blogged about at capital defense weekly:
Geneva and fifteen others have been released from federal prison “because their convictions were based on testimony of a government informant who lied on the witness stand and framed innocent people.â€
and indeed the sucky thing is, this kind of lying-landing-people-in-the-pokey happens all the time…
follow the blogs links to the plain dealer for more and see truthinjustice.org’s prosecutorial misconduct page.
i (and likely most of you) missed this one back in August: an Ohio county judge jailed an assistant public defender, for not being ready to go to trial. how long did he have to prepare you ask? a day. sheesh!
here’s a bunch of stories about this freaker and his other shenanigans:
can’t seem to find any follow-up. guess no one higher up the ladder thinks this is worth doing anything about. dang.
not quite sure what this is about, the votergate “about” page seems to be busted. i recall in the 80’s the sidwalk graffiti near the polling places that said, “if voting changed anything, it’d be illegal.” speaking of the bay area, i know i’ve linked to this before, but i always like checking back in on the list. some of my current faves:
i love the bay area and miss it sometimes for sure, but i’m so happy i now live in this crazy f’ing town. [update: and while we are (trying to get off) the subject of electoral politics, we can agree that “Fox is not a credible news outlet and needs to be stopped.” I’d say duh, but Foxattacks.com has some good stuff there for media activists.
Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents
Two years into the war in Iraq, as the Army and Marines struggle to refill their ranks, parents have become boulders of opposition that recruiters cannot move.
a farily compelling response to the October AAP statement on cosleeping…
The term “adult bed” usually includes dangerous sofas, sofa chairs, make-shift beds and waterbeds, which account for a large portion of the adult-surface deaths. Also, the term doesn’t necessarily mean cosleeping is occurring, only that an infant is sleeping on that particular surface. An infant sleeping alone on an adult bed is at greater risk than when sleeping there with a parent. Failing to understand these points makes appropriate adult bed-sharing mistakenly sound dangerous.
and
“Bed-sharing/cosleeping” statistics and comments usually lump together cases of infants sleeping with any adult in any state, including over-exhausted, intoxicated adults, smoking adults, other children and even combinations of these. These comments and statistics also generally include dangerous practices such as sofa-sharing. Another limiting factor of these definitions is that they usually include statistics on infants who coslept at any point during the night of their SIDS-related death — not necessarily at the time of death. Conscientious parents are scared away from safe cosleeping by such slanted reporting.
and
The numbers in the largest study on cosleeping around the world suggest that safe cosleeping reduces SIDS greatly. Most nations with SIDS rates much lower than the United States regularly practice cosleeping on firm surfaces with low rates of adult smoking. Countries with increased cosleeping frequency also show decreased rates of SIDS.
[another previous AAP article says that “The Data Neither Condemns Nor Endorses Bedsharing/Cosleeping” but they won’t let you read it unless you pay moola or are a pediatrician, for we can’t share that dangerous information with the masses… jerks!]
a bit stunned, Katrina was one of a number of recent tragidies on which i didn’t blog. however, this report from the Human Watch is a nugget i mean to keep in mind:
Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.
14 Defining Characteristics of Facsism. a well done flash animation. i’m kind of surprised, but glad that it’s stayed up so long. if you’ve not seen it, go. and then send to your friends and family.
[update - in oct 03 blacktable.com did a piece on this, and now both the site in question and the others linked from the original post are gone. was a law passed? comment if you know?]
i know for most of you this is old news but one angry girl designs pointed me (through the “latest outrage” section) to this bizarre and insidious phenomenon of preteen softcore. it got me wondering. what if your daughter wanted to do this? as a feminist, i think that of course i would stress how fucked up and exploitative it is. but also, as a parent i think i would have to let her find that out herself. most likely - i would hope - she wouldn’t really be exposed to it much or have really an inkling of it, or would know about it but would find it as repulsive as we did.
but i remember a set of parents i knew in the bay area force a kid to come to every demonstration, wear only certain clothes, eat only certain foods, and basically constantly barrage him with propaganda and rhetoric about the latest cause. yes, that kid is now in the army, an arch-conservative activist republican who reviles the flat, ineffective, boring world his folks pushed him toward.
and so it’s a tough call in some ways. what are the those kids’ parents like? i mean beyond the steretypes you no doubt had, as i did, of florida and southern california and small midwestern towns and gobs of disney and letting the grandparents buy too many barbies and abusive men in the family and safeway picnics etc etc. No. statistically at least some of them have to be working and have interesting lives and think critically and had issues with what their daughter wanted to do and grappled with it. some of them read sisterhood is powerful and are still calling out or even fighting sexism in their workplaces and some of them work to help women have a real meaningful role in their churches and synagogues and don’t let their kids drink coke and hate their (p)resident etc etc.
it makes me thankful for the writings and insights of ariel gore and pals. especially now that we’re expecting. most of you who read this know, but maybe some of you don’t. so there ya go. mid-december! whooooooo hooo!
i seem to remember that dangerousideas had some rad content. anyone know if they are coming back someday? a kerry presidency is not in the cards, friends. but we hope maybe you are?
update: it’s back! (but mostly with Jenny’s blog). check it.
The fear is even thicker among Muslims in the United States, where the Patriot Act gives police the power to seize the records of any mosque, school, library or community group on mere suspicion of terrorist links. When this intense surveillance is paired with the ever-present threat of torture, the message is clear: You are being watched, your neighbor may be a spy, the government can find out anything about you. If you misstep, you could disappear onto a plane bound for Syria, or into “the deep dark hole that is Guantánamo Bay,” to borrow a phrase from Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
it was rampant long before the recent media flurry, of course at places like corcoran and pelican bay, but this small shedding of some light in the nation mag by naomi klein is well done and right on time.
among the many highly intelligent things Tori Borland — ubersmart 13-year-old sophomore at Towson University in Maryland — had to say in her recent public chat via the Washingtonian: “All this attention is a little odd…”
ride it out… you go grrl.
via merdith
the site is gone, domain taken over by the domainmongers. anyone know what happened to the content? here’s the basic info on what it was:
Discussion of how parents and other child caregivers do and should treat and relate to children and young people, while focusing on the anarchist perspective. This forum also explores how various forms of hierarchy and domination, such as the State, capitalism and patriarchy, affect and relate to child-raising. This is also a place to exchange ideas on how to overcome the hierarchy and domination that exists in the area of parenting and child care.
also missing in action:
the new Freedom for Political Political Prisoners and Prisoners of war calendar is out. more info on the calendar and how to order it is available from the calendar committee (along with info about the groups that calendar sales benefit). and here’s several reasons why you should get this calendar today:
oh darn, we broke the earth. guess we better move somewhere else. and well, now have to wait til september anyhow for the movie.
french activist killed by nuke train
it’s happening for real. i just viewed about as much of the yahoo slideshow as i could without bawling.
i don’t think that in general we should have to get hitched to have this kind of recognition by the state, that’s all problematic in it’s own way. but i see this as a move towards real equality. we’ve still got a long way to go, but this feels like such a huge step. salud sf!
“for a more submissive, yuppie-firendly neighborhood, press 2.”
this week’s “We don’t care what the community thinks, we just want to make more money!” award goes to the fratboys and gals over at urban works real estate for trying to put in a new starbucks on 20th and division.
a lot of folks in the community just ain’t gonna have it. but of course that doesn’t surprise you, since there’s a global movement pressuring the anti-democratic earth-and-people hating chain store.
it’s no wonder that in those photos they all look like they gotta run to the bathroom. but seriously, i’m sure they’re perfeclty nice, polite people. but their platform for community destruction is seriously harshing my mellow. so get over to the nostarkbucks site, get the 411, and fax ‘em — early and often!
