crime: December 2006 Archives
OneWorld U.S. Home / Today's News - Richest 2 Percent Own Half the World's Wealth
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 21 (OneWorld) - The richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half the world's wealth, according to a new study released by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University.
The study's authors say their work is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. They found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total.
In contrast, the assets of half of the world's adult population account for barely 1 percent of global wealth.
Last Wednesday, the name of Angel Diaz was added to a long list of persons whose executions have been botched in recent American history. As widely reported in the press, it took Florida thirty-four minutes to kill him, twice the usual time. The needles that carried the lethal chemicals were mistakenly inserted completely through their intended targets--the veins in Diaz's arm--into the flesh of his arms. Thus, instead of being unconscious within the usual three or four minutes after the administration of the first chemical in the execution protocol, Diaz "appeared to be moving twenty-four minutes after the first injection, grimacing, blinking, licking his lips, blowing and appearing to mouth words."
Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, 2006
Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation reported an increase of 3.7 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention in the first half of 2006 when compared to figures reported for the first six months of 2005. The violent crime category includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
The number of property crimes in the United States from January to June of 2006 decreased 2.6 percent when compared to data from the same time period in 2005. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is also a property crime, but data for arson are not included in property crime totals. Figures for 2006 indicate that arson increased 6.8 percent in the first half of the year when compared to 2005 figures for the same time period.
Md. executions halted - baltimoresun.com
In a narrowly tailored decision with potentially sweeping consequences, Maryland's highest court ordered a halt yesterday to executions in the state, ruling that procedures for putting prisoners to death were never submitted for the public review required by law.
Under the Court of Appeals ruling, state prison officials face the prospect of having to submit the execution protocols to the scrutiny of a joint legislative committee and schedule a public hearing on the issue. Alternatively, the court ruled, the legislature could exempt the execution procedures from that review process - something that one state senator characterized as "very unlikely."
Now, there's been a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about how impeachment should be "off the table." We're told that it's time to look ahead - not back...
Can you imagine how far that argument would go for the defense at an arraignment on charges of grand larceny, or large-scale distribution of methamphetamines? How about the arranging of a contract killing on a pregnant mother? "Indictment should be off the table." Or "Let's look forward, not backward." Or "We can't afford another failed defendant."
Our country has a legal system, not of men and women, but of laws. Why then are we so willing to put inconvenient provisions of the U.S. constitution and federal law "off the table?" Our greatest concern right now should be what to put ON the table. Unless we're going to have one set of laws for the powerful and another set for those who can't afford fancy lawyers, then truth matters to everyone. And accountability is a matter of human and legal principle. If we're going to continue wagging our fingers at the disadvantaged transgressors, then I suggest we be consistent. If truth and accountability can be stretched into sham concepts, we may as well open the gates of all our jails and prisons, where, by the way, there are more people behind bars than any other country in the world. One in every 32 American adults is behind bars, on probation, or on parole as we stand here tonight.
Which is to say that, globally, the United States is number one at demanding accountability and backing up that demand with imprisonment. But, when it comes to our president, vice president, secretary of state, former secretary of defense...this insistence on accountability vanishes. All of a sudden, what's past is prologue. And we're just "forward-looking." But some people can't just look forward. Men and women stationed in Iraq at this moment, under orders of a Commander-in-Chief so sufficiently practiced in the art of deception, that he got vast numbers of American journalists and the most esteemed media outlets of this country, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and PBS to eagerly serve his agenda-building for war. And the process also induced vast numbers of artists and performers (probably even some in this room tonight) to keep quiet and facilitate the push for an invasion in Iraq.
MiamiHerald.com | 12/16/2006 | Gov. Bush orders hold on executions
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush halted all Florida executions and ordered a special commission to review lethal-injection policies after a medical examiner Friday suggested Miami killer Angel Nieves Diaz's execution was botched.
The order, asking the commission to report its results by March 1, came the same day a federal judge imposed an execution moratorium in California, finding that lethal injection is painful and unconstitutionally cruel.
A violent career criminal, Diaz was executed Wednesday for the 1979 killing of a Miami topless-bar manager. It took 34 minutes for him to die -- more than double the average time -- as he grimaced, flexed his jaw and opened his mouth.
Diaz was the 21st person executed under Bush, a record high for Florida governors.
