Thoughts for the day
It was shortly after that episode that [Justice Charles Evans] Hughes made a statement to me which at the time was shattering but which over the years turned out to be true: "Justice Douglas, you must remember one thing. At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reason for supporting our predilections. Source: William O. Douglas. The Court Years, 1939-1975
All men are equal but only as long as those who have do not have to sacrifice anything to those who have not. Raja Shehadeh, The Sealed Room: Selections from the Diary of a Palestinian Living Under Israeli Occupation
Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?
Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)
Friday, May 29, 2009
American judicial and legal corruption
Here is the complete internet FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions with Answers, on American judicial and legal corruption - the most hidden and ugly secret about life inside the modern United States.
Information for the many victims of USA legal injustice, and for anyone seeking to understand America's terrifying legal system, and how America really works.
Why American lawyers and judges are destroying families, sending innocent people to prison, and why average working people cannot get justice in American courts.
This FAQ is especially important, because America's major news media are afraid to talk about wrongdoing by lawyers and judges. Here is the truth that the U.S. media knows, but hides from the public.
http://faqusajudicialcorruption.blogspot.com/
Here is the complete internet FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions with Answers, on American judicial and legal corruption - the most hidden and ugly secret about life inside the modern United States.
Information for the many victims of USA legal injustice, and for anyone seeking to understand America's terrifying legal system, and how America really works.
Why American lawyers and judges are destroying families, sending innocent people to prison, and why average working people cannot get justice in American courts.
This FAQ is especially important, because America's major news media are afraid to talk about wrongdoing by lawyers and judges. Here is the truth that the U.S. media knows, but hides from the public.
http://faqusajudicialcorruption.blogspot.com/
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
"This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security."-- Michael Lerner, journalist
whatreallyhappened.com
"This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security."-- Michael Lerner, journalist
whatreallyhappened.com
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The Other Death Penalty: LWOP The Trouble With Prison May 25,'09 By KENNETH HARTMAN, counterpunch.org
Excerpts: People are put in prison because nothing else works. This is the foundational misperception that supports the prison edifice. The truth is far less simple. There are prisoners whose lifetime of dangerous behavior leaves prison as the only choice for society. But these are a tiny minority in the sea of pathetic misfits and perennial losers walking the yards.
Most prisoners are uneducated, riddled with unresolved traumas and ill-treated mental health problems, drug and alcohol addictions, and self-esteem issues that are beyond profound, bordering on the pathological far too often. The vast majority has never received competent health care, mental health care, drug treatment, education or even an opportunity to look at themselves as human. Were any of these far less draconian interventions even tried, before the descent into this wretched cave, no doubt many of my peers would be leading productive lives. Nothing else works is not a statement of fact; it is the declaration of an ideology. This ideology holds that punishment, for the sake of the infliction of pain, is the logical response to all misbehavior. It is also a convenient cover story behind which powerful special interest groups hide.
Prison employees benefit by our failure. This startling fact contains within it a monstrous truth. These well-organized government workers created the victims’ rights movement, a sad shill for the prison-industrial complex. Using the handful of politically active victims of crime to obscure their actual agenda, propositions are passed, laws are changed, and policies that could prevent victimization in the first place are suppressed. Both of these groups, working in tandem with the corporations that supply and construct prisons, pour millions of dollars into the political process to achieve a system guaranteed to fail.
Excerpts: People are put in prison because nothing else works. This is the foundational misperception that supports the prison edifice. The truth is far less simple. There are prisoners whose lifetime of dangerous behavior leaves prison as the only choice for society. But these are a tiny minority in the sea of pathetic misfits and perennial losers walking the yards.
Most prisoners are uneducated, riddled with unresolved traumas and ill-treated mental health problems, drug and alcohol addictions, and self-esteem issues that are beyond profound, bordering on the pathological far too often. The vast majority has never received competent health care, mental health care, drug treatment, education or even an opportunity to look at themselves as human. Were any of these far less draconian interventions even tried, before the descent into this wretched cave, no doubt many of my peers would be leading productive lives. Nothing else works is not a statement of fact; it is the declaration of an ideology. This ideology holds that punishment, for the sake of the infliction of pain, is the logical response to all misbehavior. It is also a convenient cover story behind which powerful special interest groups hide.
Prison employees benefit by our failure. This startling fact contains within it a monstrous truth. These well-organized government workers created the victims’ rights movement, a sad shill for the prison-industrial complex. Using the handful of politically active victims of crime to obscure their actual agenda, propositions are passed, laws are changed, and policies that could prevent victimization in the first place are suppressed. Both of these groups, working in tandem with the corporations that supply and construct prisons, pour millions of dollars into the political process to achieve a system guaranteed to fail.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Rampant Police Violence
How Many Kicks to the Head Does it Take?
By BEN ROSENFELD; May 18, 2009
Excerpts - Countless people in this country live amid an epidemic of police violence. ...rampant police abuse is creating a widening gulf of mistrust between police and the public they putatively serve...it may help explain why someone...would run from police...
On the police side, the failure to prosecute assaultive officers only exposes responsible officers to danger by an incensed public robbed of any reasonable hope for official accountability. John F. Kennedy famously warned: “Those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
But who could expect responsible local government action when the federal government sets such an atrocious example?
...William Brandeis, a wiser Supreme Court Justice than most, observed: “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.” (Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)).
Unless we are willing to apply consistent legal standards, we will only spin further to the edge of our moral compass, and will find ourselves putting down ever more justifiable rebellions by ever increasing excessive force.
Each extra-legal kick to the head which does not jar us to our senses becomes one more intolerable exception to democracy. We only get so many exceptions before we simply cease to be.
http://news.resist.ca/rampant_police_violence_how_many_kicks_head_does_it_take
How Many Kicks to the Head Does it Take?
By BEN ROSENFELD; May 18, 2009
Excerpts - Countless people in this country live amid an epidemic of police violence. ...rampant police abuse is creating a widening gulf of mistrust between police and the public they putatively serve...it may help explain why someone...would run from police...
On the police side, the failure to prosecute assaultive officers only exposes responsible officers to danger by an incensed public robbed of any reasonable hope for official accountability. John F. Kennedy famously warned: “Those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
But who could expect responsible local government action when the federal government sets such an atrocious example?
...William Brandeis, a wiser Supreme Court Justice than most, observed: “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.” (Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)).
Unless we are willing to apply consistent legal standards, we will only spin further to the edge of our moral compass, and will find ourselves putting down ever more justifiable rebellions by ever increasing excessive force.
Each extra-legal kick to the head which does not jar us to our senses becomes one more intolerable exception to democracy. We only get so many exceptions before we simply cease to be.
http://news.resist.ca/rampant_police_violence_how_many_kicks_head_does_it_take
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