Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
STEVEN NELSON, Reporter - US News & World Report
Stephan: Here we see the pro-prohibition forces beginning to raise their heads to block the gathering trend against prohibition. There is nothing surprising about this. The ricebowl of the pro-prohibitionists depends on this insane war against American society. If the DEA had nothing to be concerned about but Heroin and Meth they could be reduced to a quarter of the size they presently are. That's why the Sheriffs who heard this speech reacted as they did. Their ricebowls are also at risk.
Michele Leonhart says she has spent 33 years working for Americans. I would say she has spent 33 years destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of American families using a policy that has no scientific basis whatever.
The Drug Enforcement Administration’s leader reportedly contradicted President Barack Obama’s views on marijuana during a “closed-door” speech Wednesday and denounced White House staff for playing softball against a team of marijuana activists.
DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart’s candor about her boss and his staff didn’t stay quiet for long.
Key details about Leonhart’s speech at the closed-to-the-press annual winter meeting of the Major County Sheriffs’ Association in Washington, D.C., were reported Saturday by the Boston Herald.
“She was particularly frustrated with the fact that, according to her, the White House participated in a softball game with a pro-legalization group,” Bristol County, Mass., Sheriff Thomas Hodgson told the Herald.
Leonhart spoke to the sheriffs less than a week after The New Yorker published an exclusive interview with Obama, in which he said marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and that “it’s important for [legalization] to go forward” in Colorado and Washington, whose residents voted in November 2012 to allow recreational use of the drug. White House spokesman Jay Carney quickly said Obama’s comments did not reflect any change in his personal position or governmental policy.
“To have the president of the United States publicly say marijuana was a bad habit like alcohol was appalling to everyone in […]
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Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
Stephan: Over the last year I have noticed a significant increase in police shooting innocent people, often deaf, or mentally ill. I could run a story on this almost every day. Part of it, I think, arises from the militarization of law enforcement, and the rise of the surveillance state.
Let's be candid, many police are honorable individuals genuinely interested in serving their communities. I have known a number of these people. But walking around with a gun on your hip, or under your arm, able to tell everyone what to do, also appeals to bullies. These people I think were held in check when policing was seen as a neighborhood service, and the good cop on the beat was an iconic figure in American society. But, when you are wearing armor, and people can barely see your face, and it is all very confrontational well, the bullies come to the fore.
It doesn't surprise me that an increasing number of people would never call the police for fear they, or a family member, might end up getting shot. Based on the stories I see almost every day that may not be an unreasonable fear.
On January 4 in Boiling Spring Lakes, North Carolina, Mark Wilsey called 911 because his stepson Keith Vidal, 18, was threatening his mother with a small screwdriver. Vidal, a schizophrenic, had no history of violence, but in this case his family needed help. Two police officers used a taser to subdue Vidal, who weighed 90 pounds. The situation, says Wilsey, was under control. But a third officer, Bryon Vassey, showed up and quickly-within 70 seconds-shot him. ‘We called for help and they killed our son,” said Wilsey.
The killing recalls last month’s killing of Dixon Rodriguez, a mentally ill man whose mother had called 911 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. In recent months, the police have injured or killed a notable number of people. Some were suspects; others posed an alleged threat to police. Some were armed; others weren’t. Only a few hours into 2014, Chicago police had shot four in two different incidents. On January 7th in Philadelphia, Darrin Manning, a 16-year old black boy, had emergency surgery for a ruptured testicle after a stop-and-frisk by two white officers: Thomas Purcell and a woman the department hasn’t identified.
If it seems to you that the police are becoming more […]
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Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
Stephan: Increasingly, I see the disinformation campaign of the Right producing a segment of the population that literally lives in another reality. This is very destructive in a democracy. Here is an excellent account of what I mean.
One October evening, in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown, I watched Bill O’Reilly work himself into something of a state. He sat at his desk, his hands palms upward, fingers slightly curved, as if cupping something in them. ‘I want Hagel.” he said, staring into the camera. ‘I want Hagel. I want him.” A casual observer might interpret this moment as O’Reilly expressing his fierce but tender desire for Chuck Hagel, the Secretary of Defense. More experienced O’Reilly viewers, however, will recognize it as a signal that the unfortunate Hagel had plummeted downward in O’Reilly’s estimation from pinhead to evildoer. (There are only three kinds of people in Bill O’Reilly’s world: good hardworking Americans, pinheads-people who are not actually malevolent but who are too stupid to understand the way the world really works-and evildoers.)
I know these things about O’Reilly because, for the entire month of October, I watched Fox News for approximately three hours every day, while at the same time strictly abstaining from any other sources of information about current events. The reason I engaged in this self-induced Fox News torture was that it had become clear that the right-wing media in general, and Fox News in […]
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Tuesday, January 28th, 2014
Michelle Healy, - USA TODAY
Stephan: Maybe someone can explain it to me. Twenty school children a day in the United States are hospitalized for gun injuries. How is it that we tolerate this? I just don't get it.
Almost one child or teen an hour is injured by a firearm seriously enough to require hospitalization, a new analysis finds. Six percent of the 7,391 hospitalizations analyzed in 2009 resulted in a death, says the study in February’s Pediatrics, released Monday.
The damage caused by gun-related injuries rarely gets the same attention as fatalities, “but that every day, 20 of our children are hospitalized for firearms injury, often suffering severe and costly injuries, clearly shows that this is a national public health problem,” says Robert Sege, director of the Division of Family and Child Advocacy at Boston Medical Center and a co-author of the study.
Despite declining rates over the past decade, firearm injuries remain the second leading cause of death, behind motor vehicle crashes, for teens ages 15 to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Children who survive firearm injuries often require extensive follow-up treatment, including rehabilitation, home health care, hospital readmission from delayed effects of the injury, and mental health or social services, Sege says.
Although a number of studies have used vital statistics data to examine pediatric fatalities related to firearms, this is the first to highlight the burden of non-fatal injuries using hospitalization data, he […]
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Tuesday, January 28th, 2014
, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: This Snowden revelation isn't get as much play as his early reveals but, I suspect, to Europeans and Asians, in some ways this is even more threatening. This is basically the American government engaged in industrial espionage. Something about which the U.S. has complained bitterly when it has been done to us.
BERLIN — The US National Security Agency (NSA) sometimes uses data it collects for economic purposes, intelligence leaker Edward Snowden reveals in an extract of an interview with a German television chain to be broadcast Sunday.
“If there is information, for example on Siemens, which is in the national interest, but has nothing to do with national security, they will still use this information,” said Snowden, according to the German translation of the interview on public television ARD.
The interview was carried out by a journalist for NDR, a regional chain belonging to the broadcaster that has analysed secret documents that Snowden leaked to journalists.
Under top secrecy, the chain this week in Moscow filmed the first interview with Snowden since he left Hong Kong in 2013 to seek refuge in Russia.
The 30-minute interview will be broadcast Sunday at 2200 GMT, with initial extracts to be released during an earlier talk show at 2045 GMT.
On its website, NDR said that Snowden assured he was no longer in possession of any confidential documents, as they had all been handed out to handpicked journalists. The former NSA contractor said he no longer wants to, or is able to, take part in any future revelations.
Other […]
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