Curfew re-imposed in Missouri city where black teen shot by white police officer
/Authorities on Sunday imposed a midnight curfew for the second night a row in the tense St. Louis suburb where an unarmed black teen was shot to death last week by police, seeking to secure an elusive peace as protesters continued to gather.
Police blocked off at least one street to vehicle traffic before the sun had even set. The move came as scores of protesters began gathering along West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, the site of ongoing protests as well as violence and looting since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death on Aug. 9.
"They want to take it night by night," said Highway Patrol spokesman Justin Wheetley said of the curfew, imposed Saturday night by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon in an effort to quell protests and looting.
America's for-profit prisons: Greed over justice
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Today, in the U.S., there are privately owned for-profit prisons that contractually require states to maintain a certain number of prisoners. If prison populations fall below the agreed upon quota, there are fines the states have to pay to these prison corporations. There is something terribly wrong with America. You can even invest in for-profit prison corporations, or the partnership corrections industry, as they prefer to be called. One such company is Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA for short, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CXW. Started in 1983, the Corrections Corporation of America was the first for-profit prison company. The more prisoners a facility holds, the more profitable the corporation is. That is good for stockholders, but not for the rest of the citizens of America In their 2010 annual report, CCA wrote, “Historically, we have been successful in substantially filling our inventory of available beds and the beds that we have constructed. Filling these available beds would provide substantial growth in revenues, cash flow, and earnings per share. One company was so desperate to keep their prison populations high that it was willing to bribe two Pennsylvania judges to do so. Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan were sentencing children without proper representation to harsh penalties for petty crimes while receiving kick-backs from the prison corporation for their efforts. In 2011, Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced to 28 years and made to pay a $1.2 million restitution after it was found out that he accepted more than $2 million in bribes from Robert Powell and Robert Mericle who built and owned, respectively, the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers. Michael Conahan, received 17 and a half years for charges stemming from the bribes. The true tragedy is the cost to the prisoners. These are actual human beings, most often not white, who are being preyed on by people in the more affluent sectors of American society. Lives are ruined every day so that stockholders can enjoy a better return on their investment. According to The Sentencing Project, when CCA was founded in 1983, there were about 400,000 people in prison in America for various crimes. By 2012, that number had risen to more than 1.5 million people. In 1985, states were spending $6.7 billion on housing inmates. By 2010, states were paying $53.3 billion. |
Zero-tolerance means zero productivity [putting students in jail furthers the goals of white supremacy]
/An editorial states: “People send their children to schools to learn, not to be subject to rough societal punishments. When a person trusts a school with the well being of his or her child, it is understood that educators and administrators in middle and high schools will act in the best interest of the student. Zero-tolerance policies are counterintuitive to the development of a functioning member of society, and they should be eradicated before more young people are prematurely introduced to the incarceration system.
“Any zero-tolerance policy against non-violent crime breeds criminals. When a student is in possession of an illegal substance or spray paints a wall on a campus, administrators should take the responsibility to discipline. Guidance counselors and school security should be held more accountable for discovering and assessing a child’s actions and administering constructive discipline rather than punishing the student to the fullest extent.
“Disruptive students should not be contained to jail cells, juvenile detention or simple detention in a cafeteria. If a social problem warrants possible incarceration, parents and school officials should be more than capable of avoiding such harsh consequences. How is society going to advance if young people are left to fend for their rights in a courtroom?
“Expulsions and suspensions delegate the responsibility of disciplining a student to the parents, which is fine in most cases. But if a parent is incompetent or unable to address unruly social issues — as is often the case when students have certain social problems — then the student is left to his or her own devices to continue the bad behavior.
“Currently, more than 70,000 people under the age of 18 years old are in juvenile detention, according to The Sentencing Project, an organization geared toward fighting to lower the sheer number of young people behind bars. Schools think they can effectively educate willing, behaved students if the ne’er-do-wells are removed from classrooms, but removing these more difficult students damages their futures.”
Fast-Food Workers Across The U.S. Cry Poverty Wages, Demand Better Pay
/When you're making eight bucks an hour, which is pretty typical in the fast-food industry, it's tough to make ends meet.
And increasingly, the working poor are asking this question: Why am I living in poverty, even when I'm working full time?
That's the message that thousands of fast-food workers rallying Thursday in about 100 U.S. cities — from Oakland to Memphis to Washington, D.C. — are trying to get across. A living wage in big cities is closer to $14 an hour, and it jumps to about $20 an hour for an adult supporting a child.
The protests are part of a growing campaign backed by a coalition of advocacy groups, religious organizations and union organizers aimed at raising fast-food wages to $15 an hour.
But not everyone agrees that raising the federal minimum wage will fix the problems of fast-food workers struggling to make ends meet. "I would oppose raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour," says Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute.
”Control food and you control the people.” Monsanto, TPP, Global Food Dominance
/“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.
”Control food and you control the people.”
Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.
Profits Before Populations
According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals).
Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants genetically modified to resist it.
Glyphosate-based herbicides are now the most commonly used herbicides in the world. Glyphosate is an essential partner to the GMOs that are the principal business of the burgeoning biotech industry. Glyphosate is a “broad-spectrum” herbicide that destroys indiscriminately, not by killing unwanted plants directly but by tying up access to critical nutrients.
Because of the insidious way in which it works, it has been sold as a relatively benign replacement for the devastating earlier dioxin-based herbicides. But a barrage of experimental data has now shown glyphosate and the GMO foods incorporating it to pose serious dangers to health.
Compounding the risk is the toxicity of “inert” ingredients used to make glyphosate more potent. Researchers have found, for example, that the surfactant POEA can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. But these risks have been conveniently ignored. [MORE]
Tighter rules of engagement contributed to US casualty rate in Afghanistan
/US military directives enacted in Afghanistan after President Obama took office in 2009 could be to blame for an increase in casualties according to a critical new report, and may have laid the seeds for the current impasse in negotiations.
Months after his presidential inauguration in 2009 Obama announced that the US would commit over 30,000 additional troops to the Afghan conflict. The order came at the request of military leaders on the ground in the Middle East, who advised the president that it would be beneficial to send troops in sooner and pull them out sooner than initially planned.
Obama tapped General Stanley McChrystal and then Army General David Petraeus to carry out the directive. Yet a new report from the Washington Times, a conservative paper often critical of the administration’s policies, notes that the shift from the policies of the Bush administration to Obama’s may have cost more American lives.
The rules of engagement (ROE) put into place in 2009 and the early part of 2010 limited air and artillery strikes in the name of preventing civilian casualties, and at times called upon soldiers to restrain from firing their weapons. The report in the Washington Times indicates that, upon approaching Taliban fighters, a ground unit would often have to convince a remote commander that the threat was armed before engaging.
“In Afghanistan, the [rules of engagement] that were put in place in 2009 and 2010 have created a hesitation and confusion for our war fighters,” Wayne Simmons, a retired US intelligence officer who worked at NATO headquarters in Kabul under McChrystal and Petraeus, told the Times.
“It is no accident nor a coincidence that from January 2009 to August of 2010, coinciding with the Obama/McChrystal radical change of the ROE, casualties more than doubled,” Simmons went on. “The carnage will certainly continue as the already fragile and ineffective [rules] have been further weakened by the Obama administration as if they were playground rules.”
US troop strength more than doubled from 40,000 to 85,000 military personnel between 2008 and 2010, the first full year of the surge. Despite that influx 499 Americans were killed in 2010, three times the 2008 total and roughly five times the 2007 death toll.
The American military presence peaked in 2011 at 100,000 troops, with 419 deaths that year. Numbers began to subside the following year, when the death toll fell to 319.
Federal judge: 2 Washington towns systematically violate rights of poor defendants
/Two Washington cities have systematically violated the constitutional rights of poor defendants to effective legal representation, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, blaming city officials for being "willfully blind" to the effects of their cost-cutting.
The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Skagit County towns of Mount Vernon and Burlington two years ago, alleging that public defenders there were so overworked that they amounted to little more than "a warm body with a law degree."
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik agreed. He issued a ruling Wednesday, following a two-week trial in June, that could have broad ramifications for how cities provide legal help to the poor: "In the state of Washington, there are undoubtedly a number of municipalities whose public defense systems would, if put under a microscope, be found wanting," he wrote.
The judge ordered the cities to hire a part-time public defense supervisor to oversee whether poor defendants are receiving adequate legal counsel, saying "the court has grave doubts regarding the cities' ability and political will to make the necessary changes on their own."
Lawyers involved said they believed it was the first time in the nation's history a federal court had appointed such a supervisor to oversee a public defense agency.
Sarah Dunne, the ACLU of Washington's legal director, said in an emailed statement she was thrilled to see the ruling this year, which marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Gideon v. Wainright that the right to counsel applies in state courts as well as federal ones.
"The right to be represented by an attorney is essential to ensuring that everyone - rich and poor alike - has a fair day in court," Dunne said. "We've got a historic ruling enforcing that principle for towns in Washington."
Federal Court Finds Systemic Violation of Indigent Defendants’ Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel
/Yesterday, in the case of Wilbur v. City of Mount Vernon, et al., one of a number of cases challenging systemic deficiencies in the delivery of indigent defense services across the nation, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington State found systemic violations of defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel by the Cities of Mount Vernon and Burlington, Washington, and ordered injunctive relief. A copy of the decision is available here. On August 14, 2013, the United States Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest in this case. While not taking a position on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims in this particular case, the Department of Justice made very clear that “The United States has an interest in ensuring that all jurisdictions – federal, state, and local – are fulfilling their obligation under the Constitution to provide effective assistance of counsel to individuals facing criminal charges who cannot afford an attorney, as required by Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).”
In its decision yesterday, the court found that “indigent criminal defendants in Mount Vernon and Burlington are systematically deprived of the assistance of counsel at critical stages of the prosecution and that municipal policymakers have made deliberate choices regarding the funding, contracting, and monitoring of the public defense system that directly and predictably caused that deprivation.” After setting forth detailed injunctive relief aimed at addressing the significant problems with the indigent defense delivery systems in these jurisdictions, the court noted that this is the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, the seminal case cited by the Department of Justice in its Statement of Interest to this court, and concluded:
“It has been fifty years since the United States Supreme Court first recognized that the accused has a right to the assistance of counsel for his defense in all criminal prosecutions and that the state courts must appoint counsel for indigent defendants who cannot afford to retain their own lawyer. The notes of freedom and liberty that emerged from Gideon’s trumpet a half a century ago cannot survive if that trumpet is muted and dented by harsh fiscal measures that reduce the promise to a hollow shell of a hallowed right.”
Black Woman Released on bond until Florida retrial of self-defense, stand your ground case
/A Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a "warning shot" during an argument with her abusive husband has been released on bond, while she awaits retrial under a controversial part of the state's self-defense law.
The case of Marissa Alexander, who was convicted of aggravated-assault with a deadly weapon, touched off a furor when her supporters compared it to the self-defense case of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted earlier this year of murdering an unarmed black teenager. Although no one was injured in Alexander's case, the court gave her a 20-year prison sentence under the state's mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines because she had fired a gun during the assault.
A state appeals court ruled in September that Alexander, who is black, deserved a new trial because the judge failed to properly instruct the Jacksonville, Florida jury about her self-defense argument. She was convicted in May 2012.
"This news is vindication for Marissa and all the women who have become criminalized for exercising their basic right to defend themselves and their children," Angie Nixon of Florida New Majority, a social justice organization, said of Alexander's release.
The case drew criticism from civil rights groups concerned about self-defense laws and mandatory minimum sentencing rules, but it received little attention outside north Florida until the Zimmerman case. [MORE]
(as if prosecutors didn't know!) Report Details the Extent of a Crime Lab Technician’s Errors in Handling Evidence
/The crime lab technician mislabeled samples, using “the victim’s name instead of suspect’s name,” her evaluation said. Her supervisors disqualified her from testifying in court because of her inability to “explain and retain basic concepts.”
Indeed, for a time, the technician, Serrita Mitchell, was only allowed to perform the most rote assignments at the New York City medical examiner’s office.
When she was given another chance, more errors occurred and she overlooked crucial evidence in a number of rape investigations, according to a new report by the state inspector general’s office.
The report describes a troubling pattern of mistakes at the city’s premier crime lab, also considered among the best in the country.
The inspector general’s office, which has already presented its findings to the medical examiner’s office, is expected to release its report Thursday morning.
The report was commissioned after The New York Times revealed some of Ms. Mitchell’s errors and efforts by the medical examiner’s office to determine the extent of her mistakes. It questioned the office’s application of a new method for interpreting complicated mixtures of DNA.
US: Forced Guilty Pleas in Drug Cases
/Federal prosecutors routinely threaten extraordinarily severe prison sentences to coerce drug defendants into waiving their right to trial and pleading guilty, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. In the rare cases in which defendants insist on going to trial, prosecutors make good on their threats. Federal drug offenders convicted after trial receive sentences on average three times as long as those who accept a plea bargain, according to new statistics developed by Human Rights Watch.
The 126-page report, “An Offer You Can’t Refuse: How US Federal Prosecutors Force Drug Defendants to Plead Guilty,” details how prosecutors throughout the United States extract guilty pleas from federal drug defendants by charging or threatening to charge them with offenses carrying harsh mandatory sentences and by seeking additional mandatory increases to those sentences. Prosecutors offer defendants a much lower sentence in exchange for pleading guilty. Since drug defendants rarely prevail at trial, it is not surprising that 97 percent of them decide to plead guilty.
“Prosecutors give drug defendants a so-called choice – in the most egregious cases, the choice can be to plead guilty to 10 years, or risk life without parole by going to trial,” said Jamie Fellner, senior advisor to the US Program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Prosecutors make offers few drug defendants can refuse. This is coercion pure and simple.” [MORE]
Why Are Prosecutors [mostly white] Thwarting Sentencing Reform of defendants [disproportionately non-white]?
/Maybe Clarvee Gomez’s luck is finally changing.
Convicted of a federal drug offense in Massachusetts in 2010, given a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence based upon a crime with which he was not charged, blown off not once but twice by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Gomez this week brings his case for review before the United States Supreme Court. His timing at last could hardly be better. Tomorrow, the justices at their weekly conference in Washington will evaluate his Sixth Amendment claims. Today, Human Rights Watch is out with a devastating report exploring the nature and extent of the coercive practices that federal prosecutors employed against Gomez.
It turns out that this criminal defendant is not going to be alone in highlighting — to the Court, to the Obama Administration, to lower court judges and to anyone else who will listen — the litany of structural injustices that remain at the heart of the nation’s sentencing regime (despite all the talk lately of meaningful reform). Here is the essence of the Human Rights Watch report, which every justice ought to read before deciding what to do tomorrow about Gomez’s case:
In this report, Human Rights Watch presents cases that illustrate the unjust sentences that result from a dangerous combination of unfettered prosecutorial power and egregiously severe sentencing laws. We also present new data developed for the report that documents the extent of the “trial penalty”— the higher sentences that defendants who go to trial incur compared to what they would receive if they plead guilty. In essence, it is the price prosecutors make defendants pay for exercising their right to trial.
US constitutional jurisprudence offers scant protection from prosecutors who are willing to pressure defendants into pleading and punish those who insist on going to trial. Courts do not view defendants as unconstitutionally coerced to forego their right to a trial if they plead guilty to avoid a staggering sentence. Nor do they consider defendants to have been vindictively—that is, unconstitutionally—punished for exercising their right to trial when prosecutors make good on their threats to seek much higher mandatory penalties for them because they refused to plead. Finally, even when courts agree that prosecutors have sought egregiously long mandatory sentences for drug offenses, they will not rule the sentences so disproportionate as to be unconstitutionally cruel.
This is precisely what happened to Gomez. He was offered a plea deal but threatened with a longer sentence based upon a charge that was never brought against him by a grand jury. Worse, his trial judge accepted as true for sentencing purposes the facts behind this unindicted charge even though Gomez contested the underlying allegations made against him. The federal appeals court was no help whatsoever even after the Supreme Court this past June, in a case styled Alleyne v. United States, specifically declared that because mandatory minimum sentences increase the penalty for a crime, any fact that increases the minimum must be determined by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. [MORE]
Today Fast-food workers plan another day of walkouts to protest low wage servitude
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Fast-food workers are poised to walk off the job in 100 cities Thursday, the latest action in a nationwide push for a $15-an-hour wage.
Organizers said Thursday’s one-day job action will be backed by protests in 100 other cities by social justice groups that support the fast-food workers’ demands.
“There is a huge amount of support and enthusiasm for this,” said Ezra Tempko of the Delaware chapter of the Americans for Democratic Action, which is supporting workers who plan to walk out in Wilmington, Del. “The only push back is that folks were worried about what repercussions there might be for workers.”
The protests began in November 2012, when about 200 fast-food workers walked away from their jobs at 30 restaurants in New York City. Since then, the walkouts have expanded across the country and joined with a broader movement to increase pay for low-wage employees of retail chains and federal contractors, among others.
“The workers realized that the only way they could gain something was by taking dramatic action,” said Kendall Fells, organizing director for Fast Food Forward, which helped organize the initial New York walkout.
Organizers say few workers have been punished for the walkouts and that some have even been rewarded with slightly higher pay and more regular shifts. Also, several states and localities have raised their minimum wages. On Tuesday, the D.C. Council endorsed a $3.25 hike in the District of Columbia’s minimum wage, to $11.50 an hour. The measure needs final approval from the council and Washington’s mayor.
President Barack Obama has endorsed raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10 an hour after previously calling for an increase to $9.
A top aide to White Wisconsin Governor says it is 'Nightmare to be Around Non-white Illegal Immigrants'
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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign finance chairwoman has been fired for…wait for it…making racist comments via email and Twitter.
Taylor Palmisano, who is white, first penned a fundraising email that urged parents to forgo presents for their own children during their Black Friday shopping sprees. Instead, Palmisano wrote, they should send that money to her boss’s campaign for the upcoming governor’s race in Wisconsin.
Next, according to a report from Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a couple of Palmisano tweets surfaced from 2011. To wit: In January, she wrote: “This bus is my worst fu*king nightmare Nobody speaks English & these ppl don’t know how 2 control their kids #only3morehours #illegalaliens.”
Palmisano followed that gem with a second tweet in March of 2011: “I will choke that illegal mex cleaning in the library. Stop banging fu*king chairs around and turn off your Walkman.”
Walker also had to fire Steve Kriesler, his assistant deputy secretary at the state Department of Transportation, for a similar Facebook rant. Kriesler compared undocumented immigrants to Satan.
Anonymous hacks and defaces Interpol Honduras and State Police websites against electoral fraud
/The online hacktivist group ‘Anonymous Honduras‘ has hacked and defaced 6 high profile Honduras government ministries websites against the alleged fraud in country’s presidential elections.
Hacked websites belong to Interpol Honduras, two websites of National Police of Honduras, Superintendent of Public Alliance, Honduras, Ministry of Culture and Zolitur Island under Ministry of Tourism.
Anonymous left a deface page along with a message on all hacked websites against alleged rigging and fraud in 2013 during country’s Vice Presidential Election. The hackers urge the people not to vote until the whole electoral system is improved. According to the deface message:
- “We are Anonymous! From past couple of day we have been spreading news about electoral fraud in the election. Where , with the help of citizens, collect all the evidence, in order to prove fraud in the election procedures and results. So this day we appeal to all to join in and protest but as a collective we have no commitments with any political party to consider all of the same. We urge that democracy and true decision of the people we respect.”
Anonymous later urged people to come out and protests against the fraud in these election or then it will be too late. The deface message adds that:
- “Let’s go out to the streets peacefully and not compare ourselves , or we challenge oppression , remember that they have the guns and money , we only our voice, our indignation and our desire for freedom . If you are in protest in front of foreign embassies. If we can wake up now , there will be a possible time.”
Links of targeted websites along with their mirrors are available here.
This is not the first time when Anonymous has warned citizen of Honduras on voting and elections. On October 03, 2013 the United Nation Honduras website was hacked by Anonymous with messages urging people to vote wisely.
Documentary about MOVE, "Let the Fire Burn" Shows the Racist White System in Brutal Action
/What makes Jason Osder's documentary important, unusual, and almost pure is that it has no talking heads, no interviews, no new materials, and no reenactments of the events that led to two deadly confrontations between the Philadelphia Police Department and a radical urban organization called Move. What we see instead is the deposition of the only child who survived the second confrontation, which happened in 1985 and involved the police dropping a bomb on the Philly headquarters of Move, killing 11 people (five of whom were children) and destroying 61 homes in a black neighborhood. We also see the procedures of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission on the incident, which involved citizens, preachers, lawyers, politicians, early members of Move, and police officers who participated in the first confrontation, which occurred in 1978 and ended with one dead officer, five injured firefighters, and the members of the PPD brutally beating an unarmed black man.
What we see in Let the Fire Burn, then, is the smoothness of a process that has two main components—the media and the justice system—and these key features: It appears to be democratic, have no center, and be disconnected from history. This process, however, has inputs that have been precisely shaped by historical events and class positions within a hierarchical order of social power: what kind of person should be in the police department (a working-class white male), what kind of person should be in jail (a poor black male), who should moderate a commission (an educated white male), who should represent the black community (an educated black man), and so on. Although no one is directing this process, the right inputs still produce predictable outcomes: At the end of the commission on the incident, white officers are vindicated and the black radicals who are not dead are serving long sentences. [MORE]
A Mind Shampoo - White Media Complicit in Contra-Cocaine Conspiracy
/The 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination saw a mainstream media blackout of nearly all evidence of conspiracy in that case. But New York Magazine went even further, mocking the proven Contra-cocaine scandal as a “conspiracy theory.”
In the insular world of Manhattan media, there’s much handwringing over the latest blow to print publications as New York Magazine scales back from a weekly to a biweekly. But the real lesson might be the commercial failure of snarky writing, the kind that New York demonstrated in its recent hit piece on “conspiracy theories.”
What was most stunning to me about the article, pegged to the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, was that it began by ridiculing what is actually one of the best-documented real conspiracies of recent decades, the CIA’s tolerance and even protection of cocaine trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s.
According to New York Magazine, the Contra-cocaine story – smugly dubbed “the last great conspiracy theory of the twentieth century” – started with the claim by ”crack kingpin” Ricky Ross that he was working with a Nicaraguan cocaine supplier, Oscar Danilo Blandon, who had ties to the Contras who, in turn, had ties to the CIA.
Author Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: “The wider the aperture around this theory, the harder its proponents work to implicate Washington, the shakier it seems: After several trials and a great deal of inquiry, no one has been able to show that anyone in the CIA condoned what Blandon was doing, and it has never been clear exactly how strong Blandon’s ties to the contraleadership really were, anyway.”
So, it was all a goofy “conspiracy theory.” Move along, move along, nothing to see here. But neither Wallace-Wells nor his New York Magazine editors seem to have any idea about the actual history of the Contra-cocaine scandal. It did not begin with the 1996 emergence of Ricky Ross in a series of articles by San Jose Mercury-News investigative reporter Gary Webb, as Wallace-Wells suggests.
The Contra-cocaine scandal began more than a decade earlier with a 1985 article that Brian Barger and I wrote for the Associated Press. Our article cited documentary evidence and witnesses – both inside the Contra movement and inside the U.S. government – implicating nearly all the Contra groups fighting in Nicaragua under the umbrella of Ronald Reagan’s CIA.
Our Contra-cocaine article was followed up by a courageous Senate investigation led by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts who further documented the connections between cocaine traffickers, the Contras and the Reagan administration in a report issued in 1989. [MORE]
Yet, part of the scandal always was how the Reagan administration worked diligently to undercut investigations of the President’s favorite “freedom fighters” whether the inquiries were undertaken by the press, Congress, the Drug Enforcement Administration or federal prosecutors. Indeed, a big part of this cover-up strategy was to mock the evidence as “a conspiracy theory,” when it was anything but.
Big Media’s Complicity
Most of the mainstream news media played along with the Reagan administration’s mocking strategy, although occasionally major outlets, like the Washington Post, had to concede the reality of the scandal.
For instance, during the drug-trafficking trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1991, U.S. prosecutors found themselves with no alternative but to call as a witness Colombian Medellín cartel kingpin Carlos Lehder, who — along with implicating Noriega — testified that the cartel had given $10 million to the Contras, an allegation first unearthed by Sen. Kerry.
“The Kerry hearings didn’t get the attention they deserved at the time,” a Washington Posteditorial on Nov. 27, 1991, acknowledged. “The Noriega trial brings this sordid aspect of the Nicaraguan engagement to fresh public attention.”
