In July of last year, Oakland police officers pointed their guns at a sleeping 3-year-old while delivering a search warrant for a misdemeanor probe. The incident was brought to light in a quarterly report by Robert Warshaw, Independent Monitor for the Oakland Police Department. Read More
A family of six was killed in the Gaza Strip on Thursday when their house caught fire from a burning candle during a power outage. Read More
“The settlements are established for the exclusive benefit of Israeli Jews; settlements are being maintained and developed through a system of total segregation between the settlers and the rest of the population.” This is the conclusion reached by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) in a report that slams Israel’s state-sanctioned settlement campaign.
In typical fashion, Israel accused the UNHCR of systemic bias towards the Jewish state and didn’t even bother showing up to the UN review of its human rights record, behavior that’s to be expected of a criminal government I suppose. And in even more typical fashion, the establishment press watered down the report’s findings and omitted or buried the most significant conclusions reached. Read More
The gunman who fatally shot a school bus driver in Midland city, Alabama and then took a 6-year-old kindergardener hostage yesterday is still holed up in his underground bunker as the standoff with law enforcement continues.
The bus driver, who was shot four times, has been identified as 66-year-old Charles Poland Jr. and is being hailed as a hero for giving his life to protect the nearly two dozen children on their way home from school.
Ryan Lenz at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog reports significant details about the shooter, identifying him as 65-year-old Vietnam veteran Jimmy Lee Dykes: Read More
Nearly half of Americans are one medical emergency or job loss away from poverty, says a report released today by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED). According to CFED’s Assets and Opportunities Scorecard, 43.9 percent of American households are “liquid asset poor” meaning they “lack adequate savings to cover basic expenses at the federal poverty level for just three months if they suffer a loss of stable income.”
And they’re not just talking about Americans living below the poverty line but also people who likely consider themselves middle class. Over a quarter of the “liquid asset poor” make between $55,465-$90,000 a year. Read More
Does ABC News think people of color don’t go missing? Given their latest article on missing persons the FBI and local authorities are actively searching for, the answer appears to be yes.
Pictures from Black and Missing Foundation. More info at bottom of post.
Of the 15 missing people ABC profiles, all but one are white, which wouldn’t be such a big deal if the article reflected the demographics of the missing persons population. But it didn’t even come close.
According to FBI data, of the 661,593 people reported missing in 2012, 265,683 (40 percent) were minorities, slightly more were female than male and a disproportionate amount (33.8 percent) were African Americans who only make up 13 percent of the overall population. Conversely, the list of missing persons at ABC included just two young boys and a single African American girl. The rest were literally all white females ranging from blue eyed babies to a woman in her late 30s. And an overwhelming majority were “pretty” as defined by western beauty standards. Read More
Demonstrators rally outside the LA County Sheriff’s Department in Compton to demand justice for Jose de la Trinidad. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)
“How am I supposed to explain to my daughters that their father was murdered by the police, the people who they are supposed to go to for protection,” asked Rosanna de la Trinidad three days after her husband was three days after her husband was killed. Jose de la Trinidad, 36, left behind a wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 6 when he was shot dead by Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputies on November 10, 2012.
An autopsy report obtained by the Los Angeles Times reveals that he was shot from behind. Five of the bullets pierced him in the upper and lower back, one in the right forearm, and another in his right hip. Four were described as fatal.
This makes the deputies who shot him look more guilty of execution-style murder than they already did. Read More
The gun industry is spending millions of dollars a year to market their products to America’s children. Read More
Photo Credit: Sony Pictures
I still haven’t seen Zero Dark Thirty, which is why I’ve hesitated to write about it. That being said, I already have my biases based on the movie’s synopsis and several analyses I’ve read (Jane Mayor’s critique at the New Yorker is a must read). The movie has rightly stirred controversy because it depicts torture as having led to finding Osama bin Ladin.
I was even more disturbed by the film when I noticed several feminists celebrating it simply because its director (Kathryn Bigelow) and main character (Jessica Chastain as Maya) are both women. Read More
Illustration by Seth Tobocman
Sandy Hook has understandably horrified the country and put school’s everywhere on edge. But taking it out on a little kids isn’t going to make schools safer.
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