In a move unprecedented in American History, one local government is trying to make helping the less fortunate a criminal offence. The move emphasises the importance of the corporate dollar over the lives of people as no other laws to date could do, by denying the right of volunteers to help their follow man. The law denies the right of the charitable to feed persons whom "a reasonable ordinary person" determines may be indigent. In this writers opinion this is one step away from calling for the mandatory euthanasia of the poor.

Don't feed the homeless: new Vegas law


July 21, 2006 - 2:36PM


Trying to curb charity that is having unintended consequences, the Las Vegas City Council has made it illegal to give food to homeless people in city parks.

Residents complained that the large numbers of homeless gathering in the parks make it impossible for others to use them, said city spokesman David Riggleman.

Civil libertarians are crying discrimination.

"We're trying to empathise with both camps," he said.

"We're hoping we can improve their lives and improve the lives of people living around the park, some of whom have people urinating and defecating in front of their door."

The new law targets mobile soup kitchens, with a maximum penalty of a $US1000 ($A1300) fine and six months in jail.

Riggleman said that by shutting down such soup kitchens, homeless people will be encouraged to go to a centre or charity that offers services such as mental health evaluations or job placement.

Gail Sacco, who operates a mobile soup kitchen seven days a week, said the city doesn't have adequate homeless services and that she is undeterred.

"There's no way for people to get out to those services in triple-digit weather," she said - with the US experiencing a heatwave.

"My plan is to do anything I feel is needed to keep these people alive."

The law defines a homeless person as an indigent "whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance."

American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada lawyer Allen Lichtenstein said the language makes the law unenforceable.

"The ordinance is clearly unconstitutional and nonsensical," he said. "How are you going to know without a financial statement who's poor and who's not poor?"

"It means they can discriminate based on the way people look.".

from the pen of Richard Neville …..

‘Familiar lies are music to our nation’s ears.

Australians always punch above their weight. We are the most generous people on earth. Our soldiers are the most professional in the world. In fact, we’re so professional, that even when our troops shot at the Iraqi Trade Minister’s bodyguards in June, killing two people and wounding four others, our military carried out an investigation without bothering to interview any Iraqis. Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, found that our soldiers had “acted in accordance with their rules of engagement”. In November, when the US Marines murdered Iraqi women and children in their homes in Haditha, this action was also said to comply with the “rules of engagement”. In that case, the toll was 24. Perhaps it was this death disparity that led Air Marshall Houston to conclude, “the Australian soldiers might have been over-cautious”. While the government has agreed “in principle” to pay compensation, it has decided “in principle” not to apologise.

From the ABC …..

Hicks outcry falling on deaf ears, father says

The father of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks says he is afraid public outcry against his son's detention is continuing to fall on deaf ears.

More than 400 people have signed an open letter that will be sent to the Prime Minister John Howard calling for Hicks's release.

Another 35,000 have signed an online petition.

‘The lives of Muslims mean nothing. They’ve become the “expendable” people whose security simply doesn’t matter. Their wholesale slaughter appears regularly on the evening news while heart-wrenching stories are spun about the suffering of Israeli fathers and mothers who lost loved ones in retaliatory attacks.

Don’t Muslims have mothers and fathers? Is it so important to demonize them that they must be stripped of every trace of humanity including parents?

The Centre for American Progress reports …..

“Americans are worried about debt and believe it is just going to get worse. "The public is more worried about falling into debt, particularly from medical bills, than about being the victim of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster." According to a new poll sponsored by the Center for American Progress, 86 percent "insist the number of Americans having trouble with household debt has gone up in the last five years." Unfortunately, their worries are well-grounded in reality. The average American savings rate in 2005 was negative 0.5 percent, "the lowest since the Great Depression."  As everyday expenses continue to rise, the problem of debt will continue to burden working Americans.

‘In Iraq, officials said Wednesday that U.S. and coalition forces as well as an increase in sectarian violence were behind the surge in civilian casualties cited in a U.N. report.

The report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq said nearly 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in May and June in a wave of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, torture and intimidation.

‘When we last left off, our gallant crusaders, Bush Wayne and his trusted confidant, Dick Grayson-Cheney - oil executives by day, freedom fighters by night - had earned yet another significant victory in their divinely inspired war on terror. 

Another “corner was turned” as our heroes sent on a one-way trip to paradise that diabolic villain, the elusive, brilliant mastermind of the evil Iraqi insurgency, the once-invisible man known only to us mortals as al-Zarqawi: the (unelected) leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. 

 
‘US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".

Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: "it is a matter of great concern to us ...that these civilian deaths are occurring. It's a tragedy."

Vanstone faces accusations of animal cruelty over her share in piggery July 13, 2006

A Piggery part-owned by the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, is breaching industry guidelines by keeping pigs in cramped conditions, animal welfare activists allege.

Animal Liberation said it lodged a complaint yesterday with South Australian police, complaining of conditions at the Wasleys piggery,  near Adelaide.

Senator Vanstone said she owned shares in the piggery but had nothing to do with the running of the operation, thought to be one of the largest in the state.

‘The fight over the Hamdan ruling heats up - as fears about its reach escalate.

David Bowker vividly remembers the first time he heard the phrase. A lawyer in the State Department, Bowker was part of a Bush administration "working group" assembled in the panicked aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Its task: figuring out what rights captured foreign fighters and terror suspects were entitled to while in U.S. custody. White House hard-liners, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and his uncompromising lawyer, David Addington, made it clear that there was only one acceptable answer. One day, Bowker recalls, a colleague explained the goal: to "find the legal equivalent of outer space" - a "lawless" universe. As Bowker understood it, the idea was to create a system where detainees would have no legal rights and US courts would have no power to intervene.

 Adelaide is now a port of the U.S.A. The Pentagon has announced that it will make the three warships being built in Adelaide compatible with the U.S. Navy.

In a mandatory notice to Congress, the Pentagon's Defence Security Cooperation Agency said Australia was seeking to buy up to three MK 41 Vertical Launch System "ship sets" and modify up to three MK 7 Aegis weapons systems.

Lockheed Martin, who were last year awarded the system integration contracts for the three Air Warfare Destroyers being constructed in South Australia, will sell Australia up to a billion dollars worth of technology.