Is Chalk Really A Weapon Requiring Riot Police?

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / July 13, 2012)

So, apparently chalk drawing on the street is now a matter of terrorist security such that the LAPD had to come out in full riot gear during the monthly L.A. Artwalk.

Occupy L.A. activists and their supporters accused Los Angeles police of overreacting Thursday to chalk protesters during downtown's monthly ArtWalk, which set the stage for the violent run-in that resulted in 17 arrests.

Cheryl Aichele, 34, an informal leader of Occupy L.A., said police were aggressive early and made their first arrest shortly after 7 p.m. "within 10 minutes of getting where we wanted to be."

"Police were pushing us -- I got pushed into a garbage can -- then we were being pushed into the street," Aichele said. "They would do all these intimidation tactics -- all before 9. They would come in and snatch somebody and pull them away. Or they'd push us. Or yell at us."

One of the guys she saw got arrested "was just walking by, took some chalk and drew a heart and wrote 'police' in it."

"We were being peaceful," she said. "In our meeting beforehand, we said our goals were: Have fun. Stay safe. Speak out. Stand up. Reach out. Make friends. Chalk."

Peter White of the Los Angeles Community Action Network said he was present at 5th and Spring streets as a legal observer and believed the heavy police presence played a role in the conflict.

"I firmly believe it was an over-saturation of the police earlier in the evening, the sort of aggressive behavior earlier, that bled into things that happened later in the night," White said. On Thursday night, people began amassing and drawing and writing with chalk at 6th and Spring streets.

Good-bye America

I am ambivalent about politics of late. Somewhere between 2005, when I had started up my blog, and was very passionate about the slow take-over of our democracy by the “right wingers,” and today, where seven years of outright lying, a lackadaisical news media, and a misdirected and ill-informed public, I’ve given up. Literally. With the promises made by a presidential candidate in 2008, who won (in my mind) with overwhelming support, and the follow-up of consistent failure to keep those campaign promises, coupled with a very real embrace by said president of certain ideologies that are antiethcal to the very nature of our democracy (i.e., renditions, killing American citizens abroad without warrants, trials, and the like, deporting more people out of this country than Bush ever did, failure to properly and timely embrace the GLBT issues that he ran on, etc., and not to mention the very same reliance on the banking industry that his opponents also embrace) have molded me into a non-believer in today’s version of our democracy.

This is a fully corrupt nation, with zero regard for the 99% of those that make up this country, work hard, and have tried to believe in the greatness of America. Instead, we have countries disparaging America based on the hypocrisy of its ideology vs. the practice. We prop up dictators, deal with our enemies, and wage wars on innocent people and nations. We are trillions in debt and yet not a single legislator on any level of government is taking up the mantle and running with the torch for the American people.

I had a guy tell me yesterday at my local watering hole that it is the corporations like GE, the oil companies, and others, that “pay the majority of taxes” in this country. I literally almost fell off my bar stool. I told him he really must stop watching Fox news, stop reading the Wall Street Journal, and for goodness sake, turn off talk radio. You will not get the truth from such areas, and that is why you, my friend, are ill informed.

It is hard to stand for truth and justice when there are so many politicians that have jumped on the bandwagon of corrupt methods of gaining and maintaining their free ride in government. “Can I please have some more” is the cry of the populace with the answer from the politicians being “hell fucking no” even as they cash their social security checks, get their federally funded (or state mandated) insurance coverage that is denied to anyone not in politics, and tell the average worker to go fuck themselves. Hell, the thought that the 1% think it’s okay (for example, Scranton, PA) to cut police and firefighter’s pay to minimum wage ($7.25), even after a court ordered the mayor NOT to do that, is just to mind boggling for me. The 1% are clearly not aware that to live in today’s America, minimum wage just does not cut it. And to believe that the majority of Americans want to suck off the teat of the government (the only people the suck off the teat of government ARE the politicians) is preposterous. A decent wage, the ability to put a roof over you and your family’s head, and raise your children with a decent education, has now gone the way of a “dream” and is actually, according to many politicians, no longer a “right” for Americans. The only “rights” that these politicians believe in is their right to pillage and destroy the America I grew up in, and turn our government into a corporate owned subsidiary. One person, one vote? Got rid of that. Power to the people? Got rid of that. A decent working wage? Got rid of that. Home ownership for the average American? Got rid of that. Where a corporate executive can work one day, retire, and take home $44 million in severance, bonuses, etc. (think Duke Energy’s CEO Bill Johnson), while there are millions and millions of people (including many Iraq war veterans) who are literally homeless, on the streets, with no real income in sight, as well as the rampant starvation of our children, I get sick to my stomach. And to top it off, a great deal of this rhetoric is pumped up by the false assertion that these politicians and their supporters are merely following Christian (read “bible”) themes, which totally distort the reality of what “Jesus” actually preached (according to some relevant history that seems to be methodically erased from the propaganda of what current Christianity means to this country).

Many of our elected officials are boneheads and seriously stupid. Deranged and empowered by corporate fueled laws and rights that come hand-in-hand with corporate money, it is time for me to check out. The power of the people, or the lack of it at this point, will be demonstrable in the 2012 elections, when it becomes obvious that millions of people will be disenfranchised as voters, where gerrymandering has resulted in lopsided and illegal power grabs, and where many more millions like me will simply fail to show up to cast our worthless vote.

Good-bye America. I will dream of your resurgence in the future. I only hope I live long enough to see the second Revolution and the fight to regain the rights that constitutionally belong to the American people.

A Little Bit Of Black, And A Little Bit Of White In All Of Us, So It Seems

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.

Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.

And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn't sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry.

This story reminds me of the PBS series hosted by Harvard professor Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. that traces the ancestral history of black Americans. I think the most interesting thing that all of the people learned, as did I, was that the majority of the participants had no idea they had as much European white ancestry roots, primarily from a white woman. Of course, as my daughter likes to say, we all came from Africa, it's where life started on this planet!

The "Fleecing" Of Minnesota Citizens By NFL

The rich never, ever, run out of ideas to screw the non-rich. I am copying the post from Think Progress verbatim, as cutting it up will now give the full impact of the deviousness nor the duplicity of the NFL (the "rich") stealing money from the non-rich, in this instance, the citizens of Minnesota. Guess there's a reason I don't root for the Vikings, and now I have another reason not to root for them.

In an egregious example of how professional sports can be little more than a “glorified real estate scam,” the owners of the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings are about to fleece an unwilling Minnesota public for hundreds of millions of dollars, as they push to secure public subsidization of a new stadium. A deal is reportedly “imminent.”

Real estate developer Zygi Wilf and five partners bought the team in 2005 for a reported $600 million. (The franchise is now valued at $796 million.) From the get-go, Wilf and his partners wanted what every owner in the NFL wants: a new stadium.

The Metrodome opened in 1982 and is certainly not the newest and most lavish in the league, but there are eight stadiums that are older. And Minnesota voters clearly do not want to pay for a new stadium using public funds. A February 3 poll sponsored by KSTP-TV in Minneapolis found that a whopping 68 percent of Minnesota voters think the new stadium should be built “entirely with private financing.” Only 22 percent believed that any tax dollars should be used at all.

Even more astounding, these results came after a six-figure ad campaign paid for by the Vikings to try to drum up support for financing the stadium.

So leave it to Minnesota’s politicians to find a way around the public will. Gov. Mark Dayton (D) has been out front on the stadium issue and is doing everything he can to get a new stadium built. “We’re at the five yard line and its first and goal, and I think we’ve got a great opportunity,” Dayton recently said.

But in 1997, Minneapolis voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum stating that voters must approve any plan to spend more than $10 million on a sports facility. Given that a referendum today would obviously fail, how is the governor going to get a stadium built in downtown Minneapolis? By exploiting a loophole, of course.

In the latest stadium proposal, at least $300 million in Minneapolis taxes already devoted to paying off the city’s convention center would be diverted to pay the city’s share of the new stadium. And to circumvent the requirement that voters approve funding for the stadium, Dayton’s top stadium negotiator, Ted Mondale, explained that a newly created “stadium authority” would spend the city’s money, rather than the city itself.

So despite the fact that the Minneapolis public voted to require a public referendum before financing any new stadium, and has made it clear that it doesn’t want a new stadium in this case, Minnesota’s governor and state legislature appear poised to spend $300 million in taxes on one anyway by creating a new entity out of thin air that is not subject to the referendum law.

The NFL is making money hand over fist, but the public is expected to pay the costs of providing a (lavish new) place for NFL teams to play, socializing the costs of the sport while privatizing the profits.

Say Something Nice

Great idea. H/T to AMERICAblog.

"Occupy Wall Street"

Bumped to front page 10/5/11.

From the idiot Herman Cain: Courtesy of Think Progress.

CAIN: I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! [...] It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.

No, Mr. Cain. It is corporate greed and Wall Street that did this to Americans. The unemployed need not apply is the current mantra for many companies that are actually hiring. Being unemployed is not a choice you stupid dirt bag. It's what has happened all across America thanks to corporations FIRING their workers and sending the jobs out of the country, along with closing down factories and FIRING the workers. All so the CEO's and shareholders can make more money by not having to pay living wages to AMERICANS. Dumb people like this is a true example of where we are going in this country, because a lot of people (with money) really believe this crap. And that is why I still feel there will be actual riots and violence in the future, by the have nots against the haves. "If you don't have a job and are not rich, blame yourself." That's a good one, Herman.


From AMERICAblog, entitled: "New York Observer: Exclusive "Occupy Wall Street" Unaired Fox Footage"



Great, articulate and spot on comments from a "protestor" filmed by Fox News that never saw the light of day on that network!

From Think Progress:

Workers Union is going to court today in hopes of blocking New York City from forcing bus drivers to transport any Occupy Wall Street protesters after the New York police department commandeered at least three buses to take many of the 700 protesters off the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend. Last week, the TWU voted to support the Occupy Wall Street movement and called the order to bus prisoners “a blatant act of political retaliation.” “TWU Local 100 supports the protesters on Wall Street and takes great offense that the mayor and NYPD have ordered operators to transport citizens who were exercising their constitutional right to protest — and shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place,” TWU President John Samuelsen said. Samuelson said that by instructing the drivers to follow the police directive, the Metropolitan Transit Authority violated its contract with the Local 100.

Earlier updates.

Credit: Ian Murphy's cell phone

LIBERTY SQUARE, NY--despite the early morning rain, morale is high. A reported 100,000 copies of The Occupied Wall Street Journal have just arrived. The young occupiers are busy handing out the four page broadsheet to curious passersby and the protest tourists, who linger on the outskirts of Zuccotti Park, snapping photos of signs and the occasional blue-haired hippie.

Again, H/T to C&L.

UPDATE 9/30/11:



Oh, and let's not forget the mantra "class warfare!" Let them eat cake (or in this case, drink champagne).



A picture is worth a thousand words.

It seems the movement is spreading; Video of Americans in Boston, courtesy of Think Progress.

The occupation of Wall Street appear to be organically spreading, as similar movements are popping up across the nation, in locations as varied as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

Donate here.

Courtesy of C&L:

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Wall Street firms will be the target of a nonviolent demonstration in which organizers say they want 20,000 people to participate with tents, kitchens and “peaceful barricades” in lower Manhattan.

Dubbed “#OccupyWallStreet,” the goal of the protest scheduled to start today is to get President Barack Obama to establish a commission to end “the influence money has over our representatives in Washington,” according to the website of Adbusters, a group promoting the demonstration. Organizers want participants to “occupy” the area for “a few months,” according to the website.

“People have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we'll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sept. 15 at a press conference. “As long as they do it where other people's rights are respected, this is the place where people can speak their minds, and that's what makes New York New York.”

Twitter feed.

American Current Wars Account For Majority Of World's Refugee Crisis

From Think Progress:

America’s wars are forcing Afghans and Iraqis to flee their homes in greater numbers. According to a recent U.N. High Commission for Refugees study, nearly one half of the world’s refugees are from Afghanistan and Iraq, 3.05 million and 1.68 million, respectively. But neither the United States nor much of the developed world bears the burden of the 10.55 million refugees under the UNHCR’s purview globally. Instead, Pakistan, Iran, and Syria serve as the top host countries. The Economist has charted the numbers:

And why, I ask again, are we not putting war spending cuts into the picture on this debt ceiling craziness going on in Congress?

I seriously hate the fact that our so called elected leaders in the past 12 years have completely isolated America from the rest of the world, and have their fingers in their collective ears. We have children running our country, for God's sake. These people feel the world is still flat, and that they can just keep running in one direction and will never fall off that deep end. Me, (as well as millions of other Americans), I see that deep end, and our current government is on the precipice. God help us all.

Unemployed Need Not Apply - New Business Mantra

Sadly, this is the new craze in hiring. Ain't American business just grand?

Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.

I'd bang my head on the keyboard, but I gave that up a long time ago (got a strong head, and I really like my keyboard!)

Rise In Number Of Children Being Raised By Grandparent(s)

One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

About four-in-ten (41%) of those children who live with a grandparent (or grandparents) are also being raised primarily by that grandparent,¹ according to the census data.

Interesting study by Pew.

On A More Positive Note ... Thousands Of Muslims Become Human Shields For Coptic Christians In Egypt

While our "bought and paid for" main stream (or lame stream, to quote Sarah Palin) media hypes the ever (non) threat that Muslims are supposed to pose for we "freedom" (cough cough) loving Americans, Muslims in Egypt showed the world how to unite and deal with fundamentalism and tyranny from extremists.

On New Year’s Day, a devastating terrorist bombing at a Coptic church in Egypt killed 21 people and injured 79 others. Although the identity of the culprits was not known, it was assumed that they were Muslim extremists, intent on targeting those they saw as heretics.

[snip]

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside. From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea. Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole. “This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”

Let there be peace on earth, please.

Pix Of THE Wedding (Chelsea's)

Nuke 'Em Or Duke 'Em

Now why is this not news to me?

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Hmmm. No wonder there's a supp0sed ban on the use of white phosphorous. But the U.S. felt no compulsion not to use it.

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

August 6 is just around the corner, 65 years after first atomic bomb dropped in Japan. My piece, here.

And for what it looked like in Fallujah, here are some graphic pictures to remind one of what war is really like.

State Capitalism, A Primer

My bottom line? You have two of the strongest economies in the world:

• One, an aging, but still attractive U.S. economy, which sold its manufacturing capability so that a short list of people could grow even richer than rich (and a whole lot of people could feel like they're still getting even with the hippies); and


• The other, a young, supple, my-best-years-are-ahead-of-me Chinese economy, which bought the U.S. manufacturing capability — because, well, it was for sale.

Both are now poised to duke it out over the next 30 years or so. The difference between them? In China, everyone serves the national interest. In the U.S., no one does. More here.

Read the ENTIRE piece. It's by a new writer over at AMERICAblog, and he is really spot on.

The Best Party In Seattle

I spent the afternoon with some friends of Linda from her early days in Los Angeles that have moved up here (the two girls, yes, they are a couple). This is their fabulous house, and they had about a dozen people over and we had all this incredible food and wine and tequila shots all afternoon. I made fast friends with everyone, and the girls (one works for Microsoft duh LOL) and when the found out how much music I had on this little puter, one brought out a portable hard drive and started downloading the crap out of my puter, till my battery finally died!

One of the guys there (the son of one of the older ladies my age, he was like a tad older than my daughter) went to college in Hawai'i and spent some time on the islands. He actually hates it there, is about 1/16 Hawai'ian and the rest Portuguese, and so they downloaded all the Hawai'ian songs so they could bug him. Of course the one girl is Mexican (lots of Spanish spoken today) and they (her mother and her) remembered me from all the parties I went to at Linda's parents' house off of Vermont Ave. and Washington, in Los Angeles. So, of course, they also downloaded all my Mexican and mariachi songs, but pretty much everything, like Frank Sinatra, my doowop, Journey, hard rock/heavy metal, zydeco, and a bunch of stuff. Speaking of zydeco (which is Louisiana music) when we got to talking about Katrina and New Orleans, they said the real damages were in Mississippi, and they downloaded some of those pictures from New Orleans, over 300 of them! I feel like I have actually been there.

After the afternoon we hooked up with the groom and Linda's ex Steve and his wife, Lisa, and other family for dinner (I had lobster) and then the "boys" went out for their bachelor night, and we old farts came back to the hotel. I am not sleepy by a long shot, got a nice bottle of wine, listening to my music with headset and blogging.

The girls whose house I took the above pictures are coming to L.A. in June, and we've already made arrangements to hang out at my place and do the Los Angeles thing.

Maybe we'll go over to the Criminal Minds set, and I can get a smooch from my new sweetie (LOL).

Madoff Gets 150 Years!

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said Madoff's breach of trust was massive, and that he lied to investors and to the SEC to buy homes, yachts and pay country club fees. He called the maximum sentence symbolic to those who might imitate the fraud and to the victims seeking relief.

"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of manipulation of the system is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper, but one instead that takes a staggering toll," Chin said.

"Not a single letter was submitted in support of Madoff," Chin said. "Not friends, not family. That is telling."

Too bad no one else on Wall Street, etc. is being sued for fraud, damn it. I'd like to see more prison sentences for those that forced Americans to have to fork over tax dollars just to pay for their salaries and bonuses.

Nobody Listens, Nobody Cares

The Neda video.



I mourn for my brothers and sisters in Iran. As a Baha'i, Persia has a personal place hisorically for me in my life, and I have been surrounded by Persians and their culture for over 40 years.

Eydie Gorme "As Long As He Needs Me"

Not sure if I need to do an introduction to this piece.

What Part Of Change Don't You Understand?

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming

I know that was a Norman Jewison movie, (which my uncle played drums with the band that did most of the sound score - don't confuse that with the soundtrack, which would be the songs used in the movie as opposed to the musical sounds of the movie), but it's what came to mind after all this reading about how "immigrants" are changing the face of politics.

Many of those that are in power in ex-Bushland, and in the Beltway, and in control of conservative talking points are usually just a generation away from their grandparents having come to America from some other country. It was their politics, their children's politics and their grandchildren's politics that have shaped this country.

So, when those older, died in the wool, this is my country, white Christian males. try to tell me there is no room left in America to tolerate the new immigrant politics, I just have to roll my eyes.

The whole point of America is that it is supposed to continually evolve as a nation, not be stagnant at some point in the timeline run by a small contingent of people who have their hands over their eyes.

Puerto Rican Night - Hector Lave With Willie Colon

I am in a Puerto Rican mood tonight ...



Ok, I admit it, a Willie Colon moment as well, damn it!

Mike Doogan Is An Asshole

I read this piece in The Washington Monthly (posted by Hilzoy) about Mike Doogan, an Alaskan state Representative, outing the identity of AKMuckraker whose blog is Mudflats.

Only a handful of people who read my blog know my real identity. Hell, recently my own boss at work called me Carrie, much to the laughter of the rest of the office.

Carrie Cann has been my pseudonym for nearly 12 years, and everything I have written on the internet and on my blog in those 12 years bears my Carrie or Carrie Cann signature. I cannot fathom why anyone would give a shit about my "real" identity, as it has no bearing on my comments on the internet or my blogging. Even when I had a hockey website in 1998-2000, I still wrote under the name Carrie Cann.

If all I am doing is commenting on the politics of the day, with a dash here and there of personal stories and music, why should anyone care what my real name is? If I had a larger goal in mind, or wanted to enter the political arena as a viable candidate for an office, or step up and write for a legitimate newspaper, that would be a different story altogether. But to obsess over the identity of someone who simply comments on the news, especially when that obsession is by someone who does hold a political office -- isn't there more on that person's plate to do in these political times than to try to out an anonymous blogger?

You'd think, eh?