Asian-American says Latinos not only ones hit by SB 1070

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TucsonOnline

Jim Shee says he never experienced discrimination, let alone racial profiling, until his 70th birthday.

Shee, a Paradise Valley real-estate investor of Chinese and Spanish descent, was driving to meet friends for lunch on April 6, 2010, his birthday, when he stopped on a side street in west Phoenix to check a text message.

A Phoenix police officer approached and tapped on his car window.

“Let me see your papers,” Shee says the officer told him.

“That is the very first thing he said,” recalled Shee, now 72.

Shee, whose civil-rights battle against Arizona’s immigration law Senate Bill 1070 is credited with highlighting the law’s impact beyond the Latino community, was taken aback.

Born in Tucson, Shee has been a U.S. citizen all his life. No police officer had ever asked him for his “papers.”

When he asked why he’d been stopped, Shee says the officer told him, “You looked suspicious.”

Less than two weeks later, Shee said, he was profiled again by police.

This time, he was with his Japanese-American wife, Marian, driving back to the Valley after taking her across the border in San Luis, Sonora, to have some dental work done.

On the highway near Yuma, an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer traveling in the opposite direction saw Shee’s car, made a U-turn across the divided highway and pulled him over. Shee was sure he hadn’t been speeding because his cruise control was set below the speed limit.

“Why’d you stop me?” Shee recalls asking the officer.

The officer told Shee the tint on his 2002 BMW was too dark and gave him a repair order.

Shee did not receive a citation in either case. But he believes both stops were motivated by Senate Bill 1070.

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Jimmy Carter returns to Haiti to build houses

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TheGrio

LEOGANE, Haiti (AP) — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is in Haiti, helping to build homes in a town hit hard by the devastating January 2010.

Carter and wife Rosalynn are leading a mission of hundreds of Habitat for Humanity volunteers in the southwestern town of Leogane. The town was the epicenter of the quake. Many people there still have no home or live in terrible conditions.

The former president and former first lady were both taking an active part Monday in the construction of 100 one-room houses on about 14 acres. Families will get to live in the homes rent-free for five years and then will have to pay a modest annual rent to the government.

This is the 88-year-old president’s second trip to Haiti since the quake and third since 2009.

Mike Tyson launches children’s foundation

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NEWS ONE 

Former world heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson (pictured) has traveled quite a road from fighter, spousal abuser and convicted rapist, to ear biter, pigeon lover, actor and now, children’s philanthropist. And to prove it, Tyson has launched his very own charity, aptly named, ‘Mike Tyson Cares Foundation.’

The organization’s mission is to ‘“give kids a fighting chance” by providing innovative centers that provide for the comprehensive needs of kids from broken homes.

It will also provide such essentials as healthcare and school assistance, shelter, mentoring, job mentoring and any other needs that the foundation deems necessary for the child in question seeking assistance.

Click here to read more.

Protesting at Walmart results in forcible arrest-Video

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DailyKos

I'm not sure why she is being arrested in the video someone says she was leaving. The video starts with a tiny woman on the ground with a police officer on her back. Another officer has to jump in because apparently a woman half the officers size laying on the floor with his weight on top of he was still too much for the officer to handle. He must have went to the Barney Fife Mail Order Academy like so many of today's officers.

NY's Rikers Island Inmates Paid 39 Cents Per Hour to Work in Sandy Recovery

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ColorLines

There was no Hurricane Sandy evacuation plan for inmates inside New York City's main jail complex on Riker's Island but they were certainly put to work in the recovery efforts. 

The New York Times is reporting Riker's Island prisoners who worked in post-Sandy recovery efforts were paid 39 cents an hour.

The New York Times has more details on the recovery efforts inmates were part of:

Capt. Richard Polak, who helps oversee the laundry at Rikers, accompanied other correction officers to pick up sheets, blankets, towels and clothes from a dozen shelters in storm-struck parts of the city. The items were returned laundered within hours. It was the first time Rikers's laundry was used to help in a citywide emergency, the correction agency said.

The laundry, on the north side of Rikers, serves the island and most of the city's other jails. It already handles enormous loads and, in what turned out to be a stroke of good timing, a huge new washing machine was installed there in July. The machine, a long tube that looks like a rocket lying on its side, can do 2,000 pounds of wash every 90 minutes. The jail's inmates were able to add extra loads from the shelters during their shifts, for which they are paid 39 cents per hour.

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Obama 'drone warfare rulebook' condemned by human rights groups

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CitzensforLegitGov

President Barack Obama's administration is in the process of drawing up a formal rulebook that will set out the circumstances in which targeted assassination by unmanned drones is justified, according to reports. The New York Times, citing two unnamed sources, said explicit guidelines were being drawn up amid disagreement between the CIA and the departments of defense, justice and state over when lethal action is acceptable. Human-rights groups and peace groups opposed to the CIA-operated targeted-killing programme, which remains officially classified, said the administration had already rejected international law in pursuing its drone operations. "To say they are rewriting the rulebook implies that there is already a rulebook" said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy. "But what they are already doing is rejecting a rulebook – of international law – that has been in place since [the second world war]."

US to leave 10,000 troops in Afghanistan past 2014

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CitizensforLegitGov

US troops will remain in Afghanistan after NATO combat operations end at the end of 2014, US media reports said Sunday. The administration of President Barack Obama aims to keep around 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan after formal combat operations in that country end in 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday... However, the paper said, some defense analysts outside of the US government believe that the training and counterterrorism mission would require a much larger US presence -- perhaps as many as 30,000 troops.

Why Are Police Allowed to Break Into Your Phone?

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Alternet

The judicial system around the country is sharply divided on the legality of searching cell phone records and using that evidence for the prosecution of criminal suspects. A New York Times review of court cases and legislation shows that there are no uniform rules when it comes to whether law enforcement can search cell phone records and use the data as evidence.

In Rhode Island, a judge threw out evidence used to convict Michael Patino, a 30-year-old resident of the state, because, according to the judge, the police obtained cell phone data improperly. But a Washington court said that cell phone text messages are similar to voice mail messages that can be heard by anyone in a room, and are therefore not subjected to privacy laws.

And beyond the issue of using evidence obtained by cell phones in prosecutions are disputes about how that data is obtained in the first place. In Ohio, a court ruled that a warrant is needed to search cell phones because it holds large amounts of private data. Meanwhile, in California, the highest court said “the police could look through a cellphone without a warrant so long as the phone was with the suspect at the time of arrest,” The New York Times reports.

The attention to the use of cell phone data comes a few months after the revelation that “cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies,” as the New York Times reported.

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The Case of the Confidential Confetti: Private NYPD records dropped over crowd at Macy’s parade

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Rt.Com

A New York police department is in trouble after its confidential documents were used as confetti in the city’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.

Crowds standing alongside the signature floats and balloons during one of America’s biggest annual spectacles were bemused when confetti that turned out to be badly-shredded official records began landing on their clothes.

The documents, many of which were imprinted with the letterheads of the Nassau Police Department, contained social security numbers, addresses and license numbers.

More disturbingly, some of the recovered pieces appeared to be fragments of police reports, and private staff records – including those listing undercover officers. 

One even detailed the route to be used by Mitt Romney during a presidential debate last month.

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Kenya police face 'summary killing' claims: "When they fail to secure conviction in a court of law, they decide to eliminate"

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Aljazeera

Mombasa, Kenya - 

A ceiling fan turned slowly overhead as Laylatu Mohammed Omar and her family fell asleep on mattresses strewn across the floor to escape Mombasa's searing heat. At 1am, they awoke to screeching cars and gunfire. Tear gas streamed inside through cracks in the door.
 
Two-hundred metres away, Saad Faraj was also awoken in his apartment. From his window he could see the shadows of anti-terrorism police, fanning out in the streets of Majengo, a suburb of Kenya's second-largest city.

Saad received a call from his brother, Omar, a 40-year-old cashier at a butcher shop who lived next door to Laylatu.

"I'm being robbed," Omar Faraj said, confusing the police for thugs.

"Just hide, they are everywhere," Saad told him. 

Saad realised his brother was the target of the police raid. For four hours, punctuated by bursts of shooting, Saad waited. When the squad cars pulled away at dawn, he rushed to Omar's home.

Saad found his brother's body on top of his wife, Rahma, who was unconcious but survived. Omar Faraj was shot in the head at close range, and brain matter spilled out of his skull. A suspected terrorist - intercepted the day before carrying grenades on a bus - led police to the home. He was also killed in the raid.   
 
Though the police report described the incident as a shootout, testimony from neighbours indicated the firefight was one-sided.

Critics say the October shooting of Omar Faraj - whom police allege possessed weapons and was planning a "terrorist" act - was the latest in a series of extrajudicial killings and disappearances linked to Kenyan police trying to root out "terrorist" cells.

"This trend really worries us," says Khelef Khalifa, director of Muslims for Human Rights. "The Kenyan police are not equipped to investigate. When they fail to secure conviction in a court of law, they decide to eliminate."
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The high price of racial health disparities

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Baltimore Sun

Reducing racial health disparities will take more than providing additional services in poor neighborhoods; it also requires confronting inequality and empowering communities

Why do some people get sicker and die sooner than others? The answer involves more than our genes, behaviors and medical care, according to a new study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the advocacy group Equity Inc. It turns out that where we live is often the strongest predictor of our well-being, and that disparities along racial and class lines in health outcomes and access to care mirror the inequities in every other aspect of people's lives.

The report's findings confirm earlier studies that have shown persistently large gaps in health outcomes between different areas of the country, the state and even parts of the same city. In Baltimore, for example, residents of poor, largely African-American communities are known to suffer far higher rates of infant and child mortality, premature death and chronic illness than those of affluent, largely white neighborhoods elsewhere in the city.

Average life expectancy for affluent, white residents in Roland Park, for example, is nearly 30 years longer than for poor, African-American residents in Upton/Druid Heights. Meanwhile, the infant mortality rate among black women in some city neighborhoods is three or four times the state average. By almost any measure — including hospital visits for chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and asthma — place matters even more than access to care as the most important determinant of people's health and well-being.

Recognizing the urgency of producing better health outcomes for poor and minority residents, Maryland has encouraged the creation of so-called health enterprise zones in areas around the state where the disparities are greatest. The enterprise zones would offer tax incentives for doctors, hospitals, business groups, churches and community associations to form public-private partnerships that provide additional medical and support services to underserved communities.

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Brooklyn killings may have been serial hate crimes: all three were immigrants from the Middle East

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Salon

Hate crime detectives in New York City are joining the investigation into three unsolved killings of Brooklyn business owners in the past four months – crimes believed to have been carried out by a serial killer.

All three victims were shot with the same .22 caliber handgun, all three were immigrants from the Middle East, all three worked alone without security cameras and all three businesses have the number 8 in their address, authorities say.

The latest victim, Rahmatollah Vahidipour, 78, a Jewish immigrant from Iran, was fatally shot Friday in his business, She She Boutique on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. That homicide followed the Aug. 6 killing of Isaac Kadare, 59, a Jewish immigrant from Egypt, who was fatally shot in his Bensonhurst store, Amazing 99 Cent Deal.

The spree began with the July 6 killing of Mohammed Gebeli, 65, an Egyptian immigrant and a Muslim, found murdered in his business, Valentino Fashion Inc., in Bay Ridge. Detectives are “exploring a few similarities among the three murders,” The New York Times reported in Sunday’s editions.

Cash was stolen in the first two homicides, but not in the most recent murder, authorities say. Investigators assigned to the Police Department’s Task Force on Hate Crimes have been brought in to assist with the investigation, the newspaper reported. But Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said there was at this point no clear evidence indicating the three murders were bias crimes.

 

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Professor says: No Thanks for Thanksgiving

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Instead, we should atone for the genocide that was incited -- and condoned -- by the very men we idolize as our 'heroic' founding fathers.

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.

That the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It's now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

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China supports Palestinians, gives $1M aid

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Guardian UK

China has expressed support to the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel and their bid to upgrade their status at the United Nations, and is giving them $1 million in aid, a Palestinian envoy said Friday.

Beijing supports "stopping any kind of aggression from the Israelis against the Palestinian people," Bassam al-Salhi told reporters following talks in Beijing with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. Chinese officials did not immediately comment.

The talks followed Gaza's first day of calm after the fiercest fighting in years between Israel and Hamas militants. A cease-fire Wednesday ended eight days of airstrikes and artillery attacks by Israel and rocket attacks by Palestinian militants that killed 161 Palestinians and five Israelis.

China has increasingly played a more active diplomatic role in the Middle East. It recently announced its own four-point plan for a political solution to the Syrian conflict, although observers said it was vague and did not significantly add to past peace plans that have failed.

The Egyptian-sponsored cease-fire that took effect Wednesday night in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict aims to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel and ease border closings that have stifled Gaza's economy. But vague language in the agreement and deep hostility between the combatants make it far from certain that the bloodshed will end.

24 States To Be Dominated By Republicans In 2013

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ThinkProgress

At least 37 states will fall under single-party control come January, with one party holding the governor’s office and majorities in both legislative chambers, the New York Times reports, “raising the prospect that bold partisan agendas — on both ends of the political spectrum — will flourish over the next couple of years.”

As a result of November’s election, 24 states will be completely controlled by Republicans, while at least 13 states will be Democratic. Power will be divided evenly in just 12 capitals — the fewest since 1952. Democrats won more of “the roughly 6,000 state legislative seats that were up for grabs,” adding “more than 150 legislative seats.”

Depopulation Control/Genocide of Non-Whites: Israel Gaza Kill and Maim

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Cryptome

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Gaza, November 19, 2012
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An emergency rescue worker carries a child's body found in the Daloo family house rubble following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, on November 18, 2012. Palestinian medical officials say at least 10 civilians, including women and young children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. AP
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Shaheed Muatazz al-Sawwaf, 6 years old June 23, 2012. Rosa Schiano
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Bissane Barhoum, 3, screams as she is treated by medics for a head wound caused by falling down stairs when she ran in panic reacting to a nearby blast, according to her uncle, at the an-Najar hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza strip, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2009. AP
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Palestinian medics wheel a man wounded in an Israeli missile strike into hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, Jan. 16, 2009. Israel's Security Cabinet will vote Saturday night on an Egyptian proposal for a truce to end the 3-week-old offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, a senior government official said. AP
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Palestinian medics wheel a wounded girl to the treatment room of Shifa hospital following Israeli military operations in Gaza City, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009. Israel showed no signs of slowing its bruising 19-day offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, striking some 60 targets on Wednesday. Israel launched the onslaught on Dec. 27, seeking to punish the Hamas militant group for years of rocket attacks on southern Israel. The offensive has killed more than 940 Palestinians, half of them civilians. AP
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** EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** Palestinian Akram Abu Roka is treated for burns at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009. The hospital's chief doctor said the injuries might have been caused by munitions containing white phosphorus. Human Rights Watch said Sunday that Israel's military has fired artillery shells packed with the incendiary agent over populated areas of Gaza, putting civilians at risk. AP
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** EDITORS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** A severely injured Palestinian man is helped as he lays on the ground moments after being hit in an Israeli missile strike outside his home in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip,Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009. Five Palestinians were killed in the strike, Palestinian medical sources said. Lebanese militants fired at least three rockets into northern Israel early Thursday, AP
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** EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** A Palestinian woman reacts over relatives moments after they were killed in an Israeli missile strike outside their home in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip,Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009. Five Palestinians were killed in the strike, Palestinian medical sources said. Lebanese militants fired at least three rockets into northern Israel early Thursday, threatening to open a new front for the Jewish state as it pushed forward with a bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip. AP
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$8.81 an hour: Walmart Retaliates Against Black Friday Activists

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For more than six months, two groups linked to the United Food & Commercial Workers union have been working on behalf of Walmart employees, demanding a living wage, a humane level of benefits, reasonable hours and an end to the company’s legendary retaliation against workers who seek to unionize and put an end to its abusive labor practices, including wage theft. Walmart employees number 1.4 million, and, as Catherine Ruetschlin of Demos reports, it is the country's largest single employer of African Americans.

The groups, OUR Walmart and Making Change at Walmart, are relying largely on social media campaigns to organize what are expected to be thousands of Walmart workers walking off the job today. Aiding in the organizing are former Walmart employees, such as Alex Rivera, who claims he was fired by Walmart in Orlando this September for joining the OUR Walmart campaign, according to a report by The Nation's Josh Eidelson.

On Wednesday, Rivera was handcuffed by Orlando police -- in front of his former colleagues -- when he entered the store in which he was formerly employed, because, Eidelson writes, Walmart managers appear to have falsely told police that the store had a “no tresspassing” order against the former Walmart “associate,” as the mega-retailer calls its employees.

From Eidelson’s article:

According to Rivera and an OUR Walmart organizer who accompanied him to the store, Rivera was leaning over to drink from a water fountain when a police officer grabbed his arm without warning, put him in handcuffs and led him to an office. Rivera said that the officer told him that Walmart management had informed the police that Rivera had previously signed a written trespassing warning obligating him not to return to the premises. Walmart “lied to the police officer.…” said Rivera. “That’s why they handcuffed me.”

Rivera says that he was released when the store managers were unable to provide police with a copy of the warning, and police realized they no such document in their own records.

Meanwhile, in St. Cloud, Fla., Vanessa Ferreira walked off the job in another Walmart store after she was disciplined for the first time in her eight-year tenure as a cake decorator in the store’s bakery department, an action she’s convinced Walmart managers took against her because she is a known member of OUR Walmart.

After she walked off the job, reports the Huffington Post’s Dave Jamieson, Walmart managers had police evict Ferreira and several family members from the store, allegedly for “trespassing,” telling her she was not welcome back on the premises until after Black Friday. After Ferreira filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that the retailer was infringing on her right to organize, Jamieson writes, a Walmart spokesperson said the trespassing warning had been issued to Ferreira in error.

Ferreira told Jamieson that she took the action because, unlike most of her fellow “associates,” she could afford to, on account of her husband’s income.

From Jamieson’s report:

As much as she loves her job, there's plenty Ferreira doesn't like about her employer. According to Ferreira, Walmart's wages are too low for workers to survive on, and the company keeps too many of its employees on part-time status, leaving them to rely on government assistance to get by.

"They pay low wages, then the taxpayers pick up the tab for food stamps and Medicaid," Ferreira said. "They need to take care of their people. They need to be responsible to their workers."

 

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