Monthly Archives: November 2013

REAGAN’S HEART OF DARKNESS–A Legacy Of Pain South Central Los Angeles

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Ronald Reagan Meets with the Taliban

Ronald Reagan Meets with the Taliban
“These Gentlemen are the Moral Equivalents Of America’s Founding Fathers.” – Ronald Reagan 1985

 President Reagan, as President was the country’s most notorious drug trafficker  history has ever known–More than One Generation of American Citizens having resultantly been destroyed by his election and subsequent Presidency

 SAM SMITH The nausea-inducing elevation of Reagan into someone he never was is another triumph of rightwing spin being swallowed whole by a media that not only doesn’t know the facts, it doesn’t even think it has to, for it, too, has become just another part of show business.

 

Guns haven’t made us safer: TrickleDown hasn’t made us richer; Global warming is real; Fair taxes/reasonable regulation aren’t Socialism Patrick Jennings ‏ ‪@PatJennings

 JUAN COLE – I remember seeing a tape of Reagan speaking in California from that era. He said that he had heard that some asserted there was hunger in America. He said it sarcastically. He said, “Sure there is; they’re dieting!” or words to that effect

GLENN KESSLER WASHINGTON POST – Reagan’s spending cuts barely nicked the fastest-growing parts of government, his tax cuts reduced revenue so much that later in his tenure taxes had to be raised repeatedly, his regulatory approach was criticized for leading to the savings and loan crisis and his unbalanced budgets to a near-tripling of the federal debt in eight years.

PHIL GASPER, COUNTERPUNCH – Reagan refused to mention AIDS publicly for six years, under-funded federal programs dealing with the disease and, according to his authorized biography, said, “Maybe the Lord brought down this plague,” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.”

 TOM CARSON, VILLAGE VOICE – Ronald Reagan is the man who destroyed America’s sense of reality – a paltry target, all in all, given our predilections. It only took an actor: the real successor to John Wilkes Booth. In our bones, we had always been this sort of bullshit-craving country anyhow, founded on abstractions:

“For many Americans, this was a time best forgotten,” said Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and a longtime civil rights activist. “He was a polarizing figure in black America. He was hostile to the generally accepted remedies for discrimination. His appointments were of people as equally hostile. I can’t think of any Reagan policy that NEGUS’ would embrace.”

The former actor and California governor offended blacks when he kicked off his 1980 general election campaign by promoting “states rights” — alec-logo- States Rightsonce southern code for segregation — in Philadelphia, Miss., scene of the murder of three civil rights workers 16 years before. Early in his first term, Reagan ordered some of his toughest budget cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children and other “means tested” programs that were critical to large numbers of lower-income black families. Until a public protest forced Reagan to back away, his Agriculture Department sought to cut the school lunch program and redefine ketchup and relish as vegetables.

JOE STRUPP, EDITOR & PUBLISHER – The death of Ronald Reagan has become yet another reminder that news organizations often turn sentimental at the death of a former leader, no matter what legacy he or she leaves behind. . .The overwhelming praise for a president who plunged the nation into its worst deficit ever, ignored and cut public money for the poor, while also ignoring the AIDS crisis, is a bit tough to take. During my years at Brooklyn College, between 1984 and 1988, countless classmates had to drop out or find other ways to pay for school because of Reagan’s policies, which included slashing federal grants for poor students and cutting survivor benefits for families of the disabled.Not to mention the Iran-contra scandal, failed ‘supply-side economics,’ the ludicrous invasion of Grenada, 241 dead Marines in Lebanon, and a costly military buildup that kept us closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, besides leaving us billions of dollars in debt. And should we even mention the many senior Reagan officials, including ex-White House aide Michael Deaver and national security adviser Robert McFarlane, convicted of various offenses? What about Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger indicted but later pardoned by the first President Bush? “It is clear that each US government agency which had a relationship with Noriega turned a blind eye to his corruption and drug dealing,

 

In 1970 he had written a paper  in which he called for martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants. Among his ideas were “assembly centers or relocation camps” for at least 21 million “American Negroes.” Those words come from a time when Giuffrida was the head of then-Governor Reagan’s California Specialized Training Institute, a National Guard school. 

“This is an operation, this is an exercise, this is an objective which is going forward because in the long run . . . it is the only way that will be able to prevail [against anti-war protests.]”

Addressing the kickoff of Cable Splicer, Governor Reagan told some 500 military and police officers:

“You know, there are people in the state who, if they could see this gathering right now and my presence here, would decide their worst fears and convictions had been realized — I was planning a military takeover.”

General Anastasio Somoza, of the rightist regime, invited Sandino to meet in Managua for peace talks. Sandino agreed, and upon his arrival Somoza summarily seized and executed the man. The revolution was finally subdued, and in 1937 Somoza became dictator. From 1937 to 1979, Nicaragua was ruled autocratically by two successive generations of the Somoza family.  On August 22, 1978, twenty-four Sandinista guerillas stormed the national palace at Managua, and by July 17, 1979, the Sandinistas had formally taken power. The Sandinistas quickly wrote and passed a provisional constitution, The Fundamental Law of State. This constitution guaranteed human rights that were previously ignored by the Somoza regime. It guaranteed equal justice under law, the right to free expression, and the abolition of torture. It seemed that the people were already benefiting from this great revolution, which truly did liberate them.

With the discrete help of the US, these so-called counter-revolutionaries, or contras, began a guerilla war on the Sandinistas. Despite the irony of this switch in positions, the contras, indeed, became guerillas (revolutionist; terrorist.) right after the Sandinista guerillas had ousted them from power. Though the Reagan administration was officially forbidden by congress to support the contras, the US secretly provided financial aid for them. Through Ollie North and the highly controversial Iran-Contra Affair, the US provided the contras with endless financial aid stemming from profits from an illegal arms trade with Iran.

 Democratic Anti-Contra-War Campaign The socialist oriented Left had a natural affinity with the Leftist Sandinista Revolution. Reagan administration officials illegally sold arms to Iran and used the profits to illegally supply arms to the Contras The conference issued a statement declaring that “the United States government bears a direct responsibility for the long suffering of the Nicaraguan people”

“Once you set up a covert operation to supply arms and money, it’s very difficult to separate it from the kind of people who are involved in other forms of trade, and especially drugs. There is a limited number of planes, pilots and landing strips. By developing a system for supply of the Contras, the US built a road for drug supply into the US.”“Former CIA agent David MacMichael

In 1984, U.S. officials began receiving reports of Contra cocaine trafficking. Three officials told journalists that they considered these reports “reliable.” Former Panamanian deputy health minister Dr. Hugo Spadafora, who had fought with the Contra army, outlined charges of cocaine trafficking to a prominent Panamanian official and was later found murdered. The charges linked the Contra trafficking to Sebastián González Mendiola, who was charged with cocaine trafficking on November 26, 1984, in Costa Rica.

Reagan Administration admits Contra-cocaine connections

On April 17, 1986, the Reagan Administration released a three page report acknowledging that there were some Contra-cocaine connections in 1984 and 1985, arguing that these connections occurred at a time when the rebels were “particularly hard pressed for financial support” because U.S. aid had been cut off. The report admitted that “We have evidence of a limited number of incidents in which known drug traffickers have tried to establish connections with Nicaraguan resistance groups.” The report tried to downplay the drug activity, claiming that it took place “without the authorization of resistance leaders.”[8]

Kerry Committee

Main article: Kerry Committee report

In 1986, Senator John Kerry and Senator Christopher Dodd proposed a series of hearings at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding charges of Contra involvement in drug trafficking; the hearings were conducted by Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the Republican Chairman of the Committee. The report of the Committee, released on April 13, 1989, found that “Contra drug links included… payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.” The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras.[9]

Gary Webb[edit]

Former DEA agent Celerino Castillo alleged that during the 1980s Ilopango Airport in El Salvador was used by Contras for drug smuggling flights with the knowledge and complicity of the CIA. These allegations were part of an investigation by the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.[10] Castillo also testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Between 1996 and 1998 the Central Intelligence Agency investigated and then published a report about its alleged involvement in cocaine sales in the US. This was prompted by the journalist Gary Webb‘s report[11] in the San Jose Mercury News alleging that the CIA was behind the 1980s crack epidemic. Gary Webb alleged through his Dark Alliance series that the government had been complicit in the trade of drugs in the inner city through the use of a kingpin named Freeway Ricky Ross. According to the Oakland Tribune, “In the course of his rise, prosecutors estimate that Ross exported several tons of cocaine to New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and made more than $600 million in the process.”[12][13][14]

 

The Naval Versions of Reagan, Clinton, and Obama (sago.com)

The Naval Versions of Reagan, Clinton, and Obama (sago.com)

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Religion, Politics and Conspiracy that Killed LA Neighbourhood By Genocide in America–To Pardon a People

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The first publicly known case of contra cocaine shipments appeared in government files in an October 22, 1982 cable from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. The cable passed on word that American law enforcement agencies were aware of “links between

(a United States religious organization) and two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups (which) involve an exchange in (the United States) of narcotics for arms.” The material in parentheses was inserted by the CIA as part of its declassification of the cable. The name of the religious group remained secret.

Over the next several years of the Reagan administration, the CIA learned of other suspected links between the Contras and drug trafficking. Ironically, “the war on drugs” became an important part of Reagan’s domestic agenda. While the United States sent military aid southward to its surrogates fighting the Sandinista government, the rate of cocaine being transported northward into the states quickly escalated. The CIA was involved in a variety of ways — by air, land, and sea — in bringing cocaine into the United States.

_________________________________________________

n December 1981, Vice President Bush met with the National Security Planning Group in the White House. They discussed and approved a $19 million expenditure to Argentina for the creation of a 500 man anti-Sandinista Contra force. In April 1982, Bush met with Australian Labor leader Hayden to discuss the CIA’s involvement with the Nugan Hand Bank in Australia. Nugan Hand was a money-laundering machine for the Southeast Asia heroin operation that began during the Vietnam War. Defense Department spokesman Richard Armitage acted as bagman, carrying cash from Bangkok, Thailand, to Australia.

“We the People (or the 1%)” Bringing In Blacks with No Constitution — Skin Colour and the Constitution.

Ronald Reagan: 
Illegal drugs are one thing that no community in America can, should, or needs to tolerate. America’s already started to take that message to heart. That’s why I believe the tide of battle has turned and we’re beginning to win the crusade for a drug-free America.

FRED PLATT, Former Pilot, Laos 
When a farmer raised a crop of opium, what he got for his year’s worth of work was the equivalent of thirty-five to forty U.S. dollars. That amount of opium, were it refined into morphine base, then into morphine, then into heroin and appeared on the streets of New York, that thirty-five dollar crop of opium would be worth fifty, sixty, a hundred thousand dollars in 1969 dollars–maybe a million dollars today.

NARRATOR 
Ramon Milian Rodriguez saw that world as the chief accountant of the Colombian cocaine cartel responsible for managing eleven billion dollars in drug profits. Now serving a forty-three year sentence for money laundering, he has been a key witness for a senate investigation probing links between drugs and the CIA.

RAMON MILIAN RODRIGUEZ, Government Witness 
If we start with the premise that drug trafficking is morally reprehensible, our government agencies are not supposed to do anything like that, but they live in a practical world. U.S. Senator John Kerry:
The subcommittee on narcotics, terrorism, international operations will come to order. From what we have learned these past months, our declaration on war against drugs seems to have produced a war of words and not action. Our drugs seem to have produced a war of words and not action. Our borders are inundated with more narcotics than in anytime ever before. It seems as though stopping drug trafficking in the United States has been a secondary U.S. foreign policy objective, sacrificed repeatedly for other political and institutional goals such as changing the government of Nicaragua, supporting the government of Panama, using drug-running organizations as intelligence assets, and protecting military and intelligence sources from possible compromise through involvement in drug trafficking.

According to the Kerry report a March 1987 memorandum stated that a number of people, who supported the Contras and who participated in contra activity in Texas, Louisiana, California, and Florida, as well as in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, claimed that cocaine was being smuggled into the United States. They stated that it was part of the same infrastructure which procurred and transported weapons for the Contras.

THE GEORGE MORALES CONNECTION. In the early 1980s, Morales was a well known contra drug trafficking, transporting cocaine and marijuana from Latin America northward into the United States. In May 1986, Morales was to meet with Vice President Bush to discuss a secret operation. However, the appointment was canceled when the Iran-Contra scandal was about to leak to the public. Morales was dismissed from the CIA and was later was indicted.

Morales testified before the Kerry committee that he was well known to Colombian drug traffickers and that his ranch was the key base of an operation which sent cocaine to Miami in exchange for contras arms. Morales also testified that he had delivered 40 M-79 grenade launchers which were flown from Miami to Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador.

Who is winning the war on Drugs

CASH FOR KIDS PREY FOR PRISON INDUSTRY

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“We the People (or the 1%)” Bringing In Blacks with No Constitution — Skin Colour and the Constitution

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Laws Designed to Disarm Slaves, Freedmen, and African-Americans

Georgia is where England sent all of its criminals, debtors and other people it would rather not have in England. Georgia was called “the great social experiment” because of this, since they had so many people of different social groups in such close proximity. Georgia then served as a buffer zone for the rich state of South Carolina, from French-owned Florida. The british saw it in their best interest that if the french decided to attack, they would have to fight through all of the debtors and criminals before reaching the manors and gentry of South Carolina.US founding fathers were criminals under British law

Before the Civil War ended, State “Slave Codes” prohibited slaves from owning guns. After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and after the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery was adopted and the Civil War ended in 1865, States persisted in prohibiting blacks, now freemen, from owning guns under laws renamed “Black Codes.” They did so on the basis that blacks were not citizens, and thus did not have the same rights, including the right to keep and bear arms protected in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as whites. This view was specifically articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford to uphold slavery.

The United States Congress overrode most portions of the Black Codes by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The legislative histories of both the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as The Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867, are replete with denunciations of those particular statutes that denied blacks equal access to firearms. [Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204, 256 (1983)] However, facially neutral disarming through economic means laws remain in effect.

Thus, many Southern States imposed high taxes or banned inexpensive guns so as to price blacks and poor whites out of the gun market.

In the 1990s, “gun control” laws continue to be enacted so as to have a racist effect if not intent:

  • Police-issued license and permit laws, unless drafted to require issuance to those not prohibited by law from owning guns, are routinely used to prevent lawful gun ownership among “unpopular” populations.
  • Public housing residents, approximately 3 million Americans, are singled out for gun bans.
  • “Gun sweeps” by police in “high crime neighborhoods” whereby vehicles and “pedestrians who meet a specific profile that might indicate they are carrying a weapon” are searched are becoming popular, and are being studied by the U.S. Department of Justice as “Operation Ceasefire.”

After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, most States turned to “facially neutral” business or transaction taxes on handgun purchases. However, the intention of these laws was not neutral. An article in Virginia’s official university law review called for a “prohibitive tax … on the privilege” of selling handguns as a way of disarming “the son of Ham* ”, whose “cowardly practice of ‘toting’ guns has been one of the most fruitful sources of crime … .southwest trainsLet a negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights.” [Comment, Carrying Concealed Weapons, 15 Va L. Reg. 391, 391-92 (1909); George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, “Gun Control and Racism,” Stefan Tahmassebi, 1991, p. 75] Thus, many Southern States imposed high taxes or banned inexpensive guns so as to price blacks and poor whites out of the gun market.

Unlike most molecules, cocaine has pockets[clarification needed] with both high hydrophilic and lipophilic efficiency, violating the rule of hydrophilic-lipophilic balance. This causes it to cross the blood–brain barrier far better than other psychoactive chemicals[citation needed] and may even induce blood-brain barrier breakdown.[9][10]

It is controlled internationally by Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (Schedule I, preparation in Schedule III).

In 1900, state legislatures in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee considered anti-cocaine bills for the first time.[99]

Hyperbolic reports of the effect of cocaine on African Americans went hand-in-hand with this hysteria. In 1901, the Atlanta Constitution reported that “Use of the drug [cocaine] among negroes is growing to an alarming extent.”[100] The New York Times reported that under the influence of cocaine, “sexual desires are increased and perverted … peaceful negroes become quarrelsome, and timid negroes develop a degree of ‘Dutch courage’ that is sometimes almost incredible.”[101] A medical doctor even wrote “cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the negroes.”[101] To complete the characterization, a judge in Mississippi declared that supplying a “negro” with cocaine was more dangerous than injecting a dog with rabies.[102]

These attitudes not only influenced drug law and policy but also led to increased violence against African Americans. In 1906, a major race riot led by whites erupted; it was sparked by reports of crimes committed by black ‘cocaine fiends.’[100]Indeed, white-led, race riots spawning from reports of blacks under the influence of cocaine were not uncommon.[103] Police in the South widely adopted the use of a heavier caliber handguns so as to better stop a cocaine-crazed black person – believed to be empowered with super-human strength.[104] Another dangerous myth perpetuated amongst police was that cocaine imbued African Americans with tremendous accuracy with firearms and therefore police were better advised to shoot first in questionable circumstances.[105]

Ultimately public opinion rested against the cocaine user. Criminality was commonly believed to be a natural result of cocaine use.[106] Much of the influence for these kind of perceptions came from the widespread publicity given to notorious cases.[92] While the historical reality of cocaine’s effect on violence and crime is difficult to disentangle from inflamed perceptions, it does appear that public opinion was swayed by the image of the violent, cocaine-crazed fiend and pushed over the edge by a few violent episodes.[106] It was an image of the cocaine-user that carried acute racial overtones.[92]

 

Faced with a second year of Congressional denial of funds for the Contra paramilitary force in Nicaragua, National Security Council member Col. Oliver Northbegan brainstorming on ways to circumvent Congress. This memo to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane is one of the earliest pieces of evidence showing the Reagan administration’s drift into illegality to fund the Central American rebellion.
Secrecy for the plan is paramount. We could not implement such an option if it became known in advance and it also mandates that present donors continue their relationship with the resistance beyond the current funding figure. The plan would require the President to make a major public announcement which, in turn, must be supported by other Administration officials, resistance leaders, and regional Heads of State once it has been announced.

(1) President Reagan wanted to support a pro-capitalist, right-wing paramilitary group in Nicaragua (called the “Contras”).

(2) But Congress said it was illegal.

(3) So Reagan secretly sold weapons to Iran (one of the U.S.’s biggest enemies) and used that money to fund the Contras.

(4) To further boost the Contras’ war chest, dozens of its members sold tons of cocaine into the inner-city during the height of the crack crisis. Reagan’s men were unable somehow to detect veritable mountains of cocaine being trafficked right under their noses.

(5) Nobody went to jail. Well, except for thousands upon thousands of street-level drug dealers and users in the hood and America’s poor communities.

*NIMROD

Sample Slave Codes, Black Codes, Economic-Based Gun Bans Used To Prevent The Arming Of African Americans, 1640-1995

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Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments #UNITEBLUE Protecting the Union

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Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments
By Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu 

#BarrackObama DetroitPrison Art

Preserving the Union

  1.  Passed Health Care Reform:

  2. Obama launches effort aimed at HIV cure Reagan Laughs

  3. Passed the Stimulus: .
  4. Passed Wall Street Reform:.
  5. Ended the War in Iraq:
  6.  Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan:.
  7. Eliminated Osama bin laden:
  8.  Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry:
  9. Recapitalized Banks:
  10. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
  11. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi:
  12. Told Mubarak to Go: 
  13. Reversed Bush Torture Policies:
  14.  Improved America’s Image Abroad:
  15. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program, Expanded Pell Grant Spending:
  16.  Created Race to the Top:
  17. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards:
  18. Coordinated International Response to Financial Crisis:
  19. Began Asia “Pivot” Increased Support for Veterans:
  20. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants:
  21. Passed Credit Card Reforms: 
  22. Eliminated Catch-22 in Pay Equality Laws:
  23. Protected Two Liberal Seats on the U.S. Supreme Court:
  24. Improved Food Safety System:
  25. Achieved New START Treaty:
  26.  Expanded National Service: Signed Serve America Act in 2009, which authorized a tripling of the size of AmeriCorps. Program grew 13 percent to 85,000 members across the country by 2012, when new House GOP majority refused to appropriate more funds for further expansion.
  27. Expanded Wilderness and Watershed Protection:
  28. Gave the FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco:
  29. Pushed Federal Agencies to Be Green Leaders: Issued executive order in 2009 requiring all federal agencies to make plans to soften their environmental impacts by 2020.
  30. Trimmed and Reoriented Missile Defense:
  31. Began Post-Post-9/11 Military Builddown:
  32.  Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission:  in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Mars’s potential to support life.
  33. Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology:
  34. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.
  35. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges:
  36.  Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.
  37. Expanded Hate Crimes Protections:Avoided Scandal:Brokered Agreement for Speedy Compensation to Victims of Gulf Oil Spill:
  38. Created Recovery.gov:
  39. Pushed Broadband Coverage: Proposed and obtained in 2011 Federal Communications Commission approval for a shift of $8 billion in subsidies away from landlines and toward broadband Internet for lower-income rural families.
  40. Expanded Health Coverage for Children: Signed 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, which allows the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover health care for 4 million more children, paid for by a tax increase on tobacco products.
  41.  Recognized the Dangers of Carbon Dioxide:
  42. Expanded Stem Cell Research:
  43. Provided Payment to Wronged Minority Farmers: In 2009, signed Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion in funding for a legal settlement with black and Native American farmers who the government cheated out of loans and natural resource royalties in years past.
  44.  Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Appointed two envoys to Sudan and personally attended a special UN meeting on the area. Through U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, helped negotiate a peaceful split in 2011.
  45. Passed Fair Sentencing Act: Signed 2010 legislation that reduces sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possessionfrom100 to1 to 18 to1.
  46. Passed Fair Sentencing Act: Signed 2010 legislation that reduces sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possessionfrom100 to1 to 18 to1.
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“Guns, Drugs, the CIA and The #GOP Reaganomics of the Drug WAR”

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Before every presidential election, Moon’s Washington Times plants derogatory – and often false – stories about Democratic contenders, discrediting them and damaging their chances of winning the White House.

For instance, in 1988, the Times published a bogus account suggesting that the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment. In 2000, Moon’s newspaper pushed the theme that Al Gore suffered from clinical delusions. [For details, see Robert Parry’sSecrecy & Privilege.]

As for Murdoch, his giant News Corp. expanded into American cable TV with the founding of Fox News in 1996. Since then, the right-wing network has proved highly effective in promoting attack lines against Democrats or anyone else who challenges the Republican power structure.

As President George W. Bush herded the nation toward war with Iraq in 2002-03, Fox News acted like his sheep dogs making sure public opinion didn’t stray too far off. The “Fox effect” was so powerful that it convinced other networks to load up with pro-war military analysts and to silence voices that questioned the invasion. [See Neck Deep.]

U.S. Senator John Kerry:
The subcommittee on narcotics, terrorism, international operations will come to order. From what we have learned these past months, our declaration on war against drugs seems to have produced a war of words and not action. Our drugs seem to have produced a war of words and not action. Our borders are inundated with more narcotics than in anytime ever before. It seems as though stopping drug trafficking in the United States has been a secondary U.S. foreign policy objective, sacrificed repeatedly for other political and institutional goals such as changing the government of Nicaragua, supporting the government of Panama, using drug-running organizations as intelligence assets, and protecting military and intelligence sources from possible compromise through involvement in drug trafficking.

RAMON MILIAN RODRIGUEZ, Government Witness 
If we start with the premise that drug trafficking is morally reprehensible, our government agencies are not supposed to do anything like that, but they live in a practical world.

SUBCOMMITTEE HEARINGS

John Kerry:
Would you raise your right hand please.

NARRATOR 
Ramon Milian Rodriguez saw that world as the chief accountant of the Colombian cocaine cartel responsible for managing eleven billion dollars in drug profits. Now serving a forty-three year sentence for money laundering, he has been a key witness for a senate investigation probing links between drugs and the CIA.

RAMON MILIAN RODRIGUEZ
Say for instance, the drug group was involved in a war with a terrorist group, a communist terrorist group, well, it would behove the CIA to give that drug group as much help and advice as possible so they could win their little war.

VICTOR MARCHETTI
The history of the CIA runs parallel to criminal and drug operations throughout the world, but it’s coincidental.

NARRATOR
Victor Marchetti came to know the world of covert operations as a long time CIA officer. He is the highest ranking agency official ever to go public about what he learned.

VICTOR MARCHETTI, Central Intelligence Agency 
It goes all the way back to the predecessor organization OSS and its involvement with the Italian mafia, the Cosa Nostra in Sicily and Southern Italy. Later on when they were fighting communists in France and–that they got in tight with the Corsican brotherhood. The Corsican brotherhood of course were big dope dealers. As things changed in the world the CIA got involved with the Kuomintang types in Burma who were drug runners because they were resisting the drift towards communism there. The same thing happened in Southeast Asia, later in Latin America. Some of the very people who are the best sources of information, who are capable of accomplishing things and the like happen to be the criminal element.

WILLIAM COLBY, Former Director, CIA
CIA has had a solid rule against being involved in drug trafficking. That’s not to say that some of the people who CIA has used or been in touch with over the years may well have themselves been involved in drug traffic, but not the CIA.

FRED PLATT, Former Pilot, Laos 
When a farmer raised a crop of opium, what he got for his year’s worth of work was the equivalent of thirty-five to forty U.S. dollars. That amount of opium, were it refined into morphine base, then into morphine, then into heroin and appeared on the streets of New York, that thirty-five dollar crop of opium would be worth fifty, sixty, a hundred thousand dollars in 1969 dollars–maybe a million dollars today.

NARRATOR
The war isolated the Meo tribespeople in their remote villages. CIA-owned Air America planes became their only life line to the outside world. While Meo children came to believe that rice fell from the sky, Meo farmer witnesses could count on Air America to move their cash crop.

RON RICKENBACH
It was then the presence of these air support services in and out of the areas in question where the product, where the opium was grown that greatly facilitated an increase in production and an ease of transhipment from the point of agriculture to the point of processing. So, when I say the Americans greased the wheels, essentially what I’m saying is we did not create opium production. We did not create a situation where drug trafficking was happening. But because of the nature of our presence, this very intense American means that was made available to the situation it accelerated in proportion dramatically.

JUDY WOODRUFF
Good evening.

Two of the most persistent offensives of the Reagan presidency have been the war against communism in Central America and the war on drugs here at home.

But investigations of America’s secret war in Nicaragua have revealed mounting evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency has been fighting the Contra war with the help of international drug traffickers.

It is not a new story.

Tonight’s FRONTLINE investigation traces the CIA’s involvement with drug lords back to the agency’s birth following World War II. It is a long history that asks this question: “In the war on drugs, which side is the CIA on?”

Our program was produced by Leslie and Andrew Cockburn. It is called Guns, Drugs, and the CIA and is reported by Leslie Cockburn.

Ronald Reagan:
Illegal drugs are one thing that no community in America can, should, or needs to tolerate. America’s already started to take that message to heart. That’s why I believe the tide of battle has turned and we’re beginning to win the crusade for a drug-free America.

U.S. Senator John Kerry:
The subcommittee on narcotics, terrorism, international operations will come to order. From what we have learned these past months, our declaration on war against drugs seems to have produced a war of words and not action. Our drugs seem to have produced a war of words and not action. Our borders are inundated with more narcotics than in anytime ever before. It seems as though stopping drug trafficking in the United States has been a secondary U.S. foreign policy objective, sacrificed repeatedly for other political and institutional goals such as changing the government of Nicaragua, supporting the government of Panama, using drug-running organizations as intelligence assets, and protecting military and intelligence sources from possible compromise through involvement in drug trafficking.

RAMON MILIAN RODRIGUEZ, Government Witness 
If we start with the premise that drug trafficking is morally reprehensible, our government agencies are not supposed to do anything like that, but they live in a practical world.

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#MichelleObama is getting #housing for #homeless #veterans Receives Highest Award

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First lady Michelle Obama waves as she and Ty Pennington, host of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, enter the Jubilee House during the taping of an episode in Fayetteville, N.C., Thursday, July 21, 2011. (Gerry Broome | The Associated Press)

#PresidentObama, #MichelleObama Receive Highest Award In #Homeless #Veteran Advocacy

For their determination to put an end to veterans living on the streets, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will receive the highest honor given to homeless advocates.

The Obamas were chosen to get this year’sJerald Washington Memorial Founders’ Award, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV), and Barack Obama is the first person — in history — to receive the award more than once. 

Barack Obama is tackling the issue with his “Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness,” an initiative that aims to end chronic and veteran homelessness by 2015. He’s working to meet this goal by mainstreaming housing, health, education and human service programs.

On any given night last January, 67,495 homeless veterans were sleeping on the streets, a 56 percent decline since the president took office, according to the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress.Image

First Lady Michelle Obama, center, examines vegetables grown by #Somali immgrant #KhadijaMusame, second from right, as interpreter #BilalMuya, right, farm coordinator #AmyLint, second from left, and  #DrRobertRoss , 

Image

 .. makeshift shelter during the annual point-in-time count of the homeless, …

VA and HUD announce funding for homeless veterans

The departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development announced  $7.8 million in funding Tuesday that the agencies say will provide housing and clinical services for 1,120 homeless veterans.

The funding for HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) vouchers will be used by local public housing agencies across the country. The vouchers have been a key weapon in the Obama administration’s vow to end veteran’s homelessnessby the end of 2015.

“These vouchers are helping America end veterans’ homelessness one veteran at a time until we see not one veteran living on the street,”HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement.

The most recent available figures based on a national count found 62,619 veterans homeless on a single night in January 2012, a drop of 17.2 percent since January 2009.

ImageNew Directions helps homeless veterans reintegrate into civilian life.Image

Veterans Affairs claims progress in ending homelessness among vets

Halfway into an ambitious five-year campaignto end homelessness among veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it has made enough progress that the goal is within reach, even as a new generation of veterans returns from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Making aggressive use of a voucher program, Veterans Affairs has housed more than 33,000 veterans in the past 21/2 years. It did so by changing its longtime policy of requiring homeless veterans to be successfully treated for substance abuse and mental ailments before being given apartments.

The shift in approach means that there is “a better opportunity to end veterans’ homelessness by 2015 than at any time in the past,” said Susan Angell, VA’s director of homeless initiatives.

Although many agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, have adopted a housing-first strategy, Veterans Affairs had resisted. “Folks were initially concerned about the safety aspects of it,” Angell said. “We wanted to make sure they were clean and sober.”

VA and HUD want enough funds to issue 60,000 vouchers at the rate of 10,000 a year through 2014.

The effort comes as tens of thousands of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are leaving military service and entering an often bleak job market.

“For this new generation of veterans, we are very concerned,” Angell said.

Her agency estimates that more than 20,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been homeless at some point during the past five years and that their numbers are rising.

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Option is to Educate Youth on Algebra, NRA, Guns and #Alec; California Assembly passed a bill that would give juvenile lifers a shot at rehabilitation.

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Do the Police Fear Us or Hate Us What Should our Survival Response Be, Are we Likewise afraid, But With More To Lose.

— In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter. Along with solitary confinement!  When Algebra  Gun Safety Works!

Playing Algebra is making algebra your own

Algebra is a group sport fun cooperative groups

  • LOOK! SEE OUR ALGEBRA PROJECT HERE

Earle School District 

Pine Bluff School District    

Eudora Public School

Helena-West Helena School District       

West Memphis School District

Dollarway School District

After Supreme Court Ruling, States Act on Juvenile Sentences

In 1980, Henry Hill was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He was 16 years old and functionally illiterate.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life sentences for offenders under 18 are cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional. In the wake of that decision, a federal court this month ruled that Hill and more than 300 other Michigan children lifers are entitled to a parole hearing.

A 10-year-old boy, charged with murdering his mother, sits with leg irons in a courtroom in Millersburg, Ohio. The Supreme Court last year struck down mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles, prompting varying reactions from states. (AP)

So, On Whom Does Responsibility Rest for Crack Cocaine, Drug Markets and Easy Access, To Guns ?

 FROM:  THE LIVES OF JUVENILE LIFERS | FINDINGS FROM A NATIONAL SURVEY  Part of the reason for the rise in sentencing children to life in prison was the upswing in crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, fueled  by the emerging crack cocaine drug markets and easy access to illegal guns.

3  By 1993, the rate children arrested had tripled from a decade earlier.

4  Policymakers, the media, and the public listened to dire warnings from some that, “…on the horizon…are tens of thousands of severely morally impoverished juvenile superpredators.”

5  These so-called “superpredators” never arrived; moreover, the arrest rate for children was already declining when this statement was made, and homicide rates among juveniles have dropped steadily since 1993.

The arrest rate

for 10 – 17- year-olds in

2008 of 4 per 100,000 represents a 74% decline

from the peak arrest rate for children

1993, 15 per 100,000

Nonetheless, driven by media reports of celebrated cases and public fear catch phrases such as “adult crime, adult time” were popularized. #Alec  responded with a frenzy of unconstitutional laws ts, catch phrases such as “adult crime, adult time” were popularized. Policymakers responded with a frenzy of tough laws tt disregarded developmental differences between youth and adults, and instead focused exclusively on the crime.

State legislatures #ALEC chipped away at the founding principles of the juvenile justice system by passing laws that opened the trap  for young people to be transferred to and tried in adult courts, thus circumventing the very courts that the U.S. had created to prevent child abuse. By the mid-1990s, every state had passed laws that either allowed or mandated that children be tried as adults. As a result, there was a steep rise in the number of  children sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. 

Nationwide, there are roughly 2,500 inmates  are serving life in prison without parole, including 309 California inmates serving such sentences, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“Because their brain is still developing, they have the ability to rehabilitate,” said Michael Harris, a senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “They are more likely to rehabilitate than an adult.”

California Assembly’s passage of a bill introduced by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. The bill allows lifers to seek a sentence of 25-years-to-life with a chance for parole after serving 15 years.

in Pennsylvania, which has largest number of inmates whose sentences are covered by the Supreme Court ruling, the state Supreme Court has been considering the retroactivity question for over a year. The court’s decision could lead to the resentencing and eventual release of over 400 sentences.

In Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi, judges have ruled that the Supreme Court decision applies retroactively to all prisoners serving such sentences. But in Minnesota and Florida, judges have ruled that the Supreme Court decision only applies to future cases.

State Supreme Courts in Illinois, Florida, Massachusetts and Colorado will likely consider the retroactivity question this fall, said Marsha Levick, chief counsel at the Juvenile Law Center, a legal advocacy group for youth.

Lawsuit: Hearings For Illinois Youth Are ‘Kangaroo Courts’

XX Sunday Morning-p10 dkCHICAGO (AP) Hearings used in Illinois to revoke a juvenile’s parole amount to “kangaroo courts” that deny fundamental due-process rights and lead to the illegal detention of hundreds of children each year, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges.

The 15-page class-action suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, argues that putting so many young people behind bars not only costs taxpayers millions but also suggests it may lock some kids into lives of crime once they become adults.  The lawsuit, filed by Northwestern University Law School’s Roderick MacArthur Justice Center, names Illinois Prisoner Review Board Chairman Adam Monreal and Gov. Pat Quinn, and asks a judge to order the board to reform its procedures to comply with state and federal law.

Case: 1:13-cv-07572 Document #: 1 Filed: 10/22/13  

exposed America’s cash for kids

scandal Pennsylvania – PA

in Pennsylvania, which has largest number of inmates whose sentences are covered by the Supreme Court ruling, the state Supreme Court has been considering the retroactivity question for over a year. The court’s decision could lead to the resentencing and eventual release of over 400 sentences.  Less than a minute into the hearing the gavel came down. “Adjudicated delinquent!” the judge proclaimed, and sentenced her to three months in a juvenile detention centre. Hillary, who hadn’t even presented her side of the story, was handcuffed and led away. But her mother, Laurene, protested to the local law centre, setting in train a process that would uncover one of the most egregious violations of children’s rights in US legal history.

Last month the judge involved, Mark Ciavarella, and the presiding judge of the juvenile court, Michael Conahan, pleaded guilty to having accepted $2.6m (£1.8m) from the co-owner and builder of a private detention centre where children aged from 10 to 17 were locked up.

The cases of up to 2,000 children put into custody by Ciavarella over the past seven years – including that of Transue – are now being reviewed in a billowing scandal dubbed “kids for cash”. The alleged racket has raised questions about the cosy ties between the courts and private contractors, and about the harsh treatment meted out to adolescents.

American Legislative Exchange Council

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, state and local governments passed tough crime legislation. For example,  California passed the “three strikes and you’re out” law which called for mandatory sentencing of repeat offenders, and New York adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small.  #GovJerryBrown

The precedent was set in August of 2009 when California was federally-mandated to release over 40,000 prisoners in two years. The next step is for @ALEC  to DEFY federal mandate by implementing #prisonIndustry in Canada and the US.

CHILDREN WITH PARENTS IN PRISON

  • In 2007, 1.7 million children had a parent in prison on any given day.
  • The number of children with parents in prison increased 80% between 1991 and 2007.
  • 1 in 15 black children, 1 in 42 Latino children, and 1 in 111 white children had a parent in prison in 2007.

Black children are 7.5 times more likely and Hispanic children are 2.6 times more likely than are white children to have a parent in prison.

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Do the Police Fear Us or Hate Us What Should our Survival Response Be, Are we Likewise afraid, But With More To Lose

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Lawyer says police shooting not justified

Although the full autopsy report is not available, the Office of the Medical Investigator in Albuquerque confirmed Friday that the woman shot by a New Mexico State Police officer last week in Santa Fe died from gunshot wounds to the head and back. Mail the Ticket. Police are not in danger.

A Tennessee woman on vacation with her five children led cops on a wild pursuit that ended shortly after an officer fired upon her minivan.Jeannette Anaya, 39, of Santa Fe, was shot and killed by State

Police Officer Oliver Wilson during the early morning hours of Nov. 7,

after Anaya allegedly sped away when Wilson tried to pull her over

for a traffic stop….

A dash cam video captured the chaotic scene of a family of six that was pulled over for speeding in Taos, New Mexico.

The footage taken Oct. 28 shows driver Oriana Farrell, 39,

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  — Two New Mexico state police officers are under investigation and a mother and her 14-year-old son are facing charges after a routine traffic stop turned to chaos when the teen physically confronted one officer and another officer fired shots at a minivan carrying children. It’s unclear whether the 14-year-old is in custody. He faces charges of battery of an officer. His name has not been released.

On the video, the initial officer could be heard telling Farrell she had been driving 71 mph in a 55 mph zone.

The mother of five was arrested on suspicion of intentional child abuse, fleeing and possession of drug paraphernalia. Her 14-year-old son was charged with battery of an officer.

Officials with the state Children, Youth and Families Department assumed custody of four of Farrell’s children. The kids were later released to a friend of the family who resides in New Mexico, police said.

Maybe Officers can mail a ticket if women are going to be killed because of lack of trust.

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Kobe Bryant Lakers star to lead walk to help fight homelessness #PrisonIndustry for McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act

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As part of United Way’s campaign to end poverty in Los Angeles County, the organization is planning to host its seventh annual HomeWalk – a 5K run/walk to raise public awareness and fund solutions to end homelessness, one of the most extreme forms of poverty.

The past six years, nearly 40,000 people have participated – raising more than $3 million and helping move more than 13,000 people off the streets and into housing.

The event is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 23 at Exposition Park, beginning at 7:00 a.m. with registration. The opening ceremony is to start at 8:30. At 9, the 5K begins.

According to United Way reports, Los Angeles County remains the homeless capital of the nation, with more than 58,000 living without homes.

Gov. Brown signs 10 bills to help homeless and foster youths Stay out of jail.

16x9

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed 10 bills that his office said will help protect “the most vulnerable Californians – homeless children and adults and foster youth.”

GOV Brown los angeless homeless money goes to prisons 200,000 homeless teens are believed to be living in California.

Homeless children and education

That Act uses the Illinois statute in defining homeless children as “individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” The Act then goes on to give examples of children who would fall under this definition:

  • (a) Children sharing housing due to economic hardship or loss of housing;
  • (b) Children living in “motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camp grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations”
  • (c) Children living in “emergency or transitional shelters”
  • (d) Children “awaiting foster care placement”
  • (e) Children whose primary nighttime residence is not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation (e.g. park benches, etc.)
  • (f) Children living in “cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations…”

Following the Illinois statute, the McKinney-Vento Act also ensures homeless children transportation to and from school free of charge, allowing children to attend their school of origin (last school enrolled or the school they attended when they first become homeless) regardless of what district the family resides in.

Mother Given 5 Yrs Prison for Sending Child to School Outside Her District 

Tonya McDowell, a 34-year old single mother who was arrested for sending her son to a school outside his home district, has been sent to prison for five years.   The homeless mom sent her son to elementary school in Norwalk, Connecticut, instead of Bridgeport, where he was supposed to go. The state has accused McDowell of stealing $15,686 worth of education from the city of Norwalk.

School located in Norwalk Connecticut instead of Bridgeport

McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act

The Congress finds that —
  1. the Nation faces an immediate and unprecedented crisis due to the lack of shelter for a growing number of individuals and families, including elderly persons, handicapped persons, families with children, Native Americans, and veterans;
  2. the problem of homelessness has become more severe and, in the absence of more effective efforts, is expected to become dramatically worse, endangering the lives and safety of the homeless;
  3. the causes of homelessness are many and complex, and homeless individuals have diverse needs;
  4. there is no single, simple solution to the problem of homelessness because of the different sub-populations of the homeless, the different causes of and reasons for homelessness, and the different needs of homeless individuals;
  5. due to the record increase in homelessness, States, units of local government, and private voluntary organizations have been unable to meet the basic human needs of all the homeless and, in the absence of greater Federal assistance, will be unable to protect the lives and safety of all the homeless in need of assistance; and
  6. the Federal Government has a clear responsibility and an existing capacity to fulfill a more effective and responsible role to meet the basic human needs and to engender respect for the human dignity of the homeless.
(b) Purpose
It is the purpose of this chapter —
  1. to establish an Interagency Council on the Homeless;
  2. to use public resources and programs in a more coordinated manner to meet the critically urgent needs of the homeless of the Nation; and
  3. to provide funds for programs to assist the homeless, with special emphasis on elderly persons, handicapped persons, families with children, Native Americans, and veterans.

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“John F. Kennedy” Where Were You? Where Were Your Parents? Spirit of Fox News; Dallas; and Evil: John F Kennedy

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https://twitter.com/AlgebraPoints/status/403951362129416192

The Sprit of Dallas (Sprit of #FoxNews #Dallas Evil .  #JohnFKennedy)  risked it all. Too much!

Obamacare      Individual      FormHealth Care for all

JFK VISITS CLEVELAND OHIO
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