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Wednesday, June 14, 2006 |
WashingtonPost: "Violent crime in 2005 increased at the highest rate in 15 years, driven in large part by a surge of killings and other attacks in many Midwestern cities, the FBI reported yesterday.
The FBI's preliminary annual crime report showed an overall jump of 2.5 percent for violent offenses, including increases in homicide, robbery and assault.
Criminal justice experts said there were a number of possible explanations for the increase, including an influx of gangs into medium-size cities and a predicted surge in the number of inmates released from U.S. prisons. The jump could also represent a lingering effect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, some experts said, because governments at all levels have diverted resources away from traditional crime fighting in favor of anti-terrorism and homeland security programs."
An increase in violence usually has not one cause but several. But one important factor is the general level of justice and morality in the country at large. What can one expect in a country with a criminal president, a Republican party with a high percentage of felons and a government that only caters to the rich? Some people will adapt to the same level (or lack of) morality and justice that reigns supreme in the country.
AlterNet: "As a spinoff of the disturbing and disturbingly popular Left Behind book series (63 million customers can't be wrong...), the folks at Left Behind Games have created a truly sickening, kid-friendly version of their nightmarish Christianist vision (video). The game essentially has kids running around NYC killing those who don't subscribe to mega-church Christianity."
Double standards: "The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove."
Guardian: "America has spent more on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than on all its foreign wars up to 1939, following the passage of a bill allowing $66bn (£35.8bn) in new funding for the Pentagon."
ACN: "US Army Colonel James Steele, who was involved in the Iran-Contras scandal along with international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles at his command, is now an advisor to death squads in Iraq."
Even Hillary Clinton is involved in schemes to prevent free speech.
CommonDreams: "The Take Back America conference, an annual event held in Washington DC this year from June 12-14, is supposed to be a venue for prominent progressives to gather and debate the major issues of our day. Their aim is to 'provide the nation with new vision, new ideas and new energy'. But choosing New York Senator and probable presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a keynote speaker and then stifling dissent against her pro-war position hardly seems the stuff of a new vision for America."
The peace group CODEPINK was not allowed, contrary to previously made agreements, to air their views and were removed from the conference by security guards.
The mentality of violence within the US government is condemned all over the world, as well as by the majority of the American people.
Yahoo: "People in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Russia rated America's continuing involvement in Iraq a worse problem than Iran and its nuclear ambitions, according to polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Views of U.S. troops in Iraq were even more negative in countries like Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan."
EUObserver: "The EU has reiterated its calls for the closure of the US camp in Guantanamo Bay in the wake of the three prisoner suicides over the weekend."
11:11:57 AM 
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© Copyright 2006 Hetty Litjens.
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