New Training Program For DuPage County Sheriff's Dept.

GDP - May 17, 2008
by EF Swagee

In response to mounting public pressure against what many are calling a "political persecution" of two local peace activists, the DuPage County Sheriff's Department is implementing a new training program with help from Hazzard County, sources said.

Deputies we spoke with anticipate learning how to tell the difference between peaceful First Amendment exercises and criminal acts.

"Our goal is to reduce the number of wrongful arrests we make and the number of tax dollars we waste, while protecting our citizens' Constitutional rights," said one Deputy who spoke on the condition of anonymity pending formal announcement of the program.

Hazzard County officials, including J.D. ("Boss") Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane have not replied to requests for comment.

Last May, Coltrane's top Deputies led a similar program in DuPage, but it failed miserably, by their own accounts. "They just plain didn't get it," Cletus said. "Hard to say what went wrong. But, we're trying a new approach this time," added Enos. "Pictures."

Cletus and Enos released an important part of the new training manual to Grateful Dissident for this exclusive report:

F U B A R !

Call 911 for help when your life is in danger and the dispatcher might forget to call you back or might say, "I really don't give a sh*t what happens to you."

Call 911 to harrass two peaceful protesters publicly expressing a political opinion you find offensive and not only will the police be sent to investigate, but they just might collaborate with you and the State's Attorney to have the protesters wrongfully arrested and maliciously prosecuted. You may have to lie and say the protesters are, "acting like they're throwing stuff".

Don't worry though, it's only illegal to make a false report to 911 . And everyone would agree that people should be arrested, jailed, and forced to defend themselves in court against criminal charges that are based on nothing more than a person's baseless claims.

Domestic Spying Far Outpaces Terrorism Prosecutions

As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made. The trend concerns civil liberties groups as well as some lawmakers and legal experts.

By Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 12, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously.

The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it. Read On

Free Speeching in St. Paul, MN Mother's Day '08

Don't Bomb Iran!

It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Injustice In DuPage County, IL

Ever wonder how our justice system allows wrongful arrests and unjust persecutions?

It's simple, really. Start with a false report to 911, Add a spiteful Sheriff's Deputy, Mix in a vindictive State's Attorney, Sprinkle with Corruption. And, voila!

Take the tale of the "DuPage Duo" for example, which begins with two people peacefully exercising their right to express a political opinion in public and transforms inconceivably into a criminal case....

Transcript of False Report To 911:

Copy of Bogus Arrest Warrant Issued Eight Days After Police Responded To the Fake 911 Call and Detained, Questioned, Then Released The Peaceful Protesters:

The Sheriff's Deputy had no probable cause to arrest the protesters. Their lawyer filed a Motion to Quash the Arrest and Suppress Evidence. The motion was denied at a hearing on April 10th.

Amazingly, the guy who called 911 and claimed to have seen the protesters "acting like they were throwing stuff at the windshields" is allowed to change his story completely and without question.

Now he is saying he didn't see the protesters throw anything, but did see a traffic disturbance, a traffic disturbance that wasn't mentioned in the 911 call. According to the protesters, who've been very consistent with their story from the beginning, there was never any traffic disturbance.

When asked about the protesters' alleged throwing motions during the hearing, the 911 caller says, "it was just the demeanor that made me believe that that was possible" and "I interpreted them as the possibility that, yes, it was like they could have been releasing something, but I don't know. I really don't know."

Can probable cause for an arrest be fabricated out of a bunch of lies nearly eleven months AFTER a bogus arrest warrant is issued? You Betcha!

Here you have it folks, in plain view:

Another Year of Carnage, Brought to you by the Corporate Democrats

by Cindy Sheehan
Wednesday May 7th, 2008 2:58 PM

Commentary about the war funding bill

The Democrats are working diligently to put a war funding bill on George's desk that will give him two cycles of money for the illegal and obscene occupations in the Middle East connecting anti-poverty programs and VA educational benefits to the appropriation's bill to exploit the horrible condition of poor families and vets who have risked life and limb because Congress is too worried about their political stakes than our children's lives.

The Democrats, with shaky reasoning, feel that attaching a time-line on an appropriation's bill for troop withdrawal (which George has promised to veto) by December 2009, will assuage the anti-war left that is becoming a bigger and bigger majority by the day. What the Democratic leadership is doing is putting their major donors and political futures ahead of our flesh and blood. Are you okay with the Democratic leadership thinking that you are dumber than a door bell and hoping that you don't see their ploy for what it is: a pure political calculation to help themselves and harm everyone else.

Are you okay with borrowing 178 billion more dollars from China furthering the demise of our dollar, economy and enlarging our deficit? Are you okay with putting our children's future at jeopardy so the Democrats can maybe widen their majority in Congress and perhaps put a Democrat in the White House?

Are you okay with the HUMANS of Iraq and Afghanistan (who bleed the same color you do and who love their children just as much) being exploited and abused for the sake of a bigger Democratic majority? Are you okay with our brothers and sisters in these countries being terrorized by OUR military? Are you okay with CHILDREN being demonized and then blown up by bombs dropped out of US jets? Are you okay with two countries being torn apart so Congress' cronies can make obscene profits when you know that many Senators and Congressional Reps are invested in the very industries that profit off of the death, dismemberment and destruction?
Read On

Nearly seventy-percent of our fellow citizens oppose the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

Congress can end the occupation by de-funding it.

Congress, namely Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, can de-fund the occupation by simply refusing to introduce any new funding bills onto the house floor for debate.

Veterans' Office Covering Up Soldier Suicides: US Lawmakers

Published on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 by Agence France Presse

WASHINGTON - US lawmakers have accused the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) of being out of control and of covering up the high suicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

“The VA healthcare system has been pushed to the edge in dealing with the mental health care needs of our veterans,” Bob Filner, chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee of Veterans’ Affairs, told a packed congressional hearing about the issue of suicides among veterans.

The hearing came five months after a first round of testimonials on the same topic, and weeks after a series of internal VA emails about suicides among veterans were brought to light by a documentary on US network television.

In one of the emails, sent in February, Dr Ira Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health at the VA, wrote: “Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see.” Read On

18 suicides per week. 1,000 suicide attempts per month. Staggering.

Our leaders give the troops all the bullets and bombs they need to kill and be killed halfway around the world, then neglect them when they return home with psychological problems. What a disgrace. -EF Swagee

Iraqi alleges Abu Ghraib torture, sues US contractors

By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer May 5, 2008

LOS ANGELES - An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors Monday, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications punched him, slammed him into walls, hung from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.
Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

Phone messages left for Arlington, Va.-based CACI and New York City-based L-3 Communications, formerly Titan Corp., were not immediately returned Monday. Stefanowicz could not immediately be reached for comment at a Los Angeles address.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles because Stefanowicz lives there, seeks unspecified monetary damages.

The firms provided interrogators or interpreters to assist U.S. military guards at Abu Ghraib, which became notorious when photos made public in early 2004 showing U.S. soldiers abusing and humiliating detainees. Military investigators later concluded that much of the abuse happened in late 2003 — when CACI and Titan's interrogators were at the prison.

CACI and L-3 were accused of abusing Abu Ghraib prisoners in earlier lawsuits. In November a federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed the suit against L-3 but allowed the one against CACI to proceed.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday in Istanbul, Turkey, al-Janabi said he hopes the lawsuit sheds light on what happened to him and other detainees.

"God willing the righteousness will emerge and God willing the criminal will receive his punishment," al-Janabi said.

Al-Janabi, 43, said he was detained by U.S. troops during a late-night raid in which he and his family were beaten by their captors. He said he was taken to a military base where he was stripped naked, a hood was placed on his head and his hands and legs were chained.

"They (U.S. troops) did not tell me what was the reason behind my arrest ... during the interrogation, the American soldier told me I was a terrorist ... and I was preparing for an attack against the U.S. forces," said al-Janabi, who denied the accusation and claims he was forced to give confessions under "savage" intimidation. Read On

Worse yet, even after Mr. Al-Janabi wins his lawsuit (and I sure hope he does) the sickness that motivates people to torture each other will remain. -EF Swagee

Profiteers Squeeze Billions Out of Growing Global Food Crisis

By Geoffrey Lean, Independent UK. Posted May 5, 2008.

Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger.

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor -- who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food -- into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12 billion. Its profits increased from $1.44 billion to $2.22 billion. Read On

U.S. Airstrike In Bagdad Injures Women and Children

Iraq hospital 'damaged by US raid'

Al Jezeera Saturday May 3, 2008

At least 28 people have been wounded after a hospital in Baghdad's Sadr City district, a stronghold of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, was damaged in what witnesses described as a US air strike.

A medic at the al-Sadr hospital said women and children were among the wounded in the raid, which an Iraqi security official said took place at around 10am local time (0700 GMT) on Saturday. The US military confirmed the attack but said it targeted "known criminal elements". [AFP]

Read On

Factory Farms Must Change

A New Report Details the Impact of Intensive Food Animal Production on Humans, Animals and the Environment — and It's Not Pretty.

By Annie Bell Muzaurieta

The farm animal industry has got to change, according to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

The Commission, which began its research in 2006 and consisted of 15 experts in public policy, veterinary medicine, public health, agriculture, animal welfare and rural society, released a report detailing the impact of intensive food animal production (IFAP) on humans, animals and the environment.

The report details how animal agriculture has grown at warp speed over the past 50 years thanks to cheap feed, water and energy, according to the Environment News Service. As a result, Americans eat more meat per person than any other society on the planet. The report suggests that the industry will have to change as these resources become less available.

The commission is quoted in the article: "Our diminishing land capacity for producing food animals, combined with dwindling freshwater supplies, escalating energy costs, nutrient overloading of soil, and increased antibiotic resistance, will result in a crisis unless new laws and regulations go into effect in a timely fashion. This process must begin immediately and be fully implemented within 10 years." Read On

Why not just stop eating meat altogether? Let's be honest. The only reason we eat it is cuz it tastes good. I mean, we all know meat's nutritional value can be obtained in a plant-based diet way more efficiently and without destroying the environment, right? -EF Swagee

Iraqi Lawmakers: U.S. Bombing Sadr City Like Saddam Gassing His Own People

U.S. repeats Halabja massacre in Baghdad’s Sadr City, Iraqi legislators say
Azzaman newspaper, May 1, 2008
By Alaa al-Tameemi.

In 1988, former leader Saddam Hussein gassed his own people in the city of Halabja. For the U.S. he was then seen as a ‘good boy’. Today, the power that helped Saddam build the same chemical weapons he dropped on Halabja is reported to be carrying out a repeat of his crimes.

That is the impression several Iraqi members of parliament had following a fact finding mission of the Sadr City in Baghdad which the U.S. occupation troops have been bombarding and encircling for weeks.

“The aerial bombardment and military operations the U.S. is carrying out in Sadr city are similar to what happened in Halabja,” Iraqi member of parliament Falah Hassan said.

U.S. helicopter gun ships and warplanes have been pounding the city, home to more than 2 million people – their declared aim is to have it flushed of gunmen. While gunmen are nowhere to be found, those bearing the brunt of U.S.’s disproportionate use of force are none but the city’s impoverished inhabitants. Read On

Vets Await Verdict in Class Action Lawsuit

Aaron Glantz, North America Inter Press Service

SAN FRANCISCO, 2 May (IPS) - Arturo Gonzalez delivered his closing arguments inside a packed courtroom on the 17th floor of the Federal Building in downtown San Francisco.

A partner at the gigantic corporate law firm Morrison and Forrester, he's part of a team of lawyers seeking to force the Department of Veterans' Affairs to provide better health care and more timely disability benefits to returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

The case, officially known as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake, represents the first class action lawsuit brought on behalf of the 1.7 million U.S. citizens who served in the war zones. Veterans say that over the last six years, the George W. Bush administration has systematically denied veterans the health care they were promised and that they went to court as a last resort.

'We are here because veterans are committing suicide at an alarming rate,' Gonzalez told U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, citing government documents that show 18 U.S. war veterans kill themselves every day. 'More of these veterans are dying in the United States than in combat. That's wrong.'

'There is only one person on Earth who can do anything to help these men and women,' he told the judge, 'Your honour, these veterans need help. The VA has demonstrated that they won't do it on their own.' Read On

In Solidarity With Economic Refugees

March, rally smaller but still spirited
City immigration event draws about 15,000

By Antonio Olivo, Vanessa Bauzá and Carlos Sadovi Tribune reporters
9:14 PM CDT, May 1, 2008

Thursday's crowd of marchers was much smaller than those in years past, but for several hours they filled downtown Chicago with the echoing beats of drums and deafening chants for Immigration reform.

Nearly 15,000 demonstrators—a tenth the tally at last year's May Day march, far short of the estimated 400,000 in 2006—made up for their numbers with youthful energy, in what Chicago police said was a peaceful event.

Taking advantage of the warm, sunny weather, crowds of high school and college students skipped classes to join a movement that had been made up mostly of labor unions, older immigrants and middle-aged activists.

As the younger marchers made their way from Union Park to an afternoon rally in Federal Plaza, iPods dangling from ears, they carried a hardening conviction that the struggle is not over, even with hopes for congressional reforms fading. Read On

All people are created equally and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, except if you're trying to escape a desperate, poverty-stricken environment and improve your family's quality of life. In that case, you should expect to be vilified, terrorized, abused, and exploited. -EF Swagee

Friday Time Capsule 05.02.08

Don't Ease Me In!

Friday Time Capsule 04.25.08

Don't Tell Me This Town Ain't Got No Heart!

The U.S. Role In Haiti's Food Riots

By BILL QUIGLEY, Counterpunch

Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives of six people. There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.

Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of Port au Prince, told journalist Nick Whalen that her two kids are “like toothpicks” they’ re not getting enough nourishment. Before, if you had a dollar twenty-five cents, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25 cents. With a dollar twenty-five, you can’t even make a plate of rice for one child.”

The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port au Prince, serves 1000 free meals a day, almost all to hungry children -- five times a week in partnership with the What If Foundation. Children from Cite Soleil have been known to walk the five miles to the church for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat, spices, cooking oil, propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because of the rise in the cost of food, the portions are now smaller. But hunger is on the rise and more and more children come for the free meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat the leftovers once all the children were fed, but now there are few leftovers.

The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force. Read On

The End of Cheap Food?

High Cost of Commodities Will Continue to Hit Developing World Hardest

The Washington Independent
By Mary Kane 04/23/2008

A sharp spike in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other staples has sparked riots in Mexico and Egypt, marches by hungry children in Yemen and the spectre of starving people in Haiti turning to mud pies for sustenance. This growing unrest is forcing the global community to focus on the causes of higher food costs and what can be done. But it's also raising the troubling possibility that cheap prices for food may be gone for good, an economic relic of the the past.

That scenario would be disastrous for the progress of fighting poverty in poor countries - and it would threaten to halt a long period of rising living standards in the United States tied directly to the inexpensive cost of food.

snip

Should prices stay high, the effect will be felt most keenly in developing countries, as the recent food riots have shown. Impoverished families now pay 50 percent to 80 percent of their incomes for food. Continuing high prices for oil and corn threaten to undo any gains in reducing poverty made over the past decade, Zoellick said.

Josette Sheeran, head of the U.N.'s World Food Program, told The Economist that the effects of higher food prices in poor countries will be devastating:

“For the middle classes, it means cutting out medical care. For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.”

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The promise of globalization was that it could lift living standards for everyone. But if the world's hungry still can't be fed because food is no longer cheap, it's an empty promise. Read The Whole Piece Here

Read more about food riots going on around the world here, here, & here

Land of the Free?

Inmate count in U.S. dwarfs other nations'

International Herald Tribune
By Adam Liptak
Published: April 23, 2008

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. Read On