Prometheus 6

Santa’s Crimes Against Humanity
By Robert Anton Wilson
December 18th, 2007

In Burlington, North Carolina in 1990, a group of decent, Christian, hard-working folks who called themselves the Truth Tabernacle Church held a trial featuring the well-known elf Santa Claus as defendant.

They charged Mr. Claus, represented in court by a stuffed dummy, with all sorts of high crimes and misdemeanors. They charged him with paganism. They charged him with perjury for claiming to be Saint Nicholas. They even charged him with encouraging child abuse by appearing in whiskey ads. Worse yet, they found him guilty on all counts, for basically being a jolly old elf — i.e., a pagan god trying to steal Christmas from Christ.

Where 40 years ago, blacks were afraid in crowds of whites, the opposite is true today. Repeated violence by a few black kids has colored the whole, the same way a few white rednecks earned a reputation for 1967 Birmingham. And while most people can judge the individual rather than the group — or maybe that's wishful thinking — Tower City's throngs of black kids were scaring away that most sacred shopper: the professional white woman....

Since the ban began, Kreiger has already received an "overwhelming response." Business has increased, families are returning, and customers are e-mailing praise for the change in atmosphere. "We're hearing that over and over and over again," she says.

Pragmatic Racism
At Tower City, banning black kids in the name of better business.
By Pete Kotz
Published: November 28, 2007

The guard stands at the bottom of the escalator in his trademark Smokey the Bear hat, wearing the dulled determination of one who does the unpleasant for a living.

Two young women descend from the upper floor. He asks for their IDs. They laugh anxiously, are-you-serious? expressions stamped on their faces. The guard just checked their IDs moments before, they tell him. But Smokey wants to see them again. There are rules, after all.

The scene is reminiscent of the old Soviet Union, where people were routinely asked for their travel papers. Yet this is 2007, Tower City mall, where the restrictions aren't meant to defend Communism. They're here to usher in the more brilliant colors of commerce.

In mall-speak, it's called the Parental Involvement Program, which essentially bans children under 18 from shopping after 2:30 p.m. unless they're accompanied by an adult. In practical terms, it might be better described as the We Gotta Get Rid of the Black Kids Program. And that's where we begin today's quandary.

“Even if Antigua goes ahead with an act of piracy or the refusal to allow the registration of a trademark, the question still remains of how much that act is worth,” said Brendan McGivern, a trade lawyer with White & Case in Geneva.

“The Antiguans could say that’s worth $50,000, and then the U.S. might say that’s worth $5 million.” He predicted that “the U.S. is going to dog them on every step of the way.” 

In Trade Ruling, Antigua Wins a Right to Piracy
By JAMES KANTER and GARY RIVLIN

PARIS — In an unusual ruling on Friday at the World Trade Organization, the Caribbean nation of Antigua won the right to violate copyright protections on goods like films and music from the United States — an award worth up to $21 million — as part of a dispute between the countries over online gambling.

The award follows a W.T.O. ruling that Washington had wrongly blocked online gambling operators on the island from the American market at the same time it allowed online wagering on horse racing.

Antigua and Barbuda had claimed damages of $3.44 billion a year. That makes the relatively small amount awarded Friday, $21 million, something of a setback for Antigua, which had been struggling to preserve its gambling industry.

The United States argued that its behavior had caused $500,000 damage.

And because I'm still digesting.

Darkstar @ Darkstar Spouts Off

Spence @ Blacksmythe 

Steven M DeVougas @ The Superspade

It seems the number one result Google returns for girls things aka the other side of there buts is this post.

Ghod only knows why... 

Goodbye Song

Just because I fill
An empty place in your life
Doesn't mean you care

A poison passion
Can deal a loving spirit
Damage beyond repair

I see a nightmare
Is just as truly dreaming
As fantasy flight

A bruised, battered heart
Still caring, wishing you well
Is driven from your sight

Once I wrote a post titled "The reason I would oppose Ron Paul even if he hadn't voted against every civil rights advance he could." It linked an op-ed saying the terms of the public debate on taxation is insane.

DamnWilcox, a Paulite who operates Wrong Policy. said in that thread:

You mention only the symptoms of the problem (high debt)
On December 11th, 2007 DamnWilcox (not verified) says:

First off your title is inappropriate to the content of the article.

I was rude, of course...

It is appropriate to my intent. It is the precise truth. I was hoping you Paulies would recognize the futility of arguing the point.

You see, even if you are right in your argument...and I don't know yet, this comment is entirely a reaction to that first sentence...the fact remains that Ron Paul has voted against every civil rights bill that ever crossed his desk. That and that alone would be enough for me to oppose him, for life.

It is also enough for Stormfront to support him.

This, the third in the series of three brutally honest articles on suburban policing around Philadelphia by the Inquirer, is the most hopeful of the set. 

Forging bonds
Coatesville has a long history of racial strife and high arrest rates for minor crimes. But the town has new leaders, and they are reaching out to develop new solutions.
By Mark Fazlollah and Keith Herbert

The article presents the current police chief, William H. Matthews, quite well. He's made changes, has messed up and apologized, and he's actually trying stuff, you know?

Not stuff like getting 10,000 guys to take responsibility for all of history, mind you...

In a real way, Coatesville is still troubled by a murder - one nearly a century old.

Ask any African American about race relations in Coatesville, and the conversation usually turns to Zachariah Walker, the last man lynched in Pennsylvania.

The typical subject of a questionable strip search is "the African American teenage male brought in on loitering" charges, said attorney Charles J. LaDuca, one of the lawyers suing Philadelphia. Lawyers for both sides are discussing a possible settlement. ...

Until October, though, Philadelphia's prisons were strip-searching all new inmates, more than 30,000 every year - even people arrested on charges as minor as disorderly conduct. After a civil-rights lawsuit, the city adopted stricter regulations.

The Delaware County jail, now run by a private firm, strip-searches thousands of inmates annually, regardless of charge, according to three current and former guards. County officials would not talk about the strip searches; neither would executives from the company, the Geo Group of Boca Raton, Fla.

The Inquirer found similar practices in some police departments. Darby, Chester and Erie police routinely strip-searched people detained in their lockups on minor offenses such as disorderly conduct or public drunkenness, records and interviews show. And the Pottstown police chief, Mark Flanders, said blanket strip searches were still the rule in his jail.

Stripped of their rights
Pennsylvania jails have been strip-searching thousands of people detained on minor charges, often without legal justification. It could cost taxpayers millions.
By Mark Fazlollah and Melissa Dribben
Inquirer Staff Writers 

Tameka Flythe was arrested by Darby police as she walked home from a pickup basketball game in Philadelphia. Strip-searched on an officer's suspicion that she might have drugs, she was released without any charges being filed. No drugs were found.

"It was almost like being raped," she said.

In Harrisburg, Devon Sheppard, a biophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, was arrested for attending an outdoor party that didn't have a city permit. She was jailed and given a body-cavity search when she couldn't come up with bail money, $1,051 in cash.

"I'm sure there are places where this happens regularly," Sheppard said. "I just didn't think the United States was one of them."

And in Philadelphia, former schoolteacher George L. Byrd was arrested when he was on his way home from a party for his niece and charged with drunken driving. Unable to post the $2,500 bail, he was taken to a Philadelphia prison and stripped.

Afterward, he said, he went to an empty prison cell, and "I stayed there and cried."

Suburban Cops, Tough Tactics
In area towns, nuisance laws result in a disproportionate number of arrests of African Americans, often by nearly all-white police forces.
By Mark Fazlollah, Dylan Purcell and Keith Herbert
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

The Rev. Reggie Brooks, pastor of a storefront church in the toughest part of Pottstown, once counted himself as a strong supporter of a police crackdown on the pushers and hoodlums who tormented his neighborhood.

That ended on the day his 14-year-old nephew and a friend were hauled out of a neighborhood barbershop last year as suspected drug dealers.

After ordering the teenagers to put their hands in the air and spread their legs, the police found no drugs. They left without an apology.

"There was a time when there was a relationship between the police and the people," said Brooks, who is African American. "Now, I don't think the cops respect the community."

A Johns Hopkins University biophysicist was among a group arrested in Harrisburg for holding an outdoor party that lacked a permit. She was subjected to a strip search and body-cavity inspection that included the removal of her tampon. The charges were dropped, but she'll never forget the humiliation....

The overzealousness of suburban police again raises questions about Philadelphia Mayor-elect Michael Nutter's plan for a "stop-and-frisk" policing program to reduce gun violence in some neighborhoods. Such measures cannot be a license to arbitrarily violate the civil rights of innocent people....

A number of other troubling issues are also raised in the series. For one, police in several suburbs appear to recruit their officers mainly in Iowa.

Editorial | Profiling in Suburbia
No mere nuisance

The ghost of Frank Rizzo lives. Except now, the late top cop and mayor appears to be walking a suburban beat.

An Inquirer series on suburban police practices that concludes today reads like a throwback to the 1960s, when the Philly cops under Rizzo were known for meting out street justice - especially in black neighborhoods.

The series details how police officers in Coatesville, Darby, Pottstown and other suburbs have racked up some of the highest arrest rates in America for such minor offenses as loitering, disorderly conduct and jaywalking.

African Americans have been arrested on many of these charges much more frequently than whites. Suburban police departments deny racial profiling. But walking while black sure seems like a crime in some Pennsylvania towns.

Kuttner takes on four pillars of neoliberalism: the preference for balanced budgets and modest-size government; free trade; economic austerity as a condition for development aid; and financial-market deregulation. In each case, the evidence suggests neoliberal policies were either irrelevant or downright disruptive.

Doesn't that sound Republican? It definitely sounds Clintonian...they are neoliberals. Maybe our problems have more to do with being "neo" than with being "con."

The Clintonites spent the ’90s negotiating one trade deal after another. But once the dust had settled, the laissez-faire approach appeared to have accelerated the decline of American industry. What the Clintonites (and, to be fair, this commentator) missed was that clearing aside trade barriers can leave you dangerously exposed when many of your trading partners — especially in East Asia — don’t reciprocate.

Perhaps the most disturbing story involves financial markets. It’s no surprise that an administration staffed with Wall Street refugees would view New Deal-era restrictions on banking and investing as excessive. What’s surprising is that the Clinton White House would champion deregulation with so little regard for the consequences.

It’s the Politics, Stupid
By NOAM SCHEIBER

This July, when the Democrats John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all proposed closing a tax loophole that saves hedge fund managers hundreds of millions of dollars each year, it wasn’t immediately clear what to make of it. On the one hand, it was the sort of proposal you’d expect from the party of working people. On the other, these three presidential candidates had stayed silent on the issue for months — while raising gobs of money from wealthy financiers. Why would they turn on them now?

Only later did we get some hint of an explanation. The New York Times reported that Charles Schumer, the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, had spent June assuring Wall Street donors that the loophole would remain intact. This made the pronouncements a victory for everyone involved. The Democratic candidates could take the high road publicly, while their contributors could rest easy knowing those tax breaks were safe.

The wounded man was found dumped on the street at Homan Avenue and Lexington Street, about five blocks west of the shooting scene. He was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was in critical condition and undergoing surgery for a gunshot wound to the head, according to sources....

The chief administrator of the review authority, Ilana Rosenzweig, would only confirm that a police officer fired his weapon and that one person was wounded. No police officers were hurt.

She would not say what precipitated the shooting, whether any shots were fired at the police, or if the wounded man was struck by an officer's bullet.

"It's under investigation," Rosenzweig said.

Man critically wounded in police shooting
By Jason Meisner
Tribune staff reporter
4:48 AM CST, December 21, 2007

A man was shot in the head and critically wounded overnight in a police-related incident on Chicago's West Side, but authorities would not say what occurred or even if the bullet that hit the person was fired by an officer.

“As a group, they skew higher,” said Michael Duffy, who oversees charter schools for the city’s Education Department. “I think that charter schools are all about accountability. It’s baked into their DNA. They are data driven and focused on how their students are doing, so it’s not surprising to see them do well.”

Charter Schools Outshine Others as They Receive Their First Report Cards
By JENNIFER MEDINA

Education officials, acting under the city’s new system of accountability, released report cards on Wednesday for several charter schools, with the majority receiving A’s and B’s, but one school in Queens getting an F.

The grades came more than a month after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein released grades for the rest of the city’s public schools. Officials said that they had always intended to release grades for charter schools, but that it had taken longer to make sure the data was complete and accurate because the schools are privately run, though publicly financed.

The witness told police that Roberts said Zoe had told them to stop wrestling. According to the affidavit, when the witness asked why they didn't stop, he responded, "I don't know; I was drunk."

Teens charged in 'Mortal Kombat' death

JOHNSTOWN, Colo. (AP) — Two teens have been charged with killing the 7-year-old sister of one of them by beating her with imitations of moves from the "Mortal Kombat" video game, prosecutors said.

Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, were charged as adults on one count each of felony child abuse causing death, state prosecutor Robert Miller said in court documents released Wednesday and filed a day earlier.

According to a police affidavit, the teens were baby-sitting Trujillo's half-sister, Zoe Garcia, on Dec. 6 while the girl's mother was at work. Zoe lost consciousness and stopped breathing after the teens hit, kicked and body-slammed her, imitating moves used in the video game, the document said.

Sometimes there's nothing for it but to crack open the full MP3 collection and start playing random shit you haven't played for a while. Some random fun shit...I got a think called Oojama Fantasy with a drum line that made me smile for the first time this week. Babatunde Lea's March of the Jazz Guerrillas got me dancing in my chair...then I had to play "I'm On Your Side" by Angie Bofill.

There's some stuff in my collection that always hurts me to my heart to hear, and I can never resist playing it.

Fortunately there's some techno...the diametric opposite, spiritually speaking, of what Angie does to me sometimes.  Throw some Bony James in there and I'm ready to risk Happy Rhodes' "Warpaint."

I've been alternating like that...one song that brings on deep memories, two or three dance or mellow, like it's bleeding off pressure. And a chord and a phrase will raise an emotion that feels like it's bound to my bones.

And I'm singing. But Jesus Christ, I can't sing. 

MADERA, Calif. - It's not makeup or paint that makes Paul Karason's skin a bluish color.

The 57-year-old started making the transition from fair skin and freckles to what he looks like today 14 years ago.

"The change was so gradual that I didn't perceive it and for people around me, likewise," Karason said. "It was just so gradual that no one really noticed. It wasn't until a friend that I hadn't seen in several months came by my parents' place to see me and he asked me 'what did you do?'"

Clinton Advisers Say Edwards Is a Threat

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa -- Advisers to Hillary Clinton have been pushing the notion that John Edwards poses a growing threat in the Iowa caucuses, suggesting their internal data show something of a mini-surge for the former senator from North Carolina. Barack Obama's advisers have countered that it makes for a convenient story line -- and is evidence that the Clinton campaign is threatened by a two-way race with Obama.

On Wednesday, Clinton took Edwards on over his signature issue, indicating that she may view the Edwards improvements as quite real. "People talk about poverty in this campaign," Clinton said during a crowded event here, noting that her husband's administration was an era of great progress on the issue. "Well, we lifted more people out of poverty during the 1990s than at any time in our history.

What do you think we are, stupid? Obviously you do.

I don't want to hear any apology for a planned statement. In fact, I don't want to hear anything from you or any other Clintonite. Not only are YOU as full of it as Shaheen, Mark Penn proves himself incapable of containing his smarminess. All he needs is a cheap cigar and a Boss Hawg hat.

I have no idea what kind of explanation it would take to convince me your "backhanded insult" wasn't planned well in advance of your interview. I know this ain't it. And after Penn's performance, I doubt you'll find it in the time insurance industry actuarial tables suggest you have left.

The text of Kerrey's apology is below the fold. Don't bother reading it.

The first I heard of this poll was when McClatchy reported it like this:

Poll shows rifts among minority groups, but hope for future
MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU
LESLEY CLARK

WASHINGTON _ The nation's three largest minority groups _ African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians _ view one another with deep suspicion, though there's evidence that the divide could be breached, a new poll finds.

Billed as the first of its kind, the nationwide poll of 1,105 blacks, Hispanics and Asians found that all three groups held negative stereotypes of one another _ though in some cases, a majority or nearly as many respondents rejected such beliefs.

Pollster Sergio Bendixen said the mixed results "reflect the extent to which the poll is capturing not a static picture, but a racial landscape in flux."

 New American Media, who ran the poll, said this:

Ethnic Media Take On Race Challenge
New Poll Highlights Media's Role in Covering Race Relations
New America Media, News Report, Sandip Roy, Posted: Dec 12, 2007

Editor’s Note: The first-ever multilingual poll of black, Hispanic and Asian Americans is a call to action for the ethnic media leaders who sponsored it. While respondents believe that ethnic media are "irresponsible" when it comes to covering race relations, they also describe ethnic media as a vital intermediary for strengthening inter-group communication. NAM Editor Sandip Roy interviewed some of the poll’s media sponsors about how they view their shifting role in covering race relations in America.

Me, I fnd it remarkable ho many different stories get pull out of the same numbers.

The point is this- if the goal is to encourage the creation of a multiracial civil society, then racism needs to be addressed through institutional and structural interventions.

Let’s Just Get Along: Poll Passes Up Structural Analysis of Race
Seth Wessler

Race, racism, and racial stereotypes run deep according to a new opinion poll of over a thousand Blacks, Latinos and Asians by New American Media . The poll asserts that people of color in different groups don’t trust each other and feel like race, racism and ethnic cleavages are just as present as they’ve always been despite some hope for change.

Law enforcement officials said Officer Johnstone, who had been working undercover, was recorded via a hidden transmitter he was carrying. Backup teams typically decide when to turn on and off the recording of signals from such transmitters.

During the recorded conversation, Officer Johnstone was not using his undercover persona, law enforcement officials said. He used racial slurs and spoke of giving Officer Alvarez undue credit for an arrest. Both officers have been suspended.

Officers Charged in Cocaine Disappearance
By MICHAEL BRICK

Two city police officers were arraigned Wednesday on charges of misconduct and falsifying records in connection with the disappearance of 11 bags of cocaine.

The officers, Julio Alvarez and Sean Johnstone of the Brooklyn South narcotics unit, walked into Brooklyn Criminal Court in jeans and bulky coats, without handcuffs. They were released without bail at the request of prosecutors. Led out of the courthouse through a back exit, they left without comment.

Before every election season for the last decade or so, folks start running articles about Al Sharpton designed to inflame white folks. Common phrases for eliciting knee-jerk responses in these articles such as "kiss his ring," "the same old race-baiting politics" and "Tawana Brawley" appear dependably.

New York Magazine is an ideal launching pad for these articles, as you will note by reading the most recent example. This one strikes me as a subterranean Edwards endorsement; most of it is an exploration of Sharpton's interaction with the Obama campaign with a smattering of Clinton tossed in. And there's this picture:

That's a white guy with (I think) Al's face photoshopped onto his head. At least when they doctored Hillary's picture for the second page they used Al's real head...

How do Iraqis feel about the walls springing up around their neighborhoods? Mixed, unsurprisingly: relieved by the lull in violence but dismayed by the cost. "Iraq is a prison, and now I live in my own little prison," one Iraqi told the Christian Science Monitor. "We are not free; our neighborhood is barricaded," complained another.

It's against this backdrop that we should evaluate the success of the Bush administration's troop "surge" in Iraq. Yes, violence is down. Some of that is because of the surge itself: More troops -- and smarter counterinsurgency tactics -- have indeed translated into a reduction in violence. But violence also is down because the process of "sectarian cleansing" is nearing completion: Sunnis have been driven out of Shiite neighborhoods, Shiites out of Sunni neighborhoods, the Kurds have retaken their own historic territories and smaller minorities have been shoved to the side.

Financial disclosure would do nothing to allow the public to monitor the kinds of corruption and excessive force that led to the Rampart scandal -- or the kind of management and training failures that produced this year's MacArthur Park fiasco.

Unfortunately the Rampart scandal doesn't represent the only type of corruption possible; and no one expects management and training failures to be caught by financial disclosures. I don't even know why the editors tossed that in there.

Reject LAPD disclosure
It's hard to see how combing through police officers' finances would be a useful tool for fighting corruption.
December 20, 2007

The Los Angeles Police Department recently entered its eighth year under a federal consent decree that imposes strict mandates on operations and record keeping. The LAPD has modernized its procedures to root out corruption and purge from its ranks a Rampart-era culture of excessive force and false arrest. Full compliance with the decree is within reach, and it is tempting to urge the Police Commission to finish the job today by completing one final piece -- requiring full disclosure of personal and family finances by those officers in specialized units who in theory could be bribed because of greed or financial distress.