I Am Jack's Seething Cauldron Of Rage

State Of Fear: Russian Democracy

2011-12-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

A leader of an opposition party in modern Russian is arrested for opposing the ruling United Russia party of Medvedev and Putin.

The leader of Russia's only independent election monitor was detained at a Moscow airport for 12 hours, a colleague said Saturday, the latest government pressure on the group ahead of Sunday's parliamentary vote.

Golos has documented thousands of election law violations during the latest campaign — most of them linked to the United Russia party, which dominates the Kremlin and supports Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

United Russia dominates Russia's political life and has received overwhelmingly favorable coverage during the campaign, mostly from Kremlin-controlled national television. But the party is increasingly disliked, seen as representing a corrupt bureaucracy and often called "the party of crooks and thieves."

Golos leader Lilya Shibanova was held at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after refusing to give her laptop to security officers late Friday, the group's deputy director Grigory Melkonyants said. She was released after giving up the computer, he said.

"The detention was politically motivated," Melkonyants told The Associated Press.

The detention follows a decision Friday by a Moscow district court to fine Golos $1,000 for violating a law forbidding the publication of public opinion research within five days of an election.

Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev. Photo courtesy of Moscow Times.

The group has come under growing pressure since Sunday, when Putin accused Western governments of trying to influence the election through their funding of unidentified Russian non-governmental organizations. Golos, whose name means "vote," is supported by grants from the United States and Europe.
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The group's staffers all over Russia "face threats and psychological pressure," Melkonyants said.

Kremlin-controlled NTV television showed a half-hour program on Friday evening that attacked Golos directly. The program included shots of suitcases full of U.S. dollars and claimed that Golos was openly supporting opposition parties and trying to discredit the elections.

The Kremlin is determined to see United Russia maintain its majority in parliament. President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin, who serves as prime minister, both made final appeals for the party on Friday, warning that a parliament made up of diverse political camps would be incapable of making decisions.

The Moscow Times reports that Putin needs the United Russia party to do well in the parliamentary election to pave the way for his return to the presidency in a vote now three months away. This would be Putin's third presidential term and 13th year in power since he became acting President on the December 31st of 1999 when Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, resigned in a surprising move.

References:
MSNBC, Russian Watchdog Group Arrested
Wikipedia, Russia United Party
Moscow Times, On-line Edition
Eurasia Review, Putin Party Suffers Big Loss

Das Volksgerichtshof: The People's Court

2011-02-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

Von Moltke stands defiant before the Nazi appendage: Das Volksgerichtshof.

In early 1945, the Allies had gained a strong enough foothold in Europe to threaten Nazi Germany. As the Nazi Regime began a final descent into utter defeat, the Gestapo frantically prosecuted those who had spoke out against the war or were seen as capable of leadership after the Reich was swept away. The targets of the Nazi's rage came from universities and the higher echelon of German society. These were citizens who, for reasons either personal or practical, remained in Germany as it crumbled.

The Nazis sought credible opposition voices among these groups and silenced them publicly in kangaroo courts. The courts were called Volksgerichtshof or "People's Courts". In these courts, being on trial guaranteed a sentence of death.

"If you knew that your nation was savagely butchering its own people in semi-secret camps; if you thought your leader was a madman whose decisions would inevitably ruin your country and threaten all of civilization; would you sit still or would you try to do something?"

- Helmuth von Moltke, from his last letter to his wife, 1945.

One of these trials centered on Helmuth von Moltke, an outspoken critic of Hitler and descendent of a German national hero from WWI. Von Moltke, himself was a prominent lawyer. Since the raise of the Third Reich in the early 1930's von Moltke frequently questioned the Nazi's ambition to conquer the Western Europe, kill Jews and brutally attack their own people. He was targeted for the Volksgerichtshof to serve as a warning to those who opposed the regime.

Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler argues for his life before the Nazi death courts.

In pursuing high-profile political opponents, the Nazi warning was this: no matter how well bred - anyone opposing Hitler's power lust would die. Von Moltke, who appeared resolute and stone faced after an impassioned defense, was pronounced guilty of Treason.

His execution took place on January 23^rd 1945 just four months before Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies.

References:
Wikipedia, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Wikipedia, Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Martyr's Letter, January 11, 1945
Letters to Freya : 1939-1945; edited and translated from German by Beate Ruhm von Oppen. New York : Knopf, 1990.

Remembering Buddy Gray

2011-01-02T12:55:00.000-08:00

Re-printed from a Cincinnati City Beat article by Lew Moores published in November 2006
Those who remember him recall the gray bib overalls, the railroad engineer's cap, perhaps the headband, the long hair and the black beard that really didn't seem to gray with age... The energy that was born while he was still in his 20's never really dissipated and was there right until the end when on November 15, 1996, he was shot while he sat in the Drop Inn Center as he looked up to welcome a friend and stared down the barrel of a handgun instead.

Wilbur Worthen shot him. Gray fell to the floor. Worthen fired again and again, emptying his .357-caliber Magnum.

It's been 15 years. His death at the age of 46 was a shock and an irony not lost on Gray's supporters and friends - shot and killed that day by someone he'd helped, by someone those who knew both called a friend.

For almost a quarter-century Buddy Gray made the poverty-ridden little pocket of America called Over-the-Rhine his battleground, a corner where he and others thought they could make a difference in the lives of those who lived and, for many, suffered there. They wanted to show how grassroots organizing could work. It began with the Drop Inn Center, a shelter for the homeless, and continued with local, state and national coalitions of the homeless and ReStoc, the attempt to preserve housing and thwart displacement.

From 1973 until 1996, Gray was in many ways the face of Over-the-Rhine, giving voice to the poor and homeless.

Buddy with Michael Moore for his movie 'The Big One.' Buddy was killed before the movie was completed. Photo by Jimmy Heath.

Bonnie Neumeier, a longtime friend of Gray, can close her eyes and still see Gray gliding on his bicycle through Washington Park in Over-the-Rhine, parking his bike at Cincinnati City Hall, driving his truck through the neighborhood to work on abandoned houses.

She and others recall taking walks with Gray through the neighborhood.

"If you ever walked around the neighborhood with Buddy it would take a long time," Neumeier says. "Everybody knew him, everybody knew his name. He was personable. He could energize anyone. He had this sense of the collective. He wasn't a one-person movement. It's very clear he thought strategically about a mass base of people. It was never about himself alone."

That was a thorn in the side of some who saw Gray as confrontational, an obstructionist. Over-the-Rhine was a rich architectural gem, Music Hall and Washington Park among its jewels. It hugged the downtown business district. Developers thought it begging for revitalization and an infusion of the upper-class. It was ripe, ready to be picked.

Gray and his troops were in the way. His most ferocious detractors thought him a "poverty pimp," arguing that his investment in the neighborhood was in perpetuating poverty. As long as Over-the-Rhine was poor, Buddy Gray had a constituency, the argument went. He blocked development, he blocked a renaissance.

Even some city officials found him a handful.

"He wasn't one to cultivate friends, that's for sure," William Langevin, the city's director of buildings and inspections, told The Cincinnati Enquirer 10 years ago. "He was highly, highly confrontational and argumentative. But the man certainly had my respect."

But, for those who admired his tenacity and appreciated his advocacy, even a decade after his death, his presence is still felt. His impact was not ephemeral.

References:
The Greater Cincinatti Homeless Coaltion
Cincinnati Magazine April 1982, The Underdog's Buddy
Citybeat, Lew Moores' Original Story
Streetvibes, Wordpress

Greenwood: The Burning Of Black Wall Street

2010-05-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Ruins of Freemont Street in the affluent black suburb of Greenwood in Tulsa, May of 1921.

In the chapters of American history, there are stories of tragedy and senseless death that are very carefully and almost entirely forgotten. These tales are conveniently forgotten by the wise and craftily ignored by the haughty.

This particular tragedy raged in 1921, in a Tulsa Oklahoma neighborhood that was burned to the ground by a mob. 300 people were officially reported killed. Those killed weren't soldiers or insurrectionists - they were a small community of successful minority business owners who were murdered by a mob of angry white Oklahomans for no better reason than hatred and ignorance.

When the story of Greenwood is foggily recalled it makes Americans, as a people united by common cause, law and geography, question the value of life itself when witnessing that life so carelessly snuffed out. Life snuffed out like stray sparks from an untended fire - crushed under the collective hot boot heel of a blinded, blood-thirsty giant in the guise of justice.

The burning of Greenwood is the record of death stalking the streets in collective form. That form made of everyday men and women who have become bitterly blinded by their own unchecked hatred. In this sense a mob acts as a single mindless giant striking down all in it's path.

In re-telling the story of Greenwood, it's the hope of all historians that this monster will never be able to so easily. To never take to the streets as a force of evil, again. And if and when it does, this blood-thirsty monster will not be ignored or forgotten - but made to face it's own brand of justice in a court of law.

But this is rarely this case. The story of Greenwood, Oklahoma in 1921 is a tragic American story.

I. Greenwood and Black Wall Street
Prior to the turn of the century O.W. Gurley, a wealthy African American land-owner from Arkansas, traveled across the United States to participate in the Oklahoma Land run of 1889. The young entrepreneur had just resigned from a presidential appointment from president Grover Cleveland in order to strike out on his own.

In 1906, Gurley relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma where he purchased 40 acres of land which was "only to be sold to colored". This notion was unheard of at the time. Gurley's first business in Oklahoma was a rooming house located on a dusty trail near the railroad tracks. This road was called Greenwood Avenue, named for a city in Mississippi. The area became extremely popular amongst African American migrants fleeing Jim Crow and racially based oppression in Mississippi.

Many blacks moved to Oklahoma in the years before and after 1907, which is the year when Oklahoma became a state. Oklahoma must have represented change and provided a chance for African Americans to get away from slavery and the harsh racism of their previous homes. Most of them traveled from the states in the south where racism was very prevalent. To them, Oklahoma offered hope and provided all people with a chance to start over. They traveled to Oklahoma by wagons, horses, trains, and even on foot.

During the oil boom of the 1910's, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished including the Greenwood neighborhood. Greenwood came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street". The area was home to several prominent black businessmen, many of them multimillionaires. Greenwood contained a variety of thriving businesses that were very successful up until the Tulsa Race Riot.

Not only did African Americans want to contribute to the success of their community but also racial segregation laws prevented them from shopping anywhere else other than Greenwood. Greenwood had the two prerequisites for a successful community: jobs and citizens - citizens who took enormous pride in their neighborhood.

II. Racial Tension
In America, lynchings were acts participated in by angry mobs of white citizens who targeted and jumped upon blacks as scapegoats. These acts were vicious, brutal and violent. American lynchings often culminated in self-righteous murder and Oklahoma was no different.

III. The Fire And Aftermath

The flames raged until it consumed one of the most distinctive and independent communities in America.

Gurley's prominence and wealth were relatively short lived. It matter of moments he lost everything. During the riots The Gurley Hotel at 112 North Greenwood Avenue, the street’s first commercial enterprise, valued at $55,000, was lost, and with it Brunswick Billiard Parlor and Dock Eastmand & Hughes Cafe. Gurley also owned a two-story building at 119 North Greenwood. It housed Carter’s Barbershop, Hardy Rooms, a pool hall, and cigar store. All were reduced to charred ruins. By his own account and court records, he lost nearly $200,000 in the 1921 riots.

Because of his leadership role in creating this self sustaining exclusive black community, it had been rumored that Gurley was lynched by a white mob and buried in an unmarked grave. However, according to the memoirs of Greenwood pioneer B.C. Franklin, My Life and an Era, published in 1997, Gurley had simply exiled himself to California. He died in obscurity a broken man.

References:
Wikipedia, Tulsa Race Riots of 1921
Wikipedia, Greenwood, Oklahoma
Tulsa Reparations Coalition, Tulsa Race Riot Report
Executive Leadership Council, 95 Year Old Survivor Speaks
Before They Die, The Movie

The Fight Against Fear: Establishing Equality in America

2010-01-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

The September 15^th 1963 Birmingham church bombing killed four girls - the oldest was fourteen years old.

When man made injustice is done in the name of man's justice, in any age, it renders the man to whom that injustice happens helpless. This was the case in 1960's America as a growing population of black Americans became educated enough to realize that laws were a creation of a multi-cultural society not the immutable, unchangable commandments from a paper god.

Many black American leaders fought for these changes in law and society but did not live to see them take place. These mens' rebuke, their punishment for seeking equal status, came for generations in the guise of official policy. Their consolation came in the form of official lies that stripped them of hard-earned dignity. Their shelter was the bitter cold. All the while, an inequitable society expected a smile on the wronged mens' faces. When these man continued to question official hypocrisy - they were quickly answered with fear-mongering, violence and death.

When these men asked why injustice was official policy they were often told: "This is the way of the world". This inequitable answer was meant to be the final and unquestionable answer.

Although, in 1776, the American Constitution guaranteed all men equal status this was not the legal status for black Americans up to the mid-1960's.

The March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC. on August 28^th 1963.

In the first part of the 20th Century, the "answer" to race relations in America came in the form of Jim Crow laws, poll "taxes" and segregation. This policy came not as the result of history but rather of hatred and ignorance.

These wide spread local policies were actually illegal laws that nullified the Bill of Rights. This hypocrisy disregarded the blood and tears spilled during the Civil War and WWII and unofficially, these practices re-wrote the American Constitution. The final "answer" to race relations from 1865 to 1963 only inspired more questions.

Religious and educational organizations began to form within churches and schools to counteract the brutally enforced policies of hatred and ignorance.

1962 at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. Photo by Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery.

Why did hundreds of thousands of strong, young men die bravely, right up to the early 1960's, fighting for the civil rights of only one race of people when they come from a country of many races? The question would not go away. Why?

"All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

- The American Declaration of Independence, July 4^th 1776

Two centuries after the American Revolution, finding the answer made the world of 1960's America one of social upheaval. Students, preachers, film makers, writers and musicians kept shouting a one word question: Why?

As a group of many groups (SNCC, Freedom Riders, SBLC), they collectively challenged the long standing second class citizenship of black Americans. 100 years after the end of slavery in the United States, racial tension, mostly between fat cat politicians, apathetic "leaders", embittered racists and uneducated fearmongers, came to an inevitable boil. Riots and protests. demonstrations and peacefull marches began to crowd the streets of New York, Birmingham, Washington DC and Los Angeles.

Drinking fountains in the County Courthouse in Albany, Georgia in 1962. Photo by Daniel Lyon.

Young people and respected elders took up a national fight to guarantee equality to all men and women in the United States. Their goal was to ensure that the promise of the American Constitution was lived up to the last letter. They modeled their goals around higher education and civil disobedience.

Many of the civil rights leaders were from educational or religious backgrounds like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X but were inspired by another document: The American Declaration of Independence. Written while the nation was a dominion of a foreign empire, it boldly stated: "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". For black and minority Americans, who forefathers had created a nation and each with a long history in America, it was time for social reform to include all Americans. The US Army and then US baseball teams had used integrated soldiery and players for decades. Members of minority groups had contributed to an American culture by 1963 but would not enjoy equal rights until 1967.

A 1962 meeting in Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. Photo by Danny Lyon.

The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were Southern Baptists, Irish-Catholics, African Americans and student volunteers. These men and women were determinded to see the promise of America's founding document fufilled, or, see the government admit that it was, in fact, a 20^th Century empire.

These leaders came from the far North, from way out West, and brought their fight for equality to the deep South and the steps of Capitol Building in Washington DC. They were each united in their sense of social justice, courageous willingness to speak and act, and driven to change their world by a deep sense of morality.

A student volunteer at a 1962 meeting in Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia Photo by Danny Lyon.

Their names were often as unknown as their deaths. There were attacks and assassinations that made the nation weep bitter tears. Rome was not re-made in in a day. The fight was not never an easy one. In the end, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon made good on the promise of a equal American populated undivided by legal status or hobbled by segregation.

This equality of status was earned by soldiers and immigrants who fought for America no mmater there race or religion for 200 years. Equality of status was campaigned for by non-violent professionals and masses of people who wanted to live in just county. These people faced vicious and violent punishments for breaking with a world of irrational bigotry.

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth leading marchers in prayer just before they are arrested in early April of 1963 in Birmingham Alabama.

Today, every American enjoys the independence that was won in the 18th century. This struggle for equality was re-newed repeated in the 20th century. Democracy, fought for, bled for and taken from a loose concept and made into a firm reality is the core principle that defines America and America alone.

This modern age will always owe thanks to those who refused to accept the answer "This is the way of the world" - those who bravely replied, through their actions: "This is the way of the world that should be."

Notes:
0 = A 11-year-old future Secretary of State Condelezza Rice was a friend and classmate of the youngest of the girls who were killed in the attack in '63, Carol McNair, 11. The other girls were Cynthia Wesley, 14, Carole Robertson, 14 and Addie Mae Collins, 14.
1 = No one was convicted of the bombing until 1985. Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss was convicted in 1985 of four counts of Murder. His accomplices Bobby Cherry, Thomas Blanton Jr., Herman Cash, and Troy Ingram were primary suspects but never convicted. Each of these men have each died since - Chambliss and Cherry both died in prison.

References:
Wikipedia, 16^th Street Church Bombing '63
Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, Photographers of a Movement
Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, Albany, Georgia 1962
Avalon Project, The Declaration of Independence, July 4^th 1776
Black Past.org, Washington August 28^th 1963

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished In Chicago

2009-11-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

In November of 2002 in downtown Chicago, a car raced through a stop sign at high-speed crashing into the side of a CPD squad car. The crash trapped two police officers in their vehicle as the car began to burn.

Horrified Chicagoans, unlike the stereotypical Southsiders, immediately began pulling the injured to safety before the vehicles could explode. Among the bystanders trying to save the officers lives was 41-year-old nurse Rachelle Jackson. Jackson was credited with saving the life of Officer Kelly Brogan who sustained injuries from the crash. Brogans partner, also injured, was knocked unconscious during the crash.

Soon after the rescue it was discovered that Officer Brogan's partner's side arm was missing. Mrs. Jackson, staying on the scene until medical personel arrived was accused of the theft. The weapon was not found in Jackson's possession nor has it ever been recovered.

Jackson, wanting to clear her name, went to the local police station as a witness to the crime and not as a suspect. After walking into the Chicago police station Rachelle Jackson would remain in police custody for nearly a full year on suspicion of battery, theft and false informing as a result of attempting to save the life of an injured police officer.

Days after the incident, in perhaps an attempt to save public face for the CPD, Officer Brogan accused Ms. Jackson of trying to steal her badge and gun during the rescue attempt. Consequentially, Jackson was given an extremely high bond during her arraignment. For the next 10 months she waited in the Cook County jail for a trial.

When Jackson went to trial, the criminal case was thrown out due to lack of evidence, no prior criminal record and the fact that Ms. Jackson had spent 20 years as a positive member of the community as a medical professional.

In 2008, Rachelle Jackson won her law suit against the City of Chicago due to her wrongfull arrest and imprisonment. The jury awarded originally her $7.9 million dollars in damages. This amount would be modified by the ruling judge, Judge Castillo, in 2009 to $1.9 million.

“This was an innocent woman who saved a police officer from a burning car,” said Jackson's lawyer, Chris Smith, who tried the civil case. “There were many heroes out there who helped the police, but they all turned into suspects because some guy ran away with the gun.”

References:
Chicago Tribune, Federal Jury Verdict
Reuters, Chicago Woman Wins $7.9 Million in Suit
Police America Blog, Chicago Woman Was Falsely Accused

State of Denial: The 21st Century Russian Republic

2009-11-06T21:20:00.000-08:00

Neo-nazi and nationalist hate groups in Russia are called a dark secret within the former Soviet Union. Their existence is down-played by the new, leaner Russian government as inconsequential. Some members of the Russian media question whether many of these groups are, in fact, used as state sanctioned secret police to assassinate voices of dissent against the new government.

These groups, like most groups bound together with a common hatred, claim to fight for their own specific race's civil rights. But, in modern Russia, unlike most hate groups their only measurable effect is in murdering members of their own communities and doing so under the guise of being a "radical nationalist group". Leaders, including new Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, insist despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that it is only a matter of coincidence that these murder victims were also critics and political dissidents with voices heard by the West.

Such was the case with the murder of prominent human rights lawyer and investigative journalist, Stanislav Markelov. Markelov was shot dead before a stunned crowd of onlookers in the middle of a crowded Moscow street on January 19^th 2009.

The Moscow street corner where Markelov and Baburova were shot and killed.

Law, as an international concept, exists as society's shield to protect all of its citizens, particularly the poor who are regularlly the most victimized. Russia and it's satellite state-nations, like the Ukraine and Chechnya, are overwhelmed with these victimized poor. In claiming first world status Russia is obligated to maintain this shield, made of ethics and enacted by men, as the most basic of first world statutes - to protect it's own people.

Consequentially, 21^st Russia is a place where men like Markelov are badly needed. Fighting for the rights of citizens and the sovereignty of individuals within the republic became the bulk of Markelov's work in the post-authoritarian era of his nation.

Markelov was a staunch defender of the rights of the Russian people. Rights that guarantee a citizen a legal defense and a legal recourse. He chose extremely difficult cases. In 2006, he represented survivors of the Moscow Opera House Stand-off in which a group of 39 Chechen terrorists were killed along with 129 Russians civilians. Although this rescue operation saved the lives of 800 others it was largely viewed as a debacle. Markelov successfully sued the government on behalf of the survivors and victims families.

At the time of the murder, Markelov was part of another controversial case. He made up a part of the state prosecution's team investigating the murder of author and journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was brutally killed in 2006. Anna Politkovskaya was a fierce anti-war campaigner who wrote exhaustively about atrocities in Chechnya. She was allegedly killed by neo-Nazis with suspected involvement with the FSB, the infamous KGB's successor spy agency.

The 2006 funeral of writer Anna Politkovskaya. The family of Politkovskaya was being represented by Markelov when he was murdered.

The 51-year-old woman, due to her investigation into Russian policy, was reportedly told that she "deserved a bullet in the head" by the high-ranking Russian installed rulers of Chechnya during the course of her own research into the civil war that still rages there. Her body was later found in an elevator at her building shot 5 times. Her accused killers were tried but not convicted in February of 2009.

Markelov also gained infamy when representing the family of Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen girl, who former tank commander Yuri Budanov freely admitted strangling in his quarters in March of 2000. Budanov was given a 10-year sentence but released early for good behavior. Today, Budanov enjoys a wide spread approval among the general Russian populace. He was released from prison 4 days before Markelov and Baburova were murdered.

On that cold winter day in Moscow, January 19^th of 2009, 29-year-old Nikolay Tikhonov and 24-year-old Yevgenia Khasis, allegedly members of a radical neo-nazi nationalistic group, waited for Markelov outside a news conference. The conference was held just a half mile from the Kremlin in the very heart of new, united Russia. As Markelov exited, Tikhonov, wearing a stocking-style mask, approached.

Markelov and Tithonov had met before. Two years prior, Markelov had represented the prosecution of Tikhonov and seven others in connection with the murder of Maria Rozalskaya - another murdered human rights activist. Tithonov, who went into hiding shortly after his conviction, fired a silenced weapon multiple times into Markelov's chest. When Markelov's friend, Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old journalist, boldly tried to interfere - Tikhonov turned the silenced pistol her as well. Her attacker shot them both where they had stood and fled.

Tikhonov was captured by the FSB and confessed to the murder a few months later.

The funeral of slain journalist Anastasia Baburova who was killed with Markelov.

Both victims of the assassination were passionate, outspoken critics of Vladimir Putin's new facist leaning government. Russia has experienced a string of contract-style killings of human rights workers and journalists in recent years. This murder, in particular, is so unlike the rest due to the near military precision of the attack and use of a silenced pistol - the hallmark of international spys and assassins. As a rule, most hate groups attack with crude improvised explosives, grenades and drive-bys using cheap machine guns.

If these were in fact contract killings - then who ordered the contract? Why are none of the suspects in these targeted murders members of Russian Mafia or involved organized crime? Why are the targets vocal opponents of Russian government and not police or rival or fellow Mafia?

This dramatic double-murder has led progressive minded Russians to believe that their new democratic government is not very different from their old communist one. Instead of opposition leaders being "disappeared" by KGB they are now apparently brutally murdered in broad day light by puppets of the FSB.

References:
Wikipedia, Stanislav Markelov
San Diego Union-Tribune, Man says he killed lawyer and journalist
New York Times, Two Held in Killings of Russian Lawyer
Robert Amsterdam, Stanislav Markelov 1974-2009
Open Democracy, Stanislav Markelov
New York Times, The Last Article By Anna Politkovskaya

Tradegy, Meth and New Mexico

2009-11-06T00:33:00.000-08:00

It was a hot late summer day outside Grants, New Mexico a small town 70 miles west of Albuquerque. Two men had just robbed a Wal-Mart for a key ingredient for meth, escaping store security and getting away with about $600 worth of antihistamine from the Wal-Mart Supercenter.

The date was August 1^st 2001. At the end of the day, a 37-year-old man who had served his small community for seven years would be run down like a wretched dog in the streets by a man who could barely count to ten.

After the Wal-Mart robbery was reported a police officer stopped two young men in a vehicle matching the one used in the robbery. In it were the Craig brothers Aron and Zacharia, a 21-year-old and 19-year-old, both were the gaunt, eerie product of a run-down Albuquerque satellite town called North Valley. The Craig's get-a-way vehicle was a stolen 1995 Toyota pickup truck. It's license plate matched those taken down by Wal-Mart employees. As the officer questioned Aron on the side of the road Zacharia, the younger of the two boys, slid over from the passenger side of the truck, started the engine and sped off.

The police chased Zacharia Craig, while Aron Craig apparently seized the opportunity to run for it but was quickly apprehended. Police say Zacharia Craig, leading them on a 45 mile chase, drove toward Albuquerque on I-40 when he encountered two New Mexico State patrolmen: Officer Billy Cunningham and Officer Lloyd Aragon.

The officers had just laid down stop-sticks on the highway when Zacharia gunned the Toyota's engine and swerved towards the median - directly at Officer Aragon. The truck struck the State patrolman killing him instantly. Officers at the scene later testified that Zacharia Craig had aimed the truck at Aragon who was standing in the median after placing the spiked strip across the road.

Craig's stolen truck continued after the impact only stopping when it struck a guardrail. Zacharia got out of the truck and ran until he was tackled by Officer Cunningham and two other officers. After the arrest police found 40 boxes of the antihistamine Actafed in the truck.

As the hot August day in New Mexico ended, Zacharias Craig was booked into jail and Lloyd Aragon was wheeled into the Grants/Cibola County morgue.

Five years later, in September of 2006, Zacharia Craig, now 24, was presented by his defense counsel as a young man who grew up in abject squalor in shacks and trailers without electricity or running water. His parents never attempted to seek medical attention for his thyroid condition known as Grave's Disease which causes physical and mental deterioration. His parents were depicted as cruel alcoholics that forced their three children to live in trash covered shacks. The meth only made Zacharia's poor judgement worse.

The body of Officer Lloyd Aragon is laid to rest on August 4^th 2001. Photo by Craig Robinson of the Gallup Independent.

However, the prosecutor's set aside the Death Penalty, which it had previously swore to pursue, for a plea. Zacharia Craig was sentenced to 25 years in prison for 2^nd Degree Murder. With a ten year credit, five years for his time served and five more years based on psychiatric evaluations, Craig's actual sentence was 15 years.

In November of the same year a memorial marker was laid at the 126 mile marker of I-40 at the the section of freeway where Officer Aragon was struck and killed. Officer Lloyd Aragon is survived by his widow, Monica Aragon, his son Lloyd Jr. and his daughter Adriana.

References:
A Police Officer Died Today, Lloyd Aragon
Gallup Independent, Trial set for brothers
Gallup Independent, Cop killer gets 15 years
Gallup Independent, Set in Stone: The Lloyd Aragon I-40 memorial
Albuquerque Tribune, Environment of neglect by Joline Gutierrez Krueger

The State of Arizona vs Jeff Pataky

2009-11-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

Re-printed from the original article at Citizen and Media Law

In March 2009, Phoenix police raided the home of Jeff Pataky, a blogger who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, a blog that has been highly critical of the Phoenix Police Department. According to The Arizona Republic, Pataky's home was raided by ten Phoenix police officers who handcuffed his girlfriend for three hours while they conducted the raid.

"We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me," Pataky told the Republic. "They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem."

The search warrant lists petty theft and computer tampering with the intent to harass as potential crimes. Pataky, who was away on a business trip when the raid occurred, says he has yet to see an affidavit that explains why they had probable cause to conduct the raid.

The search warrant provides little insight into what police believe Pataky has done. It does, however, mention repeatedly that police were to search for personal correspondence between Pataky and "Dave Barnes." According to The Arizona Republic, Barnes is a former Phoenix homicide detective who went public in 2007 with claims of mismanaged evidence at the city's crime lab. In May 2009, Barnes' home also was raided by police due to his alleged "involvement in what some officers perceived to be a connection to a blog critical of the policeleaders," the Republic reported at the time.

Carlos Miller, who runs the Photography is Not a Crime Blog, is reporting that Pataky recently filed a lawsuit over the raid, which netted three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. Pataky told Miller that he has not let the raid stop him from blogging, however, "They thought they were going to scare us into a corner but they just made us stronger."

UPDATE: 07/14/09
Pataky filed a lawsuit against the City of Phoenix and the officers involved in the raid. Pataky's six-count complaint alleges abuse of process, intentional infliction of emotional distress, harassment, and violation of privacy.

Related Links:

Details:
Website(s) Involved: Bad Phoenix Cops
Subject Area(s): Censorship
Location of Filing/Threat: Phoenix, Arizona
Court Name: County of Maricopa, State of Arizona
Relevant Documents:Pataky Search Warrant (03-09-2009), Affidavit for Search Warrant.pdf (03-09-2009), Pataky Complaint.pdf (07-14-2009).

A Bad Idea or A Federal Crime?

2009-11-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

Former Medieval Studies and Philosophy Professor Reinhold Aman calls himself the World's Most Dangerous Postcard writer. Aman, an academic from Bavaria with no prior criminal record and a long history of teaching at both local high schools and the collegiate level, was sentenced to five years in federal prison in 1993.

The problem: he never lifted a finger to hurt anyone. Nor did he directly threaten to do so. At the time of his arrest, he was an intelligent and productive member of society working at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in the middle of a very nasty divorce.

Aman's mistake came during the prolonged legal battle with his soon-to-be ex-wife. The 57-year-old Professor cut out two headlines from a local newspaper reading "MAN KILLS EX-WIFE" and "ESTRANGED WIFE IS FOUND SLAIN IN HER HOME" and mailed them to his wife. This implied and ominous warning was clearly intended to cause his wife mental distress. It was a nasty way of saying "be afraid of me". This, in itself, is a crime, but it is not on par with the Federal case it was eventually made to be.

As a minor State misdemeanor case, Aman, as a first time non-violent offender should have recieved, at most, 6 months in a county jail. Instead, due to his previous outspoken stance on the application of federal justice in Wisconscin - he recieved two concurrent 27-month sentences in federal prison - a total of four and a half years. Aman was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine. His ex-wife, when the divorce was final, was awarded another $250,000 in divorce proceedings.

Professor Aman was given a total of five years in federal prison and fined half a million dollars in criminal and civil court over a minor misdemeanor that occured during his divorce proceedings.

After his conviction, Aman was shipped 2,300 miles west to spend time in the maximum security wing of Sonoma County Jail in Santa Rosa, CA. Aman began a institutional rotation that sent him to the Federal Building in San Francisco and Alameda County Jail in Santa Rita, CA. He was moved an incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island, CA., then transferred to a federal prison camp in Lompoc, CA., before being transferred to another federal prison camp at Dublin, CA. At the end of his sentence he was finally moved to a federal half-way house in the dicey Tenderloin District back in San Francisco.

15 months and half a million dollars later, it seemed like that Professor Aman's case of "impending harm" was completely unfounded. In the 14 years since his release in 1995, there have been no new charges involving Aman and his ex-wife. There are no new charges, no new reports - nothing to suggest this man was an impending danger to anyone. His non-violent misdemeanor crime was turned into a serious federal case due to incompetence and greed.

This is a clear example of gross abuse of the justice system - both criminal and civil. Aman's case, that he was a threat to his wife or judges w/out any evidence/priors, is a draconian punishment both in severity and scope. Today, as an ex-con and former federal prisoner, freed after 15 months in federal prison, Aman is now unable to do what he has done for nearly 30 years w/out incident - teach.

Today, the deep distrust of the American justice system still reverberates in Aman's fiery denunications of injustice. After spending time in many federal prisons with men who had lost decades of their lives due to minor or non-violent infractions such as marajuana cultivation or petty theft. In his writing and web site Aman details how he and his fellow prisoners were unable to recieve the smallest bit of education in federal prisons due to Bureau of Prisons guidelines barring classes of any sort.

Aman Reinhold, now 74, decribes his time in federal prison with career criminals as a "cruel netherworld". Since his 1995 release, he has continued to has write exhaustively about specific reforms for the justice and prison system in America.

References:
Wikipedia, Reinhold Aman
Reinhold Aman's Official Web Site
OPEN LETTER TO JANET RENO ATTORNEY GENERAL: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE, J'accuse!

It was like somebody ripped our hearts out.

2009-10-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

Katie Collman was just another poor Indiana girl in the heart of the American Midwest. That was until the ten-year-old's dead body washed up in a shallow creek in February of 2005.

Katie had lived in a quiet, small town in southern Indiana of 1500 people 40 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. Although she would never have a chance to understand it, Katie would find herself at the center of one of the sickest and most shocking murders in America.

In a CBS interview Katie's dad, John Neance recalls, "She was my best friend. I've got best friends my age, but Katie was my very best friend. It was like somebody ripped our hearts out."

The ten-year-old's murder in February of 2005 and the circular investigation into three local suspects, each with dark histories of meth and child abuse, would make front page headlines from New York to San Diego.

The story would question the reality of the quiet Midwest of American myth. The idea of a friendly place where a family was safe from the raging crime in America's large cities got harder to picture as the relative security of small town life disappeared in a sickening lurch. Did such a place ever really exist?

"Katie was my best friend. It was like somebody ripped our hearts out."

- Jim Neance in an interview with CBS August 2005

When a fourth grader can't leave the house without being kidnapped, raped and murdered then this idyllic place must be regarded as a myth. A convenient myth invented and reached for the consensually blind. An imaginary place where those who are surrounded by crime and drugs in the city dream that little girls aren't raped to death by deranged meth heads out in the country.

Katie was killed when she was 10 years old. According to court documents Anthony Stockelman, a 38 year-old meth addict and father of two teenage boys. Stockelman kidnapped her bound her, raped her, then drowned her. Stockelman stuffed Katie's small body in a storm drain under a nameless county bridge. DNA and red carpet fibers from his mother's home would convict Stockelman, despite another jangled meth addict confessing to the FBI. Stockelman was sentenced to spend life in prison on a plea deal.

Nearly five years later, her face still haunts this country. It haunts America in the way that all murdered little girls faces haunt families: as another "unlucky" little girl who found her way into a small nondescript grave because the world around her was too distracted by a comfortable myth to notice something was wrong.

Notes:
Early in his sentence at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Indiana, Anthony Stockelman was unfortunate enough to encounter a distant cousin of Katie Collman, 22-year-old Jared Harris. Harris held a shank to Stockelman's throat while another inmate tattooed "Katie's Revenge" across on Stockleman's forehead.

References:
CBS, Girl's Murder Amplifies Drug War by Brian Dakss
FBI Operative, Katie Collman
Missing Kids, Katie Collman
Crime Blog, Katie’s Cousin Makes His Mark

Her Name Was Uma Singh

2009-02-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

Killed January 14th 2009, Uma Singh, 26, was a vocal critic of government corruption and questioned indigenous traditions such as caste discrimination in Nepal, a country that lies between India and China. Singh was butchered by a group of 15 men who burst into her apartment and murdered her in the southern city of Janakpur while her neighbors stood by helplessly. Her neighbors reported hearing the killers say: "This is for writing so much".

This killing follows the three-year disappearance of her father and brother who are long suspected to have been kidnapped and killed by Maoist paramilitaries.

Her death has triggered a series of public protests against the Maoist Government (The Maoist People's Liberation Army or PLA) which, after a decade-long bloody insurgency, now controls Nepal.

The Prime Minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda), after taking office warned a large crowd in Kathmandu the nation's capital that "- we will no longer tolerate criticism..." And recently, attacks on journalists in Nepal has become endemic. The federation released a year-end report, recording 284 incidents including three deaths and a kidnapping.

Four unnamed men are currently being held in connection with the brutal execution of Uma Singh. Additionally, on May 4th 2009, totalitarian ruler Prime Minister Prachanda resigned from office.

References:
CNN, Nepalese Journalist Killed
BBC, Thousands mourn Nepal journalist
Democracy for Nepal, Who Killed Journalist Uma Singh?
Myrepublica, The Murder of Uma Singh

Keep this safe, it is my whole life.

2009-01-15T09:23:00.000-08:00

In 1943, Charlotte Salomon went to the gas chamber in Auschwitz at the age of 26. She left behind a series of nearly 800 paintings known as "Leben? oder Theater?" (Life? Or Theater?) in the care of a family friend. She reportedly said, "Keep this safe, it is my whole life."

Her short life was characterized by the deaths of her mother and her grandmother by suicide and living in the shadow of the Third Reich. Her mother took her own life when Charlotte was nine. As a teenager, Charlotte studied painting at the Berlin Art Academy until Nazi policies ejected her due to "racial grounds" in 1938.

Charlotte fled to Nice in the South of France to live with her grandparents. After her grandmother's suicide on 1939, she and her grandfather were sent to Gurs, a political concentration camp in the French Pyrenees. They were released in 1941 due to her grandfather's declining health.

Over the next two years, beginning in 1941, Charlotte frantically painted 1,325 notebook-sized gouaches and chose 769 for the basis of a operetta called Life or Theater? depicting the trials and tragedies of her life.

One of 1300 paintings that Charlotte Salomon painted before her murder in Nazi ovens.

Charlotte's life would take a final bad turn as the French occupational government known as the Vichys hunted and gathered suspected Jews - shipping them to Nazi death camps.

Charlotte Salomon died five months pregnant with her new husband, Alexander Nagler, in Auschwitz in 1943. But thanks to the efforts of modern historians her work and life are not forgotten by generations to come.

References:
Wikipedia, Charlotte Salomon
Jewish Historical Muesuem of Amsterdam, Charlotte Salomon
Remember.org, Remember:The Holocaust Library
Jewish Theatre, Charlotte Salomon's Life? or Theater?
Jewish Theatre, To Paint her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era

A Tale of Two Sentences

2008-10-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from freejeffluers.org

In June 2001, 23 year-old activist Jeffrey "Free" Luers was sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in prison* for a single incident involving the burning of three Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) in Eugene, Oregon.

To make a statement about global warming, Jeff and his co-defendent, Craig 'Critter' Marshall, set fire to three Sport Utility Vehicles at a Eugene car dealership. Their stated purpose was to raise awareness about global warming and the role that SUVs play in that process. No one was hurt in this action nor was that the intent. An arson specialist at trial confirmed that the action did not pose any threat to people based on its size and distance from any fuel source.

Despite the fact that this action hurt no one, caused only $40,000 in damages and the cars were later resold, Jeff was sent to prison for a sentence considerably longer than those convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape in Oregon state.

Jeff is considered a political prisoner and continues to write and agitate for his release while imprisoned at Oregon State Penitentiary. His appeal was filed in January 2002 and oral arguments before the Oregon Court of Appeals were heard on November 30, 2005.

Over a year later (and six years into his sentence), on February 14^th of 2007, the Oregon Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Jeff's case will be reversed and remanded back to the Circuit Court for re-sentencing.

A year after their decision, a re-sentencing hearing finally took place on February 28^th of 2008 in Lane County Circuit Court. The courts subtracted 13 years from Jeff's sentence making his total sentence 10 years. He will be released in December 2009.

Please sign the petition for Jeff's release HERE.

Write to Jeff:
Jeffrey Luers #13797671
CRCI
9111 NE Sunderland Avenue
Portland, OR 97211-1708

Write the Judge:
Judge Lyle C. Velure (Retired) c/o
125 East 8th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97401
Telephone: (541) 682-4020

UPDATE: On December 16^th 2009 Jeff Luers was released after spending nearly 10 years in prison. He is re-adjusting to life on the outside and plans on continuing to participate in Ecological Defense efforts in the Pacific Northwest.

Notes:
* = In Oregon, Measure 11 Offenses provide for lengthy sentences for murder, kidnapping, and rape. Luers was given a total of three Measure 11 Sentences from a misdemeanor case of Criminal Damaging. Back to Article

Slim's Revenge: Short Time

2008-10-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

The now defunct Queensgate Prisoner Facility outside downtown Cincinnati.

Preface: Justice is an uncertain thing. The testimony of a single witness, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, can put a man behind bars his entire life whether a crime has taken place or not. The following is a true story.

I.
They came for me in the middle of the night.

Sitting up in my bed, I heard the low garbled squawk of a police radio echoing in the alleyway. Bodies rushed past my window and heavy hands slammed an unwanted announcement on the building's thin door.

Fearing nothing and trusting in my own innocence. I greeted the newest series of police with a half-asleep smirk at the door. This expression was wiped off my face when the hand cuffs came out.

"Are you Mr. XYZ?" one of the four officers croaked.

The croaker, he could have been a college wrestling champion (heavy weight class) and looked like he was sizing me up for some kind of bone crushing leg lock. There was no neck to this man. His wide jawline mushroomed directly into broad shoulders - like he spent his time off ripping phonebooks in half and benchpressing his patrol car.

Over the past few months, a jealous ex-girlfriend who lived in my neighborhood had sent a lot of cops over. Cops would show up at my building investigating an "anonymous" call reporting me as shop-lifter or I'd be walking down the street and get stopped and searched by a couple cops who'd recieved a report of a "suspicious person". Each time, the police would ask me a few questions and then leave me be. So, again, trusting in my innocence, I answered the officer in a clear confident manner.

"Yes." I began to say.

Before I had a chance to fully reply, I was pushed over the stairway railing - face first. No warning. All four them were suddenly inside the building and two of them were on top of me.

They held me down expecting an intense and bloody struggle. In fact, in shock, I did try to regain my balance from the bull-rush. As the cold metallic grip of the handcuffs bit into my wrists I quit fighting and they brought me to my bare feet.

"Get him some pants." The weight-lifter cop barked.

II.
I was thrown into the lower hell holes of the City jail. Eroded layers of concrete stank with sweat, bile and shit. There were frantic eyed men who remained impossibly still - men dressed in yellow or wrapped only in teflon re-enforced vests as they laid on their sides. These were the suiciders.

These men, facing Rape or Murder charges, stared into empty spaces behind re-enforced plexiglas as I, along with a small line of the night's arrests, filed past them.

Their craggy faces spoke what their mouths alone could not. There were decades of prison cells inscribed in those twisted blank expressions. The deputies sneered from the darkness of their control room as rows of prisoners shuffled meekly past them.

When we were finally placed in one of the larger "pods" not all the men locked in the enclosure remained silent or distant. Frantic dope fiends paced and screamed. Their cries reverberated weirdly off the irregularly shaped concrete walls and ceilings.

A clearly mentally ill young man loudly mumbled about his concern for his endangered "girlfriend" whose apartment, I learned, he'd broken into during an attempted rape.

Other men would warily drift past him out of an unlikely concern that comes with being locked up. When someone would come close to him his tone would change into a frenzied warning. Then, men would drift away from him, and he went back to a steady mumble.

Sometimes, when no one was near, he'd launch into an eruption anyway.

"Hey!!" he'd wail. "Hey!!! They're runnin' a train on my girl, man!" he'd garble. "Hey!!"

All of these mad outbursts came out of nowhere and right at the top of his lungs.

I found a space under a set of stairs that I could go back to sleep and looked down at my shoes. No shoe laces in them. They took my belt too. The pants the raiding team supplied me with where at least 2 sizes too large. Floppy shoes and cartoon baggy pants.

In the blink of an eye, with no questions asked other than my name, I became Bozo the Con.

III.
The next morning, I waited for hours, listening to an unending series of imaginative lies, in the "bullpen" at the Justice Center. I was waiting to be told exactly what I was accused of at my arraignment.

There must have been two hundred or more men packed together among the peeling paint, rancid body odor, and ancient sand-blasted concrete - waiting, telling ridiculous lies, and some still trying to sleep.

When it was my turn to be led before the judge, I was told that I was a dangerous stalker. My alleged victim, a woman who I had a short and meaningless fling with, had sworn out a Felony warrant in the middle of the night at the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office in fear for her life.

Until then, I had no idea what I was accused of doing. All I knew was that I had spent my whole adult life staying out of trouble and no one seemed to notice that fact during any phase of my trial proceedings.

The arraignment judge ordered an astronomical bond for me. I would not be going home anytime soon. My over-sized clown outfit was taken from me and I offically became an inmate of Hamilton County.

During the remainder of the criminal proceedings the judges I faced, looking for justice, looked down at me with the same irrational contempt. I had no criminal record or previous arrests. I was confident in my innocence because I'd done nothing. Yet, each time I faced a judge or lawyer I was treated as a dangerous criminal. There were no facts or evidence to prove it. I slowly realized that I was being fed into a rusty meat-grinder: a lumbering juggernaut of a legal system that was unable to tell an innocent man from a guilty one so it assumed guilt.

A criminal record was invented for me where there was none. The Prosecutor's Office insisted that I had a violent criminal record with a history of Trespassing and Domestic Violence that made me a danger to my victim. These lies could have easily been proved false with a press of a computer button* but were never contested by my Public Defender, a nervous-looking man named Terry Trantor.

The Prosecutors continued burying me in false charges: Menacing, Stalking, continuing to state that I had multiple priors. Again, no proof, prior arrests/convictions, reports or records of any kind backed this up. Not the slightest shred of evidence. Even a dismissed restraining order from a week prior wasn't enough to get anyone to listen to me.

I was facing a mountain of lies that highly educated and experienced professionals could not see through. A court appointed lawyer shook his head and told me to shut my mouth each time I tried to contest these lies.

I was caught in the meat-grinder up to my neck.

No one questioned the wisdom of my court ordered mental evaluations. During which, my social worker described the last 10 years of her life as "nightmarish" and told me that I should "just act crazy". No one questioned the $50,000 bond I was given on a Felony 5 (the lowest of felony charges in Ohio). This amount is usually reserved for Felony 2's like Felonious Assault or Robbery. I was never able to confront my accuser in court. The warrant was issued behind closed doors with no investigation. I was never able to offer any explanation in open court.

I was eventually convicted of two minor Misdemeanors and sentenced to one year. The proceedings happened so fast that the verdict left tread marks on my back.

I felt like a small helpless fly caught in giant jar with no air holes. The harder I fought to break through the glass, the less air and energy I had left to fight for my freedom. In the beginning, I was buzzing in shrinking manic circles. In the end, I had all my frozen fly legs clawing at the airless vacuum - and suffocated.

During the entire charade, the woman whose lies were costing me my life, glared angrily at me from the back of the small county court room. A withering gloat spread across her face that said: "I got you. I finally got you."

IV.
I fought for my life while I was inside.

As part of the plea deal I accepted, the Felonies were dropped in exchange for the maximum amount of jail time for two petty Misdemeanors. It was all my Public Defender could do for me. I signed off on a full year in County lock-up instead of three years in the State Pen and after the anger began to subside I appealed the entire ruling.

The thing was, I had to appeal all of it from a rotating series of jails. Contact with the outside world was iffy and distorted. The low-jack touchscreen computers in Queensgate used to request a meeting with any lawyer were almost always broken. My Commisary (used to buy stamps or phone cards) was being sent but was constantly being "misplaced". In the Justice Center, the telephones were off most of the time. In Butler County, where I was housed for several months, I was held in 24 hour lock-down. And this was the beginning of the bullshit.

What bullshit, a person might ask? Try and picture the dirtiest scum of the earth all gathered together. Forced into small cages. The types of evil, crack-jarred shitheads that are always agitated and always ready to hurt someone.

Imagine these same back stabbers, thieves, addicts and baby rapists are all trapped in the same dank jail together - stressed out and facing years in prison. This is the Hamilton County jail system on a good day.

In jail, they are free to be even worse monsters. What's the worst that can happen? They're already in Hell.

My time was easier time than most guy's time. My muscles and brains pulled me through it. The steady cons, both young and old, thought I reminded them of guys they pulled jobs with. In reality, I was a college educated artist, who was wrongfully incarcerated, that nevertheless was falling in the ranks with bank robbers and thugs in the Can.

Among the coping mechanisms that prisoners adapt is a dullness that acts as a sort of mental shield. That is, the ability to look at anything with a straight face: from your friend bleeding out of large gouges to his face five minutes after was telling you about how much he loved his kids or watching corpulent female C.O.' s having sex with inmates. You don't make a sound when bodies crash down from the top tier onto the table you were just playing cards on or a mixed kid that looks like something that crawled out of Freddy Krueger's nightmares is sweating you. It's all just flat.

In this situation, a prisoner forces himself into a numb acceptence of the situation. The prisoner stores the shock for a later date. The prisoner tells himself that the knots growing his chest will be undone at a TBA time and place. All the while, thinking that cattle must think the same thoughts as they are loaded into slaughterhouses with their cow eyes and faces blank as a new tombstone.

This kind of dulled emotional distance has two advantages for two type of bad situations.

For example, a new bunkie (the one you are on 23 hour lock down with) could have bed bugs running marathons around his hair while he insists that you agree with him that everyone on earth is both infected with AIDS and smokes crack cocaine.

You have to actually close your eyes around this person and pretend to sleep for a few hours a night. So, you learn not to bat an eye. A prisoner will find himself shaking his head and say "uh-huh". Sure, it sounds ok to me, pal.

This type of bad situation can be classified as "Bullshit That I Can Deal With". This is seperate from "Bullshit I Have to Worry About". This second type can mean a lot worse than patting your insane, lice covered bunkie on the head so you can pretend to sleep.

The Bullshit That You Had To Worry About usually happened on the basketball court or at Rec. Anywhere loosely supervised or overpopulated. Here, I didn't take the bullshit. I grew up around bullies starting at 10 years old - they were nothing new to me. I smashed a few of them when they came at me. I cracked a few ribs, traded black eyes, and broke some small bones in my hands doing it. This idiot kid took a swing at me as I passed him. Right out of the blue. I put him on his back. When I hit him, my fist hit him so hard that his head bounced off the concrete floor.

There was a second, when I had this kid pinned on the ground, where I held the power of life and death over his head - right in my fist. His life was to be decided only by the amount of pressure I brought down on his face.

Another time, I watched a man we'll call "Joe", turn his hand into strawberry Jello smashing it into a kid's face. The teenager stole ¢45 worth of snack cakes from Joe's cell. Up until then, I'd never seen that brutal of a mismatched fight where the smaller man won.

The teenager had at least 40 pounds and a foot on the 40-something Joe. But when the teenager emerged from Joe's cell, munching on a Lil' Debbie snake cake, Joe started screaming. Joe grabbed him with his left hand and hit the kid upwards of twenty times in the face with his right. He kept hitting him, and hitting him, and hitting him...

When the guards finally ordered Joe to the ground, his right hand looked like a doughy red hankerchief filled with split chicken bones. The kid had the sense to fall down. They took Joe out still screaming about his snake cakes.

In any correctional facility, it's Time itself that is the worst enemy. It's time that makes a man do something like what Joe did. Just a few months in prison doesn't make anyone want to do anything. A few years in prison is what makes a person fry eggs on their own burning scalps while singing upbeat gospel hymns. You may laugh but guys really have done this.

Cons looking at long, lonely years hate anything that smells like the outside world - i.e. "shortimers" - those who still may have a shot at the company of women and the ability to operate a refridgerator door...

So, in jail, there was always a fight. Or a shake down. Or a something.

The endless hours, that I spent there, got filled up with books and gesture drawing with these ridiculously tiny pencils. I learned more Spanish from a giant Mexican from Michocan before he got thrown in the Hole. I was forced to quit smoking so I ran laps. I filed a Motion to Dismiss and a Motion to have the "evidence" re-examined nearly every month I was there. Eventually, my Appeal got "fast-tracked" which meant, after I was released, my case would be heard again.

I didn't lose control, focus or hope. Not even in Hell.

V.
There was a lot of time to reflect on the situation.

I'd been a volunteer at a non-profit that worked with the homeless downtown in Cincinnati. That's where I met the woman who would spend the next five months stalking me before testifying, with crocodile tears streaming down her face, that I was the one who was stalking her.

Prior to the stalker, I'd just got out of the most serious relationship in my life. This happened right before we met. There was a lot of guilt and remorse left over from this relationship when this woman began following me around.

At first, there were indications that something was really wrong. After meeting up at a local festival and spending the night together she spent the following day walking in nervous circles around me while tittering and not acknowledging me. I dismissed it as the result of a drunken night - something I'd done before. But there was a disproportionate amount of fear and weirdness in her that reeked of something unavoidably worse yet to come.

Many months later, at a gathering of friends, she spent her time staring at me like she was watching my face melt off and Satan's horns erupting at my forehead. A cold sweat spread across her clammy forehead as the minutes turned to hours. To make things worse, it appeared that I was the only one at the house that was sober enough to see it.

This expression was a weird side effect of anti-psychotic medication. I recognized it from dealings with other deranged/sick people - it's the Grinning Scarecrow effect. But instead of grinning-and-bearing-it her face was cracking open with this ludicrous sneer. I began to distance myself from her, after some confusion, right around this point.

At the time (August 2006) I lived in a rickety one room studio apartment in a old building in a crack infested part of the city. This woman only lived two blocks from this building. My neighbors were pretty oblivious to the daily crack deals and prostitutes. When this woman showed up, not to visit but to stand on the corner for hours with an alternating series of drug buddies and "moral" supporters, no one really even batted an eye.

This woman was clearly a lunatic. Although I'd suspected it, she was mentally ill and to top it all off a prostitute who worked in my neighborhood. Eventually, she made a point of turning tricks right in front of my building. She'd take guys, two at a time, into a darkened alley that building sits in. If disturbed, she'd make hasty escapes through a run-down commercial property only to return within hours to hide behind a rickety fence and scream at or alternately watch my building.

She wanted everyone on my block to know that she was a maniac and this was all my fault.

Again, none of this was invisible or even hard to notice. What allowed it to continue was a neighborhood so desensitized by decades of dealing with crackheads that it just kind of shrugged it's collective shoulders and said: "I'm glad it ain't me." When the cops would show up she'd melt back into the darkness like a rat into a open sewer grate.

To top it all off, she'd roam around my building and then managed to briefly make "friends" with a guy that lived inside of my building. She was like a case of walking, talking hemorroids. Hemmoroids that were threatening to bloodily erupt. She would not go away. She latched onto me so much that she finally had to do something to hide the last five months of her life - improbably enough, filing false charges against me - accusing me of stalking her w/out an arrest, piece of evidence or even a police report to back it up.

This was not only condoned by her friends and co-workers but they would later refuse to testify to her activities. Instead, they withdrew like frightened ostriches into bitter denials that it ever happened. My letters from prison to these former friends begging them to refute these charges went unanswered.

VI.
Finally, after I'd watched a year go by the one window in the facility, located 30 feet above my head (and fenced in), I neared my release date. Two counties, eight motions, twelve or more cells and court appearances, 900 putrid meals, and thousands of prisoners later I was freed.

When they returned my shoes to me at the Property Window they smelled like someone wore them for a few weeks then took a king-size dump in them. I put them on anyway.

Outside, on the snowy steps of the jail downtown, I smoked a menthol cigarette. It was a "100" - the longer variety of cigarette - I bummed it from a guy who just did 30 days and I nearly passed out.

"How long where you in the County?" the thin, moustached man asked me.

"11 months."

He couldn't believe it either. I didn't tell him that they wanted 3 years for my "first offense". Him and the others that were released in that dark morning made their individual ways from the colossal county jail. Probably to return soon.

They disappeared in dark alleys or faded around corners. I sat in front of the jail finishing the cigarette. Head spinning a little bit as the nicotine entered my bloodstream like a freight train.

With nowhere within 100 miles to sleep I got wandered to the Greyhound station and took the bus home to Indy. When I got back there, Christmas was largely me trying to convince my family I hadn't suddenly become a dangerous criminal. This part could have over gone over easier.

After a few days in Indiana, my family decided that I was either only Mildly Dangerous (the neurotic kind as in Al Bundy) or that if I truly was Seriously Dangerous that I could at least cover it up well enough to function properly (the sociopathic type as in Ted Bundy).

In late winter, a few weeks later, I returned to Cincinnati. I got my life back, but not all at once. One thing was clear, I wasn't going to waste my freedom on an empty vengeance on the psychotic woman who had tried to send me to prison for dating her. Or not dating her? I still have no idea what I had done to her.

The thing was - I didn't even really hate her. She was a sad, confused person. In the weeks months before she made up the hard to swallow lies that cost me 11 months of my life I watched her retreat into herself - inch by inch. When she drug me into this case, it was just her shaky word against mine - a 30 year old man with no criminal record.

Since I wasn't allowed to speak out during my first case I still felt I had a lot to say. But due to a 5-year restraining order between us - she was the last person that was going to speak to. I wanted to confront her with what she had done to me, and my family, but this was illegal.

This deeply frustrating experience with the justice system had stolen enough time from me. I wasn't going to let it take one more hour from me by doing something stupid and retaliatory.

After my new trial, no matter what the verdict was this time around, I decided that I had to let this one go.

So, I very gradually put my life back together. I waited. I worked. I volunteered, joined a dozen clubs from regional film groups to the city's chess club. I drank in nearly every bar that served a decent cheese burger in the Tri-State. I shamelessly chased new women around who had absolutely no interest in dating me - smiling as they turned me down for dinner, dances and phone numbers.

Then, nearly one and half years after the cold night that my freedom was taken from me - my wrongful conviction was thrown out. I pled guilty to "Disorderly Conduct" and eventually this too was removed from my record - like it never happened...

Only one man, a court appointed Appeals lawyer, by the name of Mr. Robert Hastings, believed that I could possibly be innocent. This was long after I had been wrongfully convicted. Without his help and the help of the Public Defender's Office in the form of the diligence of Mr. Thomas Rolfes - I would've had to live with being wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for a crime I never committed.

Due to Hastings and Rolfes, the original Menacing by Stalking charge, after being reversed by an apellate commitee, was thrown out by the exact same judge, Judge Lisa Allen, who had convicted and sentenced me in 2007 by saying "You scare me, Mr. XYZ."

Over a full year later there was still no evidence why. Even the falsified emails, uncorraborated claims against me and lack of any criminal record were red flags that the entire justice systems chose to ignore. I was not an insane killer poised for an imminent attack but an innocent man caught up in the thinnest of lies by a bitter, mentally ill ex-girlfriend.

After my exoneration, a lot of uncomfortable questions where finally being asked. No answers were being found. The woman whose lies had stolen 11 months of my life was being disregarded by the city Prosecutor's Office even as she was trying to bring up new charges against me early in 2008.

Apparently she was unafraid to play the role of local crazy person as she followed me around my neighborhood screaming "criminal!" in 2009. She'd trail me into bars and insist to the patronage that I was following her. Places I'd been to for years.

It's hard to believe that all of these hardships were over the false accusations from a woman I barely knew or dated. It still seems so petty and trivial that she kept crying wolf while many other people are robbed, beaten, and victimized by real criminals in the exact same neighborhood everyday.

For all her wild allegations of imminent danger - I've never lifted a finger to harm her or threatened to do so either before or after she filed the charges. To date, nothing violent or threatening has ever happened to her. Nothing.

Seeking an unjust revenge, by saying she was a victim of a fictious crime, meant losing her job at the non-profit where we met. Losing the hard earned respect of her peers in a community of artists and musicians came next.

No matter how badly things had gone, the fact was I was a free man and in the clear again. My false accuser, terminated the same month I was released from jail, was no longer in a position to accuse other volunteers of similar crimes.

I began working successfully within a Fortune 500 company and rebuilding my reputation in the city. After working 60 hour weeks for months I saved up enough bread for a new apartment and new car (my previous clunker had been stolen while I was locked up).

Through the endless soul searching, lies, trials and jails I actually felt a little closer to my family. Although I was always regarded as an unclassifiable retard - I found myself elevated to the even more awkward position of well-meaning retard. I began looking forward to the next leg of my legal battle to get my record completely cleared.

In late 2009, a year after the reversal of my conviction, the false charges of Menacing by Stalking and Disorderly Conduct were permanently removed from my record by the same judge who had originally convicted me.

For all the crazy lies, circular injustice and months spent in jail I found my life was, for the most part, better than ever before. After nearly three years of fighting I had the small victory of knowing that I had fought everything the city could throw at me and that Slim's revenge had finally backfired.

Epilogue: Moral? Holy crap, Mean Gene. Is there one here? Me and you - we'll call it Perseverance. Perseverance, in the face of mindless bureaucracy fueled by the self-destructive hatred of a pathetic woman.

I still consider myself lucky to have only have had to do 336 days out of the three years or more that I was originally facing. Even luckier to have these trumped up charges off my record. I know of at least two (see below) different cases in the US where men spent 20 or more years in prison because of injustice based on the "word" of a deranged woman. This kind of justice is unforgivable because it happens so often to so many.

Notes:
* = All criminal records are available on-line in Cincinnati, thanks to a series of progressive minded Clerks of the Court. The public can easily access this information at Court Clerk.org.

[0] = Gary Reese spent nearly 20 years in Ohio prisons for a Rape he never committed until he was freed by DNA. To this day his false accuser still insists he did it. Gary Reese now works in downtown Cincinnati getting men with felony convictions steady work at Superjobs.

[1] = Dwayne Allen Dail was falsely imprisoned and sentenced to two life sentences plus 18 years in North Carolina for a alleged rape of a 12 year old girl. At one point, prosecutors offered Dail a plea of no contest to charges of taking "indecent liberties with a minor" and receive only three years probation in return. He refused stating in no uncertain terms that he was innocent. After nearly twenty years in maximum security prisons he was freed by DNA evidence in August of 2007.

[2] = My own case, including it's Reversal and Expungement from my record, State vs Schmitt 07/CRB/2706 is a matter of public record.

Death in Gaza (2006)

2008-10-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

British journalist James Miller is ruthlessly killed while filming a documentary in Palestine with 60 Minutes foreign correspondent Lara Logan. Miller himself was killed as his unarmed team approached an Israeli night patrol waving a white flag. Guerilla tactics, like this, are often employed by Muslim fundamentalists in the war zone Miller and Logan were filming in. Miller's fatal mistake was in not realizing the severity of the situation until it was far too late.

References:
James Miller at Common Dreams
The Guardian, Family of shot journalist accuse Israel

Dresden 1945

2008-10-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

East German Civilian and Defense personnel enjoy being stacked into a charred pile after an British firebombing of the city in early 1945.