http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/schools-called-hotbeds-luring-young-sex-slaves-article-1.1053977
[...]
Sex traffickers who coerce kids into prostitution are using the city’s schoolyards and playgrounds as recruiting offices.
It’s such a troubling problem that Brooklyn prosecutors have started training educators on how to spot kids in peril on their turf.
“It happens enough that I can say it happens a bunch,” Assistant District Attorney Lauren Hersh told the Daily News. “Many girls are forced to go to middle school playgrounds and recruit other young girls.”
Hersh, who runs a pioneering sex-trafficking unit for the DA’s office, has held several workshops and hopes to expand into as many schools as possible.
Last fall, pimp Abking Wilcox admitted turning girls as young as 15 into being sex slaves and making them recruit others in Bushwick and Brownsville middle schools.
Wilcox, who pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Criminal Court to three counts of sex trafficking, called it his “team.”
Hersh prosecuted another trafficker — a school parent, no less — after a guidance counselor at a Canarsie, Brooklyn, public high school blew the whistle.
At first, the counselor couldn’t believe the secret hell a 16-year-old student described.
But her tale of being forced to sell sex over the Internet by a classmate’s mom quickly rang true.
“She takes the guidance counselor to Backpage.com. She shows her, by plugging in a phone number, that these are in fact pictures of her that are being sold for sex,” Hersh said.
“And the phone number that was on Backpage.com was the mom’s phone number. When you looked on file at the school for the school’s contact information for the mom, it was that phone number.”
The counselor called police, and the mom later pleaded guilty.
In the year and a half that Hersh’s unit has been up and running, 32 defendants have been indicted.
Last year, there were nearly three times as many sex-trafficking arrests in Brooklyn than in any other borough — 23 compared with nine each in the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens, and none in Staten Island.
Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which helps trafficking survivors, said recruiting is happening everywhere, including schools.
“Pimps go where young people are,” she said.
“Teachers may think, that’s something happening in Thailand. But there could be a girl sitting your class who is two weeks away from being recruited, or who has already been recruited . . . . we’ve got girls in junior high who’ve been through this.”
[...]
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Five New Orleans police officers sentenced in hurricane Katrina killings
Four officers, along with a fifth who helped cover up the 2005 crimes, are sentenced to between six and 65 years in prison
Chris McGreal, guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/04/new-orleans-police-officers-katrina
Four New Orleans police officers have been sentenced to decades in prison over the killing of two people and wounding of four others fleeing the massive flooding of the city by hurricane Katrina.
A fifth officer was sent to jail for his role in a web of fabrications to cover up the true circumstances of the shootings on the Danziger bridge in 2005. The shootings came to symbolise the behaviour of a police force regarded as out of control in the chaotic aftermath of the hurricane which claimed nearly 2,000 lives and flooded about 80% of New Orleans.
The policemen were prosecuted in federal court after Louisiana state authorities declined to charge them. The federal investigation revealed a coverup that involved planted evidence, invented witnesses and falsified police reports that prosecutors said exposed a culture of corruption and a code of silence in the New Orleans police department.
[...]
Chris McGreal, guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/04/new-orleans-police-officers-katrina
Four New Orleans police officers have been sentenced to decades in prison over the killing of two people and wounding of four others fleeing the massive flooding of the city by hurricane Katrina.
A fifth officer was sent to jail for his role in a web of fabrications to cover up the true circumstances of the shootings on the Danziger bridge in 2005. The shootings came to symbolise the behaviour of a police force regarded as out of control in the chaotic aftermath of the hurricane which claimed nearly 2,000 lives and flooded about 80% of New Orleans.
The policemen were prosecuted in federal court after Louisiana state authorities declined to charge them. The federal investigation revealed a coverup that involved planted evidence, invented witnesses and falsified police reports that prosecutors said exposed a culture of corruption and a code of silence in the New Orleans police department.
[...]
Friday, April 6, 2012
USA High Court’s Supremely Unethical Activists
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_high_courts_supremely_unethical_activists_20120404/
By Joe Conason
How the Supreme Court majority will rule on President Obama’s Affordable Care Act may well have been foretold months or perhaps years ago—not so much by their questions during argument this week, as by their flagrant displays of bias outside the court, where certain justices regularly behave as dubiously as any sleazy officeholder.
While the public awaits the high court’s judgment on the constitutionality of health care reform, it is worth remembering how cheaply Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in particular have sullied the integrity of their lifetime appointments, and how casually Chief Justice John Roberts and their other colleagues tolerate such outrages.
[...]
By Joe Conason
How the Supreme Court majority will rule on President Obama’s Affordable Care Act may well have been foretold months or perhaps years ago—not so much by their questions during argument this week, as by their flagrant displays of bias outside the court, where certain justices regularly behave as dubiously as any sleazy officeholder.
While the public awaits the high court’s judgment on the constitutionality of health care reform, it is worth remembering how cheaply Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in particular have sullied the integrity of their lifetime appointments, and how casually Chief Justice John Roberts and their other colleagues tolerate such outrages.
[...]
Koch-Funded ALEC Behind State Attempts To ‘Reclaim’ USA Public Lands
By Public Lands Team
By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/04/03/457463/koch-funded-alec-behind-state-attempts-to-reclaim-your-public-lands/
In the last few months, Republican presidential candidates from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum have shown their ignorance about the value of public lands. And recently a handful of states have joined the fray, with state legislators introducing bills that demand Congress turn over millions of acres of public lands to the states or face a lawsuit. Utah has taken this idea the furthest, where two weeks ago Governor Gary Herbert (R) signed a bill into law demanding that Congress give 30 million acres of federal land located in Utah to the state by 2015 or it will sue.
But buried under the headlines is the fact these bills are being quietly drafted and promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate front group that provides draft legislation to state lawmakers and is funded by some of America’s biggest corporations including Koch Industries, BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell.
As the Associated Press reported:
Lawmakers in Utah and Arizona have said the legislation is endorsed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that advocates conservative ideals, and they expect it to eventually be introduced in other Western states.
And in January, Utah Pulse noted that:
Lawmakers in four western land states will be running similar bills in their legislative sessions this year – Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Idaho. Ivory’s bill will be unique to Utah, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has turned his bill into model legislation that other western land states can use. While ALEC is a conservative legislative/business group, Ivory says he hopes to get Utah Democrats onboard with this new effort.
[...]
By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/04/03/457463/koch-funded-alec-behind-state-attempts-to-reclaim-your-public-lands/
In the last few months, Republican presidential candidates from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum have shown their ignorance about the value of public lands. And recently a handful of states have joined the fray, with state legislators introducing bills that demand Congress turn over millions of acres of public lands to the states or face a lawsuit. Utah has taken this idea the furthest, where two weeks ago Governor Gary Herbert (R) signed a bill into law demanding that Congress give 30 million acres of federal land located in Utah to the state by 2015 or it will sue.
But buried under the headlines is the fact these bills are being quietly drafted and promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate front group that provides draft legislation to state lawmakers and is funded by some of America’s biggest corporations including Koch Industries, BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell.
As the Associated Press reported:
Lawmakers in Utah and Arizona have said the legislation is endorsed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that advocates conservative ideals, and they expect it to eventually be introduced in other Western states.
And in January, Utah Pulse noted that:
Lawmakers in four western land states will be running similar bills in their legislative sessions this year – Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Idaho. Ivory’s bill will be unique to Utah, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has turned his bill into model legislation that other western land states can use. While ALEC is a conservative legislative/business group, Ivory says he hopes to get Utah Democrats onboard with this new effort.
[...]
30 people pepper-sprayed at Santa Monica College course fees protest
Up to 30 people were pepper-sprayed Tuesday by police after students tried to storm a Santa Monica College trustee board meeting in protest over proposed higher course fees. KNBC-TV's Robert Kovacik reports.
By NBC News and msnbc.com staff
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/04/11013517-30-people-pepper-sprayed-at-santa-monica-college-course-fees-protest
Up to 30 people were pepper-sprayed by police after students tried to storm a Santa Monica College trustee board meeting in protest over proposed higher course fees.
A handful of protesters suffered minor injuries as campus police tried to prevent dozens of students chanting, "Let us in, let us in" and "No cuts, no fees, education should be free," from disrupting the meeting during a public comment period, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Capt. Judah Mitchell of the Santa Monica Fire Department told NBC News that up to 30 people had been sprayed, five of whom sought treatment for the effects of the spray and were transported to nearby hospitals.
[...]
By NBC News and msnbc.com staff
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/04/11013517-30-people-pepper-sprayed-at-santa-monica-college-course-fees-protest
Up to 30 people were pepper-sprayed by police after students tried to storm a Santa Monica College trustee board meeting in protest over proposed higher course fees.
A handful of protesters suffered minor injuries as campus police tried to prevent dozens of students chanting, "Let us in, let us in" and "No cuts, no fees, education should be free," from disrupting the meeting during a public comment period, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Capt. Judah Mitchell of the Santa Monica Fire Department told NBC News that up to 30 people had been sprayed, five of whom sought treatment for the effects of the spray and were transported to nearby hospitals.
[...]
from “Rupert Murdoch's American media immunity”
The paradox is how little interest, until now, the US press has taken in the scandals engulfing the tycoon's News Corp empire
by Michael Wolff, guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/04/rupert-murdoch-american-media-immunity
[...]
Here's the thing: Murdoch's empire may be under siege in one of the most riveting business tales of our time – featuring wounded celebrities, a dynastic family drama, and toadying at the highest levels of government – but American journalism has been mostly absent from the story. At best, it has been a sidelined presence, late to the game, and generally confused about how to get ahead of events happening in another country. This is, arguably, the best thing Murdoch has going for him: in the US, the seat of his company and the main motor of his fortunes, he has been able to hide in plain sight.
So, why the disconnect? In a universe of equal-access global information, how can such parallel worlds comfortably exist? In the world abroad, almost everything is coming apart for Murdoch: his top executives, including his son, face possible imprisonment, his businesses face dismemberment, his reputation is in ruins. In the world at home, he remains the largely untouchable chief executive of one of the most influential companies in the nation. Within the US business and journalistic community, there is no real sense that he is even vulnerable – precisely, or circularly, because it would require a US outcry to bring him down. And the business and journalistic communities, which would have to lead that outcry, haven't begun to stir.
Many journalists, including Bergman, make the technical point that without an instance of phone-hacking on US soil, there is no smoking gun. Last summer, a spurious report in a second-tier British tabloid suggested that Murdoch reporters might have hacked the phones of 9/11 families, which would have provided an emotional gotcha. But without that, well … shrug.
Still, while this lack of jurisdiction might change the legal direction of the story, it ought not to change the journalistic view. The UK evidence trail reaches ever-more perilously close to Murdoch, the big kahuna. And such pursuit of such a personality is the sport of journalists, isn't it?
What's more, the constant revelations in the UK, and now Australia, reflect on the ethos of the whole company, most of which operates in the U.S.: News Corp. has built itself by an aggressiveness that defines its character and actions. The smoking guns seem limited only by one's imagination.
And yet, nothing: not a single US news outlet has meaningful advanced the investigation of Murdoch and his company.
[...]
by Michael Wolff, guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/04/rupert-murdoch-american-media-immunity
[...]
Here's the thing: Murdoch's empire may be under siege in one of the most riveting business tales of our time – featuring wounded celebrities, a dynastic family drama, and toadying at the highest levels of government – but American journalism has been mostly absent from the story. At best, it has been a sidelined presence, late to the game, and generally confused about how to get ahead of events happening in another country. This is, arguably, the best thing Murdoch has going for him: in the US, the seat of his company and the main motor of his fortunes, he has been able to hide in plain sight.
So, why the disconnect? In a universe of equal-access global information, how can such parallel worlds comfortably exist? In the world abroad, almost everything is coming apart for Murdoch: his top executives, including his son, face possible imprisonment, his businesses face dismemberment, his reputation is in ruins. In the world at home, he remains the largely untouchable chief executive of one of the most influential companies in the nation. Within the US business and journalistic community, there is no real sense that he is even vulnerable – precisely, or circularly, because it would require a US outcry to bring him down. And the business and journalistic communities, which would have to lead that outcry, haven't begun to stir.
Many journalists, including Bergman, make the technical point that without an instance of phone-hacking on US soil, there is no smoking gun. Last summer, a spurious report in a second-tier British tabloid suggested that Murdoch reporters might have hacked the phones of 9/11 families, which would have provided an emotional gotcha. But without that, well … shrug.
Still, while this lack of jurisdiction might change the legal direction of the story, it ought not to change the journalistic view. The UK evidence trail reaches ever-more perilously close to Murdoch, the big kahuna. And such pursuit of such a personality is the sport of journalists, isn't it?
What's more, the constant revelations in the UK, and now Australia, reflect on the ethos of the whole company, most of which operates in the U.S.: News Corp. has built itself by an aggressiveness that defines its character and actions. The smoking guns seem limited only by one's imagination.
And yet, nothing: not a single US news outlet has meaningful advanced the investigation of Murdoch and his company.
[...]
Thursday, April 5, 2012
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