H2O Man Survey #39

[JonLP24]

40. Lead

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There are, it turns out, plenty of theories. When I started research for this story, I worked my way through a pair of thick criminology tomes. One chapter regaled me with the "exciting possibility" that it's mostly a matter of economics: Crime goes down when the economy is booming and goes up when it's in a slump. Unfortunately, the theory doesn't seem to hold water—for example, crime rates have continued to drop recently despite our prolonged downturn.

<snip>

Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.

So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

And with that we have our molecule: tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive invented by General Motors in the 1920s to prevent knocking and pinging in high-performance engines. As auto sales boomed after World War II, and drivers in powerful new cars increasingly asked service station attendants to "fill 'er up with ethyl," they were unwittingly creating a crime wave two decades later.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

I don't know the primary cause because I do believe things you mentions are systemic and complex and require deep complex solutions than a bumper sticker slogan or paragraph answer, whatever it is it cannot be a lie. I think the invention of the telephone was a powerful device to expand & begin this military control of globalization which in turn encouraged and increased spying. right at the beginning they were plotting CIA assassinations, COINTELPRO, Operation Chaos, etc which the media was helpful in assisting creating false perceptions, hate... Reagan did a lot of damage.

I think the a huge contributing factor for recent times have to do with -- I'll start with my home state like Jan Brewer telling the DOJ or administration what she is not going to do, stripped and cut funding down to everything. Arizona ranks last in job recovery since the 2008-11 Recession. There have been cuts to everything, medicare, education, everything but gave her staff bonuses. The politicians here are so openly corrupt and Sheriff Joe -- I don't even know where to start with him -- the same day he answered the judge in his contempt of court trial if he hired an private investigator to spy on his wife and he said he did but with the "I"m incompetent" defense with he gets a tip from someone in Seattle that he heard that the judge's wife is going to try rig his next election but said that he required a payment to investigate the claim that he made to see if it was true or not and Joe paid him.

That isn't really what happened but it was the best he could say which he ended with a sob story "in all my years of law enforcement" & apologized profusely he routinely uses law enforcement to spy on political opponents & judges -- Andrew Thomas was disbarred and ran for Attorney General where the debate featured both accusing the other of corruption and they were right. Tom Horne exited office on a scandal and unfortunately one of my favorite Democrats Rotellini lost back-to-back 50/50 elections (statewide Dems lose by 70% or more). She prosecuted cases in the area of financial crimes which the GOP strategy was to go with she has no experience with violent offenders therefore she is going to make Arizona less safe in campaign aids.

The same day Sheriff Joe made that admission a case was dismissed a year after a 30-year-old family business was raided and the owners and workers were charged with "forgery" on the documents proving their citizenship. The same day the family filed suit.

Russell Pearce & the SB 1070 thing. I really feel like I'm in the middle of a far right movement that's brewing.

Brewer privatized as much as she could. Education, anything you name it. Prisons is especially cements the callous, cold, reality status of America. They're privatized and Arizona has incredible strict laws -- felony for one seed of marijuana. She told critically-ill inmates to "pray" for their injuries rather than provide necessary treatments.

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Powell, 48, died May 20, 2009, after being kept in a human cage in Goodyear's Perryville Prison for at least four hours in the blazing Arizona sun. This, despite a prison policy limiting such outside confinement to a maximum of two hours.

The county medical examiner found the cause of death to be due to complications from heat exposure. Her core body temperature upon examination was 108 degrees Fahrenheit. She suffered burns and blisters all over her body.

Witnesses say she was repeatedly denied water by corrections officers, though the c.o.'s deny this. The weather the day she collapsed from the heat (May 19 -- she died in the early morning hours of May 20) arched just above a 107 degree high.

According to a 3,000 page report released by the ADC, she pleaded to be taken back inside, but was ignored. Similarly, she was not allowed to use the restroom. When she was found unconscious, her body was covered with excrement from soiling herself.
Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, actually expired after being transported to West Valley Hospital, where acting ADC Director Charles Ryan made the decision to have her life support suspended.

(Ryan lacked the authority to do this, but that's another story, which you can read about, here.)

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/blogs/marcia-powells-death-unavenged-county-attorney-passes-on-prosecuting-prison-staff-6499269

Private prisons lobby for tougher & longer sentences, life sentences on 3rd strike drug possessions. They send someone to a slow sentence to work for pennies while live in very violent prisons. This recent wave as a the government sucks (because they usually hand off to a contractor but while things can be improved on & more efficiently getting rid of it for a for-profit service is not the answer. Tax cuts & subsidies while simultanously slash the safety net while privatizing literally every thing is creating an everybody for themselves while consciously unaffected by the lives destroyed for profit creating a very desperate environment and the world becoming very cold & especially cruel.

Phoenix Program

The Phoenix Program (Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng, a word related to fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix) was a program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces, special forces operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV),[1] and the Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) security apparatus during the Vietnam War.

The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong).[2][3][4][5] The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong".[6] The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area.[7] The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions.[7]

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Former CIA analyst Samuel A. Adams,[27] in interview to CBC talked about the about the program as basically an assassination program that also included torture. A former Phoenix Intelligence Officer , Barton Osborn, in an interview broadcast in 1975, talked about the torture practices used by the Americans and detailed a case in which a man was dragged out of the interrogation's hooch with a dowel protruding from his ear. The dowel had been tapped through in the course of torture to hit the brain. These were activities performed by American Marines. They would also kill people by throwing them out of helicopters to threaten those they wanted to interrogated and who were forced to watch other men being thrown out into the air.[28]

Abuses were common.[13][29][30] In many instances, rival Vietnamese would report their enemies as "VC" in order to get U.S. troops to kill them.[31] In many cases, Phung Hoang chiefs were incompetent bureaucrats who used their positions to enrich themselves. Phoenix tried to address this problem by establishing monthly neutralization quotas, but these often led to fabrications or, worse, false arrests. In some cases, district officials accepted bribes from the NLF to release certain suspects.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program

I thank that right there highlights the cruel, unforgiving, desperate & cold world which has only expanded and privatization but hopefully and I believe there are generational aspects of this and with the internet and access to open sources there is potential for hope but growing up in the "9-11 era" I've seen the world became a different places. Better in same ways, yes, but worse in so many others in terms of prejudices, hate, poverty, fear, etc.