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Today's Stories October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

October 31, 2007 The Screams of the Besieged New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System By BILL QUIGLEY "We are faced with the daily reality of an imminent collapse of our criminal justice institutions." New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley Some say crime causes a city to be under siege; others say crime is the symptom of a city under siege. Either way, New Orleans is in serious trouble. Our criminal justice system is in unprecedented crisis. Thursday there were four murders in 24 hours in New Orleans. Over the weekend three more people died from gunshots. So far this year, 170 people have been murdered in New Orleans--a rate seven times the national average. The District Attorney of New Orleans just resigned at the insistence of the Mayor, the Attorney General and several legislators. His office owes a group of discharged employees a federal civil rights judgment of over $3 million--and neither the City nor State was willing to pay unless he resigned. There is high turnover in the office and thousands of people arrested have been released because the office could not timely decide whether to charge them with crimes or not. His resignation will not make New Orleans any safer. Katrina severely damaged an already dysfunctional criminal justice in New Orleans. In fact, what has occurred and is happening now in New Orleans is really neither "justice" nor a "system Before Katrina, New Orleans averaged 1000 violent crimes each quarter. In the second quarter of 2007, New Orleans reported over 1300 violent crimes--despite the fact that not many more than half the people of New Orleans are back. Black on black crime continues to dominate. Of the 161 homicide victims in 2006, 131 were black men, along with most of the suspects. Many victims and the suspects were teenagers. About two-thirds of the deaths of 2006 have gone unsolved. Police work out of trailers, including the brass. During the summer, officers filled out paperwork in their cars because there was no working air conditioning in their temporary trailer offices. Not until spring 2007 was there a working crime lab. New Orleans has a post-Katrina police force over 80% as large as before the storm--nearly half are new officers. At the end of 2006, seven police officers were indicted on murder charges--and then hailed as "heroes" by many fellow officers as they reported to court. The police force is supplemented by hundreds of National Guard members patrolling the city in camouflaged humvees, and, on special occasions, members of the state police as well. The public defender system is starting to improve but remains unable to represent all those facing charges. Recently, Orleans Criminal Court Judge Arthur Hunter mailed over 450 letters to attorneys in New Orleans ordering them to report to his courtroom to start defending poor defendants. Most declined. Jail is not the answer to our crime problems because Louisiana already leads all 50 states in the percentage of our people in jail, and New Orleans leads Louisiana. A report on those in the New Orleans jail show that the majority are awaiting trial and many of those in jail could easily be released. A third are in on bonds of $5000 or less--the only reason they remain in jail is because of their poverty. Over half are only facing minor charges and nearly three-quarters have no other outstanding warrants for their arrest. Addressing crime takes a functioning criminal justice system--and New Orleans is working on that by increasing communication between the various agencies and enacting some new programs. But, like the resignation of the District Attorney, this is not likely to dramatically reduce crime. Three recent reports help show the way for New Orleans to improve the criminal system. They stress earlier and better communication between the police and prosecutors; a wider range of pre-trial release options; and greater use of alternatives to prison. The August 2007 report of the Urban Institute, "Washed Away? Justice in New Orleans," documents past and present challenges for criminal justice. Available online at: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411530_washed_away.pdf. The VERA Institute of Justice report, "Proposals for New Orleans' Criminal Justice System: Best Practices to Advance Public Safety and Justice" gives four concrete ways that the system can be improved in the short run. Their report is available at: http://www.vera.org/publication_pdf/399_770.pdf The community-based Safe Streets Strong Communities organization has put out several recommendations about how New Orleans can fight crime without criminalizing or alienating the people in the neighborhoods. See: http://www.safestreetsnola.org But even if all these changes are started, most leaders acknowledge what Criminal Judge Calvin Johnson, who has presided in criminal court for nearly 20 years, says over and over "We cannot arrest our way out of this problem." Crime is not an isolated action. It is impossible to fix the crime problem if the rest of the institutions that people rely on remain deeply broken. The head of the local FBI suggested to the Christian Science Monitor that criminals in New Orleans "are products of an educational system that didn't educate, a state judicial system that failed to mete out consequences for criminal activity, and an economic landscape devoid of meaningful jobs." Katrina and its aftermath place enormous daily stresses on all people, particularly those already disadvantaged by race, gender and class systems. Treatment facilities report much more substance abuse, suicide and domestic violence. Yet, the mental and physical health systems are only a shell of what they were before the storm. Affordable housing is scarce and families are separated. Public education is not working for the poorest children. There is only so much the criminal justice system can do. The number of doctors and social workers and nurses who treat mental health is down dramatically. Beds are down nearly 80%. Hospitals turn troubled people away every day. Doctors report people who cannot be turned away are chemically restrained on gurneys in the hall or kept in dimmed emergency waiting rooms until they can be released. The system is backed up around the state. Even regular medical treatment is a challenge for uninsured and insured both as many hospitals remain closed. Drug and substance abuse treatment are scarce. The extreme lack of affordable rental housing means many older family members have not returned to New Orleans. Many teenagers have returned on their own--living alone or with other relatives and friends. Public education for those not in charter schools continues to be quite an uphill battle for the children--often in highly policed public schools that illustrate the school to prison pipeline. Before Katrina, New Orleans had the highest per capita murder rate in the nation a couple of times. The police arrested few people for violent crimes and prosecutors and judges and juries convicted less. Police, prosecutors and public defenders were overworked and underpaid--often losing their most experienced people to the suburbs and other cities where the work was calmer and the pay better. After Katrina it is all worse. There is much more stress on the streets. There is much less counseling and treatment available. There are fewer extended families to provide a supportive environment. The police are less experienced. The police do not communicate well with the prosecutors, who do not work well with the victims and witnesses, while the judges feud with the public defenders, and on and on. After Katrina, there is even less of a system and certainly less justice for everyone--the public, victims, the accused, law enforcement and people working in the institutions. Only when the criminal justice system is supported by a good public education available to all children, sufficient affordable housing for families, accessible healthcare (especially mental healthcare), and jobs that pay living wages, can the community expect the crime rate to go down. The District Attorney has resigned. But New Orleans and the Gulf Coast remain in serious trouble on all fronts. Our criminal justice system is but one illustration of our institutions melting down. For us, crime is not the cause of our community being under siege; crime is the scream of our community under siege. Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu   Your Ad Here

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