Category: The News From Around The World

Dennis Rodman Checks Into Rehab

January 18, 2014 - Full Interviews With Our Guests, Journalists, The News From Around The World, Top Stories, Transcripts

  • Dennis Rodman checked himself into rehab Wednesday.
  • Less than a week after returning home from his fourth trip to North Korea.
  • Agent says Rodman will be in alcohol treatment facility for one month.
  • Rodman and agent still refuse to apologize for “basketball diplomacy.”
  • Sobriety may not be the only hurdle the 52-year-old basketball legend faces.
  • Today’s guest Hayes Brown says charity Rodman claimed to be playing for  in North Korea may not even exist.

Dennis Rodman has checked himself into rehab less than one week after returning from North Korea. Hayes Brown from ThinkProgress.org says Rodman may have misled us about the charity he was reportedly playing for

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Dennis Rodman makes his fourth trip to North Korea to play in what he calls a ‘charity basketball game’ raising money for North Korea’s deaf.  Not so, says Hayes Brown, who is a national security reporter for ThinkProgress.org. He joins us from Washington, D.C.

David: Today, you’re reporting over at ThinkProgress.org that Rodman’s agent and the sponsor of his trip know nothing about this charity for the deaf?

Hayes: That is correct. So, Rodman, when he first landed in North Korea, they told the Associated Press that the proceeds from this game, whatever those might be, will be going to a North Korean charity for the deaf. When I reached out to Paddy Power, the sponsor of the event, they directed me to Rodman’s agent. Then Rodman’s agents still didn’t give me any information about this charity.

Dennis Rodman checks into rehab less than a week after returning home from North Korea.

Dennis Rodman checked into rehab last Wednesday, less than a week after returning home from North Korea.

David: Who is Paddy Power?

Hayes: Paddy Power is an Irish bookmaking website, actually. They’re online gambling, and they decided to sponsor this trip for Dennis Rodman and several former NBA players to go over and play a North Korean basketball team and get all the publicity that comes with it.

But I do know that Paddy Power is no longer interested in the Rodman name. It turns out, right before the New Year, they pulled their name from the sponsorship saying they don’t want to be associated with North Korea anymore. Instead, they are just paying for the trip due to the contractual obligations of the agreement they already agreed to with Rodman.

David: This is his fourth trip. Were the three previous trips for charity?

Hayes: None of them were for charity. The first one was with VICE magazine to go and do a cultural diplomacy sort of thing. At that point, he struck up a weird friendship with Kim Jong-Un, the leader of North Korea, and at that point, he decided to go back, to everyone’s surprise, and he met up with the dictator again. And then on his third trip, he was coaching the North Korean Olympic basketball team a little – I mean, it’s unclear exactly what he was doing at that stage. So on this fourth one, charity, that’s why it’s a little questionable.

David: How does North Korea treat its deaf?

Hayes: The parents of disabled children are forced to move from Pyongyang, the capital, because they want to present a perfect city. They’re sent off to isolation basically where they can’t be seen or heard from, and their medical infrastructure is in no way adequate to provide for the disabled.

David: We’re on Pacifica Radio. Pacifica’s mandate is to promote peaceful dialogue. Dennis Rodman going to North Korea falls under the purview of Pacifica’s mission statement. Isn’t this a good thing? Isn’t this the right thing to do for one of our own, to reach out to a potential enemy?

Hayes: You’d think so, if Kim Jong-Un had shown any sort of willingness to have peaceful dialogue, to give up its nuclear weapons, to treat humans with respect and dignity, none of which seemed to be the case. The prisons are still full, labor camps are still active, and there’s just still no sign of any sort of improvement on human rights from the North Koreans, one of the reasons why the claims of this being a charity game were met with such skepticism.

Rodman now says alcohol played a role in his calling the North Korean leader a friend.

Rodman now says alcohol played a role in his calling the North Korean leader a friend.

David: Well, we know nothing about what’s going on in North Korea. There was a report that Kim Jong-Un last week fed his uncle to the dogs, and now we’re being told that just might be apocryphal.

Sending Dennis Rodman to North Korea, is it possible his real sponsor isn’t Paddy Power, but our intelligence agencies.

Hayes: I mean, anything is possible, but the U.S. government has been very vehement that Rodman has been acting as a private citizen. When questioned directly, they’ve said that they have not debriefed him on his trips. If they actually are the sponsor of Rodman going to North Korea, they are lying straight to the face of the media without blinking.

David: Yeah, because our intelligence agencies would never lie to us. The NSA…

Hayes: Paragons of honesty, those guys. But on this one, I’m pretty sure that Dennis Rodman is not the secret ambassador to North Korea.

David: It’s so bipolar, it just might work. I mean, it’s beyond crazy. No one would believe that Dennis Rodman was working for the NSA. But we know with certainty that North Korea is probably the worst of the worst, right?

According to our guest nobody is sure if Kim Jong Un is really running North Korea.

According to our guest nobody is sure if Kim Jong Un is really running North Korea.

Hayes: I would agree with that. I mean, it’s not just the U.S. and its allies saying this. A United Nations investigator early this year said that he had not seen the sort of atrocities perpetrated in North Korea since the time of the Nazis. That’s not an American government official, that’s someone from the United Nations saying this. And we get all these horror stories out from the defectors who actually make it out, the ones who risk their lives to cross the border to leave North Korea.

David: How old is Kim Jong-Un?

Hayes: That’s a great question. No one is really sure. They think his birthday is Wednesday, but that’s a guess. So one of the things is that this game is supposedly kind of a birthday present for Kim the younger. I think he’s supposed to be in his late 20’s, like 28, maybe 29. That’s one of the things about North Korea, their isolation is so all-encompassing.

David: It would be great if the NSA could find out what’s going on in North Korea.

Hayes: They’re trying as hard as they can, but North Korea is just so hard to penetrate that it’s almost impossible to get information out, even with our top people on it.

David: Maybe they should take a break from spying on Americans and find out what’s going on in North Korea.

Hayes Brown covers national security issues for ThinkProgress.org.

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Should Americans be reaching out to the North Korean leadership? Join the conversation below.

 

 

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Self Policing The Chemical Industry Is A Hoax – YouTube

January 18, 2014 - The News From Around The World, Top Stories

300,000 West Virginia residents were left without water for six days  after 7,500 gallons of a coal cleaning chemical known as “crude MCHM” spilled into the ELK River. The spill took place a mile and a half upstream from where parts of West Virginia gets its drinking water. For more on this we are joined by Meteorologist and Climate Change expert Mark Thompson.

 Self Policing The Chemical Industry Is A Hoax – YouTube.

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“The 5 Biggest Lies Told To You This Week” Our Entire Radio Show on YouTube

January 18, 2014 - The News From Around The World, Top Stories

West Virginia’s chemical spill demonstrates why we need a more powerful EPA and John Boehner is lying when he says coal is “regulated enough.”  The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is the most corrupt man in Washington and is lying when he tell us why he’s retiring. A new documentary reveals that Donald Rumsfeld is delusional and a liar. Is Egypt ready for Democracy? Is America ready for Democracy? And with North Korea and Iran pursuing their nuclear ambitions does America really have the ability to shoot incoming missiles out of the sky? Or is Raytheon lying to us? Today’s show features the following Truth Tellers: Will Ryan, Cactus Chloe Fiorenzo, Westy Westenhofer, Benny Brydern and JT “Tornado Thomas,” Hal Lublin, Mark Thompson, Howie Klein, Hayes Brown and Michael Snyder. Portions of our show are written by Hal Lublin and David Feldman. Please subscribe to this for free as a podcast on iTunes and Stitcher.

The 5 Biggest Lies Told To You This Week – YouTube.

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Is America A Police State?

January 18, 2014 - Authors, David Feldman Show, Full Interviews With Our Guests, The News From Around The World, Top Stories, Transcripts

Dr. Robert Brame On America’s Increasing Taste For Locking Americans Up

  • 50% percent of black males and 40% of white males will be arrested by the time they’re 23, according to Dr. Brame’s new study.
  • Is America a police state?
  • An arrest record, with no conviction, can make it impossible to find a job in some states.
  • Violent crime has plummeted yet the number of Americans getting arrested continues to rise.
  • Dr. Brame says nobody’s sure of the role Roe versus Wade plays in the sharp dip in violent crime.

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Now comes news that nearly 40% of white males in America are arrested by the time they’re 23.  Is America a police state? Joining us is Dr. Robert Brame. He is a Criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, and the lead author of this study.

Police state? 50 percent of black males in America will be arrested by the time they're 23.

Police state? Nearly 50 percent of black males in America will be arrested by the time they’re 23.

David: Dr. Brame, nearly 40% of white men have been arrested by the time they’re 23. So America either has a serious problem with white men or the police, which means America has a serious problem with white men.

Now, these are arrests, not incarcerations. My son’s best friend is black. At the age of 18, he was arrested for marijuana possession. Never convicted, but ended up spending a week in the L.A. County jail, and then was sent home.

Does that count as an incarceration, or does that count simply as an arrest?

Dr. Brame: Well, that’s an arrest, followed by a period of detention.

40% of white men have been arrested by the time they're 23.

Police state? Nearly 40% of white men have been arrested by the time they’re 23.

David: So you can spend a week in the county jail and that’s just an arrest, not an incarceration?

Dr. Brame: That’s not what we normally think of as incarceration. So that experience you just described would be an arrest with a period of pre-trial detention.

David: If you’ve been arrested but never convicted, certainly that doesn’t show up on your record, right? When you’re looking for a job, running for office or applying to college, having been arrested but not convicted, that doesn’t show up on your record, right?

An Arrest Often Remains Part of  Your Police Record

Dr. Brame:  You have to take into consideration that the laws that govern the use of criminal history records vary tremendously from state to state. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is that an employer can ask you many questions on a job application. So if an employer wants to ask you about whether you’ve ever been arrested or not, unless the state has a law that governs the kinds of questions about criminal history that can be asked, they can ask you that question. You, as an applicant, decide whether to answer that truthfully or not.

Dr. Brame: Just having an arrest record with no conviction can affect opportunities to get a license in some states, it can affect your eligibility to get student loans, it can affect your relationships with friends and family. Yes, it can affect you if you’ve been arrested without being convicted, certainly.

David: Professor Brame, violent crime is down dramatically in America. What do you say to those who maintain this is all good, we introduce Americans to the criminal justice system at an early age, and it scares them straight?

Dr. Brame: The basic idea that you lay out is correct. Homicides today in the United States, the homicide rate today is as low as it’s been since the early 1960’s. That’s a fact.

Dr. Brame: What we’re not sure of is how much of that is due to criminal justice system policies, or, on the other hand, how much of it is due to other things that are not as much under the control of the criminal justice system, or other things that are under the control of the criminal justice system, but they are different than arrests.

For example, putting more police on the street or the decline of crack cocaine markets have both been proposed as potential explanations for the crime decline, and those don’t really have anything at all to do with how often people are arrested.

Dr. Brame: But it would be an unjustified leap from the evidence at this point to say that the violent crime declines that we’ve seen say in the last 20 years or so, that those are due to arresting people more often. I don’t think that’s consistent with the evidence we have right now.

Has Roe v. Wade Played Any Role In Violent Crime Dropping?

America's incarceration rate has spiked since Reagan became president.

Police state? America’s incarceration rate has spiked since Reagan became president.

David:  Is there any evidence to suggest that Roe v. Wade is responsible for the precipitous drop in violent crime?

Dr. Brame: I don’t think the research on that speaks with one voice, so I think it’s fair to say that research is controversial. And I don’t think we have a good consensus understanding of the effects of changes in abortion laws and abortion guidelines on violent crime.

David:  If getting slapped by your father, an authority figure, sends you into therapy, what does being thrown to the ground and arrested by a police officer do to a 16-year-old white male?

Dr. Brame:  To me, it would be traumatic. This is where the research needs to go is to try to understand this. We look at the effects of the types of schools that kids go to, we look at the effects of the types of food they eat, how much TV they watch, we look at the effects of all those sorts of experiences on life outcomes. Given how widespread arrest experiences are, we need to better understand what the total effects of the arrest experience is, both beneficial and harmful on people’s future behavior.

So that’s one of the issues we are hoping to shed light on with this research and future research.

David: Is this our nature? Have we always been arresting people?

Dr. Brame:  I think we have a lot more police officers in schools today than we used to. We’re much more likely to arrest people for certain kinds of drug offenses, domestic violence, dating violence kinds of issues that maybe then weren’t as likely to result in arrests a generation ago. Unfortunately, no simple answer to that question.

Dr. Robert Brame is a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina.

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Have you been arrested? Do you fear America is becoming a police state?  Please join the conversation below.

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