CBS Host: Palestinians Force Israel to Kill Kids ... As we noted earlier (FAIR Blog, 7/15/14), Schieffer expressed serious concern for Israelis who ...
Israel and Palestinians traded blame after a blast at refugee camp that Gaza officials said killed 10. A hospital also was hit. Five Israeli soldiers died Monday. FULL STORY
AUDIT REPORTS by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction identify potentially billions of taxpayer funds wasted in Afghanistan, including donation of planes the government doesn't need or can't use.
This is the story of an innocent man put to death by the state of Texas.
Shocking in the details ... BUT worth the read. Most enlightening is the fact that his innocence was only really discovered after an exhaustive review. Imagine how many other such cases we might find if we really look!
U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney held that California's death penalty is so dysfunctional as to amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Vacating the death sentence of Ernest Jones, who has been on death row for almost 20 years, Judge Carney said the punishment cannot serve the purposes of deterrence or retribution when it is administered to a tiny select few, decades after their sentencing: "Inordinate and unpredictable delay has resulted in a death penalty system in which very few of the hundreds of individuals sentenced to death have been, or even will be, executed by the State. It has resulted in a system in which arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed. And it has resulted in a system that serves no penological purpose. Such a system is unconstitutional." Read the Court's Opinion.
California has sentenced more than 900 people to death row since the 70s but has executed less than 20. I'd call that freakish. Just like I've taught and written about the death penalty in the entire US. Freakish.
Check out these facts of the death penalty just offered by CNN here. There you will find cool graphics will facts about executions per year in the US, executions by country in the world, executions by state, methods of death in the US, race, etc.
But what might be surprising is how the demographics of news guests breaks down by network and by show.
According to an analysis by Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting (FAIR), there is "a stunning lack of diversity among the guests."
According to FAIR: "Guests were coded by gender, race/ethnicity and occupation, as well as the affiliations of partisan guests-those who are identified with a party as current or former government officials or campaign professionals."
Here are just some of the findings:
Eighty-four percent of guests were white (848). The most and least diverse shows in terms of ethnicity were both on MSNBC: People of color were 27 percent of guests on All In and only 6 percent on Maddow. Just three of Maddow’s guests were people of color; none of these were women.
Male guests widely outnumbered women on every show (730 to 285), making up 72 percent of the guest lists. Just 5 percent (46) of cable news guests were women of color.
Women of color (about 18 percent of the US public) were strikingly underrepresented on most shows ...
This is from a fascinating article in the New York Times. Here ...
This is from a journalist who, while writing for the Times, covered many, many, many shootings and killings. She then complied a report--called the Gun Report--where she summarizes what she learned in her time covering such incidents.
Very important stuff. READ IT!
This is portion of the article:
Before starting work on Gun Report, I had my own ideas about gun violence: Most of it probably resulted from gang activity, I assumed, along with the marital domestic shootings we so often read about.
More than 350 posts and 40,000 deaths later, here is what I learned.
Gang shootings are prevalent, especially in former hubs of industry now in economic decline in Ohio; the Flint/Tri-Cities region of Michigan; in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, Indiana; Newport News, Va.; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Carjackings and home invasions often appeared in my Google news searches. I was surprised to learn that suburbs were a magnet for gun violence, perhaps mirroring the housing implosion, which decimated the suburbs and propelled people to cities, where there are always jobs.
Not that nation’s largest cities are exempt: Miami, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Dallas are notable examples. (Less so New York, possibly because of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy, which was ruled unconstitutional.) Drive-by shootings still plague northern and southern California; Los Angeles, Fresno and the entire east side of the state are rife with gang activity. Tennessee, Alabama, and Missouri also frequently popped up in this regard.
What was also notable was where the shootings aren’t: Maine, Hawaii, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, and New Hampshire were rarely mentioned in the report. Why? Weapons don’t easily flow into Hawaii, surrounded by the Pacific, and Montana and Wyoming are sparsely populated, mostly by experienced, rural gun owners. But homeowners in these states are also armed against home invaders, and as we saw in Montana in May, tragedy can result.
But while half of the shootings I featured were the result of a crime, the other half, I was most surprised to learn, resulted from arguments — often fueled by alcohol — among friends, neighbors, family members and romantic partners. More and more, people are solving their differences not with their fists but with guns. Husbands and wives are shooting each other, as are sisters and brothers. In many homes across America, loaded guns are easily accessible, and children find them, accidentally shooting themselves or each other. One hundred children died in unintentional shootings in the year after Newtown, which breaks down to two every week.
As shown in the book, stories of prisons are rare in the news ... aside from those stories about riots and escapes and the like.
In today's New York Times, there is an article titled "Rikers: Where Mental Illness Meets Brutality in Jail." Read it here.
The story of Rikers, pictured below, is stunning, brutally honest, and strongly suggestive of a cultrue of violence by the state and city against people with mental illnesses.
Incredibly, as shown below, the number of violent incidents is rising, even as the jail's population has declined. April 2005--67 uses of force vs January 2014--389 uses of force
’
In spite of these stories and these data, the authors note:
"Reports of such abuses have seldom reached the outside world, even as
alarm has grown this year over conditions at the sprawling jail complex.
A dearth of whistle-blowers, coupled with the reluctance of the city’s
Department of Correction to acknowledge the problem and the fact that
guards are rarely punished, has kept the full extent of the violence
hidden from public view."
The unexpected new locations for hate crime scenes in the 21st century appear to be the comments sections of the nation's leading newspapers, where calls to violence have become routine and through which progressives have decided correcting the record is a waste of their time.
In his story, he provides examples that show "letters or comments sections appear to have become sanctuaries to virulent hate and, especially since the advent of the internet, a comfortable home to discourses of extremist hate and calls to violence, primarily of the extreme right-wing variety."
Now, this might be a partisan conclusion, but the point is that PEOPLE (whatever their politics) now use the Internet to talk trash and say horrible things, thinking they are anonymous (which they are not). As a result, many people simply do not read the letters or comments.
This is because of the "scripted messages" ... "talking points" ... "coded language, preposterous stereotypes and outright falsehoods" contained within.
You might not agree with the author that "right wing utilizes or engages the letters to the editor sections ... much more frequently, with much more volume and much more effectively than their liberal or progressive counterparts. It does this through the use of powerful metaphors and imagery, albeit false ones, which are effective because they are generally wrapped in the flag and/or the Bible. Demonization, fear and hate work. Repeated often enough, outright lies and distortions appear to be effective, especially when meanings of words are changed or misrepresented, and especially when they are not refuted. Soon, lies, distortions and misrepresentations become conventional wisdom. Conservative talk show hosts become credible sources, whereas facts are readily dismissed as liberal hearsay and heresy."
But you should agree with the argument that: "Audiences become susceptible in times of high stress, such as severe economic downturns, national crises, and especially in times of war. These are the times when people scapegoat the most politically powerless sectors and close ranks to fight a 'common enemy.'" This is what is happening right now with the immigration debate.
AL QAEDA-INSPIRED TERROR GROUP ISIS is leaving a path of destroyed churches, shrines and mosques in its wake as it storms across Syria and Iraq, and has even apparently set its sights on Mecca — Islam's holiest site.
It discusses how the US actually has way more crime than we are led to believe, only it is not counted in the numbers because it happens within prisons!
If such stories were commonplace in the news, we'd not have the major problems we have in criminal justice today.
Seriously, this is the latest. CNN calls it a new epidemic.
If you follow this blog, then you know CNN regularly focuses on one kind of crime or incident, gets fixated on it, and makes it out to be some kind of epidemic (when in fact it is not). Here is the latest example:
Cooper Harris died after he was locked in his father's car. Justin Ross Harris is charged with murder and child cruelty, but police also have questions about his wife's behavior. Here's what we know about Leanna Harris. FULL STORY
We compared the amount of sugar found in some of America's top-selling beverages to the sugar found in common sugary snacks. Are you ready to be shocked? PHOTOS
ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S first moves toward trying to 'fix' the US immigration system without Congress will almost certainly be to expand on his 2012 executive order postponing deportation for potentially millions of young illegal immigrants, say experts on both sides of the debate.
Such is the finding of a study recently summarized in the Smithsonian magazine.
Incredibly, the authors found in a simulation that the difference between a 14-month sentence and a 17-month sentence (for example, between a white offender and black offender sentenced for the same crime) would, over time, explain the difference in incarceration rates between blacks and whites.
Why? Peer contagion. That is, eventually, prison becomes the norm and is learned as part of normal life for those who go and spend more time there.
This is an amazing piece of research that is thankfully getting some media coverage.
Some of us listen to NPR to learn about what is going on in the world. It is a reliable, non-biased source that is listener supported and thus non-profit.
Studies find its listeners are among the most informed people. See for yourself.
But every once in a while, you might want to listen to some music, and for those of us who do not have satellite radio, we get stuck with popular music stations owned by corporations. What do they cover?
Well, celebrity news. Scandals. And silly stuff.
Does that make us stupid? I'd bet it does.
And what kind of music do they play? This kind of stuff.
In case you don't know, these are the lyrics:
______________________
I'm that flight that you get on, international
First class seat on my lap girl, riding comfortable
'Cause I know what the girl them need,
New York to Haiti
I got lipstick stamps on my passport,
You make it hard to leave
[Jason Derulo:]
Been around the world, don't speak the language
But your booty don't need explaining
All I really need to understand is
When you talk dirty to me
Talk dirty to me
Talk dirty to me
Talk dirty to me
Get jazzy on it
I know what the girl them want,
London to Taiwan
I got lipstick stamps on my passport
I think I need a new one
[Jason Derulo:]
Been around the world, don't speak the language
But your booty don't need explaining
All I really need to understand is
When you talk dirty to me
Talk dirty to me
Talk dirty to me
Talk dirty to me
[2 Chainz:]
Dos Cadenas, close to genius
Sold out arenas, you can suck my penis
Gilbert Arenas, guns on deck
Chest to chest, tongue on neck
International oral sex
Every picture I take, I pose a threat
Bought a jet, what do you expect?
Her pussy's so good I bought her a pet
Anyway, every day I'm trying to get to it
Got her saved in my phone under "Big Booty"
Anyway, every day I'm trying to get to it
Got her saved in my phone under "Big Booty"
[Jason Derulo:]
Been around the world, don't speak the language
But your booty don't need explaining
All I really need to understand is
When you talk dirty to me
Talk dirty to me (you you you)
Talk dirty to me (yeah yeah)
Talk dirty to me (talk to me)
Talk dirty to me (oh yeah)
Get jazzy on it
What? I don't understand!
______________________
Remember when you used to have to buy the music to hear this? Now it is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN!
The aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush and five other warships are in the
Persian Gulf. Hundreds of Marines and dozens of copters are on standby
for whatever President Obama orders.
FULL STORY
This is the very definition of irony and a self-fulfilling prophecy:
... the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threatens to attack the capital of Iraq. ISIS said it had executed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers, and posted photos online Sunday appearing to show some of the killings. [from CNN, The New York Times]
ISIS is what we wanted to prevent by invading Iraq. ISIS only exists because we invaded, removing the one man who prevented such a group from ever operating in the country. Be sure to thank Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George W. Bush, and company.
Now, is this reality in the news?
Nope. In fact, the people who called for and made the war a reality are at it again.
... "since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology. According to a count by the New America Foundation, right wing extremists have killed 34 people in the United States for political reasons since 9/11. (The total includes the latest shootings in Kansas, which are being classified as a hate crime).
"'Since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies...have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology.'
"By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.
(Although a variety of left wing militants and environmental extremists have carried out violent attacks for political reasons against property and individuals since 9/11, none have been linked to a lethal attack, according to research by the New America Foundation.)"
So, I cannot wait to see what the rest of the media say about these facts.
After all, "according to the New America Foundation, as of April of this year, 21 people had been killed in the United States in attacks motivated by Islamic extremism since 9/11. Meanwhile, 34 people had been killed by right-wing extremist attacks during the same time period." See?
Looks to me like even school shootings are a greater threat than terrorism!
This map shows every school shooting since Sandy Hook
The cover of the final 9/11 report, which can be purchased in bookstores across the United States and around the world. (Image via Wikipedia)One of the many things I learned in government is that the investigative commissions which inquire into a scandal, disaster or atrocity are usually intended to bury the real causes of the incident and trumpet other circumstantial or irrelevant details as if they are shocking or novel. In other words, commissions are cover-ups pretending to be exposés. This is not always the case, but as the stakes rise, it becomes the accepted practice.
SIGAR
AP
Reuters