Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 June 2014

The People's Game: Football, Soccer (video)

Mexico is better than Brazil is better than Netherlands is better than Venezuela is better than USA is better than Germany...and if you disagree, we'll beat you outside the match!
What about Women's Soccer or women's anything? That's an abomination (FEMEN)
(MS13) Comic Futebol, Football/Soccer, world's most popular sport, courtesy of Australia
I'll kill ya, Futballer! You'll be assassinated for that mistake! You will rue the day! Die!
As Ivory Coast kicks off against Greece, Didier Drogba, the footballer who ended a war, is being cheered on. After qualifying for the 2006 World Cup, Drogba and his teammates appealed to their fellow citizens to lay down their guns after five years of civil war. A ceasefire was called, and Drogba became a hero to peacemakers everywhere (The PG).
Mexico (Los Angeles' soccer favorite team) wins: celebrates victory over Croatia
 
(June 25, 2014) On today’s podcast, the politics of food -- specifically, Luis Suarez’s choice of snack in the 80th minute of the Uruguay-Italy match. Alan Minsky and Meleiza Figueroa discuss today’s bizarre events. Then David Goldblatt, soccer historian and author of Futebol Nation: The Story of Brazil through Soccer. Next, People’s Game correspondent Lezar Treschan helps make sense of Uruguayan gastronomy. And finally, author, comedian Prof. Gustavo Arellano (Editor, OC Weekly) celebrates Mexico’s glorious victory over Croatia and their advancement to the second round.
 
Revolution: The Zapatista team is mixed male and female (thepeoplesgame.org)
 
War, what war? Poverty? Huh?
(June 24, 2014) On today’s podcast, the focus is on Mexico and the Netherlands, whose victories today mean they will face off against each other in the Round of 16. Alan Minsky and Meleiza Figueroa recap Holland’s win, as well as El Tri’s ecstatic victory and how the rise of CONCACAF may reflect on Europe’s dominance of the game and give a preview of tomorrow’s matches. KPFK’s Antonio Gonzalez speaks with David Brooks of La Jornada on how Mexico’s conservative government is using the team’s glory to distract people from the dramatic and reactionary economic reforms being rammed through the legislature. Finally, we reprise Minsky’s 2010 interview with David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer.
 

Pacifica Free Speech Radio: Anti-Imperialist World Cup party, L.A. (KPFK.org)
 
The People’s Game Part 2: Brazil Rejects Neo-Liberal Soccer
Alan Minsky (KPFK.org) and Meleiza Figueroa (Before It's News)
What FIFA has imposed on Brazil is a kind of soccer that is nearly unrecognizable. So it is heretical to the people who have over the course of more than a century made this sport into a national religion.

Before It's News (beforeitsnews.com)
Riots, police state crackdowns, and big corporate business for Brazil (occupy.com)
War will be endless, but keep playing the ball game (mediaexposed.tumblr.com)
 
Bread and Circuses News (democracynow.org)
 
"A Neo-Liberal Trojan Horse": Dave Zirin on Brazil’s mass protests against World Cup displacement 
Thousands of people marched in Brazil in one of the largest protests against [corruption related to] the 2014 World Cup. Members of the Homeless Workers Movement blocked a major freeway in São Paulo to protest massive...

Dave Zirin on the World Cup we won’t see on TV: protests, tear gas, displaced Favela residents
As the 2014 World Cup in Brazil enters fifth day, the U.S. will play its first game of the tournament against Ghana. Meanwhile, World Cup protests are continuing on the streets of Brazil...
As patriotic Americans we prefer Gridiron Death Match, which we call "American Football." We're not dumb: We call Futbol "Soccer" because of England (BusinessInsider.com).

Thursday, 5 June 2014

FBI exposes L.A. County Jail guards (video)

Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Victoria Kim (latimes.com, June 4, 2014); Rob Halford and Judas Priest, Chris Barnes and Six Feet Under
Jailhouse Sheriff's deputies walk past cells on the 3000 floor of the L.A. County Men's Central Jail in downtown, housing 19,000 detainees and inmates (Jay L. Clendenin/LA Times)


Police (Sheriff's deputies) eager to commit felonious assault with great bodily injury to create climate of terror and oppression for all awaiting their day in court. Innocent until proven guilty is reversed in this upside down world of darkness, the rotting -pool nestled in the center of the City of Lights.

One officer recently pleaded guilty to assembling an automatic weapon for private off-duty use, and 19 or so are up on felony charges of conspiracy and impeding an investigation... -- because the worst thing one can do in jail is fink on another. This is not the lore of prisoners, it is the active mantra of the jailers. To tell on them and expose their crimes means the full weight of the Force will be brought down on you to silence you and continue their illegal behavior. Exposure might stop the police brutality, homosexual officer-on-prisoner rapes, and unwarranted murders of prisoner (framed to look as if they committed suicide or were killed by other inmates, when more often than not a simple form of killing an inmate is by exposing him to great danger by placing him defenseless in closed quarters with deadly inmates and then saying it was "just one of those things" that happens in jail).

No one wants to hear about it. None of us wants to believe police of all people commit the most heinous crimes under color of uniform sanctioned by the state and all of complicit by our silence, police revenge killings, deputy sexual assaults, predatory-police and sociopathic-jailer torture. And so it continues. 

Accused criminals are blamed. They must be "causing" good, wholesome officers to behave this way. The Stanford Prison Experiment tells us that the social context contributes a great deal, but who becomes a police officer, a jailer, a punishment-meting patrolman (most are men)? The average person doesn't. Troubled, thrill seeking misfits do, as do many damaged people back from war, who enjoy wearing uniforms, vastly outgunning "enemies," and acting with impunity.

Breaking the Law? "There I was completely wasting, out of work and down/ All inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town/ Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die/ So I might as well begin to put some action in my life!/ CHORUS: Breaking the law, breaking the law.../ So much for the golden future, I can't even start/ I've had every promise broken, there's anger in my heart/ You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue/ If you did, you'd find yourselves doing the same thing, too!/ CHORUS/ You don't know what it's like!" (Judas Priest/Rob Halford).
 
(Judas Priest) These were to good ol' days when a British rock band led by a closeted gay singer dressed extravagantly in leather and chains could sing staccato of "breaking the law."
 
Jail deputy told FBI agent of "unwritten rule" on fights with inmates
Victoria Kim (latimes.com)
Cop vs. cop, FBI vs. Sheriff's deputies
On top of the many protocols and regulations he learned in training, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy William David Courson was taught one "unwritten rule": If an inmate fights with a deputy, that inmate ends up at the hospital [or the morgue].
 
He learned the rule at a jail operations training session led by a sergeant and two deputies in a classroom full of about 50 deputies, Courson testified Wednesday [June 4, 2014]. Courson, who has worked at Men's Central Jail since graduating from the academy in early 2008, described [police] violence and [police] coverups among jail guards at the federal trial of six sheriff's officials on charges of obstruction of justice.
 
The "unwritten rule" was among the things Courson told [a female] FBI agent investigating the jails. He had asked the agent out on dates after seeing her at the jail facility. Over meals at a taco joint and a breakfast cafe, he talked to her about the jail's culture and specific incidents -- not realizing that all the while, she was wearing a wire and recording him as a potential target in the investigation into excessive force and corruption in the sheriff-run jails.
 
(6FU) Fast forward a few decades, and it's now the bad new days, as Florida Bigoot/yakkha/skunkape Chris Barnes growls "No Warning Shots," Six Feet Under, "Maximum Violence."
 
Courson said that during pill call one night not long after he started working at the jails, he saw a deputy come up from behind an inmate and start a fight. That same day, a senior deputy came up to him and asked him what he saw.
 
"I asked him what did he want to hear," Courson said. The senior deputy responded: "Say you were upstairs running the showers," he recalled the senior deputy saying.
 
None of the five [police] men and one woman on trial are accused of civil rights violations or excessive force [felonies they committed and commit on a routine basis]; they faces charges of attempting to impede the investigation by hiding a federal informant and threatening the case agent with arrest... More

"No Warning Shot"
Lyrics by Chris Barnes
Vientiane, Laos (Ianh3000)
"Die, die!/ The end of all law/ Four shots fired, another body falls/ I execute the guilty, violently/ Undercover killing spree, no warning shot// CHORUS: Die, [mister], die, die/ Die, [mister], die, die!/ Die, [mister], die, die! / I'll put a bullet between your [blooming] eyes// Pull the trigger, cock the hammer back/ Fifth shot to the back of your neck/ You're not a threat, you're a [blooming] disease/ Eradicate the enemy/ Dead body, another crime scene/ Blood-stained pavement, chalk outline/ Bullet holes, you're dead and cold/ The end of all law, no warning shot// CHORUS// I put the gun to the side of your head/ Squeezing the trigger/ Powder burnt skin, breaking through cranial bone/ Decayed brain tissue implodes/ Just another life that you thought you could control/ Just another pig, dead, with some extra holes/ You better think again, before I kill again/ You won't survive, when the bullets start to fly/ Protect and serve yourself/ Dug your own grave, now rot/ In that hole decay/ The murder will never stop, no warning shot// CHORUS

Friday, 23 May 2014

A Coup in Thailand?: Bangkok Rising (video)

 
Look, mom, I'm in a coup! (nytimes.com)
(VICE) For almost a decade, Buddhist Thailand has been trapped in a bloody conflict between Red Shirt supporters and Yellow Shirt opponents of the billionaire-tycoon-turned-politician Thaksin Shinawatra (and the subsequent Thai PM, his sister Yingluck Shinawatra).

Ousted Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra
During his time as prime minister, Thaksin improved life for the poor and the working class.

But his autocratic tendencies and crony capitalism led his opponents, mainly made up of conservative royalists and the upper middle class, to rise up and overthrow him.

Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006 for alleged abuse of power and corruption. Since then Thaksin's opponents -- widely known as the Yellow Shirts -- and his avid supporters, the Red Shirts, have taken turns instigating mass street protests to topple their opponents.

CNN/CIA coverage has been superficial
While attempting to clear her brother's name of corruption charges in November 2013, Thaksin's sister and Thailand's latest PM [ousted by the court two weeks ago] Yingluck Shinawatra triggered a new Yellow Shirt uprising that has so far killed a reported 23 people and injured hundreds.

Yingluck Shinawatra tried to diffuse the protests by dissolving Thailand's parliament and calling for new elections. But the Yellow Shirts, determined to overthrow her, began a shutdown of Bangkok on January 13th, bringing the Thai capital to a standstill.

Huh, what coup? This has happened before.
Since the election was annulled on March 31st, Red Shirts are mobilizing and intensifying their threats of starting a civil war.

VICE News was on the ground to capture Thailand's state of emergency as the long-running battle for the country is coming to a head.

There are other people, ethnic minorities like these beautiful mountain village girls from the north, often seen selling trinkets in Chiang Mai, Thailand's second-city (Max_Drukpa/flickr).
 
Commentary
We're Red Shirts, but we're tourists.
Who's right, who's wrong? It is easy to support the revolutionary Red Shirts. But the person they entrusted their future to may have been, could likely have been, a corrupt billionaire. He made all the right promises...as did Obama. These "populist" leaders say the right things. They don't follow through. They sell out their followers. Then the Red Shirts succeeded again by electing the fabulous Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of ousted and exiled PM Thaksin Shinawatra.

A People's Coup 2013 (nation.com)
But Yellow Shirts accused her of continuing her brother's populist/corrupt policies. Was she great, or was she a hypocrite? Should Thaksin been allowed back into the country, or had he offended the establishment too much? How could he, a billionaire tycoon, be the "people's hope"? He was the one making all the right promises, offering help to the poor. This is what so many would-be dictators begin by saying. Even if they are sincere, clandestine forces come in to convert or assassinate them. (Why is explained in John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hitman).
 
Surely the Shinawatras were a better alternative to the status quo -- but an even better option is what Red Shirts are actually fighting for: a citizens' committee to rule the country. The military will not stand for it. The military-industrial complex (government police+private corporations = military+industry) have a plan for that kind of talk: Game over, time out, military coup, police state, "I'm taking my ball and going home," as Cartman would put it.

People's Coup vs. Military Coup 
Thitinan Pongsudhirak (The Nation, Dec. 13, 2013)
Bangkok, Thailand protest rally for the people, Red Shirts vs. Yellow Shirts (AP).
.
Woman sells statues, talismans (Ska09/flickr)
Never has Thai politics degenerated so quickly from uneasy accommodation to outright insurrection.

It started a month ago [Nov. 2013] with broad-based opposition to an expansive amnesty legislation that would have absolved former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from convictions for corruption and abuse of power.

It ended up as a civilian putsch by anti-Thaksin forces, led by the Democrat Party and its erstwhile heavyweight MP Suthep Thaugsuban. On an anti-corruption crusade and intent on uprooting what they call the “Thaksin Regime,” these forces incorporate the royalist “Yellow Shirts” and other anti-Thaksin groups from recent years who constitute one side of Thailand’s polarization.

Whether they succeed in removing the government of PM Yingluck Shinawatra, Mr. Thaksin’s younger sister, from power and installing their own government will determine the direction of Thai democracy. More

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Chilling documentary: Koch Brothers Exposed!

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Gonzalez (DN!, 5-21-14)


There is a chilling new documentary about the billionaire Koch Brothers (focusing on David and Charles although there are five). And some Republicans do not want people to see it.

On Monday, Republican Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan tried to block an event at the Capitol unveiling the film, "Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition." 

Miller claimed the documentary could violate House rules and "cross the line into partisan politics." She unsuccessfully argued that showing the documentary was an inappropriate use of taxpayer-funded facilities.

John_dunbar
Group helps fund right wing agenda
On Tuesday evening, the film event proceeded as planned. The updated documentary shows how the Koch Brothers have used their vast [multi-billion dollar] fortunes to oppose government programs such as: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, as well as obstruct efforts to raise the minimum wage, tackle climate change, and expand voting rights.

Director Robert Greenwald, founder and president of Brave New Films, appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the film. More
Sonsofwichitabook
Behind the Koch Brothers: Secrets of US’s Most Powerful Dynasty

Monday, 12 May 2014

Corrupt police go on trial in Los Angeles

Grab her! She's wearing a wire! She's wearing a wire! She's wearing an underwire bra!

She's packing some kind of baggies with gel... Drugs, drugs! It's not sexual assault if I'm wearing a badge. (Occupy My Boobs/lareviewofbooks.org/Ben Ehrenreich et al./tumblr)
MA woman with the sense to record her cop encounter on her cell phone is now facing felony wiretapping charges for not informing them. (What if they had broken the law on tape?) Karen Dziewit was drinking outside an apartment building. Residents complained that she was yelling at them and refused to calm down. More
(RELATED: "Lawsuit: Cops shoved ‘sharp object’ down teen’s throat, killing him")
.
LA jail scandal: 1st of 20 indicted sheriff's deputies faces trial
Staff Photos
Rina Palta (KPCC)
The first of 20 [criminal] deputies charged in a sweeping investigation into corruption and civil rights violations in L.A.'s county jails goes to trial today.
 
James Sexton is charged with obstruction of justice related to an incident involving an [L.A. Jail] inmate working as an FBI informant.
 
According to prosecutors, a group of deputies learned an inmate at Men's Central Jail, Anthony Brown, was working as an informant for the FBI. The FBI was investigating [police] corruption -- such as deputies smuggling contraband into the jails -- and civil rights violations that included deputies beating inmates.
 
Turn around, I beat your faces, m-f'ers!
[This would amount to felony assaults under color of uniform, conspiracy, gang affiliation in that Sheriff deputies have formed a criminal gang among themselves, attempted murder, witness tampering, and torture of captives, which is a "crime against humanity" in the eyes of the International Court of Justice even if condoned by American courts].
 
LA Sheriff Corruption
US Attorney Birotte, LA FBI's Lewis (AP)
Prosecutors say when deputies learned Brown was an informant, they interviewed him, took his cell phone away, and "fudged" records to make it look like he had been released from jail.

Meanwhile, Brown was being moved from jail to jail under a false name [kidnapping, false imprisonment, conspiracy, witness tampering, falsification of records].
 
Sexton is accused of helping falsify records, keeping watch over the hidden inmate, and denying access to FBI agents who arrived at the jail to talk with Brown.
 
You want Tibet, S.O.B., I'll give you Tibet!
He later approached the FBI with his concerns over the episode, but nevertheless was charged as part of a larger obstruction of justice case against seven deputies allegedly involved in hiding Brown.

Sexton's defense attorneys are expected to argue that he was following orders from higher ups [criminal conspiracy], that he was unaware he was being investigated when he cooperated with the FBI, and that he did not intend to obstruct justice, as evidenced by his later cooperation with federal authorities. 

The remaining six deputies in the case are expected to go to trial when Sexton's trial concludes. LISTEN (0:51 secs)

COMMENTARY
Open season on a defector in Big Bear, LAPD Officer Dorner, serial killer (scpr.org)
.
Police state
Sheriff Lee Baca stepped down abruptly earlier this year, not to avoid charges being brought against him or anything...but, well, sort of to avoid charges. He was seen recently walking around as a free man attending the blessing for Pasadena's planned Armenian Genocide Memorial, which ironically commemorates a holocaust and torture perpetrated by Turks while he as Sheriff for term after term perpetrated crimes against humanity with impunity. He didn't know. How would a boss know? It must have been "rogue elements" under him. Yeah, that's it! The other police did it! He can't be held responsible for covering up for them...if he can prove he didn't know. Yes, sure, maybe he should have known, but if he can prove that he did not... Well, now we see why he had to leave office. If he were charged and held, a standing Sheriff would be thrown in the very jail system he runs. And what kind of justice is there in that? If he gets thrown in one he ran, well that's more acceptable to keep up the front that Los Angeles police are here to serve and protect everyone. They are here to "protect" only a very few and to "serve" banking interests and other conservatives who give them money. And taxes from citizens don't count. They just don't, so don't try to bring that up.

(DemocracyNow.org, May 12, 2014)

(InfoWars) Dr. Steve Pieczenik: "Shutdown the corrupt CIA and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] because both are incompetent and psychopathic!" Alex Jones agrees.

PHOTO: Andre Birotte, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, at podium, and Bill Lewis, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Division, right, take questions on the five criminal cases filed against 18 current and former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies as part of an FBI investigation into allegations of civil rights abuses and corruption in the nation’s largest jail system, during a news conference in Los Angeles, Monday, Dec. 9, 2013. The FBI has been investigating allegations of excessive force and other misconduct at the county’s jails since at least 2011 (AP/Nick Ut).

Tuesday, 6 May 2014

UN: Vatican tortures, rapes children (NPR)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Sylvia Poggioli (NPR, 5-6-14)
Yeah, we molest kids, of course. We even make "sacred" art about it for our churches.
 
UN grills Vatican officials on sex abuse
Maybe I still run things in secret. *Giggle*
A U.N. committee has found that the systematic sex abuse [of children] by Catholic priests in the Vatican's corporate body (the Roman Catholic Church) amounts to torture.

["Torture" is defined by international treaties to which the Holy See is apparently a signatory, or the court might not have any say over their crimes against humanity. 

Small "country" but very, very rich
The Vatican is not only Roman Catholic HQ. It is also a tiny city-state independent of Italy and Rome. Vatican City is its capital. It has massive cash, art, and gold reserves in its own corrupt banking system and private financial institutions. It has a tiny population of roughly 1,000 elite clerics and Swiss guards, and a CEO whose rotating position is popularly called "the papacy," which Pope Francis currently fronts, and which Benedict may still run the way Dick Cheney ran the U.S. while G.W. Bush shook hands and acted a bumbling fool too simple to be much of a threat.]

At the Holy See's first appearance before the committee, experts on the panel peppered the representative with questions. On Tuesday, the Vatican has a chance to respond. LISTEN

News from Russia
A strange, soulless man and his utterly failed presidency
Russian interests not limited to Ukraine alone
Hiding the US-NATO military overkill
Whatever happens, Belarus will stay with Russia - Lukashenko
Canada's Ukrainian borsch has bitter anti-Russian taste
Washington drives the world to war