mnemosyne

b. medusa 10 December 2007 8:07:35 am

today is International Human Rights day. so let’s begin shall we…

EDIT: just found this after completing the post:

Seven Year Old Alexis Goggins Shot Six Times Protecting Her Mother

A 7-year-old-girl is being hailed as an “angel from heaven” and a hero for jumping in front of an enraged gunman, who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother’s life.

Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, is in stable condition at Children’s Hospital in Detroit recovering from gunshot wounds to the eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm.

“She is an angel from heaven,” said Aisha Ford, a family friend for 15 years who also was caught up in the evening of terror.

The girl’s mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her bicep by a former boyfriend, who police said was trying to kill Parker. The gunman was disarmed by police and arrested at the scene of the shooting, a Detroit gas station. Police identified him as Calvin Tillie, 29, a four-time convicted felon whom Parker had dated for six months.
[...]
Ford said she dialed 911 on her cell phone as she walked into the station.“The first operator clicked off and I dialed again and told that operator a guy with a gun was holding me hostage with a mother and baby and threatening to kill us. I told her the name of the gas station and then she said they didn’t have a unit to send.”Ford said she paid for $5 of gas and slowly returned to the vehicle, stalling for time as she handed Tillie the change. She said she kept stopping and starting the pump, hoping the police would show up.“I told him I needed more gas and took money out of my purse and went back into the station,” she said. The attendant, Mohammad Alghazali, 30, said he noticed Ford was crying and she told him what was happening. He called 911 as he heard shots coming from the vehicle.
[…]
Alghazali said a police car on a street nearby arrived in less than a minute after his call.

an update on her condition can be read here. a fund has been set up for Alexis, checks should be made out to the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund & sent to the following address:

Campbell Elementary School
c/o Alexis Goggins Hero Fund
2301 E Alexandrine St
Detroit, MI 48207

for information, call (313) 494-2052

ADDITIONAL INFO (courtesy of all about race): Alexis is a special needs child, due to a massive stroke she suffered as an infant. she walks with a limp & has a weak left eye. her right eye was just removed.

Alexis, who walks with a limp, slipped momentarily on the icy sidewalk and as she helped the girl up, she saw the man and recognized him as Tillie. He was holding a gun.
[...]
Before Tillie could fire again, Alexis jumped over the seat between her mother and the gunman and begged him not to shoot her mother.

The police report said Tillie “without hesitation” pumped six shots into the child.

G*TD*MN M*THAF*CKIN SORRY *SS PIECE OF SH*T!!!!!

(i don’t usually bleep myself here, but i don’t want to be excessively disrespectful to my readers. all 2 of them.)

also contact the msm & ask them why they’ve ignored this story.

CNN
Phone: 404-827-1500

Fox News Channel
Phone: 212-301-3000

ABC News
Phone: 212-456-7777

CBS News
Phone: 212-975-4321

NBC
Phone: 212-664-4444

MSNBC
Phone: 201-583-5000

Newsweek
Phone: 212-445-4000

Associated Press
Phone: 212-621-1500

Reuters
Phone: 646-223-4000

United Press International
Phone: 202 -898-8000

i don’t have to tell you why this is a human rights (as well as police brutality) issue do i?

i can’t believe i missed this story until now. much respect & gratitude to Sylvia, Nez, Carmen D., Ann & all other bloggers covering this.

• activism , assholes , capitalism run amok , community , disability , domestic abuse , feminism , gender , history , imperialism , infrastructure , networking , oppression , organizing , police brutality , politricks , poverty , privilege , racism , rape , sexism , violence , war , war is a racket
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b. medusa 4 November 2007 1:32:39 am

“they always tell you what they’re gonna do before they do it.”

a thought that has been shared more than once by some of my friends & i. not necessarily while we were passing joints either. they being the conspiratorial they. or them, take your pick. sounds delusionally paranoid doesn’t it? but its a thought that runs through my head when i watch or read more or less far-fetched fiction (terminator, matrix, universal soldier, etc). then i console my paranoid ideas with the thought, “nah, even they couldn’t be that
stupid.”

then i see shit like this:

…Leading the field is the USA, of course, with 5,000 robots deployed in Iraq alone, everything from a nine-pound Dragon Runner, a “throwbot” that can be tossed over a wall, out a three-story window or up a flight of stairs, to the Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS), armed with an M249 rifle. All these systems are still controlled by a human, but that will soon change. Noel Sharkey wrote recently in The Guardian:

[F]ully autonomous robots that make their own decisions about lethality are high on the US military agenda. The US National Research Council advises “aggressively exploiting the considerable warfighting benefits offered by autonomous vehicles.” They are cheap to manufacture, require less personnel and, according to the navy, perform better in complex missions. One battlefield soldier could start a large-scale robot attack in the air and on the ground.

This is dangerous new territory for warfare, yet there are no new ethical codes or guidelines in place. I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying.

The Pentagon is taking its cue from a 1995 dystopian movie, Screamers, which features a fighting robot called Autonomous Mobile Sword…

Robot Nation by Linh Dinh
Dissident Voice/ November 3rd, 2007

delusionally paranoid, eh?

• assholes , militarism , violence , war , weaponization
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b. medusa 3 November 2007 9:26:22 pm

you prolly think life is precious, dontcha? all life. and in time of disaster, if it is humanly possible to rescue everyone, then everyone should be rescued. well, prepare to be disabused of that quaint notion:

Rapture rescue will airlift you to safety. If you can afford it

The booming business of privatised disaster services in the US goes against the principle that every life is of equal value

I used to worry that the US was in the grip of extremists who sincerely believed the Apocalypse was coming and that they and their friends would be airlifted to heavenly safety. I have since reconsidered. The country is indeed in the grip of extremists who are determined to act out the biblical climax – the saving of the chosen and the burning of the masses – but without any divine intervention. Heaven can wait. Thanks to the booming business of privatised disaster services, we’re getting the Rapture right here on earth.

Just look at what is happening in southern California. Even as wildfires devoured whole swaths of the region, some homes in the heart of the inferno were left intact, as if saved by a higher power. But it wasn’t the hand of God; in several cases it was the handiwork of Firebreak Spray Systems. Firebreak is a special service offered to customers of insurance giant American International Group – but only if they happen to live in the wealthiest zip codes in the country. Members of the company’s Private Client Group pay an average of $19,000 to have their homes sprayed with fire retardant. During the fires, the “mobile units”, racing around in firetrucks, even extinguished fires for their clients.

[...]

And your home alone. “There were a few instances,” one of the private firefighters told Bloomberg News, “where we were spraying and the neighbour’s house went up like a candle.” With public fire departments cut to the bone, gone are the days of rapid response, when everyone was entitled to equal protection. Now, increasingly intense natural disasters will be met with the new model: Rapture response.

During last year’s hurricane season, Florida homeowners were offered similarly high-priced salvation by HelpJet, a travel agency launched with promises to turn “a hurricane evacuation into a jet-setter vacation”. For an annual fee, a company concierge takes care of everything: transport to the air terminal, luxurious travel, bookings at five-star resorts. Most of all, HelpJet is an escape hatch from the kind of government failure on display during Katrina. “No standing in lines, no hassle with crowds, just a first-class experience.”

Naomi Klein
Saturday November 3, 2007
The Guardian

read the full article
(i thought the Titanic was a better metaphor than the Rapture, but that’s just me – b. medusa)

what did Michael Moore say about our socialized rescue services in Sicko? hmm, i guess that was prior to Rescue Version 2.0.

by now everyone knows about the ongoing tragedy of Katrina (unless you’ve living in a cave for the last 2 years). you may not be aware of the treatment that was accorded to native americans or those assumed to be undocumented immigrants during the California fires. pay attention, because if you think paid rescue will allow “the little people”* to get in the way of providing the rich w/ “a first-class experience”, think again.

* that’s the rest of us, no matter how much better you think you are than “those people”

• assholes , capitalism run amok , class war , hierarchy , infrastructure , poc , poverty , privatization
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b. medusa 23 August 2007 12:02:39 pm

you know its election year in b’more. the mayor showing up in previously unseen places (like my neighborhood), info packets hanging on your front door, inserts in the water bill…

speaking of which: the last bill contained an insert extolling the virtues of b’more’s water. “major improvements to facility X”, upgrades to plants Y & Z”, the entire 2nd & 3rd page devoted to charts outlining how uncontaminated the water supposedly is (i say supposedly because the chart was gobbledy-gook to me), & an endorsement from a local rag giving b’more’s water an “A” – “baltimore’s water is among the very, VERY best.” (their emphasis, not mine).

so according to all that i shouldn’t even need this on my tap right? ah, but a look @ the actual filter reveals a different story. to be fair though, the report didn’t say anything about rust. too bad i can’t afford filters for the shower head.

another take on the rust situation. no that’s not highly diluted piss. y’all don’t even want to know how it looked before i put bleach tablets in the tank.

still trying to ascertain what department is responsible. given the age of the pipes running beneath b’more (& every other city on the east coast), i think its gonna be awhile before this gets resolved. infrastructure anyone?

off-topic: i just noticed that traffic has been a non-issue this year during baseball games. of course, if its been anywhere nearthis bad all season, i understand why. sounds like bad karma to me.

• assholes , infrastructure , politricks , poverty , water
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b. medusa 8 June 2007 3:44:36 pm

me-onlyism, nationalism, us-onlyism, piece-of-the-rotten-ass-pieism.

ok, myopia in general.

that’s all (for now).
EDIT: you can read us-onlyism as either the pronoun or the nation state. or both.

• assholes , groupthink
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b. medusa 29 May 2007 12:03:23 pm

U.S. High-Speed Internet Is Slow
From Canada IFP, May 23, 2007

According to statistics provided by CWA 80 percent of households in Japan can connect to a fiber network at a speed of 100 megabits per second. This is 30 times the average speed of a US cable modem or DSL connection, at roughly the same cost (emphasis mine – b. medusa).

Cohen pointed out that the average upload speed was in the US was only 371 kilobits per second, not nearly enough to send quality medical information over the Internet. full article

feeling ganked yet? wait, there’s more:

The FCC is on the verge of turning over a large chunk of the public airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed Internet access for more than 96 percent of connected American homes…Don’t let the FCC give away our wireless Internet to these price-gouging giants. The FCC deadline is fast approaching. Act now:

Tell the FCC: Use Our Airwaves for the Public Good

do it!

• activism , assholes , internet , media
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b. medusa 16 May 2007 2:29:17 am

and being the irreverent bitch that i am, i’d have no problem saying, “ding, dong, the witch is dead!”

if it didn’t denigrate witches.

• assholes
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b. medusa 8 May 2007 5:35:30 pm

“can you relate? we livin’ in a police state.” Dead Prez

Parents who fight back against racial injustice often become targets for local police. Last month, 7-year-old Gerard Mungo, Jr. was arrested in East Baltimore for sitting on a motorized dirt bike in front of his home, with the engine off….Less than two weeks later, Gerard’s mom, Lakisa Dinkins, was arrested under dubious circumstances. Gerard told reporters as he waited for her release, “They took my mama because I was on TV.” The boy is too young to understand that his mother was targeted for defending his rights. She had the audacity to ask for the arresting officer’s supervisor to approve of the arrest (he did). And just hours before her own arrest, 100 activists had staged a protest against the boy’s arrest outside her home. That same afternoon, police broke down the door of Dinkins’ sister’s home, allegedly searching for “a drug suspect.” No drugs were found, but police nevertheless gathered all 11 family members into the living room for further interrogation. Apparently, one of the officers recognized Gerard’s mother. She heard him tell his supervisor ‘I have the woman whose 7-year-old was arrested for sitting on the bike,’” she said. “Then they arrested me.”

Dinkins was not charged with a crime. Such tactics are designed to intimate activists, yet they seem to have had the opposite effect in this case. – from ‘The Rights of Children in America’ by Sharon Smith, Counterpunch, April 25, 2007

i’ve been meaning to post about this, because it shocked me & i’m not easily shocked by the actions of the police anymore. this little boy was handcuffed, had mug shots taken & was questioned. i understand that dirt bikes are illegal in baltimore city, god knows i get sick of hearing, seeing & watching out so as not to hit them. i have a scooter that i ride for short trips/small errands to save putting gas in the car, & i hate the thought i might be regarded as a menace to society like the dirt bikers. but this was a 7-year-old CHILD, under no circumstances are the actions the police took excusable behavior to me.

• assholes , oppression , poverty
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