Rose Colored news returns to regular operations

Crime prevention organization making a difference in Chicago

Man grows new finger thanks to ground-up pig bladder

Argentina Decriminalizes Drug Consumption

Alaska: Appeals Court Cracks Down on Coercive Searches

Low cost, small scale wind turbines to power off-grid villages

Gel-like Material Shows Promise As Oral Insulin Pill For Diabetes

Bakeries urge customers to plant wheat in their lawns

Florida: No crime in photo of undercover officer

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Wes Unruh on Super High Me:

I was willing to give the documentary that doubt, because otherwise this film is little more than an unfunny schtick overshadowed by the importance of social upheaval the camera crew happens to connect with, seemingly unexpectedly.

[…]

In other words, this is not the time for a juvenile documentary, the stakes are too high (cough). Medical marijuana is shifting the debate around the tangled world director/writer/former Austinite Kevin Booth dives into with his documentary, American Drug War: The Last White Hope, a serious analysis of current drug enforcement. A long, thorough treatment of drug policy in how it formed and how it impacts today that was refreshing after the plodding and senseless Super High Me.

Full Story: Alterati

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I haven’t been following or covering the FLDS fiasco much because it erupted at a time when I had no time to follow it and I’ve been slow to catch-up. But I think Wendy McElroy does a pretty good job of commenting on it:

Part 1

Part 2

One other thing: Jesse Walker Radley Balko points out that “And if Texas law says parents can marry their 15-year-old daughters off to 60-year-old men, perhaps we should talk about the wisdom of that law, not arrest the people who still manage to stay within it.”

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Behind the powerful din created by the popular and celebrity-embraced “Save Tibet,” campaign is the fact that the CIA is behind the Tibet independence movement.

According to many reports, the Dalai Lama himself may be a long-time CIA asset. See The Role of the CIA behind the Dalai Lama’s holy cloak and The Tibet Card.

In addition to being geostrategically situated, Tibet is also rich with oil and gas, and minerals — and this is just part of the larger superpower warfare between the US and China. See Tibet, the "great game", and the CIA.

The legions of pro-Tibet activists also seem largely unaware of the historical fact that the “holy land of compassion” has been a CIA pawn since the end of World War II. The infamous Tolstoi Mission sent CIA operatives into Tibet, with plans to establish it as a US military base, from which the US could control the entire Asian region. This activity flourished under the US-supported, opium-banked Nationalist Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.

When the Communists rose to power, the CIA trained Tibetans in guerrilla tactics to use against the regime in Peking, and thousands of Tibetans lost their lives in these battles. Who benefited? Who really gave the orders then — and who is driving the agenda now?

There is little doubt that Anglo-American interests continue to use Tibet, exploit the image of Tibet as a holy place under siege, and bamboozle naïve (and well-heeled) outside activists with slick marketing, in order to undermine Beijing.

Denunciations of Beijing’s brutal crackdowns do not take into account the covert operations and outside infiltrations that triggered the crackdowns in the first place.

Read the whole article via Online Journal

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3) Lancaster County (Nebraska) District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront

For forbidding all witnesses, including the alleged victim, from using the word “rape” and other terms in a trial for first-degree sexual assault, a 2008 Jefferson Muzzle goes to…Lancaster County (Nebraska) District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront.

Full Story: The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Speech.

(Thanks Bill!)

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A change in the law could mean mediums, psychics and healers face prosecution if they cannot justify their claims. Spiritualists are delivering a mass petition to Downing Street and complaining that a genuine religion is being discriminated against.

[…]

Parliament is about to debate measures that will see all forms of paid-for paranormal activities fall under the new Consumer Protection Regulations. As well as tackling a raft of more mundane commercial sharp practice, these regulations will also replace the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951.

And some mediums are not happy. Under the old legislation, it had to be proven that any accused psychic was setting out to commit a fraud. The first case was a man in 1952 on a charge that he did in “purporting to act as a spiritualistic medium, unlawfully use a certain fraudulent device, namely, a length of cheesecloth”. He was acquitted, setting a pattern for the last 50 years of very few prosecutions.

Under the new laws, some mediums feel they will be obliged to prove what they do. And when you’re in the business of contacting spirits in the afterlife, that’s not easy.

[…]

The Office of Fair Trading says enforcement of the new regulations will not target sessions like this or churches, instead being more likely to be used against foreign mass mailshot fraudsters extracting large sums of money.

But despite the protestations of officialdom, the medium community has enough foresight to see potential problems ahead.

Full Story: BBC.

The story is light on details about the specific changes, so it’s hard to weigh in on it.

(Thanks Lupa)

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“Planning to open a bookstore in Indiana? Maybe a newsstand? How about a pharmacy? You may be officially labeled a purveyor of “sexually explicit materials.” Now, if you’ll just sign this registry, the secretary of state will accept your check for $250.

At the end of March’s legislative session, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed House Act 1042, which requires all new businesses selling “sexually explicit materials” to notify the secretary of state and pay a licensing fee. Failure to comply is a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to 180 days in jail.

Exactly who — or what — defines “sexually explicit” is the $250 question, and the crux of any test of the law’s constitutionality. One such test may come from the Media Coalition, a trade association representing publishers, libraries and booksellers in 1st Amendment cases.”

(via The Chicago Tribune)

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From their press release:

Steven Hayne’s long history of misconduct, incompetence and fraud has sent truly innocent people to death row or to prison for life. This is precisely why regulations are in place to revoke medical licenses. Steven Hayne should never practice medicine in Mississippi again, and the complaint we filed today is an important step toward restoring integrity in forensic science statewide – and restoring confidence in the state’s criminal justice system,” said Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project.

Full Story: Hit and Run.

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Legislation against selling, making, hiring or importing samurai swords in England and Wales has come into force.

Those breaking the law face six months in jail and a £5,000 fine. Carrying a sword in public is already illegal.

Exemptions will cover swords which are used for re-enactments or antique weapons kept on display by collectors.

Full Story: BBC.

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Having spent most of my developing years taking care of sick family members, I feel very strongly about people having a choice in their death. There is nothing more humbling than watching those you love, once vital, productive members of society, deteriorate before your eyes. Those with a terminal illness, who have tried everything and have lost any possibility of maintaining their quality of life, ought to have a right to end their suffering. If we can have compassion for suffering animals and put them out of their misery, why can’t a human being who has lived their life through choice, have that option available to them?

“A French woman, Chantal Sebire with a disfiguring and painful terminal illness recently failed in her appeal for medical assistance to help her to die. Before her death Chantal Sebire was quoted as saying “We wouldn’t let an animal go through what I have had to endure”. Euthanasia for animals is commonplace, and is widely accepted as a morally acceptable response to animals whose suffering is unable to be relieved. But, with the exception of a few places such as the Netherlands, Belgium and the US state of Oregon, euthanasia for humans is legally prohibited.

But is it speciesist to make a distinction between animal and human euthanasia? In the case of terminally ill humans who request medical assistance in dying we may have more reasons to permit euthanasia than in the case of animals. If the arguments against euthanasia are so forceful that it should not be permitted even in tragic cases like that of Chantal Sebire should animal euthanasia be prohibited?”

(via Practical Ethics)

(Compassion & Choices)

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Promo copy:

DEA agents put their lives in the hands of a drug and weapons trafficker turned informant as they mount an operation to burrow deep into Detroit’s drug underworld. Each undercover buy and daring raid brings them one step closer to a deadly showdown with a violent drug kingpin.

Radley Balko:

Or with an unarmed mother of six. Or a 92-year-old-woman. Or a meek amateur gardener. Or a middle-aged mother of two who led prayer groups on her lunch breaks. Maybe they’ll show a bunch of DEA agents handcuffing a post-polio medical marijuana patient to her bed while they shove assault weapons in her face. Or storming the home of a paraplegic with multiple sclerosis because he had the audacity to try to treat his own pain.

But hey. It’s all about protecting the kids from drugs, right?

Seriously, what’s the fallout for a show like this? It’s clearly a recruiting video for the DEA. But if the show focuses on door-smashing, head-bashing, and ass-kicking, exactly what kind recruits are they drawing?

Tellingly, the series is doing promo on sites like.…military.com. Remember that the next time someone argues that there’s nothing paramilitary about the drug war.

Full Story: The Agitator.

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On the word of one student, who said a girl had given her a prescription strength Ibuprofen, the vice principal of a school had a female student strip searched.

While the nurse watched, a female secretary had Redding strip to her underwear, pull her bra to the side and her panties out at the crotch and expose her breasts and pelvic area. After no pills appeared, Redding got dressed.

Redding says she didn’t return to class but sat in the vice principal’s office and called her mother to pick her up. She was afraid to tell her mom on the phone what had happened, she recalls, because “the secretary was listening” and “I was like really ashamed, like it was my fault.” A friend later spilled the beans about the search, and Redding says her mom “was more mad than I was. I felt really stupid.”

The incident was so humiliating that Redding says she couldn’t return to school for months. “Everyone knew what had happened, and they were talking about me,” she recalls. “I got really nervous, developed ulcers and started puking.”

What did the school district’s lawyer have to say?

Wright, the lawyer for the school district, says the school’s strict drug policy is still in effect. He is not aware of any specific rules on strip searches but stresses the duty of schools “to closely supervise students and provide a safe environment.” As for the strip search of Redding, he says it was based on “reasonable grounds.”

“Remember,” he says, “this was prescription strength Ibuprofen.”

Full Story: ABC News.

(via Lupa)

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Ehsan Jami is not to release his animation film The Life of Mohammed. After consultations with his advisors, Jami is abandoning the plan to show his film, which was to be released on 20 April.

“Minister Hirsch Ballin (Justice) has stated that he fears the film will drive a wedge through our society. That was never my intention”, said Jami. He added however that he does not believe the Dutch government is capable of protecting him against death threats.

Full Story: NIS.

(via OVO 127)

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Fox News. It’s hard to talk about greatest hits without mentioning their war coverage or their coverage of racial issues. As a political and cultural propaganda machine, there’s little outright funny about Fox News’s persistent distortion of reality. Or, if there is, the jokes on the people of the United States and the world.

But occasionally they have a real zinger. Some “hard hitting” piece of “journalism” where the joke really is on them. Here are Fox’s 5 journalistic masterpieces, after the fold.

(more…)

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Radley Balko writes:

Over at the blog of criminal defense attorney Mark Bennett, a Texas prosecutor has put up an astonishing guest post arguing that merely advocating for jury nullification is in itself a crime, and that the authors of the Time article have violated Texas law.

[…]

This is not only absurd, it’s reckless. It’s a direct attack on free expression by a government agent. He’s arguing that anyone in Texas who advocates for jury nullification is committing a crime—and by definition then risks prosecution. And this argument is coming from a man who has the power and the position to carry out just such a prosecution.

Full Story: The Agitator.

Previously: The Wire writers promote jury nullification in Time Magazine.

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A website that a Dutch right-wing politician was planning to use to release a film expected to be fiercely critical of Islam has been suspended.

The US hosting service, Network Solutions, said it was investigating complaints that it may have breached guidelines on hate language.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders says the 15-minute film describes Islam as “the enemy of freedom”.

Full Story: Religion News Blog.

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The case of a 15-month-old Oregon City girl who died for lack of medical treatment could become the first test of a state law that disallows faith healing at the expense of a child’s life.

Ava Worthington died March 2 at home from bacterial bronchial pneumonia and infection, according to Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner. He said both conditions could have been prevented or treated with antibiotics.

The child’s breathing was further compromised by a benign cyst that had never been medically addressed and could have been removed from her neck, Young said.

Child-abuse detectives recently referred investigative findings to prosecutors, who are evaluating the case in light of a law passed in 1999 after several faith-healing deaths of children.

“This is the first time that they could be taking a shot at interpreting the law,” said state Senate President Peter Courtney, who carried the contentious bill on the Senate floor nearly a decade ago. He said the Worthington case is giving him “flashbacks.”

Full Story: Religion News Blog.

See also: Child sacrifice in Oregon.

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Believe it or not, I’m not much of one for atheist evangelism (for lack of a better word). I’m just not that concerned with changing other people’s personal beliefs (but of course I’m always willing to offer my opinions, and always trying to promote accurate information). I think there’s a case to be made for religion as mental illness idea (and have pushed that idea myself), but when it really comes down to it most religious people (at least in the US) are mostly harmless. My friend and colleague Trevor Blake often points to a correlation between religious belief and committing violent acts. To paraphrase him, you never hear about atheists burning down Christian stores for sex, but you frequently hear about Christians burning down sex stores for Jesus. However, correlation and causation are not the same thing. We can learn from this that religion is not a necessary or sufficient source for morality, but little else.

So my main concern, with regards to religion, is theocracy: when one group’s superstitions become law. So I’ve stopped taking much note when an individual Buddhist priest is found guilty of molesting a woman, or someone commits a murder in the name of their religion. There are laws against these sorts of things, and I’m not sure someone commits these sorts of acts because they’re religious, or if their attraction to religion stems from the same source as their attraction to rape and violence. In other words, I’m not sure religion is a symptom or a disease. I’m more concerned with sovereign nations that organize child-rape syndicates and the institutional oppression and murder of women and homosexuals in countries like Saudi Arabia.

Sometimes it’s not so cut and dry, though. One kicker is parents and their children. I was raised Christian, and I think I turned out ok. I could have done without the paranoia inspired by the notion of an invisible monster watching everything I did, but I don’t hold it against my parents. So I’m generally inclined to believe that parents should be free to teach their kids whatever sort of nonsense they want, and that if the kids are smart they’ll grow out of it eventually.

But what happens when parents take it too far? Recently, an 11 year old girl died of a treatable form of diabetes because her parents choose to pray instead of seek medical help (via Pharyngula). This obviously crosses the line between believing something crazy and behaving in a malicious way. What is the response of the local police?

The girl has three siblings, ranging in age from 13 to 16, the police chief said.

“They are still in the home,” he said. “There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see.”

The girl’s death remains under investigation and the findings will be forwarded to the district attorney to review for possible charges, the chief said.

At least the case is being investigated, but how can the police chief say there is no abuse? I know people who have had their kids taken away from them temporarily for far less. Sadly, this is not without precedent. Trevor wrote last year about parents who withhold medical treatment for religious reasons. None of the parents of children who died preventable deaths were charged with a crime.

This is not a case of religious freedom, or of individual belief. It’s theocracy. If the parents had let their children die for any reason other than religion, they would be charged with crimes and their other children would be taken into state care.

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I can understand the police talking with the guy, or even asking him to stay away from the woman’s kids. But arresting him? Since when is it a crime to talk to children? When the judge set his bail at $10,000, the police asked it be upped to $100,000. That request was granted. The guy isn’t a sex offender, has no criminal record, and was under no order not to speak to children. Perhaps there’s something else going on here, but it isn’t apparent in the article.

Full Story: Hit and Run.

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He walked to the National Geographic map of the world mounted on the wall. “You guys know about Genghis Khan?” he asked. “Genghis was a man with a vision. He conquered” - David stood on the couch under the map, tracing, with his hand, half the northern hemisphere—”nearly everything. He devastated nearly everything. His enemies? He beheaded them.” David swiped a finger across his throat. “Dop, dop, dop, dop.”

David explained that when Genghis entered a defeated city he would call in the local headman and have him stuffed into a crate. Over the crate would be spread a tablecloth, and on the tablecloth would be spread a wonderful meal. “And then, while the man suffocated, Genghis ate, and he didn’t even hear the man’s screams.” David still stood on the couch, a finger in the air. “Do you know what that means?” He was thinking of Christ’s parable of the wineskins. “You can’t pour new into old,” David said, returning to his chair. “We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his.”

He reached over and squeezed the arm of a brother. “Isn’t that great?” David said. “That’s the way everything in life happens. If you’re a person known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything. And that’s who you guys are. When you leave here, you’re not only going to know the value of Jesus, you’re going to know the people who rule the world. It’s about vision. ‘Get your vision straight, then relate.’ Talk to the people who rule the world, and help them obey. Obey Him. If I obey Him myself, I help others do the same. You know why? Because I become a warning. We become a warning. We warn everybody that the future king is coming. Not just of this country or that, but of the world.” Then he pointed at the map, toward the Khan’s vast, reclaimable empire.

Full Story: Harpers.

Previous coverage of The Family.

(thanks Gabbo!)

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On a different note, this is something else I came across today worth sharing:

It’s not a relic of the past; it’s here and now and ensnaring more people than ever.

By E. Benjamin Skinner
March 23, 2008

Many people are surprised to learn that there are still slaves. Many imagined that slavery died along with the 360,000 Union soldiers whose blood fertilized the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. Many thought that slavery was brought to an end around the world when most countries outlawed it in the 19th century.

But, in fact, there are more slaves today than at any point in history. Although a precise census is impossible, as most masters keep their slaves hidden, baseline estimates from United Nations and other international researchers range from 12 million to 27 million slaves worldwide. The U.S. State Department estimates that from 600,000 to 800,000 people — primarily women and children — are trafficked across national borders each year, and that doesn’t count the millions of slaves who are held in bondage within their own countries.

Read the whole article via the Los Angeles Times.

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“The details listed below are excerpts taken from the Banned Books Resource Guide by the American Library Association, and Ready Reference Censorship, Copyright 1997, Salem Press (ed. Lawrence Amey et al.). In some cases, my own pithy comments have been added.”

Forbidden Library.

(thanks Dug!)

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The New Yorker has a long article about the 1950s comic book crack down, including some interesting information about the man who started it all, Seduction of the Innocent author Fredric Wertham:

He did not want to censor comic books, only to restrict their sale so that kids could not buy them without a parent present. He wanted to give them the equivalent of an R rating. Bart Beaty’s “Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture” ($22, paper; University Press of Mississippi) makes a strong case for the revisionist position. As Beaty points out, Wertham was not a philistine; he was a progressive intellectual. His Harlem clinic was named for Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law. He collected modern art, helped produce an anthology of modernist writers, and opposed censorship. He believed that people’s behavior was partly determined by their environment, in this respect dissenting from orthodox Freudianism, and some of his work, on the psychological effects of segregation on African-Americans, was used in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education.

Wertham thought that representations make a difference—that how people see themselves and others reflected in the media affects the way they think and behave. As Beaty says, racist (particularly concerning Asians) and sexist images and remarks can be found on almost every page of crime and horror comics. What especially strikes a reader today is the fantastic proliferation of images of violence against women, almost always depicted in highly sexualized forms. If one believes that pervasive negative images of black people are harmful, why would one not believe the same thing about images of men beating, torturing, and killing women?

Full Story: New Yorker.

(via Mind Hacks).

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In a small airport office, the agents asked about drugs and prostitutes. It’s all in my book, Horsley said, offering them a promotional flier that quotes English musician Bryan Ferry calling it “a masterpiece of filth.”

“If I had to live my life again,” he told them, “I would take the same drugs, only sooner and more often.”

They asked about his criminal record. Again, in the book: 25 years ago, when he was 20 and walking around London with his hair dyed bright orange, he was arrested and fined 100 British pounds for possession of a gram of amphetamines.

“Describe your relationship with Kate Moss,” they said. Not in the book this time. Horsley said he’d never met the supermodel, who was questioned by police last year over newspaper photographs that appeared to show her snorting cocaine. Silently, he wondered to himself where on earth that question had come from.

He said they made him raise his right hand and “swear on the Bible” that he was telling the truth.

Then Sebastian Alexander Horsley was handed a document telling him he was being refused entry to the United States of America under the provisions of “Section 212 (a) (2) (A) (i) (I) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended.”

He was being run out of America for “moral turpitude.”

Full Story: Washington Post.

(via Hit and Run).

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(via A Day in the Life).

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