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What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.


This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Why Reverse Racism Isn't Real

"I spend a lot of time on the internet. I write in various places on the internet, I interact in lively and active commenting communities at different websites, and I partake in a multitude of online forums that have an ongoing and pretty continuous stream of communication between the contributors. Ya know what I’ve noticed? Any time a PoC starts to talk about their experiences with racism, a white person chimes in to derail the conversation and talk about their own experiences with ‘reverse racism.’ And yes, I’m going to say ‘any time’ and not ‘sometimes’ because I have never once been in an internet dialogue amongst commenters and observed a PoC bring up their experience with real, actual, systemic or overt racism and not encountered a white person trying to make it all about their experiences with perceived racism. Not once. It happens every time. Ya know what else? That shit is tired, played out, and incorrect. So let’s talk about why reverse racism isn’t real and why white people need to let that one go."

Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Mex Tex - The Daily Show - Video Clip | Comedy Central


Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Mex Tex - The Daily Show - Video Clip | Comedy Central

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S. - NYTimes.com

"WASHINGTON — In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.

The number of requests, contained in a 2014 audit of the surveillance program by the Postal Service’s inspector general, shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax."

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Darren Wilson’s lawyer speaks out on leaked Brown autopsy | MSNBC

Later that day, Melinek told msnbc that her words had been partly misconstrued.
Melinek said that she had compared the forensic evidence included in the official autopsy report and Wilson’s statements and found them consistent. Since the report indicated the wound to Brown’s right thumb was close and in line to the barrel of Wilson’s gun when it discharged, it could mean he had been reaching for the gun.
“I’m not saying that Brown going for the gun is the only explanation. I’m saying the officer said he was going for the gun and the right thumb wound supports that,” she said. “I have limited information. It could also be consistent with other scenarios. That’s the important thing. That’s why the witnesses need to speak to the grand jury and the grand jury needs to hear all the unbiased testimony and compare those statements to the physical evidence.”
, 10/22/14, 7:24 PM ET

Most detailed account yet of Michael Brown shooting

Melinek said that interpreting the forensic findings is often subjective.

“If other witnesses have statements as to where [Brown’s] hands were, they could also be consistent with the forensic findings if they line up with the injury trajectory and distance,” she said.
Melinek added that the only statement she compared to the forensic evidence was that made by Wilson and that a number of other scenarios could also be possible, including Brown trying to protect himself or his hands for whatever reason being near the muzzle of Wilson’s gun.
The new autopsy also found the fatal shots had come from a downward motion into the top of Brown’s head. Another gunshot struck Brown in the forehead, a third to his chest, two in his upper arm and one two the back of his forearm.
All but one of the gunshots, Melinek said, seem to have struck Brown in the front of his body, which is consistent with witnesses who said Brown had been facing Wilson when he was shot. Depending on any witnesses physical proximity to the shooting, Brown could have been turning to Wilson in surrender, stumbling toward him after being shot or charging him.
The shot to the back of Brown’s upper arm, Melinek said, suggested he could have been shot from behind.


Darren Wilson’s lawyer speaks out on leaked Brown autopsy | MSNBC

The Mirage of the ‘New Egypt’ - NYTimes.com

"The reality is that since July 2013, when Mr. Sisi overthrew President Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, at least 16,000 people have been jailed for their views — most for being members or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The regime has also imprisoned secular activists, such as Ahmed Maher, a founder of the April 6 youth movement, for an unauthorized protest, and journalists, including three from Al Jazeera who were convicted in July on charges of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood.

Earlier this year, a judge handed down more than 1,200 death sentences in two mass trials, again mostly to those accused of being Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters. (The number of death sentences was later reduced to 277 and the judge was removed from his court after international condemnation.)

As a draconian “protest law” that went into effect last November has almost entirely eliminated street protests, university campuses have become one of the few places of opposition. Since the school year began on Oct. 11, with harsh new government-directed security forces on campuses, at least 200 students have been arrested across the country for protesting."



The Mirage of the ‘New Egypt’ - NYTimes.com

Blackwater Guards Found Guilty in 2007 Iraq Killings - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards were convicted and immediately jailed Wednesday for their roles in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that marked a bloody nadir in America’s war in Iraq.
A jury in Federal District Court found that the deaths of 17 Iraqis in the shooting, which began when a convoy of the guards suddenly began firing in a crowded intersection, was not a battlefield tragedy, but the result of a criminal act.
The convictions on murder, manslaughter and weapons charges represented a legal and diplomatic victory for the United States government, which had urged Iraqis to put their faith in the American court system. That faith was tested repeatedly over seven years as the investigation had repeated setbacks, leaving Iraqis deeply suspicious that anyone would be held responsible for the deaths.


Leaks from the Mike Brown investigation surface |Leaks from the Mike Brown investigation surface Chris Hayes says that the steady stream of leaks out of Ferguson “has turned what is supposed to be a secret proceeding driven by the prosecution into a public proceeding taking place in the media that seems far more beneficial to the defense.”



Leaks from the Mike Brown investigation surface | MSNBC

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Questions surround Florida inmate's death | MSNBC








Questions surround Florida inmate's death | MSNBC

Liberian Leader: Ebola May Cause 'Lost Generation'

"DAKAR, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The Ebola outbreak in West Africa risks unleashing an economic catastrophe that will leave a "lost generation" of young West Africans, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Sunday, urging stronger international action.

The worst epidemic on record of the deadly virus has now killed more than 4,500 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Eight people have also died in Nigeria and cases have been reported in the United States and Spain.

Johnson Sirleaf said the international reaction to the outbreak, detected in March deep in the forests of southern Guinea, was initially "inconsistent and lacking in clear direction or urgency."

She said the international community had woken up to the global health risk posed by the epidemic but called for help from every nation with the capacity to do so, either in funding or medical staff and supplies."

Saturday, October 18, 2014

A letter to Gov. Nikki Haley: Time to take down the confederate flag in South Carolina | MSNBC



A letter to Gov. Nikki Haley: Time to take down the confederate flag in South Carolina | MSNBC

How is Ebola treated? | MSNBC



How is Ebola treated? | MSNBC

How Ebola could trigger famine in West Africa | MSNBC



How Ebola could trigger famine in West Africa | MSNBC

Discrimination 'mounting' on West African immigrants | MSNBC




Discrimination 'mounting' on West African immigrants | MSNBC

MHP: We have two standards for health care in America | MSNBC



MHP: We have two standards for health care in America | MSNBC

Jeremy Renner on ‘Kill the Messenger’ The CIA, The Reagan Administration, The Contras and Drug Trafficing| MSNBC



Jeremy Renner on ‘Kill the Messenger’ | MSNBC

Rand Paul stoops low to stoke Ebola fears | MSNBC



Rand Paul stoops low to stoke Ebola fears | MSNBC

2014: The GOP’s fear campaign | MSNBC



2014: The GOP’s fear campaign | MSNBC

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Violent Clashes Between Police and Demonstrators Erupt in Hong Kong - NYTimes.com

"HONG KONG — In the most intense confrontation since the early days of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, hundreds of police officers used pepper spray in the early hours of Wednesday to scatter hundreds of demonstrators who had barricaded a harbor-front road overnight.

The conflict appeared to last less than half an hour, and the two sides settled into an uneasy standoff nearing dawn. But the crackdown, which the police said had included the arrests of 45 protesters, further escalated tensions in this Asian financial center as the authorities showed growing impatience with demonstrations that have choked traffic for more than two weeks.

The swift police action to reopen the road near the offices of Hong Kong’s leader came hours after the Chinese government appeared to ramp up the pressure on Hong Kong’s authorities to act."

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Bill Maher Isn’t the Only One Who Misunderstands Religion - NYTimes.com

Yet there is a real lack of sophistication on both sides of the argument when it comes to discussing religion and violence.
On one hand, people of faith are far too eager to distance themselves from extremists in their community, often denying that religious violence has any religious motivation whatsoever. This is especially true of Muslims, who often glibly dismiss those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam as “not really Muslim.”
On the other, critics of religion tend to exhibit an inability to understand religion outside of its absolutist connotations. They scour holy texts for bits of savagery and point to extreme examples of religious bigotry, of which there are too many, to generalize about the causes of oppression throughout the world.
What both the believers and the critics often miss is that religion is often far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. 


Bill Maher Isn’t the Only One Who Misunderstands Religion - NYTimes.com

A Black Detective, an 1870 Trial and a What If - NYTimes.com

"Ross has unearthed an important story,” Mr. Brophy said. “Historians are going to argue about its broader significance for a long time.”

Beyond academia, Mr. Ross said he hoped his whodunit would add complexity to the public understanding of Reconstruction, restoring a sense of contingency to a period that is too often read as leading inexorably to Jim Crow."

Monday, October 13, 2014

Diversity won’t solve police misconduct: Black cops don’t reduce violence against black citizens.

According to a ProPublica analysis of federal data on police shootings, young black males ages 15 to 19 are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than their white counterparts. “One way of appreciating that stark disparity,” notes ProPublica, “is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk. The number is jarring—185, more than one per week.” What’s most relevant for the diversity of police departments is this fact: While black officers are involved in just 10 percent of police shootings, 78 percent of those they kill are black.
The glib response to stats on blacks and police is to cite so-called “black crime” or “black criminality.” But this depends on a major analytical error. Yes, blacks are overrepresented in arrest and conviction rates. At the same time, “criminal blacks” are a tiny, unrepresentative fraction of all black Americans. If you walked into a group of 1,000 randomly selected blacks, the vast majority—upward of 998—would never have had anything to do with violent crime. To generalize from the two is to confuse the specific (how blacks are represented among criminals) with the general (how criminals are represented among blacks). Statisticians call this a “base rate error,” and you should try to avoid it.


Diversity won’t solve police misconduct: Black cops don’t reduce violence against black citizens.

Diversity won’t solve police misconduct: Black cops don’t reduce violence against black citizens.

According to a ProPublica analysis of federal data on police shootings, young black males ages 15 to 19 are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than their white counterparts. “One way of appreciating that stark disparity,” notes ProPublica, “is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk. The number is jarring—185, more than one per week.” What’s most relevant for the diversity of police departments is this fact: While black officers are involved in just 10 percent of police shootings, 78 percent of those they kill are black.
The glib response to stats on blacks and police is to cite so-called “black crime” or “black criminality.” But this depends on a major analytical error. Yes, blacks are overrepresented in arrest and conviction rates. At the same time, “criminal blacks” are a tiny, unrepresentative fraction of all black Americans. If you walked into a group of 1,000 randomly selected blacks, the vast majority—upward of 998—would never have had anything to do with violent crime. To generalize from the two is to confuse the specific (how blacks are represented among criminals) with the general (how criminals are represented among blacks). Statisticians call this a “base rate error,” and you should try to avoid it.


Diversity won’t solve police misconduct: Black cops don’t reduce violence against black citizens.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Mexico’s Deadly Narco-Politics - NYTimes.com

"IGUALA, Mexico — STUDENT protesters in rural Mexico have long dealt with heavy-handed police officers. But on the black night of Sept. 26, students who attended a rural teachers’ college realized they were facing a far worse menace in this southern city. Not only were police officers shooting haphazardly at them, killing three students and several passers-by; shady gunmen were also firing from the sidelines.

The next morning, the corpse of a student was dumped on a major street. He’d had his skin peeled off and his eyes gouged out. It was the mark of drug cartel assassins.

Soldiers and federal detectives detained two alleged cartel hit men, who confessed they had conspired with the police to murder students. They led troops to pits on the outskirts of Iguala containing 28 charred corpses. Forensic teams are working to identify the bodies. A total of 43 students went missing that night, many last seen being bundled into police cars.

When I went to the grave site on an eerie hill, it still stank of decaying human flesh. I had just been interviewing some of the students’ classmates at their university, mostly teenage sons of poor farmers, who are idealistic, committed and frightened. I have covered cartel violence in Mexico for over a decade. But as I inhaled the stench of death on that hill, and saw photos of the mutilated student on the road, I felt as never before that I was covering an act of pure unadulterated evil."

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Indiana police defend shocking video | MSNBC





If We Must Die

BY CLAUDE MCKAY

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!




Indiana police defend shocking video | MSNBC

Sunday, October 05, 2014

NYTimes: Protesters in Hong Kong Ease Sit-In at Government Headquarters

This is sad. At some point democracy demonstrators mutual confront the Chinese government and risk another June 6th 1989 massacre.

NYPD: Black Teens Must Stay Out Of Predominantly White Neighborhood Unless Doing Something Productive | Addicting Info

This is the cap I grew up with in Staten Island. I lived and went to school in Lilly white neiborhoods. This makes me see red. Cops like this need to be eliminated from the police force preferably by the city government or by the people since the government has failed at it's duty. This is the attitude that is getting Black people kiiled.

Bill and Melinda Gates top Forbes list as most philanthropic Americans - CNET

"Bill and Melinda Gates have taken the No. 1 spot on Forbes' list of the 50 top givers in America.

Ranking the most philanthropic people across the country, Forbes singled out the Gates couple, who donated $2.65 billion last year toward fighting disease and reforming education, among other initiatives. One notable gift cited by Forbes was $50 million dollars given by the pair to the International Aids Vaccine Initiative. Over their lifetime, the two have given out $30.2 billion, about 37 percent of their net worth.

The couple coordinate their efforts through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which works with other people to donate money and resources on trying to solve a select number of global problems and concerns."

Saturday, October 04, 2014

An Inconvenient Protest for Both China and the U.S. - NYTimes.com

We must have the courage to do what is right and speak out.

"WASHINGTON — President Obama is scheduled to visit China next month, and with tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters on the streets of Hong Kong, human rights could force itself onto the agenda between the United States and the Chinese in a way not seen in many years.

A major caveat, of course, is that the fervent crowds in Hong Kong could be long gone by Nov. 10, when Mr. Obama and 20 Pacific Rim leaders gather in Beijing for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. That would certainly be a relief to the Chinese host, President Xi Jinping, and perhaps to Mr. Obama, too.

Human rights have not been a major topic of discussion between the two countries since the aftermath of China’s bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago. With Washington eager to work with Beijing on a list of priorities — from climate change to curbing Iran’s nuclear program — officials in both countries are eager to keep it that way."

Thursday, October 02, 2014

At 17, Setting Off Protests That Roil Hong Kong - NYTimes.com

"HONG KONG — The slight teenager with heavy rectangular glasses and a bowl cut stood above the ocean of protesters who had engulfed downtown Hong Kong. His deep voice was drowned out by cheers, but the crowd did not mind: They knew him and his message. It was Joshua Wong, a 17-year-old student activist who has been at the center of the democracy movement that has rattled the Chinese government’s hold on this city.

“When I heard the national anthem starting to play, I certainly did not feel moved so much as angry,” Mr. Wong said a few hours later, after a protest at a flag-raising ceremony on Wednesday morning to mark the Chinese National Day holiday. “When it tells you, ‘Arise! All those who refuse to be slaves!’ — why is our treatment today any different from the slaves?”

Guilty verdict for Jordan Davis’ killer Chris Hayes talks about a jury’s decision to convict Michael Dunn, the man who shot and killed unarmed teenager Jordan Davis, of first degree murder, and what that might mean for the rest of the country.



All In with Chris Hayes on msnbc

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Grand jury considering the Ferguson shooting is being investigated for misconduct - The Washington Post

The St. Louis County prosecutor’s office is investigating an accusation of misconduct on the grand jury that is hearing the case against the Ferguson Police Officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Ed Magee, the spokesman for county prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, said they received the information from a “Twitter user” Wednesday morning.

“We are looking into the matter,” he said.

An account of possible jury misconduct surfaced Wednesday morning on Twitter, when several users sent messages about one juror who may have discussed evidence in the case with a friend.

In one of those messages, a person tweeted that they are friends with a member of the jury who doesn’t believe there is enough evidence to warrant an arrest of the officer, Darren Wilson.

The same person who tweeted about being friends with a member of the jury has also tweeted messages of support for Wilson.

Magee confirmed that the Twitter user and feed came from an activist, Shaun King.

Within seconds of posting this, her friends told her to delete it and she did. It was screenshotted first.



Grand jury considering the Ferguson shooting is being investigated for misconduct - The Washington Post