America's Humane Treatment of Detainees

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Reaffirming America's Commitment to Humane Treatment of Detainees

Press Statement Hillary Rodham Clinton Secretary of State Washington, DC March 7, 2011

Today the Obama Administration is taking two important steps regarding Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 that reaffirm the determination of the United States to treat humanely all detainees in our custody and to advance America's long-standing leadership in setting and encouraging compliance with global legal standards for the conduct of armed conflict.

These steps are part of our broader commitment to the goals President Obama laid out in his three Executive Orders of January 22, 2009 and his speech at the National Archives: to close Guantanamo consistent with our values, by prosecuting Guantanamo detainees where possible, by transferring them abroad when it can be safely done, and by asserting clear, defensible and lawful standards for those Guantanamo detainees who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but still pose a threat to the security of the United States. The State Department has worked closely with the Defense Department to transfer 67 Guantanamo detainees to third countries, and those determined efforts continue daily.

Today we are informing the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that we intend to seek, as soon as practicable, Senate advice and consent to ratification of the Additional Protocol II to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which elaborates upon safeguards provided in Common Article 3 and includes more detailed standards regarding fair treatment and fair trial.

Ratifying Protocol II will strengthen our national security and advance our interests and values. It is fully consistent with current military practice and would improve America's ability to maintain strong coalition cooperation in ongoing and future operations, as 165 other countries have now ratified the treaty.

The second step we are taking is to declare that as of today, the United States, out of a sense of legal obligation, will adhere to the set of norms in Article 75 of Protocol I in international armed conflicts. Article 75 sets forth humane treatment and fair trial safeguards for certain persons detained by opposing forces in international armed conflict and was praised by President Reagan's Joint Chiefs of Staff as "militarily advantageous insofar as it might make mistreatment of captured U.S. military personnel more difficult to justify in future conflicts."

These steps we take today are not about who our enemies are, but about who we are: a nation committed to providing all detainees in our custody with humane treatment. We are reaffirming that the United States abides by the rule of law in the conduct of armed conflicts and remains committed to the development and maintenance of humanitarian protections in those conflicts.

PRN: 2011/343 Read more at www.state.gov

 

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Sex Addiction

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Monday’s Lesson – Sex Addiction

What does the Bible say about sex as a source of enjoyment and strengthening marriage relationships? Prov. 5:18, 19; 1 Cor. 7:2–5.

Sex is one of the many enjoyable gifts that God has granted to men and women. God designed it not only for procreation but also to be a source of joy, closeness, and unity—but only in the context of marriage between one man and one woman (Gen. 1:27, 28; 1 Cor. 7:2). When taken away from this God-ordained framework and purpose, the gift becomes sin—sin often with devastating consequences(see 1 Cor. 6:18, 19). God alone knows the extent of havoc that sexual immorality has brought to the human family.

Sex is a very strong drive and thus readily open to abuse. It easily can become an absorbing obsession, one that’s very difficult to control. Worse, the more one indulges in it, the more and more sex one needs in order to reach the level of satisfaction attained earlier.

Prostitution and adultery are traditional paths into sexual immorality and addiction (see Prov. 5:3–14, 9:13–18). In addition, other forms of sex addiction are available today, such as pornography and cybersex. Internet pornography has created a staggering problem because, with a few mere clicks of a mouse, it can put the most vile and degrading acts into our homes and offices. These practices are highly capable of creating addiction, compulsion, and deterioration of marriage and family ties. It’s impossible to calculate the damage, for instance, that adultery has created in the world.

Sexual immorality is easy to start, and those who have not fallen into its trap will do well in keeping far from it. How crucial that when confronted with sexual temptations outside the sacred bonds of marriage, each person should act as Joseph did (see Gen. 39:7–12).

God is willing to grant full pardon and freedom to anyone trapped in sex addictions. Submission to Him is crucial (James 4:7). But the addiction mechanism is so intricate that professional help may be needed. Support groups that incorporate God as the ultimate source of help and include specialized skills to treat the problem can be of great benefit, if available.

How can you help someone who, though guilty of sin in this area, is seeking to know God’s forgiveness and healing?Suppose you are struggling here. How can you know that all hope is not lost, just as long as you don’t lose hope yourself? Jesus forgives—and heals.

Anyone who is struggling with sexual addiction  needs to be displayed unconditional love. We must support people who are struggling and want to change and not tear them down. We have all struggled with something and it is only by the grace of God that we are able to be victorious.

Prayer: Father we thank you for all that you have done. I pray that you will help those who are dealing with sexual addictions please grant them deliverance. Father we know that you have the power to help us overcome any difficulty. Thank you in Jesus name amen. Read more at www.quickandpowerful.org

 

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Amtrak Chief Targets TSA For Groping

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Amtrak Chief Targets TSA For Conducting “Illegal” Grope Downs

Amtrak police chief bars Transportation Security Administration from some security operations

Don Phillips Trains Magazine Monday, March 7, 2011

WASHINGTON — In late February, the Transportation Security Administration took over the Amtrak station in Savannah, Ga., and thoroughly searched every person who entered. None of the passengers got into trouble, but the TSA certainly did — big time.

Amtrak Police Chief John O’Connor said he first thought a blog posting about the incident was a joke. When he discovered that the TSA’s VIPR team did at least some of what the blog said, he was livid. He ordered the VIPR teams off Amtrak property, at least until a firm agreement can be drawn up to prevent the TSA from taking actions that the chief said were illegal and clearly contrary to Amtrak policy.

“When I saw it, I didn’t believe it was real,” O’Connor said. When it developed that the posting on an anti-TSA blog was not a joke, “I hit the ceiling.”

O’Connor said the TSA VIPR teams have no right to do more than what Amtrak police do occasionally, which has produced few if any protests and which O’Connor said is clearly within the law and the Constitution. More than a thousand times, Amtrak teams (sometimes including VIPR) have performed security screenings at Amtrak stations. These screenings are only occasional and random, and inspect the bags of only about one in 10 passengers. There is no wanding of passengers and no sterile area. O’Connor said the TSA violated every one of these rules.

A posting in late February to the Transportation Security Administration’s blog, which serves as a public relations tool of the TSA, tried to explain why TSA agents took over the Amtrak station in Savannah. But O’Connor said the “facts” as posted on the TSA blog were incorrect. He said the blog indicated that Amtrak had approved of the operation, but it had not. He called the TSA’s posting on blog.tsa.gov “inaccurate and insensitive.” As of the time this story was filed, the same posting remained on the blog.

Full story here. Read more at www.prisonplanet.com

 

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Man stole, sold grandmother's van

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Police: Man stole, sold grandmother's van

P.J. REILLY, Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era

Police allege a Lancaster man stole his grandmother's van and sold it to a salvage yard. Justin Breniser, 20, whose last known address was 324 Beaver St., was charged last week with theft of a motor vehicle, receiving stolen property and burglary. According to Manor Township police, a township resident on Feb. 14 reported her 1997 Dodge Caravan had been stolen overnight from in front of her apartment in the 200 block of Stonemill Road. Breniser is the woman's grandson. About a week after the van was stolen, police said, it was located at a salvage yard in York County. Police allege Breniser sold it to the yard after stealing it. He was taken into custody on a bench warrant for violating the terms of his probation stemming from a 2010 guilty plea for forging checks. He is being held in Lancaster County Prison. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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Officer suspended recording conversation

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West York officer suspended, accused of recording conversation

AMANDA DOLASINSKI The York Dispatch

A West York Police officer has been suspended without pay after telling her supervisor about a wiretap she made, West York Police Chief Justin Seibel said.

The officer, Bridgette Wilson, is charged with interception or use of wire and electronic communications. She was arraigned and released on her own recognizance.

Pennsylvania law states recordings of communications cannot be made without the consent of the other party. It is a third-degree felony.

On Jan. 5, Wilson approached Seibel and played an audio recording she said she made of a conversation between herself and another person. Seibel advised her to keep the recording in a safe place, according to court documents. Seibel said he then began an investigation.

Wilson has been a police officer with the West York department since 2008. Prior to that, she had been a police officer with three other departments in central Pennsylvania, Seibel said.

In February, Seibel talked with Wilson's attorney, Ronald Gross, who acknowledged he also had heard the recording, according to charging documents.

Officers obtained a search warrant for Wilson's Chevrolet Trailblazer and recovered an RCA digital voice recorder containing the recorded conversation from the center console on Friday, charging documents state.

Seibel listened to the recording to confirm it was the same one he had heard in January. He talked to the other individual on the tape, who said she had not given consent to be recorded, charging documents state.

Prior to West York, Wilson was employed at Susquehanna Township Police Department in Dauphin County and the Lancaster City Police Department and as a sheriff's deputy in York County.

District Judge Walter Groom will hear the preliminary hearing, for which a date has not yet been set.

-- Reach Amanda Dolasinski at 505-

5434 or adolasinski@yorkdispatch.com. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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Car salesman charged with homicide

Car salesman charged in crash that killed York prison worker

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Car salesman charged in crash that killed York prison worker

THE YORK DISPATCH

A Lancaster County car salesman is charged with homicide by vehicle for allegedly causing the death of a York County Prison employee during a test drive in December, according to the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era.

Michael D. Hershey, 48, of Landisville, Lancaster County, had been drinking and had marijuana in his system on Dec. 30 when he got behind the wheel of a sports car so he could show two customers "how it's done," according to his arrest affidavit.

Hershey accelerated to an estimated 80 mph to 100 mph, swerved to miss a truck and crashed, killing a customer who was in the back seat of the car, the newspaper reported.

Jon Christian Jensen, 48, of Leola, died after being thrown from the car on South Colebrook Road in East Hempfield Township, police said. A nurse, he was the administrator of health services at York County Prison, according to the newspaper.

Jensen's son, Tyler Jensen, 20, a college student from Durango, Colo., was injured in the crash, as was Hershey.

Hershey, who worked for Imports of Lancaster County in East Petersburg, also was charged with driving under the influence of a controlled substance, reckless endangerment and driving at an unsafe speed, according to documents filed Thursday. The car salesman has an arrest record that includes numerous driving violations and two drunken-driving arrests, the Intelligencer/New Era reported. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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No crime, but arrest and strip searched

Amplify’d from www.infowars.com

No Crime, but an Arrest and Two Strip-Searches

Adam Liptak NY Times March 7, 2011

Albert W. Florence believes that black men who drive nice cars in New Jersey run a risk of being questioned by the police. For that reason, he kept handy a 2003 document showing he had paid a court-imposed fine stemming from a traffic offense, just in case.

It did not seem to help.

In March 2005, Mr. Florence was in the passenger seat of his BMW when a state trooper pulled it over for speeding. His wife, April, was driving. His 4-year-old son, Shamar, was in the back.

The trooper ran a records search, and he found an outstanding warrant based on the supposedly unpaid fine. Mr. Florence showed the trooper the document, but he was arrested anyway.

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Why do police need a tank?

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Why do America’s police need an armored tank? Read more at www.infowars.com

Amplify’d from jalopnik.com

Justin Hyde Jalopnik March , 2011

America’s most in-demand police vehicle is a ten-officer 16,000-pound armored tank that takes bullets like Superman and drives 80 mph. The federal government buys dozens each year for local police departments. Do America’s local police need tanks?

Every day, America produces a fresh batch of barricaded gunmen, some of whom want to lure police into a shootout. Roughly 50 police officers are killed every year, most in shootings, and many during arrests or ambushes.

Which is where the Lenco BearCat G3 rolls in.

“If somebody looks out and sees a Ford Crown Victoria sitting out there, they may not take you very seriously,” Warren County, Va., Sheriff Daniel T. McEathron told a local newspaper in October, “but if they look out the window and see this thing sitting there, they’re going to know you’re serious.”

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Tampering with 9/11 Records Revealed

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Tampering with 9/11 Flight Records Revealed

Dean Hartwell Op-Ed News March 7, 2011

The late Gerard Holmgren did those of us who want the truth about 9/11 a major favor by uncovering the tampering of official records about the flights of 9/11. Here is the story and why it is important.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) originally did not show American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 as having been scheduled or having taken off on September 11, 2001.

The late researcher Gerard Holmgren identified this fact and made it public on November 13, 2003.

By 2004, the BTS records showed something completely different about these flights. The new explanation said the following:

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Father beat girl to death

Amplify’d from hosted.ap.org

Police say father beat Florida girl to death

By KELLI KENNEDY

Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) -- A 10-year-old Florida girl and her twin brother sometimes spent days at a time locked in a bathroom, their hands and feet bound, enduring their parents' abuse before the girl's father punched and beat her to death, police said Monday.

Her death came the day after an investigator with the Florida Department of Children and Families visited the home and concluded that the children were not in immediate danger, even though she didn't know where they were.

Authorities charged the girl's parents with her death, the culmination of what they called months of abuse and torture. Police said Jorge Barahona ended that on Feb. 11 when he grabbed Nubia from the bathroom and beat her "while she screamed and cried until she was dead." His wife, Carmen, is accused of encouraging her husband's abuse and abusing the children herself, according to the arrest warrant.

Both have been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and child neglect in the girl's death. Her decomposing body was found on Valentine's Day, stuffed in plastic bags in the back of her father's truck along a busy Interstate. Her brother, Victor, was found in the front of the truck, badly burned from a toxic chemical.

"Two people engaged in this subhuman abuse that culminated in the death of their own child," Miami-Dade Police director James Loftus said. "It's one of the saddest commentaries on the human condition I've ever seen."

A child protective investigator visited the home on Feb. 10, one day before Nubia's death, after the state received a call to its abuse hotline. But Carmen Barahona said that the couple had separated and that the twins were with her husband. She has since admitted lying, police said.

According to a safety questionnaire, state DCF investigator Andrea Fleary marked a box indicating "there are no children likely to be in immediate danger or serious harm," even though she had no contact with the twins and didn't know where they were.

Still, when asked whether the children's whereabouts were unknown, she marked 'no'.

Fleary has been placed on administrative leave and has declined comment. Her personnel file show she had been disciplined several times in the past few years for putting children at risk and was on a "performance improvement plan."

Roberto Martinez, a former attorney who is investigating Nubia's death as part of a three-person panel, asked why Fleary had not been fired.

"Everyone deserves due process but that doesn't mean you keep an incompetent person around to do something that's so critical," Martinez said.

One day after Fleary's investigation, police said Nubia was beaten to death. Police called her brother, who is now living in a specialized foster home, a hero and key witness.

The boy told authorities he and his sister were locked in the bathroom when Jorge Barahona grabbed Nubia on Feb. 11. He said he heard the screams before her death. He didn't see his sister again after that, according to the warrant.

Victor's lip had also split open in the weeks before his sister's death and the Barahonas refused to take him to see a doctor, authorities said. The boy was born with a cleft palate.

Two days before the twins were found in their father's truck, a worried man called the state's abuse hotline saying something was wrong.

"My sister had questioned (Jorge) about the little girl and he doesn't come with a straight answer which is worrying me so much that something might have happened to that little girl," the unidentified caller said, according to a transcript of the call.

That caller also contacted Miami-Dade Police, but was given a case card and told to contact the Department of Children and Families.

Loftus, the police director, said ideally it's something "we would have investigated immediately." He said they are reviewing the process.

Jorge Barahona has pleaded not guilty to attempted first-degree murder in Victor's case. His attorney declined comment Monday. Carmen Barahona's attorney also declined comment Monday.

Officials called it a case that cried out for the death penalty.

A panel is investigating how child welfare officials missed glaring warnings in the case, including several abuse allegations in the years before Nubia's death.

School officials warned Nubia was afraid of her mother and was hoarding food at school. One teacher said Nubia confessed that Carmen hit her, but each abuse allegation was deemed "unfounded" by child welfare officials.

Child welfare officials acknowledged mistakes, but said the Barahonas deceived many who were working with the family.

"These people are sociopaths," child welfare attorney Esther Jacobo said Monday. She questioned what safeguards could have prevented the Barahonas from fooling officials only to "get us out of their life in a particular period of time so they can do whatever they are going to do."

Fellow foster parent Trudy Petkovich said she spent lots of time in the couple's home.

"They were committed to the children," she said. "I saw no signs that anything would happen to these children in the home ... so where this came from obviously I don't know." Read more at hosted.ap.org

 

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