The family of slain teenager Freddie Gray have agreed to a $6.4 million wrongful death settlementwith the City of Baltimore nearly five months after Gray died of severe spinal injuries he sustained while riding in the back of a police vehicle.
The payment, if approved by city spending officials as expected, will be larger than the combined settlement payouts the city made in over 100 separate police misconduct cases from 2011 to 2014. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) emphasized that the decision to settle the Gray family’s suit is not “a judgment on the guilt or innocence of the officers facing trial” for charges that they killed Gray by giving him an intentionally violent “rough ride” back to a police station.
In addition to the $5.7 million that Baltimore paid to victims in alleged police misconduct cases of various kinds from 2011 to 2014, the city spent $5.8 million on related litigation. Settling with the Grays instead of fighting their claims in court will likely save the city money despite the size of the settlement figure.
Barack Obama has upped the ante in his aggressions against Venezuela. The U.S. president claimed Monday that the democratically-elected Venezuelan government poses a “threat to national security,” due to a full compliment of alleged human-rights abuses..
Yet this preoccupation with human rights becomes perplexing when one considers that many of the chief recipients of U.S. aid — a combination of military and economic assistance — or support employ highly-questionable practices to prop up their regimes.
Israel and Egypt, who receive some of the highest military financing from the US, have both been in the spotlight for a whole host of human-rights abuses in the past months, while Saudi Arabia, who Obama sycophantly labelled as the U.S.'s “greatest ally,” has a long history of violent state repression. Colombia, the tenth overall highest recipient, and the highest in Latin America, has jails crammed with political prisoners....
In spite of all these blatant and well-publicized human rights abuses, these countries continue to receive large sums and support from the U.S. Venezuela, on the other hand, which in 2012 was elected the United Nations Human Rights Council for the first time with 154 votes, is deemed a threat.
The hypocrisy of the U.S. in funding actions abroad, while having the highest prison population in the world at 2,228,424, and whose police force is continually criticized for murdering innocent black and Latino people, appears to know no bounds.
The United States government has a long history of declaring certain countries to be a “national security threat.” The policy of declaring a particular country, no matter how small, a threat to the U.S. — the economically-and-militarily-largest country in the world — has its roots in the “Trading with the Enemy Act” of 1917.
Since then, the legal framework for declaring another country to be a national security threat has changed several times. The current legal framework is governed by International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977.
Once a U.S. president has declared a country to represent a national security threat, under the provisions of the IEEPA, the president is authorized to block transactions and freeze assets of any government entity or government official of that country.
If there is an actual armed conflict, then the president has the authority to confiscate the property of any government official or entity of that country. In the case of Venezuela, which owns the major multi-billion dollar oil company CITGO in the U.S., this would be a significant blow to the country....
Currently the following governments have been declared to be national security threats under the IEEPA:
Cuba (since 1977)
Iran (since 1979)
Myanmar (1997)
Sudan (1997)
Zimbabwe (2003)
Syria (2004)
Belarus (2006)
North Korea (2008)
Russia (2014)
The U.S. government has consistently worsened relations with Venezuela ever since Obama became president. As early as 2010, the newly-appointed U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, Larry Palmer, issued uncharacteristically-undiplomatic declarations against the government against Venezuela during his appointment hearing in the U.S. Senate.
When his remarks became public then-President Hugo Chavez rejected Palmer's nomination, at which point the Obama administration expelled Venezuela's ambassador to the U.S.....
Declaring a Country a 'National Security Threat'
Research shows a correlation between police behavior and authoritarianism.…
…criminologists, psychologists and other social scientists have compiled a large amount of data on the relationship between police behavior and authoritarianism. This information is readily available and highly accessible to the general public. However, it is not discussed by the corporate news media because the facts cannot be readily reconciled with the mythologies that surround (and protect) America’s police.…When authoritarianism is combined with bias and power, the result can be exploitive and explosive. And this doesn't only apply to policing, or even chiefly to policing.
How much does it cost you to live in your house? If you are a renter, the answer to that question is fairly straightforward (although if your rent includes a gym membership and heat, it is not clearcut what the simple cost of occupying your place is).
But suppose you are an owner. What is it costing you every month or every year to live in your house? The truth is, you don't know with a great deal of precision, and neither does anyone else.
There are two ways to look at the issue.…Pretty much like the right wing went after Clinton and Obama. Now it's De Blasio's turn.
Stop “the right people, the right time, the right location,” Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard saying on the recording.
[...]
“So what am I supposed to do: Stop every black and Hispanic?” Serrano was heard saying on the tape, which was recorded last month at the 40th Precinct in the Bronx.
[...]
“I have no problem telling you this,” the inspector said on the tape. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”
The tape and testimony are a part of a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy.
Torture is not publicized domestically even as it is ‘understood’ by ‘knowing’ Congressional committees. But among the colonized, occupied people, through word and experience, CIAand military torture and violence against suspects, seized in neighborhood round-ups, is aweapon to intimidate a hostile population. The torture of a family member spreads fear (and loathing) among relatives, acquaintances, neighbors and colleagues. Torture is an integral element in spreading mass intimidation – an attempt to minimize co-operation between an active minority of resistance fighters and a majority of passive sympathizers.People often think of torture as applying exclusively or predominantly to interrogation. However, this is not the case. It is also used institutionally for control and also retribution.
The consensus seems to be that there is a now a consensus that police brutality towards Black people, and the treatment of Blacks by the criminal justice system more generally, is out of control. Those arguing this case only have in mind the pundit class, of course.
There is no clear indication that non-pundit whites and conservatives are actually on board with this new consensus. Indeed, in the Mike Brown case, recent polling suggests that whites, conservatives, and the rich approved of the whole affair by very large margins, while liberals, poor people, and people of color disapproved by equally large margins.
Even within the pundit class though, the claims of a new consensus are deeply misleading. Though pundits on the right and left have expressed dismay over recent events, their underlying narratives and theories about how we got where we are dramatically diverge from one another. And this divergence tracks the same fundamental disagreements that normally keep conservatives on the other side of these issues.Demos Policy Shop
Local KSAT News says that witnesses claim the officer “emptied his gun” into Redus with no provocation.
“I didn’t hear him say anything like, ‘Get down on your hands and knees,’ you know?” one witness recalled, “I didn’t hear him say anything. He just started shooting. He emptied the gun on him… Boom, boom, boom.Six shots — five or six.”
Mohammad Haidarasl saw it all go down. He said that Redus’ final words were “Oh, you’re gonna shoot me?”Haidarasl added that the officer kept saying “Stop resisting, stop resisting,” even though Haidarasl saw no physical resistance at all.
The U.N. racism watchdog urged the United States on Friday to halt the excessive use of force by police after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman touched off riots in Ferguson, Missouri.
Minorities, particularly African Americans, are victims of disparities, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said after examining the U.S. record.
"Racial and ethnic discrimination remains a serious and persistent problem in all areas of life from de facto school segregation, access to health care and housing," Noureddine Amir, CERD committee vice chairman, told a news briefing.US shredding moral authority and soft power, reversing the direction of the election of the first person of color.
An Iraq war veteran critically injured in 2011 Occupy protests in California has won $4.5 million in a legal settlement with local authorities, his lawyers said Friday.
Scott Olsen, who served two tours in Iraq, suffered brain damage when riot police used tear gas to disperse protestors in Oakland on Oct. 25.
Olsen, 26, welcomed the settlement but said it could not compensate for his injuries including a fractured skull.
“It’s certainly not enough to make up for a part of my brain that is dead and will forever be dead,” Olsen told the Democracy Now! video news outlet.
He gave an outdoor press conference not far from where he was injured, saying he had not expected to be disabled due to police action at home, having survived war-torn Iraq.
