Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

Two articles that debunk the myth...

Debunking a myth: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear


The idea that an individual can live in a surveillance society with nothing to fear so long as they have nothing to hide may, on the face of it, appear attractive. For those of us who think of ourselves as 'honest' - we pay our taxes, don't commit murders and are loyal to our partners - why indeed should we fear surveillance?


"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" (NTHNTF) is a myth that is built on certain false assumptions, and these assumptions are never questioned when it is wheeled out as an argument to support whatever draconian surveillance measure is being pushed out in the face of citizen opposition (commercial organisations rarely try such an approach, since it dooms them to failure from the very beginning). These assumptions include:

Full article at link:

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/the-data-trust-blog/2009/02/debunking-a-myth-if-you-have-n.html

Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'


When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private."


The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.


The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!"


The argument is not of recent vintage. One of the characters in Henry James's 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: "If these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and if they hadn't done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing."

Full article at link:


http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/

Prosecution would have used false evidence to execute Casey Anthony

One of the main sticking points by the lynch-mob couch-lawyers that Casey should have been hanged, is the supposed computer search for information on chloroform. During the trial the prosecution claimed that Casey had searched the term 84 times, based on the testimony of their computer expert John Bradley. Now it appears that not only was that information false, but that the prosecution knew that it was false, and never corrected the matter to the jury or shared the revelation with the defense.

This matter is not only a sticking point in the trial-by-media which still continues, but was in fact a primary reason that the prosecution intended to seek a death sentence against Casey. So not only did the prosecution let the jury believe that Casey had searched for chloroform 84 times, but they were going to execute her knowingly based on false evidence.

Was it really false evidence though? It does appear that the term was in fact searched one time from the Anthony home computer. But is that enough for a conviction? Is that enough to execute someone? I can tell you that I have searched chloroform a number of times since this trial, and on at least one occasion before the trial after I saw the movie The Vanishing. We also must consider too, who actually did the search.

Suppose this is why the State Attorney’s office has decided not to seek perjury charges against Cindy Anthony? Casey's mother testified at trial that she put in a search query for chlorophyll, and mistakenly entered chloroform. As anyone who as ever Googled knows, when you begin to spell out a word, it pops up with a list of closely spelled suggestions. One click is all it takes to land you someplace other than where you searching originally, either mistakenly, or because a new topic or term catches your interest in the moment.

When clarifying the error in an interview with the New York Times...

The Google search then led to a Web site, sci-spot.com, that was visited only once, Mr. Bradley added. The Web site offered information on the use of chloroform in the 1800s.

So, in a nutshell, the police used an incompetent programmer to design the software for their invesitgation, the prosecution used false evidence in order to prosecute someone and then did not disclose that fact to the defense when the programmer discovered an error, and were also planning to use that false evidence in order to execute someone. And you really want to give those people MORE power?

Say No To Cayleee's Law

Be sure to check out these two related articles from the big boys of media for more details:

Software Designer Reports Error in Anthony Trial

Casey Anthony Trial Witness John Bradley Backtracks After Blasting Prosecutors

An open debate on Caylee's Law

I would like to take this opportunity to make an open rebuttal to the page Get Caylee Justice, in regards to their support of Caylee's Law.

As many readers here know, I am against Caylee's Law for many reasons, including the painfully simple fact that it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Nevertheless, so many folks continue to deny the facts, and come up with any number of illogical reasons why we need this law. Using the lengthy response from this one page as an example of the oft-repeated points by supporters of Caylee's law, I will now refute their position through applied logic and the exposure of their application of the classic 25 Rules of Disinformation. Point by point, in parentheses, I will cite the tactic being applied, so keep the list handy.


Let us begin...

Absolutely amazed with people. I didnt not ban you yet so I can explain a few things to you about Caylee's law and effective parenting.

Right out of the gate, we see the opponent try to goad us (5, 18), while threatening to ban us (25, 6) and then attempt to establish themselves as an authority (8) as if they are the only good parent on the planet, while assuming that we know nothing about good parenting.

One, on average a child who is abducted is killed with in the first six to eight hours. SO to be quite frank, without a doubt, every second counts.

Here the opponent exposes the fallacy of their position, and is "quite frank" about it, establishing a fall-back position (11). While anyone would agree that indeed seconds do count either in an abduction, or even of course in a medical emergency, the proposed Caylee's Law only makes it a felony crime to not report a missing child after 24 hours, not the first six to eight in which the child is actually killed, according to our opponent. Therefore, Caylee's Law is not a practical measure or standard for dealing with a child who may have fallen into harm's way.

Second, to all of your little attempted theories about well what if you didn't know in the first hour or 24 hours, it is after you discover. Sure, a child might go off to a friends house, but I can tell you, my daughter will need to call me whenever she gets to where she is going, and if she leaves that place to go to a new place. A rule every parent in my mind should have into effect. 

In the first sentence they ridicule earlier statements we had made in the course of previous discussion on the issue. as "little attempted theories" (3, 8, 18) rather than seeing the points raised as the legitimate and logical points they were (1, 19). That discussion can be viewed here. Or if they remove the thread/comments, we can add the screenshots later that we took of the conversation.

As to the specifics of the proposed law itself, most versions propose to make it a felony if you fail to not report a missing child within 24 hours, or a child who has died within 60 minutes. Now, in general, a reasonable person should not have to point out how these time constraints may be impractical in the real world for any number of reasons which may not otherwise be considered to be criminal or even immoral.But more to the point, our opponent here specifies that the point of "discovery" is when the clock starts ticking. There is no such provision made in the laws I have seen proposed. If it were, it would again make the law itself pointless. After all, a parent accused of wrongdoing could claim that they didn't know, had not made the discovery for any number of reasons, for any amount of time. Indeed, in the Anthony case itself, Casey never did admit to discovering her deceased child at all, at any time. The only thing that can be factually established is the time of death, not when the parent actually discovered the child was deceased.

Next we see the "MY child" logic (2) so often applied in these discussions. Again in an attempt to establish themselves as the perfect parent with perfect children (8, 11) while simply ignoring (9) the many, many examples of why a child may be out of touch with a parent for more than 24 hours, and why it is not necessary to always have the police micro-manage how you raise your child. Maybe the child simply forgot to call. Maybe because of scheduling between work and school the parent and child fail to connect. Perhaps the child has run away from home in a fit of rebellion against an overbearing and obnoxious parent who fancies themselves perfect and who demands nothing less than perfection from the child. Is it a good idea to set out rules like this for a child to keep in contact and be communicative? Absolutely. But trying to force them to act in this way will only encourage rebellion and leave the parent in situation after situation where they will not in fact be able to find their kid. And more importantly, it should not be a FELONY on the parent if the child breaks this household rule.

Also if you do not report your child after as you say been floating in the pool for twenty hours, you are going to have some serious felonies on your hands anyhow with federal level child negligence and abuse.

Yet again we see the opponent actually make the point for us, that Caylee's Law serves no practical purpose (15), because as the opponent themselves have pointed out, there are already laws on the books which can be applied. Murder, negligence, all of these things are already illegal, and did nothing to save the life of little Caylee, nor was Casey proven to be responsible for her daughter's death. If this law had been on the books already, prosecutors would have had an even more difficult time actually proving that Caylee was even in her care at the time of the baby's death/disappearance.

Third, every law has acception to the rules. Technically if you were to be walking by a man screaming for help while drowning in the river, and you didn't jump in and save him, you can get first degree murder, not even man slaughter, murder. This law was added to be able to charge everybody in a group killing with first degree murder. Now how many people do you know charged with murder because they didn't jump into a save a stranger over something they had nothing to do with? It is an exception to the rule.

This passage is outright false in a number of ways (3, 4, 13, 20, 22) and the opponent is trying to use a "red herring" in order to distract us from the facts. To begin with, no as a matter of fact, laws do not have exceptions to the rules. Nor should they have any.

"The duty we owe our constituents obliges us to be as attentive to the safety of the innocent as we are desirous of punishing the guilty; and we apprehend that a doubtful construction and various execution of criminal law does greatly endanger the safety of innocent men." ~JOUR. HOUSE OF BURGESSES (1773-1776) 

Arbitrary justice is no justice at all.When a particular police officer, prosecutor, or judge can pick and choose who they will and will not prosecute based upon their own personal biases, hunches, political affiliations, etc., rather than on the rule of law applied equally to everyone, you wind up with fiefdoms of absolute dictatorship.

Now again, the example of the man drowning in the river is patently false. There is no such law that requires anyone to risk their own life and limb to save anyone. Even the police are not required to take any such risks. No murder charge, no manslaughter. In fact if you did jump in to save them and failed, then you could actually be opening yourself up to charges and a lawsuit. Same goes for rendering first-aid of any kind, Heimlich maneuver, CPR, etc. The only way you can be charged with murder in a group setting, is if you conspire to and are in the process of carrying out a felony. If you and a friend decide to rob a store at gunpoint, and your friend shoots the clerk, you are going to prison for murder as well, even if you did not know your friend was going to kill the clerk.

So end all be all, the opponent here has failed to establish a rule, and therefore cannot establish an exception to the rule. 

For further information, you might like to watch this video discussing a recent case where people stood by and watched while a teen girl was brutally raped.

As I have read posts on your page, let me explain this to you. Caylee's law was not made to "bring back a dead child" it is infact to bring harsher punishments on things such as this to maybe deter somebody from killing their or anybodies child (if you read the entire law, it isn't just for parents, it is for adult in a caregivers position, like if your kid went over to a friends house and went missing it would be the responsibilty of that adult. Like the Haleigh Cummings incident where she wasn't reported for a few hours.

Again we see that our opponent is trying to put words in our mouth (4). No one ever said anything about bringing back a dead child, though the logic (13) of some opponents in that camp seems to often imply it, or that the law would actually prevent a death. If the threat of execution or life imprisonment on a charge of murder does not deter someone from killing their child, then they certainly are not going to be deterred by Caylee's Law.

Yes, we are aware (8) that the law applies to all caregivers, not just parents. Which actually only complicates matters further. How does one prove who's care the child was actually in when they disappeared or died? This was one enormous gap in proving Casey guilty of murder in the first place, so how will this new law actually help in that regard? It also opens the door to wrongful prosecutions.

I know you think it want stop people from commiting crimes but a lot of people do like to obey the law. There are some people who dont care if they are going to get the death penalty and are going to do things regardless of the punishment. But some of us respect the law. You wouldn't rob somebody for a million dollars if it was completely legal and you werent going to hurt anybody? The law stops you from doing that because you dont want to go to jail. It is to try and stop those who can be stopped.

Again we see circular logic being applied (13) along with assumptions made as to what we would do in a given situation (4). No law ever prevented a crime. If someone is willing to murder their child, then obviously they don't care enough about the law to worry about another few years getting tacked on to their life sentence thatnks to Caylee's Law. And those of us who respect that law, who don't murder and abuse our children, should not go to prison not meeting some arbitrary reporting deadline that fails to take into account the many nuances of modern family life and the many reasons why a parent may not be able to, or may feel it is best not to report to police. 

Also the law was created to try and preserve the evidence so nobody can walk away free because the body was to decomposed.

Which now bring us to the entire crux of the matter. This law is created to destroy YOUR Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Your right to not provide evidence against yourself or to self-incriminate.

But we also see here again the fallacies of our opponents position  (1, 9, 13, 15, 20)  since we all know full well that many people have been successfully prosecuted without a body ever being located at all, or in very poor condition for examination as was the case in the Scott Petersen trial.

And in mind, anybody who is complely opposed to this law, should think twice about becoming a parent.

So then our opponent finally signs off by invoking a whole slew of disinformation tactics in a single sentence. (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 17, 18)

I expect rules 24 and 25 will follow soon as well. So let me sign off here with a little of the old number 18.

And also be sure to join the Facebook page Say No To Caylee's Law.

"All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach." -Adolf Hitler

Alert: Americans are stupid! (terror threat issued)

Well well well. Surprise surprise. All the money spent, all the citizens harassed, all the children molested at airports, all the fascist expansion of power with the newly minted TSA, etcetera, and what do we wind up with? A terror alert that verifies exactly what anyone with half a friggin brain said right from the start, when the government started with the pat-downs and nude imaging back-scatter x-ray machines at the airports. That these new measures would do nothing to stop terrorists.

Alert: Terrorists Look to Implant Bombs in Humans

Wow, I am stunned, no one would have ever thought of that. Yeah, that was sarcasm. Wake the fuck up people. You are twice as likely to die from being crushed under a vending machine than be killed in another terrorist attack. I don't see any guards posted to make sure you get your corn-chips and cola safely. The government could give a shit less if a plane blows up, and they don't give a shit about al-Qaeda either. The people, you and I, the American who has not been lobotomized by television and junk-food, WE are the threat to their power, not some phony terror cartel. WE are the ones they are watching. We are the ones being forced to live in a prison without walls.

So they pump the propaganda at us, sell us fear, so that we beg to be deprived of freedom. They give us these bullshit alerts telling us what we already knew as if it was suddenly some genuine revelation. As if it were a plot cracked wide open by some clandestine operative embedded deep within a terror network. It's bullshit. They rattle the public, as an excuse in order to justify...

"...travelers may find themselves subjected to more scrutiny when flying in the heart of summer vacation season..."

...despite the fact that...

"Still, there is no current information that points to a specific plot involving surgically implanted explosives, a U.S. security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss such sensitive matters."

Pardon me while I laugh my ass off for a second. "Such sensitive matters" huh? Hate to tell you guys that just got the memo, but this is not breaking news, this is not ingenious tactics of a terror mastermind uncovered by a super-spy. Drug-smugglers have been doing this for years. This is a bullshit propaganda piece spun out by the Associated Press to hit the front page of every mainstream media news source across the nation.

"Aviation continues to be a special target, and evidence from Osama bin Laden's compound showed that the al-Qaida leader retained his fascination with attacking airplanes until his death in May."

Oh, is that so? First I'm hearing about it. Are you telling me that the grand mastermind of the most devastating terror attack in the history of the world, couldn't bring down another plane at any point in the next decade after the 9/11 attacks? But since we are on the topic, how about you SHOW US the evidence in documents, tapes, whatever, of this "fascination." In fact, show us some evidence that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11 in the first place, since he was never indicted and even his FBI Most Wanted profile did not mention 9/11. Better yet, show us one bit of proof that he was even killed in that compound.

Okay, so what are we going to do about this terrible threat of terrorists packing their ass with plastique or stitching a mini-nuke into their abdomen?

"Officials did not want to discuss specific security measures under consideration so as not to tip off terrorists who could seek ways to get around them."

Don't want to rile up the public just yet and tell them that by this time next year it will be full cavity searches for random hot chicks, dudes that give them a hassle, and well, kids and old folks too just to make it unbiased. Wait, here we go, the excuse for feeling up women's breasts, gotta love it.

"Surgery to implant explosives could be done a couple of days before a planned attack, said James Crippin, an explosives expert in Colorado. In order for it to work, there would need to be a detonation device, and it's conceivable that if the explosive was implanted in a woman's breast, the detonator could be underneath the breast so that all the operative would have to do is press downward, Crippin said."

So we better be diligent about really getting up under some titty fellas. Because terrorists would never think to use a remote detonator or a timed charge. Well, maybe they really wouldn't I guess. Seems to me that every terror plot since 9/11 has been carried out by some bumbling buffoon with matches and a propane tank, or underpants that sizzled rather than bring down an airliner.

"The al-Qaida offshoot in Yemen has emerged as the most inventive terror organization these days and has been behind two plots that nearly brought down planes over the U.S. The group, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, was behind the Christmas Day attack in 2009 when a Nigerian hid a bomb in his underpants and nearly brought down an airliner over Detroit."

Oh good, more official sounding horse-shit. AQAP, are you friggin kidding me here? Couldn't the propaganda artists at least come up with something a little more clever sounding? There isn't even any such thing as al-Qaeda in the first place anyway, so there sure as hell is not some organization called AQAP, but your average Joe Six-Pack eats that shit up like a bag of Doritos when you make things sound all official like that using acronyms and titles. Here, let me try. Arabs who Stalk, Shoot, Hate, American Troops. ASSHAT.I hope I never run into an ASSHAT  operative on a plane.

"'Due to the significant advances in global aviation security in recent years, terrorist groups have repeatedly and publicly indicated interest in pursuing ways to further conceal explosives,' TSA spokesman Nick Kimball said..."

No shit Sherlock. Did you really think the terrorists were going to say, "Oh darn, backscatter x-ray machines, guess I'll go back to selling used cars."

"...adding that passengers flying into the U.S. may notice additional security. 'Measures may include interaction with passengers, in addition to the use of other screening methods such as pat-downs and the use of enhanced tools and technologies.'"

Nothing new there either geniuses. Passengers are already subject to the most intrusive, un-Constitutional searches on a regular basis than any nation on the planet has ever seen. And we call this the land of the free? Pardon me while I fart in your general direction TSA.

So all in all, we have this big headline news piece, blaring an alert, for news that is decades old and reinforcing lies that have been told time and time again. This is news how? It's not. It's propaganda.

Here, get the propaganda "main-lined."




And it certainly looks like we will be seeing a LOT more of this...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I need some music...

Why drug testing of welfare recipients is a bad idea

On July 1st, Florida will become the first state to begin mandatory drug-testing of welfare recipients. While at first glance this may seem to be a great idea, really it is an appeal to emotional rhetoric and typical knee-jerk reaction by the public which sells this bill. Under closer scrutiny, the public would see that this is a terrible idea, more bureaucracy, more government control, with no net gain for the public at large or the taxpayer. So let us look at the reasons, point by point, why drug testing of welfare recipients is actually a very bad idea.


Cost effectiveness

It's not. Plain and simple. The biggest reason that people are supporting this new law is that they believe there will be a major savings to the taxpayer by kicking a bunch of people off of welfare. Even if there were a savings, the voter must make an erroneous assumption that any such savings would grant them any tax relief in the first place or that the money would then be spent on “people who really need it.” But more to the point, this program will be enormously expensive and yet another huge burden on the taxpayers. A Congressional committee found that drug-testing government employees, would cost $77,000 for each positive drug test in 1992 dollars. Is it really worth spending somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred-grand, just to catch one drug user who may be getting twelve-grand a year in benefits?

According to some sources, drug tests may run as high as $75 per test. The average is expected to land around $42 per test. With 100,000 people on the welfare rolls in Florida, you are looking at a cost of $4.2 million to test everyone once a year for the 420. An expense that the very poorest people of the state will be expected to pay up-front, and then be reimbursed later if they pass the drug test. Of course, the cost of the tests are only the tip of the iceberg too, as all of this information will now have to be digested by the welfare bureaucracy. It would probably be conservative to estimate that the true cost might be three times the cost of the actual test itself, when you consider all the different social workers who will have to check and double check the paperwork, meet with recipients, speak with clinics, etcetera. A red-tape nightmare with a very hefty price tag. And for what? Arizona has also considered such a law. They projected they would save a measly $1.7 million by kicking people off of welfare. That is a net loss of $2.5 million to the taxpayer by comparison. And that is of course, if each person were only tested once per year.


Cronyism, Politics for Profit

That net loss by the taxpayer is a gross gain for the drug testing companies. As it turns out, Florida's governor Rick Scott co-founded and owns 70% of Solantic, the company that will be doing the drug-testing on welfare recipients.



False-positives

There is substantial risk that people will test positive for drugs even if they did not take any drugs. A “blank” false-positive, or one that would have come up positive regardless of what the specimen actually contained runs about 5-6%, even if it were distilled water. When you add to that the fact that things like poppy-seed buns, or Mountain Dew can trigger a false-positive, the rate increases to about 15%. Not to mention people who are taking prescription medications. Some sources indicate false-positive rates can run as high as 1 in 2. So there we will see 15-50,000 innocent people kicked off of welfare for using drugs, when in fact they were not drug users at all. A first offense will mean that the applicant can no re-apply for one year. A subsequent failure would bar the applicant from re-applying for another three years.

Will a second test be granted, and at who's expense, to re-test to insure that a false positive was not returned? Double-testing would of course double the cost to $8.4 million. But even granting a second test in an attempt to offset false-positives does not guarantee that innocent people will not by kicked off of welfare, leaving them and their kids to starve in the streets.

You can check out a huge list of substances that will return a false postitive at the link below this quote from AskDocWeb...

What is a false positive? It is a test result that is returned when a substance tests positive for another compound. It is a case of mistaken identity. For example if you eat a couple poppy seed cakes before testing, you can get a positive result for opiates.

The chances of you getting a false positive depends on the quality of the laboratory that does the testing. There seems to be about 1,200 of these labs in the United States currently testing for drugs. Less than a 100 of these meet federal standards and most of the individual states do not regulate drug test labs. The number of false positives returned range from 4% to over 50%, depending on the lab.

A concern here is that, if your company tests for drug usage, they are probably not required to use a certified drug testing lab, which means you have a greater chance of getting a false positive.

http://www.askdocweb.com/falsepositives.html

Ineffectiveness of drug testing, and substance bias

The truth is, drug-testing is actually a very ineffective way of uncovering substance abuse and addiction, especially when done randomly or sporadically. To even hope to be effective, recipients would have to be tested once a month or more. For a whopping total of $50.4 million a year cost to the taxpayer for the tests alone, and now triple that to guess what it will actually cost to process those results through the bureaucracy of Social Services.

Alcohol abuse is probably the most prevalent substance abuse problem in our society today, but welfare cannot test for that for two reasons. Firstly, because alcohol is not illegal and secondly, because it processes out of the system so quickly, unlike marijuana which can stay in the system for up to 30 days. Even the casual user can have lingering traces in the system for 10-13 days. Which makes pot smokers the real target of this witch-hunt among welfare recipients. Not drunks, and not even crack-heads or heroin junkies or meth freaks, since those substances only take a matter of hours to filter out of the system. So Florida is going to spend all of this money to catch pot-heads, while likely turning addicts toward harder, more dangerous drugs which are not so easily detected.

Even with just the pot-heads though, how effective will the testing be? Pot smokers have been getting around drug tests for years, with various methods, including elixirs that can be purchased at you local head-shop or online. I'm sure there are similar tricks available for any drug user. More complex tests will only cost even more money. So clearly, many people who are on welfare and doing drugs will never be detected despite the many many millions that will be spent searching for them.


Stigmatizing the poor

There is a false notion in our society today that people on welfare are there as a matter of choice. While there are certainly examples of people who lie and abuse the system, those instances are much more rare than we are led to believe. Again we can take drug abuse as an example. The popular notion is that most people who are poor and on welfare are drug addicts who simply don't want to work. The facts do not support this notion however. Before Michigan's drug testing of welfare recipients was struck down as un-Constitutional, they found that only 3% of recipients were using hard drugs such as cocaine or methamphetamine. That rate is about in line with the general population showing clearly that there is no rampant drug abuse among the poor and disenfranchised. Indeed, another study found that 70% of all drug users in the U.S. were between 18-49 and employed full-time.

Now some might say that if they are employed they have the “right” to do drugs. But by that logic, one must assume that their drug use will not affect their job and finances to the point that they might wind up on welfare in the end thanks to their drug abuse. Which then of course brings up the entire moral basis of even having welfare in the first place.

(Here is an excellent short film about the realities of poverty. It is a little dated in the statistics, but you will get the gist of it anyway I'm sure... )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YYG-f3qYE8



Morality

We as a society have seen fit to put money aside to help our fellow countrymen in their time of need. “Blame” is something that can be thrown around all the livelong day, but at the end of the day we still see a person in dire need of assistance for the basic necessities of life, regardless of the reasons why or how they got there, which more often than not is the result of our nation's terminally flawed economic policy, rather than personal choices. Does that need simply disappear because someone is battling with addiction? Or was their drug addiction necessarily the cause of their economic straits in the first place? Certainly not. As we just noted above, the stigma attached to the poor in regards to drug use is false.

Regardless, it is probably the addict who is most in need of assistance, as much as anyone else suffering from some debilitating disease. Should we kick a homeless vet off of welfare because he chose to join the Army and go to Afghanistan where his legs got blown off? Absolutely not. So we see that choices, mistakes, or anything of the sort is actually irrelevant to the moral question of whether or not a drug user should be given welfare benefits. We do in fact, have a moral obligation to help even the most wretched creatures among us, and the most destitute, regardless of how they got there or what their condition is today.



Forcing the hand is illogical

Simply put, you cannot force people to be, or to do what you believe they should be doing or who you think they should be. All too easy to judge someone else without having walked a mile in their moccasins. There is a long list of medical associations who oppose mandatory drug testing and treatment for any number of reasons.

American Public Health Association, National Association of Social
Workers, Inc., National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
Counselors, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, National
Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Association of Maternal and
Child Health Programs, National Health Law Project, National Association
on Alcohol, Drugs and Disability, Inc., National Advocates for Pregnant
Women, National Black Women’s Health Project, Legal Action Center,
National Welfare Rights Union, Youth Law Center, Juvenile Law Center,
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/marchwinskiamicusbrief1_22_01.pdf

But perhaps the most glaringly obvious reason is that the addict must want to get better. Forcing someone into the streets, starving them, forcing them into a rehab program that they have no interest in is counterproductive and only compounds the addicts justification for their addiction. It will not make them better, it will not help them to become a productive member of society, it will not address the reasons why the addict turned to substance abuse in the first place.

Instead, the end result of forcing the hand will be an increase in criminality as these addicts will only become more desperate than ever. So we can pay to give addicts the basic necessities of life while they try to find their way to their own destiny and hopefully a moment of clarity where they might recover and once again be productive members of society. Or, we can pay to house and feed them in prisons after they have robbed or killed you or someone you love. Keep in mind too, that the U.S. already has the largest prison population in the world, housing a full 25% of the total global prison population.


Constitutionality

Now we come to the very bedrock of what it means to be an American citizen, with the promise of liberty as prescribed by the Founding Fathers in our beloved Constitution. In 2003 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in the case of Marchwinski v. Howard ruled that the state of Michigan's policy for mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients violated our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Some have argued that if we can be drug-tested at work, then the government has the right to drug-test welfare recipients. Again though, this is an illogical apples and oranges comparison. Aside from my own personal opinion that even employers should not be able to test workers without cause, a private company or employer is not the government. You have a choice to go work somewhere else. You have the choice to boycott the company that drug tests their employees. Granting the government this power over all the people of this country is a very dangerous precedent.

It is important to keep in mind here, that this isn't just about welfare recipients. This is about the balance of power between government intrusion into our own personal lives and liberty. This is about your rights, not just the rights of some pot-head buying Doritos with food stamps. You never know when you might be in need of welfare or some other public assistance of some kind. Indeed, this sentiment is echoed by U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts when she ruled ruled that the state's rationale for testing welfare recipients...

“...could be used for testing the parents of all children who received Medicaid, State Emergency Relief, educational grants or loans, public education or any other benefit from that State.”

The ACLU adds...

Indeed, any of the justifications put forth to subject welfare recipients to random drug testing would also by logical extension apply to the entirety of our population that receives some public benefit and/or that is a parent. It is clear that our constitution – and common sense – would object to the random drug testing of this large group of people, making the drug testing of an equally absurd category of people – welfare recipients – unconstitutional as well.

We can even take it a step further and see that the government might use such a precedent to shove us down a slippery slope where you would have to pay for and submit to a drug test for any transaction at the DMV, or any time you are arrested, ticketed, even questioned by police. And then how long before it gets to the point where the government begins drawing blood from whoever they please, and profiling your DNA? How long then before you are forced to be implanted with a government chip that tracks your every movement and every word you say?

Sound far-fetched? If you had told me ten years ago that the government would be molesting children at airports under the guise of looking for bombs I would have told you that you were insane. And I am the police-state conspiracy nut. You can bet that if this is allowed to stand in Florida, the government will use that precedent to get into your life in ways you never imagined.

In conclusion, it is my humble opinion that rather than finding new and clever ways to fuck over the poor, they need to start finding ways to do more to help the poor. Namely, creating more jobs and better paying jobs. The government needs to take responsibility for their failures, rather than spending even more tax dollars to try to sweep the problems under the carpet. There is no reason why in the richest, most powerful country in the world anyone should want for the most very basic necessities of life, no matter who they are.

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

-James Madison

"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think." -Adolf Hitler

For further consideration:

Economic Bill of Rights

Unemployed forced to clean subways

Prison labor re-education camps for welfare recipients 

Botox Mom was a hoax

Well well, another media sham. Another good reason to not trust the news. It appears that the entire story was a hoax, that the child is not even a pageant contestant, and that they didn't even use their real names in the interview. The mother was paid $200 by British tabloid The Sun to carny out the media campaign. Sadly, the child actually did get taken away from the mother, and now she is being accused of having form of Munchhausen's Syndrome. Nevermind of course, the fact that the blame really lay with the media for starting this whole thing and then running with the ball for ratings. Some are calling this is a hoax, I call it a psyop. Look at the buzz it created. Do you really thing the powers-that-be were not collecting data on everyone's tweets and FB posts to get a profile of public reactions? This is how social engineering works people. This was an experiment, a data-mining psychological profiling operation, not a hoax. Just like the Airforce One flyby over Ground Zero a few years ago.



http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/thefamous/botox-mom-made-200-off-her-hoax/1325

NY overturns Family Court decision to bar level 3 sex offender from his kids

James Colliton was a half-million dollar a year tax attorney with a Manhattan apartment and a home he shared with his wife and children in upstate Poughkeepsie, New York. Today, he is a convicted level-3 sex offender after pleading guilty to rape, among other charges, for patronizing teenage prostitutes who were pimped out by their mother according to prosecutors. Initially he took his family and fled to Canada, was arrested but released in Ontario, before finally being arrested again in Manhattan to face a 43-count indictment. By the time of his 2007 conviction, he had been in jail for 19 months and was sentenced to one year, time-served, in a plea deal that let him off the hook for a potential 30 years in prison. The mother of the teen girls had previously pleaded guilty to charges against her for pimping the girls out to Colliton.

In Plea Deal, Lawyer Admits Having Sex With Teenagers

Seem like a pretty open and shut case of a real creep who probably got off a lot easier than he should have. I mean, just getting a look at this guy's mug is almost enough to convict him. Tell me that doesn't look like the textbook pic of a pedophile.

Since his conviction he has gone from tax attorney to pro se litigant, suing everyone from American Express for revealing account information leading to his arrest, to his former employer for not paying him his bonus, to the Town of Poughkeepsie and Dutchess County for violating his Constitutional rights and rights to privacy while monitoring him as a registered sex offender. Now it appears as though he might have grounds to go after the county's Department of Social Services with the NY State Court of Appeals ruling in his favor against the Family Court and recommendations of DSS which forced him out of his home for the next three years after his conviction. According to the Poughkeepsie Journal...

The Dutchess County Department of Social Services filed neglect petitions against both parents alleging the father was an untreated level-three sex offender, deemed likely to reoffend, whose crimes involved young teens, and that the mother failed to protect the children from the father.

Enough to make your blood boil right? One article I linked above there they called him "the most ridiculous pro se litigant of all time." And I am sure much worse has been said about him. Certainly enough to piss off the average Joe or Jane to see a creep like this using his legal expertise in to start snagging up loopholes in order to sue various parties for hundreds of millions of dollars. You would think he would have been happy with getting such a lucky break at sentencing for his admitted crimes.

Well, if you know me, or as you get to know me, you will see that I like to play the devil's advocate a lot. I am not easily swayed by rhetoric and shock-value reporting. I don't have the same knee-jerk reactions as most people do to words like communist, terrorist, sex offender or pedophile. So I tried to think about this objectively. Should this man have been forced from his house and barred from his children simply because he was guilty of sex with a teenage girl for money?

Of course I understand that these girls were underage and what he did is indeed a crime, but I am not quite seeing the correlation that shows he would actually attack his own children. It's kind of like the assumption that homophobes always make when they find out a guy is queer. All the sudden the straight guys all think the queer guy is going to try to have sex with them. You see that assumption too when it comes to homosexuals interacting with children. Legal or not, homosexuality is still often seen as sexual deviancy, that the homosexual might be more inclined to molest children and therefore should not be allowed to adopt or work with kids. Even if there were data to support such a notion, there is certainly nothing that says all homosexuals are likely to attack children.

So just because he pled guilty to having sex with a minor, does not mean that he is likely to attack any and all minors, especially his own children.  If he had sex with a prostitute that was of legal age, would that be a sign that he was likely to proposition his children for sex when they became legal age of consent? Certainly not, yet that is same sort of logic which was applied to bar this man from his house and his kids.

Applied logic doesn't always pan out though in the real world. My gut was still telling me that this guy is a creep and his kids would be better off without him. I would certainly sleep better at night knowing that this guy was nowhere near kids, his own or otherwise. But then again I am conflicted between what my gut is telling me, and what my morals tell me. And my morals tell me this has nothing to do with how I sleep at night. My morals tell me that this has nothing to do with what my gut tells me "might" happen. My morals tell me that just because a man is guilty of one crime, I have no right to assume he is destined to be guilty of any crime my imagination conjures up.

Therefore, I must conclude that the judges in this case did in fact make the right decision in their ruling. A difficult decision on their part no doubt, and an unpopular ruling it is likely to be in the face of hyperbole and the public's utter contempt for sex offenders. Nonetheless, we see that they had statutory basis for their ruling.

...under New York's Family Court Act, they cited two findings that required them to determine neglect. The first is "proof of actual (or imminent danger of) physical, emotional, or mental impairment to the child." Second is the danger "must be a consequence of the parent's failure to exercise a minimum degree of parental care."


The court noted the statutory test is not best or ideal care for children, but a minimum degree.

So it does appear that the Department of Social Services did wrongfully separate this man from his family, falsely accusing both himself and his wife of neglect. And as much as I hate to admit it, he should be compensated for that. As this story begins to unravel, now we must consider too that perhaps his other lawsuits were not so frivolous as we had assumed. What if this man were not guilty of statutory rape? I think that perhaps me might actually give him more serious consideration. Which we should anyway. Just because someone is the perpetrator of a crime, no matter how heinous, that is no justification for others to commit crimes against him or to deny him his rights, lest one day we too are abused simply because we are not popular.

Digging a little deeper now, I am confronted by articles that paint a very different picture than what has been portrayed by the prosecution and in most media sources reporting on the case. What if this man really is not in fact guilty of the crimes he was convicted of? It would seem incredulous, unthinkable to even suggest such a thing. How dare I even doubt for a second that such a creep is not as guilty as sin. After all, he pled guilty, and so did the mother who pimped out those poor girls.

So let's go ahead and take a second look at that woman, who also pled guilty in a plea arrangement. How could a mother do such a thing to her daughters? Well, the case comes undone a little more as we pull at the loose ends as they begin to fray.

"The one that was prostituting my [now] 15-year-old daughter was my [21-year-old] daughter," the mother said in her sparse apartment in lower Manhattan. "She's the devil's child, period."


The mother said her vengeful child had been out to get her since she called ACS to report her daughter's boyfriend was abusing her granddaughter.

But it also appears the girls weren't just out to get the mother. According to another article, these young girls have lied about an awful lot in this case, even lying under oath to the grand jury. So what can we really believe? The window of reasonable doubt is suddenly wide open it appears, and perhaps James Colliton should never have pled guilty to what may have been false allegations from the start.

The older sister had alleged that her own relationship with Colliton began when she was 15. This is disputed however by a cousin of the sisters, identified only as "Shorty," who states that it was she who introduced the older sister to Colliton and that it had been three years later than claimed, when she was 18, a year older than the legal age for consent in New York State. If that is true, then one of the rape charges against Colliton goes right out the window. Plainly not guilty of statutory rape, even if guilty of patronizing a prostitute.

The younger girl has now admitted that she lied about her mother pimping her out, but maintains that she did in fact have sex with Colliton for money and gifts at the behest of her older sister.But that too must be met with the utmost skepticism at this point, considering how this whole case came about in the first place. The elder sister became pregnant by another man, but then began extorting Colliton until finally he demanded a DNA test be done. This is where the younger sister comes into the picture.

By some accounts, still needing cash, the older sister began offering up her younger sibling to Colliton. At first to clean his apartment in exchange for money, but eventually he is alleged to have begun paying in cash and gifts for sex with the younger girl for the next several months. By her own admission, the younger girl began extorting Colliton, threatening to have him arrested.

"I started threatening him that if he didn't give me money that I'd call the cops on him. I told him to give me whatever he could give me. I didn't want to have sex with him anymore," she said.

Maybe she never had sex with him in the first place. The older sister convinced the younger to report Colliton to ACS Administration for Children's Services) while implicating their mother becasue she was too strict on them. As if the credibility of these two girls was not already in serious doubt, we also have the case of José Mangual, the ex boyfriend of the mother of these two girls, who has come forward stating that he was the subject of false allegations made by these two sisters.

Mangual said he ran afoul of the older sister when he moved into the family's Manhattan home and the mother began paying more attention to him than to her kids.


The older girl, then 17, filed physical-abuse charges against the mother with the Administration for Children Service and allegedly persuaded her younger sister to accuse Mangual of sexual abuse.


Mangual said he was never arrested but hired a lawyer to defend himself in family court. He said that the girls' claim fell apart under questioning and that the case against him was dismissed. He and their mother later broke up.

Considering that Mangual came forward and the testimony of the girls had been all but disproven by their own public statements to press, it is hard to imagine how the charges against either the mother or Colliton still stood at all, much less why they might have elected to plead guilty to those charges. Of course, there are those who will maintain the naive notion that "only a guilty person would plead guilty." But sadly, that just is not the truth in this day and age of the presumption of guilt over innocence. The police and courts are too well trusted, while someone as loathsome as a child molester or an unfit mother will hardly be afforded any reasonable doubt even when only the weakest of evidence is brought against them.

So considering that. Considering the very real possibility that they may spend decades in prison for something they did not do, it is really little surprise that such a fear would get the better of someone. And that they would rather just plead guilty, go home and try to move on, leaving the whole sordid tale behind them the best they can. And that my friends, is a big reason why our system is broken. Because the accused, even with the best lawyers often, know full well that there is no such thing as the presumption of innocence anymore. How did that happen? How do we change that?

This article courtesy Station.6.Underground, used by permission, all rights reserved.

Domestic violence debate still rages nearly a year after murder-suicide

This piece is brought to us by contributing author Rogan Mattock. It is a question-posing rebuttal to a column written by Jaqueline Axt, an advocate of domestic-violence related legal reform and the sister of Linda Riccardulli, who was killed by her husband in a murder-suicide in July 2010.


A related article published previously by the MSMR can be viewed here...


Murder-suicide case raises questions about right to bear arms

* * *

It is only appropriate that I begin by expressing my sympathies and offering my condolences to the family and friends of the departed. I am truly saddened by this horrific crime, and was as shocked as any native or local of Dutchess County, New York, where this event took place when I began to hear the news of what had happened.

In the very early hours of a July morning in 2010, Anthony Riccardulli shot his wife Linda several times, killing her, before turning the gun on himself as police stormed the family's Hyde Park home. He was pronounced dead a short time later at a local hospital. One of their children was present in the home at the time of the murder-suicide.

A crime and tragedy the likes of which most people would have trouble comprehending the full gravity of. Which is why it is no surprise that Linda's sister Jackie Axt has become a vocal advocate for changes she hopes will save lives and prevent anything like this from ever happening again. I can't say that I blame her. There is probably no greater feeling of grief and powerlessness as that which is experienced by the loved ones of a person who has been murdered.

Regrettably however, I do not agree with the ideas and changes proposed by her and her fellow advocates, who have begun a new domestic violence initiative in the mid-Hudson Valley region. Which leads me to make this direct, open rebuttal to a column written by Ms. Axt, advisory council member of the newly founded Tri-County Crisis Center. A complete copy of the original column can be found at this blog, a movement against domestic violence.

After a brief introduction she states...

“I'd like to set a few things straight. My sister, Linda Riccardulli, was not helped by Grace Smith House.”

The Grace Smith House is a shelter for battered women. They offer no services for male victims of domestic violence, but do provide shelter and services to women who claim to be fleeing a household where they have been the victim of domestic violence.

Sadly, the mere fact that this is an organization which caters to women alone actually encourages women of little means to falsely accuse men of violence toward them, in order to secure a safe, short-term place to stay rather than a standard homeless shelter or the streets. So right off the bat here, we see a serious financial factor in domestic violence and a motivation for women to lie about domestic violence.

But let's just be clear though, it is plainly obvious that Linda was certainly not making any false claims of domestic violence. She could not claim anything. She was brutally murdered by a husband who was quite obviously deranged. And as far as I'm concerned, murder certainly counts as domestic violence.

So let's cut to the chase here with my first question to Ms. Axt. Did Linda request help from Grace Smith House? What could GSH have offered her? Shelter is one of the primary services that GSH provides, but Linda had shelter. A nice house in the country. How was GSH supposed to know she needed help? What help could they have offered that she would have taken? A crummy converted motel room? I doubt she would have taken it, and I can hardly blame her really. GSH is the end of the line for woman who really have no place to go. Not a service that Linda could have benefited from or would have chosen to use I don't believe.

“She did not get directed to a Domestic Violence Court in Dutchess County.”

To my knowledge, there is no DV court in Dutchess County, no plans for such a court, and frankly, I don't see the need for one. When someone is the victim of an assault, that is a criminal matter. It makes no difference in the eyes of the law, nor should it, if the victim is a one-night stand, a lifelong spouse, a sibling, parent, etc. For other matters which can complicate domestic relationships, we have family courts, divorce courts, and civil courts.

Courts are not advocacy centers, nor should they be twisted to be, at substantial taxpayer expense. Ms. Axt, I don't mean to sound insensitive, but what makes victims of DV more “special” than the victims of any other crime?

Please don't misunderstand, I am not ignorant of the unique problems posed by a domestic assault as compared to, say, a random assault on the street by a total stranger. But those problems are not something that are going to be resolved by a new court system.

The idea sounds good at first look, but at second glance, all I see is another big ball of government red-tape, more tax dollars down the drain, and handing over more power to a government that neither you nor I seem to trust or have much faith in.

“She was not assigned a DV Divorce Lawyer who would have given her appropriate council.”

And who precisely should “assign” a divorce lawyer? I am sure Linda had a phonebook and knew how to use it. Or are you proposing that a woman who claims to be the victim of DV should get a “free” tax-payer subsidized divorce lawyer?

Does the man also get a court appointed divorce lawyer? After all, Anthony had not been convicted of any crime. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. Anthony obviously turned out to be a killer. A man who, for whatever reason he may have thought he had, murdered his wife. But that is hardly the norm. Most men do not murder their wives, no matter what the problems are in a relationship or the stakes of a divorce.

More importantly, a man or woman in this country is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, with a right to be judged by a jury of peers, and a right to legal counsel. It could hardly be considered justice to deny one spouse access to a subsidized attorney, in favor of the other spouse, simply on the basis of an accusation. Or, for that matter, even based on a history of criminal conduct. If that conduct pertains to a divorce, that should be judged by the court, with both parties being afforded equal opportunity for legal representation.

If you were the victim of a robbery, should you be denied a lawyer to sue the perpetrator because you got arrested for shoplifting once when you were a kid? Should you be denied a lawyer because someone accused you of being a thief even though you had never been convicted of any crime?

At the end of the day, it is not my responsibility to pay for someone else's lawyer in a legal proceeding that decides who gets what in regards to property that is not mine and has nothing to do with me. As empathetic as I may be to folks who cannot afford a good divorce lawyer, it is hardly the responsibility of the taxpayer, regardless of the circumstances,, to manage the affairs of another citizen.

“She and her children were not protected by the "Order of Protection" that was given to them. Her estranged husband who was a danger to himself and others was released from jail and what she was given was 40 minutes notice that he was out. That was the "model" that did not save Linda's life last summer, the same model I keep reading about.”

For readers who are not familiar with this case, Anthony had been accused of a previous violent attack on his wife, a month or so before the morning of the murder. From what I gather, she was not severely injured in that altercation, but the alleged attack was said to be quite violent nonetheless, employing the use of household objects as weapons. It is not known what triggered the reported attack, or if there was a history of violence in the household. Regardless, he spent about a month in the county jail before a large bail was posted, and he was released pending trial, with an order of protection against him ordering that he was not to contact or be in the vicinity of his wife.

Orders of protection are not a magic shield. The only thing such an order ensures, is that if the person violates that order, they will face a separate, additional, felony charge if they violate it, on top of whatever other crime they may be accused of. So really, an order of protection is only a deterrent, just as all other laws are.

No order of protection, and no law will ever protect you from a person intent on doing harm or committing a crime. Sadly, when Anthony appeared at the house that morning with a handgun that was not registered to him, Linda and her daughter were unarmed. That was no accident either. Thanks to pressure and legislation by previous domestic-violence advocates, a judge had ordered that all the guns in the home be removed when Anthony was arrested. The one single tool that was left at Linda's disposal, to protect herself from an armed deranged man coming into her house to kill her, had been taken away by a judge in order to “protect” her.

So now we must really ask ourselves... Did Linda die because the government didn't do enough, or because they did too much?

Ms. Axt complains that her sister was only given 40 minutes notice, yet her killer did not appear at the door until days later. So what good would have 12, even 24 hours of notice have done? A pretty nice gesture on the part of the jail to notify her at all. Most crime victims are not notified when their attacker is released. Would you or I be in any less danger of, let's say, a thug coming to get revenge and silence us after they had robbed us at the store where we worked? Or if a stranger who had burglarized our house had been released on bail? In fact, 40 minutes is actually a pretty good amount of notice. Probably about as much notice as the jail themselves had. When someone comes to post bail for a detainee, they have to release that person as soon as the paperwork and processing is completed. It is not the job of the jail to hamper a release or to otherwise harass a suspect who might in fact be innocent of the charge against them.

That point is important to remember. Anthony had not been convicted of any crime. Nor was he found by any court or mental health professional to be a “danger to himself and others.” So what model do you propose here Ms. Axt? That any person, man or woman, who is accused of getting into a spat with their spouse be locked up for a year or more waiting for a trial in which they might be found to be innocent and of sound mind?

“I can not correlate the military level response to the woman who was being evicted from her home, to the lack of response that Linda encountered in Dutchess County when she brought her multiple OP violations to her lawyers, the DA and Police, and ultimately as she lay bleeding in her home on the night she lost her life.”

That is correct. You cannot correlate the two. Two entirely different incidents. The woman who was being evicted is an accused burglar who pointed a gun at police. I think they were awfully heavy-handed in their response in that matter though, calling in SWAT and tanks to disarm a little old lady armed with a BB gun, but maybe they over-reacted precisely because of the recent string of DV incident in our region.

Moreover, police were actually in the process of mobilizing such a response to save Linda when she was killed. Time ran out in her case, where the other incident dragged on for many hours.

As far as alleged orders of protection violations, I am only aware of one that was reported. When Anthony was released from jail, he reportedly placed a phone call telling Linda that he needed important financial documents. Papers that were necessary for him to get the money that paid for the house and the bills where she was still living with the kids while he was told to stay away and had to find some other place to stay. Allegedly he tried to arrange a meeting at the police station in order to receive those papers and some personal affects.

When Linda reported the call to police, the only evidence she had of the call was a caller ID phone number that came back to Anthony's mother's cellphone. Of course, common sense tells us that it probably was him that called, in violation of the court order, but you cannot prosecute someone in a court of law on “maybe.” You have to have some proof other than someone's mother's telephone number. According to newspaper reports, Linda herself refused to press charges in order to have him arrested for violating the order of protection.

Unless she was willing to make a sworn statement that she had gotten a call from her husband, in violation of the court order, the only thing that the police had as evidence was that a phone call had been placed from his mother's phone to Linda's That is no crime at all, nor a violation of the court order. It was up to her to press charges and swear in a statement that he had contacted her in violation of that court order.

As far as her bringing multiple OOP violations to her “lawyers,” I thought you said she didn't have a lawyer?

“I really cannot fathom the reluctance that the advocates I work with, Maria DiBari and Alyssa Kogon have encountered trying to offer solutions to the problems. Not far fetched solutions or unproven theories. These are solutions that have been proven effective in other places. Ideas that have been dismissed or ignored, and in some instances, many months later, are being touted as their own.

As previously mentioned, the press conference we held in September for "Linda's Laws" was not attended by anyone from any DV assistance group even though they were all invited.”

Again, I don't mean to sound cold ma'am. But you are hurting, and the people you have aligned yourself with are carrying on an axe-grinding agenda. If other DV groups are not standing beside you, there is a reason. And that reason is, your proposals are unreasonable.

On the other hand, I do believe in giving credit where credit is due. As much as I may oppose your ideas, the last thing I want to see is some bum politician or group of cronies taking credit for the things you have worked on. I am also not entirely thick-headed, and might be more amendable to some of our proposals if constructive dialogue could be achieved.

“The latest slap in the face was the Committee hearing on April 7th. You can see for yourself how the discussion of the GPS proposal was mentioned and tabled and the reaction from the Angela Friesland -R who seemed annoyed that it was even being brought up. I wrote a letter to the Legislature/Advisory Committee regarding my feelings from a victims point of view. (letter attached below)

I got three responses (Thank you!) out of 25 people in the Legislature. Most notably , I received no response from Leah Feldman who is the Project Coordinator of the Universal Response to Domestic Violence. The most resounding response I got was the Web Cast taken down the day after my letter was received by the Legislature. Only after complaints from the public, the Webcast was put back up and a letter from the Advisory Committee went out to appease those concerned and angered about the Legislature Meeting.”

I only saw bits and pieces of the hearing, so I cannot comment authoritatively with a solid opinion one way or the other on that. In general though, I have a healthy distrust of government and politicians, hence my reluctance to give them any more power than they have already usurped from our beloved Constitution. We all know though, that government is a lumbering oafish giant, and very little of substance ever happens at all, much less quickly.

On the other hand, those delays are for a reason too. That is the price we pay for democratic government. Your opinion, even as a victim, is not the only opinion to be acknowledged, and Linda's death is not the only fact to be considered.

Specifically to the point of GPS monitoring though. What criteria do you propose that would mandate someone be placed on electronic GPS monitoring? How would that have saved Linda?

On the one hand, I am inclined to say that GPS monitoring of an early-release felon might indeed be helpful in preventing and/or solving other crimes. But at what cost? At what cost financially to an already overtaxed citizenry? A people so overtaxed that it actually induces domestic violence.

And at what cost to liberty? Is anyone who is simply accused of a crime to be tracked and monitored like cattle? Are our public streets to become the new prisons littered with folks being electronically monitored? A very slippery slope there, that gives the government and the powers- that-be a motivating factor to accuse and convict any and all of us on some trumped up charge in order to track our every move. Rather Orwellian don't you think? It's bad enough that we already keep more people in prison than Communist China. The US has less than 5% of the world population but a full 25% of the world's total prison population, not including parole, probation and other monitoring already in place. Has that made us any safer?

I don't want to see domestic violence be exploited as yet another in a long line of “flavors of the day” to bring about even more oppression by an ever-more corrupt and broken government. And I certainly don't want to see DV laws that actually perpetuate more DV.

But let's cut back to the chase again. Would Linda have been saved by a multi-million dollar surveillance apparatus? Probably not. From what I understand, police got the call not long after he arrived at the home. An army of police were already outside when Linda was killed. So in that instance, we can see, that millions of dollars would have been spent and Linda would still be gone, all because she did not have a $300 shotgun in the house or strong enough locks on the doors. Now granted, a shotgun may not have saved her life, but it sure as hell is a better bet than a GPS system and a fistful of court orders.

“Stop using my sister as a political pawn. I am appalled that these groups keep invoking Linda's name when I know first hand that they did not help her before her death, nor have they supported or even acknowledged the family in the wake of her murder.”

I'm sorry, but that sounds rather egotistical. They are trying to push through some slow-moving legislation on behalf of your sister, but you are mad because they didn't make you the captain of the ship. Maybe we should all just stop trying to invoke boutique laws in the name of one person or another, and start applying the laws that are already on the books... along with some good common sense.

"ATTACHMENT LETTER TO LEGISLATURE 4-14-11

County Legislature,

I would like to thank those Legislators in Dutchess County that value saving the lives of domestic violence victims in the community and were willing to speak out, along with the unpaid advocates in the county.

However, I'm sorry that the value of saving lives for some is not as obvious as the value of a free ice machine."

If you want to hold a rally for Linda, then do it. A county legislature meeting is held to conduct business. Everything from considering proposed legislation to prosecute the most heinous criminals, to who is going to install a new ice machine in the county office building. Linda is not the county's only order of business. I get it, you are hurting, your sister did not deserve to die like that, but Ms. Axt, life goes on even after we have lost someone close to us.

“I am shocked and appalled by what occurred in the committee meeting on April 7th. it is unbelievable that the committee was so quick to table the GPS proposal with nothing more than a vague "We're looking into it" from the Advisory Committee Liaison. That Leah Feldman, the Project Coordinator for the Universal Response for Domestic Violence had nothing to say on the matter is baffling.”

What can she say? They are looking into it. You may think they should have just enacted every law you wanted at enormous taxpayer expense and without question, but you are not a dictator, you are not providing funding, or even an articulate plan on how to implement these measures.

“Furthermore, my family and I are offended by the callus comments made by Legislator Angela Flesland as though it was out of line to bring this proposal to the meeting. My sister, Linda Riccardulli, is dead, and other families in addition to my own have been destroyed by homicides related to DV since. The Committee is not working fast enough where domestic violence is concerned. The offenders were all out on bail. Victims go unprotected. The GPS would have saved lives, and as part of a solution deserves discussion, not distain. You must remember we are dealing with lives, not political agendas.”

I don't know what comments were made, but judging by the tone of your piece, and how you became continually more aggressive and frustrated I can see how certain officials may have become exasperated by your impatience and lack of understanding as to how the democratic process happens. Only in a dictatorship does an idea today become a law tomorrow.

Domestic violence is a scourge, granted, but it is not going to be solved by some hip-shot legislation.

And what difference does it make that the offenders were out on bail? You do understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty, do you not? You do understand the purpose of bail?

GPS would not have saved lives, but it would cost taxpayers a fortune in a vain attempt to protect people who choose not to protect themselves. Victims are unprotected thanks to previous DV legislation that take away from them the very best tools they could ever have to protect themselves. You want to feel safe? Get a dog. You want to be safe? Get a gun. If I feel threatened by someone, I would take a Smith&Wesson any day of the week and twice on Sundays over some enhanced bail criteria, a timely phone call from the jail, or a GPS tracking device being monitored by a sleeping fatass in front of a bank of TV monitors.

Your sister's death was a horrific tragedy, there is no disputing that. But nothing in the proposals I have seen would have prevented that tragedy. We must make our own choices, not expect society and government to wave some magic wand to make everything “better” for us. There will always be mistakes, failure, and tragedy. This is the price we pay for living in a free society.

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” ~Thomas Jefferson

CIA Psyop: Cordoba Initiative

“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” ~Adolf Hitler

Wise words, from an evil man. How easily the masses are manipulated through emotion, that they will ignore all reason, not only allowing their most cherished values to be pushed aside, but demanding that they be swept away, so as to assuage their own anger and sadness. No case in recent history exemplifies that more than the fervor over the Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan. In a frenzy the people chant, “No mosque at Ground Zero!” Well folks, there are no plans for a mosque at Ground Zero. There are plans for a cultural center two blocks away from Ground Zero. Would there be such outrage if there were plans to build a Young Men's Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) two blocks away from the site where a Christian fundamentalist blew up a Federal building, in Oklahoma City? Certainly not. But in this case, Americans are suddenly not only willing to allow, but are demanding that the government step in and trample the most very basic values of what it means to be an American in the first place. Have we made such great strides against racism and bigotry in this country, only to revert back to a “no n@ggers in this neighborhood” mentality?

The project for this cultural center was was begun in 2004. Their objective, to restore the old Burlington Coat Factory building and to upgrade the premises so that it is more suitable housing for a cultural center rather than the mosque that has already been operating there since the project's inception. Any city might be grateful for such a project restoring a dilapidated old building to improve a blighted property right smack dab in the middle of the busiest part of town. New York City may in fact be grateful for such development, but it is a national, even an international issue now. Suddenly after more than six years, and just in time for midterm elections with a Democrat as President and a Democrat controlled Congress, this smear campaign is launched into the headlines and used as a rallying cry by Republicans and their more rabble-rousing counterparts in the Tea Party movement.

But this isn't just about Republicans and Democrats. It never is anymore. As we have pointed out here before at the MSMReview, it is never as simple as Left vs. Right, and both parties are little more than two faces of a self-serving monolith giving the appearance of choice to the humble and near-sighted masses. By hobbling the Democrats in this election, it will become all the more easy to justifiably maintain the status-quo and to marginalize the chances of any real productive business from being done at all in Washington for another two years, as each side blames the other for the stalemate in any proposed initiative. At the same time it gives the power to the Democrat President to prosecute war in the middle-east as aggressively as his Republican predecessor, who's policies he has done nothing to reverse despite his posturing and promises before the last election. Anti-Muslim sentiment has been restored to its zenith, and is more deep-rooted now than ever before. Meanwhile, through the tactical application of propaganda, Conservatives have been made utter fools of, exposing their bigotry to anyone who is bothering to look at the situation with reason rather than emotion, having completely undermined the most revered tenets of Conservative philosophy for which they have always stood. How easily undone the traditional defenders of Constitutional liberty.

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

~Former Republican Presidential candidate, Congressman Dr. Ron Paul

Ron Paul's complete statement


By whom indeed. There is no political gain here for either Democrat or Republican. They both lose, as do the American people. So who really is behind all of this?

The Cordoba Initiative is the non-profit group leading the project to build the cultural center since it was founded in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Several media outlets have tried to make the weakest of links between Rauf and any number of extremist organizations, and even Iran. What you don't see being played on a loop over your television set is that Imam Rauf has worked for the FBI as a counter-terrorism consultant. And what you don't see blazoned across the headlines of your newspaper is the fact that he also worked as a spokesperson for Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Karen Hughes, during the Bush administration, as she headed up propaganda efforts in the Muslim world. Bush's favorite Imam traveled side-by-side with Hughes, attended the 2006 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, and went to Morocco in 2007. So while some have tried to paint it that he has been traveling to the middle-east to collect funding from terrorists for the building project, it appears that he has actually been on diplomatic missions for the United States.

GZ Imam Helped FBI
Karen Hughes Opposes Cordoba House

Imam Rauf is not the only character in this story though. Another quite interesting person comes into play, far away from the media glare, offering up nearly a hundred-thousand dollars in seed money for the project between 2006-2008. The money reported to be their entire operating budget at that time came by way of the Deak Family Foundation, headed by one R. Leslie Deak, 52, a native of Scarsdale NY, who has served on the board of advisors for the Cordoba Initiative since its inception. His resume reports that he has “in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East.” He was born a Christian, converted to become an Orthodox Jew when he married, but then later divorced and again converted his religion, this time to Islam, when he married Moshira Soliman, with whom he shares a home in Rye NY. At least part of the year anyway, as he spends six months of the year in Egypt.

Resume on Linked In

Looking into Deak's background we see that he graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in international economics, but apparently didn't need to go much further in his education after going to work for his father, Nicholas Deak. The elder Deak had been an intelligence commander for the OSS, the predecessor of CIA, during WWII. He went on to found Deak & Co.which, along with subsidiaries, became one of the top gold and currency dealers in the world, controlling 20% of all retail gold sales in the U.S. and was the leading seller of the South African Krugerrand. Leslie Deak became Executive Vice-President of the the company. In 1978 the firm was convicted in Federal court and fined, for failing to report millions of dollars in large currency transactions with two Philippine businessmen. Then, in October 1984 the firm came under fire in a report by the President's Commission on Organized Crime alleging that their firm had been involved in a money laundering operation with Colombian drug cartels who had reportedly been bringing bags of cash, amounting to millions of dollars, right into the firm's NY offices. By December the firm had filed for chapter 11 reorganization in bankruptcy court. In November the following year, a deranged homeless woman walked into their offices, shot and killed the receptionist, and then murdered the company's founder, Leslie Deak's father Nicholas.

After the bankruptcy, the Deak empire was broken up and sold in pieces but continued to operate. One company that traces it's roots back to the original corporation is Goldline International Inc. Goldline sponsors Conservative talking-head Glenn Beck among others. The company is now under investigation by a U.S. Congressional committee as well as local authorities in California, and is the target of a class-action lawsuit for trying to dump debased product onto gullible customers. The 300-employee company is projected to have revenues in excess of $1 billion for 2010/11. Glenn Beck is aired on FOX News, which is a subsidiary of News Corp., who's second largest shareholder is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who also happens to be funding Imam Rauf's projects. As comically pointed out by humor-newsman Jon Stewart, the right-wing media company railing against the Cordoba Initiative, are actually the ones “funding terrorism” as they like to put it. The right wing media is railing against an initiative that they themselves are funding by proxy.

HUFFPO article with Jon Stewart video included
Wikipedia - Goldline International
Goldline.com

Now let's take a look at another item on Mr. Deak's resume, to see if we can see any other interesting coincidences. In the same time period that he gave nearly a hundred-grand to the Cordoba Initiative, he gave about as much to the National Defense University Foundation. The NDU is a network of research centers and strategy/war colleges, including the National War College, all under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Deak's own resume makes it clear that he is a much more active part of operational national security than simply a donor to defense education. His resume describes his affiliation with the NDU under this entry:

Director
National Defense University Foundation
(Non-Profit; Fund-Raising industry)
2003 — Present (7 years )
Raising funds to support unfunded initiatives at National Defense University, the preeminent strategic educational facility of the United States.

Selected by Secretary of Defense to Joint Civilian Orientation Conference. Participate in briefings with base commanders and Joint Chiefs on issues, operations and strategic objectives.

Deak sits on the board of directors chaired by one Mark Treanor. Mr. Treanor was Senior Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Wachovia Corporation between 1998 through the collapse in 2008, and a major consolidator of campaign donations for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. Coincidentally enough, Wachovia also had their hands in some serious drug-money laundering, like the Deak family had been accused of years earlier. Now owned by Wells Fargo, Wachovia recently paid a $160 million settlement to end a criminal probe of money laundering for drug cartels through Mexican exchange houses admitting “serious and systemic” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act failing to monitor $420 Billion in transactions. At face value, we might suspect that there might be some common bond of profiteering through illigal drugs, but it may be even more complex than that. It is well known by many that CIA has long been involved in the trug trade. So perhaps these businessmen have been operating fronts for that ubiquitous spy agency.

But is there any clue that Leslie Deak has any contact with anyone in the CIA? Even if he were in any way involved in business dealing with someone from the CIA, surely it wouldn't be a matter of public knowledge. Right? Well as a matter of fact, Deak's own resume once again gives us a clue. He lists himself as a business development consultant for Patriot Defense Group, LLC.

Who we are and what we do...

Patriot Defense Group, LLC. provides defense, security, and logistical services in support of corporate and government clients. We provide professional services, training, and logistics to those who defend America, her allies, and Fortune 100 companies in the defense, energy, financial, and media sectors. Our company is organized into two functional divisions to provide these specialized services.

Our defense and government services division focuses exclusively on the needs of the U.S. military and law enforcement communities as well as the requirements of friendly foreign governments. We focus our capabilities and resources to provide specialized training, curriculum development and logistics.
Our corporate services division, PDG Risk Management, provides business intelligence and specialized security services to corporate clients and high net-worth family enterprises. These services rely upon a unique composite team of operations officers drawn from the ranks of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. Our specialized security services are proactive and focus on protecting our clients' resources.

Management Team

Patriot Defense Group, LLC is a company with a wealth of experience. Our principal officers and contract cadre have served in contingency and other operational roles in every major conflict since the Vietnam War. You will not find a more qualified group of dedicated professionals to meet your organization’s needs.

PDG’s CEO and founder was an infantry platoon leader in Desert Storm; had two separate commands of a U.S Army, Special Forces Operational Detachment – Alpha (A-team); and served for nine years as a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State in the Middle East supporting American foreign policy and economic initiatives.

The managing director of PDG's defense and government services was a CIA Operations Officer with extensive experience ranging from hostile environments in Asia and Southwest Asia to counterterrorism operations throughout the Middle East.

PDG Risk Management is led by a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who worked on the personal security details of former Presidents Bush and Clinton. He went on to serve as the Director of Security for Shaw Engineering in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.

http://www.patriotdefensegroup.com/index.php

Note that they do not name their managers. They do however name their strategic advisors. Alexander Cappello, finance and banking guru. The military man, General Doug Brown (U.S. Army, Ret.), who commanded the the entirety of US special operations forces, leading the War on Terror, until his retirement in 2007. The spook, James L. Pavitt, former Deputy Director for Operations at CIA, who controlled half of CIA's budget and a third of their deployed personnel. And then there is Leslie Deak, the “business development consultant” who will match this outfit with clients and financing.

Seems that Mr. Deak must have quite a few very powerful friends, throughout the world, in both private industry, as well as in military, government, and intelligence circles to do a job like that well. If one had a project they wanted to carry out, that might very well have global implications, is seems that he just might be the man who talk to, who could put together the financing, as well as bring together all the people that would need to meet in order to carry out an operation to a successful conclusion.

So just to re-cap now. While the media shine the spotlight on Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, trying to paint him as a terrorist, he has actually done extensive work for our government in counter-terrorism and pro-American propaganda in the middle-east. Meanwhile, a key partner in the development of the “Ground Zero Mosque” has gone completely un-noticed. R. Leslie Deak, key investor and board-member of the Cordoba Initiative was born the son of a man who held a command position in the OSS, predecessor of the CIA. Leslie Deak got a basic education in international finance and helped his father command a large portion of the world's gold and currency supply, until his father was murdered and the company broken up, amid well-founded allegations of money laundering for Columbian drug lords. One portion of the company, which still publicly claims its roots back to the heyday of the Deak empire, funds the Conservative propaganda machine and is now under investigation for scamming their customers selling fake gold. Deak himself goes on to sit on the board of directors for a foundation which funds the premiere research and educational facilities that determine national defense strategy and who write the book on fighting the War on Terror. Chairman of the Board for that foundation was a key officer and top lawyer for Wachovia, while they were laundering billions of dollars for international drug cartels. Deak is also recruited to develop the business of a private group of clandestine operatives for hire to both corporate clients and foreign states.

Are we really to believe that Leslie Deak's invlovement in the Cordoba Initiative is purely philanthropic? Or that he wanted to get in on the ground floor of an investment opportunity in some rinky-tink little Muslim cultural center that no one would have paid any attention to at all had it not been for it's proximity to the site of the nation's worst tragedy since Pearl Harbor? (Not to mention the biggest conspiracy since the assassination of JFK.) Perhaps instead we should at least consider some other possibilities here. That perhaps this has been planned for quite some time to be a political trump card of sorts in the upcoming national election that will determine the control of the Congress of the United States. An ace in the hole for the Republicans perhaps? Or maybe, just maybe, something even bigger than that. A CIA psychological operation that will accomplish a number of objectives.

First, it will guarantee continued support for American imperialism in the middle-east. Second, it will thoroughly undermine the the power of our national political leadership to do anything more than act as administrators of the status-quo, as babysitters of the citizenry, while more secretive and nefarious groups carry out their agendas. And third, it will bring in a wealth of data as they gauge public reaction.

How easy would it be to mount an all-out assault on what little remains of the Constitution? How malleable are the minds of the people in the face of a perceived threat? How willing are the people to condemn an entire section of society? Like Hitler did to Jews as a people, to Slavs. To political, religious and racial groups, all based on propaganda. These are the things that they have learned from the mosque-project. They see better now who the extremists are right here at home. Those that are willing to do violence in support of their agenda, and those who are paying enough attention to see through it and who will hinder their progress. You see, articles like this, this is the threat to the enemies of freedom. Places like the MSMReview, and people who speak of like mind will be identified as sources of information that cannot be propagandized or brainwashed, who cannot be dealt a blow of amnesia to history through shock and awe. The enemies of freedom are not bearded religious man living in caves and mud huts. Oppression and tyranny are much closer to home. The words of liberty and truth, that is the threat to their power, this is what will hinder their goals, and hopefully one day be their undoing.

Whether or not the Cordoba Initiative ultimately succeeds in its publicly stated goal is irrelevant. The fight is all that ever mattered. Will reason triumph over emotion one day, for the masses, or is it destined to remain the exclusive purview of elitists and despots?