Tag Archives: prince

Greta Thunberg dresses down more global elites for climate inaction

Subscribe to The Beacon

Young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is continuing her tour of speaking truth to power. Last December, she accused the delegates to the U.N. climate talks in Poland of “stealing” their children’s futures. And on Friday, at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, she delivered another powerful speech, calling for quick and bold progress on climate change.

“At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories,” Thunberg told the audience. “But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag.”

Climate change became a hot topic of discussion at the 2019 meeting of the global elite. Sixteen-year-old Thunberg joined the ranks of Prince William and British naturalist and TV personality Sir David Attenborough, who also urged decisive action on climate change. National leaders, like Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, unveiled plans and goals for tackling warming at the forum.

Although Thunberg’s message was dire, she stopped short of saying the world is doomed. “Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around — we can still fix this,” Thunberg said. “I want you to act as if the house was on fire. Because it is.”

View original article: 

Greta Thunberg dresses down more global elites for climate inaction

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Greta Thunberg dresses down more global elites for climate inaction

The Washington Post Just Reported the Founder of Blackwater Tried to Set Up Trump-Putin Back-Channel

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Washington Post just published a story that, if corroborated, could be a pretty big deal:

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to US, European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11—nine days before Trump’s inauguration—in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would likely require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.

In addition to being the founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince is also the brother of Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told the Post that the White House had no knowledge of any such meeting and reiterated that Prince was not on the transition team. A Prince spokesman denied the story in a statement to the Post:

“Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication,” said a spokesman for Prince in a statement. “The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”

After the Post published its story, NBC reported that two sources confirmed a meeting occurred but that one of those sources disputed the claim that the meeting was about Russia:

One US intelligence official confirmed the Post’s account to NBC News, saying the meeting was with a Russian envoy. A second source said he believed the meeting was not about Russia. That source, a former intelligence official with close ties to Prince and the UAE, said the subject of the meeting was Middle East policy, to cover Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Read the whole story.

This story has been updated.

Originally posted here: 

The Washington Post Just Reported the Founder of Blackwater Tried to Set Up Trump-Putin Back-Channel

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Washington Post Just Reported the Founder of Blackwater Tried to Set Up Trump-Putin Back-Channel

Here Are Just Some of the Stunningly Bad Moments From Betsy DeVos’ Confirmation Hearing

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing to become President-elect Donald Trump’s education secretary was originally scheduled for last Wednesday but was ultimately postponed until late Tuesday afternoon. With an extra week to get ready, Senate Democrats came prepared—and DeVos, oddly enough, did not.

Our latest investigation: Betsy DeVos Wants to Use America’s Schools to Build “God’s Kingdom”

While Republicans on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions lauded the billionaire philanthropist—and prominent GOP donor—for her commitment to expanding charter schools and voucher programs, committee Democrats barraged DeVos with specific, pointed questions about her attempts to privatize public education, even pleading with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the HELP chairman, for the opportunity to ask more questions as the three-and-a-half-hour hearing boiled over.

DeVos reaffirmed her support for an education system beyond a “one-size-fits-all” approach that opened up choices—”whether magnet, virtual, charter, home, religious, or any combination thereof.” But when pushed beyond her talking points, she was stiff and often thrown off her game:

“If you were not a multibillionaire…”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) didn’t shy away from challenging DeVos on her family’s large contributions to the Republican Party. “Do you think that if you were not a multibillionaire, if your family had not made hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions, that you would be sitting here today?” Sanders followed up by grilling DeVos on free college education and tax cuts on the richest Americans.

“Do you not want to answer my question?”

During a tense exchange, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) challenged DeVos on whether schools that receive federal funding should meet the same accountability standards, the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, and report the same information on instances of bullying, discipline, and harassment. DeVos…was less than forthcoming.

Growth, proficiency…and conversion therapy:

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) wanted to know if DeVos thought test scores should measure a student’s proficiency (i.e., did she reach a specific standard?) or a student’s growth (i.e., did she improve over time?). After DeVos struggled to clarify the distinction, Franken responded, “This is a subject that has been debated in the education community for years…But it surprises me that you don’t know this issue.” He also pushed DeVos on her family’s past donations to groups that support anti-LGBT causes—including Focus on the Family, a nonprofit founded by evangelical leader James Dobson—and even asked whether DeVos supported conversion therapy.

Campus sexual assault

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) asked whether DeVos would uphold a 2011 Department of Education letter establishing that sexual assault on college campuses was covered by Title IX and school reporting standards. DeVos would not commit to an answer, noting it would be “premature” to do so and that she would work with lawmakers to find a resolution.

Guns—and bears?!

Longtime gun control proponent Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked DeVos directly whether guns had any place in schools. “That’s best left to locales and states to decide,” she responded. When Murphy followed up, DeVos referred back to an earlier question about an elementary school from Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.). “I would imagine that there’s probably a gun at the school to protect from potential grizzlies,” DeVos said.

Kids with disabilities

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), whose son has cerebral palsy, questioned DeVos on her knowledge of the Individuals with Disabilities Act—particularly whether DeVos knew that it was a federal law. DeVos eventually said she “may have confused it” with something else.

On the Prince Foundation board or not?

Hassan also asked DeVos about a $5.2 million donation that the Edger and Elsa Prince Foundation made to Focus on the Family. As my colleague Kristina Rizga noted in her new, in-depth investigation, DeVos was listed as a vice president of the Prince Foundation in tax documents through at least 2014. But DeVos denied having any real involvement in her parents’ foundation: “That was a clerical error. I can assure you I have never made decisions on my mother’s behalf on her foundation’s board.”

Visit site: 

Here Are Just Some of the Stunningly Bad Moments From Betsy DeVos’ Confirmation Hearing

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here Are Just Some of the Stunningly Bad Moments From Betsy DeVos’ Confirmation Hearing

Comic Phoebe Robinson Is Tired of Being the Token Black Girl

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Perhaps you know and love her from 2 Dope Queens, the comedy podcast she co-hosts every week with Jessica Williams of Daily Show fame. Perhaps you don’t know her yet. But Phoebe Robinson is someone you’ll want to familiarize yourself with if you like funny interviews about race, gender, and the struggle of being a young adult. Now you’ll have more ways to listen to her: Robinson’s new podcast, Sooo Many White Guys, launches today on WNYC.

In each episode, Robinson says she will talk to people who are “killing it”—whether in music, TV, comedy, books, or anything in between. The first show’s guest is hip-hop artist and vocal Black Lives Matter supporter, Lizzo. Upcoming guests include actress Nia Long (known for her role as Lisa on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), trans-rights activist Janet Mock, and Broad City‘s Ilana Glazer, the executive producer of the podcast. “I’m picking them because they’re talented, but also because…they’re not just straight up white dudes,” Robinson says in the show’s trailer.

At the end of the season, Robinson plans to speak to one white man (“the token”), who will have to speak on behalf of white people everywhere. Sound familiar?

“Coming from a comedy background where cis straight white dudes are the norm and everyone else is the ‘Other’ or the token, it feels great to flip that and have the majority of the guests on SMWG be women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks and not reduce them to what they identify as on a census form,” Robinson said.

Before 2 Dope Queens, Robinson served as a staff writer for MTV’s Girl Code and performed stand-up comedy in New York, particularly at famed improv theater the Upright Citizens Brigade. She also recently finished her first book, You Can’t Touch My Hair, which will hit shelves this coming October.

More here: 

Comic Phoebe Robinson Is Tired of Being the Token Black Girl

Posted in Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Comic Phoebe Robinson Is Tired of Being the Token Black Girl

17 Random But Fascinating Facts About Our Oceans

About 70 percent of the Earth is actually ocean, and 94 percent of life on Earth is aquatic. In fact, life on earth began in the ocean 3.1 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. Land dwellers didn’t show up until much later(approximately 400 million years ago). Even though we’re newbies, wehave a tendency to think the planet is all about us humans and what happens on land above the sea.

To mark World Oceans Day, here are 17 intriguing facts about the oceans that might make you think twice about the watery world we live on and how we should treat it.

1. Fifty percent of the United States (in terms of our complete legal jurisdiction, which includes ocean territory) lies below the ocean, reports MNN.com.

2. We probably know more about the moon than we do our oceans; we have better maps of Mars than we have of the ocean floor. In fact, weve only exploredless than5percent of the Earths oceans, even though we depend on them for everything from food to transportation to recreation.

3. Forget the Smithsonian, the Louvre or the Parthenon. There are more artifacts and remnants of history in the ocean than in all of the worlds museums combined, thanks to shipwrecks, tsunamis, tidal waves, floods, wars and the general tendency of people to treat the ocean as a big dumping ground.

4. An underwater mountain chain running through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean from the Arctic Circle all the way down into the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific is the longest mountain range in the world. It coversmore than 35,000 miles, making it four times longer than the Andes, Rockies and Himalayas combined. Ithas peaks higher than those in the Alps.

5. The Pacific Ocean isthe world’s largest water body. It occupies a third of the Earth’s surface and contains about 25,000 islands, which is more than the total number in the rest of the world’s oceans combined. Most of those islandsare found south of the equator.

6. The oceans make up 97 percent of the Earth’s water.Of what remains, less than 1 percent is the fresh water we use for drinking. 2-3 percent of the remaining water on earth is contained in glaciers and ice caps, though due to global warming, this amount is decreasingas the ice caps melt.

7. The sea level is rising seriously due to climate change. 10,000 years ago the ocean level was about 110 m lower than it is now. If all the world’s ice melted, the oceans would rise 66 m. Sea levels will continue rising even if the climate stabilizes because the ocean is too vast to react quickly to change.

8. Ninety percent of all volcanic activity occurs in the oceans, reports MarineBio.org. Undersea earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides can cause tsunamis, powerful seismic sea waves that can destroy entire cities and kill hundreds of thousands of people, as we saw when an earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra in 2004, letting loose a tsunami that eventually killed 230,000 people.

9. Sound travels nearly five times faster through water than it does through air.

10.Air pollution is to blamefor 33 percent of the toxic contaminants that end up in oceans and coastal waters. About 44 percent of the toxic contaminants come from runoff via rivers and streams, especially runoff contaminated with agricultural chemicals.

11. Each year, three times as much rubbish is dumped into the world’s oceans as the weight of fish caught. Much of that is plastic which will never decompose but instead may get eaten by fish and end up being eaten by people, as well.

12. Nearly one-third of the world’s oil comes from offshore fields in our oceans, especially those in the Arabian Gulf, the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

13. Oil is a major source of ocean pollution. But while some of that comes from oil spills, most of it comes from leaking automobiles and “non-point sources” like oil that is poured down street drains and otherwise improperly disposed. According to MarineBio.org, more oil reaches the oceans each year as a result of leaking automobiles and other non-point sources than the oil spilled in Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez or even in the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

14. The Great Barrier Reef, which coversan area largerthan Britain, is the largest living structure on Earth and can be seen from space. Its reefs are made up of 400 species of coral, supporting over 2,000 different fish, 4,000 species of mollusc and countless other invertebrates. The “reef” is actually an expanse of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and 1,000 islands. Because the physiology of coralis so similar to human bone, coral has been used to replace bone grafts, helping human bone to heal more quickly.

15. People eat more fish than any other protein source. Unfortunately,most of the world’s major fisheries are being fished at levels above their maximum sustainable yield; some regions are severely overfished.

16. More than90 percent of the trade between countriesis carried by ships traveling back and forth across the oceans. About half the communications between nations from one side of the world to another relies on cables that have been laid across the ocean floor.

17. Blue whales are the largest creatures on the planet, ever. They’re bigger than the largest dinosaurs ever were.

Related:
13 Ways to Celebrate the Oceans
7 Tips for Reducing Pollution and Saving Our Marine Species
Overfishing is Actually Worse Than We Thought

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Credit:  

17 Random But Fascinating Facts About Our Oceans

Posted in alo, Brita, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Smith's, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 17 Random But Fascinating Facts About Our Oceans

Breaking: Pop Megastar Prince Has Died at 57

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Prince, the legendary pop icon, was found dead at his Paisley Park home in Minnesota, a publicist told the Associated Press on Thursday. He was 57. TMZ first reported the death.

The police were investigating a death at Prince’s estate on Thursday morning but have not made the identity of the deceased person public. Last week, the musician’s private plane made an emergency stop in Moline, Illinois, after performances in Atlanta. A representative for Prince told TMZ that the musician had been battling the flu for several weeks, though the exact cause of death has yet to be confirmed.

Prince’s publicist Yvette Noel-Schure noted in a statement that there were “no further details as to the cause of death at this time.”

Fellow musicians, artists, and celebrities took to social media to mourn the soulful singer’s death.

Visit source – 

Breaking: Pop Megastar Prince Has Died at 57

Posted in Anchor, cannabis, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Breaking: Pop Megastar Prince Has Died at 57

Breaking: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Is Dead

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud has died, according to reports carried by Saudi state-run television in the early hours of Friday morning, local time. He was around 90 years old (his exact age is a matter of some dispute). Saudi news agencies reported that his half-brother Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz has become the kingdom’s new ruler. The news from Saudi Arabia—one of 12 OPEC member states—has the potential to cause a shake-up in global oil markets.

King Abdullah, the leader of the world’s top oil exporter, came to to power in 2005, but had in recent years fallen seriously ill, according to the BBC. Reuters reports that the king had been hospitalized with pneumonia since December, and “had temporarily needed help to breathe through a tube.”

The Guardian’s Middle East editor, Ian Black, writes that even after a modicum of reform under Abdullah, the path ahead for the monarchy is far from clear:

Saudi Arabia’s immediate future following his death is not in doubt. Crown Prince Salman, his half-brother, will almost certainly ascend the throne. But beyond that lie troubling questions about the succession, the stability of a unreformed absolute monarchy and the prospects for its younger generation of royals.

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz – the king since 2005 and effectively in charge since his brother Fahd’s stroke in 1995 – accepted limited change after 2011 in response to the events of the Arab spring. Yet Saudi women are still unable to drive, citizens are unable to vote except in municipal elections and public beheading by sword remains a standard feature of the judicial system. Political parties are banned.

Update, 7:30pm ET: The White House has released the following statement from President Obama on King Abdullah’s passing:

It is with deep respect that I express my personal condolences and the sympathies of the American people to the family of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and to the people of Saudi Arabia.

King Abdullah’s life spanned from before the birth of modern Saudi Arabia through its emergence as a critical force within the global economy and a leader among Arab and Islamic nations. He took bold steps in advancing the Arab Peace Initiative, an endeavor that will outlive him as an enduring contribution to the search for peace in the region. At home, King Abdullah’s vision was dedicated to the education of his people and to greater engagement with the world.

As our countries worked together to confront many challenges, I always valued King Abdullah’s perspective and appreciated our genuine and warm friendship. As a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions. One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond. The closeness and strength of the partnership between our two countries is part of King Abdullah’s legacy.

May God grant him peace.

See original article:  

Breaking: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Is Dead

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, Crown, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Breaking: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Is Dead

Despite Conservatives’ Pleas, Texas Board Rejects Clemency for Mentally Ill Convict

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Scott Panetti in an old mugshot.

Today the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole voted 7-0 against recommending clemency for Scott Panetti, a severely mentally ill death row inmate who is now infamous for having represented himself at trial wearing a purple cowboy suit.

Panetti, first diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1978, was convicted of capital murder after he shaved his head, donned camo fatigues and shot his in-laws in 1992 in a psychotic rage. But today, not even his victims think he should be executed. His ex-wife has said publicly that she believes he is deeply sick and should be spared. In the past month, a host of prominent conservatives and evangelicals have joined with death penalty opponents, mental health groups, the European Union, the nation of Bulgaria, a former Texas governor, libertarian cult figure Ron Paul, and myriad others who have called on the board and Texas governor Rick Perry to spare Panetti. But even that wasn’t enough to sway the governor-appointed board.

A more recent shot of Panetti.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice

The decision means that Panetti’s last real hope of avoiding execution on Wednesday lies with the US Supreme Court. Texas law doesn’t give the governor independent authority to commute a sentence unless the pardons board recommends such a move—although Perry could order a one-time 30-day delay. Every Texas court that has heard Panetti’s appeals in recent weeks has ruled against him, despite powerful dissents from conservative Republican judges.

With the execution less than 48 hours away, Panetti’s lawyers have filed two petitions with the high court asking the justices to halt the execution and review the case to determine whether executing the mentally ill violates the Eighth Amendment. They also argue that Panetti hasn’t had a mental competency hearing in seven years, and that his mental state has deteriorated significantly during that time. (He now apparently believes there’s a listening device implanted in his tooth, for instance.)

This is a similar issue to the one that won Panetti a reprieve in 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled that he hadn’t been afforded due process in assessing his competency to be executed. (A previous Supreme Court ruling bans use of the death penalty on people who can’t understand the nature of their punishment.) The 2007 decision gave Panetti the right to a hearing on his mental competency, but it didn’t do him much good. Even though Panetti still believed he was going to be executed for preaching the gospel, and despite the fact that all but one of the doctors who testified in the hearing believed he was seriously mentally ill, the lower courts greenlighted his execution anyway. The Supreme Court denied his last appeal of those decisions this past October, clearing the way for his December 3 execution.

The Supreme Court hasn’t been especially sympathetic lately to arguments about mental illness and the death penalty. Last year, it refused to block the execution of another seriously mentally ill inmate in Florida, John Ferguson, who went to his death believing he was the prince of God. But Panetti’s pro bono lawyers, Kathryn Kase and Greg Wiercioch, argue that public opinion on the issue is changing, and that the law needs to change with it. They cite a new poll showing that nearly 60 percent of Americans oppose executing someone with a serious mental illness. They also reference new research showing that juries and judges today are far less likely to choose death for a mentally ill defendant than they were 20 or 30 years ago. In 11 former and current death penalty states that allow for a “guilty but mentally ill” verdict, there hasn’t been a death sentence imposed on a mentally ill person in at least 20 years.

The Supreme Court petitions also seem clearly targeted at Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was the swing vote in Panetti’s favor in 2007, and who is somewhat fond of citing international law in his opinions. Panetti’s lawyers emphasize that executing the mentally ill is considered a major human rights violation by most other civilized countries. We’ll soon know whether these arguments are proving persuasive, as Texas is moving full steam ahead for Panetti’s lethal injection. The high court will have to act quickly one way or another.

The following infographic was created by the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit group that seeks to fix the flaws in the death penalty process and ensure fair representation for capital defendants:

TexasDefender.org

Source:

Despite Conservatives’ Pleas, Texas Board Rejects Clemency for Mentally Ill Convict

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Pines, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Despite Conservatives’ Pleas, Texas Board Rejects Clemency for Mentally Ill Convict

Even Without Voter ID Laws, Minority Voters Face More Hurdles to Casting Ballots

Mother Jones

Over the past decade, Republican legislators have pushed a number of measures critics say are blatant attempts to suppress minority voting, including voter ID requirements, shortened early voting periods, and limits on same-day voter registration. But minority voters are often disenfranchised in another, more subtle way: Polling places without enough voting machines or poll workers.

Charts: How minority voters were blocked at the ballot box in 2012.

These polling places tend to have long lines to vote. Long lines force people to eventually give up and go home, depressing voter turnout. And that happens regularly all across the country in precincts with lots of minority voters, even without voter ID or other voting restrictions in place.

Nationally, African Americans waited about twice as long to vote in the 2012 election as white people, (23 minutes on average versus 12 minutes); Hispanics waited 19 minutes. White people who live in neighborhoods whose residents are less than 5 percent minority, had the shortest of all wait times, just 7 minutes. These averages obscure some of the unusually long lines in some areas. In South Carolina’s Richland County, which is 48 percent black and is home to 14 percent of the state’s African American registered voters, some people waited more than five hours to cast their ballots.

Continue Reading »

View article: 

Even Without Voter ID Laws, Minority Voters Face More Hurdles to Casting Ballots

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Even Without Voter ID Laws, Minority Voters Face More Hurdles to Casting Ballots

SWAT Teams Keep Killing Innocent People in Their Homes

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Today, 85 percent of SWAT operations target private residences. When heavily-armed policemen conduct raids at peoples’ homes, they often go in expecting a fight from hardened criminals—but sometimes they’re wrong. Here are a few cases where botched SWAT raids ended in tragedy:

Bounkham Phonesavanh

Curtis Compton/ZUMA Press

One night last May, 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh (“Bou Bou”) was sleeping in the Atlanta home of relatives. Around 2 a.m., a SWAT team arrived to arrest Bou Bou’s 30-year-old cousin, an alleged drug dealer. Officers threw a flash-bang grenade into the room where Bou Bou was sleeping. It landed in his crib and exploded under his pillow, giving him third-degree burns and injuries so severe he was put in a medically-induced coma. While Bou Bou’s injuries remain severe, he’s expected to survive. The Habersham County Sheriff expressed deep regret but insisted his men were simply following procedure. Earlier this month, a jury cleared them of wrongdoing.

Jose Guerena

On the morning of May 5, 2011, in Tuscon, Arizona, a SWAT team assembled outside the home of 26-year-old Jose Guerena. A former Marine who served in Iraq; Guerena had just come home from working the night shift at the copper mine. Local law enforcement believed Guerena was involved in a drug distribution operation with his brothers. Woken up by his wife, who thought she heard burglars, Guerena went outside with an AR-15 rifle to investigate. He was shot 60 times and died before the SWAT team allowed paramedics to help. After his widow sued, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department agreed to a $3.4 million settlement in 2013.

Eurie Stamps

On the night of January 4, 2011, Eurie Stamps, a 68-year-old grandfather of 12, was watching a basketball game in his Framingham, Massachusetts, home. A SWAT unit was staking out his home and had already arrested his 20-year-old stepson outside. Despite having booked their suspect, the SWAT team raided the house. Officer Paul Duncan forced Stamps to lie face down on the ground. While Stamp was complying, Duncan allegedly tripped, causing his gun to go off and kill Stamps. Duncan was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Tarika Wilson

On January 4, 2008, a SWAT team arrived in the Lima, Ohio, home of 26-year-old Tarika Wilson. The team was looking for her boyfriend, who was suspected of dealing drugs. They broke through the front door and soon opened fire, killing Wilson and injuring her 14-month-old son, whom she was holding. Sgt. Joe Chavalia, who shot and killed her, was placed on paid leave and later cleared of wrongdoing.

Aiyana Stanley-Jones

Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press

On May 16, 2010, a Detroit SWAT crew arrived at the home of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, with a TV crew from the A&E network trailing them to film a show. They were looking for Chauncey Owens, who allegedly shot a teenager two days before. He was upstairs, but Aiyana was sleeping on the living room couch. The front door was unlocked, but the team busted open the door. Soon after, Officer Joseph Weekly’s gun went off, sending a bullet through Aiyana’s head. She died shortly afterward. Weekly is currently being tried for felony involuntary manslaughter; he claims it was an accident.

Dogs

In the past few years, SWAT teams have shot and killed dogs in Minnesota, North Carolina, Missouri, and California. In almost every case, officers have insisted that they felt threatened by the dogs. Pet owners have responded that their dogs were simply startled when SWAT teams broke in—often unannounced—to their homes, and denied that the dogs attacked officers. Take the case of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, a quiet D.C. suburb. On the evening of July 29, 2008, a Prince George’s County SWAT team burst into Calvo’s home, responding to a report of a package of marijuana on the doorstep. Upon entering, the officers shot and killed the family’s two Lab retrievers, handcuffed Calvo, his wife, and his mother-in-law, and then forced them to the ground. Police later found that Calvo had been targeted in a scheme in which drug dealers used the homes of unsuspecting people as pickup points for drugs.

View original post here: 

SWAT Teams Keep Killing Innocent People in Their Homes

Posted in Anchor, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on SWAT Teams Keep Killing Innocent People in Their Homes