There is an 800% Higher Probabilitly Americans Will be Killed by Police Than by a Terrorist

BlackListedNews.com 

The Ferguson incident has exposed the underbelly of the United States and now everyone is starting to pay attention that there is a higher risk of being killed by police even when they chase or shoot at people who need not be you. The risk is 800% greater that you will be killed by POLICE rather than a terrorist. The Economist has reported the death by police so far are ZERO in Japan and Britain, 8 in Germany and 409 in America.

Why Do most Americans Feel Politically Powerless?...Because They Are

BlackListed News

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision gave the wealthy almost unlimited means to influence elections at the expense of the average voter. But the voices of rich individuals and corporations had long drowned out the concerns of most Americans, according to a new study.

In their work “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that ordinary Americans have almost no influence on policy. “Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all,” according to the study, due to be released this fall.

Who does affect policy? As might be guessed, it’s the wealthy and powerful interest groups. “Economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy.” According to the study, that group is the most influential in terms of getting what it wants out of elected officials. Organized interest groups are also influential.

The data leading to these conclusions was gathered from 1,779 policy cases between 1981 to 2002, so anecdotal evidence would lead one to believe the problem is actually now worse than represented by the study.

California AG (Black Woman) to appeal death penalty ruling

JURIST

 California Attorney General Kamala Harris [official website] announced [press release] Thursday that she will appeal a recent ruling [JURIST report] striking down California's death penalty. A judge for the US District Court for the Central District of California [official website] ruled earlier this month that California's use of the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment [text] of the US Constitution. The district court held that lengthy delays create uncertainty for death row inmates, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. In a brief statement, Harris said, "I am appealing the court's decision because it is not supported by the law,...

UN rights chief cites potential war crimes in Iraq

JURIST

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay [official website] reported [press release] on Monday that Islamic State (IS) fighters killed up to 670 prisoners in Mosul and committed other crimes in Iraq that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Pillay stated that IS has systematically targeted men, women and children based on their ethnic, religious or sectarian affiliation. Pillay urged donors to send humanitarian aid to areas affected by the fighting. She also reminded both sides that they must exercise caution and avoid directly targeting civilians. Iraq has experienced mounting unrest since IS (also known...

White Party (Republicans) to Spend $500 an hour to Sue Obama

AtlanticWire

How much does it cost to sue the president? Half a grand an hour, or a total of $350,000, if you're the House of Representatives.

The House Committee on Administration announced on Monday that it has retained the law firm BakerHostetler and appointed attorney David Rivkin to lead the House's lawsuit against President Obama, which Republicans approved on a party-line vote last month.

According to a copy of the contract posted on the committee's website, the House (i.e. John Q. Taxpayer) will pay a rate of $500 an hour with a "firm cap" of $350,000 for the lawsuit.

As outlined by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House plans to accuse Obama of exceeding his constitutional authority by delaying the employer mandate in his healthcare law without permission from Congress. [MORE]

Hospitals Less Likely To Encourage Black Mothers To Breastfeed

ThinkProgress

Black mothers have lagged behind white mothers in breastfeeding for decades. Now a recent U.S. government study suggests that key differences in maternity services at hospitals may be a factor in the widening disparity.

The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found that hospitals in neighborhoods with an above-average population of black people promoted nursing at a rate nearly 15 percentage points lower than hospitals located in other neighborhoods. Manufacturers of baby formula also had more success in distributing their products in facilities that had a strong minority patient base. Researchers examined data from 2,600 medical facilities, the U.S. Census, and the 2011 U.S. survey on maternity practices in infant care and nutrition.

“Hospital practices during childbirth have a major impact on whether a mother is able to start and continue breastfeeding,” the study’s authors noted in a press release. “These findings suggest there are racial disparities in access to maternity care practices known to support breastfeeding. This observation could provide insight into the reasons for the persistent gap in breastfeeding rates between black and white babies in the United States.”

Common & Kerry Washington Speak Out About Michael Brown Funeral At The Emmys

ThinkProgress

Actress Kerry Washington referenced the Michael Brown funeral during a pre-show for Monday’s Emmy Awards as an interviewer asked how she felt about becoming the first African American to win the award for outstanding lead actress in a drama category. Washington is nominated for her role in the hit ABC show Scandal.

“This has been a really complicated day for me,” Washington began. “I started the day watching the funeral services for Michael Brown. And so it’s a lot to wrap your head around being an African American in this country right now.”

Washington’s comments come just one day after Common led the audience in a moment of silence for the killing of Brown and the protests that have overtaken the town of Ferguson, Missouri at MTV’s Video Music Awards. “For the past two weeks the eyes of the nation have been on Ferguson, MO the people in fee and St. Louis,” he said. “Every one of out lives matters. Hip hop has always been about truth… hip-hop has always presented a voice for the revolution. I want us all to take a moment of silence for Mike, for peace in our country and the world.”

Earlier on Monday, thousands of mourners filled the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church to pay their respects to the Brown family. Brown was shot and killed on August 9th by officer Darren Wilson.

Shoplifting in St. Louis? What was Kajieme Powell thinking? White Cops Blast Black Man holding steak knife. Then lied about it.

Aljazeera

With the St. Louis police shooting and killing of 25-year-old Kajieme Powell coming, as it did, amidst continued focus on the death of teenager Michael Brown at the hands of police in nearby Ferguson, Mo., the country is given the uncomfortable “opportunity” to examine a situation that unfortunately happens all-too-frequently and — also unfortunately — rarely makes the top of a national news page.

Powell was shot Tuesday after police responded to a report of shoplifting. Witnesses have said that Powell left the store after refusing to pay for soft drinks and doughnuts. One 911 caller said he was acting erratically, others have said he was “grabbing his waistband.” When two officers from the St. Louis city police (a different department than the St. Louis County police that came under criticism for its heavy-handed approach to demonstrations in Ferguson and has a documented history of racial profiling) pulled up in a squad car and got out, guns drawn, Powell yells at them, “Shoot me now. Kill me now.”

In less than 30 seconds, the two responding officers start shooting at Powell (six shots each, according to reports), killing him.

The original police account of this incident said that Powell had a knife and that, before he was shot, he came at the officers with the knife raised in an "overhand grip.”

What kind of knife, and even whether Powell had one, is now a topic of some discussion (some later reports are saying it looked like he had a steak knife). Whether Powell came at police with the knife raised above his head is not — he didn’t.

The reason there is now a high degree of clarity on that final point is because, on Thursday, there emerged amateur video of the incident. The St. Louis PD has now officially released the camera-phone recording as part of what they say is an effort to be completely “transparent” about this shooting.

That, in itself, has to be seen through the high-definition optics of current events.

Much was made in the first hours after the killing of Powell about how St. Louis police and city officials had behaved in a manner that diffused the situation, holding the actions of the police chief and a city alderman in sharp contrast to the police response a few miles away in Ferguson. Both St. Louis city officials waded into the crowd that quickly gathered after the shooting, answering questions and pledging a full investigation.

Most of the national media grabbed hold of the contrast, buttressed as it was by the reports that Powell was a) committing a crime, b) wielding a knife and behaving in a threatening manner, and c) was said by neighbors to be suffering from some sort of mental illness.

But is this as easy a contrast as it appears? Is the shooting of Kajieme Powell, in the end, an unfortunate result of a chaotic situation — or even if it is something much more suspect and much less excusable, is it part of a narrative that lives independently of Brown’s death in Ferguson?

There are several discussions of the tactics (or lack thereof) employed by the responding officers. They pull up too close to Powell, exit the car with guns drawn, immediately start yelling orders, and shoot to neutralize the target (as the lingo goes) very quickly. Further, there is a tragic litany of police interactions with the mentally ill going very badly. It appears from the video the responding officers did little to defuse the situation with Powell, and it appears they would have had time to do so if they had positioned themselves better (there were no bystanders near Powell at the time police arrived).

There are also conversations about how differently this incident and the recording of it might be perceived by Americans with dissimilar racial backgrounds (like this one from Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic), how police in other countries, such as Great Britain, would have responded in another way, and there are many comments around the web asking why police don’t fire warning shots or use tasers in these circumstances.

Those are discussions worth having — even if some of them don’t have clear conclusions — but there seems another angle that has yet to be discussed.

Look at Powell’s death in a slightly different way and in a slightly different context.

Almost a week ago now, on Friday, August 15, Ferguson awoke after a night of almost celebratory calm that followed the move to shift command of crowd control from the St. Louis County police to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. On that morning, Ferguson’s chief of police had called a press “conference” (it was more a briefing, as no questions were taken), ostensibly to release the name of the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

The chief did that, revealing the shooter to be six-year veteran Darrell Wilson. But along with the name, the Ferguson police released 19 pages of incident reports — not on the shooting (none of the pages referred to shooting), but on the alleged “strong-arm robbery” of a convenience store (a strong-arm robbery is one where no weapon is used, but there is some use of force). The police also released surveillance footage of a man they said was Michael Brown pushing a shopkeeper out of the way as Brown, so we are told, took some cigars (or was it cigarillos?) without paying.

No incident report on the shooting of Brown was released (we now know this is because there was no report filed until Tuesday, August 19 — and even that is essentially a blank document). But the implication was clear — Brown was a suspect in this “robbery” (in many other places, the crime would more typically be called “shoplifting”) and, therefore, the police had some cause to use lethal force when they encountered him later that day.

Ferguson’s police chief was forced to admit later that Friday that Wilson did not know Brown was identified as a suspect in the earlier crime — the only thing that provoked the interaction according to witnesses and the unofficial police account (because, again, there is no official one) is that Brown and a friend were walking in the middle of the street — but then the chief tried again to muddy the waters, saying that Wilson had seen cigars in Brown’s possession. Whether he saw them before or after he approached Brown, or whether it was only after Wilson had killed Brown, was never explained.

Some in the media questioned just what the Ferguson police were trying to do, especially after the previous night had been relatively calm, but the reaction in the community was immediate and intense. Police seemed to be saying Michael Brown was not a nice kid, but an aggressive young man (and a black man, at that) involved in a robbery, and so he deserved what he got.

Friday night saw angrier demonstrators, along with some vandalism and looting, and the anger carried over through the weekend and into the next week.

Cut to: Kajieme Powell.

Maybe Powell was mentally disturbed and acting erratically, sure, but what if the scene was described this way:

After hearing the police make the case that they can justify shooting shoplifters, and after days of militarized police response to largely peaceful demonstrations, Powell decided he’d had enough. The young black man walks into a convenience store, shoplifts a few dollars worth of junk food, walks out to the street, puts the items down on the sidewalk and gets a little loud, as if to say, “There, I just shoplifted, now what’re you going to do? Shoot me?”

The police respond to the call about the theft and confront Powell, guns cocked and aimed.

“Shoot me now. Kill me now,” says Powell.

Again, it might be that all Powell had was his anger and a need for doughnuts and soda, but what if it was something more? No one will get to ask Powell what was going through his head — the St. Louis Police and their questionable tactics made sure of that. But if Powell could speak, would he have something to say?

Or did he say it all already?

For sale: Systems that can secretly track cellphone users anywhere they go

WashPost

Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent.

The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer, according to company marketing documents and experts in surveillance technology.

The world’s most powerful intelligence services, such as the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ, long have used cellphone data to track targets around the globe. But experts say these new systems allow less technically advanced governments to track people in any nation — including the United States — with relative ease and precision.

Users of such technology type a phone number into a computer portal, which then collects information from the location databases maintained by cellular carriers, company documents show. In this way, the surveillance system learns which cell tower a target is currently using, revealing his or her location to within a few blocks in an urban area or a few miles in a rural one.

Venezuela Offers Education to 1000 Palestinian Youths

Telesurtv

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro unveiled plans on Friday to offer one thousand Palestinian youths study opportunities in Venezuela.

 

In a brief statement, Maduro said he felt compelled to launch the initiative because of the death toll of Palestinian children in Gaza.

 

Since Israel began its latest assault on Gaza in July, at least 468 Palestinian children have been killed according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Thousands more have been injured or left psychologically scarred, according to UNICEF.

 

“They want to kill the girls and boys in order to exterminate the people of Palestine,” Maduro said.

Palestinian [non-white] Teen Detained 5 Days, Handcuffed & Blindfolded in his underwear by Israelis [honorary whites]

NY TIMES

A Palestinian teenager says that Israeli soldiers detained him for five days last month, forcing him to sleep blindfolded and handcuffed in his underwear and to search and dig for tunnels in Khuza’a, his village near Gaza’s eastern border, which was all but destroyed in the fighting.

The teenager, Ahmed Jamal Abu Raida, said the soldiers assumed he was connected to Hamas, the militant Islamist group that dominates Gaza, insulted him and Allah and threatened to sic a dog on him.

“My life was in danger,” Ahmed, 17, said in one of two lengthy interviews on Thursday and Friday. As soldiers made him walk in front of them through the neighborhood and check houses for tunnels, he added, “In every second, I was going to the unknown.”

His assertions, of actions that would violate both international law and a 2005 Israeli Supreme Court ruling, could not be independently corroborated; Ahmed’s father, Jamal Abu Raida, who held a senior position in Gaza’s Tourism Ministry under the Hamas-controlled government, said the family forgot to take photographs documenting any abuse in its happiness over the youth’s return, and disposed of the clothing he was given upon his release. The case was publicized Thursday by Defense for Children International-Palestine, an organization whose reports on abuses of Palestinian youths in West Bank military jails have been challenged by the Israeli authorities.

The Israeli military confirmed that troops had suspected Ahmed of being a militant and detained him during their ground operation in Gaza, noting his father’s affiliation with Hamas. A military spokesman promised several times to provide more details, but ultimately did not deal with the substance of the allegations, saying they had “been referred to the appropriate authorities for examination.”

A military statement also challenged the credibility of D.C.I.-Palestine, which accused the Israeli military of using Ahmed as a human shield by coercing him to engage in military actions. Throughout the current conflict, Israel has argued that Hamas uses Gaza residents as human shields by conducting militant activity in crowded public places. [MORE]

The FBI and Homeland Security Department say there are no specific or credible terror threats to the U.S. from the so called "Islamic State"

AP

The FBI and Homeland Security Department say there are no specific or credible terror threats to the U.S. homeland from the Islamic State militant group.   An intelligence bulletin, issued to state and local law enforcement, says while there's no credible threat to the U.S. as a result of recent American airstrikes in Iraq, officials remain concerned that Islamic State supporters could attack overseas targets with little warning.   U.S. law enforcement has been trying to identify Islamic State sympathizers who could help export the group's brand of violent jihad to the United States. U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State group intensified after militants beheaded American journalist James Foley. The group called Foley's killing revenge for previous strikes against militants in Iraq.  

Income inequality continues to rise

Fight Back News

Tired of living paycheck to paycheck, not able to put aside any savings for a rainy day or the future? Or worse, not having a full-time job for years, struggling through unemployment, part-time, and/or temporary jobs and having to rely on family, community or government help to get by? At the same time, the news is filled with stories of how the stock market is at record highs and about billionaires’ cash is buying elections?

Year after year, the gap between the rich and almost everyone else continues to grow. One common measure of income inequality, called the Gini index, has been rising since 1974, showing that inequality of income rose more than 30% by 2012. In the last 15 years, the growing inequality has meant that the median, or typical, household income has fallen from a peak of $56,080 in 1999 to only $51,017 in 2012, a decline of more than 9%, even though the economy grew 28% during this period. During this same period the number of Americans who fell below the official poverty line (which, at $18,500 for a family of three, is way too low) rose from less than 12% to 15% of the population.

Milwaukee protesters stand up to police brutality, storm Municipal Court

Fight Back News

More than 200 people gathered for a rally, Aug. 22, at Red Arrow Park in downtown here to continue the fight against the police brutality that’s directed against Black and Latino communities. Organizers brought public attention back to the many victims of police killings and white vigilantism, including Dontre Hamilton, Corey Stingley and Derek Williams. The rally was also showed solidarity with the people of Ferguson.

Organized by the African American Roundtable, Occupy the Hood and Youth Empowered in the Struggle, the rally took the streets and marched on the nearby Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) building. When organizers saw that the doors to the Municipal Court were left unlocked, they led an impromptu storming of the building, with more than 100 protesters pouring up the stairwell and confronting the police directly. [MORE]

Thousands March to Protest Eric Garner Chokehold Death in New York

Atlantic Wire

Thousands of people marched through Staten Island Saturday to protest the death of Eric Garner, who died July 17 after a New York Police Department officer brought Garner to the ground with a banned chokehold — an incident that was captured on a video that went viral. 

Led by Rev. Al Sharpton and Garner's family members, a crowd of what police estimated to be more than 2,500 demonstrators gathered on Staten Island in what was dubbed the "We Will Not Go Back" march. 

“Let’s just make this a peaceful march and get justice for my husband so this doesn’t happen to nobody else, nobody else’s son,” said Garner's wife, Esaw Garner. 

Protesters carried signs that "Respect Human Rights" or "Jail Killer Cops." Other demonstrators chanted and held signs that said, "I can't breathe," Garner's last known words. 

The New York City Medical Examiner's Office ruled Garner's death a homicide, but no charges have been filed against the officers involved.

“This is not going away,” Sharpton said earlier this week. “We cannot have a society where police are automatically excused. The definition of a police state is where the citizenry cannot question police and when they do they are penalized.”

That sentiment was echoed by many of the demonstrators who linked the Staten Island march to the ongoing demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo.