy surrounding the Bin Laden raid as being necessary to protect the identities of the military operators who reportedly carried out the raid. Yet some of those specialized personnel have gone on to write books and appear in "tell all" interviews. It was also reported that most of the commandos who were on the raid were part of US Navy SEAL Team 6, which was decimated in a helicopter crash in the mountains of Afghanistan a short time after the raid.

This of course, led to rampant conspiracy theories that perhaps our very own government was the real threat to those commandos, and that they were wiped out to protect the secrets of the Bin Laden raid.

But this leads us again back to the question, why? What secret is so powerful that the Pentagon would go to such great lengths to cover up not only all of their knowledge about the raid, but also to virtually disavow their involvement at all?

After years and years of the American government trumpeting how dangerous Osama Bin Laden was, and his al-Qaeda network, suddenly the Pentagon does an about face and threatens the American public to shut up about the Bin Laden raid.

So what are they really hiding? What is the truth about 9/11, al-Qaeda, the war on terror, and the death of Osama bin Laden?

Also see:

No closure for 9/11 victims' families and survivors

Citing security risks, Pentagon asks nation to 'move on' from bin Laden

Helicopter Crash in Afghanistan Allegedly Wipes Out Commando Team

No Sailors Witnessed Bin Laden Burial At Sea

11 Years Later, We Still Don't Know Who Did 9/11

Freedom 2013

Personally, they might have had to shoot me that night to get me out of my car. That citizen has no obligation to lower the window, to pull to "secondary" or to exit the protection of his vehicle.

Would I die for traffic stop? Well, if we all stood our ground this fascism would stop. And if someone shoots you, unjustified, you have the right to shoot back in some states.

NYC Draft Riots of 1863, Race and Finance

Have our times gotten better or worse?


 On July 13, 1863, as the second day of a new military draft lottery in New York City got underway, demonstrations broke out across the city in what began as an organized opposition to the first federally mandated conscription laws in the nation’s history, but soon morphed into a violent uprising against the city’s wealthy elite; its African-American residents; and the very idea of the Civil War itself. The New York City Draft Riots, which would wreak havoc on the city for four days and remain the largest civilian insurrection in American history, exposed the deep racial, economic and social divides that threatened to tear the nation’s largest city apart in the midst of the American Civil War.

Thanks to its status as the business capital of the United States, New York City was a deeply divided city at the start of the Civil War in April 1861. Its merchants and financial institutions were loath to lose their southern business and the city’s then-mayor, Fernando Wood, had called for the city to secede from the Union. Meanwhile, to the city’s poorer citizens, the war increasingly came to be seen as benefitting only the rich, as the coffers of the city’s elites filled with the financial spoils of battle and the conflict became known as a “rich man’s war, poor man’s battle.” The passage of the nation’s first military draft act, in March 1863, only worsened the situation. Not only did it allow men (presumably only the wealthy) to buy their way out of military service by paying a commutation fee of $300 (more than $5,500 in today’s money), it also exempted blacks from the draft, as they were not yet considered American citizens. Opposition to the draft was widespread across the North, and in New York, some of the loudest critics of the bill could be found in city government, as politicians (primarily Democratic) railed against the legality of the bill and its impact on the city’s working class poor.

Read more at: History.com



The following commentary courtesy of guest author J. Marselus VanWagner

That small brief from History.com gave some keen insight into social and economic dynamics which are still of great concern to us today, both for New York City and as American people overall.

In general, the average American vastly oversimplifies the American Civil War and ignorantly believe that it was a war to end slavery. This premise is almost entirely false, and has been brought about through revisionists of history, particularly in the public school system, where most of us have had our worldview fed to us from a tin can.

Many readers may be surprised to learn certain incongruous facts about the Civil War as it pertains to race. The fact that New York City almost seceded from the Union in 1863 is one such fact shown in the article above. Another fact is that New Jersey, a Union state, still had slaves at the end of the Civil War. It was not until January 1866 that they ratified the 13th Amendment freeing the last Negroes held in bondage there.

While President Abraham Lincoln seems morally opposed to the practice of slavery, some of his own words show that the issue did not carry the same weight as true racial equality, which only became a concern for Americans a century later. Moreover, his own words betray a glamorized notion that some of our revered national heroes, like Lincoln, were any better than the hypocrites who occupy the same office in the modern era.

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." - 4th Lincoln/Douglas Debate, 1858

Ol' "Honest Abe" was just another politician after all.

Ultimately, the issue of slavery has nothing to do with liberty for blacks, but simply an economic weapon to use against the Confederacy of southern states opposed to an imperial Federal government. 

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..." -Abraham Lincoln, publichsed response to Horace Greeley, 1862

The Civil War was as the Confederacy said all along, a war of independence, based on the same spirit as the American Revolution which freed the colonists from the oppression of a King who was beholden to elitist financiers. The bankers.

Read more on that subject in the following article:

U.S. Federal Authority Is Martial Law

Of course, this is not to say that racial tensions were not a very real dynamic then, even as they are today. This is also not meant to diminish the abhorrent practice of slavery either, and the horrors that both black and white folk were subjected to in the centuries before the Civil War, as victims of slavery. (Yes, white people were slaves too.)

On the one hand, we must consider that slaves were not universally beaten, raped, and abused as revisionist history would lead us to believe. After all, a slave was a very expensive piece of  "property." One might compare owning a slave in those times, to owning a luxury automobile in these times. One does not intentionally go out and beat on a brand new Mercedes or BMW simply because they can. Often a slave might be treated as a prized "possession." Doing harm to a slave made about as much sense as blowing the motor in your brand new BMW. Then again, ignorant asses will do that, and ultimately, we are still talking about treating a human being as a possession, no matter how well they were treated.

But we should also consider that all slaves were not Negroes imported from Africa. Granted, by the time of the Civil War, blacks were the vast majority of slave laborers in the Continental United States. Nonetheless, the practice of slavery still persisted as a legitimate economic structure, not necessarily based on race alone. New Orleans, for example, became a hub of Creole persons. In the Caribbean, Scots, Welsh, and Irish persons made up a large population of slaves and indentured servants. To a lesser extent, whites has also served as slaves even in New England states.

One might even see the first military draft in American history as a form a slavery, or indentured servitude, forcing free men into military service in which they might very well die, even if they were paid a pittance for their efforts. This notion certainly played an important part in the psychology behind the NYC draft riots. Not only were poor white men being drafted for a war that was not at all their own cause, but the wealthy were able to buy their way out.

Then, as now, war was a rich man's game paid in poor man's blood. 

Essentially, poor whites were being forced to fight and die for the right of poor blacks to compete with them for low-wage jobs. And because blacks were not citizens, they were legally exempt form the draft in a war that was ostensibly meant to be a fight for the liberty of their own race.

Of course, there was a bigger political and economic paradigm behind the Civil War, but for the Irishman on the street, who was seen as little more than a "white nigger" by the powers that be, abolition meant unemployment and starvation for them and their families as former slaves would flood the workforce and eviscerate labor bargaining for even menial labor. Not necessarily based on race even, but sheer numbers.

The same article referenced above tells us:

A labor demonstration earlier that year had turned violent, as had a protest by the city’s white, largely immigrant dockworkers, who refused to work alongside African-American workers. The two groups, on the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder, had long jostled for the city’s lowest paying jobs, and tensions had only increased as the war continued.

In other words, the elite financiers exploited racial tension to exempt themselves from paying a living wage to their laborers, and let them duke it out in the streets to fight for the scraps left over from their fortunes.

The same plan in various forms has been put into effect several times in the years since the Civil War, driving homemakers into the workforce, extending retirement age, and cultivating the influx of virtual slave labor today from Latin America. The net result has been devastating to the American labor force and leaving the minimum wage settled at a rate below the standard of the slave's living.

Oh, but you're not a slave, you get paid. Whereas in yesteryear, even a slave owner had to pay for your clothes, your housing, and even your medical care.

So what do we conclude here? What has history told us? That poor people will be divided and conquered by the power elite, along easily inflamed lines of inherent, perhaps instinctive bigotry and racism. Our instincts tell us that a man of a different color, a person of another gender, hell, a person who has a bad tattoo, is competition and therefore an enemy. All the while, we are blinded to the fact that the real enemy remains aloof, and untouchable. 

We can always find a reason why a person is "different" and therefore not as "worthy" as you. But the truth is, none of us, no matter our color or affliction is any better than another. And in our hearts, we know this.

And of the blacks in the NYC riots? They got their asses kicked that time. Poor folk. Poor folk vs poor folk in fact. What a shame. As before then, even in those racial times, NYC tried to be a bastion of racial equality, and failed under economic pressure by the same bastards that are doing it to us today.

Quote from article above:

Many of those who stayed relocated from their racially mixed neighborhoods to areas with an elevated police presence or to the relative safety of the outskirts of the city.

Also see:

John Decker

Top 5 Greatest Bar Brawls in American History

When gangs of thugs put out your fires

Head Transplant Tech Now Reality

The First Head Transplant

In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, Stalin turned his attention to medicine as a way to advance technology and put the USSR ahead of the west.

To this end, just outside Moscow, Stalin established secret medical laboratories to explore and develop new concepts. Scientists were encourage to experiment freely in the search for the secrets to prolonging life. Many of these tests were carried out on animals. Organs were removed from the corpses and kept alive with machines. Dogs were put to death and subsequently brought back to life.

Vladimir Demikhov, a veteran of the Red Army hospitals in World War 2, believed it was possible to transplant organs like the heart and lungs in human beings. Even in the science-mad 50s this sounded far-fetched.

However, Demikhov proved it could be done, by transplanting the heart and lungs from one dog to another. His experiments laid the ground-work for future medical success in humans, but his work never received the recognition it deserved. Demikhov was preparing plans for a human heart transplant, 16 years before the first one was actually achieved.

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One night in 1954, Demikhov undertook an experiment that stunned the world. He took two dogs, one fully grown, the other a puppy. He, and his team of surgeons, operated on them through the night. The following morning Demikhov unveiled his achievement. It was a creature straight out of science-fiction.

He had stitched the head and upper-body of the puppy onto the neck of the larger dog, connecting their blood-vessels and windpipes. Soviet propaganda trumpeted his achievement. In America, this caught the attention of an ambitious young scientist: Robert White.

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Possibility Of First Head Transplant Fraught With Ethical And Medical Dilemmas

A leading neurosurgeon has revealed a project to carry out the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage within the next two years. The project is code-named HEAVEN/GEMINI.

Published in the June issue of Surgical Neurology International, the project has been outlined by Italian neuroscientist and functional neurosurgeon, Dr. Sergio Canavero. He says the procedure would take 100 surgeons 36 hours to complete, and would cost around £8.5 million ($12.6 million).

In 1970, US neurosurgeon Robert Joseph White performed an operation to transplant a monkey's head onto another monkey's body. However, the inability to repair the severed spinal cord due to lack of required technology proved a problem, and the monkey was left paralyzed, passing away days later.

But Canavero believes today's technology will overcome this hurdle and refers to previous studies in which scientist have reconnected spinal cords to rats. Canavero explains that the transplant will work if surgeons can successfully link the spinal cord to the head by fusing severed axons, the nerve cells that transmit information to different neurons, muscles and glands.

Click here for more


Also see:

Woman Survives Internal Decapitation

Marijuana Retail Rules Released By Washington State Liquor Control Board

NYC Subway Horror Shows Cops Won't Protect You

Despite the fact that NYC has the most intrusive laws against personal liberty, citizen gun ownership. and the like, we see that the police cannot keep you safe and actually have no obligation to protect you.

We encourage you to watch the full video, as details are made more clear.


Also see:

Police Have No Duty to Protect You

Threats by Trayvon Supporters Ignored While Kids Are Jailed for Nonsense

In one case a white teenager was arrested, jailed for a month, and faced 20 years in prison for posting rap lyrics on Facebook. In another case, a teenager has been sitting in jail since February on charges of making terrorist threats stemming from a comment on a Facebook video game. The comment was admittedly violent sounding but also quite clearly meant as sarcasm. In Pennsylvania, school officials alleged that a five-year old made terror threats when she threatened to shoot classmates with a Hello Kitty bubble gun. In New York, a man's guns were confiscated and his permits revoked after his ten-year old son threatened to shoot classmates with a water pistol. Not a water pistol posing as a real gun mind you, just a water pistol. Authorities in Suffolk county have told the man he can't have his guns back until his son is 18 or moves out of the home.

Despite so many cases like this, of authorities going out of their way to arrest and harass citizens over entirely bogus "terror threats" supposedly in the name of a "better safe than sorry" approach to law enforcement, when it comes to actual threats of terror and violence, police fail to act.

Authorities are bracing for riots if Andrew Zimmerman is acquitted in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Despite the fact that Zimmerman is part Latino, has a black grandmother, and has been active in black activism for years, the trial has become a lightning rod for black vs. white racial tensions across the country. But police have failed to take action against hundreds, maybe thousands of black youths across the country who have threatened looting, arson, violence and even murder against whites if Zimmerman is acquitted.

These threats should not be taken as idle threats either. Violence has already been done in the name of Trayvon Martin. You can see examples of that here, here, and here.

Aside from the issues which surround the Zimmerman murder trial itself, we should not be distracted from a larger field of view here. Whether Zimmerman is guilty or innocent, the fact remains that we are seeing another blatant example of police and government hypocrisy. People who are clearly innocent being jailed for terrorist threats, while authorities plainly ignore genuine threats and fail to act against the perpetrators.

Syrian Catholic Priest Beheaded, Vatican Confirms (GRAPHIC VIDEO)

The Vatican has confirmed the death of Father François Murad. He was building a monastery in northern Syria when the site came under attack by radical Muslim militants who are opposed to the standing government in Syria. They claim the Catholic priest was an ally of President Assad and his forces. Murad became a Catholic martyr as he was beheaded, along with two other men, to cries of "Allahu Akbar" in a ritual fashion. The victims were unarmed, bound and hooded, but had the hoods removed just before the grisly executions were performed with a kitchen knife. Children were also present in the crowd, watching as the brutal killings took place. 

It should also be noted that the war criminals who committed this atrocity are the same people the United States has recently decided to arm with more powerful weapons, and to directly support militarily. 

((( WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC )))

This video contains extreme violence, gore, and actual human death. Many readers may prefer not to see such disturbing imagery.

Remains Found in Basement of Poughkeepsie Home ID'd

This is an update of our previous story found here:

Discovered Remains May Be Woman Missing Since 1985

As expected, the remains turned out to be human, and were identified as the missing woman. The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head.

ROP JoAnn Nichols