by Anna Driver
Reuters

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A New Orleans judge on Wednesday dismissed charges against seven policeman accused of killing two people on a bridge amid the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Criminal District Court Judge Raymond Bigelow threw out murder and attempted murder indictments, saying prosecutors had acted improperly, a clerk for the judge’s office said.

The police had been accused of shooting pedestrians on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans on September 4, 2005, just days after Hurricane Katrina inundated much of the city and stranded tens of thousands of people.

Two people were killed and four wounded in the incident, amid widespread looting and shooting. Police officers Robert Falcoun, Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius and Anthony Villavaso were charged with first-degree murder.

Three other officers, Robert Barrios, Michael Hunter and Ignatius Hills, were accused of attempted murder.

All seven men had pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The case sparked outrage among the families of the victims and their supporters, who say the accused officers received preferential treatment.

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From the McCain campaign, in case you didn’t know what was considered appropriate in the Temple Of The Messiah.

Just be careful about what you say in the presence of The Messiah however, lest they move to silence you for your incredulance like the Obama team did to Stanley Kurtz. A reminder: The Messiah does not tolerate “distractions” from his important duties of controlling the atmosphere, providing hope and spreading change.

TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America

A United Nations committee said in November, 2007 that use of Taser weapons can be a form of torture, in violation of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Use of the electronic stun devices by police had been marked with a sudden rise in deaths - including four men in the United States and two in Canada. Canadian authorities were taking a second look at them, and in the United States, there was a wave of demands to BAN them.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture referred to the use of TaserX26 weapons which Portuguese police had acquired. An expert had testified to the committee that use of the weapons had “proven risks of harm or death”.

“The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use,” the committee said in a statement.

Tasers have become increasingly controversial in the United States, particularly after several notorious cases where their use by police to disable suspects was questioned as being excessive. Especially disturbing is the fact that six adults died after being tased by police in the span of a week.

In Frederick, MD, a sheriff’s deputy trying to break up a late-night brawl tased 20-year-old Jarrel Grey. He died on the spot. “I want to know what he did that was so bad?” the victim’s mother, Tanya James, said. “Did the deputy think that their life was in danger? Did he have a weapon?” The death came just weeks after Frederick police used a Taser to subdue a high school student.

Also in the same week, in Jacksonville, Fla., in two separate cases two men died after being stunned. One suspect, who fled a car crash and tried to break into a nearby home, struggled with a policeman, prompting the officer to tase him three times. The man continued to fight, and tried to bite the officer, while he was being tased. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Another man died Tuesday of that week, after a Jacksonville officer pulled over his car. When the officer approached it, the man took off running. When the officer caught up with him, during a struggle, authorities say the officer used his Taser to subdue the suspect. After being placed in the back of the police car the suspect became unresponsive. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

In New Mexico, 20-year-old Jesse Saenz died after Raton police used a Taser to subdue him. Police say Saenz was struggling and fighting with them as they attempted to take him into custody. Saenz died after being transported to a county jail.

A Polish man died at Vancouver airport after being Tasered by Canadian police. The man, Robert Dziekanski, 40, fell to the ground and died after the police officers piled on top of him. It was caught on a handheld video camera by a tourist. That horrifying video shows Robert Dziekanski, a Polish man who spoke no English, become increasingly agitated. He was shocked twice, and then died. More than a dozen people have died in Canada after being hit by Tasers in the last four years.

Taser International, based in Scottsdale, AZ, released a statement following the Vancouver Airport incident saying no deaths have ever been definitively connected to what the company describes as: “the low-energy electrical discharge of the Taser.” That’s 50,000 volts.

“The video of the incident at the Vancouver airport indicates that the subject was continuing to fight well after the TASER application,” Taser International said. “This continuing struggle could not be possible if the subject died as a result of the Taser device electrical current causing cardiac arrest. [Dziekanski’s] continuing struggle is proof that the Taser device was not the cause of his death.”

“Specifically in Canada, while previous incidents were widely reported in the media as ‘Taser deaths,’ the role of the Taser device has been cleared in every case to date,” Taser said.

While the medical questions about causes of death are not resolved, Cox said this is precisely why more study is needed. “Nobody really knows exactly why these people are dying, we only know that people are dying after they’re tasered,” he said. “It’s nearly 300 people who have died in the United States - they’re tasered, and then they die.”

“It may be because they have a heart condition. It may be because they’re on drugs. It may be because of some other factor that we don’t know about. The important thing is, they are dying after they are tasered. That cannot be denied, no matter how you spin the language.”

Amid a growing outcry, civil rights groups are urging police to put down their Tasers until more research is done.

“The danger of Tasers is that they seem safe, they seem easy and therefore I think it’s natural that police will be inclined to use them much more quickly than they would ever use a gun,” Cox told Chen. “Most of the cases we’ve looked at, there’s been no weapon involved at all [on the part of the suspect], let alone a deadly weapon” Cox said, “so these are not situations where necessarily the police officer sees a threat”.

“The penalty for resisting arrest should not be death,” Cox said.

krAzykrAkr01:
Tasers are becoming the “convenient” weapon of the Police State. It has been almost a year since these incidents happened. Despite all this, taser weapons are used more and more frequently across N. America. Supposedly non-lethal, so there is built in deniability. Did our grandfathers go fight the Nazi’s so that we could let them take the country at a later date? Was the American Revolution just a negotiation with England to rent the colonies for a certain amount of time, and now that lease is up? We can not continue to let tyranny engulf the United States and the Planet.

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Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

Dead civilians in South Ossetia. But you will not hear much about it on CNN or Faux News. Because they are too busy reporting ad nauseam about the extramarital shenanigans of CFR darling John Edwards. In order to find out what’s really going on in Georgia, you have to read the international press on the internet. Bush, McCain, and Obama may cast blame on Russia, but reading the international press you get a different perspective.

Russia accuses U.S. of orchestrating conflict

“Russian officials believe that it was the USA that orchestrated the current conflict. The chairman of the State Duma Committee for Security, Vladimir Vasilyev, believes that the current conflict is South Ossetia is very reminiscent to the wars in Iraq and Kosovo,” reports Pravda, the Russian newspaper.

Recall the CIA admitting it “helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia,” according to The Sunday Times. The KLA is a perfect outfit for the CIA. “Known for its extensive links to Albanian and European crime syndicates, the KLA was supported from the outset in the mid-1990s by the CIA and Germany’s intelligence agency, the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND). In the course of the 1999 war, the KLA was supported directly by NATO,” writes Michel Chossudovsky. “The KLA had extensive links to Al Qaeda, which was also involved in military training. Mujahideen mercenaries from a number of countries integrated the ranks of the KLA, which was involved in terrorist activities as well as political assassinations.” Of course, “links to Al Qaeda” translate into links to the CIA.

“The things that were happening in Kosovo, the things that were happening in Iraq - we are now following the same path. The further the situation unfolds, the more the world will understand that Georgia would never be able to do all this without America. South Ossetian defense officials used to make statements about imminent aggression from Georgia, but the latter denied everything, whereas the US Department of State released no comments on the matter. In essence, they have prepared the force, which destroys everything in South Ossetia, attacks civilians and hospitals. They are responsible for this. The world community will learn about it,” Vasilyev told Pravda.

Indeed, the world will learn about it, but not by way of America’s corporate media, more interested in the entirely meaningless baby-making of Clay Aiken and Jaymes Foster. Bread and circuses shall suffice in America.

U.S. loads up Georgia with weapons to fight “al-Qaeda”

The Federation of American Scientists website reveals that Georgia

is the most recent recipient of U.S. weapons and aid, receiving 10 UH-1H Huey helicopters (four for spare parts only) and $64 million in military aid and training to fight Arab soldiers with alleged ties to Al Qaeda that have been participating in the Chechen war and are now taking refuge in the Pankisi Gorge region in northern Georgia. Like many of the recent aid recipients, claims that Georgia has become an al Qaeda sanctuary are dubious at best.

“The rapid increase in US strategic influence in the Caucasus has alarmed Russian policy planners. Moscow is keen to take steps to shore up its eroding position in the region. However, Russian officials have limited options with which to counter US moves while at the same time maintaining cordial relations with Washington,” Eurasia.net reported on April 8, 2002. “The most prominent US moves in the Caucasus are the decision to dispatch military advisers to Georgia and a March 29 State Department announcement on the lifting of an arms embargo imposed on Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both actions have the potential to tilt the military establishments of all three Caucasus nations away from Russia and towards NATO.”

Imagine Canada decided to enter a military and diplomatic alliance with Russia and Canada began arming itself to the teeth with Russian weapons and training with Russian military advisers. Can you guess what the reaction of Bush and the neocons would be?

It doesn’t take much imagination.

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