OWS Update:
Report released chastises NYPD for their abuses of the basic human rights of #OWS
...“The abusive practices documented in this report violate international law and suppress and chill protest rights, not only by undermining individual liberty, but also by causing both minor and serious physical injuries, inhibiting collective debate and the capacity to effectively press for social and economic change, and making people afraid to attend otherwise peaceful assemblies.”
Above quote from:
Did the NYPD Break International Law in Suppressing Protest?
A new report just out documents how the NYPD used excessive force, arrested reporters, and concludes that police broke international law in their handling of Occupy.July 25, 2012
The Romney campaign got the memo: Race-baiting and xenophobia work -- at least among the segment of the electorate former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney hopes to capture in his quest for the presidency.
Above quote from: Romney Campaign's Race-Baiting Strategy Could Have Dire Consequences for America Romney's strategy has incorporated racial and cultural cues, both subtle and blatant, as a means of deflection from the Obama campaign's questions about Bain Capital. by Adele M. Stan at Alternet.org ,July 22, 2012
we have become so gun loving, so gun crazy, so blasé about home-grown violence that far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined...
...We are fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves that the law could allow even an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of a “well-regulated militia” be construed as a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you like, a license for murder and mayhem. A great fraud has entered our history.
Above quote by Bill Moyers from:
Colorado Shootings: Latest Evidence That America Is Poisoned by the NRA's Dark Gun Culture
There are some 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men.by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship at Alternet.com, July 20, 2012
Today's Topics:
#OWS update NYPD accused of suppressing the basic human rights of Occupy participants
#Romney's Uses racism to appeal to Republican base
# more calls for gun control: Amy Goodman and Bill Moyers
OWS Update
International human rights advocates condemn NYPD for its total disregard for the basic human rights as defined by International Law of Occupy participants.
Obama and Romney ignore the issue per usual.
As president of the United States Obama is supposed to uphold its constitution and Bill of Rights and any international laws including those on human rights which the USA has signed unto.
The problem is that President Obama has followed the ignoble path of former President George W. Bush in ignoring US laws and international laws on human rights when it did or does not fit with unilateral US policies such as redefining torture , redefining who constitutes a POW or Enemy Combatant and how they are to be treated,the use of indefinite detention, the use of prolonged solitary confinement attacking the rights of a free-press ,the right of citizens to peacefully protest and air their grievances and undermining legal constructs and practices which have centuries old tradition such as Habeas Corpus , the right to a fair trial, the right to face one's accusers or the obligations the government has to those incarcerated to provide prisoners with food and medical care and so forth .
Did the NYPD Break International Law in Suppressing Protest? A new report just out documents how the NYPD used excessive force, arrested reporters, and concludes that police broke international law in their handling of Occupy.July 25, 2012
A report by a group of civil and human rights attorneys released Wednesday morning paints the clearest picture yet of the New York City police department’s aggressive tactics and over-policing, all of which resulted in the systemic suppression of the basic rights of Occupy protesters.
The report, which chronicles events from late September 2011 up to July of 2012, extensively documents numerous ways in which the NYPD acted with excessive force, attempted to intimidate and harass members of the press, expelled activists from public space due to the content of their speech, and ultimately concludes that authorities broke international law in their handling of Occupy Wall Street.
The executive summary states, in plain language:
“The abusive practices documented in this report violate international law and suppress and chill protest rights, not only by undermining individual liberty, but also by causing both minor and serious physical injuries, inhibiting collective debate and the capacity to effectively press for social and economic change, and making people afraid to attend otherwise peaceful assemblies.”
The executive summary states, in plain language:
“The abusive practices documented in this report violate international law and suppress and chill protest rights, not only by undermining individual liberty, but also by causing both minor and serious physical injuries, inhibiting collective debate and the capacity to effectively press for social and economic change, and making people afraid to attend otherwise peaceful assemblies.”
Mitt Romney in his campaign against President Obama has taken to using racial stereotypes to appeal to a large portion of the Republican base who are racist.
Romney has attacked Obama supporters as just being interested in getting more free stuff ie Obamacare ,welfare, extended unemployment benefits etc.
His use of overt racism and the more fine tuned use of racist Dog-Whistles/ code words to appeal to voters if anything should in fact undermine his appeal to more moderate voters who may be uncomfortable voting for a candidate who uses the race card against Obama.
Romney Campaign's Race-Baiting Strategy Could Have Dire Consequences for America Romney's strategy has incorporated racial and cultural cues, both subtle and blatant, as a means of deflection from the Obama campaign's questions about Bain Capital. by Adele M. Stan at Alternet.org ,July 22, 2012
The Romney campaign got the memo: Race-baiting and xenophobia work -- at least among the segment of the electorate former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney hopes to capture in his quest for the presidency.
Over the course of the last two weeks, Romney's strategy has incorporated racial and cultural cues, both subtle and blatant, as a means of deflection from the Obama campaign's relentless offensive based on questions about Romney's tenure at Bain Capital...
... Romney, an elite member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, has suffered difficulties from the start among elements of the Republican base, especially right-wing Christian evangelicals, who view Mormonism as a cult and doubt Romney's conservative bona fides, especially on abortion, given the fact that he was, at one time, pro-choice.
Searching for a theme that would unify the base of the Republican Party, the Romney camp sought to find its footing in voter sentiment verified this week in a Washington Post/ABC News poll: Race-based reservations about Obama trump religion-based reservations about Romney.
In short, the theme boiled down to this: remind those core voters that the stakes in this election include another four years with a black guy in the White House -- and you know what those people are like.
The poll, conducted by Langer Research, found that among the non-black adults it surveyed, 62 percent "think blacks in their community don’t experience racial discrimination ...
Romney's most recent spate of race plays began with his visit to the NAACP convention, where he dangled some bait in front of an almost all-black audience that had, up until that point, received him politely.
He had to know that trotting out his "promise to repeal Obamacare" line would generate a negative response, and the audience delivered with a chorus of boos -- just as he had to know that his right-wing base would love to watch that video clip on instant replay. And when he patronizingly asserted himself as the best candidate "for African American families," Romney was clearly playing to the the white Republican base, whose leaders often express purported knowledge of what's best for black people.
His intention became clear when, later that day, Romney referred to the disapproval aimed his way at the NAACP event. "I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy -- more free stuff"...
As Amy Goodman in her recent article explains that better gun control laws may not have prevented the latest Mass Murder they might have reduced the carnage by regulating and banning assault rifles and large gun magazines.
" US gun laws: guilty by reason of insanity James Holmes bought his weaponry with relative ease. If better gun control laws were in place, perhaps fewer would have died" By Amy Goodman at The Guardian .co.uk, July 26, 2012
Holmes allegedly had an AR-15, equipped with a 100-round drum magazine, as well as one or two Glock pistols with 40-round extended magazines and a Remington 870 shotgun that can fire up to seven shells without reloading. The AR-15 can fire from 50 to 60 rounds per minute. Holmes had a massive arsenal, easily acquired at retail stores and online.
Carolyn McCarthy is a member of Congress from Long Island, NY. Her husband was shot in the head and among the six killed in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road massacre. Her son also was shot in the head, but survived and remains partially paralyzed. She was a nurse back then, but when her congressman voted against the assault-weapons ban, she ran against him. She won and has been in Congress ever since.
McCarthy has introduced HR 308, the Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act. It would ban the sale or transfer of these large-capacity clips that enabled the massive casualties in Aurora, and in Tucson, Arizona, in January 2011 when Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six were killed.
McCarthy told me: "The problem is, politicians, legislators across this country are intimidated by the NRA and the gun manufacturers who put so much money out there to say that 'we will take you down in an election if you go against us.' Common sense will say we can take prudent gun-safety legislation and try to save people's lives. That is the bottom line."
One group pushing the large-magazine ban is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, named for Jim Brady, who was shot in the head and severely disabled during the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. I spoke with Colin Goddard, who works for the group. He survived the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, where 32 people were killed. Goddard was shot four times. I asked him about the refrain so commonly uttered now on television, that it's political opportunism to discuss gun control before the Aurora victims are even buried.
"This conversation should have happened before this shooting in the first place," Goddard replied. "This is when people are outraged. This is when people realize that this could happen to them. We cannot wait ... Now is the time for a change. We are better than this."
Bill Moyers wonders aloud about why Americans in general and the Media act surprised each time a new mass murder is committed in America when the US has a Wild West style Gun culture which encourages citizens to buy more guns and body armour in a futile attempt to protect themselves from their fellow citizens. USA is stuck in a vicious irrational cycle of violence the more mass murders the more gun sales go up and is then followed by more mass murders.
Colorado Shootings: Latest Evidence That America Is Poisoned by the NRA's Dark Gun Culture
There are some 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men.by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship at Alternet.com, July 20, 2012
You might think Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of and spokesman for the mighty American gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, has an almost cosmic sense of timing. In 2007, at the NRA’s annual convention in St. Louis, he warned the crowd that, “Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure.” Two days later, a young man opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech, killing 32 students, staff and teachers.
Just last week LaPierre showed up at the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty here in New York and spoke out against what he called “anti-freedom policies that disregard American citizens’ right to self-defense.” Now at least 12 are dead in Aurora, Colorado, gunned down at a showing of the new film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” a Batman movie filled with make-believe violence. One of the guns the shooter reportedly used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994. The NRA pressured Congress to let the ban run out in 2004.
So why do we always act so surprised? Violence is our alter ego, wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in Colorado. But this, too, will pass as the nation of the short attention span quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in 2012.
We are a country which began with the forced subjugation into slavery of millions of Africans and the reliance on arms against Native Americans for its westward expansion. In truth, more settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted gunshots wounds than Indian attacks – we were not only bloodthirsty but also inept.
Nonetheless, we have become so gun loving, so gun crazy, so blasé about home-grown violence that far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter – a 9 millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol – doubled.
We are fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves that the law could allow even an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of a “well-regulated militia” be construed as a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you like, a license for murder and mayhem. A great fraud has entered our history.
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