May 15 2012
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May 15 2012
Chicago cops’ new weapons
By Natasha Lennard, Salon
Monday, May 14, 2012 11:54 AM EDT
“This is simply a risk management tool, as the public will receive clear information regarding public safety messages and any orders provided by police,” Chicago Police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton told the Guardian.
However, during its first outing at a U.S. protest, during the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, police blasted non-lethal sound waves from the device as a crowd deterrent. Unlike firing tear gas or swinging batons, deploying the LRAD does not create a dramatic media spectacle; indeed, videos from the Pittsburgh protests capture the LRAD emitting little more than a high-pitched siren. Those within the sound cannon’s range, however, have described immense pain and severe headaches and – in some cases – irreversible hearing damage. LRAD Corp., which produces the weapon for the military and domestic policing, said that anyone within 100m of the device’s directed sound path will experience “extreme pain,” according to Gizmodo (link corrected- ek).
“In Pittsburgh, they directed the LRAD at a crowd coming up the center of a wide street, then sent tear gas canisters down the sides of the street. Tear gas is painful, but everyone ran into the tear gas to get out of the LRAD path,” one protester who attended the Pittsburgh G-20 told me, asking to remain anonymous. Chicago’s Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has recently expressed that he believes tear gas to be an ineffective crowd control device – and based on lessons from Pittsburgh, the LRAD can produce a painful enough effect to force crowd dispersal without the dramatic media impact tear gas creates; it’s certainly a more insidious weapon.
(h/t Chris in Paris)
May 15 2012
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
Click on image to enlarge
May 15 is the 135th day of the year (136th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 230 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1776, the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.
The Virginia Conventions were a series of five political meetings in the Colony of Virginiaduring the American Revolution. Because the House of Burgesses had been dissolved in 1774 by Royal Governor Lord Dunmore, the conventions served as a revolutionary provisional government until the establishment of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia in 1776.
The fifth convention began May 6, 1776 and met in Williamsburg. On May 15, the convention declared independence from Britain and adopted a set of three momentous resolutions: one calling for a declaration of rights for Virginia, one calling for establishment of a republican constitution, and a third calling for federal relations with whichever other colonies would have them and alliance with whichever foreign countries would have them. It also instructed its delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to declare independence. Virginia’s congressional delegation was thus the only one under unconditional positive instructions to declare independence; Virginia was already independent, and so its convention did not want their state, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, to “hang separately.” According to James Madison’s correspondence for that day, Williamsburg residents marked the occasion by taking down the Union Jack from over the colonial capitol and running up a continental union flag.
On June 7, Richard Henry Lee, one of Virginia’s delegates to Congress, carried out these instructions and proposed independence in the language the convention had commanded him to use: that “these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” This paved the way for the American Declaration of Independence, which also reflected the idea that not one nation, but thirteen free and independent states were aborning on the east coast of North America.
The convention amended, and on June 12 adopted, George Mason‘s Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the United States Bill of Rights. On June 29, the convention approved the first Constitution of Virginia, which was also the first written constitution adopted by the people’s representatives in the history of the world. The convention chose Patrick Henry as the first governor of the new Commonwealth of Virginia, and he was inaugurated on June 29, 1776. Thus, Virginia had a functioning, permanent, republican constitution before July 4, 1776 — uniquely among the thirteen American colonies.
May 15 2012
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Why is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, or for that matter any bank CEO, sitting on the board of the body that is supposed to regulate their banks? This is a serious conflict of interest in the face of the 2008 bank crisis and, now, the $2 billion loss by Chase. $2 billion, a pittance you say. Well consider that loss triggered a drop in Chase’s market value by another $20 billion
As Matt Taibbi points this is a cause for public concern:
[..] J.P. Morgan Chase is a federally-insured depository institution that has been and will continue to be the recipient of massive amounts of public assistance. If the bank fails, someone will reach into your pocket to pay for the cleanup. So when they gamble like drunken sailors, it’s everyone’s problem. [..]
{T}he incident underscored the basic problem. If J.P. Morgan Chase wants to act like a crazed cowboy hedge fund and make wild exacta bets on the derivatives market, they should be welcome to do so. But they shouldn’t get to do it with cheap cash from the Fed’s discount window, and they shouldn’t get to do it with money from the federally-insured bank accounts of teachers, firemen and other such real people. It’s a simple concept: you either get to be a bank, or you get to be a casino. But you can’t be both. If we don’t have rules to enforce that concept, we ought to get some.
Dimon being on the board of the New York Federal Reserve is absurd:
The chief executive of JP Morgan Chase — the largest bank in the land, and the exemplar of a ‘too big to fail’ institution — is allowed to sit at the table with the people tasked with deciding when and how much of other people’s money gets earmarked for his rescue. This is not the fox guarding the hen house; this is the fox guarding the hen house while selling synthetic derivatives whose value increases with every hen he gobbles up, and who burns down the hen house so he can collect on his fire insurance policy, and then gets the government to build him a new hen house at taxpayer expense. And then, after that, he still gets to guard the new hen house.
Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat running for U.S. Senate, called for Dimon’s removal:
JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should resign from the NY Federal Reserve Bank Board
Last week, JP Morgan Chase announced a $2 billion trading loss in two months.
Sunday on Meet the Press, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said, “We know we were sloppy, we know we were stupid, we know there was bad judgment.”
After the biggest financial crisis in generations, Americans are frustrated that Wall Street has still not been held accountable and does not appear to consider itself responsible. Wall Street banks continue to have fundamental problems, and tough oversight and accountability are urgently needed.
Dimon is not only the CEO of JP Morgan, he is also a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, where he advises the Federal Reserve on the oversight of the financial industry.
Dimon should resign from his post at the New York Fed to send a signal to the American people that Wall Street bankers get it and to show that they understand the need for responsibility and accountability.
Sign Ms. Warren’s petition for Dimon to resign
May 15 2012
Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Minorities use black hole time travel for revenge, strokes suddenly turn people gay, and a zoo is nothing but monkey prison.
Whatever you do Do Not Google “Gay Tail Spin“.
