Who Bankrolls the Islamic State? Private Donors in Gulf Oil States Cited as Key to ISIS Success
/Militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State have reportedly abducted at least 220 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria during a three-day offensive. Meanwhile, the Islamic State militant nicknamed "Jihadi John," who has been featured in several beheading videos, has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born former resident of London. In other news, two U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have reportedly killed over three dozen people in Iraq, including at least 20 civilians. Also this week, UNESCO is has condemned the Islamic State for destroying the Mosul public library, which housed more than 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. UNESCO described the incident as "one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history." Earlier today, video was posted online that appears to show members of the Islamic State smashing ancient artifacts inside a Mosul museum. The video shows men toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C. Live from Iraq, we are joined by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His latest book is "The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution."
President Obama would veto bill that forces him to submit text of any Iran nuclear agreement to Congress
/Barack Obama would veto a bill recently introduced in the US Senate allowing Congress to weigh in on any deal the US and other negotiating countries reach with Iran on its nuclear capabilities, the White House said on Saturday. "The president has been clear that now is not the time for Congress to pass additional legislation on Iran. If this bill is sent to the president, he will veto it," said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House's National Security Council. The US and five other major powers are seeking to negotiate an agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
Cleveland Mayor Forced to Apologize for Claiming 12-Year-Old Shot by Police Was Responsible for his own Death
/The mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, apologized Monday for papers filed by the city that claimed a 12-year-old boy was to blame for his fatal shooting at the hands of police. The family of Tamir Rice, shot to death last November by Cleveland police, filed a lawsuit (pdf) against the city and the officers involved in the shooting. In its response filed Friday, the city originally claimed Rice was responsible for his own death. After news of the city’s stance got out over the weekend, Mayor Frank Jackson apologized to Rice’s family and to Cleveland residents, and said a new response to the family’s suit would be filed within 20 days. “In an attempt to protect all of our defenses, we used words and we phrased things in such a way that was very insensitive to the tragedy in general, the family and the victim in particular,” Jackson said.
Moronic New York Police Chief Says Spike In Homicides Was Caused By Marijuana
/In New York City, there were nine more homicides in January and February than there were in the same time period last year. Police Chief Bill Bratton blames the 17 percent increase on pot.
There were 54 homicides in the first two months of 2015, compared to 45 the year before. According to Bratton, marijuana — which he calls a “seemingly innocent drug” — is one of the root causes of the shootings. “In this city, people are killing each other over marijuana more so than anything that we had to deal with in the ’80s and ’90s with heroin and cocaine,” he explained. “In some instances, it’s a causal factor. But it’s an influence in almost everything that we do here.”
Robert Boyce, the city’s Chief of Detectives, shared a similar sentiment, arguing that ripoffs of marijuana dealers and pot-related robberies are largely responsible for the homicide rate.
gabriel sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance responded in a statement by questioning how Bratton moved from correlation to causation. “It appears that finding marijuana on the scene of a violent crime is enough for Bratton to assert a causal link. Using that rationale, we can make other causal links to violence – for instance, if police find a cell phone at the scene of a violent crime, then certainly the cell phone must cause that crime.”
“If, indeed, there is violence in the illicit marijuana marketplace between those who are selling marijuana, there is one very basic and smart way to solve that problem: end marijuana prohibition,” he added.
Over the past two years, multiple reforms have led to the decriminalization of marijuana in the city. Former mayor Michael Bloomberg issued an executive order to eliminate jail time for low-level possession in 2013. Medical marijuana use was legalized last year, and police officers stopped undercover “buy-and-bust” tactics to catch pot dealers in the act of selling.
However, the push to decriminalize pot hasn’t resulted in a complete reversal of former policies. The Drug Policy Alliance actually found that there were more arrests under Mayor de Blasio during his first year in office, than there were under Bloomberg’s leadership in 2013. Last year, blacks and Latinos accounted for 86 percent of those arrests within an eight-month period. And Bratton previously expressed reluctance to end the prosecution of low-level marijuana offenses, even though research shows that marijuana-related arrests are not indicative of dangerous criminal behavior in the future.
Despite the rise in homicides, serious crime dropped 11 percent in the last two months — mirroring rates from the 1990s.
Report: Ferguson Police [nearly all white force] Made Racist Jokes On City Email Accounts
/The Department of Justice will release a report on Wednesday that finds Ferguson City Police had a pattern of racial bias and excessive force, multiple outlets are reporting. The report will also detail that police made racist jokes on city email accounts, The New York Times reported.
Ferguson, which was the location of a white officer shooting unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, spurred nationwide protests over police brutality. At the time it was reported that Ferguson police were disproportionately targeting the city’s African-American population, and that finding is confirmed by the Justice Department’s forthcoming report.
African Americans make up 67 percent of the city’s population, but they made up 85 percent of vehicle stops and 93 percent of arrests, even though blacks were less likely to possess contraband like drugs or illegal guns. The AP also reported that blacks were 68 percent less likely to have their cases dismissed by the municipal judge, and that 95 percent of the people kept in jail for two days or more were black. Huffington Post reported that 88 percent of use-of-force cases were against African-American suspects.
FBI Director James Comey recently candidly addressed unconscious racial bias in policing, which might be progress for the law enforcement agency but long-running research and many activists have pointed out that police officers are biased in their work.
Attorney General Eric Holder has threatened to sue Ferguson police if it finds a pattern of racial discrimination. This threat may serve as an incentive for Ferguson police to change its practices.
NPR's Microphone Check Live: 'The Spook Who Sat By The Door' Screening
/This week, in honor of Black History Month, we went down to NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to screen Sam Greenlee's 1973 film The Spook Who Sat by the Door and host a conversation about its resonance.
The members of our panel are Dr. Greg Carr, Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Howard University, Jamilah Lemieux, Senior Editor at Ebony Magazine, and K. Nyerere Ture, Professor of Anthropology at Morgan State University. [MORE]
U.S. Justice Report Finds Blatant Pattern of Racial Bias in Policing in Ferguson
/The U.S. Justice Department is expected to release a report this week blasting police in Ferguson, Mo. for discriminatory traffic stops of African-Americans that have created years of racial tension in the small midwestern town, the New York Times reports.
Officials briefed on the report say it will criticize the city for its disproportionate ticketing and arrest-rates of African-American motorists. People who cannot afford to pay their fines are often imprisoned. Traffic fines are the second-largest source of revenue for Ferguson after sales tax. The Justice Department’s report is expected to say that this provides local police the incentive to unfairly target black drivers during stops.
Although African-Americans make up just 63 percent of the city’s population, they were stopped 86 percent of the time in 2013. During those stops, black drivers were twice as likely to be searched, even though white drivers were more likely to have some kind of contraband on them. The report will force the city of Ferguson negotiate a settlement with the Justice Department or face being sued on civil rights charges. [MORE]
Fear Dominates Politics, Media and Human Existence in America—And It’s Getting Worse
/“Fear is the mind-killer” – Frank Herbert, Dune
People cannot think clearly when they are afraid. As numerous studies have shown, fear is the enemy of reason. It distorts emotions and perceptions, and often leads to poor decisions. For people who have suffered trauma, fear messages can sometimes trigger uncontrollable flight-or-fight responses with dangerous ramifications.
Yet over time, many interlocking aspects of our society have become increasingly sophisticated at communicating messages and information that produce fear responses. Advertising, political ads, news coverage and social media all send the constant message that people should be afraid—very afraid.
In addition, television and film are filled with extreme violence and millions of fictional deaths, far out of proportion to what happens in real life, as researchers have pointed out. And more recently, we have witnessed the massive militarization of local police departments with equipment, gear and attitudes that treat citizens as if they were terrorists, as recently evidenced by events in Ferguson, Missouri. Many militarized police raids have gone wrong and taken the lives of hundreds, while police violence against often unarmed people results in unnecessary deaths and injuries every day. All this, despite statistics indicating that in most parts of the country, the crime rate is actually on the decline.
Fear is so pervasive that experts have made the case we live in a generalized “culture of fear,” also the name of a book by Barry Glassner which underscores the fact that we often fear the wrong things, and incredibly out of proportion to reality. Statistics show you have a much higher chance of being killed by lightning than by a terrorist.
New Series Commitment by AlterNet
We at AlterNet feel our society is overrun with a destructive and growing social preoccupation with fear. This fear factor breeds more violence, mental illness and trauma, social disintegration, job failure, loss of workers’ rights, and much more. Pervasive fear ultimately paves the way for an accelerating authoritarian society with increased police power, legally codified oppression, invasion of privacy, social controls, social anxiety and PTSD.
Over the next few months we will be looking at most aspects of society through a “fear lens,” examining how fear operates, what motivates the purveyors, and how we can better challenge the fearmongers. At the same time, we will work to figure out and help people better cope with fear issues, hoping that more people can join together and build more supportive communities.
We are also hyperaware of how some in society scapegoat others for problems they face, encouraged by conservative media such as Fox News, the New York Post, and increasingly, the Wall Street Journal—all owned by Rupert Murdoch. Immigrants, for example, are blamed for numerous social ills, and certainly the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants and their families live in fear every day. But poor people of all stripes face discrimination, and racism, whether overt or covert, makes life far more dangerous for people of color than for whites.
Massive Vulnerabilities
Financial Insecurity
In the context of pervasive fear, large portions of the population are extremely vulnerable to fear-based messaging in simply coping with their day-to-day lives. There are many examples of the vulnerable among us, and the numbers are huge, though difficult to assess, since there is likely so much overlap. Here are a few examples, beginning with those who are especially vulnerable due to widespread financial insecurity.
Nearly half (43.9 percent) of U.S. households live on the edge of financial collapse with almost no savings to fall back on in the event of a job loss, health crisis or other income-eliminating emergency, according to a report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED). [[MORE]
Fair Trade? We Have Nothing Close
/Lest the title of this “fair trade” post confuse you, I’m not talking about the fair trade goods that stock the shelves of shops run by well-meaning nonprofits. That movement — to insure that craftspeople abroad get paid fairly for the goods they make — is well-intentioned and important, but it isn’t the subject at hand. The operation of a market economy — capitalism — rests upon a definition of what constitutes a fair trade. Analysts usually frame this definition as the amount that a willing buyer and a willing seller, both of whom possess all relevant information, agree represents a fair price for the goods or services in question. In some areas, rather obviously, markets don’t work. Health care — no matter what GOP congressmen insist — rates one of these, because health care buyers and sellers do not both possess all relevant information. Economists call this situation an instance of “information asymmetry.” As a practical matter, when one party to a transaction has important information that the other party doesn’t have, the party with the information has an unfair advantage. We have other situations where markets can be manipulated. One of the most common involves “externalities.” Economists use this term to refer to the costs of an economic activity that aren’t paid by either party to the primary exchange, but are instead “offloaded” to someone else — typically, taxpayers. - See more at: http://inequality.org/fair-trade-close/#sthash.yCm6alq1.dpuf
After being Locked Up 21 Years for Wrongful Rape Conviction, Black Man Closer to Receiving $18.5 Million Compensation from NYC
/On Thursday, DNA-based exoneree Alan Newton—who was exonerated of rape in 2006—found out that he may receive $18.5 million from New York City after serving 21 years in prison for a wrongful conviction based on an eyewitness misidentification.
The New York Daily News reports that a federal appeals court has reinstated the $18.5 million award Newton was awarded in 2010. For more than a decade when Newton was in prison, the city told him that evidence from his case could not be tested for DNA because it had been lost or destroyed, when, in fact, it was sitting in nearly the exact same place where it had been stored originally in 1985.
According to the Daily News, “U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier wrote that Newton proved the city’s evidence-handling system was woefully inadequate around the time of his conviction in 1985 and subsequent appeals — a key element in determining whether he deserved the hefty sum.”
Thursday’s ruling reverses a decision by the district court to set aside the jury’s $18.5 million verdict to Newton. According to the Daily News, “[b]arring an appeal by the city to the U.S. Supreme Court and a dispute over attorney’s fees, the money will be paid.”
John Schutty, Newton’s attorney, said that the exoneree cried tears of joy when he learned of Thursday’s ruling. “He was ecstatic. He hasn't received a nickel from the city and state. Finally, we're hoping this is it,” said Schutty, according to the Daily News.
Santa Clara County Jail May Have Planted Jail Informants, Violating Civil Rights
/A retired lieutenant for the Santa Clara County Jail classifications unit says that from the late 1980s through the 1990s, he and other jail officials routinely used jail informants to solicit information from suspects. If the former lieutenant’s claims are true, it could mean that the county jail violated the civil rights of countless criminal suspects.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Frank Dixon said in a sworn declaration for the appellate case of Surinder Bains—convicted of killing his brother-in-law in 1990—that it was commonplace for the county jail to intentionally place jailhouse informants in holding cells with defendants to “tease out” information at the request of prosecutors and law enforcement officials. Bains claims that Raymond Delgado, the informant who testified against him, was purposely placed in his jail cell to question him at the request of the prosecution.[MORE]
Israelis call for murder of Palestinian children on Facebook
/Having regularly documented the horrifying racism and violent fantasies frequently expressed by Israelis on Facebook or Instagram, I thought I had seen everything.
But this may be the worst yet. On Wednesday, the picture above of three Palestinian boys in a tent was posted on a popular Facebook page titled in Hebrew “We are all in favor of death to terrorists.” Under the picture is the following caption:
Arab boys in the illegal Arab outpost established near Maale Adumim. What should the Israeli army do to them?
This is an apparent reference to the peaceful “Bab al-Shams” encampmentestablished by Palestinians near Jerusalem to protest Israel’s plans to seize more land for settlements. The protest was timed to coincide with the visit of US PresidentBarack Obama.
“Run the tent over with a truck/Merkava tank/a bus/ whatever it takes to crush and kill these children,” suggested Facebook user Lidor Swisa.
As of Friday there were almost 200 comments under the post offering suggestions of what the Israeli army should do – the vast majority fantasizing extreme sadistic violence and murder.
What makes this even more than usually disturbing is many of the Israeli commentators appear to be high school students themselves – perhaps only a year or two from mandatory army service when they will be empowered to carry out their fantasies.
California eyes 'Right to Rest Act' to stem criminalization of homeless
/A California state lawmaker has introduced the "Right to Rest Act," a measure aimed at ending criminalization of the homeless — bringing to four the number of states considering similar proposals — rights advocates said Monday.
"It's time to address poverty, mental health and the plight of the homeless head-on as a social issue and not a criminal issue," State Sen. Carol Liu, D-LA Cañada Flintridge, said in the release. "Citing homeless people for resting in a public space can lead to their rejection for jobs, education loans and housing, further denying them a pathway out of poverty."
Liu introduced Right to Rest Act, SB 608, in the state Senate on Friday. Similar bills, widely referred to as a “Homeless Bill of Rights,” have been introduced by state legislators in Colorado, Oregon and Hawaii.
California’s Right to Rest Act would give homeless people the right to use public space without discrimination. It also describes the right to rest in public, to protect oneself from the elements in public, to eat in public and to occupy a legally parked car as "basic human and civil rights," according to the text of the Senate bill.
"The bill would authorize a person whose rights have been violated pursuant to these provisions to enforce those rights in a civil action," the text read.
Laws targeting the homeless for carrying out life-sustaining activities such as standing, sitting, resting or sleeping in public places — as well as begging and food sharing — have risen sharply in California in recent years, a report by the University of California at Berkeley Law School said.
Statewide arrests for offenses such as sitting or standing in public areas increased by 77 percent between 2000 and 2012, according to the Berkeley report released last month.
The report also said that the number of ordinances targeting such activities had risen along with the homeless population — which increased sharply after federal funding for affordable housing was cut in the early 1980s and again in 2008 with the recession.
In Hawaii — where lawmakers are considering legislation similar to Right to Rest — the number of laws targeting the homeless has also risen. In Honolulu, it was recently made a misdemeanor to rest on sidewalks in the tourist district. The offense is punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000.
In response, homeless rights advocates created Hawaii's Homeless Bill of Rights, which last week passed through state Senate hearings, advocates said. It heads next to the House for more hearings.
The bill would assert the right to use public spaces, to vote, to not have police or other authorities search their belongings without reasonable suspicion, to sleep in a legally parked car and to have access to restrooms and other hygiene facilities.
"Actions by state, county or private organizations shall not impede an individual's ability to maintain access to services essential to survival," the legislation reads.
Similar bills in Colorado and Oregon have already been introduced by lawmakers and will head to hearings in coming weeks. A coalition of more than 130 advocacy groups worked on the legislation proposed in Oregon, Colorado and California, based on nearly 1,500 interviews with people living on the streets.
Respondents said they were most commonly cited or arrested for basic acts of survival including sleeping, sitting and standing in public areas. Homeless rights advocates say such laws unfairly target those deemed undesirable, in an attempt to push them out of public spaces.
The Right to Rest movement aims to change how homelessness is addressed. Instead of treating it as a criminal issue, homeless rights advocates say it should be considered a social justice issue, like poverty.
"Whether it is our Right To Rest Act or other versions that achieve the same goal of decriminalizing poor and homeless community members existence in public spaces, doesn't matter," Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), told Al Jazeera in an emailed statement.
"What matters is we all work together and support each other in ending racist and classist policing programs once and for all,” Boden added. “From Hawaii to New York, and from Maine to Texas, it’s time for this to stop."
Out of Trouble, but Criminal Records Keep Black Men Out of Work
/Michael Hugh Mirsky landed a temporary job in December rolling stacks of crated milk and orange juice to the loading docks at a commercial dairy in central New Jersey. He’s not making much, and he doesn’t know how long it will last, but after 30 months of unemployment, he counts himself lucky. Mr. Mirsky is a convicted criminal, and work is hard to find.
A series of unfortunate events that began in 2012 when Mr. Mirsky lost a job as a Verizon technician culminated last year in a guilty plea for resisting arrest. He is facing the foreclosure of his home; his church has told him that he cannot serve as an usher; he is thousands of dollars in arrears on child support payments for his 8-year-old daughter. Even as the economy improves, Mr. Mirsky has been unable to find a permanent position so he can start rebuilding his life.
The share of American men with criminal records — particularly black men — grew rapidly in recent decades as the government pursued [white supremacy] aggressive law enforcement strategies, especially against drug crimes. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, those men are having particular trouble finding work. Men with criminal records account for about 34 percent of all nonworking men ages 25 to 54, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
The reluctance of employers to hire people with criminal records, combined with laws that place broad categories of jobs off-limits, is not just a frustration for men like Mr. Mirsky; it is also taking a toll on the broader economy. It is preventing millions of American men from becoming, in that old phrase, productive members of society.
“Prior to the prison boom, when convictions were restricted to a smaller fraction of the population, it wasn’t great for their rehab potential but it wasn’t having a huge impact,” said Devah Pager, a Harvard professor of sociology. “Now such a large fraction of the population is affected that it has really significant implications, not just for those people, but for the labor market as a whole.”
Employers, of course, have always taken an interest in the histories of prospective employees. Banks do not want to hire embezzlers; trucking companies do not want drunken drivers. Schools and security companies don’t want to hire criminals of any kind. But the easy availability of online databases lets employers investigate everyone — indeed, it makes hard to justify not looking. Surveys show roughly nine in 10 United States employers check databases of criminal records when hiring for at least some positions. Some focus solely on felony convictions; others also consider misdemeanors or arrests.
Rising concern that background checks are being used to systematically exclude applicants with criminal records is fueling a national “ban the box” movement to improve their chances. The name refers to the box that job applicants are sometimes required to check if they have been convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor. Fourteen states and several dozen cities have passed laws, mostly in recent years, that generally require employers to postpone background checks until the later stages of the hiring process.
6 states and D.C. with the most people in poverty
/We all know that the income distribution in the U.S. is completely uneven. According to the most recent Census reports, 80% of people share less than half of the income. And that other 20% has enough money to dive into giant piles of cash like Scrooge McDuck (excuse the dramatic exaggeration).
We often hear about the haves and have-nots. But, as some of us sit and think about how the office worker earns only a fraction of what the executive on the top floor does, we forget that there are also those who do not have enough money to even cover the most basic necessities.
The lowest income groups have only the tiniest pieces of the pie. The bottom 20% share only 3% of the income in this country, and the next 20% share only 9%.
There is a large group of people in the U.S. — around 45 million of them — who fit poverty guidelines. That is, they are part of a family of four living off of an annual income of less than $23,850, a couple living off of less than $15,730, or an individual living off of less than $11,670 (per the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's most recent publications).
