Famed civil rights photographer doubled as FBI informant
By Michael Calderone


Labels: Articles , Black History , cointelpro

By CHRIS FARAONE  |  September 8, 2010

In March 2004, Kathleen Dennehy was hired as the new Department of Correction (DOC) commissioner. The first woman ever to hold the job, she had served nearly 30 years in the system, working as a deputy commissioner and before that as superintendent of the women's prison in Framingham. The challenges before Dennehy were grave; in August 2003, defrocked Catholic priest and serial child rapist John Geoghan was strangled to death by a white supremacist in his cell at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, casting a negative light on the department.

READ: "Troubled Over Bridgewater," by Chris Faraone

It's no surprise that Dennehy locked ideological horns with the union. MCOFU's then-president Steve Kenneway had just completed a tour in Iraq, where he served at Abu Ghraib as an Army reservist. When the notorious Baghdad prison came under scrutiny for outrageous human-rights violations that were exposed in a series of incriminating pictures, Kenneway publicly defended his military comrades, stating that he never witnessed a single inappropriate interrogation. Dennehy, on the other hand, was tasked in to lead the biggest Massachusetts jail reform initiative in 40 years.

Read the Full Story Here: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/108112-reform-proof-prison/#ixzz0z289Fvj6
Labels: Articles , Prison Conditions

I recently heard the crime rate is down in the the East Bay city of Oakland. It doesn't feel that way on the streets. My 21-year-old brother who stays in Oakland just got shot at last week. I stay in Hunter's Point, and someone in the neighborhood just got shot at yesterday.

The last few weeks haven't been good for me. I made the local news twice because of violence.

On March 22, I was standing at the T-stop on 3rd Street in San Francisco when some young dudes choked a 57-year-old Asian lady and threw her off the platform. Her mouth was bleeding. It was shady for them to attack an old lady. The cold part was when my cousin called me the next day to say she saw me on the news. I got interviewed because I was standing right there when the assault occurred. I was at the wrong spot at the wrong time. It was bad because first off, I got on the news for an old lady being thrown off the platform, and there's nothing good about that. It was also bad because they asked me all these questions on camera that I didn't have answers to.

The second time I made the news was even worse. It was because I was getting shot at on the freeway last Sunday. Me and three other people left the city around midnight, trying to get to Hayward to see some females. I was driving.

We were in San Leandro when we happened to pass a car. We looked at the people in the car, and my friend said, “What’s up?” in a head motion, and we thought everything was fine. The car slowed down a little, moved to the other side of me, and that's when my cousin mugged them. Since I was driving, I didn't even know my cousin mugged them. I smack past their car, but I guess they thought we were on them. I heard the first gunshot hit my window, and the bullet ended up hitting my cousin in the back. He was damn near crying like he got shot hella times, but luckily the bullet just clipped him and popped out.

I was mad my cousin got shot, but then again, if he hadn't mugged those folks, none of this would have happened He was the only one who got shot. I'm glad the bullet wasn't in his head because that would have been crazy.

While we were getting shot at, I managed to get off the freeway, but not before hitting the island that separates traffic. Then I hit the off-ramp and landed in the island. Everybody hopped out of the car and went different ways. I left my phone in the car, so I had to go back to get it. I got into my car and drove it around the corner to where everybody gathered waiting for me. It was damn near 1 a.m. People started coming out of their houses to see what was going on. This one dude who we didn't even know gave us a tire. But when we turned around to fix our car, this white dude was trying to take a tire off my car.

Three different highway policemen kept coming back to ask us if we had seen anything. We all said, “no,” because we knew for sure they were going to take the car since there were three bullets holes and my window was shot out. I wish they had let me drive off with my car, but because of the bullet holes, they had to take it.

The police handcuffed us all, even the guy who was just trying to help us put a new tire on the car. While being handcuffed, I told the guy who helped us, "I know you're not helping no more black people out." He started laughing and said, "I'm not helping nobody else out." I think they handcuffed us because we're black and they thought we had something in the car, which we didn't.

We were taken to the police station and asked hella questions. By the time it was all over, it was 4 a.m. It was lightweight shady because one of the people who rode in my car was only 17 years old, so he had to wait for his mom and dad to get him. I wasn't really trippin' about being at the police station because I knew they couldn't take me to jail for being shot at. I couldn't wait to leave and get home. It was hella late.

Since we didn't have a ride, my cousin called somebody he knew to pick us up. I had to take BART and get back to the city to see my parole officer at 10 that morning. Then I had to go straight to work even though I only got two hours of sleep. I was so tired I didn't even want to get up, but I made it to work.

They took my car, and now I'm real mad because I only had that car for one day. Now I'm back to the bus and I know not to hang with those people who got me mixed up with being shot at.

Jaquan Rushing
http://www.youthoutlook.org/news/
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=4dae326ab50ef131998600a40a3c803f
Labels: Articles , Street Violence , Youth

LOS ANGELES -- Twenty-two killings in just 13 days have put the LAPD on alert and brought a surprising end to the low crime trend of recent years, reports La Opinión. The unusual surge in homicides, which has been a lingering fear for several months as a result of the early release of prisoners and the budget cuts to law enforcement agencies, coincides with an AP report this week that found the early release included a percentage of violent offenders. Until two weeks ago, the police had recorded a double digit drop in the homicide rate, which has been consistently declining in the last few years. However, as of March 31, there had been 73 killings in the city Los Angeles, compared with 74 in the same period of 2009.

An even steeper increase in violent crime has taken place in New York, where crime is up 20 percent. There have been at least 103 murders in New York as of Monday, compared with 86 killings at this time in 2009.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=afa3f7143463e83a45414f9b253b730d
Labels: Articles , Street Violence , Youth

LOS ANGELES -- La Opinión reported last month that 22 killings in 13 days brought a surprising end to Los Angeles' low crime trend of recent years. In a follow-up story Monday, the Spanish-language daily reports that the majority of those killed were black and Latino youth. In Los Angeles County, 32 percent of murder victims were African American, 11 percent were white, and only 3 percent were Asian. Latinos in Los Angeles County are five times more likely to be victims than whites, and nearly twice as likely as African Americans, La Opinión reports.

Experts say the high rate of murders of black and Latino youth may be linked to access to weapons and gang affiliation. They also cite poverty and social conditions, as well as lack of parental supervision, as factors that may contribute to the violence.

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=558330f8e3660a62fc93f68afaf357a0
Labels: Articles , Street Violence , Youth

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2010

A fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for "the West" to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.

Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel's Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog ("Superfluous young men," 7 February 2010).

In the speech Kramer rejected common views that Islamist "radicalization" is caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Too many children, he argued, leads to too many "superfluous young men" who then become violent radicals.

Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would "happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status."

Due to the Israeli blockade, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now dependent on UN food aid. Neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide Palestinians with specifically "pro-natal subsidies." Kramer appeared to be equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to reproduce.

He added, "Israel's present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim -- undermine the Hamas regime -- but if they also break Gaza's runaway population growth, and there is some evidence that they have, that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men." This, he claimed, would be treating the issue of Islamic radicalization "at its root."

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include measures "intended to prevent births within" a specific "national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

The Weatherhead Center at Harvard describes itself as "the largest international research center within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences." In addition to his positions at Harvard and WINEP, Kramer is "president-designate" of Shalem College in Jerusalem, a far-right Zionist institution that aspires to be the "College of the Jewish People."

Pro-Israel speakers from the United States often participate in the the Herzliya conference, an influential annual gathering of Israel's political and military establishment. This year's conference was also addressed by The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and, in a first for a Palestinian official, by Salam Fayyad, appointed prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.

Kramer's call to prevent Palestinian births reflects a long-standing Israeli and Zionist concern about a so-called "demographic threat" to Israel, as Palestinians are on the verge of outnumbering Israeli Jews within Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories combined.

Such extreme racist views have been aired at the Herzliya conference in the past. In 2003, for example, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, an Israeli government armaments expert, called on Israel to "implement a stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population," a reference to the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Labels: Articles , Palestine