Some would say the American media suffers from an attention deficit disorder. It switches from topic to topic, headlines to headlines and breaking news to breaking news - without depth, appropriate continuity, relevance and intelligent analyses. And one important aspect of American society that has received scant attention in the American media is the legal and judicial system.
We have people, labeled as terrorists, who have been held without trial for nearly a decade. Some among them have been released quietly, without public or press scrutiny and knowledge, because they are innocent - though they endured torture and unfair detention.
On the other hand, as of July 2011, we have a doe-eyed Anglo woman, in the strange State of Florida, with a penchant for drama and manipulation, being acquitted for a murder of a child for reasons that remain murky. If evidence in this murder trial has not been pesuasive to the jury, then where has the hard evidence that could be persuasive go? Has the police convicted anyone for the murder of this woman's child?
If Ms. Casey Anthony was the sole suspect in the murder of her child then the lawyers either did not do their job of presenting all the right evidence, or they did a great job of defending the guilty. Or, there is a guilty-someone other than Ms. Casey Anthony walking around free! Every way you look at it the legal and the judicial systems do not come out looking competent, reliable or trustworthy!
Worrying? There is more!
We have the strange case of Huberto Leal - a Mexican national, accused of raping and killing a 16 year old in 1994, on death row in Texas (a State with the longest and largest execution history). While he was investigated and arrested for rape and murder the Mexican embassy, or the consulate (and there are plenty of them in Texas), was not contacted as per the Vienna convention - that America is privy to. The Governor of Texas has pretty much dismissed any effort on the part of the President of the United States, and his administration, to put a stay on the execution. He, as a Governor, has the right to do that, but the judicial system still has to explain why Leal's embassy or consulate was not contacted, and appropriate representation from his country was not offered (as a legal alien).
The people and the government of Mexico are livid. Rightly so! They wonder if this is a kind of colonial justice where there is one rule for the cowboy and another for the Injuns, the Negros, them Folks of Color and us non-Christian Infidels - as they called most non-Anglo non-Christians. As one blogger wrote, "If you holler they come after you for hollering, or accuse you of 'bein crazy, insane, difficult and not congenial enough' (as old Cowboy movies use to show)."
Then we have all this hacking and whacking of public and Congressional phones, texts and twitters, selectively of course, to download embarrassing or useful information to sabotage careers, reputations and future political actions.On these matters of hacking there is no consistency in it, nor any legal or judicial action against it.
Is it getting worrying enough for you? Bring in the popcorn...there is more!
Pennsylvania's "kids for cash scandal", that occurred in 2008, involved judicial kickbacks to two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, that ran to millions of dollars. These judges, working for the Luzerne Country Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, accepted money from co-owners and builders of two private for profit juvenile facilities in return for contracting with the facilities, and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought to their courts. As state money for detention centers usually depend on resident population size and need, more detained juveniles, with longer sentences, merrier (and moneyer) the owners and the managers of these detention centers and the judges who sentence the kids.
For using children-with-problems as pawns to enhance their wealth these two judges got only 13 years in prison with some financial penalty - with the possibility of early release for good behavior...unless the class action lawsuits against them keeps them in prison for a much longer period.
If judges are skewing sentences and playing with lives for "money", is there not a possibility that judges are also acquitting some people for money? It is also possible that in some States people are getting in or staying out of the prison system due to biased publicity, incompetency on the part of lawyers and judges, corruption, injustice and "dumb compassion" in stead of "smart compassion". Dumb compassion includes feelings of pity, or other emotions, that occur among jury members and the public, deliberately created by a shrewd manipulative defendent, that contribute to leniency in sentencing. This is the opposite of someone whose demeanor during a trial leads to harsher sentences strictly due to the "unacknowledged partialities, prejudices and emotion induced perceptions" from the jury and the judge. Sometimes people from a different culture are judged unfairly because their demeanor is read wrongly by people who decide or influence the verdict.
Mark of an unbalanced unfair society is one that cannot get "justice right nor its compassion right"! It convicts the innocent and acquits the guilty.
If many racist non-Blacks were eager to see OJ "fry" (as some crudely wrote and stated in many talk shows and programs across the US) even before evidence was carefully scrutinized - only because to many in America a Black man is guilty (before proven innocent), and an arrogant Black man is guilty as hell - we now have many men wondering if this new "gender sensitivity" is about letting all pretty young Anglo women, with doe-eyes and a sob story, acquitted for child abandonment, child abuse and child murder.
Look at America's biased statistics on race, gender and class. While only 7% of Oklahomans are Black, 48% of the incarcerated are Blacks and nearly 75% on death row are Blacks. This is true in many other States. (Of course non-Black people-of-color are classified as Blacks in some documents and statistical analysis).
While nearly 50% of American marriages end in divorce, over 75% of sole or majority custody of children in most States is given to the mother - not the father.
While fathers can be put in jail for not paying child support - even if they lose child custody on flimsy grounds, mothers rarely get adequately penalized for abandoning or neglecting their children. On the other hand, many women who abuse their children are condemned and judged by the community and the courts more harshly than men who abuse their children.
Also, large number of those who have received life sentences and death row judgements across the United States are poor, intellectually impaired and lacking in "basic analytical abilities and communication skills". Poverty and low IQ do not give many appropriate legal representation nor fair trial. Add to this class and intellect partiality race, ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, etc....you get a system that is "skewed and biased" beyond belief!
Think of the activists of "Food not Bombs" organization in Orlando, Florida who got arrested just for feeding the poor and the hungry. Many of these young people - who did not have babies before they were mentally ready nor waste time doing party drugs - proactively cooked organic vegetarian food to caringly serve the poor and the hungry, with little money from donors, in downtown Orlando, Florida. In stead of admiring and supporting what these kids were doing appropriately they got arrested in 2011! Yes, arrested! (Follow this case through KPFA and The Nation).
These community-minded kids are being labeled "a public nuisance" by the police, and "a public hygiene threat" by some restaurateurs. Only in America would we let people starve and go hungry than to feed them food deemed not-licensed restaurant-food! Do you see the legal and judicial absurdity in all this?
These activist-members of "Food Not Bombs" organization are currently waiting trial at the same court house where Casey Anthony was tried. Me thinks they'll get put in prison for five years, while judges put juveniles into prison for a fee and murderers and murderesses walk free! (Of course somethings change once you write about them!)
Welcome to the "Crazy Garden of Good and Evil...where you don't know which is which!"
We have people, labeled as terrorists, who have been held without trial for nearly a decade. Some among them have been released quietly, without public or press scrutiny and knowledge, because they are innocent - though they endured torture and unfair detention.
On the other hand, as of July 2011, we have a doe-eyed Anglo woman, in the strange State of Florida, with a penchant for drama and manipulation, being acquitted for a murder of a child for reasons that remain murky. If evidence in this murder trial has not been pesuasive to the jury, then where has the hard evidence that could be persuasive go? Has the police convicted anyone for the murder of this woman's child?
If Ms. Casey Anthony was the sole suspect in the murder of her child then the lawyers either did not do their job of presenting all the right evidence, or they did a great job of defending the guilty. Or, there is a guilty-someone other than Ms. Casey Anthony walking around free! Every way you look at it the legal and the judicial systems do not come out looking competent, reliable or trustworthy!
Worrying? There is more!
We have the strange case of Huberto Leal - a Mexican national, accused of raping and killing a 16 year old in 1994, on death row in Texas (a State with the longest and largest execution history). While he was investigated and arrested for rape and murder the Mexican embassy, or the consulate (and there are plenty of them in Texas), was not contacted as per the Vienna convention - that America is privy to. The Governor of Texas has pretty much dismissed any effort on the part of the President of the United States, and his administration, to put a stay on the execution. He, as a Governor, has the right to do that, but the judicial system still has to explain why Leal's embassy or consulate was not contacted, and appropriate representation from his country was not offered (as a legal alien).
The people and the government of Mexico are livid. Rightly so! They wonder if this is a kind of colonial justice where there is one rule for the cowboy and another for the Injuns, the Negros, them Folks of Color and us non-Christian Infidels - as they called most non-Anglo non-Christians. As one blogger wrote, "If you holler they come after you for hollering, or accuse you of 'bein crazy, insane, difficult and not congenial enough' (as old Cowboy movies use to show)."
Then we have all this hacking and whacking of public and Congressional phones, texts and twitters, selectively of course, to download embarrassing or useful information to sabotage careers, reputations and future political actions.On these matters of hacking there is no consistency in it, nor any legal or judicial action against it.
Is it getting worrying enough for you? Bring in the popcorn...there is more!
Pennsylvania's "kids for cash scandal", that occurred in 2008, involved judicial kickbacks to two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, that ran to millions of dollars. These judges, working for the Luzerne Country Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, accepted money from co-owners and builders of two private for profit juvenile facilities in return for contracting with the facilities, and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought to their courts. As state money for detention centers usually depend on resident population size and need, more detained juveniles, with longer sentences, merrier (and moneyer) the owners and the managers of these detention centers and the judges who sentence the kids.
For using children-with-problems as pawns to enhance their wealth these two judges got only 13 years in prison with some financial penalty - with the possibility of early release for good behavior...unless the class action lawsuits against them keeps them in prison for a much longer period.
If judges are skewing sentences and playing with lives for "money", is there not a possibility that judges are also acquitting some people for money? It is also possible that in some States people are getting in or staying out of the prison system due to biased publicity, incompetency on the part of lawyers and judges, corruption, injustice and "dumb compassion" in stead of "smart compassion". Dumb compassion includes feelings of pity, or other emotions, that occur among jury members and the public, deliberately created by a shrewd manipulative defendent, that contribute to leniency in sentencing. This is the opposite of someone whose demeanor during a trial leads to harsher sentences strictly due to the "unacknowledged partialities, prejudices and emotion induced perceptions" from the jury and the judge. Sometimes people from a different culture are judged unfairly because their demeanor is read wrongly by people who decide or influence the verdict.
Mark of an unbalanced unfair society is one that cannot get "justice right nor its compassion right"! It convicts the innocent and acquits the guilty.
If many racist non-Blacks were eager to see OJ "fry" (as some crudely wrote and stated in many talk shows and programs across the US) even before evidence was carefully scrutinized - only because to many in America a Black man is guilty (before proven innocent), and an arrogant Black man is guilty as hell - we now have many men wondering if this new "gender sensitivity" is about letting all pretty young Anglo women, with doe-eyes and a sob story, acquitted for child abandonment, child abuse and child murder.
Look at America's biased statistics on race, gender and class. While only 7% of Oklahomans are Black, 48% of the incarcerated are Blacks and nearly 75% on death row are Blacks. This is true in many other States. (Of course non-Black people-of-color are classified as Blacks in some documents and statistical analysis).
While nearly 50% of American marriages end in divorce, over 75% of sole or majority custody of children in most States is given to the mother - not the father.
While fathers can be put in jail for not paying child support - even if they lose child custody on flimsy grounds, mothers rarely get adequately penalized for abandoning or neglecting their children. On the other hand, many women who abuse their children are condemned and judged by the community and the courts more harshly than men who abuse their children.
Also, large number of those who have received life sentences and death row judgements across the United States are poor, intellectually impaired and lacking in "basic analytical abilities and communication skills". Poverty and low IQ do not give many appropriate legal representation nor fair trial. Add to this class and intellect partiality race, ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, etc....you get a system that is "skewed and biased" beyond belief!
Think of the activists of "Food not Bombs" organization in Orlando, Florida who got arrested just for feeding the poor and the hungry. Many of these young people - who did not have babies before they were mentally ready nor waste time doing party drugs - proactively cooked organic vegetarian food to caringly serve the poor and the hungry, with little money from donors, in downtown Orlando, Florida. In stead of admiring and supporting what these kids were doing appropriately they got arrested in 2011! Yes, arrested! (Follow this case through KPFA and The Nation).
These community-minded kids are being labeled "a public nuisance" by the police, and "a public hygiene threat" by some restaurateurs. Only in America would we let people starve and go hungry than to feed them food deemed not-licensed restaurant-food! Do you see the legal and judicial absurdity in all this?
These activist-members of "Food Not Bombs" organization are currently waiting trial at the same court house where Casey Anthony was tried. Me thinks they'll get put in prison for five years, while judges put juveniles into prison for a fee and murderers and murderesses walk free! (Of course somethings change once you write about them!)
Welcome to the "Crazy Garden of Good and Evil...where you don't know which is which!"
The USA is pretty much a dramatisation of George Orwell's 1984. The performance has been excellent, if predictable, so far.
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