http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com /

My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”

As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA’s First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as “30 tons of garbage” that was “abandoned” by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.

When the LAPD finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011...

The young woman who died after a fall from the Queen Mary's walkway Monday night had been drinking, police said.

The 26-year-old Long Beach woman, whose name has not been released pending notification of family, had climbed over a railing of the ship before the fall. She tumbled from the walkway between the shore and the ship 75 feet into Long Beach Harbor, said Long Beach police spokeswoman Nancy Pratt. The woman was apparently "rather intoxicated" at the time, Pratt said.

Police are handling the fall as an accident.

KTLA reported that witnesses said they heard the woman arguing with her boyfriend just before she fell and that she may have threatened to jump overboard. Pratt could not confirm those accounts.

After the woman plunged into the water, a ship employee and the woman's 40-year-old boyfriend jumped in after her. Two Long Beach police officers also jumped in.

The woman was taken to a hospital in critical condition and pronounced dead shortly after, Pratt said. The boyfriend was taken to a hospital for treatment of hypothermia. The ship employee and police officers who jumped in were treated at the scene and released.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011...

FAA may investigate Alec Baldwin incident if complaint filed

Alec Baldwin's dispute with an American Airlines flight attendant does not appear to be a criminal matter, law enforcement sources said Tuesday.

Baldwin was kicked off a flight departing from LAX on Tuesday afternoon -- apparently because he was playing "Words with Friends" on an unspecified electronic device.

No investigations have been opened into the matter, law enforcement sources said, but that could change if American Airlines chooses to file a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor declined to comment specifically on Baldwin's case, but said federal authorities can investigate when an airline complains to the FAA about a passenger who refuses to obey a crew member's instructions.

"If we determine the passenger did in fact disobey a crew member's instructions, we can propose to fine that passenger," Gregor said. "The passenger could appeal our proposed fine."

At least two passengers on the flight reported the incident on Twitter.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/23/2516...

BY DIANA MOSKOVITZ

A second person has been arrested in South Florida’s notorious “toxic tush” case, charged with assisting a fake doctor accused of leaving patients with life-threatening injuries from a buttocks-enhancement procedure that involved injecting a toxic stew of household and automotive chemicals into their bodies.

Corey Alexander Eubank, 40, of Hollywood, was charged with two counts of unlicensed practice of a healthcare professional with serious injury and two counts of acting as a principal, according to Miami Gardens police.

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Eubank is accused of aiding Oneal Ron Morris, 30.

Morris’ clients believed they were getting a backside enhancement. What they really got, according to police, were injections of cement, mineral oil, Fix-a-Flat and Super Glue. The injections left the victims ill, sending them to hospitals.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/nyregion...

SACKETS HARBOR, N.Y. — Clayton F. Nans, a 57-year-old retired Marine colonel, halted his Chevrolet pickup truck near Lake Ontario recently and pointed to a grassy embankment. It was the very spot, he said, where British troops first made landfall in this upstate village, before American soldiers fought off their invasion.

That engagement was two centuries ago, in the Second Battle of Sackets Harbor, a key New York moment in the War of 1812, whose bicentennial is fast approaching. And Mr. Nans, who periodically dons the blue woolen coat of an early 19th-century Marine as a War of 1812 re-enactor, is upset that New York State is not doing anything to commemorate it.

“I know people who can go their whole life and will be just as happy not to know about any War of 1812,” said Mr. Nans, who, as the uniform attests, is quite happy to know about the war: a life-size cutout of him and two of his children in period costume is on display in the local 1812 visitors’ center.

“This community thinks it’s important,” he said
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http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/1...

Veteran broadcaster and charity campaigner Sir Jimmy Savile has died at his home in Leeds.
He would have celebrated his 85th birthday on Monday.

Police found his body when they were called to his home at 12.10pm on Saturday. His death is not being treated as suspicious.

Born in Leeds in 1926, the youngest of seven children, Savile is perhaps best-known for the wildly successful 70s TV series Jim'll Fix It.

Thousands of children would write into the show in the hope of having their wishes granted.

Sir Jimmy was widely regarded as Britain's first ever celebrity DJ, fronting the original series of Top Of The Pops. He was invited back to present the final show in 2006 with former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/fashion/...


IT wasn’t quite the slip-up (or slip-down, as it were) most people expect during a presidential campaign, but whatever happened to Ron Paul’s eyebrows at Tuesday’s night debate certainly caught some viewers’ attention.

For those of you not yet riveted by the Republican race, Mr. Paul, the dark-horse libertarian with equally dusky brows, was a victim of hot lights, faulty adhesive or merely a devilish optical illusion when his right eyebrow seemed to dip toward the stage at Dartmouth College.

Seen on television, Mr. Paul appeared to have a second, thinner brow under the one headed south, creating a delicate X over his right eye.

Jesse Benton, a campaign spokesman, insisted that Mr. Paul had been the victim of the elements, namely a heavy pollen season in New Hampshire, and called accusations that he’d been artificially enhancing “stupid” and “insulting.”
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/03/1260...

By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Demoralized liberals are trying to get their mojo back. Frustrated with Congress, outmaneuvered by the tea party and all but silent as the GOP swept the 2010 elections, liberals say they've had enough.

On Monday, 2,000 progressive activists who represented more than 200 groups came to Washington to chart a new course for recapturing the 2008 electoral magic that put Barack Obama in office and gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress.

Monday's opening of the three-day "Take Back the American Dream" conference took place as small but vocal bands of protesters demonstrated in various cities nationwide to support the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" protests in New York.

The American Dream conference, which includes a jobs rally Wednesday on Capitol Hill, is sponsored by the liberal Campaign for America's Future and by Rebuild the Dream, an organization founded by Van Jones, former green jobs adviser for the Obama White House.

The event will try to stir a passionate grass-roots movement of disenchanted liberals who will organize and hit the streets to protest what they see as a hard right turn in American politics after the Great Recession and the 2010 elections.
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