Tag Archives: united

Should We Allow Nonprofits to Endorse Candidates?

by TheodorBurrough Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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

I work for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so I’m keenly aware that I’m not allowed to endorse candidates. That mean y’all will just have to guess who I’m voting for in November. I apologize for having to keep you in such suspense.

Until recently, though, I had no idea why non-profits weren’t allowed to endorse candidates. Then I began hearing about the “Johnson Amendment” from Donald Trump. Obviously someone put a bug in his ear, and he’s been repeating it like a mantra for weeks now. So what’s this all about?

The “Johnson Amendment,” as the 1954 law is often called, is a U.S. tax code rule preventing tax-exempt organizations, such as churches and educational institutions, from endorsing political candidates. At the time, then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson was running for re-election, and he and other members of Congress pushed the amendment to stop support for their political opponents’ campaigns, George Washington University law professor Robert Tuttle has explained. Many have also argued the amendment served to stop black churches from organizing to support the civil rights movement.

“All section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” the IRS explains of the rule on its website. “Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”

There you go. So why has Trump suddenly decided this is a threat to democracy? You can probably guess: because conservative churches want to endorse Republican candidates and give them lots of money without losing their tax-exempt status. Jerry Falwell Jr. explains:

In recent years, religious liberty group the Alliance Defending Freedom has advocated for its repeal, arguing that the law is unconstitutional and lets the IRS “tell pastors what they can and cannot preach,” and “aims to censor your sermon.”…“This is something that could make a difference with Christian voters in the fall,” Falwell says. “It is almost as important for Christians as the appointment of Supreme Court justices.”

My first thought about this is that it would provide yet another avenue for big money in politics. I can imagine rich donors setting up, say, the Church of the Divine Supply Siders and then funneling millions of dollars in dark money through it. Fun!

On the other hand, in a world of Super PACs and Citizens United, why bother? They can already do this easily enough, just as churches can set up “action committees” that are legally separate and can endorse away.

I’d genuinely like to hear more about this. Within whatever framework of campaign finance law we happen to have, is there any special reason that nonprofits shouldn’t be able to endorse, organize, and spend money on behalf of a candidate? I have to admit that no really good reason comes to mind. Am I missing something?

See more here:  

Should We Allow Nonprofits to Endorse Candidates?

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Should We Allow Nonprofits to Endorse Candidates?

Ted Cruz Says Building Trump’s Wall Is Like Fighting Slavery and Jim Crow

by LeslieHides Posted on July 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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

In a primetime address to the Republican National Convention Wednesday, Ted Cruz compared GOP efforts to restrict immigration to the civil rights movement’s fight against Jim Crow laws. But the Texas senator was loudly booed by Donald Trump supporters in the convention hall when it became clear that he was not going to endorse the man who beat him for the Republican presidential nomination. Instead, Cruz encouraged his audience to “vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

“We deserve leaders who stand for principle, unite us all behind shared values, cast aside anger for love,” Cruz said, in what many considered the first campaign speech of his likely 2020 presidential campaign. “That is the standard we should expect, from everybody.”

Rather than directly back Trump—who mocked his wife Heidi’s looks during the primary campaign and once suggested Cruz’s dad was complicit in the Kennedy assassination—Cruz used his prime-time slot to outline his vision of freedom.

“Freedom means free speech, not politically correct safe spaces,” he said, taking a shot at progressive college campus activists. He rattled off a series of other bullet points—religious freedom, the right to bear arms, school vouchers, and repealing Obamacare. Each of those freedoms are typical conservative talking points that the party’s nominee rarely mentions. Although Cruz’s speech focused less on social conservative issues than it might have in years past, he included a call for Washington to stay out of defining issues like marriage.

But Cruz made sure to endorse parts of Trump’s platform as well. He cited the success of the United Kingdom’s recent Brexit vote as indicative of a growing populist wave. “We deserve an immigration system that puts America first and, yes, builds a wall to keep us safe, that stops admitting ISIS terrorists as refugees,” Cruz said. “We deserve trade policies that put the interests of American farmers and manufacturing jobs over the global interests funding the lobbyists.” Cruz had never previously campaigned as an economic protectionist.

Even as he adopted aspects of the current nominee’s most controversial proposals, Cruz was careful to couch his political fight in the context of historical struggles. “Together we passed the Civil Rights Act, and together we fought to eliminate Jim Crow laws,” he said. “Those were fights for freedom, and so is this.”

Source:

Ted Cruz Says Building Trump’s Wall Is Like Fighting Slavery and Jim Crow

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ted Cruz Says Building Trump’s Wall Is Like Fighting Slavery and Jim Crow

No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

by sharonhinder880 Posted on July 20, 2016

No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

By on Jul 20, 2016Share

Biking from Maine to Florida might sound like a nightmare to lots of people — but it’s a proposition that could become much more appealing if the East Coast Greenway Alliance gets its way. A 3,000-mile bikes-only, no-cars-allowed trail that stretches the length of the East Coast could become a reality for the super-bikers among us.

OK, you may be thinking. When will this actually be finished, if ever? 

Roll up your pants and grab a helmet, because you can bike the East Coast Greenway today — some of it, at least. At the moment, only 850 miles are designated, off-road bike paths. But the goal is for 95 percent of the route to be traffic-free by 2030.

The path will be one of the longest bike trails in the United States. The trails are locally owned and managed, so if you’re an East Coaster excited about getting the Greenway up and running in your area, you can help make that happen.

Many bike trails already exist along rivers, old railways, and other scenic locations along the East Coast — but the challenge is to bring them up to code and connect the dots. Once that happens, we’ll have the cycle-friendly equivalent of the Appalachian Trail at our fingertips.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

Original article: 

No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

Posted in alo, Anchor, bigo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

Suspected US Coalition Airstrikes In Syria Kill Scores of Civilians

by ArnoldMidgett Posted on July 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Suspected airstrikes by the United States-led coalition in Syria recently killed at least 56 civilians, including 11 children, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The death toll from airstrikes targeting two villages near the Islamic State-controlled city of Manbij could be as high as 200, which would make it the coalition’s deadliest attack in two years.

In an interview with the non-profit journalism outlet Syria Direct on Tuesday, a local citizen journalist said the school housed displaced people and that 124 dead had been counted so far. A day earlier, 21 people were killed in raids also believed to be carried out by coalition aircraft north of Manbij. The airstrikes coincided with a ground offensive launched by ISIS against the US-backed Syria Democratic Forces, according to the New York Times.

In a statement, Amnesty International stated that the United States needs to do more to prevent civilian casualties. “The bombing of al-Tukhar may have resulted in the largest loss of civilian life by coalition operations in Syria,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty’s interim deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program. “There must be a prompt, independent and transparent investigation to determine what happened, who was responsible, and how to avoid further needles loss of civilian life. Anyone responsible for violations of international humanitarian law must be brought to justice and victims and their families should receive full reparation.”

United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has not commented on the latest reports of civilian deaths. The Pentagon’s estimates of civilian casualties from its anti-ISIS campaign have long been at odds with those of reputable monitoring groups.

View original post here:

Suspected US Coalition Airstrikes In Syria Kill Scores of Civilians

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Suspected US Coalition Airstrikes In Syria Kill Scores of Civilians

Donald Trump Introduces Mike Pence as His Official Running Mate

by ErrolCormack Posted on July 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Following leaked reports that revealed Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump held an event on Saturday to officially introduce the Indiana governor as his vice presidential pick, a choice Trump said would help bring “party unity” to his campaign.

“I found the leader who will help us deliver a safe society and a prosperous society for all Americans,” Trump said, speaking from the Hilton Midtown in New York City. “Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was my first choice. I’ve admired the work he’s done, especially in Indiana.”

“He is going to fight for you,” he continued. “He is a solid, solid person.”

Before Pence arrived on stage, Trump spent most of the introduction discussing himself and attacking Hillary Clinton. At times, it appeared as though he almost forgot the purpose of the event was to unveil Pence as his running mate.

The presumptive Republican nominee reportedly had last minute reservations about the decision to put Pence on the ticket, and was furious the governor’s name surfaced in the media before he made a formal announcement. Trump, however, denied reports he had hesitated:

“Donald Trump is a good man and he will make a great president of the United States,” Pence said on Saturday in his speech accepting Trump’s offer. “Hillary Clinton must never become our president.”

Continued here:

Donald Trump Introduces Mike Pence as His Official Running Mate

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump Introduces Mike Pence as His Official Running Mate

Pollution from power plants in two states killed thousands of people last year

by VicenteCombes Posted on July 15, 2016

Pollution from power plants in two states killed thousands of people last year

By on Jul 15, 2016 6:03 amShare

How poisonous are power plants? An estimated 2,300 people in the United States died prematurely because of Pennsylvania’s power plants just last year, according to a study out Thursday. Across the border in Ohio, power plants claimed another 2,130 lives last year. The healthcare bill for people suffering from power plants in both states hit $40 billion.

These startling numbers come from a pair of reports from NextGen Climate America and PSE Healthy Energy, which looked at two states infamous for their coal-burning power plants. It should come as no surprise that nearly 90 percent of power plants in both states are in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

In a word, it’s horrifying. People are getting sick, paying a lot of money, and dying to meet our demand for electricity. Once the EPA’s Clean Power Plan takes hold (it’s currently tied up in the courts) Ohio and Pennsylvania should take a hard look at who’s being affected by emissions, says NextGen. The new federal regulations give states flexibility to meet the standards — including choosing natural gas over coal plants to lower emissions. But, as NextGen points out, natural gas can still lead to asthma attacks, respiratory problems, and death.

NextGen argues that Ohio and Pennsylvania should focus on health and equity for everyone. But the organization’s policy recommendation tiptoes around it: “An emphasis on renewables and efficiency, rather than increased natural gas generation, may be the best way to realize the benefits of the Clean Power Plan without placing a disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities.” It’s not a “may be,” it is.

Natural gas plants can mean sickness and death for vulnerable communities. The long-term goal should be a complete end to poisonous power plants — not a meek proposal to curb some, but not all, of the burdens.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Source – 

Pollution from power plants in two states killed thousands of people last year

Posted in alo, Anchor, Brita, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pollution from power plants in two states killed thousands of people last year

A War Reporter’s Family is Suing the Assad Regime Over Her Death

by scormeciurilive Posted on July 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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

As the Syrian government launched a scorched-earth siege of Homs in early 2012, the American war reporter Marie Colvin holed up in a clandestine media center inside the city, sending out live broadcasts on the attack’s heavy civilian casualties. “There are rockets, shells, tank shells, anti-aircraft being fired in parallel lines into the city,” she said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in the pre-dawn hours of February 22, 2012. “It’s a complete and utter lie they’re only going after terrorists. The Syrian Army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.”

It was Colvin’s last call to CNN. Later that morning, the Syrian military fired directly at the makeshift media center. Using a targeting method called “bracketing,” rockets and mortars landed on each side of the center, the rounds inching closer until eventually, a rocket struck outside the front door as Colvin and her colleagues attempted to evacuate. Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik were killed immediately, and shrapnel and debris severely injured the French reporter Edith Bouvier and Colvin’s colleagues, Paul Conroy and Wael al-Omar.

At the time, the Syrian Information Ministry said that the government was unaware that Colvin and Ochlik were in the country. However, a federal lawsuit filed over the weekend on behalf of Colvin’s family alleges that the Syrian government targeted the media center “with premeditation” to silence Colvin and other media critics of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The civil complaint claims that Colvin was deliberately assassinated by high-ranking officials within the Assad government. “Marie Colvin was killed for exposing the Assad regime’s slaughter of innocent civilians to the world,” said attorney Scott Gilmore of the Center for Justice and Accountability, which is representing her family, in a statement. “The regime wanted to wage a war without witness against the democratic opposition. To do that, they needed to neutralize the media.”

The case, which is the result of a three-year investigation that draws on captured government documents and statements from defectors, seeks unspecified financial damages from the Syrian government. The suit alleges that Syrian intelligence officers got a tip that foreign reporters were staying at the media center in Homs and tried intercept Colvin’s broadcast satellite signal. After pinpointing her location, Syrian forces shelled her position with artillery strikes, the complaint states.

Colvin, who was 56 at the time of her death, had a reputation for courageousness while covering some the world’s most violent conflicts over the two decades that she reported for the London-based Sunday Times. She wore an eye patch after suffering an injury in an explosion while covering Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2001.

Her family’s suit is the first case yet that aims to hold the Assad regime responsible for war crimes. It was filed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a relatively obscure federal law that allows Americans to sue nations that are designated as sponsors of terrorism. “It’s very hard to hold a foreign state accountable for war crimes,” says Dixon Osburn, the executive director of the Center for Justice and Accountability. But with the Colvin case, says Osburn, “we had the jurisdictional perfect storm of being able to have the plaintiff and defendant that both fit the statute.”

Previously, FSIA has been invoked against the Vatican in cases involving clergy sexual abuse. It also protected Saudi Arabia when families and victims of the 9/11 attacks filed a lawsuit alleging that Saudi leaders had financed Al Qaeda. In 1980, plaintiffs used FSIA to successfully sue the government of Chile for the assassination of its former ambassador to the United States, and in 1992, the act was cited in a torture suit against Argentina.

“The Colvin family recognizes that they’re in a unique position to bring this lawsuit, and there are so many others who have lost sons and daughters who don’t have the same kind of opportunity,” says Osburn. “The hope is to provide some voice about what’s happening in Syria, about what happened at the siege of Homs, and to shed light on the atrocities that have been committed.”

Originally from:  

A War Reporter’s Family is Suing the Assad Regime Over Her Death

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, ProPublica, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A War Reporter’s Family is Suing the Assad Regime Over Her Death

Trump’s VP shortlist looks like him, sounds like him on climate

by LemuelForster5 Posted on July 12, 2016

Jeepers Veepers

Trump’s VP shortlist looks like him, sounds like him on climate

By on Jul 12, 2016Share

Donald Trump has reportedly narrowed his vice presidential candidates to a short list of five men, plus “two that are unknown to anybody.” The five known candidates’ environmental records are about what you’d expect considering their potential boss once referred to climate change as a Chinese hoax. Here they are:

Mike Pence, Governor of Indiana

Pence is an Evangelical Christian and Creationist who once told Chris Matthews that the science on climate change is “very mixed.” Last year, 22 scientists wrote Pence an open letter offering to help Indiana address its unique challenges due to climate change. Pence did not take them up on it, but he signed Indiana up to help derail Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey

In the midst of his own bid for the presidential nomination, the New Jersey governor referred to Trump as a “carnival barker,” a “13-year-old,” and “thin-skinned.” Then Christie endorsed him. He’s had a similar approach to climate change. Although Christie says there is “no use in denying global warming exists,” he contradicts himself by not wanting to do anything about it.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House

Gingrich used to think Congress should address climate change — as seen in the bizarro commercial with Nancy Pelosi embedded below. But apparently he changed his mind sometime after 2008. Last year, he criticized the Paris climate summit in the Washington Times, writing, “Nothing that happens there will affect the climate. Wishes don’t power the global economy; fossil fuels do.”

When Gingrich ran for president in 2012, he promised $2.50 gas if the U.S. approved the Keystone XL pipeline and opened the Gulf of Mexico to unrestricted drilling. Since then, gas prices have come down just fine without President Gingrich.

Mike Flynn, retired Army lieutenant general 

The 33-year army veteran who briefly served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Obama administration is a registered Democrat — or at least he was before Trump started eyeballing him. After the recent mass shooting in Orlando, Flynn attacked Obama for focusing on little matters like climate change. “And here we have the President of the United States up in Canada talking about climate change,” Flynn said. “I mean, God, we just had the largest attack … on our own soil in Orlando. Why aren’t we talking about that?”

Jeff Sessions, Alabama Senator

Ranked one of the most conservative members of Congress, Sessions was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump. He’s also hardliner on immigration and shares Trump’s affinity for making racist comments. Sessions has repeatedly insisted that there’s been  “almost no warming” in the past 25 years, contrary to all the evidence otherwise. But while Sessions may not accept climate change, the good news is he does believe in magic.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Read this article: 

Trump’s VP shortlist looks like him, sounds like him on climate

Posted in alo, Anchor, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump’s VP shortlist looks like him, sounds like him on climate

Raw Data: How Does Social Security Compare to Retirement Programs in Other Countries?

by MariamTIMV Posted on July 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Earlier today I wrote about retirement income in the United States, and that got me curious about how we compare to other countries. The obvious source for this is an international organization that does its best to make apples-to-apples comparisons, so I headed to the website of the OECD, the “rich countries club.” (I don’t really care how we compare to Chad. I want to know how we compare to peer countries like France and Japan.)

This in turn led me to “Pensions at a Glance,” which turned out to be an enormous misnomer: the 2015 edition is 374 pages long. I haven’t read the whole thing, of course, but I did find plenty of interesting stuff. I’m going to highlight one chart today, and maybe I’ll do others throughout the week.

So how do we compare? The answer, unsurprisingly, is: It’s complicated. There are lots of ways of comparing retirement income, and they produce different results. But there’s a single broad measure that gives a rough idea of how generous each country is: the percentage of GDP spent on pension programs. In the United States, that’s Social Security (public) plus 401(k)s, IRAs, etc. (private). Other countries give their programs different names, but they all employ a combination of public and private spending.

By itself, though, that’s not enough. Countries with more elderly people are obviously going to spend more. So you want to adjust the GDP number by how many people are retired. The OECD report doesn’t do this directly, but it does provide the old-age dependency ratio for each country, which is a good proxy. The higher the number, the more retired people a country has.

So all we have to do is divide the GDP number by the OADR number for each country. This provides a “retirement index” that indicates how generous each country’s retirement is. Here it is for public pensions only:

And here it is for all pension income, both public and private:

As with many other things, the United States relies more heavily on private spending than most rich countries. If you compare Social Security to public pensions in other countries, we’re about average. If you compare all pension income, our retirees are better off than nearly everywhere else.

Now, these are only average numbers. They don’t tell us anything about how rich retirees compare to poor ones. Social Security, for example, tends to favor poorer retirees, while private pensions favor richer ones, and it’s not easy to combine them to get a comprehensive distribution of retirement benefits. However, the OECD report has some other charts that come close to doing this, and I’ll see if I can extract one for tomorrow. In the meantime, make what you will of this raw data.

Excerpt from:

Raw Data: How Does Social Security Compare to Retirement Programs in Other Countries?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Raw Data: How Does Social Security Compare to Retirement Programs in Other Countries?

Are Brazilian Cops Ready for the Olympics?

by TrevorChristie Posted on July 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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

The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has promised to beef up public security ahead of the Olympics next month. But those efforts are complicated by a staggering rate of unlawful police killings, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, that has fostered deep divisions between law enforcement and the communities it serves.

Since 2006, Rio’s police have killed at least 8,021 people, including 645 people last year, according to the 109-page report, released Thursday. In the city of Rio alone, police killings accounted for a whopping 20 percent of all homicides last year. And while Human Rights Watch says many of these officer-involved killings were likely justified uses of force, since cops patrolling Rio often come up against heavily armed gangs and need to protect themselves, the advocacy group found ample evidence to suggest that some were “extrajudicial killings.”

Human Rights Watch found that for every officer killed on duty in Rio de Janeiro last year, 24.8 civilians were slain by the police—three times the rate in the United States.

In at least 64 cases since 2006, the Brazilian police have allegedly tried to cover up unlawful killings, Human Rights Watch found, citing interviews with officers, victims’ families, prosecutors, and others. The report details incidents where cops planted evidence, guns, or drugs on shooting victims; removed clothes from dead bodies, hoping to discard bullet fragments that could identify the shooter; and even delivered the corpse of someone they’d shot and killed to a hospital, claiming they were trying to “rescue” the victim. Of 32 “rescues” that Human Rights Watch examined, the victim was dead on arrival at the hospital in at least 27 cases. “While these false ‘rescues’ give the appearance of legitimate effort by officers to help victims, in reality they destroy crime scene evidence and hinder forensic evidence,” the advocacy group wrote.

Most of the officers involved have never been brought to court. There were 3,441 recorded police killings between 2010 and 2015, but the state attorney general’s office pursued charges in just four cases, Human Rights Watch found. Rio’s attorney general, Marfan Martins Vieira, said his office had only been able to prosecute a small number of officers because official investigations of such killings are typically of “poor quality,” even though he knows of killings where he believes cops faked a shootout to make it look like they acted in self-defense.

This isn’t the first time the issue has come up just before Brazil prepares to take center stage. Nine years ago, weeks before the Pan-American Games opened in Rio, authorities converged on the Complexo do Alemao favela as part of a series of sweeps against drug operations in the city’s slums. In an ensuing shootout, 19 civilians were killed. Five of the victims that day were shot at point-blank range. Nine others were shot in the back. Human Rights Watch found that no officer was ever held accountable for the 2007 incident, and a federal commission later determined that several deaths “were the result of a procedure of summary and arbitrary execution.” At the time, then-State Security Secretary Jose Mariano Beltrame told NPR the operation was not intended to be violent but had turned bloody after a confrontation with suspected drug traffickers. “We do not go to these regions looking for or producing violence,” he said. “We were met brutally with bullets and potent arms.”

Ahead of the Olympics, Rio de Janeiro has bolstered security around the games’ venues to 85,000 officers, thanks to some emergency funds. But high-profile incidents continue to trouble the city. Athletes have been mugged and human remains have washed up on a beach near the volleyball arena. Robert Muggah, a security expert at the Igarapé Institute in Rio, recently noted a 15 percent increase in homicides during the first four months of this year compared with same period in 2015. The city’s mayor has blamed the state, which he said was “completely failing at its work of policing and taking care of people.”

Maria Laura Canineu, the Brazil director at Human Rights Watch, said police brutality has made cops feel less safe. It’s dangerous to patrol Rio’s slums—attacks by gang members are common—and criminals are more likely to fight back if they think their lives are at risk, the advocacy group wrote in its report. Some officers told Human Rights Watch that they’d witnessed unlawful police killings but didn’t report anything because they feared potential retaliation from their colleagues. “Unlawful killings turn communities against the police and undermine security for all,” Canineu said in a statement. “You can’t expect community policing to work when police are executing members of the communities they are supposed to protect. And you can’t expect honest cops to perform well when they live in constant fear—not only of gang members, but also of their fellow officers.”

View original post here:

Are Brazilian Cops Ready for the Olympics?

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are Brazilian Cops Ready for the Olympics?