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How the excessive militarization of the police is turning cops into counterinsurgents

[Author]FROM THE EDITOR:

 

Dear readers,[/Author]

I don’t need to repeat the horror stories that have been plaguing the mainstream media or corporate media, as it is now called, about the increasing police executions of people in their “line of duty.” The same excuses: the suspect had a gun (but who didn’t shot a bullet); he didn’t obey police command to stop but kept running; he didn’t show his hands; I called the police to help me restrain my daughter who was acting crazy, etc. They all got killed. The following article, written by Matthew Harwood, brings us inside of the how the police are becoming more violent, and how the killings go unpunished.

 

[Author]by Matthew Harwood

TomDispatch
[/Author]

 

Second part: Everyday Militarization
 

Don’t think, however, that the military mentality and equipment associated with SWAT operations are confined to those elite units. Increasingly, they’re permeating all forms of policing.

As Karl Bickel, a senior policy analyst with the Justice Department’s Community Policing Services office, observes, police across America are being trained in a way that emphasizes force and aggression. He notes that recruit training favors a stress-based regimen that’s modeled on military boot camp rather than on the more relaxed academic setting a minority of police departments still employ. The result, he suggests, is young officers who believe policing is about kicking ass rather than working with the community to make neighborhoods safer. Or as comedian Bill Maher reminded officers recently: “The words on your car, ‘protect and serve,’ refer to us, not you.”

This authoritarian streak runs counter to the core philosophy that supposedly dominates twenty-first-century American thinking: community policing. Its emphasis is on a mission of “keeping the peace” by creating and maintaining partnerships of trust with and in the communities served. Under the community model, which happens to be the official policing philosophy of the U.S. government, officers are protectors but also problem solvers who are supposed to care, first and foremost, about how their communities see them. They don’t command respect, the theory goes: they earn it. Fear isn’t supposed to be their currency. Trust is.

Nevertheless, police recruiting videos, as in those from California’s Newport Beach Police Department and New Mexico’s Hobbs Police Department, actively play up not the community angle but militarization as a way of attracting young men with the promise of Army-style adventure and high-tech toys. Policing, according to recruiting videos like these, isn’t about calmly solving problems; it’s about you and your boys breaking down doors in the middle of the night.

SWAT’s influence reaches well beyond that. Take the increasing adoption of battle-dress uniforms (BDUs) for patrol officers. These militaristic, often black, jumpsuits, Bickel fears, make them less approachable and possibly also more aggressive in their interactions with the citizens they’re supposed to protect.

A small project at Johns Hopkins University seemed to bear this out. People were shown pictures of police officers in their traditional uniforms and in BDUs. Respondents, the survey indicated, would much rather have a police officer show up in traditional dress blues. Summarizing its findings, Bickel writes, “The more militaristic look of the BDUs, much like what is seen in news stories of our military in war zones, gives rise to the notion of our police being an occupying force in some inner city neighborhoods, instead of trusted community protectors.”

Where do they get those wonderful toys?

“I wonder if I can get in trouble for doing this,” the young man says to his buddy in the passenger seat as they film the Saginaw County Sheriff Office’s new toy: a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. As they film the MRAP from behind, their amateur video has a Red Dawn-esque feel, as if an occupying military were now patrolling this Michigan county’s streets. “This is getting ready for f**king crazy times, dude,” one young man comments. “Why,” his friend replies, “has our city gotten that f**king bad?”

In fact, nothing happening in Saginaw County warranted the deployment of an armored vehicle capable of withstanding bullets and the sort of improvised explosive devices that insurgent forces have regularly planted along roads in America’s recent war zones. Sheriff William Federspiel, however, fears the worst. “As sheriff of the county, I have to put ourselves in the best position to protect our citizens and protect our property,” he told a reporter. “I have to prepare for something disastrous.”

Lucky for Federspiel, his exercise in paranoid disaster preparedness didn’t cost his office a penny. That $425,000 MRAP came as a gift, courtesy of Uncle Sam, from one of our far-flung counterinsurgency wars. The nasty little secret of policing’s militarization is that taxpayers are subsidizing it through programs overseen by the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department.

Take the 1033 program. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) may be an obscure agency within the Department of Defense, but through the 1033 program, which it oversees, it’s one of the core enablers of American policing’s excessive militarization. Beginning in 1990, Congress authorized the Pentagon to transfer its surplus property free of charge to federal, state, and local police departments to wage the war on drugs. In 1997, Congress expanded the purpose of the program to include counterterrorism in section 1033 of the defense authorization bill. In one single page of a 450-page law, Congress helped sow the seeds of today’s warrior cops.

The amount of military hardware transferred through the program has grown astronomically over the years. In 1990, the Pentagon gave $1 million worth of equipment to U.S. law enforcement. That number had jumped to nearly $450 million in 2013. Overall, the program has shipped off more than $4.3 billion worth of materiel to state and local cops, according to the DLA.

In its recent report, the ACLU found a disturbing range of military gear being transferred to civilian police departments nationwide. Police in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for instance, received 34 automatic and semi-automatic rifles, two robots that can be armed, military helmets, and a Mamba tactical vehicle. Police in Gwinnet County, Georgia, received 57 semi-automatic rifles, mostly M-16s and M-14s. The Utah Highway Patrol, according to a Salt Lake City Tribune investigation, got an MRAP from the 1033 program, and Utah police received 1,230 rifles and four grenade launchers. After South Carolina’s Columbia Police Department received its very own MRAP worth $658,000, its SWAT Commander Captain E.M. Marsh noted that 500 similar vehicles had been distributed to law enforcement organizations across the country.

Astoundingly, one-third of all war materiel parceled out to state, local, and tribal police agencies is brand new. This raises further disconcerting questions: Is the Pentagon simply wasteful when it purchases military weapons and equipment with taxpayer dollars? Or could this be another downstream, subsidized market for defense contractors? Whatever the answer, the Pentagon is actively distributing weaponry and equipment made for U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns abroad to police who patrol American streets and this is considered sound policy in Washington. The message seems striking enough: what might be necessary for Kabul might also be necessary for DeKalb County.

In other words, the twenty-first-century war on terror has melded thoroughly with the twentieth-century war on drugs, and the result couldn’t be anymore disturbing: police forces that increasingly look and act like occupying armies.

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Three foods that can treat kidney disease and boost renal function

[Author]by Michael Ravensthorpe
[/Author]
Every year, more than 100,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with kidney disease, a serious, life-threatening condition in which the kidneys can no longer filter waste products from the blood. (1) The National Kidney Foundation estimates that one in three American adults is currently at risk of developing kidney disease and those odds increase to one in two over the course of a lifetime.

The leading causes of poor kidney health are diabetes and high blood pressure, which in turn are caused by a poor diet and lifestyle. Therefore, the only real long-term solution to kidney disease is to drink more clean water, get more exercise and, most importantly, to reject processed and unhealthy foods in favor of natural whole foods. The foods listed below are proven to be particularly effective at boosting renal health.

Asparagus

Asparagus was regarded as the perfect healing food for our urinary system for centuries in its native Europe and Asia, and we now understand why. This green spring vegetable is packed with natural compounds, including glycosides and saponins, that give it significant diuretic, anti-rheumatic and blood purifying qualities. Consequently, the regular consumption of asparagus is known to increase urine production, soothe the urinary system, boost cellular action in the kidneys and even dissolve the acids and salts that comprise kidney stones.

Moreover, a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in June 2013 found that a compound present in asparagus, 2”-hydroxynicotianamine, could inhibit angiotensin-converting enzyme activity in the kidneys, thus “preventing hypertension and preserving renal function.”

Garlic

Garlic has long been considered one of nature’s greatest disease fighters due to its impressive concentrations of the sulfur compound allicin. A proven antibacterial, antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal and antioxidant, allicin is well-known for treating two of the main conditions that cause kidney disease, namely diabetes and high blood pressure. However, several studies have shown that this pungent and aromatic herb could be even better for our kidneys than previously thought.

One study published in Pharmacological Reports in 2008 discovered that garlic could significantly reduce kidney damage associated with mercury chloride exposure in laboratory animals (mercury chloride is a potential carcinogen used in disinfectants, batteries, insecticides and many other products to which humans are regularly exposed). (5) Another study, published in Food and Chemical Toxicology in 2001, found that garlic in low doses could enhance the antioxidant status of the kidneys, thus protecting them from the cell-damaging effects of free radicals.

Watermelon

There are three reasons why watermelons are good for treating kidney disease. Firstly, they are low in potassium and phosphorus, which are two minerals that dysfunctional kidneys can have problems balancing. Secondly, they are comprised of approximately 92 percent alkaline water, which helps flush the urinary system of accumulated toxins (watermelon fasts can even dissolve kidney stones). Lastly, they help the liver to process ammonia and deliver it to urea, thus easing the strain on the kidneys while ridding the body of excess fluids.

Unlike asparagus and garlic, watermelon is high in natural sugars. For this reason, people with diabetes-sourced kidney disease should be careful not to consume too much of it on a regular basis.

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The President’s solid ground for executive action on immigration

by the El Reportero’s wire services

 

Comprehensive immigration reform legislation would give a majority of America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship and work authorization.

But with immigration reform stalled in the House, President Obama announced that he plans to “fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress.” The President is reportedly considering deferring the deportations of up to 5 million immigrants, starting with those with families.

While most columnists have supported the President’s authority to take action, a minority have accused President Obama of “rewriting the law” and called him a “domestic Caesar.”

UCLA Professor of Law Hiroshi Motomura’s report, The President’s Discretion, Immigration Enforcement, and the Rule of Law, thoughtfully argues that President Obama has broad executive authority to defer deportations, if he so chooses. Motomura concludes that the “President has the legal authority to make a significant number of unauthorized migrants eligible for temporary relief from deportation,” “similar to the relief available under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.” The technical term is “administrative action”—action by the President’s administrative agencies, such as Department of Homeland Security.

At the outset, Motomura makes clear that the President is only considering temporary reprieves from deportation. The President cannot unilaterally change the rules for granting green cards or citizenship. Nor did the President “enact” the DREAM Act when he announced DACA. While the DREAM Act would provide a path to a green card and citizenship for immigrants brought to America while children, DACA only gave them a temporary, renewable two-year reprieve.

But Motomura also makes clear that the President, when he announced DACA and generally, has broad prosecutorial discretion, especially as to setting enforcement priorities and a system for applying them. Indeed, Congress has created and funded a system that relies heavily on that prosecutorial discretion since Congress funds capacity for about 400,000 deportations each year out of an unauthorized population of 11 million, leaving it to the administration to carry out those deportations. As prosecutor-in-chief, though, President Obama can set formal criteria and a process, so that his enforcement agents on the ground can implement the priorities he chooses. As the Supreme Court said in United States v. Arizona, “Federal officials, as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all.”

Moreover, Motomura argues that setting formal criteria and a process is more consistent with the rule of law than not doing so. Doing so makes discretionary enforcement decisions more uniform, predictable, and nondiscriminatory. Indeed, issuing public, transparent guidelines keeps government officials, including state and local officials, from targeting some noncitizens based on race or ethnicity. And the fact that ICE’s union disallowed its agents from participating in trainings on prosecutorial discretion guidelines, and sued the federal government to block DACA, underscores the necessity of a formal process to check agents’ individual decision-making. Motomura thus rebuts arguments that President Obama is “lawless,” or a domestic Caesar.

Motomura thus joins a chorus of experts concluding that the President’s has broad legal authority to defer deportations, including Stephen Legomsky, former chief counsel to USCIS; Eric Posner of Chicago Law School; Alberto Gonzales, President George W. Bush’s attorney general; Jonathan Adler, who is otherwise suing the Administration over Obamacare; and Shikha Dalmia at the Reason Foundation. Looking forward, the question will not be whether the President can take action, but what action he will take. As The New York Times said: “Mr. Obama, Your Move.”

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God is the guardian of undocumented children

[Author]by Andrea Acosta

El Pregonero
[/Author]
SILVER SPRING, Md. – While children cross the border alone, their parents in the United States are going through intense anxiety — and the only thing they can do is pray to God to protect their kids along the journey.

Each successful trip is God’s doing, according to many immigrant parents who are waiting on the other side of the Río Grande, impatient and full of faith.

“What I did was put her in the hands of God and God put angels along her path to bring my girl to me,” Salvadoran immigrant Carmen Molina told El Pregonero recently, referring to the trip her daughter Valeria made nearly three years ago.

Two journeys

Carmen left El Salvador 10 years ago, crossed through Guatemala and Mexico by bus and taxi, and then crossed the Rio Grande to come to the United States. She made the journey with her brother, guided by coyotes, and says that God took care of them along the way.

The worst part of the trip, she says, was the journey on the infamous train known as “La Bestia” (The Beast), but she was saved from any harm inflicted by traffickers. “There are a lot of deaths on the train,” she says. “Some people lose limbs, immigrants are stripped of their clothes and robbed, women are raped….”

After three dangerous weeks making the journey north, Carmen was arrested by immigration authorities. She decided not to appear in court, so she remained undocumented. She had left her family and her country behind, with the goal of working to help her family back home.

“I cried every day for my 6-year-old and 10-year-old daughters, who I left in my mom’s care,” says the parishioner of the San Camilo Church in Silver Spring, Maryland.

She tearfully recalled the moment she said goodbye, when her younger daughter told her, “‘Take me with you, Mom… I’m going to go with you and I won’t leave your side.’”

Carmen remembers Valeria’s words and the expression on her little face. “They are painful moments you’ll never forget,” she says. Since she got here, she’s been working as a housecleaner and has always been able to send her money to her mother in El Salvador.

Carmen wanted her older daughter to come to the United States, but she was too scared to make the journey. Her younger daughter, who was 13 years old at the time, kept saying that she wanted to see her mother. She was excited, brave and determined to undertake the adventure of crossing three countries.

Before making the decision, the desperate mother knelt down and prayed: “My God, help me. Bring me my daughters. I miss them so much, and I can’t stand the pain….”

Carmen had already gotten married in the United States and couldn’t abandon her husband and her three daughters who were born here. If she returned to El Salvador, she wouldn’t be able to get back in the country.

So, between a rock and a hard place, she chose to come up with $4,500 to pay a woman who had been recommended to her to guide her daughter across the borders.

The trip

Valeria set out on the trek and the woman didn’t leave her alone for a moment.

“I wasn’t that worried because my daughter would call me along the way, and tell me where she was,” says the Salvadoran mother. But she admits that she became extremely anxious when it came time for her daughter to cross the river. “As they crossed the river, I spent the whole time on my knees asking God to help my daughter.”

After Valeria made it across, she had one last challenge: getting past the Border Patrol. So Carmen kept doing the only thing she knew how to do: pray. She knelt down again to pray to God that the agent would only look at the woman’s papers… and that’s what happened. “They just looked at us and said, ‘Go ahead,’ says Valeria.

Carmen recognizes her daughter’s courage and describes all of this as God’s work. “I’m happy that everything was OK and my daughter made it to my home in 22 days.”

The day of the reunion was very emotional, says the mother, who went from feeling anxiety to being at peace. Her daughter ran to her and said: “Mommy, mommy, I got to see you again. I did it. I’m here with you.”

Carmen was surprised to see how thin Valeria was. “She was so skinny that she didn’t even fit into size zero pants. I just felt her bones when she hugged me and I started to cry,” recalls the mother, who says she is now finally happy.

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Climate change: hoax of the century

[Author]by Joseph A Olson

Analysis
[/Author]
Carbon dioxide, a benign, life giving molecule has been miscast by a world wide political movement to be an environmental hazard in what will soon be discovered to be the hoax of the century.

This molecule, CO2 is vital to all life on earth. It is exhaled by all living things and even comes from nocturnal emissions by plants. It forms the bubbles in your soda, wine and beer. Standard air has 370 parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide of which 93 percent comes from “natural sources” which are all beyond human control. These sources include decomposition of organic matter, exhaling by living things and volcanic vents, which is by far the greatest atmospheric source. The climate change hoax is based on faulty science from two things.

First, hoaxers assume that ice layers give information on temperature like tree rings do with rainfall. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, from thousands of years of deposi s, are measured for CO2 content of the air at the time the snow layer was deposited and thickness of the ice layers. The thickness of these snowfall layers is then assumed to be an indication of global temperature. There are numerous errors in this assumption, which have been presented in a more technical analysis, but for now pretend that this evidence is true. The hoaxers then show graphs over time with a near perfect match of CO2 levels and snow thickness and by implication the earth’s temperature. The second bit of “proof” of human caused global warming is the Global Climate Model which is available to all at Wikipedia. By their own admission, this model was developed for SHORT RANGE weather forecasting and we all know how accurate that is. This formula, though not given on this web site, has a hundred parameters each with its own coefficient and exponent. By manipulating these numbers the hoaxers are able to “prove” that an increase of CO2 will raise world temperature.

The whole concept of “greenhouse gas” is absurd. The earth receives a full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation by day (Duh!) but by night only a portion, the infrared stored on the surface, is radiated back into space. There is no gaseous one way control of this energy. The atmospheric gasses can absorb or reflect some of this energy but can not increase the incoming amount. Carbon dioxide is a three-atom molecule that cannot possibly determine that all radiation should be allowed in by day, but none can escape by night. Consider the insulation or radiant barrier in your home’s attic. The radiant barrier bounces solar radiant energy away from your living space in the summer and bounces radiant energy trying to exit back into your house in the winter. Insulation does the same thing with convective energy, keeping heat out in summer and heat in during the winter. The atmosphere behaves the same way. To claim that any gas, whether CO2 or methane or any other, can simultaneously allow energy in by day but block energy exit by night is absurd. To think that the hoaxers claim of a change in 10 parts per million of CO2 molecules could effect the earths climate in any way is insane. IF CO2 had these miracle properties then all double pane glass panels would be filled with CO2 and the magic molecules would work like little Venetian blinds allowing full heat by day and no loss at night. In fact, greenhouse glass does not block radiant heat loss at night, but only a fraction of convective heat loss that is trapped by the physical glass barrier.

[efoods]If you Goggle the Last Glacial Maximum you will see maps of the thousands of square miles of ice and the ocean levels over 400 ft below current levels. All of this ice melted in 100 years. There is no evidence that humans caused this so we must look for the force that could cause this change. The earth does not rotate in a circle around the sun but rather in an ellipse, varying our distance between 91 and 93 million miles. Because of this we receive a 4 percent change in solar radiation every year but this has no effect on earth’s climate. Our seasons are the result of the planets 23 degree axis of rotation. Our summer occurs when we are farthest from the sun. The southern hemisphere has summer when the planet is closest to the sun. There is little difference in latitude by latitude comparisons of these opposite globe seasons. Based on this fact, even a 10 percent change in solar activity would have negligible effect. A ten percent change is beyond any observed solar cycle. The earth’s crust is a 10 to 20 miles thick layer of solid rock that floats on 7000 miles of molten rock. Gravity cannot provide the pressure necessary to melt this much rock. What causes this rock to melt and the earth to have massive periodic climate changes is the irregular decay of uranium in our earth’s core. A more technical analysis of this earth warming force has been presented to members of Congress and for scientific peer review but for this presentation just consider two elements that result from this uranium decay. Radon, the radioactive gas we are warned about constantly can only occur from nuclear reaction and has a half-life of 3.8 days. A one-pound container of Radon would only weigh 1/8 of an ounce in just 23 days. The fact that Radon is a health hazard is proof of its daily production. Helium, another inert element, is eight times lighter than air and all helium released on earth is lost to outer space in just minutes. Helium does not come from the break down of any compound but only from nuclear reaction. It is occurs in natural gas deposits in just a few locations on earth. The geo-nuclear energy that melts our core and creates these gases is also the greatest variable in the earth’s climate. This geo-nuclear energy is at present beyond human control or understanding. It is most convenient for the hoaxers to neglect this greatest variable in climate change from their defective climate model. The graphic match of CO2 and ice core layer thickness (earth’s temperature ?) is also matched by the amount of ash in the layer. When volcanic energy is released it produces large amounts of heat….and ash…. and CO2. Blaming CO2 for climate change is like saying ashes cause fire. CO2 is the effect of heat and not the cause.

Our democracy depends on informed consent. Informed should not be limited to lies told by a political movement. When the full scope of the scientific errors involved in this hoax are exposed everyone will realize this has been the greatest folly since the flat earth theory. We deserve a real debate. In this case, the truth will be very inconvenient. (This article was first published by Infowars.com on November 2019).

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East Side and Chicano Sould History: Lowrider photo exhibt and more

[Author]Compiled by the

El Reportero’s staff[/Author]

 

In conjunction with the Lowriding season MCCLA is thrilled to present featured artists: Yolanda López, Art Meza, Adolfo Arias, and Fern Balladares whose art work represent lowrider culture past and present. Join us at the opening reception to meet the artists, hear excerpts of Meza’s Lowriting book, view screening of Why I Ride, a documentary on 80s lowrider car scene in San Francisco, walk along the display of lowrider cars parked in front of the center, and listen to oldies by DJ Soulera. Be a part of reclaiming public space. Don’t miss out.

Exhibit runs through Sept. 12, at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission Street, San Francisco.

 

My Music is Who I Am – lecture series featuring John Santos

My Music is Who I Am: Identity & Resistance in Cuban and Puerto Rican Music with John Santos in partnership with SFJazz and Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. The six-week lecture series is part of the museum’s offsite summer programming called MoAD in the Neighborhood, and will be held at the W Hotel at 3rd and Howard Streets in San Francisco. Only the Aug. 27 program will be held at the California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street in San Francisco. MoAD will be closed for renovation and reinvention through September.

The lecture series is hosted by The MoAD Vanguard held on Wednesdays from 7-9 p.m. at the W Hotel. On Wednesdays through to Sept. 10. Member admission just $15 per program. For more info and to purchase tickets:

http://www.sfjazz.org/events/sessions/2014/education/discover-jazz-moad

 

Redwood City’s Annual Salsa Festival

This is an early heads-up to get it on your calendar, and it’s also your call for entries for the fabulous salsa tasting competition! Think your salsa has what it takes to beat the competition?

Contestants must bring all equipment necessary for making their salsa. Teams can enter the salsa challenge as an individuals, or businesses. Choose between the categories of Mild and Hot. The festival goers will be able to purchase a tasting kit in order to cast their vote for the “People’s Choice Award.” Salsa will be judged by a qualified panel of judges based on aroma, consistency, color, appropriate heat level, taste and after-taste. This panel will also judge each team booth for Best Decorated.

Public tasting runs from 12 p.m.-5p.m. Teams make a minimum of 8 gallons of salsa, while the 5 p.m. end time is our best estimate and is dependent on how much the public tastes!

Deadline to sign up is Aug. 31st. For more information please contact Lucas Wilder 650.780.7340 lwilder@redwoodcity.org Find the form in this link and mail it along with check made out to: http://www.redwoodcity.org/events/salsafest_entries.html

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Olga Tañón joins and sign to reality music competition

[Author]by the El Reportero’s news services[/Author]

 

Singing star Olga Tañon has signed on as school director and judge for Telemundo’s new reality music competition, “Yo Soy El Artista” (I’m The Artist), the network said.

The Puerto Rican singer-songwriter told Efe she is “happy and very proud” to be part of the show, which premieres next month.

Contestants will be evaluated on their singing, dancing and “star quality” over the course of 13 weeks.

“To be director of a school is a great responsibility,” Tañon said, adding that she is ready to be tough with the contestants to help them reach their potential.

Besides running the school where the contestants will live together, the multiple Grammy winner will be part of the four-person jury that ultimately selects “el artista.”

 

Cuba celebrates Shakespeare with first visit of The Globe Theater Group

Havana joined in the celebration of the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth with the first visit of the famed London theater group The Globe and its performance of “Hamlet.”

The Globe twice presented Hamlet on Thursday at the downtown Mella Theater as part of the world tour that began last April in London to mark the 450 years since Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born.

Cuba is the first Spanish-speaking country chosen for a performance by the company, which in Thursday’s Hamlet helped the audience understand the actors with subtitles shown on a screen.

Cuban playwright and critic Norge Espinosa noted that The Globe is Shakespeare’s ambassador to the world – it uses actors of all ages and ethnicities and shows how the English continue to “maintain a dialogue” with the author.

Cuban theater’s chief tribute to the English author will be staged at the 24th International Ballet Festival of Havana in October, which will present a dance version of “Romeo and Juliet” produced by one-time ballerina and current director of the company, Alicia Alonso.

Before arriving in Cuba from the Bahamas, the English company had appeared in Norway, Russia, Finland, Ukraine, Croatia and the United States.

From Cuba it will continue on to the Yucatan in Mexico, followed by such Caribbean nations as Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, as well as countries of Central America.

The original Globe Theatre where Shakespeare’s plays were first performed was built in 1599 on the banks of the River Thames.

 

Producers of “La Voz” say contestants will receive more support

The fourth edition of the reality singing competition “La Voz…Mexico” (The Voice…Mexico) will be all about giving more support to the contestants, the producer of the hit show said.

The contestants who really stand out will be given support from the beginning of the program, rather than waiting until one of them wins a contest before beginning to think about his or her career, Miguel Fox told a press conference here.

“In order to discover big stars, we have to back them from the beginning,” he said, acknowledging that previous winners have failed to achieve the expected success.

Fox presented this Thursday the fourth edition of the Mexican adaptation of the wildly successful Dutch show “The Voice,” introducing the “coaches” for the new season: Ricky Martin, Laura Pausini, Yuri and Julion Alvarez.

In “La Voz”, the coaches sit with their backs to whomever is singing and if they like the voice, they press a button to turn their seat around to choose the contestant for their team.

But as a novelty this year, the auditions will be even more blindfolded, since after pressing the button, the artists won’t see the contestants, since they will be covered by a curtain until they confirm their identities to the coaches in question.

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Police union commissar: if you resist, you should expect to die

[Author]Submit with proper docility to the commands issued by the slave patrol

by William Norman Grigg

lewrockwell.com
[/Author]
 

“We’ve heard a lot in the last number of weeks about what police officers can’t do, and what police officers shouldn’t do,” groused Patrick Lynch, designated spokesliar for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, New York’s largest police union. “No one’s telling us what we are able to do, and what we should do, when we’re faced with a situation where the person being placed under arrest says, `I’m not going. I’m not being placed under arrest.’”

“What is it we should do?” continued Lynch, his voice colored by theatrical incredulity. “Walk away?”

If the would-be arrestee isn’t involved in an actual crime – that is, an act of aggression against another person – the only morally suitable answer is: Yes. The cop should shut up, go away, and refrain from molesting one of his betters. The experience might encourage him to find honest work.

“We don’t have that option,” Lynch insisted. “Nor would the public that called and complained about these crimes want us to. If they called, it’s important to them.”

In this fashion Lynch attempted to shift the blame for the killing of Eric Garner on merchants in the Staten Island neighborhood where the harmless man was killed through an act of criminal homicide by NYPD officers enforcing a demented “zero tolerance” policy regarding the sale of untaxed cigarettes. Lynch, who has spent his entire adult life as a member of the coercive caste, tried to depict Garner – a micro-entrepreneur – as a menace to the public, and a threat to commerce. Lynch appears to believe that the spectacle of police killing a harmless and unarmed man is less damaging to the local economy than allowing that man to sell loose cigarettes to willing customers.

Lynch resurrected the unproven claim that plainclothes officers had seen Garner commit an act of unsanctioned petty commerce, and that he resisted their efforts to abduct him on behalf of the state’s tax-consuming class. He carefully avoided mention of the fact that Garner, according to eyewitnesses, had broken up a fight while the officers, ever vigilant for economic “crimes,” refused to intervene.

“There is an attitude on our streets today that it is acceptable to resist arrest,” lamented Lynch. “That attitude is a direct result of a lack of respect for law enforcement.”

While it is the moral duty of every decent person to cultivate disrespect for law enforcement, that attitude is not to blame (if that’s the appropriate word) for the growing resistance to officially sanctioned abduction. That inclination is a direct reaction to the impudence, arrogance, and aggressiveness of police officers, their palpable contempt for the public they supposedly serve, their sense of tribal solidarity with officers who commit crimes against innocent people, and the institutional immunity they enjoy.

“The charge of resisting arrest is a very serious and dangerous one,” insisted Lynch. “The charge exists to encourage those being arrested to comply with the lawful orders of police officers so that those officers do not have to use necessary force to make that arrest.”

In other words: If you submit with proper docility to the commands issued by the slave patrol, they won’t have to beat or kill you.

Like most exponents of that view, Lynch assumes that any gust of verbal halitosis that escapes the wet hole at the bottom of a police officer’s face is a “lawful order.” For this reason he insists that resisting arrest “is a serious crime, and must be treated that way by all.”

In fact, resisting unlawful arrest – while considered an actual crime, and prosecuted as such – is an ancient, venerable, and indispensable right of free people. Under the still-valid Supreme Court precedent John Black Elk v. U.S. (1900), a citizen has a legally recognized right to use lethal force to prevent the consummation of an unlawful arrest.

Perhaps, somewhere in the reptilian recesses of what passes for Lynch’s mind, there is an awareness of that fact, and a rapidly coalescing fear of the prospect that the public will come to understand it, as well. This may be why he admonished PBA members to use “all the resources of the NYPD” when they are dealing with a member of the productive class who isn’t willing to endure the indignity and injury of a state-licensed abduction. In other words: Use any means necessary – including lethal force – to insure that resistance is futile. Babies on psychiatric drugs: crime with no punishment

 

In an unrelated commentary:

 

Babies on psychiatric drugs: crime with no punishment

 

by Jon Rappoport

http://www.nomorefakenews.com

 

Here is typical, circumspect, utter bullshit reporting from the mainstream:

“For the most vulnerable foster children, those less than 1 year old, foster children were nearly twice as likely to be prescribed a psychiatric drug compared to non-foster children.” (ABC News, November 30, 2011)

“Experts are also beginning to question the accuracy of diagnoses such as bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses in children, especially in foster children who may not always have access to comprehensive mental health services.” (ABC News, November 30, 2011)

The truth is, one baby, one child on psychiatric drugs is a crime.

There are no defining diagnostic tests for any of the 300 so-called mental disorders. Psychiatry isn’t science. It’s fraud, from beginning to end.

And then…babies on highly toxic psychiatric drugs…

…prescribed by doctors…

…who actually make eyeball diagnoses of clinical depression, bipolar, ADHD…

…in babies 0 to 1 years old…

The magnitude of this could only be gauged, to a partial degree, by locking up the doctors for the rest of their lives.

 

I and others have cited the massive toxic effects of the drugs. All the drugs. If you’re new to the subject, start by reading Dr. Peter Breggin’s breakthrough book, Toxic Psychiatry.

Babies. Poisoning the brains and nervous systems of babies. Claiming to know babies have a mental disorder. Babies. 0-1 years old.

Reporter Kelly O’Meara, who for years has investigated psychiatry, cites statistics in her article at Children In Shadow. In the US, babies 0-1 years old are ingesting psychiatric drugs at these rates (for the year 2013):

Anti-anxiety drugs (e.g., Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan)—249,669 babies.

Antidepressants (e.g., Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil)—26,406 babies.

ADHD drugs (e.g., Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta)—1,422 babies.

Anti-psychotic drugs (e.g., Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa)—654 babies.

Meanwhile, major media outlets waffle and wobble about the crime, experts in journals debate the crime, no one in the mainstream calls it a crime, the Department of Justice does nothing, and the pharmaceutical companies make billions.

(Jon Rappoport Is the author of three explosive collections, The Matrix Revealed, Exit From The Matrix, and Power Outside The Matrix).

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How the excessive militarization of the police is turning cops into counterinsurgents

[Author]FROM THE EDITOR:

Dear readers,
[/Author]
I don’t need to repeat the horror stories that have been plaguing the mainstream media or corporate media, as it is now called, about the increasing police executions of people in the “line of duty.” We hear the same excuses: the suspect had a gun (without shooting a shot); he didn’t obey police command to stop but kept running; he didn’t show his hands; I called the police to help me restrain my daughter who was acting crazy, etc. They all got killed. The following article, written by Matthew Harwood, brings us inside of the how the police are becoming more violent, and how the killings go unpunished.

 

by Matthew Harwood

TomDispatch

 

To terrify and occupy

 

Jason Westcott was afraid.

One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott’s handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on “burning” Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay police and reported the plot.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, the investigating officers responding to Westcott’s call had a simple message for him: “If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.”

Around 7:30 pm on May 27th, the intruders arrived. Westcott followed the officers’ advice, grabbed his gun to defend his home, and died pointing it at the intruders. They used a semiautomatic shotgun and handgun to shoot down the 29-year-old motorcycle mechanic. He was hit three times, once in the arm and twice in his side, and pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

The intruders, however, weren’t small-time crooks looking to make a small score. Rather they were members of the Tampa Bay Police Department’s SWAT team, which was executing a search warrant on suspicion that Westcott and his partner were marijuana dealers. They had been tipped off by a confidential informant, whom they drove to Westcott’s home four times between February and May to purchase small amounts of marijuana, at $20-$60 a pop. The informer notified police that he saw two handguns in the home, which was why the Tampa Bay police deployed a SWAT team to execute the search warrant.

In the end, the same police department that told Westcott to protect his home with defensive force killed him when he did. After searching his small rental, the cops indeed found weed, two dollars’ worth, and one legal handgun — the one he was clutching when the bullets ripped into him.

Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory, often with the help of Uncle Sam’s armory, and where even nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality.

The War on Your Doorstep

The cancer of militarized policing has long been metastasizing in the body politic. It has been growing ever stronger since the first Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were born in the 1960s in response to that decade’s turbulent mix of riots, disturbances, and senseless violence like Charles Whitman’s infamous clock-tower rampage in Austin, Texas.

While SWAT isn’t the only indicator that the militarization of American policing is increasing, it is the most recognizable. The proliferation of SWAT teams across the country and their paramilitary tactics have spread a violent form of policing designed for the extraordinary but in these years made ordinary. When the concept of SWAT arose out of the Philadelphia and Los Angeles Police Departments, it was quickly picked up by big city police officials nationwide. Initially, however, it was an elite force reserved for uniquely dangerous incidents, such as active shooters, hostage situations, or large-scale disturbances.

Nearly a half-century later, that’s no longer true.

In 1984, according to Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, about 26% of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005, that number had soared to 80% and it’s still rising, though SWAT statistics are notoriously hard to come by.

As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids. Every year now, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States, according to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.

Upping the Racial Profiling Ante

In a recently released report, “War Comes Home,” the American Civil Liberties Union (my employer) discovered that nearly 80% of all SWAT raids it reviewed between 2011 and 2012 were deployed to execute a search warrant.

Pause here a moment and consider that these violent home invasions are routinely used against people who are only suspected of a crime. Up-armored paramilitary teams now regularly bash down doors in search of evidence of a possible crime. In other words, police departments increasingly choose a tactic that often results in injury and property damage as its first option, not the one of last resort. In more than 60% of the raids the ACLU investigated, SWAT members rammed down doors in search of possible drugs, not to save a hostage, respond to a barricade situation, or neutralize an active shooter.

On the other side of that broken-down door, more often than not, are blacks and Latinos. When the ACLU could identify the race of the person or people whose home was being broken into, 68% of the SWAT raids against minorities were for the purpose of executing a warrant in search of drugs. When it came to whites, that figure dropped to 38%, despite the well-known fact that blacks, whites, and Latinos all use drugs at roughly the same rates. SWAT teams, it seems, have a disturbing record of disproportionately applying their specialized skill set within communities of color.

Think of this as racial profiling on steroids in which the humiliation of stop and frisk is raised to a terrifying new level.

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Organic food’s immense potential to heal the sick

[Author]by S. D. Wells[/Author]

 

Let’s face it, many Americans eat like pigs. They pull up to drive-through windows and they sit down at pancake houses, and they order up a completely GMO meal, full of gluten, refined sugar, MSG, animal fat and sometimes even artificial sweeteners. They wash it all down and repeat the cycle within hours, sometimes three times in one day. Why? Don’t they know? Maybe they don’t care, but they will, later.

Time stands still when you’re sick. The world seems to stop spinning when you’re laid out in a hospital bed, with an I.V. stuck in your arm, waiting for a “diagnosis.”

Time just seems to stop, when you can’t work, you can’t enjoy anything and you’re miserable from some illness, disease or disorder that America seems to feed rather than try to prevent. So who’s feeding who? Are the corporations feeding the humans toxic food, or are the humans using their hands on their own free will to shove sickness into their mouths?

Believe it or not, organic food is a $15,000,000,000 industry yearly now. That’s 15 billion, not million, by the way. Are all THOSE people feeding themselves “life” — a healthy life that’s a choice to make, every meal, every snack, every drink and every personal care product? Of course it is. That’s what brings us to healing the sick with organic food, since your cells are all brand new about every three months. You could make that CHANGE in one season, my friend.

Inflammation Nation

The root cause of most pain, illness, headaches and other chronic sicknesses is simply inflammation. Hundreds of millions of people suffer from inflammation daily, because they do many of the following: Ingest fluoridated tap water, take pharmaceutical medications, take OTC (over the counter) medications, eat genetically modified foods (GMO), eat gluten, get flu shots, drink sodas and diet sodas, chew gum or candy laced with artificial sweeteners, apply topical lotions loaded with chemicals, eat bleached-white foods, eat conventional hormone-laden meat and drink conventional hormone-laden milk. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and the damage becomes exponential, as cells mutate and turn and attack living healthy tissue. That’s cancer.

Even the lack of clean whole food and clean spring water inflames the entire body, the tissues, the muscles and the brain. The heart is overworked and under-delivers the goods (nutrients), because there are none. They’ve been wiped out by pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, algaecides and toxic fertilizers used to grow toxic food for toxic humans in need of… wait for it… Obamacare!

Your cells are in a constant battle. They battle for oxygen and nutrition. Those are your good cells. Your bad cells are in a constant search — for sugar and carcinogens. Which cells will you feed with your next meal, and the one after that, and after that? Which cells will you feed with your next drink or snack, the healthy cells or the cancer cells?

Will you “feed the beast” that will destroy you once it has all the power, or will you feed the organic being that you were born to be, the machine with a heart and a brain?

Inside your body is a universe of enzymes, flora and healthy organisms that fuel the fire of thinking, doing and evolving. Will you put that fire out with processed junk science? Cancer cells can not live when your cells have plenty of oxygen. Win the daily battle. Win the long-term war. You are on the battlefield right now, and your hands and brain are your weapons. Use them. Do not pick up another piece of food that contains toxins. Heal your body and your mind, starting right now.

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