The UCLA student who was viciously tasered by university police is not an Anglo. His name is Mostafa Tabatabainejadd and he’s Muslim. I knew you’d be surprised.

“It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life,” said David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.

I bet he wouldn’t have been tasered if he was a middle-aged Anglo named Bob Morris. Police are way more leery about thumping people like me - which says something ugly about class and race in America.

UCLA Bruin student newspaper article

Video of the tasering

That makes four major incidents of Los Angeles-area police violence in the past few months that have been captured on video. The LAPD clubbing video on July 8 I posted on YouTube has now been viewed nearly 200,000 times.

Residents of Los Angeles: Keep those camcorders and cell phone cameras with you at all times!

This is yet one more reason Sue and I will be moving out of Los Angeles soon. I mean, why continue living in such a toxic environment? Yes, cops can be thugs anywhere, but the ones in L.A. are especially vicious.

More:

From AmericaBlog

Video shows police officer telling second student to leave or “you’re gonna get tased too”

The student was apparently just standing there doing nothing.

Still more:

Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.

“(He was) no possible danger to any of the police,” Zaragoza said. “(He was) getting shocked and Tasered as he was handcuffed.”

[tags]UCLA taser[/tags]

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It’s an old article, but it’s more appropriate today than ever.

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

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The Iraq Study Group and Bush are now want one final push in Iraq - send in more troops, increase funding, and screw all that democracy stuff.

One of those unnamed sources said:

“If the Democrats are smart, they’ll play along, and I think they will. But forget about bipartisanship. It’s all about who’s going to be in best shape to win the White House.”

How thoughtful of the Democrats to “play along” in hopes of selfish partisan gain. I’m sure Iraqi and Americans families of those killed and maimed during their final desperate (and losing) push will appreciate the gesture.

But wait, haven’t the Democrats already been playing along on Iraq for years? Didn’t they just win an election based on being anti-war? What happened to that?

Ah well, the Twin Parties of Militarism still insist on marching lockstep towards catastrophe. Well, they certainly can’t admit they’ve lost in Iraq -, because y’know that would mean admitting to an error and the U.S. never ever does that - so instead they will cheerfully sacrifice someone else’s kids yet again for their delusions.

See you in the streets.

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Earnings are sharply up for Swiss hearing aid maker Phonak. They expect continued growth as young users of mp3 players continue to damage their hearing by listening to mp3 players and other music at damaging volumes.

Ask Pete Townshend of the Who who has “severe hearing loss“. Ditto for Neil Young, Sting, Ted Nugent, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, who like many others didn’t start to suffer hearing loss until their 40’s. But the damage had been done much earlier.

Loud music and hearing damage

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No, it’s not Palestine…

From Subtopia

Elbit Systems limited, an Israeli company building and profiting from the Wall in occupied Palestine, has been awarded a contract, along with Boeing, to build the US wall. Elbit will import Israeli military technology, tested on Palestinians, for use against poor immigrants here.

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