David Horowitz ruthlessly and verbally attacked Dr Zinn on public radio a day following his death, when people were mourning. That is disgusting behaviour for a guest on ATC and your Ms Keyes should have called him on it. As a commenter wrote on this ATC story, "The question is: Does NPR deserve underwriting support from thinking and feeling people?" A very good question, especially since Vermont Public Radio and North Country Public Radio tell us continually that their listeners are sensitive and caring people – they donate generously to underwrite NPR programming! I am writing the management at those stations, demanding them to consider dropping your expensive programming.I included the above in my letters to VPR and NCPR management, adding,
"I urge also that you contact Ms. Shepard, Vivian Schiller [NPR's President and CEO], and Ellen McDonnell [NPR's Executive Director of News Programming] and demand NPR issue an apology to Dr Zinn's family - in national print media and broadcast it on NPR and the local stations.Recommended: NPRCheck, a blog that monitors NPR's news programs.
As I sit typing this I can look out of the window over the city of Pune in the state of Maharashtra in India, about 100 miles south-east of Mumbai. The view comprises high-rise tower blocks, green lawns and trees, concrete and glass. It could be anywhere in the developed world (though the 30 C temperature and sun virtually overhead in a cloudless sky at noon confirm that it is not England!). But I know that just across the road, and out of sight from here, are the shacks, corrugated steel sheds, and tents that everywhere are intermingled with the lives and buildings of richer Indians and their western business partners. Pune today is a rapidly-growing city, the eighth largest in India, with half a dozen universities and growing hi-tech industrial, IT and commercial sectors.
It was in a very much smaller Pune, then spelt Poona, that in 1927 the Christa Seva Sangha made its first real home. Founded in 1922 by five Indians and an Englishman this ashram or religious community — whose name means the Community of the Servants of Christ — intended to form a life of common service and equal fellowship for Indians and Europeans. The Englishman was Jack Winslow and the community soon attracted some attention in both India and England, which enabled it to move to Poona after a few years. Winslow’s account of the Society can be read online. Originally dedicated to St Barnabas, the Society soon added St Francis as joint patron, a dedication that became more important as it adopted a formal rule and vows.
In 1927 the community was joined by a number of new recruits, one of whom was a young priest called Algy Robertson, and by 1930 there were around 30 members. Robertson was convinced that the Sangha should be a Franciscan community, but after a few years his health broke and he returned to England. Still a member of the Sangha, he became vicar of St Ives, a dozen miles north-west of Cambridge, and the vicarage at St Ives became home to several Brothers of the community as well as a refuge for visitors from Poona. There are still those in St Ives (where I have lived and worshipped for twenty years or so) who can recall the Brothers living in the vicarage and cycling around the town and to nearby villlages. In 1936, however, Robertson’s group joined with another Franciscan community in England to form the Society of St Francis, with a rule largely written by Robertson and based on the principles of the Sangha in Poona. In 1937 Robertson resigned from St Ives to move to the new community at Hilfield, near Cerne Abbas in Dorset, where he was based for the rest of his life.
The Franciscan ideal of embracing poverty and the service of the poor is one that comes swiftly to mind in the streets of modern Pune, just as it must have done in the very different Poona of the 1920s and 30s, to Francis in the thirteenth century, and just as it must have done to an itinerant preacher from Nazareth two thousand years ago. The poor are still with us, and the priority of working for the alleviation of hunger, homelessness, disease and injustice is as necessary now as it was then.
"From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."Dr Zinn's last appearance on Democracy Now! was last May.
'I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King. I’m sure he pays verbal homage, as everyone does, to Martin Luther King, but he ought to think before he sends missiles over Pakistan, before he agrees to this bloated military budget, before he sends troops to Afghanistan, before he opposes the single-payer system, which you talked about earlier in your program. He ought to ask, “What would Martin Luther King do? And what would Martin Luther King say?” And if he only listened to King, he would be a very different president than he’s turning out to be so far. I think we ought to hold Obama to his promise to be different and bold and to make change. So far, he hasn’t come through on that promise.'Talking about the A Young People’s History of the United States,
'...we should be honest with young people; we should not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country. And we should be not only taking down the traditional heroes like Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt, but we should be giving young people an alternate set of heroes.And at the end of that program...he sure as hell wasn't neutral about war.[my emphasis]
'Instead of Theodore Roosevelt, tell them about Mark Twain. Mark Twain—well, Mark Twain, everybody learns about as the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but when we go to school, we don’t learn about Mark Twain as the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League. We aren’t told that Mark Twain denounced Theodore Roosevelt for approving this massacre in the Philippines. No.
'We want to give young people ideal figures like Helen Keller. And I remember learning about Helen Keller. Everybody learns about Helen Keller, you know, a disabled person who overcame her handicaps and became famous. But people don’t learn in school and young people don’t learn in school what we want them to learn when we do books like A Young People’s History of the United States, that Helen Keller was a socialist. She was a labor organizer. She refused to cross a picket line that was picketing a theater showing a play about her.
'And so, there are these alternate heroes in American history. There’s Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses. They’re the heroes of the civil rights movement. There are a lot of people who are obscure, who are not known. We have in this Young People’s History, we have a young hero who was sitting on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to leave the front of the bus. And that was before Rosa Parks. I mean, Rosa Parks is justifiably famous for refusing to leave her seat, and she got arrested, and that was the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and really the beginning of a great movement in the South. But this fifteen-year-old girl did it first. And so, we have a lot of—we are trying to bring a lot of these obscure people back into the forefront of our attention and inspire young people to say, “This is the way to live.”'
AMY GOODMAN: I’m telling you, the great historian, you have five seconds.Today, DN! pays hommage to Dr Zinn in it's program (link - the program will be up later, so check).
HOWARD ZINN: If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists, which is what war is.
Honduras, ousted president Manuel Zelaya is due to leave the country today after President-elect Porfirio Lobo is sworn into office. Zelaya has taken refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since returning to Honduras in September. On Tuesday, the Honduran Supreme Court dismissed all charges against six military commanders involved in the June 28th coup that removed Zelaya from officeSource: Democracy Now!
Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for "oral sex".
Merriam Webster's 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (for children aged nine to 10) in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the "sexually graphic" entry is "just not age appropriate", according to the area's local paper.
The dictionary's online definition of the term is "oral stimulation of the genitals". "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature," district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.
The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti (French: Eglise Episcopale d'Haïti) is the Anglican Communion diocese consisting of the entire territory of Haiti. It is part of Province 2 of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Its cathedral, Holy Trinity (French: Cathédrale Sainte Trinité) located in the corner of Ave. Mgr. Guilloux & Rue Pavée in downtown Port-au-Prince, has been destroyed six times, including in the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
It is the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church, with 83,698 members...
"Please tell our partners, the people of the Episcopal Church, the people of the United States and indeed the people of the world that we in Haiti are immensely grateful for their prayers, their support and their generosity," [diocesan bishop Jean Zaché] Duracin wrote. "This is a desperate time in Haiti; we have lost so much. But we still have the most important asset, the people of God, and we are working continuously to take care of them."
The Haitian diocese suffered greatly with the quake. A number of the diocese's 254 schools, ranging from preschools to a university and a seminary, were destroyed or heavily damaged, including the Holy Trinity complex of primary, music and trade schools adjacent to the demolished diocesan Cathédrale Sainte Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral) in Port-au-Prince.
A portion of the St. Vincent School for Handicapped Children, also in the Haitian capital, collapsed, killing between six and 10 students and staff. Many of the students are living at the camp while arrangements are being made for them to be housed elsewhere.
More than 100 of the diocese's churches have been damaged or destroyed, Duracin has said.
As many as 3,000 quake survivors, including many members of the diocese, have congregated on a rocky field next to College Ste. Pierre, a diocesan secondary school that the quake destroyed. Duracin, who was left homeless by the quake, has led the effort to organize and maintain the camp, where conditions are described as grim.
Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.I encourage you to read all of it.
I'm talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.
The Dutch government knew of the SS membership of the late Prince Bernhard as early as 1944, according to NRC Handelsblad.More (in Dutch):
The newspaper bases its finding on documents released by the National Archive in The Hague earlier this year. One of the documents refers to a coded telegram, dated September 1944, from Foreign Minister Eelco van Kleffens. The telegram reveals the cabinet knew Prince Bernhard had briefly joined the SS but suspected he had been unable to avoid doing so, "possibly in order to prevent something worse". In the telegram, the foreign minister instructs the Dutch ambassador in the United States not to refute claims, made by American media as of 1941, that Prince Bernhard had been a member of the SS.
Until now, it was not clear if the Dutch cabinet knew such allegations had any basis in fact. For many years Prince Bernhard remained evasive on his links with the Nazi NSDAP party and related organisations. In an interview with De Volkskrant, published shortly after his death in December 2004, the prince admitted to his SS membership for the first time. He always denied having belonged to the NSDAP.
The capricious [Howard] Hughes ill-used her talent. She flourished, however, as soon as she broke free of him, becoming for more than a decade one of the dominant performers in an industry where the studio system was in decline. The first great part was playing the Roman patrician converted to Christianity in the widescreen epic The Robe (1953), the first feature made in CinemaScope. In it she acted opposite Richard Burton, and at different times she co-starred with Robert Mitchum, Spencer Tracy (she called her first child Tracy Granger), Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster and Cary Grant, and was directed by Otto Preminger, George Cukor, Joseph L Mankiewicz, William Wyler, Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Donen and her second husband, Richard Brooks (with whom she had a daughter named Kate after Katharine Hepburn).
in 1955 for Guys And Dolls, the Samuel Goldwyn-produced musical in which Simmons is Sarah Brown, a Salvation Army-style reformer conned into a weekend fling in Havana by gambler Sky Masterson.
She loved the rehearsals for that film, Simmons recalled in 1988, "especially the dancing routines with Marlon trying not to step on me and choreographer Michael Kidd looking very worried".
"I got to sing," she added, "because Sam Goldwyn said, 'You might as well wreck it with your own voice than somebody else's'."
Thursday's radio and tv campaign for victims of the Haiti earthquake raised over €41m, an amount later doubled by the foreign affairs ministry, taking the total to €83m.
Aid minister Bert Koender said earlier in the day he would double the amount raised by viewers and listeners before midnight. 'It is fantastic to see how the Dutch are helping out the Haitians,' he was reported as saying by the Telegraaf.
Following criticism from some viewers that not all the money would end up helping the people of Haiti, Koenders said the government's audit office would monitor how the money was spent. The relief programme is being coordinated by an umbrella organisation of the main Dutch charities known as SHO.
Among the fund raising efforts which took place: Jonnie Boer, three-star chef at top restaurant De Librije in Zwolle raised €4,500 selling pea soup at the town's station. One passerby paid €150 for a bowl.
Gracious God,It's time to show solidarity with our Haitian neighbors. Haiti will need help for a long time.
I lift my voice in prayer with all the people of the world.
Surround Haiti and her people
with your loving embrace
that they may be:
supported by the world in the work of rescue and recovery;
comforted as they grieve;
strengthened as they bury their dead;
healed as they tend their wounds;
restored in faith and the
hope of things unseen;
and transformed through newness of life in Christ.
Make me an instrument
of divine love, of mercy, of hope, and of new possibility.
Give me eyes to see,
ears to hear, the will to act, and a discerning and generous heart
that I may serve you and those who suffer in whatever way I am able.
In and through the power of the Holy Spirit, I pray. Amen.
"... get this.. The EPA has a booth here. However, they contracted what seems to be a private marketing firm to represent them, rather than one of their own employees!!!! What does this mean?
Here's the kicker. The conference is in the Ronald Regan building - RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO EPA HEADQUARTERS!!!"
"Sixty miles from Haiti's devastated earthquake zone, luxury liners dock at private beaches where passengers enjoy jetski rides, parasailing and rum cocktails delivered to their hammocks.Clinton is not the Good Samaritan.
The 4,370-berth Independence of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean International, disembarked at the heavily guarded resort of Labadee on the north coast on Friday; a second cruise ship, the 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas is due to dock."
"In close collaboration with the new UN Special Envoy to Haiti, former President Bill Clinton, Obama has pushed for an economic program familiar to much of the rest of the Caribbean--tourism, textile sweatshops, and weakening of state control of the economy through privatization and deregulation.
In particular, Clinton has orchestrated a plan for turning the north of Haiti into a tourist playground, as far away as possible from the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince. Clinton lured Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines into investing $55 million to build a pier along the coastline of Labadee, which it has leased until 2050."
"Martin Luther King Day has become a yearly ritual to turn a black radical into a red-white-and-blue icon. It has become a day to celebrate ourselves for “overcoming” racism and “fulfilling” King’s dream. It is a day filled with old sound bites about little black children and little white children that, given the state... of America, would enrage King," -- Chris Hedges
The history of a people is found in its songs. - George JellinekR.I.P. George Jellinek
Jellinek created The Vocal Scene program in 1969, a year after he became WQXR’s music director. The weekly, one-hour show was devoted to opera and great opera singers. The show continued for 36 years, and was syndicated on classical stations around the country.George Jellinek interviewed Virginia Zeani in 1993 for "The Vocal Scene." It's in three parts; here is Part I:
Sanctimonious war talk
Several times this week we opened our papers to see pictures of teary-eyed families wishing their loved ones good luck as they embarked for the "war" in Afghanistan. We also read the words of our governor who sanctimoniously stated the sacrifices they were making were balanced out by the just cause they were pursuing.
Where is the just cause that has resulted in innocent civilians being killed? Where is the just cause that emboldens anger, outrage, and the growth of terrorism throughout the world? Where is the just cause that lines the pockets of the private contractors using war only for their profits?
Enough of the tears, enough of the loss, it is time our governor end his meaningless soliloquy and take action that will end this trail of tears. Gov. Douglas must say no to Washington's demands for more troops. By denying the machine its fuel, the machine will come to a halt.
Washington may respond by saying a governor can't do that, but Douglas must stand up to such bullying. If he is threatened by legal action, he must be willing to continue to stand up, behind bars if necessary.
To continue to pontificate about the noble cause does not serve well the citizen soldiers and the citizens of the state of Vermont. The only way Douglas can wash the blood off of his hands is by being willing to put himself on the line as well.
William Gay
Montpelier
Crisis talksFor the conclusions of the Davids report in English, click here.
The three coalition party leaders spent most of Wednesday in crisis talks to draw up a new response to the report. In Wednesday evening's letter, the prime minister said: 'Based on what we know now, the cabinet accepts that a more adequate legal mandate would have been necessary for such an action.'
Labour's parliamentary leader Mariëtte Hamer said the new statement meant the report had been 'removed from the waste bin'.
But opposition MPs were not so easily appeased. Alexander Pechtold, leader of the Liberal democratic party D66, said he had to ask if Balkenende's initial dismissal of the report was due to 'the arrogance of power' or 'clumsiness'.
Commentators said on Thursday the new statement appeared to have headed off a cabinet crisis.
Before the parliamentary debate on the letter, Balkenende said this was not the right moment for a crisis - referring to the economic problems facing the country.
Miep looks like a pack mule. She goes out nearly everyday in search of vegetables, and then cycles back with her purchases in large shopping bags. She’s also the one who brings five library books with her every Saturday.Last week we read about the death of Freya Gräfin von Moltke. Last night it was reported that Miep Gies, another symbol of resistance, has died.
-- Anne Frank July 11, 1943
Miep Gies, the last surviving and best known helper of Anne Frank and the people who shared her hiding place in an Amsterdam canalside house, has died in Hoorn on 11 January at the age of 100. Right until the end Miep remained deeply involved with the remembrance of Anne Frank and spreading the message of her story. Every day she received letters from all over the world with questions about her relationship with Anne Frank and her role as a helper. “I’m not a hero’, she once said, “It wasn’t something I planned in advance, I simply did what I could to help.” Miep Gies leaves a son, a daughter in law and three grandchildren behind.In her own words,
'I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more - much more - during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.' -- Miep Gies on her websiteFor the BBC report, click here.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has spent his career trying to remake American capitalism in a more Scandinavian image. His favored targets of late have been top finance regulators he considers far too deferential to Wall Street. Last year, Sanders spent five months trying to block a new Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman before securing promises from Gary Gensler to aggressively fight market excesses.
Now Sanders is aiming at the top of the regulatory pyramid, putting a hold on the renomination of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, whom he blames for the country's financial collapse as a "key architect of the Bush economy.''. . .
Congress's only self-described socialist, the 68-year old Sanders gives the appearance of having stepped in from a tornado and speaks as though still trying to be heard over the noise.
His voice may finally be breaking through. Over 16 years in the House, his lonely crusades - which amount to a lifelong campaign to remake American capitalism and social policy - were usually received as little more than glitches in an otherwise well-functioning two-party system. Since his 2006 election to the Senate, however, Sanders has found that a junior senator's single vote is enough to keep him in the middle of things. . .
Sanders disappointed liberal allies who had counted on him to mount a one-man stand against the Democrats' health care bill for omitting a public insurance plan. Sanders, who had introduced an amendment to create a single-payer plan, had initially threatened to oppose any such bill without a public option. . .
Sanders eventually secured $10 billion to expand a national network of rural medical clinics that he calls "perhaps the most significant and least-known public health program in America.'' (The Senate bill had one perk just for Vermont: $600 million to cover the state's previous expansion of its Medicaid program.). . .
"He deep down believes he can change American politics,'' said Larry Sanders, the senator's older brother and a county councilor in Oxford, England, representing the Green Party. "He's not afraid of being boring and making the same points for 20 years.''
A longtime critic of mainstream media, Sanders controls the flow of his own information. He wrote radio ads for his congressional campaign with friends around his kitchen table. Before being elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, Sanders developed educational film strips about New England history - and one 30-minute documentary about Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs - for sale to local schools.
Last year, Sanders began working with muckraking director Robert Greenwald on weekly Web videos designed to build a national constituency around his issues. . .
... the quote from VY's report to NRC detailing the tritium wedge moving toward the Connecticut River, especially"The presence of tritium in station air compressor condensate and manholes (Storm Drain System) has been identified since 1995... leakage of tritium to ground water beneath the site will be transported by natural ground water gradient to the Connecticut River." (Page 51)The problem with tritium is that it is chemically identical to water. This means that the tritium cannot be filtered out of the water like the other radioactive isotopes may be filtered from reactor water or other contaminated water.
who served on the special Oversight Panel that examined Vermont Yankee's reliability last year, said there likely was a plume of contamination under the reactor, and that concentrations of the tritium were likely higher in locations other than the well.
Gundersen noted that Entergy officials told his committee there was no underground tanks of piping that would have contained radioactivity, calling into question the accuracy of their reports.
"The Oversight Panel specifically asked about underground pipes and tanks, but we were stonewalled by Entergy. Tritium is a sign of a leaking pipe or tank. Entergy told the panel that they had no buried tanks or pipes containing radioactivity. This is an indication that a radioactive plume is moving under the VY site," Gundersen wrote in an e-mail.
Gundersen said the committee was very concerned about underground radioactive contamination at the site.
Man on run after committing criminal damage to a donkey. With his penis.HiccUP!
onthehushhush 22:24, arf, barf, reply
[...]
maybe he'd had a glass too many?
blazingindiscretions.blogspot.com/2010/01/chardongay.html
sgtpeppersstoneyhardcoreband 10:20
...the idea of a ‘Chardongay’, which isn’t even a Chardonnay but a mix of Chenin Blanc and Colombard, while the red version (getting confused now) is straight Cabernet Sauvignon, pun intended, just sounds, well, blah. Vinamis, the company who thought this up apparently couldn’t find an acceptable cheap Chardonnay (bless you). And since we’re driving through cliché-ville, what about a rosé? It’s coming out later, as well as the bubbly.Bottoms up!
NORWICH -- Freya von Moltke, a prominent member of the Nazi resistance in World War II, has died at the age of 98, her son said.I've always been amazed by the courage of the resisters against the Nazi regime of whatever cultural or political stripe - aristocrats or Anarchists, Communists or Social Democrats or whatever - who acted at enormous personal risk.
Von Moltke, who was born in Germany but had lived in Vermont since 1960, died Friday after suffering a viral infection, her son Helmuth von Moltke told the Lebanon Valley News.
In her writings after the war, von Moltke described her life in the resistance with her husband, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who co-founded the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle and was executed for his activities.
[...]
The Kreisau Circle included several dozen clergy members, economic experts and diplomats. Freya von Moltke hosted meetings in 1942 and '43 at the family estate at which the group discussed plans for the democratic Germany they hoped would follow the collapse of the Third Reich.
In 1943, the group established contact with Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the German military resistance, and supported his failed attempt on July 20, 1944, to assassinate Hitler with a bomb.
Helmuth von Moltke was arrested in January 1944 for warning a friend that he was about to be arrested. He was executed a year later for treason.
In 1947, Freya von Moltke left Europe for South Africa, where her mother-in-law had been born. She worked as a social worker but grew troubled by the apartheid regime and returned in 1956 to Germany, where she began publicizing the activities of the Kreisau Circle.
She moved to Vermont to live with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a Dartmouth College professor and social philosopher who had fled Germany after the rise of the Nazis. After Rosenstock-Huessy died in 1973, she dedicated herself to promoting his works and those of her late husband.
Her transcriptions of her husband's letters were published in German in 1988 as "Letters to Freya 1939-1945." Her memoirs, "Memories of Kreisau and the German Resistance," were first published in 1997.
After the fall of communism in 1989, the von Moltkes' former estate was chosen by the German and Polish governments as the site of a reconciliation Mass between the two nations. It is now used as a youth center and meeting place to promote European integration.
Von Moltke gave her blessing to the establishment of the Freya von Moltke Foundation for the New Kreisau to support the work being done at the estate.
A memorial service is scheduled for Friday at the Norwich Congregational Church, associate pastor the Rev. Mary R. Brownlow said Sunday.
She dedicated much of the six and a half decades of post-war life she would enjoy to chronicling the German resistance, in lectures and books, and in her later years she supported the conversion of Kreisau into a centre for European reconciliation. A woman who lived and sacrificed through her country's darkest years, was keen to bequeath the promise of a brighter future.
UPDATE: 2 p.m. Sunday: This storm has now become easily the largest snowstorm ever witnessed in Burlington in more than 120 years of record keeping. National Weather Service warning coordinating meteorologist Scott Whittier in South Burlington said the storm dumped 31.8 inches of snow.
And it's not over yet, folks. He said snowfall has intensified in the Champlain Valley, so we have at least several hours of snow yet to come, along with several inches of snow on top of the record.
Truely an amazing storm.
Police officers from two Chicago suburbs are being sued after one of them allegedly Tasered a man having a diabetic seizure because the diabetic involuntarily hit the officer while being taken to an ambulance.Worse, the other police offers present stood by and watched and failed to intervene, as Mr Lassi was being tasered.
Prospero Lassi, a 40-year-old employee of Southwest Airlines, filed the lawsuit (PDF) with a federal court in Chicago last week, following an April 9, 2009, incident in which Lassi was taken to hospital following a violent diabetic seizure -- and being Tasered 11 times while unconscious.
That day, Lassi's roommate found the man on the floor of his apartment having a seizure and foaming at the mouth, according to the statement filed with the court. The roommate called 911 for help, and police officers from the Brookfield and LaGrange Park police departments arrived to help with the situation.
As police officers were helping the paramedics move Lassi to an ambulance, Lassi -- still in the midst of the seizure and described as "unresponsive" -- involuntarily smacked one of the officers with his arm.
"Reacting to Mr. Lassi’s involuntary movement, one or more of the [officers] pushed Mr. Lassi to the ground, forcibly restraining him there," the complaint states. "[LaGrange Park Officer Darren] Pedota then withdrew his Taser, an electroshock weapon that uses electrical current to disrupt a person’s control over his muscles, and electrocuted Mr. Lassi eleven times.
Yet evidence given by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during hundreds of torture sessions, including over a hundred sessions of waterboarding, is admissible in the US, torture apparently not being duress like the threat of losing your job.
The US is at the same time going through more angst about the underpants bomber. Get this into your heads; people want to kill you because as a nation you behave in a murderous and arrogant way. That does not justify a terrorist in killing innocent civilians; but killing innocent civilians did not seem to bother the Blackwater boys, or the US armed forces who kill innocent civilians every single day.
