GVSU student, Derek Copp, shot in chest by police for smoking marijuana: Executing children for the War on Drugs
by chycho
Apartment neighbors of Grand Valley State University student Derek Copp say they cannot fathom what prompted police to shoot him late Wednesday in a drug-related raid. But they said they were aware of marijuana odors in the complex. "If you came down the hallway at the right time, you could smell the smoke," said Joe Putra, whose apartment door is in the same Campus View Apartments hallway as the shooting victim.
PermalinkThe Painful Cost of Breed Standards: Mutilation Vs. Cosmetics
by Walter Brasch
Legislatures in Pennsylvania and Illinois are considering bills that would reduce or eliminate what animal welfare advocates call mutilations, and what breeders and American Kennel Club (AKC) call “breed standards.” Because dogs are considered by state laws to be property, individual owners may currently cut and shape dogs’ ears (cropping) or amputate part or all of their tails (docking), often without a proper sterile environment or anesthesia.
Ear cropping and tail docking, according to the AKC, are “acceptable practices integral to defining and preserving breed standards, enhancing good health, and preventing injuries.” Of 158 pure-bred breeds recognized by the AKC, about 50 kennel clubs have “breed standards” that require or strongly suggest tail docking or ear cropping. The AKC claims standards are established by individual clubs—all of which deduct points for dogs that don’t conform to their “standards”—and that the AKC has no restrictions to register or to show a dog. The Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI), which includes national kennel clubs of 84 nations, forbids cropping and docking of rottweilers and other breeds. The AKC is not a member of the FCI.
For whom the bell tolls
Arun Shrivastava CMC
1. Introduction
The joint stock East India Company [EIC] ruled India from about 1770 to 1857, about 87 years. During those nine decades the eight millennia old farming tradition was uprooted and subjected to colonial rapacity. A food secure India suffered persistent famines, hunger, starvation and deaths on a scale never before witnessed in its documented history. The people revolted in 1857, the British Government took over, but under the evil rulers hunger and starvation continued right up until 1947. One firm took over India because it came to control its farmers and farm lands and it controlled what India’s farmers produced.
Treatment of Imprisoned Muslims at Terre Haute's Communications Management Unit CMU
Stephen Lendman
In February 2007, it was learned that Washington had a secret new facility for so-called "high-security risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners in violation of federal law that prohibits severely limiting or cutting them off entirely from other inmates as well as outside contacts and communications. Segregating prisoners by race, national origin, or language violates the Supreme Court's February 2005 decision in Johnson v. California that affirmed 14th Amendment protection against racial discrimination. Specifically, the Court:
Durban II: Politicizing Racism
Ramzy Baroud
Many countries are set to participate in the Conference against Racism, scheduled to be held in Geneva, April 20-25. But the highly touted international meeting is already marred with disagreement after Israel, the United States and other countries decided not to participate. Although the abstention of four or more countries is immaterial to the proceedings, the US decision in particular was meant to render the conference ‘controversial’, at best.
The US government’s provoking stance is not new, but a repetition of another fiasco which took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001.
ISRAEL: A MONUMENT TO ANTI-SEMITISM
Greg Felton
[RE: April 20-24 World Conference Against Racism in Geneva (2009) This article was written RE the Durban/South Africa conference in August-September 2001]
Soon, delegates to the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance will assemble in Durban, South Africa, and possibly debate a resolution equating Zionism with racism.
NYCLU Announces Findings about Statewide Impact of Rockefeller Drug Laws
from Jennifer Carnig
The New York Civil Liberties released a detailed report illustrating the disastrous effects the Rockefeller Drug Laws have inflicted on New York State. The report analyzes the drug laws’ economic and social impact on the entire state, and its largest cities: Albany, Buffalo, New York City, Rochester and Syracuse.
The report – The Rockefeller Drug Laws: Unjust, Irrational, Ineffective – presents overwhelming evidence that New York’s mandatory minimum drug-sentencing scheme has failed to improve public safety or deter drug use. It documents the grave harm the drug laws cause to low-income communities of color, and it calls on lawmakers to adopt a public health approach to addressing substance abuse.
A Different Kind of Revolution: Obedience to Authority in America
Mike Whitney
[My email exchange with Dr. Bede Vincent Curley] Mike Whitney: I have been beating the same dead horse for three or four years now and many people are getting tired of the endless iterations of collapsing markets, rising unemployment and growing pessimism. What’s needed is a vision of the future and a concrete plan of action, but I don’t have one. So, tell me, what is to be done?
Bede Vincent Curley: I do not know what is to be done in the US…. Thinking people can see that most Americans veer between manic-depression and paranoid-schizophrenia. While they know they are getting kicked around by the rich, there’s such a strong tradition of obedience to authority in America that most people just take it in stride and just get on with their lives. This is a population with an severe “abuse” problem. I compare it to the compulsive behavior among women and children who’ve lived in abusive relationships. The sickness passes from one generation to the next without interruption. It is a condition that has to be treated, which means creating a process where the person can see that the violence being done to them is violence and not love. America is a nation badly in need of therapy.
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