In Kyrgyzstan, Police Abuse, Extortion of Gay Men

In Kyrgyzstan, Police Abuse, Extortion of Gay Men

Gay and bisexual men in Kyrgyzstan already live in fear due to widespread homophobic attitudes, and the police are making a nightmarish situation even worse. Kyrgyzstan authorities at the very top levels need to call a halt to this police abuse and make sure that gay and bisexual men have the protection they need.

See the Latest News in Europe/Central Asia >>

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China Banned from Sochi Olympics After Figure Skater Tests Positive for Homosexuality

MOSCOW — The Sochi Winter Olympic Committee announced Thursday that it would ban the entire Chinese Olympic figure skating team from competition after Chinese skater Li Chunguang tested positive for homosexuality in a routine anti-doping test.
The Russian Ministry of Health lists homosexuality both as an infectious disease and as a performance-enhancing drug, especially in what the government defines as “gay sports”—figure skating, ice dancing and male synchronized diving, among others.
During their tests, Russian anti-doping officials found that Li “had a blood-homosexuality level of over 70%,” well over the acceptable limit. Several homosexuality-enhancing drugs were found in Li’s blood, including homofil, queeritol, sodorex and bendadrine. Several of Li’s teammates also had blood-homosexuality levels higher than normal.
“It is safe to assume he has spread his condition to his fellow athletes,” said one health official.

“Several homosexuality-enhancing drugs were found in Li’s blood, including homofil, queeritol, sodorex and bendadrine.”

Speaking at a press conference, the head of the Sochi Olympic Committee, Anton Smirnov, defended the ban, saying that “athletes who choose to be homosexual are 30 to 40 times more likely to win a medal in the gay events, as the condition often makes sufferers incurably fabulous.”
“We cannot risk them spreading their gayness to others, including Russian nationals, despite our near immunity to this sad pathogen.”
The ban has been opposed by the Chinese government, which described Zhang as “an anomaly.”
“We rigorously train our athletes to experience no desire, lust or passion other than to win glory for the motherland through gold medals,” said Vice Minister of the State General Administration of Sports Qi Huajian. “Zhang must have obtained homosexual desires through illicit channels, like the Internet or the team trip to San Francisco last year.”
The state sports administration has reportedly dispatched China’s best therapists to work with the athletes to lower their blood-homosexuality levels before undergoing another test. For his part, Smirnov said that he would be happy to let Li and his team compete if they could be turned straight.
“It could happen,” he said. “It worked for my kids.”
Though tensions remain, both Smirnov and Qi agreed on one issue: that homosexuality did not exist in their respective countries.

Parody Warning: The article you have just read is completely false and is presented for humorous entertainment value only. It is not to be taken seriously. nor is it being posted to 'offend' anyone's sensibilities, nor to make light or mockery of Chinese culture or LGBT individuals from any part of this world.

 

To read this satirical article in its entirety, please visit:

http://www.miniharm.com/2014/01/27/china-banned-from-sochi-olympics/

You Don't Say: Republicans Admit Anti-Immigrant Movement Driven By Racism

You Don't Say: Republicans Admit Anti-Immigrant Movement Driven By Racism

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Thursday, 1/30/2014 12:43 PM

Buzzfeed’s John Stanton today managed to get Republican lawmakers on record admitting that the movement to stop immigration report is at least party driven by racial animosity. One Southern Republican member of Congress, who requested anonymity, told Stanton outright that “part of it…it’s racial.” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham put it a little more delicately, referring to “ugliness around the issue of immigration.”

While it’s unusual to have Republican members of Congress saying it aloud, it’s hardly a secret that today’s anti-immigrant movement was built by xenophobia and remains in a large part driven by it.

Overtly racist remarks by members of Congress likeSteve King and Don Young or by fringe nativists likeWilliam Gheen or Judson Phillips could be written off as distractions if they were not part and parcel of this larger movement.

Just look at the three central advocacy groups working to stop immigration reform. The misleadingly named Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the movement “think tank” Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and Numbers USA were all founded by John Tanton, an activist who hardly hid his racist views, support for eugenics, and white nationalist ideology. (Sample Tanton argument: “I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.")

But it’s not just these groups’ history that’s problematic. While most have tried to distance themselves Tanton’s extreme nativist rhetoric, they have turned instead to racial code language to imply that immigration undermines American politics and culture.

Dan Stein, the president of FAIR, has warned that immigrants take part in “competitive breeding” to supplant native-born whites and that "[m]any of them hate America, hate everything the United States stands for. CIS president Mark Krikorian has pointed to “illegitimate” children and “high rates of welfare use” as reasons why Latino immigrants will never vote Republican and therefore shouldn’t be “imported” into the United States.

These arguments linked to two threads common in the anti-immigrant movement: that immigrants, particularly Latino immigrants, will never be prosperous, productive members of society, and that they will never vote Republican, so Republicans shouldn’t bother to try to appeal to them.

The first of these arguments was famously illustrated by a Heritage Foundation study last year that purported to show that immigration reform would cost the country trillions of dollars, an inflated number based on the premise that future generations of immigrants would never help to grow the economy or give back financially to the country. The fact that the report was co-written by a researcher who believes that Latinos have intrinsically lower IQ only served to underline the point that the study was making.

The second line of argument was most clearly put by Eagle Forum founder and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, when she said that Republicans should drop their attempts at reaching Latino voters and focus instead on turning out white voters because “there’s not any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from Mexico will vote Republican.” The next week, CIS sent out a press release echoing Schlafly’s argument . Pat Buchanan made a similar plea to revive the “Southern Strategy” by ginning up animosity among white voters toward Latino immigrants. It’s no coincidence that this theory that Republicans can maintain a whites-only coalition in an increasingly diverse nation was first laid out by white nationalist writer Steve Sailer.

These two themes were what was behind a FAIR spokesman’s comment last week that allowing undocumented immigrants to work toward legal status would collapse the two-party system and lead to “tyranny.” Similarly, CIS analyst Steven Steinlight recently claimed that immigration reform would be the “unmaking of America” because it “would subvert our political life by destroying the Republican Party” and turn the United States into a one-party state. As evidence, he cited the fact that “Hispanics don’t exemplify ‘strong family values.’”

You don’t have to talk about “cantaloupe calves” to build a movement that relies on and exploits racial animosity. The anti-immigrant movement has mastered this art.

- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/you-dont-say-republicans-admit-anti-immigrant-movement-driven-racism#sthash.d0LduVZ3.dpuf

'Family' Group: 'Pimp' Jay-Z And 'Homosexual Faux-Pastorette' Queen Latifah Hurl Grammys 'Spitball' at God

'Family' Group: 'Pimp' Jay-Z And 'Homosexual Faux-Pastorette' Queen Latifah Hurl Grammys 'Spitball' at God

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Tuesday, 1/28/2014 3:00 PM

Anti-gay activists including Rush Limbaugh, Fox News’ Todd Starnes, and the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer and Tim Wildmon have been having a field day this week attacking the Grammy Awards for hosting a performance involving a mass marriage that included same-sex couples. Today, the Illinois Family Association, the state affiliate of the AFA, joined the fray, sending out an email attacking the awards show for contributing to the “destruction of marriage.”
IFI’s “cultural analyst” Laurie Higgins writes that the Grammys were “a tragic freak show” and “a gawdy[sic] spitball hurled in the all-seeing eye of a holy God.”
The wedding ceremony, Higgins writes, was “a sorry, sick, non-serious ceremony that looked like something from the garish dystopian world of the Hunger Games” and “a non-wedding festooned with all the indulgent gimcrackery [sic] of Satan's most alluring playground: Hollywood.” She particularly attacks “homosexual faux-pastorette” Queen Latifah and “the Dorian Gray-esque” Madonna for taking part in the proceedings.
But Higgins disapproval goes beyond the same-sex marriage portion of the entertainment. She also criticizes Beyoncé -- the object of a fewrecent tirades from the Right -- for providing a “vulgar anti-woman, anti-marriage performance” that Higgins compares to “soft-core porn.”
“Beyoncé has abused her power as a beloved role model for young girls to teach them terrible lessons about sexuality and marriage,” Higgins writes. Her anger extends also to Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z, whom she claims “seems to revel in the lustings of strangers for his wife.”
“Is it money that motivates his eager embrace of his wife's immodesty, or pride that he has access to her body when all other leering men do not?” Higgins asks. “If it's money, how is he different from a pimp?”

This past Sunday night's Grammy awards was a tragic freak show that demonstrated the entertainment industry's arrogance, ignorance of marriage, and disregard for children. It was a gawdy spitball hurled in the all-seeing eye of a holy God.
The spectacle was bookended by a soft-core porn performance by the not-single lady Beyoncé who twerked and jerked her half-revealed derriere in a series of "dance" moves that simulated sex and stimulated sexual appetite, while the crowd cheered in puerile excitement.
Beyoncé was later joined by her husband Jay-Z who seems to revel in the lustings of strangers for his wife. What kind of man gets pleasure from his wife's flaunting of her sexuality and from the certain knowledge that men desire to do things to his wife because of her arousing dress and actions? Is it money that motivates his eager embrace of his wife's immodesty, or pride that he has access to her body when all other leering men do not? If it's money, how is he different from a pimp?
Beyoncé's performance reinforced the cultural deceit that modesty and the notion that conjugal love is private are archaic puritanical irrelevancies. Beyoncé has abused her power as a beloved role model for young girls to teach them terrible lessons about sexuality and marriage. Her performance raises many questions:

• What motivates a young, married mother to flaunt her partially-exposed sexual anatomy to the world and simulate sex movements?
• Deep down is this what she truly wants to do?
• Deep down does she really want her husband to delight in the objectification and commodification of her body for the prurient pleasures of other men?
• Would Jay-Z and Beyoncé want their daughter to one day perform like her mother for the pleasures of men? What would they think about an 18-year-old Blue Ivy recreating her mother's performance but in a seedy club for the eyes of less expensively attired and botoxed men and women?
• Is Beyoncé comfortable with her father watching her performance?
• What kind of mixed message does this performance send to children? Parents and pediatricians tell children that parts of their bodies are "private parts" that only parents and doctors should look at or touch. We convey that message to them from the earliest prepubescent ages. So, what happens after sexual maturity? Do those "private parts" suddenly become public parts?
• Is modesty in dress the same as prudery, or is it a virtue to be cultivated?

Beyoncé's vulgar anti-woman, anti-marriage performance foreshadowed the climactic setpiece of the evening: Queen Latifah, long-rumored to be a lesbian, officiated at the "weddings" of 33 couples, many of whom were same-sex couples, while accompanied by the preachy, feckless song "Same Love" by Macklemore and the song "Open Your Heart" by the Dorian Gray-esque Madonna. It was a sorry, sick, non-serious ceremony that looked like something from the garish dystopian world of the Hunger Games, replete with a cheering sycophantic audience, faux-stained glass windows, a faux-choir, a homosexual faux-pastorette, and "Madonna" with her faux-face. It was a non-wedding festooned with all the indulgent gimcrackery of Satan's most alluring playground: Hollywood.

 

  

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/family-group-pimp-jay-z-and-homosexual-faux-pastorette-queen-latifah-hurl-grammys-spitball-g

Utah Lunch Nazis Seize Food From Humiliated School Children!

Utah Lunch Nazis Seize Food From Humiliated School Children! (Video)

In Hot News, What the hell? January 30, 2014 , 12:34 PM

 

 

But this is no joke.  Or a clip from a sitcom. Dozens of children at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City watched as school workers picked up their meals and dumped them in the trash.

Why? 
Because the children did not have enough money in their accounts, according to a story reported by the Salt Lake City Tribune, leaving parents outraged.

“She took my lunch away and said, ‘Go get a milk,’” Sophia Isom, a fifth-grader at Salt Lake City’s Uintah Elementary School, told NBC affiliate KSL.com. “I came back and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ Then she handed me an orange. She said, ‘You don’t have any money in your account so you can’t get lunch.’” Isom’s mom Erica Lukes called the move “traumatic and humiliating” and told the Salt Lake Tribune she was all paid up. “I think it’s despicable,” she said. “These are young children that shouldn’t be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up. Lukes said it was a difficult day for her daughter and other children. She said Sophia told her she witnessed one of the cafeteria workers crying at the sight.

“You would think in a public school system your child wouldn’t be turned away from lunch,” Lukes said, “especially when people usually settle their balances.”

Jason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, said the district’s child-nutrition department became aware that Uintah had a large number of students who owed money for lunches. As a result, the child-nutrition manager visited the school and decided to withhold lunches in an attempt to “deal with the issue”. The children’s meals were thrown away and wasted because “once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another”.

 

“Something’s not working, and that’s what the school and child-nutrition department are going to work on together,” Olsen said.

Olsen said school officials told the district that their staffers typically tell students about any balances as they go through the lunch line and send home notifications to parents each week. Olsen claims that the district attempted to contact parents with balances but weren’t able to reach them all. The child-nutrition manager then decided to take away the students’ lunches.  But Olsen said he would not describe the tactic as a mistake.

“If students were humiliated and upset,” Olsen said, “that’s very unfortunate and not what we wanted to happen.”

 Olsen has since issued a too little too late apology on the district’s Facebook page.

Six Truths in Life ..........................................................

Six Truths in Life 
 1. You cannot stick your tongue out and look up at the ceiling at the same time, a physical impossibility
 2. All idiots, after reading #1 will try it.

3. And discover #1 is a lie.

4. You are smiling now because you are an idiot.

5. You soon will forward this to another idiot.

6. There is still a stupid smile on your face.

I sincerely apologize about this but I'm an idiot and I needed company. You now have 2 options...delete it, or send it along to put a smile on someone's face today.

EU police want ‘remote kill switch’ on every car

EU police want ‘remote kill switch’ on every car

by aletho

RT | January 30, 2014

The EU is considering making mandatory the equipping of all cars sold in the union with devices, which would allow police to remotely disable engines, according to leaked documents.

If the plan goes as planned, European law enforcers will be able to stop fugitives, suspected criminals and even speeding drivers with a simple radio command from a control room.

The technology is part of a six-year development plan by the ‘European Network of Law Enforcement Technologies’, or Enlets, a working group for police cooperation across the EU, reports the Telegraph.

"Cars on the run can be dangerous for citizens," the newspaper cites a document leaked by state power watchdog Statewatch.

"Criminal offenders will take risks to escape after a crime. In most cases the police are unable to chase the criminal due to a lack of efficient means to stop the vehicle safely," it says.

Remote control of car electronics is far from novel. A modern car is equipped with a network of microcomputers, which monitors and controls everything from ignition and flow of fuel to radio station being played. And increasingly cars can communicate wirelessly, a technology called telematics.

Loan firms and car dealerships have been using the benefits of electronically-controlled cars for years. A vehicle sold in the subprime market can be equipped with a black box, which reminds the client of overdue payments with honking horns and flashing lights and would disable the engine completely a few days later, unless the money is paid. And a GPS receiver would tell the dealership the exact location where the car can be collected.

Remote tracking and control is also used as anti-theft measure. Services like General Motors’ Stolen Vehicle Slowdown can force a stolen car to drop speed and stop on a remote command from the service provider.

Giving police the ability to do the same to any car in the EU does not thrill some rights advocates cautious of giving the government more authority.

"We need to know if there is any evidence that this is a widespread problem. Let's have some evidence that this is a problem, and then let's have some guidelines on how this would be used," Statewatch told the Telegraph.

Apart from that, there is a concern of possible hacker attacks, which could use the remote kill switch for nefarious ends. In March 2010 Texas police arrested a former car dealership employee, who used its car tracking and repossession system to disable some 100 vehicles in Austin in revenge for being laid-off.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Washington University tested how much harm hacking can do to a car’s electronic controller. The study conducted in 2010 showed that a criminal can relatively easily interfere with safety-critical systems like brakes.

The security of connected cars has not become hacker-proof since. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show this month, technology firm Harman warned that hacking problems for modern cars are very serious because the infrastructure of their electronic components was not designed with networking in mind, so they are not ready for the level of exposure to cyber-attacks that internet connectivity brings.

Related article

• EU has secret plan for police to 'remote stop' cars...

aletho

Banning Palestinian Students from Israeli Universities

Banning Palestinian Students from Israeli Universities

by aletho

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | May 28, 2009

The Israeli Supreme Court, that toothless wonder when it comes to confronting the national security state, has permitted the state intelligence apparatus to throw up an entirely new set of non-security criteria in order to prevent Palestinians from studying at Israeli universities.
Now, in addition to proving they’re intellectually worthy of academic study, a would-be
Palestinian enrollee will have to prove they are not a security risk AND surmount a whole host of non-security barriers including the following:

• Only PhD and Masters students will be considered and only if there is no practical alternative to studying in Israel

• Preference will be given to applicants to programs focusing on regional cooperation or developing coexistence and regional peace. The Education Ministry must testify as to the nature of the program

• Palestinians will not be allowed to study professions that have the potential to be used against Israel.

• The applicant will have to provide the army with a detailed request from a recognized academic institution explaining the grounds on which the institution wants him to study there

• There will be no further examination if the applicant has a security or criminal record.

• The army will take into account the age of the applicant and his personal status.

• The army, at its own discretion, may refuse to consider an applicant even if the student meets the above criteria.

These new and improved regulations (for the intelligence apparatus, that is) are quite astonishing. What they reveal is a nation that has decided that its institutions of higher learning are largely meant to exclude Palestinians. The military gets to determine which professions have the potential to harm Israel. Given that the same military determines that musical instruments are too dangerous to allow into Gaza, you can imagine how this could be interpreted: what, you want to study special education? Forget it. You might brainwash some poor child into becoming a shahid.

You’ll note that preference will be given to those enrolling in programs supporting “regional cooperation or developing coexistence.” Forgive me my cynicism but I’m interpreting “cooperation” a little differently than some might. Shouldn’t we be the least suspicious that “regional cooperation” might mean educating those Palestinians who will give the security services the most bang for their buck when they return to Palestine? Recruiting spies and collaborators? That certainly couldn’t be possible.

Regarding the age and “personal status” criteria, the defense ministry wishes to prevent young, single Palestinians from studying in Israel. If you’re an old geezer, married and with a few kids you’re more likely to pass the test.

The final criteria simply allows the military to reject any candidate for any reason or no reason at all. This is the way things work in the national security state. We do it the way I say because I say. You don’t like it. You can go to hell…

Related articles

• "Paths to Peace": Normalizing Israel's Collective Punishment of Gaza!

aletho

California prof's required reading paints Usama bin Laden as a freedom fighter

By Maxim Lott

Published January 30, 2014

FoxNews.com

• 
  California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, lecturer Emmit Evans tells students Usama Bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was trying to free his people from a Saudi regi8me propped up by the U.S.

Usama bin Laden was a freedom fighter and the U.S. is a “neocolonial power,” according to a California state university teacher whose writings are required reading for his political science students.

Emmit Evans, a political science lecturer at the public university Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, requires students in his "World FoodSystems" class to read the textbook he co-authored, "The Other World." In the book, about politics in the developing world, Evans offers up a sanitized version of the 9/11 mastermind and the terrorist group he headed.

“The Al Qaeda movement of Osama bin Laden is one example of an attempt to free a country (in this case, Saudi Arabia) from a corrupt and repressive regime propped up by a neocolonial power (in this case, the United States),” the book says.

"It totally blew my mind that a professor would essentially call Al Qaeda a bunch of freedom fighters in required reading for class."

- Aaron Bandler, student at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo

At least one student found the description hard to swallow.

"It totally blew my mind that a professor would essentially call Al Qaeda a bunch of freedom fighters in required reading for class," Aaron Bandler, a junior who took Evans’ class, told FoxNews.com.

Asked about his line referencing Al Qaeda, Evans told FoxNews.com in the language of academia that he merely presents facts and doesn't moralize.

"With respect to my writings, they are empirical, not normative," he said.

But Bandler said Evans’ bias showed throughout the course.

"He was encouraging us to be activists... the whole last part of the course was about how to cause ‘positive change’... but his examples of positive change were all stuff like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and raising the minimum wage,” Bandler said. “He would say things like, 'I know you guys can go out there and make things more sustainable.'"

Evans told FoxNews.com that his class does indeed have a bias -- one towards sustainability.

"World Food Systems has a built-in slant:on sustainability,” Evans said. “We do not focus on 'the other side' -- how we might build more unsustainable food systems."

Several studies have documented the left-wing orientation of most college professors. A survey done by UCLA researchers found thatjust 9.5 percent of public university professors identified as conservative, while 65.7 percent identified as liberals.

Bandler, who calls himself a proud conservative, said he believes his grade was never affected by political differences with his teacher.

"I feared about the impact of my politics on my grade a little bit, but the tests were mostly just multiple choice, graded on a … machine,” he said. “I don't really think my grade was affected.”

After the class, Bandler complained to Evans about the bias he perceived, and Evans replied to him by e-mail:

“Course evaluations sometimes include comments similar to yours, which encourage us to make the goals and focus of the course as explicit as possible. I’m sorry if I didn’t accomplish that as well as I could have in your case, but am pleased you didn’t un-enjoy the class!”

Bandler wrote of his experience in Evans class for the conservative blog The College Fix. He later told FoxNews.com the professor was also a nice guy who made him think.

"But I think I'd still like to see another side, at the very least just show the conservative side,” Bandler said. “He brought up Occupy Wall Street, but he couldn't talk about the Tea Party at all?"

Asked about that by FoxNews.com, Evans replied: "Nice idea... I'll check out Tea Party agendas and activities regarding their approach to sustainability. Would you have any suggestions on a good place to start?"

The author of the piece can be reached at maxim.lott@foxnews.com or on twitter at @maximlott

Utah School Threw Out Students’ Lunches Because They Were In Debt

BY ANNIE-ROSE STRASSER ON JANUARY 30, 2014 AT 9:20 AM

 

"Utah School Threw Out Students’ Lunches Because They Were In Debt"

 

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

A Utah school’s child nutrition manager threw out the lunches of about 40 elementary school students this week after the kids’ parents fell behind on payment.

Some parents at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City say they didn’t even realize they were indebted to the school. The school apparently made calls Monday and Tuesday telling some parents that there was a balance on their accounts, and the children of those who had missed the call were the ones whose lunches got thrown out.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the child nutrition manager’s original plan was to withhold lunches for kids whose parents hadn’t paid. But cafeteria workers were unable to distinguish who was on that list before serving. Once the food had been dished out, food safety codes say it can’t be given to another student and must be thrown away.

The children were given milk and fruit instead of a full lunch — the meal that the school says it gives any child who isn’t able to pay.

“So she took my lunch away and said, ‘Go get a milk,’ ” recalled one student, a fifth grader named Sophia. “I came back and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ Then she handed me an orange. She said, ‘You don’t have any money in your account so you can’t get lunch.’”

Parents were outraged by the move, calling it “traumatic and humiliating.”

Salt Lake City’s school district has apologized to parents and students for the incident. “We again apologize and commit to working with parents in rectifying this situation and to ensuring students are never treated in this manner again,” the district said in a Facebook note.

Still, the incident raises longstanding questions about child nutrition and low-income families. It is not the first time that students have had their lunch thrown out for insufficient funds. In November, a Texas middle school student’s lunch was thrown away because he was 30 cents short on payment.

But depriving children of food — and embarrassing them in front of their peers — isn’t the only option. In Boston, for example, public schools provide all students with cost-free breakfast and lunch no matter their financial situation.

A compelling set of evidence drives such decisions. Child hunger haslasting impacts on children’s mental health, as well as cognitive and social ability. And while more than one in five children lack stable access to food, only half of the students who are eligible for free breakfasts actually receive them.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Abuses of Power Have Cost Arizona Taxpayers Over $38 Million

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Abuses of Power Have Cost Arizona Taxpayers Over $38 Million

by Nick Goroff

Racial profiling, wrongful death, political witch hunts. These are among the more common themes to Maricopa County, Arizona's infamous sheriff Joe Arpaio's dodgy legacy. Though his 'get tough' antics and often barbaric approaches to criminal justice, Arpaio has made himself and his department the target of scorn and scrutiny by civil rights leaders and social justice advocates nationwide.

However in addition to the laundry list of ethical and legal problems that "America's Sheriff" has either created or been at the center of, newly released court documents show that throughout his tenure, Sheriff Arpaio has cost Arizona taxpayers $38 million in legal fees as a result.

The costs stem from the long series of legal battles, most of which focused on Arpaio's more aggressive and often questionable policing efforts. As a result of a ruling against his department over their racially based immigration checks, Arizona taxpayers were put on the hook for roughly $22 million to ensure appropriate supervision and compliance with court orders by Arpaio and his deputies.

In addition to these costly well publicized issues of racial profiling carried out under the auspices of immigration enforcement, Arpaio and his cronies have also been sued over what plaintiffs - both county officials and fellow law enforcement - claim were politically motivated police investigations on trumped-up or imaginary charges, costing taxpayers an additional $4.2 million.

Adding to this, two separate wrongful death suits related to his treatment of suspects and prisoners in his custody who died allegedly, as a result of either neglect or abuse at the hands of Maricopa County Sheriffs, which cost a combined $11.5 million in settlements, the total annual cost to Arizona taxpayers during Sheriff Joe's 21 years in office, comes to roughly $1.8 million a year in legal settlement costs alone.

A steep price in a time of shrinking budgets and deficit hysteria and one made even steeper when the human cost of such a brutal and inhumane approach to law and order is added in. Though praised as a true American and patriot by nationalist, 'get tough' conservatives, Arpaio's treatment of county prisoners and utter contempt for civil rights has drawn more comparisons to Soviet era gulags than the range riding cowboy marshals that many of his fans attempt to portray him as.

This past week, Arpaio grabbed headlines again when he announced that he would be putting inmates on a twice daily bread and water diet, as punishment for the desecration of American flags he installed in their cells.

Though many of Arpaio's often militant supporters will call the additional costs the result of frivolous lawsuits, they are consistently at a loss to defend the gross and overreaching assumed authority that the controversial lawman contends to posses. Presently Arpaio is seeking legal recourse to pass the costs in defending his practices on to the federal government, apparently believing that all of America should pay for his actions and legal defense.

While these and numerous other legal matters surrounding his department continue working their way through the courts, the one thing that is for certain is that presently at $38 million, the true, final financial cost for Sheriff Joe's abuse of power still has yet to be realized.

(h/t: ABCNews)

Nick Goroff

Marshall University Environmental Scientist Finds Formaldehyde in ‘Safe’ Charleston Water

Marshall University Environmental Scientist Finds Formaldehyde in ‘Safe’ Charleston Water

by John Prager

Marshall University environmental scientist and member of the state's Environmental Quality Board Scott Simonten has announced that the Charleston area's water includes more free chemicals than we had previously known--specifically, formaldehyde.

In early January, it became known that an amount up to 5,000 gallons of crude MCHM had leaked into West Virginia's Elk River from a Freedom Industries tank. Mere exposure to the water could cause blisters, rashes, and burns while ingestion could lead to uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea. In the time since, that number jumped from 5,000 gallons to 7,500 and now 10,000 and a second chemical, "PPH," was discovered to have been contaminating the water as well.

It was originally reported that the chemicals leaked for just a few hours, but as Bob Aaron revealed in a report for the local ABC affiliate, the leak likely occurred for approximately 20 hours. It could have been leaking below ground for months.

Now, it seems, a third chemical can be added to the cocktail of contamination that is in the water supply in the nine counties affected by the spill. While West Virginia American Water officials and other "experts" alike have claimed the water is now safe, residents have disagreed vehemently, citing the numerous additional hospitalizations since the lifting of the "do not use" order and other independent testing as evidence.

The declaration that the water is now safe has ended many relief efforts in the area and has placed residents in a difficult situation, given the new and interesting things being discovered about the local water supply as time marches on. "It's frightening, it really is frightening," said MU environmental scientist Scott Simonten. "What we know scares us, and we know there's a lot more we don't know."

Simonten has grown concerned not only with the newly-discovered presence of formaldehyde in the water, but with the lack of data on what actually happens to the 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol once it has a chance to react with various chemicals already found in the water. "We don't know what happens to this stuff once it gets into the environment," he said. "What happens when it reacts with makeup or soap or shampoo or anything else that we come into contact with everyday?"

One thing is for certain, though. As he told a joint legislative committee on water resources, his family is not going to drink or cook with the water, despite the weeks-old declaration that it is safe. "Your level of what risk you will accept is up to you, I can only tell you what mine is and I'm not drinking the water," Simonten said. "The formaldehyde had me personally a little freaked out."

How was formaldehyde introduced into the water? One of crude MCHM's main components is methanol, which breaks down into formaldehyde, according to Simonten. While he has not said how much of it was found, he described finding "trace amounts" taken from a downtown Charleston business.

It's no wonder Freedom Industries donates so heavily to politicians who support deregulation and who oppose any efforts to protect our environment from ecological terrorists like the criminals currently doing everything they can to evade responsibility for poisoning the water supply upon which over 300,000 humans rely.

John Prager

John Boehner Tells LGBT Caucus: There Is ‘No Way’ ENDA Will Pass In 2014

John Boehner Tells LGBT Caucus: There Is ‘No Way’ ENDA Will Pass In 2014

by Will Kohler

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) told the 113-member LGBT Equality Caucus last week that there is “no way” the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would pass this year according to Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA).

Boehner has repeatedly claimed that the LGBT employment protections are “unnecessary" while  in reality, it remains legal in 29 states to fire people for their sexual orientation and and in 33 states to fire people for their gender identity.

Meanwhile Obama could issue the "promised" executive order protecting at least the LGBT employees of federal contractors, which would also apply to small businesses not covered by ENDA, but the White House insists it prefers a legislative approach even though it seems Boehner will not be allowing it to come up for a vote  soon.

Could this be the reason why President Obama who through out his tenure has not been known to use the "bully pulpit" did not mention the Employment Non-Discrimination Act last night in the State of the Union address because he knows its dead in the water?

H/T  Zach Ford - TPM

Will Kohler

True Story of yet another Unique Bonding: The Fox and the Hound...‏

Meet Tinni (the dog on the left) and Sniffer (the fox on the right).

They are truly the BEST FRIENDS who live together in the Norwegian Forest ..

Photographer Torgeir Berge is Tinni’s guardian and has watched the
development of his dog’s incredible relationship with this wild fox.

Torgeir and his writing partner Berit Helberg are planning on publishing a
book for children and adults full of fairy tales and Berge’s beautiful photos.

These two must have been destined for friendship!

The author and the photographer agree that some of the proceeds of the
book will be donated to an organization that combats fur practices that harm animals like Sniffer.

As Helberg writes, “in this way we can be the voice of the animals.”

One thing is abundantly clear:
Sniffer and Tinni LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH.

They love to play.

And they love to rest.

They could talk for hours.

They have similar interests (traipsing, jumping, stick carrying, hanging out with each other.)

Berge explains that while Tinni and Sniffer might seem like an unlikely duo,
they are actually very much the same.

And anyone who looks at these pictures can see the affection and understanding

that they share.

If only humans could all be as kind and accepting as this pair.

Love is love.

And when you’re the best of friends, the rest of the world stands still.