Sheehan has spent her sympathy  

Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in action in Iraq on April 4, 2004, has become the face of the anti-war movement in the United States. While her grief is understandable, her rhetoric is outrageous.

As the mother of a son killed in battle in Iraq, she originally struck a sympathetic chord, whether you supported the war in Iraq or opposed it. One cannot help but empathize with the agony of a bereaved mother. But that has changed over the months, and I believe that many Americans who viewed her with sympathy no longer do so.

Many Americans now see her as a person who has come to enjoy the celebratory status accorded to her by the radicals on the extreme left who see America as the outlaw of the world. These radicals are not content to be constructive critics. They are bent on destroying this country.

Some of them want to turn America into a radical socialist state. Others hope to create a utopia. But regardless of their agendas, how can Cindy Sheehan's supporters defend her shameful statement, "This country is not worth dying for."

While we recognize the U.S. is far from perfect, we are still head and shoulders above most other countries in the world in every respect. We remain the place where almost all others, given the chance, want to come to live. We continue to be the land of opportunity. We are the world's leading economy.

Yes, there is far too great a difference between the incomes of the rich and the poor. Yes, we haven't provided universal medical care as a matter of right for all of our citizens. Yes, minorities still suffer from discrimination socially, in housing, jobs and education. But we have a political system that for more than 200 years has allowed the electorate to work its will through regularly held elections. The government follows the will of the people, or it will no longer stay in power..

Those who rail against the United States have simply failed to sell their message to the public at large. They keep losing elections, local as well as national. Rather than broadening their appeal, they have narrowed it.

The Congress and President had every right to rely on the advice of the CIA that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. On Sunday, September 25, 2005, Tim Russert of Meet The Press, summed up the situation prevailing before the war, saying, "…post September 11th, there was a fear of terrorism, an inability to know whether there were weapons of mass destruction by the public or by the media. George W. Bush said there were. Bill and Hillary Clinton said there were. The Russians, French and Germans, who opposed the war, said there were. Hans Blix of the UN said there were."

Iraq had fought an eight-year war against Iran resulting in a million casualties, using poison gas against the Kurds, who were citizens of Iraq, and against the Iranian army. Yes, since the 2003 invasion, we have not found any present supplies of WMD. Nevertheless, based on advice from CIA counterparts advising every member nation of the United Nations Security Council, the Security Council, including Syria, adopted Resolution 1441 unanimously, finding Iraq had weapons of mass destruction for which it had not accounted and advising Iraq that failure to account was cause for war. Iraq refused to account for them to the U.N. We and our allies were right to invade, notwithstanding that other countries, terrified by the prospect of terrorism against them and tempted by corruption at the UN masterminded by Saddam Hussein through the Oil-For-Food program and lucrative vendor contracts with Hussein's regime, did not join us.

We have accomplished our original goal to prevent Iraq from threatening us or its regional neighbors. We should declare victory and get out. Yes, there probably will be a civil war among the Kurds, Sunni and Shia. If the UN — which is still under a cloud because of the "Oil for Food" scandal — decides to take a military role in Iraq to stop the civil war, we can join them at that time. Having accomplished our original mission, we should no longer be fulfilling the obligations of other countries, such as Germany and France which have had a free ride to date. Even in Afghanistan, the latter NATO allies, do not participate in combat duty, leaving that and the ensuing casualties for the U.S. to bear.

On August 15, 2005, on the Chris Matthews Show, Sheehan said, "she would not have responded differently to her son's death had he died in Afghanistan rather than in Iraq. Sheehan argued that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was 'almost the same thing as the Iraq war.'" Remember, the UN Security Council authorized the invasion of Afghanistan and the war against the Taliban government.

Sheehan's personal attacks on President Bush include comments in a speech on April 27, 2005, when she said, "We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We're waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush." Shameful.

Sheehan wrote, "Casey was killed in the Global War of Terrorism waged on the world and its own citizens by the biggest terrorist outfit in the world: George and his destructive neo-con cabal."

In an interview on CBS, Sheehan referred to the foreign insurgents coming into Iraq, who are condemned as terrorists even by other Arab countries, as well as the U.S. and Great Britain, as "freedom fighters." On September 16, 2005, she said, "Pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq." On the one hand, she and her supporters urge that the National Guard be brought back from Iraq to be used in New Orleans, and on the other hand, she condemns their use there now.

In addressing a veterans' group on August 5, 2005, she demeaned herself with the use of truly outrageous remarks hurled at the President, describing him as "a lying bastard," "that jerk," "that filth spewer and war monger," and "that evil maniac."

Sheehan appeared this past weekend in Washington, D.C., leading the parade in a picture captured by the media that included Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond and Al Sharpton.

On Monday of this week, while Sheehan and her supporters were in Washington protesting at the White House against the presence of U.S. military forces in Iraq — those forces there at the request of the democratically elected Iraqi government — according to The New York Times, "Armed men dressed as police officers burst into a primary school in a town south of Baghdad on Monday, rounded up five Shiite teachers and their driver, marched them to an empty classroom and killed them, a police official said." Sheehan believes them to be "freedom fighters."

Of course, Sheehan has the right to state her opinion in a country she believes shouldn't be defended. We who disagree with her statements, we who believe this country deserves our thanks, love and willingness to defend it, also have the right to express our views. Speak up, America.

http://www.jwr.com/0905/koch.php3

posted by Matthew LeFande 10:33 AM
matt@lefande.com

Video: Shining Redux  

A new trailer for an old movie.

http://waxy.org/random/view.php?type=video&filename=shining_redux.mov

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:52 AM
matt@lefande.com

N.J. sheriff angry after relief convoy stopped for speed  

A New Jersey sheriff is hopping mad that a Virginia deputy pulled over part of a 12-car convoy of his lawmen on their way home from helping with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and told the officers to slow down.

"How about if Augusta County [took] the manpower [they used] to obstruct the vehicles of people helping hurricane victims and instead sent them down to help hurricane victims?" Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale told The Washington Times yesterday. "There were a number of conversations, and I still feel the way I feel."

Augusta County Deputy Michael Roane stopped the vehicles from the Passaic County Sheriff's Department and the Waynesboro Police Department along Interstate 81 on Sept. 18, after Virginia State Police received calls from concerned motorists complaining of the convoy's speed.

Augusta County Capt. Dwight Wood said the deputy clocked the convoy at 95 mph. And the New Jersey officers, he said, weren't exactly deferential to their Virginia counterpart when he tried to persuade them to turn off their lights and slow down.

The officers were "asking 'Why are you stopping us?'?" Capt. Wood said. "Finally our officer diffused any hostility and indicated they could slow the units down and continue on through 81."

Deputy Roane later called Sheriff Speziale to further explain the situation.

"It snowballed from there," Capt. Wood said.

According to a taped telephone conversation between Deputy Roane and Sheriff Speziale obtained by the Waynesboro News Virginian, Sheriff Speziale called the stop "unacceptable."

"If you think that that's not a disgrace, you should take the badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage," Sheriff Speziale told the deputy.

"We just had guys down there for the last 14 days helping our brothers in blue. You know what? You need to get off of that highway, pal, and wake up and learn what law enforcement is all about -- supporting each other," the sheriff continued.

When the deputy asked the sheriff whether he would like to hear his side of the story, the sheriff replied, "I don't care what your side of the story is."

Capt. Wood said the conversation prompted Augusta County Sheriff Randall Fisher to contact Sheriff Speziale by phone and by letter.

"The sheriff in that county still pretty much defended his officers and thinks the stop shouldn't have been made," Capt. Wood said.

Sheriff Speziale said a New York Police Department convoy traveling home from a Katrina relief effort was stopped by Virginia troopers in the same area. He also said his officers stopped to help during two traffic accidents in Tennessee.

"My statement to [Sheriff Fisher] was that if it happened here in the northeast corridor we understand what it's like to handle an attack and support each other," Sheriff Speziale said. "We would've done what other states did -- they waved us on and some provided us escorts."

Sheriff Fisher was not available for comment yesterday, but Sheriff Speziale said the two men had "agreed to disagree."

"There won't be no apologies," he said.

http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20050929-105705-9244r.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:45 AM
matt@lefande.com

Rodney King arrested for allegedly threatening daughter, ex-girlfriend  

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police led to the deadly Los Angeles riots of 1992, was arrested for allegedly making threats following a fight between his daughter, his girlfriend and an ex-girlfriend, police said.

King, 40, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of making criminal threats. He was held on $25,000 bail.

Police were called to the King home shortly after 4:15 p.m. Authorities said King's live-in girlfriend, Dawn Jean, 29, got into a fight with daughter Candace King, 23, who also lives in the home.

The daughter allegedly assaulted Jean, leading Carmen Simpson, Candace King's mother, who also lives at the home, to get involved in the fight, police said.

King allegedly threatened to kill his daughter and Simpson. Authorities said the daughter, who called police, said King was armed with a handgun, but it turned out to be a toy.

King's videotaped beating after he was stopped for speeding shocked the nation when it was shown repeatedly on television newscasts. After the four white police officers charged in the beating were acquitted of most charges, Los Angeles erupted in riots that left 55 people dead and caused $1 billion in property damage.

He uttered his now famous heartfelt plea, "Can we all get along?" during the height of the riots.

King sued the city for the beating, eventually settling for $3.8 million.

Since the beating, he has had a string of run-ins with the law. He walks with a limp since a 2003 accident in which he lost control of his car, crashed into a house at 100 mph and shattered his pelvis.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20050929-1926-ca-rodneyking.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:51 AM
matt@lefande.com

Witnesses: New Orleans cops among looters  

Four New Orleans police officers have been suspended and one has been reassigned over allegations of looting in the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, acting Police Superintendent Warren Riley said Thursday.

The city's police department is investigating reports that at least 12 police officers may have gone on a looting spree in the days after the storm hit.

The probe began after police officials reviewed videos from news reports, Riley said, without elaborating.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. acknowledged his office was investigating "two separate incidents of potential looting by law enforcement" but would not identify the jurisdictions involved.

The officers are alleged to have taken non-essential items like televisions or jewelry or to not have acted against looting.

Riley promised "swift and decisive action" against any violators, saying, "There is zero tolerance for misconduct or unprofessionalism by any member of this department."

His announcement of the probe came two days after the abrupt resignation of police superintendent Eddie Compass. Mayor Ray Nagin named Riley to replace him.

A department spokesman said Compass' resignation was not related to the looting probe. Riley also called the reports that some 250 officers abandoned their duties "simply not true." He said a list of those officers was being examined to identify deserters, adding that some were off the job for legitimate reasons.

"When we lost telephone service and radio communication, some officers were stranded on their rooftops for four to five days, stranded in areas around the water due to rising water or displaced into other units or divisions," Riley said.

"We had to rescue our own police officers," Riley said. "Clearly, not everyone on that list is a deserter."

At present, more than 1,400 police officers are working 12-hour shifts, along with federal agents and the military, he said.

"The more than 2,000 men and women of this agency stand united in not letting a very small segment of members tarnish the great reputation of this department," Riley said. He added that they should be commended for "30 days of tremendous challenges."

One incident that Foti's probe is focusing on took place at Amerihost Inn and Suites just days after the storm hit, said police spokesman Capt. Marlon DeFillo. It was captured on tape by a reporter from WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge and a photographer from WAFF-TV in Huntsville, Alabama.

Officials viewed the TV news video showing an officer reaching for a gun as he blocked media from a door to the 10th floor, where he and seven other police officers were thought to be staying, DeFillo said .(See the video behind the investigation -- 3:50)

The hotel's owner, Osman Khan, told CNN that on the night of August 29, when the city flooded, 70 police officers had moved into his Canal Street hotel. He said that 62 went out to fight looters and thugs on the streets, while eight launched a four-day drinking and looting binge.

"They'd leave [at] nine or 10 at night and come back 4:30 in the morning," carrying "everything from Adidas shoes to Rolex watches," Khan said.

The eight officers were drinking almost all of the time, said hotel engineer Perry Emery, and when he came to the men's 10th floor room to bring towels, he saw "jewelry, generators, fans."

"One time they came back with a bunch of weapons," Emery said. He said he had no doubts about what he witnessed: "These were New Orleans police officers -- looting."

One generator, Khan said, was stolen -- as he watched -- from Tulane University Hospital next door. He added that the officers ran an extension cord to a refrigerator in their room to keep their beer cold.

The reporter and photographer who confronted the police officer at the 10th-floor door reported that a source told them the people inside the room were New Orleans police.

Several other witnesses said police are continuing to loot unoccupied homes.

Erlaine McLaurin said she saw two police cars pull up to an apartment building down the street from where she lives. Then she and her father watched as two officers walked inside and came out with their arms full.

"They [filled] up the white car, the police car," McLaurin said. "He got a four-pack of soda, a microwave, CD player. Put that in," she said. "I know everybody that lives here. Ain't no cops live here."

In the building, seven of 12 apartment doors appear to have been kicked, pushed or battered off their frames. It did not appear likely that rescue workers broke down the doors because the neighborhood wasn't flooded.

City resident Steve Thomas said he watched police kick in the door to a Lower Garden District home. He has no doubt he saw the officers looting, he said.

"They got police escorts coming in here, breaking in houses and taking the stuff," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/29/nopd.looting/index.html

TV footage of two New Orleans police officers looting athletic shoes from a Wal-Mart.

http://www.lefande.com/weblog/Looter.wmv

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:40 AM
matt@lefande.com

Thursday, September 29, 2005

DHS Secretary: Keep Your 10-Codes  

The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has announced today that it is no longer necessary for first responders to discontinue using the 10-Code system of verbal communication in order to come into compliance with the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

Speaking at the Annual Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in Miami Beach, Chertoff said there was a strong response from the law enforcement community against this proposal. “We had a discussion about it. As a result, I have decided that NIMS compliance will not include the requirement of the abolition of 10-Codes in everyday law enforcement communications”

That announcement was followed by a warm round of applause from the full house of police chiefs at the Jackie Gleason Theater.

Chertoff went on to warn that when there are multi-jurisdictional and multi-agency events that there must exist a common language that addresses the variations that exist in 10-Code communication. “Everybody needs to be up to the challenge.”

Chertoff also announced an initiative to enhance information sharing capabilities. A pilot program will provide real time incident information, real time alerts that DHS officials receive from the Homeland Security Operations Center. In the pilot areas, Chertoff said these alerts will be made available to key state and local emergency managers who need them also, at the same time as DHS officials get them.

“It is another way of connecting to you and giving you visibility to what we are doing and what we are facing as common challenges,” Chertoff said.

NIMS was developed by Homeland Security to provided a consistent nationwide template to enable federal, state, local, and tribal governments and private-sector and non-governmental organizations to work together effectively and efficiently to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from domestic incidents, regardless of cause, size, or complexity, including acts of catastrophic terrorism. Abolishing the 10-Code verbal communication was part of the consistency dictated.

Compliance comes in as a condition for federal preparedness assistance (through grants, contracts, and other activities) beginning in FY 2005. Therefore all departments and agencies must adopt the NIMS and use it in their individual domestic incident management and emergency prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation programs and activities.

Chertoff also talked of the actions and results DHS during and after the recent hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “By any measure the test was extraordinary.”

“Some things worked well but there were shortcomings we have to address,” Chertoff said. “We have to learn the lessons of what happened so we can continue to improve.”

In that effort, although no names were mentioned, a new DHS position will come into existence. A single Director of Preparedness will be named, “with full range of capabilities to ensure our that our preparedness efforts have a focused direction to integrate the department planning, training, exercising and funding.”

Although Chertoff did not say how this position would fit in with FEMA’s mission, he did say that FEMA must be strengthen and continue to work well with state and local authorities.

Chertoff also said clearly that because of the hurricanes, the dismal circumstances created by planning failures has caused the department to undertake a review of the emergency operations plans of every major area in the country. “Their plans must be clear detailed and up to date. This includes specifically a hard realistic look at evacuation plans ranging from earthquakes to subway bombings.

http://www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=26084

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:10 AM
matt@lefande.com

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Detroit had more justifiable homicides than any of the 10 biggest cities in 1999-2003.  

From 1999 to 2003, Detroit has logged more justifiable homicides than New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or the seven other biggest cities. And the rate at which Detroiters have legally killed is nearly double that of the next highest cities, according to the most recent FBI records.

Meanwhile, a bill introduced to expand and codify citizens' rights to use deadly force in self-defense or to stop a felony has been introduced in the state House.

Detroit citizens have taken up firearms and knives to protect themselves and others from robbers, violent spouses, would-be killers and rapists on streets, in homes and at businesses. In many cases, police or prosecutors decided the killing was justified and not a crime.

Even so, the bill's author says, the law is needed to protect citizens from a potentially capricious legal system where they might be charged as criminals or sued for defending themselves or their homes. If a burglar were shot inside a house, his relatives would be barred from suing the homeowner.

"I call it the 'Castle Doctrine' and a person should not have to retreat," Rep. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, said last week.

The former sheriff of Eaton County said: "I've seen many, many crime victims ... Citizens should be able to defend their lives when they are in imminent danger no matter if they are in their home, car or out in public where they can legally be."

The number of justifiable killings may stun the layperson, but leading criminologists James Alan Fox of Northeastern University and Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University said recently the numbers are in line given the number of Detroit's homicides.

They said justifiable homicides usually equal about 5% of a city's slayings -- and Detroit's average of 11 justifiable killings a year versus 395 homicides a year falls within that range.

Fox said Detroit's count is statistically in line "based on criminal homicides."

Robert Kahle, a Ferndale-based social researcher, said he opposed the relaxation of the concealed-weapons law several years ago, thinking it would lead to a surge in killings.

Nothing of the sort happened; in fact, he said, the raw numbers for homicides and violent crimes in Detroit have been declining. "Yes, there is hope," he said last week. Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist, said Michigan is following Florida, which also broadened its self-defense laws.

http://www.freep.com/news/locway/justify26e_20050926.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:46 AM
matt@lefande.com

Monday, September 26, 2005

Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated  

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

That the nation's front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state Health and Human Services Department administrator overseeing the body recovery operation, said his teams were inundated with false reports about the Dome and Convention Center.

"We swept both buildings several times, because we kept getting reports of more bodies there," Cataldie said. "But it just wasn't the case."

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media: evacuees firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people killed for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center. Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers supposedly fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises.

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.

Military, law enforcement and medical workers agree that the flood of evacuees - about 30,000 at the Dome and an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 at the Convention Center - overwhelmed their security personnel. The 400 to 500 soldiers in the Dome could have been easily overrun by increasingly agitated crowds, but that never happened, said Col. James Knotts, a midlevel commander there. Security was nonexistent at the Convention Center, which was never designated as a shelter. Authorities provided no food, water or medical care until troops secured the building the Friday after the storm.

While the Convention Center saw plenty of mischief, including massive looting and isolated gunfire, and many inside cowered in fear, the hordes of evacuees for the most part did not resort to violence, as legend has it.

"Everything was embellished, everything was exaggerated," said Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley. "If one guy said he saw six bodies, then another guy the same six, and another guy saw them - then that became 18."

Inside the Dome, where National Guardsmen performed rigorous security checks before allowing anyone inside, only one shooting has been verified. Even that incident, in which Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt of the 527th Engineer Battalion was injured, has been widely misreported, said Maj. David Baldwin, who led the team of soldiers who arrested a suspect.

Watt was attacked inside one of the Dome's locker rooms, which he entered with another soldier. In the darkness, as he walked through about six inches of water, Watt was attacked with a metal rod, a piece of a cot. But the bullet that penetrated Watt's leg came from his own gun - he accidentally shot himself in the commotion. The attacker never took his gun from him, Baldwin said. New Orleans police investigated the matter fully and sent the suspect to jail in Breaux Bridge, Baldwin said.

As for other shootings, Baldwin said, "We actively patrolled 24 hours a day, and nobody heard another shot."

Doug Thornton, regional vice president of SMG, which manages the Dome, walked the complex from before the storm until the final evacuation and kept a meticulous journal. In a Sept. 9 interview, he said he heard reports of rapes and killings, but they were unconfirmed and came from evacuees and security officials.

"We walked through the facility every day, and we didn't see all this that was being reported," said Thornton, one of about 35 Dome employees who rode out Katrina in the building and lived there in the days after the storm hit. "We never felt threatened. It's hard to determine what's real and what's not real."

Inside the Convention Center, the rumors of widespread violence have proved hard to substantiate, as well, though the masses of evacuees endured terrifying and inhumane conditions.

Jimmie Fore, vice president of the state authority that runs the Convention Center, stayed in the building with a core group of 35 employees until Sept. 1, the Thursday after Katrina. He was appalled by what he saw. Thugs hotwired 75 forklifts and electric carts and looted food and booze from every room in the building, but he said he never saw any violent crimes committed, and neither did any of his employees. Some, however, did report seeing armed men roaming the building, and Fore said he heard gunshots in the distance on at about six occasions.

NOPD Capt. Jeff Winn's 20-member SWAT team responded on about 10 occasions to calls from the Convention Center, usually after reports of shots being fired. The group found people huddled in the fetal position, lying flat on the ground to avoid bullets or running for the exits. They also heard stories of gang rapes, armed robberies and other violent crimes, but no victims ever came forward while his officers were in the building, he said.

"What's true and what's not, we don't really know," he said.

Rumors of rampant violence at the Convention Center prompted Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux put together a 1,000-man force of soldiers and police in full battle gear to secure the center Sept. 2 at about noon.

It took only 20 minutes to take control, and soldiers met no resistance, Thibodeaux said. What the soldiers found - elderly people and infants near death without food, water and medicine; crowds living in filth - shocked them more than anything they'd seen in combat zones overseas. But they found no evidence, witnesses or victims of any killings, rapes or beatings, Thibodeaux said.

Another commander at the scene, Lt. Col. John Edwards of the Arkansas National Guard, said the crowd welcomed the soldiers. "It reminded me of the liberation of France in World War II. There were people cheering; one boy even saluted," he said. "We never - never once - encountered any hostility."

One widely circulated tale, told to The Times-Picayune by a slew of evacuees and two Arkansas National Guardsmen, held that "30 or 40 bodies" were stored in a Convention Center freezer. But a formal Arkansas Guard review of the matter later found that no soldier had actually seen the corpses, and that the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers in front of Harrah's New Orleans Casino, said Edwards, who conducted the review.

It's possible more than four people died at the Convention Center. Fore, the center's vice president, said he saw another body outside the building early in the first week after the storm, covered in a shroud on the pavement along Julia Street, near the back of the Convention Center. It's unclear whether that body ended up in the nearby food service entrance, where the four confirmed bodies were found later.

Also, several news organizations reported the body of 91-year-old Booker T. Harris, which sat covered in a chair on Convention Center Boulevard for several days after he died on the back of a truck while being evacuated.

Just one of the dead appeared to be the victim of foul play, said Winn, one of few law enforcement officers who spent any time patrolling the Convention Center before it was secured. Winn, who did the final sweep of the building, said one body appeared to have stab wounds, but he could not be sure. Baldwin also said only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, apparently referring to the same body as Winn described. Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals, also confirmed just one suspected homicide at the Convention Center, though he said the victim had been shot, not stabbed.

A Washington Post report quoted another soldier who concluded that three of the four people appeared to have been beaten to death, including an older woman in a wheelchair.

But Spc. Mikel Brooks, an Arkansas Guardsman who said he wheeled the woman's dead body into the food service entrance, said she appeared to have died of natural causes. Brooks went on to say that the woman had expired sitting next to her husband, who shocked him by asking him to bring the wheelchair back.

The Post also cited evacuee Tony Cash and three other unnamed sources saying a young boy died of an asthma attack, but multiple officials could not confirm that death.

Reports of dozens of rapes at both facilities - many allegedly involving small children - may forever remain a question mark. Rape is a notoriously underreported crime under ideal circumstances, and tracking down evidence at this point, with evacuees spread all over the country, would be nearly impossible. The same goes for reports of armed robberies at both sites.

Numerous people told The Times-Picayune that they had witnessed rapes, in particular attacks on two young girls in the Superdome ladies room and the killing of one of them, but police and military officials said they know nothing of such an incident.

Soldiers and police did confirm at least one attempted rape of a child. Riley said a man tried to sexually assault a young girl, but was "beaten up" by civilians and apprehended by police. It was unclear if that incident was the one that gained wide currency among evacuees.

Baldwin, the National Guard commander of a special reaction team patrolling the Dome, also said he knew of only one attempted sexual assault of a child - but the details of his story, while similar, differed somewhat from that of Riley. It was unclear last week whether the two men spoke about the same incident.

Soldiers apprehended the assailant after a "commotion" in the bathroom exposed him, Baldwin said, but he knew nothing about the man being beaten. Furthermore, in a detail that raises questions about whether officials have full knowledge of any sex crimes, Baldwin said his men turned over one alleged child molester to New Orleans police - only to find him again inside the Dome two days later, reportedly attempting to molest other children.

"We ran into the same guy a couple days later," he said. "The crowd came to us and said, 'You better do something with this guy or we're going to do something with him.' ... That kind of re-confirmed (the first allegation), when the crowd came to us saying he was putting his hands on kids."

But other accusations that have gained wide currency are more demonstrably false. For instance, no one found the body of a girl - whose age was estimated at anywhere from 7 to 13 - who, according to multiple reports, was raped and killed with a knife to the throat at the Convention Center.

Many evacuees at the Convention Center the morning of Sept. 3 treated the story as gospel, and ticked off further atrocities: a baby trampled to death, multiple child rapes.

Salvatore Hall, standing on the corner of Julia Street and Convention Center Boulevard that day, just before the evacuation, said, "They raped and killed a 10-year-old in the bathroom."

Neither he nor the many people around him who corroborated the killing had seen it themselves.

Talk of rape and killing inside the Dome was so pervasive that it prompted a steady stream of evacuees to begin leaving Aug. 31, braving thigh-high foul waters on Poydras Street. Many said they were headed back to homes in flooded neighborhoods.

"There's people getting raped and killed in there," said Lisa Washington of Algiers, who had come to the Dome with about 25 relatives and friends. "People are getting diseases. It's like we're in Afghanistan. We're fighting for our lives right now."

One of her relatives nodded. "They've had about 14 rapes in there," he said.

In many cases, authorities gave credibility to portraits of violence broadcast around the world.

Compass told Winfrey on Sept. 6 that "some of the little babies (are) getting raped" in the Dome. Nagin backed it with his own tale of horrors: ''They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.''

But both men have since pulled back to a degree.

"The information I had at the time, I thought it was credible," Compass said, conceding his earlier statements were false. Asked for the source of the information, Compass said he didn't remember.

Nagin frankly acknowledged that he doesn't know the extent of the mayhem that occurred inside the Dome and the Convention Center - and may never.

"I'm having a hard time getting a good body count," he said.

Compass said rumors had often crippled authorities' response to reported lawlessness, sending badly needed resources to respond to situations that turned out not to exist. He offered his own intensely personal example: The day after the storm, he heard "some civilians" talking about how a band of armed thugs had invaded the Ritz-Carlton hotel and started raping women - including his 24-year-old daughter, who stayed there through the storm. He rushed to the scene only to find that although a group of men had tried to enter the hotel, they weren't armed and were easily turned back by police.

Compass, however, promulgated some of the unfounded rumors himself, in interviews in which he characterized himself and his officers as outgunned warriors taking out armed bands of thugs at every turn.

"People would be shooting at us, and we couldn't shoot back because of the families," Compass told a reporter from the (Bridgeport) Connecticut Post who interviewed him at the Saints' Monday Night Football game in New York, where he was the guest of NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. "All we could do is rush toward the flash."

Compass added that he and his officers succeeded in wrestling 30 weapons from criminals using the follow-the-muzzle-flash technique, the story said.

"We got 30 that way," Compass was quoted as saying.

Asked about the muzzle-flash story last week, Compass said, "That really happened" to Winn's SWAT team at the Convention Center.

But Winn, when asked about alleged shootouts in a separate interview, said his unit saw muzzle flashes and heard gunshots only one time. Despite aggressively frisking a number of suspects, the team recovered no weapons. His unit never found anyone who had been shot.

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_26.html#bsbs

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:20 AM
matt@lefande.com

That's a 10-4 on Plain Language for Cops  

The days of hearing "10-4" and other law enforcement jargon on the police radio are coming to an end.

Emergency responders around the country must switch to using plain language by October 2006, as part of the National Incident Management System, which was developed to help different agencies work together in response to emergency situations.

"It makes so much sense," said Daviess County Sheriff Keith Cain, whose department is planning on using plain language starting next month. "Common language is common language."

Signal and "10 codes" were originally implemented by law enforcement agencies and emergency responders primarily to keep talk on the radio brief. Although many of the codes are the same for different departments, there are no standardized definitions, which could lead to confusion when different departments work together.

In September 2004, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security notified governors of the development of the National Incident Management System, and that complying with that system would be required to secure federal emergency preparedness funding.

In August, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is overseeing compliance, issued a directive requiring the use of plain language, or at least a good-faith effort to implement plain language, by October 2006 to be eligible for homeland security grant money.

Owensboro Police Chief John Kazlauskas said his department has been taking the necessary steps to meet the requirements, which include having each member of the department complete a test on the system.

"It seems very simple, but getting everyone to use the same specific word for an incident can be complicated," Kazlauskas said. "It's going to be a learning process for people who have been using 10 codes for their whole careers."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050926/ap_on_fe_st/plain_language_1

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:01 AM
matt@lefande.com

Friday, September 23, 2005

Authorities search for criminals among hurricane refugees  

After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, federal officials flew Brian Murph and more than 100 other victims to Rhode Island. They were greeted by the governor and cheered by residents.

Then the handcuffs were placed on Murph.

State police did criminal background checks on every refugee and found that more than half had a criminal arrest records -- a third for felonies. Murph was the only one with an outstanding arrest warrant, for larceny and other crimes.

Around the nation, state and local authorities are checking refugees' pasts as they are welcomed into homes, schools, houses of worship and housing projects. In some states, half the refugees have rap sheets.

"It's a balancing act," said Kyle Smith, deputy director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. "We don't want to treat them like criminals after they have been traumatized, but we want to make sure they are in no danger nor the families they are housed with."

Some state and local governments screened just those refugees evacuated by the federal government. Others screened anyone placed in private homes -- and screened the hosts as well.

In South Carolina, state police checked every evacuee flown there by the government. Of 547 people checked, 301 had criminal records, according to Robert Stewart, state Law Enforcement Division Chief.

While most had been law-abiding for years or had committed minor offenses, the group included those convicted of rape or aggravated assault. Two had warrants, but were not held because the states weren't interested in extraditing them.

"This was all done for everyone's protection," Stewart said. "If you're going to be sheltering people, it would be prudent for people taking them in to know what criminal pasts they might have."

The state police in West Virginia said roughly half of the nearly 350 Katrina victims evacuated by the government to that state had criminal records, and 22 percent have a history of committing a violent crime.

In Massachusetts, where about 200 evacuees were flown to a military base on Cape Cod, criminal background checks turned up six sex offenders and one man wanted for rape in Louisiana. Two of the sex offenders have since left the state, said Katie Ford, a spokeswoman for the state public safety office. The rape suspect was being held on $250,000 bail.

In Tennessee, police checked every federal evacuee flown to Knoxville and found outstanding warrants for two people in Louisiana -- but Louisiana did not want to extradite them.

In Texas, with more than 300,000 refugees, local officials have run 20,000 criminal background checks on evacuees, as well as the relief workers helping them and people who have opened up their homes.

Most of the checks have found little for police to be concerned about. Philadelphia police found no criminals as of the middle of last week, even though the local ACLU branch objected to the checks themselves.

Several states with thousands of refugees aren't checking criminal backgrounds at all. Missouri has no formal effort to check its 6,000 refugees. Neither has California, which reported about 3,800 refugees earlier this month, or Maryland, Minnesota and Michigan, which together took in several thousand evacuees.

In Middletown, a community just north of Newport, several evacuees shrugged at the prospect of background checks and said they understood the state's desire to learn more about them.

"I would like to know if there's any skeletons in the closet with my neighbors or the community," said one refugee, 38-year-old Carmen Williams.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/22/katrina.criminals.ap/index.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 10:46 AM
matt@lefande.com

Sunday, September 18, 2005

The Blonde Ditch Project  

To hear the media tell it, antiwar celebrity Cindy Sheehan has become famous because of her unique position as the grieving mother of a fallen solder... a woman who left her home and family to camp out in Crawford, Texas, near the President's ranch, to cry her way into our hearts and so end the war in Iraq by speaking truth to power.

What you don't see while "Cindy" is grieving for the cameras is the trailer full of PR professionals, makeup artists, hair stylists, and other apparatchiks that one would think more appropriate for a starlet on location.

Heading up the PR effort is Michelle Mulkey, an Account Director with Fenton Communications in San Francisco. Their client list reads like a Who's Who of left-leaning foundations and non-profits. A look at their web site makes it clear that whatever else they do, they do not come cheap.

So who's paying the bills? True Majority, an apparent hobby of Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen. True Majority is described on its web site as "a grassroots education and advocacy project of Priorities, Inc., a non-profit, non-partisan, tax-deductible, 501(c)(3) corporation."

It's difficult to figure out just what Priorities, Inc. is, other than some wealthy businessmen providing sinecures for some retired military (the "steering committee") of the sort who favor cutting "unneeded Pentagon spending, beginning with nuclear weapons." The chair of this august committee is one Vice Admiral John J. Shanahan, U.S. Navy, Retired who is remarkable for having made it to flag rank without leaving any tracks whatsoever in Google. Either everything this guy did was a secret, or he didn't do much. We know a bit more about Admiral Stansfield Turner. He served as Director of the CIA under Jimmy Carter. Connect the dots.

Besides Ben Cohen, the "wealthy businessmen" include Ted Turner, Paul Newman, and the present or former CEOs of Bell Industries, Black Entertainment Television, Eastman Kodak, Goldman Sachs, Men's Warehouse, and Phillips Van Heusen.

True Majority has also teamed with MoveOn.org, also known as The George Soros Show. MoveOn has organized "vigils" around the country in support of Miss Cindy. And like Cindy, who plans to be there, MoveOn is a member of United for Peace and Justice, sponsor of the "Massive March, Rally & Festival" in Washington, DC on September 24 that is being organized by, well, communists.

Then there's Democracy for America, a '527' sometimes referred to as the "Howard Dean Show," although actually headed by his aptly-named brother, James. DFA has been collecting money to "assist" bereaved mothers by providing them airfare to Camp Casey (AKA "The Little Ditch™") so that they can be part of the show. One such mother told TV newman Mark Matthews...

"Sometimes things don't feel quite right to me. They don't feel wrong, but maybe that's how they do it in the marketing business."

ABC7's Mark Matthews: "You feel you're part of a marketing business?"

Karen Meredith: "Possibly. Yeah I think so."

http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/9/18/102536/824

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:20 PM
matt@lefande.com

Armed Citizen of the Week  

A stranger carjacks a woman in broad daylight. There's a crash. The woman dies. Her abductor is shot and killed — not by police but by an armed passer-by who gave chase in his truck.

That man, Shawn T. Roberts, has emerged as a hero for trying to help 30-year-old Kimberly Boyd and for saving other lives that police say might have been taken had the carjacker escaped.

"Scores of people were coming up to him and thanking him for what he did," said Scott Cannon, a friend of the Boyds who attended Kimberly's funeral Friday.

Roberts was among those who came to pay respects.

"He wanted everyone to know she didn't go down without a fight," said Brandon Henderson, a friend of the Boyds' who spoke to Roberts during the service.

"He said, 'Just so you all know, Kim was whipping his ass on the side of the road before he grabbed her and threw her in the car.'"

Although police say Roberts acted courageously, such acts have not always met with official approval. Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head and the grand jury will have the final word on Roberts' legal fate.

But this much is certain: In a matter of moments, in an act of violence and happenstance, three disparate lives became intertwined on that highway last Monday morning.

Kimberly Boyd owned a truck rental company in Acworth, a Cobb County community where the Appalachian Mountains yield to the granite Piedmont.

Boyd's business is in a strip mall, with a Big Lots, a Waffle House and several other businesses — one of the last places you might notice someone lurking.

But Brian O'Neil Clark, a 25-year-old felon who had been released from prison three months earlier, was there.

That morning, Boyd left her home in Paulding County before 8 a.m. She dropped her 5-year-old son, Connor, at school and drove to her office. Police believe she was abducted by Clark in the parking lot.

At 9:25 that morning, Boyd used her ATM card to withdraw money outside a Wachovia bank about 5 miles away.

"We speculate that she went to that area hoping someone would see her and become suspicious," said Kevin Flynn, a homicide lieutenant with the Cobb County Police Department. "This indicates she was cool-headed and doing everything she could to survive because there were other banks closer to where she was abducted."

Roberts first saw Boyd and Clark about 1 1/2 miles south of the bank. Clark hit Boyd with his fist and a gun as the two struggled along Cobb Parkway, just past a bridge over Allatoona Reservoir.

At some point, Clark shot Boyd.

He then shoved her into the back seat of the SUV and sped away. As Boyd's SUV careened down Cobb Parkway, Roberts gave chase.

Then came the crash.

At Lake Acworth Drive, about a half-mile from where Roberts saw Boyd and Clark fighting, a cement truck moving northbound on Cobb Parkway crashed into the SUV as Clark tried to make a sharp left turn off the highway.

The accident's impact killed Boyd.

Clark emerged from the crumpled SUV and started running toward a gas station.

As Roberts approached, Clark raised his gun.

That's when Porter heard the shots from outside her office at Atlanta Tile Specialists.

Clark fell in a heap, dead.

Boyd, still inside her SUV, was already gone.

At the Cobb County 911 center, the call boards lit up "like a Christmas tree," Flynn said.

The first caller told an operator there had been a bad accident and someone had been shot.

Shawn T. Roberts lives in the sprawling Bentwater subdivision in Paulding County. It's only about a mile from the Boyds' home, but it doesn't appear as if the two had ever met.

Roberts, 31, owns a home theater and burglar alarm company and carried a licensed pistol.

Before he stopped speaking publicly about the incident, he said he had no choice, that had he not acted, more people could have been harmed.

And that's how his actions are being seen, in metro Atlanta and across the country.

Web sites and blogs are filled with postings crediting Roberts for his fast thinking and for trying to save lives.

"This guy probably saved another 25+ victims ..." a poster with the screen name "Taurus" said on a message board at www.packing.org, a Web site for advocates of concealed-carry laws. "Shawn Roberts is a hero in my book."

Police and community leaders seem to agree.

"You drive by a man beating a woman on the side of the road, you have to do something," said Deanne Bonner, president of the Cobb County chapter of the NAACP.

Said Flynn, the homicide lieutenant: "I want to stress that ... we have found no violations of Georgia law. That being said, the district attorney will make the final decision."

Although Roberts knew nothing about Clark's background at the time of the shooting, police seem to think there's a good chance others might have been hurt had Roberts done nothing.

In April 2002, Clark was arrested in Illinois and brought back to Georgia to face child molestation, statutory rape and burglary charges in Cobb County, where he received an 18-month sentence, jail records show.

In May 2004, Clark was charged in Cherokee County for first-degree forgery. He served a year in state prison and was released June 13.

Police also suspect Clark is responsible for a rape, carjacking and robbery in Acworth on Sept. 6.

In that case, police believe Clark beat and raped a woman, then forced her to drive to a nearby bank so he could withdraw money from the bank's ATM.

During that attack, Clark stole a gun from the woman's home, police said.

That gun was finally found Monday — near Clark's body after he was shot.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0905/18carjack.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 5:58 PM
matt@lefande.com

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Policeman accused of fleeing naked from crash  

An Edison, NJ police officer accused of running naked from the scene of an accident after crashing his BMW into the back of a truck has been charged with assault by auto and hindering his own apprehension.

Three other officers, two supervisors and a patrolman, have been charged with failing to report the crash, neglect of duty, and other departmental violations for allegedly hiding the incident from top brass.

Patrolman Ioannis Mpletsakis, 26, who joined the force in 2002, crashed his 2002 BMW into a 1998 International truck on July 20 after swimming at the Edison home of a friend, authorities said. A passenger in the truck suffered a knee injury, and the BMW was demolished.

Mpletsakis told investigators he did not want to get the interior of his newly purchased car wet and so took off the shorts that he had been swimming in, authorities said.

Mpletsakis has been suspended without pay, Mayor George Spadoro said in a statement last night. The other officers remain on duty.

Mpletsakis, a patrol officer who was out on medical leave at the time of the accident due to injuries suffered in a December car crash, also faces departmental charges.

He could not be reached.

"As far as we're concerned, he didn't do anything criminal," said Patrolman Michael Schwarz, president of Policemen's Benevolent Association Local 75. "This was an accident."

http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050914/NEWS/509140427/1001#121121

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:18 AM
matt@lefande.com

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Firefighters outraged as 9/11 flags are painted over  

Grove Hall firefighters are fuming after their commissioner demanded their Sept. 11 American flag memorial be painted over just two days after the terrorist attacks' fourth anniversary.

The workers hired by the Boston Fire Department arrived yesterday morning with instructions to paint over two flags Engine 24/Ladder 23 firefighters had emblazoned on the doors in the wake of the attacks – but when a Herald photographer showed up, the painters abruptly stopped.

As word spread through the department, firefighters, department brass, the contractor and the local painters union chief met behind closed doors for nearly two hours.

"If (Fire Commissioner Paul A. Christian's) intent was to paint over the memorial, it's an insult to the brave firefighters who were killed in the line of duty that day and to the firefighters who paid tribute to them," said Firefighters Local 718 President Ed Kelly. "And it comes shockingly close to the anniversary of the attacks."

Christian, with whom firefighters have had a lukewarm relationship at best, did not attend the meeting at Engine 24, which department brass abruptly closed to the public during and after the meeting, barring a reporter from speaking with firefighters. By the meeting's end, fire officials announced a compromise: The painting will resume, most likely today, and a pole will be erected outside the station so the approximately 40 firefighters can fly a flag with the names of the 343 New York City firefighters who died in the World Trade Center attacks.

Later, Mayor Thomas M. Menino moved to retain the memorials.

"The mayor, to honor those who fell on 9/11 and those who continue to fight for freedom around the world, issued a directive to the fire department. The door that hasn't been painted will stay, and the one that was painted will be restored," said the mayor's spokesman, Seth Gitell. He quoted the mayor as saying, "'The flag should stay. It should still be there.'"

Fire department spokesman Lt. David M. Pfeil said earlier, "You don't forget (the victims); all of us had friends." But he said, "As a tradition, doors of firehouses have simply been painted red."

Pfeil said the paint job is merely part of the aging firehouse's $1 million renovation, which will include a new kitchen, new floors, and new electricity and plumbing systems.

Firefighters in New York City were outraged that their Boston brethren were being denied a memorial.

"We have beautiful paintings on our floors, on our doors, on our apparatus," said FDNY Deputy Chief Nick Visconti.

"I can't understand doing that, making them get rid of a memorial,'' Visconti said. "People are still hurting. They really are.''


http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=102482&format=text

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:36 AM
matt@lefande.com

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

'PA gets $50m. in aid, then incites against US'  

A report published by Palestinian Media Watch revealed that after having signed a deal with the US for $50 million to help with housing and infrastructure, Palestinian Authority officials called to launch attacks against US soldiers and portrayed the US as "an enemy."

PMW noted that in recent days PA religious officials in radio and television sermons described the US as "the most heretic" among countries and as an enemy who is trying to dismantle the Islamic world. One of the officials called to intensify terror acts against US soldiers in the presence of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The report mentioned texts of two sermons conducted on September 2. One was broadcast on PA television and in the presence of Abbas and Yusuf Jum'a Salameh, the PA minister of the Wakf and Religious Affairs: "We say to the dear, heroic Iraqi nation, turn this incident [the accidental death of 1,000 Iraqis] into an opportunity for resisting the [American] occupation, for uniting families, for unifying the forces and for opposition to the policy of dismantling Iraq and dividing it geographically."

On PA radio, Aksa Mosque Imam Ysuef Abu Sneina said "Anyone who watches closely the nature of our world today, can see that the heretical countries – first and foremost, the USA – have succeeded greatly in tearing our Islamic world apart by disintegrating and splitting up more than one Islamic state, intending to weaken it, disperse [its citizens] and plunder its resources It is terrorism, and there's no choice but to fight it.

"As regards Iraq, there is much to say about it. The USA has composed a draft of the Iraqi Constitution in a way that it will serve US interests and enhance the disintegration of Iraq's unity. The new constitution includes federal solutions, which are dividing Iraq into small countries...

"A federal government hides behind it; the seeds of a future civil war... The USA is planning to rule Saudi Arabia and disintegrate it, too, despite the close friendly relations between the two countries...

"Is the USA going to fulfill its ambitions and aggressive plans? And, for how long shall the submission and surrender to the plans of the enemies of the [Islamic] nation?"

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1125973154315

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:56 PM
matt@lefande.com

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

3rd World Bomb Squad  

You find a suspicious briefcase abandoned in a third world country and you think it might be a bomb.
What should you do?

1. Open it and find out what's inside.

2. Allow bystanders to looks over your shoulder and crowd around.

3. Open it yourself without any protective equipment while being assisted by another officer equally unprotected, all while other officers are present who at least have body armor on.

4. All of the above.

This pretty much turns out how you think it will, so please don't click on the link if you're squeamish.

http://www.buzolich.com/indecorum/media/3rdWorldBombSquad.wmv

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:28 AM
matt@lefande.com

Sunday, September 04, 2005

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State  

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, the news from New Orleans has been confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

The South Side of Chicago has the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:58 AM
matt@lefande.com

Friday, September 02, 2005

Armed Citizen of the Week  

When the police have given up and the military hasn't arrived, one man keeps the peace in New Orleans for a one block radius with an old FAL and some spare magazines.

posted by Matthew LeFande 2:20 PM
matt@lefande.com

How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes?  

Forty-six-year-old Joyce Cordoba stood behind the deli counter while working at a Wal-Mart in Albuquerque, N.M. Suddenly, her ex-husband – against whom Ms. Cordoba had a restraining order – showed up, jumped over the deli counter, and began stabbing Ms. Cordoba. Due Moore, a 72-year-old Wal-Mart customer, witnessed the violent attack. Moore, legally permitted to carry a concealed weapon, pulled out his gun, and shot and killed the ex-husband. Ms. Cordoba survived the brutal attack and is recovering from her wounds.

This raises a question. How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes? We know that in 2003, 12,548 people died through non-suicide gun violence, including homicides, accidents and cases of undetermined intent.

UCLA professor emeritus James Q. Wilson, a respected expert on crime, police practices and guns, says, "We know from Census Bureau surveys that something beyond a hundred thousand uses of guns for self-defense occur every year. We know from smaller surveys of a commercial nature that the number may be as high as 2-and-a-half or 3 million. We don't know what the right number is, but whatever the right number is, it's not a trivial number."

Criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, using his own commissioned phone surveys and number extrapolation, estimates that 2.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes each year. He further found that of those who had used guns defensively, one in six believed someone would have been dead if they had not resorted to their defensive use of firearms. That corresponds to approximately 400,000 of Kleck's estimated 2.5 million defensive gun uses. Kleck points out that if only one-tenth of the people were right about saving a life, the number of people saved annually by guns would still be at least 40,000.

The Department of Justice's own National Institute of Justice study titled "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," estimated that 1.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes every year. Although the government's figure estimated a million fewer people defensively using guns, the NIJ called their figure "directly comparable" to Kleck's, noting that "it is statistically plausible that the difference is due to sampling error." Furthermore, the NIJ reported that half of their respondents who said they used a gun defensively also admitted having done so multiple times a year – making the number of estimated uses of self-defense with a gun 4.7 million times annually.

Former assistant district attorney and firearms expert David Kopel writes, "... [W]hen a robbery victim does not defend himself, the robber succeeds 88 percent of the time, and the victim is injured 25 percent of the time. When a victim resists with a gun, the robbery success rate falls to 30 percent, and the victim injury rate falls to 17 percent. No other response to a robbery – from drawing a knife to shouting for help to fleeing – produces such low rates of victim injury and robbery success."

What do "gun-control activists" say?

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence's website displays this oft-quoted "fact": "The risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households with guns." Their website fails to mention that Dr. Arthur Kellermann, the "expert" who came up with that figure, later backpedaled after others discredited his studies for failing to follow standard scientific procedures. According to the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Kellermann now concedes, "A gun can be used to scare away an intruder without a shot being fired," admitting that he failed to include such events in his original study. "Simply keeping a gun in the home," Kellermann says, "may deter some criminals who fear confronting an armed homeowner." He adds, "It is possible that reverse causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun ownership and homicide – i.e., in a limited number of cases, people may have acquired a gun in response to a specific threat."

"More Guns, Less Crime" author John Lott points out that, in general, our mainstream media fails to inform the public about defensive uses of guns. "Hardly a day seems to go by," writes Lott, "without national news coverage of yet another shooting. Yet when was the last time you heard a story on the national evening news about a citizen saving a life with a gun? ... An innocent person's murder is more newsworthy than when a victim brandishes a gun and an attacker runs away with no crime committed ... [B]ad events provide emotionally gripping pictures. Yet covering only the bad events creates the impression that guns only cost lives."

Americans, in part due to mainstream media's anti-gun bias, dramatically underestimate the defensive uses of guns. Some, after using a gun for self-defense, fear that the police may charge them for violating some law or ordinance about firearm possession and use. So many Americans simply do not tell the authorities.

A gunned-down bleeding guy creates news. A man who spared his family by brandishing a handgun, well, that's just water-cooler chat.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46085

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:30 AM
matt@lefande.com

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