Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: Police Responses to Male Rape

One does not normally think about male rape at all given the differences in the numbers and the gender perspectives in society and reporting. But it does happen and for the victim, I am sure it has similar huge impacts.

this paper was quite interesting to read about how the police react. When you realise that the policing reaction to female rape itself is so challenging and difficult despite the pressure and visibility, the situation with male rape has to be several levels below.

read and reflect.

The current paper focuses on police responses to male rape in England, UK. The data come from police officers and voluntary agency practitioners who completed in-depth interviews and qualitative questionnaires (N = 70). Questions about handling male rape cases were asked. The present paper focuses specifically on issues relating to the ways in which the police handle male rape cases. Thus, the way the police investigate male rape is critically explored. The police data were analysed using thematic analysis. Key issues emerged in the findings: male rape victims often get a poor response from the police; the police culture shapes officers’ practices and decisions regarding male rape cases; and some police officers often see male rape complainants as making false allegations. If male rape victims are seen as supposedly falsely reporting, the implication of this is that the ‘dark’ figure of crime may develop because ‘false’ reports are ‘no crimed’, giving a distorted view of the extent to which male rape occurs. I argue that the police’s treatment of male rape victims is largely influenced and shaped by preconceived ideas about male rape and gender bias. This paper attempts to tackle negative police treatment, and it raises awareness of male rape. It is significant to examine how the police manage male rape cases, to make changes to encourage reporting so that better services can be provided to rape victims.

The illegal trade in black caviar

this was a most fascinating and detailed study of how the trade in caviar works in the grey/black market. And because we in Europe are the main consumer, we are actively encouraging the devastation of the species. So whilst the common user of caviar will be shocked at the destruction of the rhino or the elephant for their horns/tusks, they are willing to keep on eating this very expensive fish roe. Sad...

The trade in caviar has a rich and colorful history, influenced over thousands of years by many cultures, societies and in the last decades by regulation. The value of caviar is historically discovered in the context of social change, political relationships and environmental change. The role of organized crime is described, as the scarcity of caviar has offered the unique opportunity to fish illegally, smuggle and trade contraband to mainly European countries with millions in profits. This study highlights that these criminal networks manifest themselves at all levels of the trade: from the poaching areas where organized criminal groups cooperate with law enforcers and possess top-notch equipment to major smuggling operations in the hands of sophisticated criminal networks. Although due to overexploitation ‘wild caviar’ is increasingly difficult to obtain, the demand in the context of exclusivity and scarcity remains intact by the upper class society desire for edible gold.

Unprotected: How Legalizing Prostitution Has Failed

Kannu

So what do you think we should do about prostitution? Regulate? Ban? Liberalise?

My view is that we need to liberalise and free it up. Why? Because what you do with your body is your business. Which is also the reason why I don't think committing suicide is illegal or unlawful. Your body your property. We don't ban people from wanting do dig ditches do we? It's physical work and so is this. Same with drugs as well but lets stick to this. 

That's not to say that I'm ok with forced prostitution, child prostitution, sex slavery etc. in these particular cases, the choices have been taken away. That's the whole point. You have a choice. 

So that's the principle. How does it operate in theory? Here's an example of what happened in Germany where they liberalised it. 

So the women still get trafficked which is wrong. But many are going there willingly. If you are willing to go to that career choice then you get the pains and gains as appropriate. She thought that she will have a room of her own and not many clients and and and. People watch pretty woman too much. 

So in my view its fine. Stop the trading but legalised prostitution is just fine. It's when you ban it, then things become much worse. Like in other countries. But people are stupid. They are willing to create and live with bigger problems just so that they can say that but we banned it. Morons. 

Love

Baba

Druckversion - Unprotected: How Legalizing Prostitution Has Failed - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533-druck.html

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05/30/2013 03:41 PM

Unprotected

How Legalizing Prostitution Has Failed

When Germany legalized prostitution just over a decade ago, politicians hoped that it would create better conditions and more autonomy for sex workers. It hasn’t worked out that way, though. Exploitation and human trafficking remain significant problems. By SPIEGEL Staff

Sânandrei is a poor village in Romania with run-down houses and muddy paths. Some 80 percent of its younger residents are unemployed, and a family can count itself lucky if it owns a garden to grow potatoes and vegetables.

Alina is standing in front of her parents’ house, one of the oldest in Sânandrei, wearing fur boots and jeans. She talks about why she wanted to get away from home four years ago, just after she had turned 22. She talks about her father, who drank and beat his wife, and sometimes abused his daughter, too. Alina had no job and no money.

Through a friend’s new boyfriend, she heard about the possibilities available in Germany. She learned that a prostitute could easily earn €900 ($1,170) a month there.

Alina began thinking about the idea. Anything seemed better than Sânandrei. “I thought I’d have my own room, a bathroom and not too many customers,” she says. In the summer of 2009, she and her friend got into the boyfriend’s car and drove through Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic until they reached the German capital — not the trendy Mitte neighborhood in the heart of the city, but near Schönefeld airport, where the name of the establishment alone said something about the owner: Airport Muschis (“Airport Pussies”). The brothel specialized in flat-rate sex. For €100 ($129), a customer could have sex for as long and as often as he wanted.

It all went very quickly, says Alina. There were other Romanians there who knew the man who had brought them there. She was told to hand over her clothes and was given revealing lingerie to wear instead. Only a few hours after her arrival, she was expected to greet her first customers. She says that when she wasn’t nice enough to the clients, the Romanians reduced her wages.

The Berlin customers paid their fee at the entrance. Many took drugs to improve sexual performance and could last all night. A line often formed outside Alina’s room. She says that she eventually stopped counting how many men got into her bed. “I blocked it out,” she says. “There were so many, every day.”

Locked Up

Alina says that she and the other women were required to pay the pimps €800 a week. She shared a bed in a sleeping room with three other women. There was no other furniture. All she saw of Germany was the Esso gas station around the corner, where she was allowed to go to buy cigarettes and snacks, but only in the company of a guard. The rest of the time, says Alina, she was kept locked up in the club.

Prosecutors learned that the women in the club had to offer vaginal, oral and anal sex, and serve several men at the same time in so-called gangbang sessions. The men didn’t always use condoms. “I was not allowed to say no to anything,” says Alina. During menstruation, she would insert sponges into her vagina so that the customers wouldn’t notice.

She says that she was hardly ever beaten, nor were the other women. “They said that they knew enough people in Romania who knew where our families lived. That was enough,” says Alina. When she occasionally called her mother on her mobile phone, she would lie and tell her how nice it was in Germany. A pimp once paid Alina €600, and she managed to send the money to her family.

When the mother forgave her son's murderer

Look at the photos first

Confusing? Let me explain. This is a set of six photographs showing what happened when the man convicted of murder was lead out to be hanged and the noose out around his neck. All in public. And then the mother of the victim, ironically the two men were friends, slapped he murderer and he was pardoned. 

The bottom middle photo shows the mother walking away, clutching her bio around her face. No tears. I'm guessing she is all cried out. While the murderer's family is celebrating. 

What was she thinking? I cannot imagine. But that was such a ginormous act of courage and charity. I would have killed the murderer myself. Sod charity. But this act of redemption is spectacular. I just stood in front of the photograph and was stunned. Nothing spectacular. Just a poor old woman who lost her son. And then she forgave her son's murderer. 

What a decision. What a heart. Respect. That's all. Utter respect. 

I kept walking and came across another set of photographs. 

These are photographs of mothers. Who lost their sons during the Iraq Iran war. And they have no idea if their sons are alive or dead. The only thing they know is hat they have hope. And fading remanents of their existence. Photographs. Letters. No tears. Again they have been cried out. But they hold hope. 

I was driving up to oxford to collect Kannu and I heard this radio play on bbc radio 4. About the town called as Hama. Which was brutally obliterated by Assad senior. And the play talked about this mother whose son was locked up by the regime and nobody knew if he was dead or alive. And how she slowly pined away. And then died of a broken heart. Clutching faded letters and photographs. Of her son. 

And all I could do was to just hug Kannu when I saw him. It's true. When your child is born, you know your heart is walking around outside your body.

I find myself in a dual situation. I can see the longing I have for my son whose now a man and is busy making his own way in life. Away from us. I'm right now flying over India. Going to meet my aged father. 

Who pines away for his children. And I'm much further away. 

Ah the joys and pains of being a father and son. 

Opening the coffin of King Charles I

Diya

Here's a bit of horrible histories for you. Remember we went to Windsor and saw these vaults? Imagine poking around there eh?

Fascinating.

Reminds me of an old poem which was sung after Charles 1 was beheaded. Or was it when Marie Antoinette was guillotined.

My neck on the guillotine

And the blade comes down

My head goes this side

And my body that side

Which side am I on?

Did I tell you that I saw a beheading in Jeddah when I went to Saudi Arabia? Pretty gruesome I tell you

Love

Baba

Opening the coffin of King Charles I - Untold lives blog
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/untoldlives/2015/01/opening-the-coffin-of-king-charles-i.html
(via Instapaper)

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King Charles I was beheaded on 30 January 1649 outside Banqueting House in Whitehall. His embalmed body was put into a coffin and taken to St James’s. Parliament then gave permission for the King to be buried in the Chapel of St George at Windsor. Mr Herbert who had been a groom of the royal bedchamber was entrusted with overseeing the interment.

Lord Clarendon later stated that the King’s body could not be found at Windsor some years later. There was a suggestion that King Charles II had re-interred his father at Westminster Abbey.

incarceration maps

this is a map of all the concentration camps in Germany during World War II. When you manage to kill 6 million people and many more injured or imprisoned, then the infrastructure required is going to be vast.

The above is only for all the federal prisons.

Here’s another view of the prisons in USA from here.

Another factoid

To put these figures in context, we have slightly more jails and prisons in the U.S. -- 5,000 plus -- than we do degree-granting colleges and universities. In many parts of America, particularly the South, there are more people living in prisons than on college campuses.

The Irish Clan Behind Europe's Rhino-Horn Theft Epidemic

Kannu

Here's a nice economics question for you. When supply is highly restricted, what should be the response of public policy? 

Compare the situation with rhino horns and say hard drugs. What does it tell you about the incoherence of public policy Vis a Vis demand and supply along with the legal responses? 

Love

Baba

The Irish Clan Behind Europe's Rhino-Horn Theft Epidemic
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-02/the-irish-clan-behind-europes-rhino-horn-theft-epidemic

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When the phone rang at about 3 a.m. on April 18, Nigel Monaghan was asleep on the floor in his office in Dublin, tangled in a sleeping bag. In his job as Keeper of the National Museum of Ireland’s natural history section, he was overseeing filming of the latest episode of a children’s TV special, Sleepover Safari. Ten children, their parents, and a film crew were spending the night in the museum, known locally as the Dead Zoo, surrounded by Ireland’s foremost collection of taxidermy.

The call was from the museum’s central security office. Four stuffed rhino heads—ones Monaghan had sent away for safekeeping a year earlier—had been stolen from the museum’s storage facility near the airport. At 10:40 p.m., three masked men forced their way in, tied up the single guard on duty, and found the shelves where the heads were kept. The trophies were heavy and awkward. Expertly stuffed and mounted by big game taxidermists at the turn of the 20th century, they were monstrous confections of skin and bone, plaster and timber, horsehair and straw. When Monaghan and his team had come to move the largest—that of a white rhino shot in Sudan in 1914, with a horn more than three feet long—it had taken four men just to lift it down from the museum wall. But the burglars were undeterred, and soon they had every head in the back of their white van. They took nothing else, and within an hour they were gone.

Rapists

A representation of rapists.

Bastards!

Islam’s Medieval Underworld

Kids

Here's a fascinating story about how thieves and burglars operated in the Islamic Middle East. Imagine going around with a tortoise in your bag? 

But imagine you are a householder and wake up at night and see this eerie candle moving around on the ground? Scary. 

And then again this quote; 

who used the Islamic religion as a cloak for their predatory ways, well aware that the purse-strings of the faithful could easily be loosed by the eloquence of the man who claims to be an ascetic or or mystic, or a worker of miracles and wonders, to be selling relics of the Muslim martyrs and holy men, or to have undergone a spectacular conversion from the purblindness of Christianity or Judaism to the clear light of the faith of Muhammad.

. People are so gullible in terms of religion. Their brains turn into hay and mush. Serves them right. 

Love

Baba

Islam’s Medieval Underworld
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/07/islams-medieval-underworld/

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An Arab city of the early medieval period. Urban centers in the Middle East were of a size and wealth all but unknown in the Christian west during this period, encouraging the development of a large and diverse fraternity of criminals. From a contemporary manuscript.

The year is—let us say—1170, and you are the leader of a city watch in medieval Persia. Patrolling the dangerous alleyways in the small hours of the morning, you and your men chance upon two or three shady-looking characters loitering outside the home of a wealthy merchant. Suspecting that you have stumbled across a gang of housebreakers, you order them searched. From various hidden pockets in the suspects’ robes, your men produce a candle, a crowbar, stale bread, an iron spike, a drill, a bag of sand—and a live tortoise.

The reptile is, of course, the clincher. There are a hundred and one reasons why an honest man might be carrying a crowbar and a drill at three in the morning, but only a gang of experienced burglars would be abroad at such an hour equipped with a tortoise. It was a vital tool in the Persian criminals’ armory, used—after the iron spike had made a breach in a victim’s dried-mud wall—to explore the property’s interior.

Dominick Dunne on His Daughter's Murder

This story moved me like nothing. I was reading the story on the tube and suddenly it became very dusty. 

As the old quote goes, no man should have to bury his child. That would be painful enough. But to have my child murdered? And then to sit through a trial like this? That would require the patience and forbearance of a saint. I wouldn't have been able to do so. My little princess being hurt? Wouldn't disembowelling and then shoving the living carcass into a diving chamber at full blast be an apt response? 

Dominick Dunne on His Daughter's Murder | Vanity Fair
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1984/03/dunne198403?printable=true

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Crime and Punishment

Justice

A father’s account of the trial of his daughter’s killer.

It was the beginning of a long hot summer. I flew to Los Angeles on July 5, 1983, for an indefinite stay. Throughout the flight from New York I engaged in diligent conversation with the stranger next to me, postponing as long as possible facing the feelings of dread within me. My two sons, Griffin and Alex, had preceded me out from New York. Alex, the younger one, met me at the airport, and we drove into Beverly Hills to the house where my former wife, Ellen Griffin Dunne, called Lenny, lives. Griffin was already there. It is not the house we lived in as a family. It is smaller and on one level. Lenny has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair. We were gathering, a family again, for a murder trial.

The first time I saw Lenny she was getting off a train at the railroad station in Hartford, Connecticut. She was ravishing, and I knew that instant that I would marry her if she would have me. We had a large wedding at her family’s ranch in Nogales, Arizona, in 1954, and after living briefly in New York, we moved to Beverly Hills, where I worked for twenty-five years in television and films. We had five children, two of whom died when they were only a few days old. Long divorced, we have, rightly or wrongly, never become unmarried. Often I have felt through the years that our lives might have been better if we had just stuck out the difficult years of our marriage, but I do not know if she would agree with that. We never venture into the realm of what might have been. I refer to her in conversation as my wife, never my ex-wife, and there is not a day in which she does not occupy my thoughts for some period of time. We communicate regularly and mail each other clippings we cut out of newspapers, and I no longer resent, as I once did, addressing her as Mrs. E. Griffin Dunne rather than as Mrs. Dominick Dunne.

When the telephone in my New York apartment woke me up at five o’clock in the morning on October 31, 1982, I sensed as I reached for the receiver that disaster loomed. Detective Harold Johnston of the Los Angeles Homicide Bureau told me that my twenty-two-year-old daughter, Dominique, was near death at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. I asked him if he had notified my wife. He said he was calling from her house. Lenny got on the phone and said, “I need you.”

“What happened?” I asked, afraid to hear.

“Sweeney,” she answered.

“I’ll be on the first plane.”

Shopping for Weed in the U.S

Kannu

Here's a funny description of how weed shopping happens in some parts of the USA. I'm a firm believer in drug legalisation. As a libertarian I cannot understand this tendency of governments to ban drugs. As long as I'm dealing in things out of my free will what's the problem? The drug war has been the most spectacular failure. It's like prostitution. Cannot be stopped. 

Yes. You may or may not try it. I actually didn't like it. First is the loss of control. Second is that it's just weird. And more importantly I'm naturally high and optimistic. :) I have fun, have faith in myself and in the future and am fairly happy most of the time. Other than when Diya and you call me fat. Then I'm grumpy. :)

Anyway. Here's the story. Remember the society we are building. Learn it's characteristics as you will have to navigate it son. 

Love

Baba

Shopping for Weed in the U.S. - GQ May 2013: Newsmakers: GQ
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201305/legalizing-marijuana-united-states-shopping-for-weed?printable=true

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Newsmakers

It happened. We legalized it! Pot is going to be the next great consumer product. Or so we all sort of believe. To commemorate, GQ’s critical shopper (marijuana division) travels to the most weed-friendly states in the union and offers GQ readers the first-ever authoritative guide to the lingo, the rules, the shops, and of course the many, many methods (lollipops! honey! wax! magical microwave popcorn! something called “dabs”?!) of getting high-legally! kind of!—in these United States

By Devin Friedman

Photographs by Maurcicio Alejo

April 2013

In November, they basically legalized marijuana. Even if you don’t pay attention to ballot initiatives or the like, you probably still possessed a fuzzy picture of where things stood. As of the past election cycle, marijuana is now totally street legal in Colorado and Washington. And possibly Oregon? And you’d been hearing for years about all those other places—there was a new state all the time—where you could buy it for medical purposes. Like California and Washington, D.C., and Connecticut and Rhode Island and, like, maybe New Mexico? Meanwhile, even in states where there is not yet a stipulation for those undergoing chemo to be able to blaze out, isn’t it functionally decriminalized? Isn’t it more or less okay to smoke weed right in front of a cop in New York City as long as you’re not killing someone with a tire iron while simultaneously being young and nonwhite? And conventional wisdom, at least from certain purviews, holds that the social taboo surrounding marijuana is now close to zero, whether you’re into older white women in Eileen fisher comfies (see: Steve Martin in It’s Complicated) or rap music (see: rap music).

Letter from Italy: Slippery Business

Dear son

My friend Vikram Doctor shared this with me. As you know we cook with olive oil assuming that its nice and healthy. As it turns out, the world of olive oil is full of dodgy characters. And extra virgin is not so virginal at all

So why am I sending this to you? For you to see how government subsidies and rules distort the marketplace. And why a dis functional government can really screw up basic operating principles of a good society and economy. 

Fraud and crime is not stoppable. But incentives like subsidies etc will always encourage crime. And think of one statement. You can make more money and be punished less by stuff like this than by pushing drugs!

Fascinating. 

Love 

Baba

Letter from Italy: Slippery Business : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mueller

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On August 10, 1991, a rusty tanker called the Mazal II docked at the industrial port of Ordu, in Turkey, and pumped twenty-two hundred tons of hazelnut oil into its hold. The ship then embarked on a meandering voyage through the Mediterranean and the North Sea. By September 21st, when the Mazal II reached Barletta, a port in Puglia, in southern Italy, its cargo had become, on the ship’s official documents, Greek olive oil. It slipped through customs, possibly with the connivance of an official, was piped into tanker trucks, and was delivered to the refinery of Riolio, an Italian olive-oil producer based in Barletta. There it was sold—in some instances blended with real olive oil—to Riolio customers.

Between August and November of 1991, the Mazal II and another tanker, the Katerina T., delivered nearly ten thousand tons of Turkish hazelnut oil and Argentinean sunflower-seed oil to Riolio, all identified as Greek olive oil. Riolio’s owner, Domenico Ribatti, grew rich from the bogus oil, assembling substantial real-estate holdings, including a former department store in Bari. He bribed two officials, one with cash, the other with cartons of olive oil, and made trips to Rome, where he stayed at the Grand Hotel, and met with other unscrupulous olive-oil producers from Italy and abroad. As one of Italy’s leading importers of olive oil, Ribatti’s company was a member of ASSITOL, the country’s powerful olive-oil trade association, and Ribatti had enough clout in Rome to ask a favor—preferential treatment of an associate’s nephew, who was seeking admission to a military officers’ school—of a high-ranking official at the Finance Ministry, a fellow-pugliese.

However, by early 1992 Ribatti and his associates were under investigation by the Guardia di Finanza, the Finance Ministry’s military-police force. One officer, wearing a miniature video camera on his tie, posed as a waiter at a lunch hosted by Ribatti at the Grand Hotel. Others, eavesdropping on telephone calls among Riolio executives, heard the rustle of bribe money being counted out. During the next two years, the Guardia di Finanza team, working closely with agents of the European Union’s anti-fraud office, pieced together the details of Ribatti’s crime, identifying Swiss bank accounts and Caribbean shell companies that Ribatti had used to buy the ersatz olive oil. The investigators discovered that seed and hazelnut oil had reached Riolio’s refinery by tanker truck and by train, as well as by ship, and they found stocks of hazelnut oil waiting in Rotterdam for delivery to Riolio and other olive-oil companies.

The investigators also discovered where Ribatti’s adulterated oil had gone: to some of the largest producers of Italian olive oil, among them Nestlé, Unilever, Bertolli, and Oleifici Fasanesi, who sold it to consumers as olive oil, and collected about twelve million dollars in E.U. subsidies intended to support the olive-oil industry. (These companies claimed that they had been swindled by Ribatti, and prosecutors were unable to prove complicity on their part.)

In 1997 and 1998, olive oil was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union, prompting the E.U.’s anti-fraud office to establish an olive-oil task force. (“Profits were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks,” one investigator told me.) The E.U. also began phasing out subsidies for olive-oil producers and bottlers, in an effort to reduce crime, and after a few years it disbanded the task force. Yet fraud remains a major international problem: olive oil is far more valuable than most other vegetable oils, but it is costly and time-consuming to produce—and surprisingly easy to doctor. Adulteration is especially common in Italy, the world’s leading importer, consumer, and exporter of olive oil. (For the past ten years, Spain has produced more oil than Italy, but much of it is shipped to Italy for packaging and is sold, legally, as Italian oil.) “The vast majority of frauds uncovered in the food-and-beverage sector involve this product,” Colonel Leopoldo Maria De Filippi, the commander for the northern half of Italy of the N.A.S. Carabinieri, an anti-adulteration group run under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, told me.

Black Men more likely to be in prison than married or college educated

Forget the esoteric discussions about statistics…This is what is extremely worrisome

“….others have been arguing for a long time that incarceration is by now a modal event in the life-course for young black men. Black men are more likely to go prison than complete college or serve in the military, and black, male, high-school dropouts are more likely to spend a year in prison than to get married. “

What kind of a society are we bring up? In 30 years time, what will these people and their children do? And its worse

… incarceration is so common in some sociodemographic groups that there are few comparable individuals in the population who have not experienced incarceration. The ubiquity of incarceration among low-skill black men undercuts research designs that require comparison groups to isolate the effects of incarceration from other factors like race, low education, or living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. A significant body of causally oriented research uses quasi-experimental designs … that compare the outcomes of inmates or former inmates with similarly-situated individuals who have not been to prison or jail. There is no valid comparison group for many of America’s inmates exactly because incarceration now inheres in whole sociodemographic groups ..

What are we talking about here? that there is nothing we can do? because they simply do not know any other way of living?

Its a similar discussion about the hundreds of thousands of families here in the UK where nobody has EVER done a bit of job. What kind of kids will come out of these families? There are QUARTER OF A MILLION kids in these families. What is the upbringing they are getting?

Death Statistics

Weapons	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Total	14,965	15,087	14,916	14,224	13,636
Total firearms:	10,158	10,225	10,129	9,528	9,146
Handguns	7,565	7,836	7,398	6,800	6,452
Rifles	445	438	453	380	348
Shotguns	522	490	457	442	418
Other guns	138	107	116	81	94
Firearms, type not stated	1,488	1,354	1,705	1,825	1,834
Knives or cutting instruments	1,920	1,830	1,817	1,888	1,825
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)	608	618	647	603	611
Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)	905	841	869	875	801
Poison	9	12	10	9	6
Explosives	2	1	1	11	2
Fire	125	117	131	85	99
Narcotics	46	48	52	34	45
Drowning	20	12	12	16	8
Strangulation	118	137	134	89	121
Asphyxiation	96	106	109	87	77
Other weapons or weapons not stated	958	1,140	1,005	999	895

So these are the statistics from the FBI annual crime statistics.

Curious, the problem with handguns seems to be improving. So is it with Rifles, Shotguns and other guns. Knives are quite high as well but also reducing slightly. Blunt objects are going up. Strangulation is going up.

Hmmm, overall, looks like the number of deaths is coming down and US society is improving…as far as crime is concerned

then again, facetiously, if we are talking about banning, then handguns are the biggest problem, why are we talking assault weapons and high capacity magazines when the biggest source relates to handguns?

and while we are at it, ban knives, blunt objects and personal weapons..

we do need to make it more tougher for nutters to have guns..

Two views of the Indian Police, from the Police

The case of the Indian woman gang raped and who subsequently died from her injuries is pretty gruesome. The onus obviously fell on the police, who basically took corrupt payments to allow these buses to ply. And the dismal rate of convictions (600 cases and 1 conviction). So what do the police themself say? Here are two contradictory views. First:

Reviled as an ineffective, uncouth force that terrorizes people rather than protect them, Delhi Police officials find scarce favour with Delhiites. Indrani Basu of TOI spoke to a lower functionary of the force to unveil a lesser-known side of the daily functioning of the 76,000-strong team that is supposed to keep the city safe.

When I joined the police force, I didn't know I would spend most of my time doing things other than what I was trained for. The public expects police to help them with every problem, including matters unrelated to our work.

The control room receives roughly 24,000 calls a day; 70% of these are not policing matters. Almost daily we are called in for civic disputes, problems with electric supply, presence of stray dogs, monkeys - the list is endless.

Civic agencies should handle such complaints but people call the police as other control rooms don't spring into action. We have to resolve the issue as it may become a law and order problem. There have been occasions where we've fetched electricians or other technicians to resolve some issue.

The public perceives us as unruly and uncouth. Much of this has to do with our working conditions. Unlike other government departments, all of which have fixed work-hours, cops don't have any shift system.

I may have a 12-hour duty but if I get a distress call 30 minutes before I'm to leave, I must attend to the call. This can take hours - many times the next 12 hours - to sort out. It's usual to work 24 hours without rest and continue the next day. The Delhi Police Act says an officer is on duty round the clock. A policeman gets a month's extra salary every year to compensate for working without a shift system, but this compromises quality of work.

Many times we don't get vehicles to respond to distress calls. We usually use private conveyance to reach the crime spot: our own or an auto. There are around 15-20 cops per police station. But not more than four or five motorcycles are provided to each. Most bikes are on patrolling duty.

Some stations have an emergency response vehicle. The conveyance allowance up to an Inspector's rank is about Rs 375 a month. This cripples our work. There is need for a proper emergency response unit for every call received; not leave an officer to his own devices.

Investigations throw up their own kind of miscellaneous expenses that you will never see in official statistics. From getting a post-mortem done to collecting forensic reports, our pocket is made lighter in many ways. We have to submit a charge-sheet within 90 days, but with limited forensic facilities we invariably incur expenses to get test results on time.

Provisions exist to claim investigation expenditure, but it's a tedious process. Also, there are no proper bills for most such expenses. For example, every year we remove several dead bodies. We make our own arrangements to retrieve the body and take it to the mortuary. Usually, we rope in a passerby willing to do the job in return for payment that comes from our own pocket. How can we claim such expenses?

We don't even have basic facilities. No buildings or land are demarcated for police stations when an area is developed. Outposts come up based on need. Many times such outposts are mere tents. It doesn't feel like we work for a serious organization.

Several stations don't have facilities for overnight stay though duty can stretch to three, four days continuously. Issues of mosquitoes, unhygienic surroundings and unavailability of fans plague many. Some police stations don't even have access to drinking water. There may be no water connection even. Lack of proper facilities causes us to function with a negative frame of mind.

Such tough work conditions make us an unhappy lot, which sometimes compromises the police-public interface. Many cope with the pressure by resorting to corruption, anger, brutality - a vicious cycle.

We constantly deal with criminals with no stress-relieving facilities provided. Many cops need psychological counselling, therapy to deal with their daily stress. No such facility is available. Some medical camps have raised these concerns but they are never resolved.

Feel pity for them? Here’s another interview with a copper. The chap also calls the rapists as bastards, as I did, and got into trouble for saying that. But leaving that aside for the moment, the opinions are pretty Neanderthal. Now check what they said about women.

I realised that according to stringent criteria of the Delhi Police, almost all women deserve to be raped. And here’s why:

Who are these people, I'd wonder, who genuinely believe that a woman would deliberately provoke sexual assault. Reuters

One, she is not in a salwar kameez or sari, at all times

Most urban professional women wear a lot of skirts, jeans, blouses, and dresses. And they usually carefully calibrate what they wear according to where they will be: out on the street or at an upmarket bar/restaurant. But all this effort is pointless because as Satbir Singh, Additional SHO of Sector 31 Police Station, Faridabad, puts it: “Ladkiya jo hai unko yahan tak yahan tak (he gestures to mean that women should cover their entire body, then carries on speaking)… Skirt pehenti hai. Blouse dalti hai; poora nahi dalti hai. Dupatta nahi dalti. Apne aapko dikhawa karti hai. Baccha uske taraf akarshit hota hai.” (Girls should be covered from here to here… They wear skirts, blouses, that don’t cover them fully. Don’t wear a dupatta. They display themselves. A kid will naturally be attracted to her.)

Sub-Inspector Arjun Singh, SHO of Surajpur Police Station, Greater Noida, clarifies the position further: “She is dressed in a manner that people get attracted to her. In fact, she wants them to do something to her.”

In other words, unless a woman is fully covered from head to toe – at all times – shewants men to rape her.

Two, if a woman is in a sexual relationship with one man, then she deserves to be raped by him and all his friends. Dharamveer Singh, Additional SHO at Indirapuram Police Station in Ghaziabad, tells Tehelka: “It’s very rare that a girl is forcefully picked up by 10 boys. A girl who gets into a car with boys is never innocent. If she does, she definitely has a relationship with at least one of them.”

Three, she keeps the company of drunk men. Is it bad judgement to drink with strangers in India? Yes. And many of us are far too cautious to slam back the vodka unless we are amongst good friends. But who cares since our men in uniform seem to think that alcohol and opportunity is sufficient – and just – cause for rape:

Roop Lal of Sector 40, Gurgaon, sought to find a rationale to the occurrence of gang-rape: “Jaise hum log baithe hai, zyaada daaru pee li. Chalte peeli. Behnchodh, phekh saala, phir to aise hi hoga. Raat bhar rakh li. Uska jawab kya degi wo apne gharwalon ko, ki jo ek ghante ke liye keh kar gayi hai, aur poori night main kahan gayi thi. To maa-baap to poochenge, bhai bhi poochega. Jinka samaaj hai woh to poochte hai (Say we are sitting and had one drink too many while on the move… it’s obvious that it’ll happen. Keep her for the entire night. What will she tell her parents? She was supposed to be away for an hour and has ended up being out the entire night. Parents will question, so will her brother. Society will ask questions.”)

So when a man drinks, he turns into a sex-crazed animal ready to rape the nearest woman. When a woman drinks, she is a slut looking to be raped. Ergo, women should not drink, nor should she place herself anywhere in the vicinity of men who do. (A rule that includes being in a bar late at night) And even if one of the men happens to be your boyfriend, it is no cause to let your guard down because: See reason #2.

Four, a girl deserves to be raped because her mother is a “slut.” When all else fails, blame the mom. That seems to be the reasoning of the investigating officer in the Noida gang rape case which involved a Class X student. Here’s Ram Malik’s justification for the rape of a minor: “The girl’s mother is divorced. She’s living with another man from the Yadav community. She’s 48 whereas the man is 28. It’s inevitable the two daughters will be wayward, isn’t it?”

Five, a woman deserves to be raped because she belongs to the upper class – or the lower class. Upper class women don’t know how to behave or dress modestly, which invites trouble. They are also either high class hookers, or alcohol and drug-addicted floozies. Their lower class peers, however, are just looking to make a quick buck.

In fact, according to 17 of the 30 policemen interviewed by Tehelka that “real” rape cases are rare: “There are cases but 70 percent involve consensual sex. Only if someone sees, or the money is denied, it gets turned into rape”

Sub-Inspector Manoj Rawat of Noida’s Sector 24 Police Station is far more skeptical: “Everything in NCR happens with mutual understanding. My personal view is that there are one or two percent rape cases in NCR.”

And six, a woman deserves to be raped because she reported the rape. The most astounding revelation in the Tehelka expose is this: most rape complaints are false, motivated by either vindictiveness or monetary gain. It’s an excellent example of circular logic:

Tehelka asked Yogender Singh Tomar, Additional SHO, Sector 39, Noida, if it was easy for a rape victim to approach the police. His answer left us shocked: “Aasaan nahi hota uske liye. Bezzati se sabhi darti hai. Akhbaar baazi se bhi darti hai. Asliyat main wahin aati hai jo dhande main lipt hoti hai (It’s never easy for the victim. Everyone is scared of humiliation. Everyone’s wary of media and society. In reality, the ones who complain are only those who have turned rape into a business).”

In other words, if you’re “really” raped, you would never complain. If you complain, you were not “really” raped.

So here’s the bottomline, ladies and gentleman. If we were to apply the this insane litmus test to all the women we know – friends, family members, distant relatives, colleagues, maids, or acquaintances – none of us would make the grade. According to the Delhi police, we all deserve to be raped.

Before one gets up and going, one has to see that pretty much the same views were uttered by the politicians, they are uttered by the various religious bastards of the sri ram sene ilk from the Hindu right to the Muslim muppets who prefer to shove their women in burqa’s and marry them off to the rich shiekhs by giving them a religious justification for prostitution. Same sermons one gets from pretty much across the society. Try to walk in any Indian city with you wearing a skirt, the stares you get are amazing..its just ludicrous. And yes, I have done so, went across an entire town wearing a ghagra choli on a bet.

The Brain on Trial

Quite an interesting discussion on free will son. And whilst its concentrating on outliers, the question arises about how does the law treat the question of free will and/or free wont. 

Not sure about the answer but the certainty I had about libertarianism and free will is a bit more nuanced now. 

Love

Baba

The Brain on Trial
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/8520/

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Adrianna Williams/Corbis

On the steamy first day of August 1966, Charles Whitman took an elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin. The 25-year-old climbed the stairs to the observation deck, lugging with him a footlocker full of guns and ammunition. At the top, he killed a receptionist with the butt of his rifle. Two families of tourists came up the stairwell; he shot at them at point-blank range. Then he began to fire indiscriminately from the deck at people below. The first woman he shot was pregnant. As her boyfriend knelt to help her, Whitman shot him as well. He shot pedestrians in the street and an ambulance driver who came to rescue them.

The evening before, Whitman had sat at his typewriter and composed a suicide note:

I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.

By the time the police shot him dead, Whitman had killed 13 people and wounded 32 more. The story of his rampage dominated national headlines the next day. And when police went to investigate his home for clues, the story became even stranger: in the early hours of the morning on the day of the shooting, he had murdered his mother and stabbed his wife to death in her sleep.

It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight … I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationa[l]ly pinpoint any specific reason for doing this …

Along with the shock of the murders lay another, more hidden, surprise: the juxtaposition of his aberrant actions with his unremarkable personal life. Whitman was an Eagle Scout and a former marine, studied architectural engineering at the University of Texas, and briefly worked as a bank teller and volunteered as a scoutmaster for Austin’s Boy Scout Troop 5. As a child, he’d scored 138 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test, placing in the 99th percentile. So after his shooting spree from the University of Texas Tower, everyone wanted answers.

For that matter, so did Whitman. He requested in his suicide note that an autopsy be performed to determine if something had changed in his brain—because he suspected it had.

I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt [overcome by] overwhelming violent impulses. After one session I never saw the Doctor again, and since then I have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail.

Whitman’s body was taken to the morgue, his skull was put under the bone saw, and the medical examiner lifted the brain from its vault. He discovered that Whitman’s brain harbored a tumor the diameter of a nickel. This tumor, called a glioblastoma, had blossomed from beneath a structure called the thalamus, impinged on the hypothalamus, and compressed a third region called the amygdala. The amygdala is involved in emotional regulation, especially of fear and aggression. By the late 1800s, researchers had discovered that damage to the amygdala caused emotional and social disturbances. In the 1930s, the researchers Heinrich Klüver and Paul Bucy demonstrated that damage to the amygdala in monkeys led to a constellation of symptoms, including lack of fear, blunting of emotion, and overreaction. Female monkeys with amygdala damage often neglected or physically abused their infants. In humans, activity in the amygdala increases when people are shown threatening faces, are put into frightening situations, or experience social phobias. Whitman’s intuition about himself—that something in his brain was changing his behavior—was spot-on.

A Dirty Business

An interesting read about fraud and insider trading Kannu. 

Crime doesn't pay and money earned wrongly burns a hole and creates headaches. There are much easier ways to make good money and enjoy. 

But fascinating story of how greed corrupts normal people. High level people, highly educated but common thieves at that

A Dirty Business
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/27/110627fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all

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In the fall of 2003, Anil Kumar, a senior executive with the consulting firm McKinsey, and Raj Rajaratnam, the head of a multibillion-dollar hedge fund called Galleon, attended a charity event in Manhattan. They had known each other since the early eighties, when, as recent immigrants, they were classmates at the Wharton School of Business, in Philadelphia. Their friendship, intermittent over the years, was based on self-interest rather than on intimacy. Kumar, born in Chennai, formerly Madras, India, was fastidious and morose, travelling at least thirty thousand miles a month for work, and seldom socializing. Rajaratnam, a Tamil from Colombo, Sri Lanka, was fleshy and dark-skinned, with a charming gap-toothed smile and a sports fan’s appetite for competition and conquest. Kumar was not among the group whom Rajaratnam took on his private plane to the Super Bowl every year for a weekend of partying. “I’m a consultant at heart,” Kumar liked to say. “I’m a rogue,” Rajaratnam once said. Kumar had the more precise diction and was better educated, but Rajaratnam was one of the world’s new billionaires and therefore a luminary among businessmen from the subcontinent. In an earlier generation of immigrant financiers, Kumar would have been the German Jew, Rajaratnam the Russian. Kumar might have felt some disdain for Rajaratnam, but Rajaratnam’s fortune made him irresistible.

McKinsey executives, in an attempt to cash in on the explosive growth of hedge funds, had recently sent Rajaratnam several e-mails proposing that Galleon hire the company to provide expert advice. Rajaratnam had ignored them. Leaving the charity event, Kumar expressed annoyance about the unanswered e-mails, he later recalled. Rajaratnam pulled him aside. “I’d much rather have you as a consultant than McKinsey,” he explained. “And I am willing to pay you half a million dollars a year.” Kumar replied that McKinsey forbade outside consulting, but Rajaratnam persisted, appealing to Kumar’s pride: “You work very, very hard, you travel a lot, you are underpaid. People have made fortunes while you were away in India, and you deserve more.” He noted that Kumar, who provided strategic advice to Silicon Valley technology companies—one of Rajaratnam’s investing specialties—possessed knowledge that was worth a lot of money. Kumar had only to keep a list of “ideas,” and to call him once a month or so. “I know you will do that if you get money from me,” Rajaratnam said. “And I know you will not remember to keep a list if you don’t get money from me.”

What about the bottom 1%?

Fascinating views.

We often hear a lot, especially from those who want to tear them down, about the top 1 percent. We don't hear nearly as much about the bottom 1 percent. Who are they? Where are they? Why are they in the bottom 1 percent? And what should we do about them?

It turns out that about two thirds of the people in the bottom 1 percent are in U.S. prisons. And of these people, a few hundred thousand are there for victimless crimes. Letting them out would help them and save us taxpayer money. That’s a win-win.

ok, I will bite. Go ahead. how much exactly are the American taxpayers spending?

One thing that our taxes are spent on is keeping people in prison. According to a 2010 report from the Center for Economic Policy Research, we taxpayers are paying about $25,000 a year per prisoner to keep them there. In California, where high-income people are taxed particularly harshly, we pay about $47,000 per prisoner per year.

HOLY MOLY!, cant we ship them to Australia?

So let me get this straight: High-income people are paying lots of taxes so that the government can put poor people in prison and keep them poor or put non-poor people in prison and make them poor.

$5 Chess Game, Best-of-Three, Zuccotti Park

Son

This isn't about the protests and stuff. That's strangely confusing and I couldn't figure out what the occupy lot are on about. 

But this is about getting hustled. I got hustled once in my life when I was in school. And it was the 3 cup and a ball trick. 

Very simple trick and I fell for it. Ended up losing a months pocket money on it. I was 2 years younger than you at that time. I felt like a complete idiot and still do. But it was a good learning experience. Here are some lessons that I learnt from it. 

If something is too good to be true then it most definitely is false. You will see these offers about getting rich quickly and those are invariably fake. 

Second, always know how much you are willing to lose. That's what I call as fuck off limits. You will lose money. On stocks, on purchases, on dates, on everything relating to money. Thats not a problem. The problem is when you don't have a stop loss limit. And stick to it. Have the discipline to walk away from extreme losses. Define decide dedicate. For example you are making losses in your portfolio but your excuse was that you don't want to lose on transaction fees. I told you to decide on your losses and select some other stocks. What that tells me is that you haven't learnt about your loss levels, you don't have your discipline to cut your losses and the fact that you missed the deadline means that you are still not at the level of dedication. So what are you going to do?

Final lesson learnt, there is no free money. The only money you can be proud of is what you earn through hard work son. Winning through crime or lotteries or gambling etc. etc. is sure to get you in disaster. But learn your figures, angles, your own abilities and characteristics. Rely on yourself to earn money, son. That's the way to have a peaceful nights sleep. Easy money ends up in tears. 

Love

Baba

$5 Chess Game, Best-of-Three, Zuccotti Park [longform.org]
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/5-chess-game-best-of-three-zuccotti-park

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McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Fading the Vig: A Gambler’s Guide to Life: $5 Chess Game, Best-of-Three, Zuccotti Park. Download our app and get Internet Tendency optimized for your device,
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Fading the Vig: A Gambler’s Guide to Life

- - - -

David Hill is a gambler. Each column will tell the story of a single bet that he made and examine what that bet reveals about life in America.

See all articles from this column

- - - -

$5 Chess Game,
Best-of-Three,
Zuccotti Park.

BY David Hill

- - - -

It’s six in the morning in Zucotti Park. Quiet hours started at eleven, but that isn’t stopping the kid behind me from singing and playing Bob Dylan’s greatest hits on his guitar. I politely tolerate it until he starts to play “Rainy Day Women.” That cinches it.

“Knock it off, it’s quiet hours.”

I point to the sign nearby that lays out the self-mandated rules about music. He scowls at me as he puts his guitar back in its case.

I’m usually more patient than this. Maybe I’m feeling punchy because in two hours the police are supposed to show up and arrest all of us. More likely it has to do with the fact that I’m down two pawns going in to the endgame.

“Sorry, man, but this is a money game,” is all the apology I can muster. I have to focus.

It looks bad now, but you should have seen me earlier. I got here around three, right after the rainstorm quit, after getting several emails and text messages that the cops were planning to storm the park at seven. I packed my bag with extra clothes and some comic books, wrote the National Lawyer’s Guild phone number on my arm, kissed my wife on the forehead and told her I was going to go get arrested at the park. She mumbled something like “good luck” and rolled back over to sleep.

When I arrived at the park people were trying to settle in and get some rest. It had been a rough night of rain that likely kept a lot of people who were planning to help occupy the park away. There were only a couple hundred people here, drying off, straightening up, and winding down.

I walked over to the chess table. Bystanders held their cell phones over the table to offer the players some light. I watched a game between an Eastern European student with a backpack and a young Middle Eastern man in a baseball cap. One glance at their position told me these guys were patzers. I asked them how much they were playing for.

“We aren’t gambling.”

No shit. I asked who has next; the onlookers all shook their heads. I sat down and played the Middle Eastern kid and end up holding the table for the next couple of hours. I’m no chess master. My last rated game had me around 1450. But tonight I was king of the park. It isn’t saying much. This is no Washington Square Park. The players in Zuccotti Park are an embarrassment to the lumpenproletariat park-dwellers of New York City. Then James showed up.

James was a young Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx. He worked for the MTA, a member of TWU Local 100. He had on a 59fifty Yankees cap, a grey hoodie and a backpack. He was polite and pleasant. Like me he had a wife and baby at home. He kept texting his wife to let her know he was still okay and not in jail. He told me he was “a little rusty.” I beat him pretty easily in our first game. I even let him take back a few moves. I felt like a goddamn grandmaster. Then he brought me back down to earth with one question.

“You want to play for money?”

- - -

“So you’re a hustler?”

Is The World Just?

Here is an ethical dilemma son. And I have to admit that I also find it difficult to express sympathy towards prisoners and their mistreatment. You will infrequently hear stories of how prisoners are pampered, have great facilities etc etc. recently there was a big controversy about how the British government does not want the prisoners to have the vote. I disagree with this. A vote is an essential part of being a citizen. And the vote keeps the state in check. Somewhat. So the very idea that the state can take away your right to vote is anathema for me. But that said, would I react in the same manner for man who gets raped in a prison compared to a man or woman who gets raped in an alleyway in London? No. 

This is wrong on my part. A crime is a crime, even if it's been committed on a criminal. 

Something to think about son. This is why I'm pushing you to do some charitable work. You will find it improves your viewpoint and makes you a better person hugely. You will see when you meet people. Other things being equal, a person who is a good Samaritan is a better person to be with compared to somebody who isn't. They are warmer, they are better people to spend time with, they are more empathetic, make better friends, enjoy more happiness and are simply good. Have a think son, try to do something starting these holidays :)

Love

Baba. 

Is The World Just? | Wired Science | Wired.com
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/is-the-world-just/

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In many American prisons, the treatment of prisoners is a national disgrace. Numerous reports have documented widespread prisoner abuse, prison rape, medical neglect and severe overcrowding. In recent weeks, for instance, there have been a number of important articles describing abuse in the Los Angeles County Jails. Here’s a sampling of headlines from the LA Times: “LA County Deputy Says He Was Forced To Beat Mentally Ill Inmate,” “Inmate Dies Two Days After Being Punched In The Head By Deputy,” “Ex-Deputy Says He Routinely Used Improper Force,” and “Report Cites Widespread Abuse At County Jails.” The horrific details stem from a new report released by the ACLU, which includes testimony from prison chaplains:

Juan Pablo Reyes was punched by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies over and over again in the ribs, mouth and eyes, breaking his eye socket and leaving his body badly bruised. After falling to the ground, the deputies continued to kick Reyes, an inmate at the Los Angeles County Jail, with their steel-toed boots, ignoring his cries.

And the deputies didn’t stop there.

They ordered Reyes to strip and forced him to walk naked up and down the hallway of a housing module, in full view of other inmates. One deputy yelled, “Gay boy walking.” Reyes began to cry, but the deputies just looked on and laughed. They then put him in a cell where he was beaten and sexually assaulted by other inmates. He desperately pled for help and to be removed from the cell, but to no avail.

Let’s be clear: the overwhelming majority of these prisoners have committed crimes. Many of them have committed serious violent crimes. They are serving their time. They deserve to be punished. But that doesn’t begin to explain the awfulness of their living conditions.