http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/opinion/25sun2.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=farc&st=nyt&oref=slogin
The New York Times says "Interpol has corroborated the authenticity of thousands of computer files captured during a Colombian Army raid on a FARC rebel camp in Venezuela. Only a small share of this trove has been released, but it leaves little doubt that Venezuela has been aiding the guerrillas’ effort to overthrow Colombia’s democratically elected government. "
Duh. The raid was into Ecuador, not into Venezuela.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/world/americas/30colombia.html?fta=y
About the data itself this is what Interpol has to say:
http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/PressReleases/PR2008/pdfPR200817/ipPublicReportNoCoverEN.pdf
The verification of the eight seized FARC computer exhibits by INTERPOL does not imply
the validation of the accuracy of the user files, the validation of any country’s interpretation
of the user files or the validation of the source of the user files. It is well established that for
law enforcement purposes, factual findings concerning the truth or accuracy of the content of
any item of evidence are made in the context of a judicial process at the national or
international level and/or by a specially appointed commission with jurisdiction over the
matter in dispute.
In other words, Interpol is not verifying that the data was placed onto the computers by FARC or that the data means what the Colombian government says it means.
There is an ongoing low intensity war being waged by the US and Colombia against Venezuela. The war manifests itself in many ways including the use of "Black propaganda" to weaken the credibility of the Venezuelan government, an incursion into Venezuela by Colombian troops (denied by Colombia) a violation of Venezuelan airspace by the US (not denied, the US says it overflew Venezuela's version of Camp David by mistake,) the reconstitution of the US 4th Fleet, and US funding of oposition groups in Venezuela. Also the right wing death squad narcoparamilitaries of Colombia called "AUC" are functioning within Venezuela, a weak state that has yet to gain control over its borders. Here is a video related to one succesful Venezuelan Army skirmnish with the supposedly demobilized pro US narcoterrorists.
++++++++++++++++
Doubts raised about "FARC Computers"
Some analysts have raised doubts about Interpol’s conclusions. Three professors of information technology at the Polytechnic University of Ecuador, led by Deacon Carlos Montenegro, held a press conference today criticizing the Interpol report.
The professors emphasized the report did not prove much at all, given the limited scope of the investigation and said Interpol’s face-value acceptance of the devices as FARC property was a contradiction of the report’s own findings. They not only criticized the scope of the report, but also the conclusions of its technical findings.
They seized on the agency’s methodology, which only examined images of the hard drives’ user files handed over by Colombia, and not the hard drives themselves. They demonstrated to a crowd of reporters how easy it is to change the creation and modification dates on documents. They asserted these changes would only leave digital traces on the actual hard drives, which have remained in Colombian custody. Investigators would need access to the actual hard drives and the system files to determine whether and when modifications occurred, according to the Ecuadorian analysts.
The Ecuadorian professors also pointed out that Interpol has now way of determining whether Colombian officials modified, deleted, or created documents between March 1 and 3, as the report contends. In fact, by the Colombian government’s own admission, its handling of the computer devices during those days did not conform to internationally recognized standards on the chain of custody when dealing with forensic evidence. Interpol’s contention that the devices were not modified is based on nothing more than faith in Colombia’s sincerity, argued the professors.
They called on Interpol to release a copy of the hard disks so that independent analysts could investigate. Interpol’s findings have been presented in two reports: one public and another classified report that was shared only with the Colombian government.
Interpol’s report is the latest ingredient in Colombia’s media war against Ecuador and Venezuela after the March attack. While it is far from clear what will happen next, it is plain to see that Colombia is confident that the international media will continue to print their preferred interpretation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Denvir (daniel.denvir(AT)gmail.com) is an activist and freelance journalist living in Quito, Ecuador. His writing has appeared in Labor Notes, Portland Street Roots and Upsidedownworld.org. He works with the Latin American Information Agency (www.alainet.org).
What Israel Has Done to Palestinian Children With U.S. Taxpayers' Dollars
Monday, May 26, 2008
Transparency International is not transparent.
Read Calvin Tucker in The Guardian.
Transparency International apparently has trumped up a "report" condemning Venezuela's national oil company PDVSA for lack of transparency, ie. not issuing reports regarding its finances. The report, put together by TI associated in Venezuela who have a track record that includes support for the 2002 coup against Venezuela's elected government is just plain untrue. Mr. Tucker has sought an explanation from Transparency International to no avail.
Transparency International apparently has trumped up a "report" condemning Venezuela's national oil company PDVSA for lack of transparency, ie. not issuing reports regarding its finances. The report, put together by TI associated in Venezuela who have a track record that includes support for the 2002 coup against Venezuela's elected government is just plain untrue. Mr. Tucker has sought an explanation from Transparency International to no avail.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Mayor Michael Bloomberg becoming a testy biatch
This post has been moved to the blog Oy Vey, oy Gevalt, Mayor Michael Bloomberg Blues
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Transparency International Exposed For Venezuela Falsehoods
Transparency international is quoted in the major western media as though it's releases were from The Diety. This is a mistake. Oil Wars blog has exposed total dishonesty and/or ineptitude in TI's recent report attacking Venezuela's state owned oil company PDVSA. Click here to read what Oil Wars has.
Here is a sample of Oil War's devastating exposure of Transparency International's gross dissinformation campaign against Venezuela and its state oil company:
That is right - according to Transparency International PDVSA does not say how much it pays in royalties, taxes, what its revenues are, what its production costs are, does not have audited financial statements, etc., etc.It is simply stunning that Transparency International would have that as its finding for PDVSA because in point of fact PDVSA makes all that information and more public.
Just go to their web-site, click on "Informes Financieros" (on the right hand side of the page), and you will all their audited financial statements from 2007 back to 2000. Open any of those financial statements and you will find for that year ALL of the information that Transparency International claims PDSVSA doesn't make public. Just for the hell of it I opened the 2007 audit report and looked how it compared to T.I.'s claims: T.I. claims PDVSA does not disclose what it pays in royalties.
Really? On page 127 of its financial statement it says it paid $21.9 billion in 2007T.I claims PDVSA does not disclose what taxes it pays to the government.Really? On page 127 it says it $5.017 billion in ISLR taxes.T.I. claims PDVSA does not disclose what its revenues are.Really? On page 127 its says that revenues were $96.242 billion in 2007 (and they even break it down by external and internal sales if the idiots at T.I cared to know).
T.I claims PDVSA doesn't disclose its production costs.Really? On page 127 it says they had $14.9 billion in operational costs in 2007.
T.I. claims PDVSA doesn't disclose its development and exploration costs.Really? They are on page 35 and for 2007 came to over $11 billion.
T.I. claims that PDVSA doesn't have its accounts done in accordance with international accounting standards.Really? On page 148 the auditors say the financial statement was prepared in accordance with "international accounting standards".
T.I. claims that PDVSA doesn't have an audit done by external auditors in accordance with international standards.Really? On page 148 we see that the financial statements were audited by Alcaraz, Cabrera, and Vazquez, the Venezuelan affiliate of the U.S. accounting firm KPMG and they clearly state that the audit was performed in accordance within "international auditing standards". I could go on and on with this but I think the point should be abundantly clear.Transparency International said that PDVSA has a "Low" level of transparency based on claims that information is not made public when in fact that very information is very easily found in a couple of minutes on PDVSA's web-site.
Clearly this report by Transparency International is fatally flawed and its conclusions cannot be taken as valid because they are based on data which is wrong.If Transparency Internional was a serious and honest organization they would retract this report, redo it, make sure they got their underlying data right, and then release a new ranking. Then, and only then, might this ranking be worth something.
How could they have messed this up so badly? Two things are worth noting.First, for some unknown reason Transparency International farmed out the actual data collection to consultants. From page 34 of the Tranparency International report:
The data were gathered by consultants. The data-gathering process did not include interviews with any of the executives or staff of the companies, but was based on desk-research of publically available company documentation.
Maybe that explains it - without actually speaking to any PDVSA staff the consultants couldn't figure out that to get financial information they should click on the "Informes Financieros" button on the web-page!! [As a side note, this use of un-named and un-accountable "consultants" bears an striking similarity to the bogus exit polls during the Venezuelan recall referendum carried under the name of a prominent U.S. polling firm but which turned out to have actually been done by the an stridently anti-Chavez NGO called SUMATE. Maybe T.I. like to be able to say "oops, not our fault, the consultants messed up"]
Here is a sample of Oil War's devastating exposure of Transparency International's gross dissinformation campaign against Venezuela and its state oil company:
That is right - according to Transparency International PDVSA does not say how much it pays in royalties, taxes, what its revenues are, what its production costs are, does not have audited financial statements, etc., etc.It is simply stunning that Transparency International would have that as its finding for PDVSA because in point of fact PDVSA makes all that information and more public.
Just go to their web-site, click on "Informes Financieros" (on the right hand side of the page), and you will all their audited financial statements from 2007 back to 2000. Open any of those financial statements and you will find for that year ALL of the information that Transparency International claims PDSVSA doesn't make public. Just for the hell of it I opened the 2007 audit report and looked how it compared to T.I.'s claims: T.I. claims PDVSA does not disclose what it pays in royalties.
Really? On page 127 of its financial statement it says it paid $21.9 billion in 2007T.I claims PDVSA does not disclose what taxes it pays to the government.Really? On page 127 it says it $5.017 billion in ISLR taxes.T.I. claims PDVSA does not disclose what its revenues are.Really? On page 127 its says that revenues were $96.242 billion in 2007 (and they even break it down by external and internal sales if the idiots at T.I cared to know).
T.I claims PDVSA doesn't disclose its production costs.Really? On page 127 it says they had $14.9 billion in operational costs in 2007.
T.I. claims PDVSA doesn't disclose its development and exploration costs.Really? They are on page 35 and for 2007 came to over $11 billion.
T.I. claims that PDVSA doesn't have its accounts done in accordance with international accounting standards.Really? On page 148 the auditors say the financial statement was prepared in accordance with "international accounting standards".
T.I. claims that PDVSA doesn't have an audit done by external auditors in accordance with international standards.Really? On page 148 we see that the financial statements were audited by Alcaraz, Cabrera, and Vazquez, the Venezuelan affiliate of the U.S. accounting firm KPMG and they clearly state that the audit was performed in accordance within "international auditing standards". I could go on and on with this but I think the point should be abundantly clear.Transparency International said that PDVSA has a "Low" level of transparency based on claims that information is not made public when in fact that very information is very easily found in a couple of minutes on PDVSA's web-site.
Clearly this report by Transparency International is fatally flawed and its conclusions cannot be taken as valid because they are based on data which is wrong.If Transparency Internional was a serious and honest organization they would retract this report, redo it, make sure they got their underlying data right, and then release a new ranking. Then, and only then, might this ranking be worth something.
How could they have messed this up so badly? Two things are worth noting.First, for some unknown reason Transparency International farmed out the actual data collection to consultants. From page 34 of the Tranparency International report:
The data were gathered by consultants. The data-gathering process did not include interviews with any of the executives or staff of the companies, but was based on desk-research of publically available company documentation.
Maybe that explains it - without actually speaking to any PDVSA staff the consultants couldn't figure out that to get financial information they should click on the "Informes Financieros" button on the web-page!! [As a side note, this use of un-named and un-accountable "consultants" bears an striking similarity to the bogus exit polls during the Venezuelan recall referendum carried under the name of a prominent U.S. polling firm but which turned out to have actually been done by the an stridently anti-Chavez NGO called SUMATE. Maybe T.I. like to be able to say "oops, not our fault, the consultants messed up"]
Friday, May 09, 2008
Sean Bell murdered, hypocrisy lives on
Once again a court has ruled that when a New York cop feels afraid he may rapid fire dozens of bullets in any direction. That's the gist of the Sean Bell verdict as it was the gist of the Amadou Diallo verdict.
Of course cops fear black men, even black cops do. Mix this predisposition with alcohol and it's a serious problem. The scared cops who fired off fifty shots at three unarmed men had been drinking at the club, we'll never know how much they had been drinking because after the shooting their cohorts didn't give them a breathalizer to see if they were impaired, though the world knows that Sean Bell had twice the legal limit of blood alcohol for driving. According to Wikipedia, some of the cops shots " hit nearby homes and a train station. Five of the seven officers investigating the club were involved in the shooting. Detective Paul Headley fired one round, Officer Michael Carey fired three, Officer Marc Cooper fired four, Officer Gescard Isnora fired eleven, and Officer Michael Oliver fired thirty one times. [24][25][26]...Surveillance cameras at the Port Authority's Jamaica AirTrain station a half block away from the shooting site recorded one of the bullets fired by the officers shattering through the station's glass window and narrowly missing a civilian and two Port Authority patrolmen who were standing on the station's elevated platform.[20][31]"
Do cops drink on the job even when they are not doing undercover work in a bar or night club?
Here it is in the New York Daily News:
"SUSPEND DETECTIVES IN PARADE BOOZE RAP
BY ALISON GENDAR
Tuesday, June 14th 2005, 6:51AM
TWO NYPD detectives were suspended for drinking while on duty at the Puerto Rican Day Parade, cops said yesterday.
Detectives Edmond Olivacce and Bernard Dixon, both of Queens Narcotics, were working the parade in uniform near E. 76th St. and Fifth Ave..."
But most of them are fine upstanding selfless men who serve the community, right?
I dunno...
"THE SCANDAL AT MIDTOWN SOUTH: THE OVERVIEW; Police Used Brothel So Often, Madam Got Worried
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E7DD1330F93BA25754C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=
By DAN BARRY
Published: July 18, 1998
For as long as 15 years, New York police officers from the precinct responsible for eradicating much of the tawdriness from Times Square went to a neighborhood brothel for free sex, in uniform and while on duty, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and police officials acknowledged yesterday...
" One officer yesterday said the sexual activity was common knowledge in Midtown South. 'Look, everyone in here knew about it,'' said a six-year veteran of the precinct, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''We called it 'the apartment.' Should the bosses have known? Probably. But it's not like people are going to tell them. Not like these guys were dealing with drug dealers or hit men. They weren't hurting anyone. It was no big deal.'
Investigators said that officers even held occasional parties at the brothel, and that as many as 20 officers from Midtown South attended one such affair. "
The whole of Midtown South had to know about this. For one thing, in stead of patrolling the cops were sleeping, drinking beer and screwing gratis undocumented Mexican women who retained all of two hundred dollars a week for themselves.
So here we have a protitution investigation turn into a fifty shot disaster.
You know it's common knowledge that the upscale strip clubs of Manhattan are brothels where sex is sold and drugs can be located. Not to mention the underground...
Put five boozed up detectives with license to kill if scared, in the Hustler Club, or Scores, or Hot Lap Dance Club and see how that flies in the New York Times editorial boardroom...
Put four potentially frightened cops on a rush hour subway platform, give them automatic weapons and dogs that bite and that's a really serious problem. Michael Bloomberg thinks it's a good thing to do. And Michael Bloomberg rides the subway.
Michael Bloomberg has lots of opinions. He says it's okay that construction work proceed in spite of numerous serious safety violations.
Bloomberg's crazy rule that school kids' cell phones can be confiscated was being quietly ignored and circumvented by school officials on the ground who have schools to run, rather than a big mouth to run. Ultimately the usually servile New York City Council overturned his billionaire arrogant, no idea of what life is like, head up his ass, stupid rule.
More about prostitution and such:
Anyone with a brain knows that Eliot Spitzer was brought down and given a fate perhaps worse than death (he has kids for God's sake!) in his public humiliation not because he had sex with protitutes but because he messed with some very big boys.
My question is this: If Eliot Spitzer was customer number nine at the Emperor's Club online brothel, who were customers one through eight? Ten through twenty? Does it matter? Why should police, prosecutors and judges concern themselves with private activity among consenting adults? Now the cops who abused the Mexican slave women for fiteen years, they should have gone to prison for a long long time, but when an adult woman (or man) decides that s/he wants to trade sex for money why should that concern the government?
Isn't it a stupid wate of time to chase down these women (and men) and lock them up? Isn't it cruel?
And given the state of New York's economy (job growth negative, the main money coming in is from overseas, tourism is more and more important) why shouldn't we have a zone here to put Nevada and Amsterdam in the shade? Add to that decriminalizing marijuana, at least in a given zone like it used to be in Manhattan, and we'd have to build more hotels and another airport to accomodate the Europeans and others anxious to enjoy our cheap dollar and what it can buy. (Let's hope that by that time the Buildings Department actually protects the public and construction worklers).
My sympathy is with Sean Bell, his family, his friends, those who love him still. It's crazy and it's scary and it has to be changed, but it's legal for cops to shoot wildly when firghtened, even after drinking.
Dancer
Poster
Buy at AllPosters.com
NYPD like wine, women, song, shooting
Of course cops fear black men, even black cops do. Mix this predisposition with alcohol and it's a serious problem. The scared cops who fired off fifty shots at three unarmed men had been drinking at the club, we'll never know how much they had been drinking because after the shooting their cohorts didn't give them a breathalizer to see if they were impaired, though the world knows that Sean Bell had twice the legal limit of blood alcohol for driving. According to Wikipedia, some of the cops shots " hit nearby homes and a train station. Five of the seven officers investigating the club were involved in the shooting. Detective Paul Headley fired one round, Officer Michael Carey fired three, Officer Marc Cooper fired four, Officer Gescard Isnora fired eleven, and Officer Michael Oliver fired thirty one times. [24][25][26]...Surveillance cameras at the Port Authority's Jamaica AirTrain station a half block away from the shooting site recorded one of the bullets fired by the officers shattering through the station's glass window and narrowly missing a civilian and two Port Authority patrolmen who were standing on the station's elevated platform.[20][31]"
Do cops drink on the job even when they are not doing undercover work in a bar or night club?
Here it is in the New York Daily News:
"SUSPEND DETECTIVES IN PARADE BOOZE RAP
BY ALISON GENDAR
Tuesday, June 14th 2005, 6:51AM
TWO NYPD detectives were suspended for drinking while on duty at the Puerto Rican Day Parade, cops said yesterday.
Detectives Edmond Olivacce and Bernard Dixon, both of Queens Narcotics, were working the parade in uniform near E. 76th St. and Fifth Ave..."
But most of them are fine upstanding selfless men who serve the community, right?
I dunno...
"THE SCANDAL AT MIDTOWN SOUTH: THE OVERVIEW; Police Used Brothel So Often, Madam Got Worried
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E7DD1330F93BA25754C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=
By DAN BARRY
Published: July 18, 1998
For as long as 15 years, New York police officers from the precinct responsible for eradicating much of the tawdriness from Times Square went to a neighborhood brothel for free sex, in uniform and while on duty, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and police officials acknowledged yesterday...
" One officer yesterday said the sexual activity was common knowledge in Midtown South. 'Look, everyone in here knew about it,'' said a six-year veteran of the precinct, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''We called it 'the apartment.' Should the bosses have known? Probably. But it's not like people are going to tell them. Not like these guys were dealing with drug dealers or hit men. They weren't hurting anyone. It was no big deal.'
Investigators said that officers even held occasional parties at the brothel, and that as many as 20 officers from Midtown South attended one such affair. "
The whole of Midtown South had to know about this. For one thing, in stead of patrolling the cops were sleeping, drinking beer and screwing gratis undocumented Mexican women who retained all of two hundred dollars a week for themselves.
So here we have a protitution investigation turn into a fifty shot disaster.
You know it's common knowledge that the upscale strip clubs of Manhattan are brothels where sex is sold and drugs can be located. Not to mention the underground...
Put five boozed up detectives with license to kill if scared, in the Hustler Club, or Scores, or Hot Lap Dance Club and see how that flies in the New York Times editorial boardroom...
Put four potentially frightened cops on a rush hour subway platform, give them automatic weapons and dogs that bite and that's a really serious problem. Michael Bloomberg thinks it's a good thing to do. And Michael Bloomberg rides the subway.
Michael Bloomberg has lots of opinions. He says it's okay that construction work proceed in spite of numerous serious safety violations.
Bloomberg's crazy rule that school kids' cell phones can be confiscated was being quietly ignored and circumvented by school officials on the ground who have schools to run, rather than a big mouth to run. Ultimately the usually servile New York City Council overturned his billionaire arrogant, no idea of what life is like, head up his ass, stupid rule.
More about prostitution and such:
Anyone with a brain knows that Eliot Spitzer was brought down and given a fate perhaps worse than death (he has kids for God's sake!) in his public humiliation not because he had sex with protitutes but because he messed with some very big boys.
My question is this: If Eliot Spitzer was customer number nine at the Emperor's Club online brothel, who were customers one through eight? Ten through twenty? Does it matter? Why should police, prosecutors and judges concern themselves with private activity among consenting adults? Now the cops who abused the Mexican slave women for fiteen years, they should have gone to prison for a long long time, but when an adult woman (or man) decides that s/he wants to trade sex for money why should that concern the government?
Isn't it a stupid wate of time to chase down these women (and men) and lock them up? Isn't it cruel?
And given the state of New York's economy (job growth negative, the main money coming in is from overseas, tourism is more and more important) why shouldn't we have a zone here to put Nevada and Amsterdam in the shade? Add to that decriminalizing marijuana, at least in a given zone like it used to be in Manhattan, and we'd have to build more hotels and another airport to accomodate the Europeans and others anxious to enjoy our cheap dollar and what it can buy. (Let's hope that by that time the Buildings Department actually protects the public and construction worklers).
My sympathy is with Sean Bell, his family, his friends, those who love him still. It's crazy and it's scary and it has to be changed, but it's legal for cops to shoot wildly when firghtened, even after drinking.
Dancer
Poster
Buy at AllPosters.com
NYPD like wine, women, song, shooting
Get A Life, Be Happy
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/Terrorism.New.York.2.244966.html
Bloomberg On JFK Plot: 'Stop Worrying, Get A Life'
Featured Slideshow: Gossip! Latest Celebrity Tabloid Rumors
by Marcia Kramer NEW YORK (CBS) ― While questions continue to arise about the alleged plot to blow up a fuel pipeline beneath JFK Airport and surrounding neighborhoods, some are questioning why New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn't had a louder voice since the plot was foiled on Saturday.On Monday, Bloomberg finally weighed in, but his response was not what some would have expected."There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life," he said.
Giuliani's private, personal religion.
Black and White Nude
Poster
Buy at AllPosters.com
Does Giuliani like this stuff?
No one loves the spotlight more than New York's ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani, and of course not just anyone was at St. Patrick's Cathedral last week with Pope Bededict. It just so happens that the Cardinal of Rudy's church in these parts, a man named Egan, had told Rudy, or got Rudy to agree, not to ever take Holy Communion. Catholics have their beliefs. One is that abortion is a sin and that if the Cardinal says you can't take the Church's communion, well you can't. Rudy advocates a woman's right to have an abortion. I happen to agree with him, but I don't go around calling myself a Roman Catholic and I don't sneak or seek communion of the Catholic Church. But Rudy couldn't resist and so a priest who hadn't gotten the memo let Rudy sneak communion at the Cathedral when the Pope was there.
Rudy, bad boy! And since Rudy made the agreement he just broke in public with Cardinal Egan he's gone on to have a very public open adulterous affair and then gone and divorced his second wife to marry his adulterous consort. No problem with me and my personal religion but all no-no's for good Catholics who take communion.
Rudy has a right to his private personal religion and the Catholic Church has a right to decide who takes its communion and who is and is not a good Catholic. Giuliani, though, is shameless.
Or Does Giuliani like this stuff? Or maybe both?
"Suicide" Madam about her imminent demise, US prisons
Loaded - Peep Show
Poster
Buy at AllPosters.com
Most men like this stuff, like it alot, but Eliot Spitzer has been destroyed, his wife and children traumatized, Deborah Jeane Palfrey either driven to suicide for her knowledge of the horrors of the US prison system that awaited her or else perhaps murdered, while clients one through eight in the Spitzer case are anonymous and Senator Vitter continues his "service."
DC Madam Predicted She Would Be Suicided Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, May 1, 2008DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be “suicided” on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today.
“If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized,” she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, “Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me,” said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.
During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder.
Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation’s capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them.
“No I’m not planning to commit suicide,” Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show on her last appearance, “I’m planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government,” she said.
Developing…..
////////////
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24468091/
If indeed Ms. Palfrey was driven to suicide it is still a form of murder. While Ms. Palfrey faced a horrible prospect of imprisonment and all the violence and degradation she already knew goes with that in the USA, while her clients were getting away scott free, even remaining in the US Senate.
Here's food for thought:
Eliot Spitzer, a crusader against Wall Street corruption, Jewish but married to a Baptist, he clearly has a weakness for sex with young women with no emotional strings attached as does God Fearing Republican Senator Vitter who is "sorry" "repentant" and a good ole boy...
Thursday, May 08, 2008
A Solicitation in Support of Genocide
Is it not the goal of the Wiesenthal Center to “Never Forget”? Should that Center be concerned that a small but powerful group in Israel has executed plans to deprive Palestinians of their homes, their natural resources, their way of life, and their lives? Should that Center be working to change the government in Israel so that a new and peaceful agenda could be enacted? Should this Center that claims to be a champion of the oppressed demand of the United Nations that the Israeli government obey the resolutions that have been brought against it for its illegal actions, all 160 of them passed by the UNGA and 30 passed by the UNSC? Should the Wiesenthal Center be the first to recognize that Israel is not an equal among nations since it has defied every civilized international law of aggression, occupation and oppression in its dealings with the Palestinian people, the central tenets of the Geneva Accords, and the humanitarian doctrine all nations of the UN have accepted, the International Declaration of Human Rights? It should. That is its purpose, not the justification of evil. - Dr. Bill Cook
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William A. Cook
World Prout Assembly
March 22, 2008
03/22/08 - "World Prout Assembly" - Within days of the fifth anniversary of “Shock and Awe,” I received a solicitation from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to help “Combat Global Hate against the Jewish People.” Rabbi Marvin Heir, Dean and Founder of the Center, presents a frightening picture of “institutionalized hate” that “has Jews feeling threatened and demonized. Many living in fear.” He decries in militaristic terms the “blatant attack” on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, the “growing campaign against Israel” that “equates Zionism with racism and urges the elimination of the Zionist movement.” He then declares that the Wiesenthal Center “will go head-to-head with the haters and extremists, fighting their lies with truth,” from every one of their headquarters in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Paris, Buenos Aires and Jerusalem.” With the forces of the Wiesenthal Center and its headquarters around the globe enlisted “…we can stand … in this noble –and absolutely crucial – battle against the forces of hate. This is a struggle none of us can afford to lose.”
Would that the good Rabbi sought our love, concern, and compassion for all the afflicted on the earth; sought to mobilize human sympathy for the oppressed, the homeless, and the starving; sought to ignite heartfelt passion for beliefs that unite, not divide; sought a dialogue with those that see exclusivity a danger, not something to be celebrated; sought to bring together those that find fault with disproportionate force used against the defenseless; sought to understand the dishonesty of those that defy International Law and the Resolutions of the United Nations while they exert pressure to blunt criticism of that defiance; sought to seek solutions with those who criticize the actions of the Israeli State since they see injustice in Israel’s occupation of Palestine; sought to create an atmosphere that encourages dialogue the better to find solutions, not an atmosphere of conflict; sought, in short, the truth.
Seven years ago, before the regimes of Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush took power, the Wiesenthal Center had no need for such a solicitation. Seven years ago before Sharon and his entourage of 1000 desecrated the al Aqsa Mosque, before the explosion of illegal settlements poured over 400,000 immigrants on to Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza, before Sharon’s introduction of the lawless State that rid itself of rights of due process reverting to the barbaric practice of assassinations without arrest or trial by jury(228 targeted and 377 ‘accidentally killed), before the erection of the heinous, inhumane, and illegal Wall of Fear, before the exertion of disproportionate force that has cost the lives of 2400 infants each year in Palestine through deliberate, intentional and war criminal actions (see UNICEF website), before 4,604 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since September 29, 2000, a number greater than America’s loss of soldiers in Iraq, most of them civilians (2113-3044), many of them children (982) [figures from B’tselem], before Sharon’s ruthless siege with attending massacres of Jenin and Rafah, before his merciless killing of a wheelchair bound blind quadriplegic cleric in a crowded street as he and his hapless friends emerged from a Mosque after prayers, before indifference to human life became the standard of the Israel government that inflicted ID cards, colored license plates, 500 check points, humiliating lines to force delays, babies delivered in the streets because the mother was denied an ambulance, before racism became imbedded in the IDF mentality, before George W. Bush released Sharon to his savagery, there was no outcry of anti-Semitism against Jews, only that inflicted on their Semite brothers and sisters in Palestine.
Given this litany of inhumane behavior inflicted by the State of Israel on a population that has been systematically squeezed into ever smaller Bantustans of overcrowded, dilapidated, rubble strewn landscapes, deprived of water and sanitation, deprived of control of their own lives and resources since all ingress and egress is controlled by the occupying forces, since their economy has been trashed and unemployment has risen above 50% in the West Bank and 70% in Gaza, since they have no military forces, no government that is allowed to govern without US and Israeli intervention, and no access to the outside world, can anyone not expect normal people who seek knowledge about the oppression of the Palestinian people to be critical of the Zionist Israeli government and of the Jews that do not criticize?
Today as I write this account, Gaza remains under siege. Yet here is a Guardian report from January 23, 2008, a month ago. Add two month’s horror to this picture. “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and – some would say – encouragement of the international community. An international community that professes to uphold the inherent dignity of every human being must not allow this to happen.” (Karen Konig AbuZayd in Gaza City). Who is responsible for this human disaster? The Jews of Israel. Who knows the suffering of forced imprisonment, starvation, torture and death? The Jews of Israel. Who proclaims a religion enriched by a moral strength that finds compassion the route to survival with all peoples? The Jews of Israel. Why then this unparalleled effort to destroy? Why this heinous approach that suffocates slowly, acid-like as it eats away at the mind and emotions of its victims, calculatingly punishing the infant, the young, the mother, the elderly, the infirm –an indifference as brutal as any undertaken by the most barbaric civilizations our planet has ever experienced. Why the Jews? Why now? What horror has undermined their faith, turned it into a killing machine that turns a blind eye to the entreaties of the world that they have mercy on the Palestinians?
“Israeli officials have publically embraced and defended their totalitarian policies of cutting off electricity generation in the Gaza strip, thus drastically reducing or eliminating the supply of safe water, halting all sewage treatment, electricity for hospitals, refrigerators, food and vaccine storage, home, and school and business lighting. The Israeli Supreme Court has approved this policy of mass, brutal collective punishment of over 1.4 million people. (Harretz, February 2, 2008).” (James Petras, February 2008, War without End). The Supreme Court is not alone in approving collective punishment; Harretz marks this remarkable occurrence: “ … several rabbis led by Rabbi Lior have issued a precedent setting halakhic ruling that Israel must shoot civilian populations in areas from whence attacks on Jewish communities originate.” (20/03/2008).
There exists, however, true Jews, those that know the value of life because they and their families have suffered severely to maintain it. Gideon Polya, an editor with MWC News, writes “Comparison of the Palestinian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust in Hungary is appropriate.” And he continues, “Whereas the Jewish Holocaust involved rapid, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, race based extermination for Nazi and Nazi collaborator benefit and gratification, the Palestinian Genocide has involved slow, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, ethnic cleansing for Zionist lebensraum.” This from a man that in his own words is “… an anti-racist, humanitarian, agnostic, Humanist scientist whose family has suffered racist genocide, dispossession and exile.” (MWC News, February 2008).
The Jerusalem Post reported in January that “The United Nations Human Rights Council condemned Israel for the 15th time in less than two years on Thursday.” Yitzhak Levanon, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, commented on this development, “We have witnessed another round of the circus…I think that this is a farce.” How unfortunate that the Israeli State feels chagrined to be castigated by its inferiors; perhaps it should reflect on its behavior in Gaza, to put its actions in parallel with those they suffered under the German genocide and ask themselves to remember, for that was their admonishment to the world in 1945.
And the world community responded on behalf of the Jews who suffered under Hitler even to the point of providing them a homeland? “Never forget,” they were admonished, and they did not. They look now at another people that have been systematically expelled, murdered, imprisoned without charge, tortured, and brutally slaughtered with the most horrible of weapons including unmanned bulldozers that demolish their homes, unmanned planes that fire missiles down crowded streets and into apartment buildings, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and cluster bombs, and they remember, “Never forget!” Never forget” lest this population, the Palestinians and the Lebanese, find themselves ethnically cleansed from their respective homelands to satisfy the Zionist agenda to turn these lands into greater Israel.
Why criticize the critics of Israel? Praise them. They have accepted the admonition of the real Jews, “Never Forget.” They have made public a brutal and calculated ethnic cleansing that exposes the Zionist forces that control in Israel, control not just the Palestinians and the press but the Jews themselves. That reality has been their modus operandi since 1939 when they turned against their benefactors, the British Mandate government that had made possible the implementation of the Balfour Declaration without which Israel would not exist. To deny this history is to deny the facts as presented in recent histories of Palestine by Israeli historians using the State archives, historians like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, and the corroborating documents from the Rhodes House Library of the Bodleian that uses seized Jewish documents to corroborate their investigative reports. These archival documents contain the official ethnic cleansing plans of the Zionist “Consultancy” that ruled in Palestine, a determined system of attack, killing, expulsion, and destruction of the Palestinian homeland.
No laws of the British mandate government, no international laws or agreements, no regulations enacted or imposed by the Yishuv or Jewish Agency could make the Zionist forces conform against their will. No law but Zionist law. Today’s Israeli government has individuals in it like Avigdor Lieberman who proclaim these same objectives. Indeed, a number of political parties hold to expulsion of the Arabs from the land of Palestine by force if necessary. Critics of Israel point to a danger in the world for Arabs, a concerted and systematized racist agenda to inflict harm on the Islamic people.
Is it not the goal of the Wiesenthal Center to “Never Forget”? Should that Center be concerned that a small but powerful group in Israel has executed plans to deprive Palestinians of their homes, their natural resources, their way of life, and their lives? Should that Center be working to change the government in Israel so that a new and peaceful agenda could be enacted? Should this Center that claims to be a champion of the oppressed demand of the United Nations that the Israeli government obey the resolutions that have been brought against it for its illegal actions, all 160 of them passed by the UNGA and 30 passed by the UNSC? Should the Wiesenthal Center be the first to recognize that Israel is not an equal among nations since it has defied every civilized international law of aggression, occupation and oppression in its dealings with the Palestinian people, the central tenets of the Geneva Accords, and the humanitarian doctrine all nations of the UN have accepted, the International Declaration of Human Rights? It should. That is its purpose, not the justification of evil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William A. Cook
World Prout Assembly
March 22, 2008
03/22/08 - "World Prout Assembly" - Within days of the fifth anniversary of “Shock and Awe,” I received a solicitation from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to help “Combat Global Hate against the Jewish People.” Rabbi Marvin Heir, Dean and Founder of the Center, presents a frightening picture of “institutionalized hate” that “has Jews feeling threatened and demonized. Many living in fear.” He decries in militaristic terms the “blatant attack” on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, the “growing campaign against Israel” that “equates Zionism with racism and urges the elimination of the Zionist movement.” He then declares that the Wiesenthal Center “will go head-to-head with the haters and extremists, fighting their lies with truth,” from every one of their headquarters in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Paris, Buenos Aires and Jerusalem.” With the forces of the Wiesenthal Center and its headquarters around the globe enlisted “…we can stand … in this noble –and absolutely crucial – battle against the forces of hate. This is a struggle none of us can afford to lose.”
Would that the good Rabbi sought our love, concern, and compassion for all the afflicted on the earth; sought to mobilize human sympathy for the oppressed, the homeless, and the starving; sought to ignite heartfelt passion for beliefs that unite, not divide; sought a dialogue with those that see exclusivity a danger, not something to be celebrated; sought to bring together those that find fault with disproportionate force used against the defenseless; sought to understand the dishonesty of those that defy International Law and the Resolutions of the United Nations while they exert pressure to blunt criticism of that defiance; sought to seek solutions with those who criticize the actions of the Israeli State since they see injustice in Israel’s occupation of Palestine; sought to create an atmosphere that encourages dialogue the better to find solutions, not an atmosphere of conflict; sought, in short, the truth.
Seven years ago, before the regimes of Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush took power, the Wiesenthal Center had no need for such a solicitation. Seven years ago before Sharon and his entourage of 1000 desecrated the al Aqsa Mosque, before the explosion of illegal settlements poured over 400,000 immigrants on to Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza, before Sharon’s introduction of the lawless State that rid itself of rights of due process reverting to the barbaric practice of assassinations without arrest or trial by jury(228 targeted and 377 ‘accidentally killed), before the erection of the heinous, inhumane, and illegal Wall of Fear, before the exertion of disproportionate force that has cost the lives of 2400 infants each year in Palestine through deliberate, intentional and war criminal actions (see UNICEF website), before 4,604 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since September 29, 2000, a number greater than America’s loss of soldiers in Iraq, most of them civilians (2113-3044), many of them children (982) [figures from B’tselem], before Sharon’s ruthless siege with attending massacres of Jenin and Rafah, before his merciless killing of a wheelchair bound blind quadriplegic cleric in a crowded street as he and his hapless friends emerged from a Mosque after prayers, before indifference to human life became the standard of the Israel government that inflicted ID cards, colored license plates, 500 check points, humiliating lines to force delays, babies delivered in the streets because the mother was denied an ambulance, before racism became imbedded in the IDF mentality, before George W. Bush released Sharon to his savagery, there was no outcry of anti-Semitism against Jews, only that inflicted on their Semite brothers and sisters in Palestine.
Given this litany of inhumane behavior inflicted by the State of Israel on a population that has been systematically squeezed into ever smaller Bantustans of overcrowded, dilapidated, rubble strewn landscapes, deprived of water and sanitation, deprived of control of their own lives and resources since all ingress and egress is controlled by the occupying forces, since their economy has been trashed and unemployment has risen above 50% in the West Bank and 70% in Gaza, since they have no military forces, no government that is allowed to govern without US and Israeli intervention, and no access to the outside world, can anyone not expect normal people who seek knowledge about the oppression of the Palestinian people to be critical of the Zionist Israeli government and of the Jews that do not criticize?
Today as I write this account, Gaza remains under siege. Yet here is a Guardian report from January 23, 2008, a month ago. Add two month’s horror to this picture. “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and – some would say – encouragement of the international community. An international community that professes to uphold the inherent dignity of every human being must not allow this to happen.” (Karen Konig AbuZayd in Gaza City). Who is responsible for this human disaster? The Jews of Israel. Who knows the suffering of forced imprisonment, starvation, torture and death? The Jews of Israel. Who proclaims a religion enriched by a moral strength that finds compassion the route to survival with all peoples? The Jews of Israel. Why then this unparalleled effort to destroy? Why this heinous approach that suffocates slowly, acid-like as it eats away at the mind and emotions of its victims, calculatingly punishing the infant, the young, the mother, the elderly, the infirm –an indifference as brutal as any undertaken by the most barbaric civilizations our planet has ever experienced. Why the Jews? Why now? What horror has undermined their faith, turned it into a killing machine that turns a blind eye to the entreaties of the world that they have mercy on the Palestinians?
“Israeli officials have publically embraced and defended their totalitarian policies of cutting off electricity generation in the Gaza strip, thus drastically reducing or eliminating the supply of safe water, halting all sewage treatment, electricity for hospitals, refrigerators, food and vaccine storage, home, and school and business lighting. The Israeli Supreme Court has approved this policy of mass, brutal collective punishment of over 1.4 million people. (Harretz, February 2, 2008).” (James Petras, February 2008, War without End). The Supreme Court is not alone in approving collective punishment; Harretz marks this remarkable occurrence: “ … several rabbis led by Rabbi Lior have issued a precedent setting halakhic ruling that Israel must shoot civilian populations in areas from whence attacks on Jewish communities originate.” (20/03/2008).
There exists, however, true Jews, those that know the value of life because they and their families have suffered severely to maintain it. Gideon Polya, an editor with MWC News, writes “Comparison of the Palestinian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust in Hungary is appropriate.” And he continues, “Whereas the Jewish Holocaust involved rapid, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, race based extermination for Nazi and Nazi collaborator benefit and gratification, the Palestinian Genocide has involved slow, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, ethnic cleansing for Zionist lebensraum.” This from a man that in his own words is “… an anti-racist, humanitarian, agnostic, Humanist scientist whose family has suffered racist genocide, dispossession and exile.” (MWC News, February 2008).
The Jerusalem Post reported in January that “The United Nations Human Rights Council condemned Israel for the 15th time in less than two years on Thursday.” Yitzhak Levanon, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, commented on this development, “We have witnessed another round of the circus…I think that this is a farce.” How unfortunate that the Israeli State feels chagrined to be castigated by its inferiors; perhaps it should reflect on its behavior in Gaza, to put its actions in parallel with those they suffered under the German genocide and ask themselves to remember, for that was their admonishment to the world in 1945.
And the world community responded on behalf of the Jews who suffered under Hitler even to the point of providing them a homeland? “Never forget,” they were admonished, and they did not. They look now at another people that have been systematically expelled, murdered, imprisoned without charge, tortured, and brutally slaughtered with the most horrible of weapons including unmanned bulldozers that demolish their homes, unmanned planes that fire missiles down crowded streets and into apartment buildings, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and cluster bombs, and they remember, “Never forget!” Never forget” lest this population, the Palestinians and the Lebanese, find themselves ethnically cleansed from their respective homelands to satisfy the Zionist agenda to turn these lands into greater Israel.
Why criticize the critics of Israel? Praise them. They have accepted the admonition of the real Jews, “Never Forget.” They have made public a brutal and calculated ethnic cleansing that exposes the Zionist forces that control in Israel, control not just the Palestinians and the press but the Jews themselves. That reality has been their modus operandi since 1939 when they turned against their benefactors, the British Mandate government that had made possible the implementation of the Balfour Declaration without which Israel would not exist. To deny this history is to deny the facts as presented in recent histories of Palestine by Israeli historians using the State archives, historians like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, and the corroborating documents from the Rhodes House Library of the Bodleian that uses seized Jewish documents to corroborate their investigative reports. These archival documents contain the official ethnic cleansing plans of the Zionist “Consultancy” that ruled in Palestine, a determined system of attack, killing, expulsion, and destruction of the Palestinian homeland.
No laws of the British mandate government, no international laws or agreements, no regulations enacted or imposed by the Yishuv or Jewish Agency could make the Zionist forces conform against their will. No law but Zionist law. Today’s Israeli government has individuals in it like Avigdor Lieberman who proclaim these same objectives. Indeed, a number of political parties hold to expulsion of the Arabs from the land of Palestine by force if necessary. Critics of Israel point to a danger in the world for Arabs, a concerted and systematized racist agenda to inflict harm on the Islamic people.
Is it not the goal of the Wiesenthal Center to “Never Forget”? Should that Center be concerned that a small but powerful group in Israel has executed plans to deprive Palestinians of their homes, their natural resources, their way of life, and their lives? Should that Center be working to change the government in Israel so that a new and peaceful agenda could be enacted? Should this Center that claims to be a champion of the oppressed demand of the United Nations that the Israeli government obey the resolutions that have been brought against it for its illegal actions, all 160 of them passed by the UNGA and 30 passed by the UNSC? Should the Wiesenthal Center be the first to recognize that Israel is not an equal among nations since it has defied every civilized international law of aggression, occupation and oppression in its dealings with the Palestinian people, the central tenets of the Geneva Accords, and the humanitarian doctrine all nations of the UN have accepted, the International Declaration of Human Rights? It should. That is its purpose, not the justification of evil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israel's "Right to Exist"
Israel and its mouthpieces around the world demand that Hamas recognize a "right to exist" for the Jews Only State called Israel.
Hamas, which is not a government or a State, says that it is willing to enter a truce period with Israel and during the truce to live side by side with Israel, within its generally recognized international boundaries. These of course exclude the territories called the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem (an internationally recognized "international city")
No State has a "right to exist", let alone a racist one built on the dispossession of inhabitants, and the making into stateless people millions of natives.
Did Yugoslavia have a right to exist?
Did the German Democratic Republic have a right to exist?
Czechoslovakia?
Does Mexico have a "right" to Texas? California? Colorado? Utah? Arizona? New Mexico?
If one considers that all the land ruled by Israel is in fact Israel, then Jews are a minority there. Why should Jews have special rights there? Why should Jews living anywhere on earth, even Harlem, be able to claim citizenship to Israel "by right?" I have renounced my "right" to be an Israeli here on this blog:
http://fatoldjewishguywholivesintheprojects.blogspot.com/2005/12/about-my-right-to-return.html
So Israel, or "Israel" or "Jews Only State" I guess some sort of congratulations are in order, you've made it to sixty years in "existence." Yeah, mazeltov. If your leaders are intelligent, they'll take up Hamas' truce offer and then "Israel" and Palestine could live side by side just like North and South Korea, or China and Taiwan. You'd have time to come to terms with your neighbors by your deeds.
Hamas, which is not a government or a State, says that it is willing to enter a truce period with Israel and during the truce to live side by side with Israel, within its generally recognized international boundaries. These of course exclude the territories called the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem (an internationally recognized "international city")
No State has a "right to exist", let alone a racist one built on the dispossession of inhabitants, and the making into stateless people millions of natives.
Did Yugoslavia have a right to exist?
Did the German Democratic Republic have a right to exist?
Czechoslovakia?
Does Mexico have a "right" to Texas? California? Colorado? Utah? Arizona? New Mexico?
If one considers that all the land ruled by Israel is in fact Israel, then Jews are a minority there. Why should Jews have special rights there? Why should Jews living anywhere on earth, even Harlem, be able to claim citizenship to Israel "by right?" I have renounced my "right" to be an Israeli here on this blog:
http://fatoldjewishguywholivesintheprojects.blogspot.com/2005/12/about-my-right-to-return.html
So Israel, or "Israel" or "Jews Only State" I guess some sort of congratulations are in order, you've made it to sixty years in "existence." Yeah, mazeltov. If your leaders are intelligent, they'll take up Hamas' truce offer and then "Israel" and Palestine could live side by side just like North and South Korea, or China and Taiwan. You'd have time to come to terms with your neighbors by your deeds.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Are You Desperate Enough To Be A Child Protective Specialist?
If you ride the subway in New York you may have seen the ads, and they're online too. New York City's Administration For Children's Services is once again on the lookout for cannon fodder, frontline troops in their war against parental rights and authority, the poor and "minority" communities.
If you are considering becoming a Child Protective Specialist why not first ask people in the community if they respect ACS, if they respect the people who work for ACS and if they believe that ACS serves the interests of New York City's children? Don't ask on East End Avenue or West End Avenue, because ACS just about never impinges on the well to do. Ask people who are shopping on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, or Fordham Road in The Bronx, or living in the housing projects which are the last refuges of the poor in Manhattan.
Google "John Mattingly is not Don Mattingly".
Read the Essence Magazine article on ACS and what it did to helpess children .
Read about their lawlessness. Ask your City Council representative what happened to the investigation of this scandal. Ask yourself if you want to be associated with the organization that snatched hundreds of kids, ran experiments on them and cannot even give a credible number of how many kids they did this to.
Ask school teachers and guidance counselors if they respect ACS. Ask Emergency Room staff if they respect ACS. Ask people who work at ACs and are feverishly sending out resumes. Ask John Mattingly why ACS cannot retain its frontline staff.
If you are thinking about working at ACS, especially about becoming a "Child Protective Specialist" you should ask questions, and think again.
PS- I'll bet that in two years more than half of the staff they used for their commercials will be gone.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/career/work_cps_ads.shtml
If you are considering becoming a Child Protective Specialist why not first ask people in the community if they respect ACS, if they respect the people who work for ACS and if they believe that ACS serves the interests of New York City's children? Don't ask on East End Avenue or West End Avenue, because ACS just about never impinges on the well to do. Ask people who are shopping on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, or Fordham Road in The Bronx, or living in the housing projects which are the last refuges of the poor in Manhattan.
Google "John Mattingly is not Don Mattingly".
Read the Essence Magazine article on ACS and what it did to helpess children .
Read about their lawlessness. Ask your City Council representative what happened to the investigation of this scandal. Ask yourself if you want to be associated with the organization that snatched hundreds of kids, ran experiments on them and cannot even give a credible number of how many kids they did this to.
Ask school teachers and guidance counselors if they respect ACS. Ask Emergency Room staff if they respect ACS. Ask people who work at ACs and are feverishly sending out resumes. Ask John Mattingly why ACS cannot retain its frontline staff.
If you are thinking about working at ACS, especially about becoming a "Child Protective Specialist" you should ask questions, and think again.
PS- I'll bet that in two years more than half of the staff they used for their commercials will be gone.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/career/work_cps_ads.shtml
Thursday, May 01, 2008
MAY DAY, "MADE IN THE USA"
Thursday, May 1, 2008
When the immigrant-rights movement chose May Day for its big demonstrations last year, people shouldn't have been surprised. The worldwide workers' holiday was "Made in the U.S.A."
May Day's roots are deep in American history. In 1886, seeking the spark that would ignite the struggling labor movement, the fledgling American Federation of Labor called a general strike for the eight-hour day to begin on May Day, the carpenters' traditional day for setting wages and conditions.
As young men in the 1870s, AFL leaders like Sam Gompers and the Carpenters' P.J. McGuire -- both members of immigrant families in New York -- had seen a long building trades strike win the eight-hour-day, then lose it in the Crash of 1872. They also knew that the 10-hour day, won in the Philadelphia general strike of 1835, had energized labor before the Civil War.
With the expansion of the railroads, what had once been local and regional labor markets had become national. And by the 1880s it made sense to call for a national general strike for the eight-hour day.
Since wages were then paid by the day, not by the hour, such a strike would reduce working hours at a full day's pay. And that would leave working people more time for their families, for bettering themselves, and for taking an active part in politics.
The AFL's call indeed unleashed a popular movement across America, well beyond its means to control. In that era, the Knights of Labor was by far the strongest labor federation in the U.S., but its leaders did not endorse the strike. As a result many members and lodges abandoned the Knights.
As the first national action for the eight-hour day, the 1886 strike had international significance. All the world was watching on May 1st, when the walkout brought much of the nation's work to a halt. It watched as, acting for the employers -- for capital -- Chicago police killed strikers on May 3 and again in the Haymarket affair on May 4, then rounded up a number of the city's leftist labor leaders and put them on trial, executing four. (A fifth killed himself before execution.) At the request of the AFL in 1889, the world labor movement adopted May Day as its international holiday.
All that has been written out of most American history books. They also omit that organized labor -- P.J. McGuire again in the fore -- unilaterally declared our first Labor Day as a show of strength in New York in September, 1882. We can be proud of that, too.
But we are denied an important part of our heritage by not celebrating May Day. We can be grateful that another generation of immigrant workers, demanding their rights, should have reminded us of that fact. Now we can all move to reclaim what is collectively ours.
When the immigrant-rights movement chose May Day for its big demonstrations last year, people shouldn't have been surprised. The worldwide workers' holiday was "Made in the U.S.A."
May Day's roots are deep in American history. In 1886, seeking the spark that would ignite the struggling labor movement, the fledgling American Federation of Labor called a general strike for the eight-hour day to begin on May Day, the carpenters' traditional day for setting wages and conditions.
As young men in the 1870s, AFL leaders like Sam Gompers and the Carpenters' P.J. McGuire -- both members of immigrant families in New York -- had seen a long building trades strike win the eight-hour-day, then lose it in the Crash of 1872. They also knew that the 10-hour day, won in the Philadelphia general strike of 1835, had energized labor before the Civil War.
With the expansion of the railroads, what had once been local and regional labor markets had become national. And by the 1880s it made sense to call for a national general strike for the eight-hour day.
Since wages were then paid by the day, not by the hour, such a strike would reduce working hours at a full day's pay. And that would leave working people more time for their families, for bettering themselves, and for taking an active part in politics.
The AFL's call indeed unleashed a popular movement across America, well beyond its means to control. In that era, the Knights of Labor was by far the strongest labor federation in the U.S., but its leaders did not endorse the strike. As a result many members and lodges abandoned the Knights.
As the first national action for the eight-hour day, the 1886 strike had international significance. All the world was watching on May 1st, when the walkout brought much of the nation's work to a halt. It watched as, acting for the employers -- for capital -- Chicago police killed strikers on May 3 and again in the Haymarket affair on May 4, then rounded up a number of the city's leftist labor leaders and put them on trial, executing four. (A fifth killed himself before execution.) At the request of the AFL in 1889, the world labor movement adopted May Day as its international holiday.
All that has been written out of most American history books. They also omit that organized labor -- P.J. McGuire again in the fore -- unilaterally declared our first Labor Day as a show of strength in New York in September, 1882. We can be proud of that, too.
But we are denied an important part of our heritage by not celebrating May Day. We can be grateful that another generation of immigrant workers, demanding their rights, should have reminded us of that fact. Now we can all move to reclaim what is collectively ours.
Boys Gone Wild(ing)
http://www.nycpba.org/archive/ch/07/ch-070629-breath.html
Cops Unions Fight Drug, Alcohol Testing
June 29, 2007
Bill May Avert Breathalyzer Tests for Cops
Unions Hope Spitzer Curbs Kelly Right To Discipline
By REUVEN BLAU
The State Legislature June 22 passed a measure designed to reduce the Police Commissioner's power over disciplinary matters, which could enable the police unions to block the NYPD's move to have all officers who fire their guns when it involves injury or death to take Breathalyzer tests.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)