Majikthise

Life parodies The Wire: Baltimore Sun replaces crime reporters with blogger

The Baltimore Sun Media Group launched a free daily tabloid and website this week:

The tabloid newspaper and Web site will focus on news, sports and entertainment news and blogs and listings geared to readers in the 18- to 34-year-old range. It plans to rely on reader-generated material for about a third of its content. The rest will come from its staff of about 20 and The Sun and other Tribune Co.-owned newspapers and entertainment listings from the company's metromix.com site as well as Metromix sites in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The tabloid also has struck content-sharing agreements with local radio stations WTMD-FM and WNST-AM. [Sun]

Like the apocryphal residents of the desert island who eked out a living taking in each other's laundry....

"So the Tribune has laid off reporters and replaced them with hired bloggers to comment on the remaining reporters’ inadequacies. That is one pomo business model," writes commenter mjb in response to an April 14 post by staff blogger Lori Barrett, wherein Barrett complains that an uplifting anecdote about an foiled armed robbery story got more ink in the local press than a rape/home invasion.

Another commenter, Sun Crime Reporter, gently reminds Ms. Barrett of the facts on the ground: "Um, maybe the fact that YOU ARE SITTING where our Baltimore County crime reporter used to sit has something to do with the newspaper’s “inadequate” coverage."

I feel bad for Ms. Barrett, who has been hired to keep of a steady stream of pithy commentary on what she reads in the paper. No doubt, it's cheaper to hire Barrett to keep up a chirpy running commentary than it would be to cover those beats.

She just started, and already readers are clamoring for her to get out and do her own reporting. The readers don't understand that Barrett's job was created to avoid paying reporters. It would defeat management's purpose if she were to abandon her post on the assembly line long enough to learn new facts, or conduct in-depth research.

Doing more! With Less!

[HT: Baltimore Crime Blog]

Drum Major Institute to honor David Simon, creator of The Wire

The producer of HBO's drama The Wire has been awarded a 2008 Drum Major For Justice Award. On May 20th, The Drum Major Institute will honor David Simon for his contribution to the national dialog on urban policy.

"Simon, by creating his own fictional urban vision, has illuminated many of the problems facing reality," writes Corinne Ramey writes at DMIblog.

The Wire is about the institutions that comprise the city of Baltimore--the police, the drug cartels, the politicians, the unions, the schools, and the media. Simon has called the series an op/ed dramatic form.   

Simon became intimately familiar with the streets of Baltimore during his 13-year career as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. His longtime collaborator, Ed Burns, is a former homicide detective who went on to teach in the Baltimore public schools--the latter being by far the more difficult job, in his opinion.

The final season of The Wire devotes considerable attention to the decline of the American newspaper. The problem, as Simon sees it, is that newspapers are too preoccupied with profit to safeguard the quality of their own product. Experienced reporters are bought out and replaced by neophytes. Editors care more about winning prizes than about telling stories that matter.

If you doubt the verisimilitude of Simon's media world, check out AngryJournalist.com and this emotionally raw comment thread about freelance magazine journalism (the accompanying New York Observer story is okay, but the comments really capture industry morale at rock bottom).

Uzbekistan legalizes money laundering until 2013

Attention, terrorists, drug dealers, and corporate criminals: The Republic of Uzbekistan has legalized money laundering until 2013.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) warned American banks about the threat on March 20:

The Government of Uzbekistan has taken a series of legal actions that undermine the jurisdiction's AML/CFT regime. Uzbekistan had made progress in addressing AML/CFT deficiencies by enacting an AML/CFT law that went into effect in January, 2006. However, the Government of Uzbekistan subsequently suspended implementation of the law through a series of decrees until January 1, 2013.

Among other things, the decrees suspend the authority of Uzbekistan's financial intelligence unit to collect and analyze information on, and monitor, financial and property transactions; identify possible money laundering and terrorist financing mechanisms and channels; share information on identified crimes with law enforcement agencies for criminal prosecution; and cooperate and exchange information with foreign agencies and international organizations on AML/CFT issues based on international obligations and agreements of Uzbekistan. The decrees also suspend reporting, programmatic, and customer identification/due diligence requirements for covered entities. Moreover, the decrees subject reports to secrecy legislation and call for the General Prosecutor to strengthen bank secrecy "to prevent interference with activities of banking and other credit organizations" (Presidential Decree No. PP-565, January 12, 2007). The most recent decree (No. PP-3968, February 20, 2008) prohibits financial institutions, law enforcement, and other supervising bodies from inquiring about the sources of cash deposits in any amount, upon threat of civil or criminal penalty.

Following the latest presidential decree, which criminalizes official inquiries about the source of cash transactions, a global anti-money laundering body known as the Financial Action Task Force issued the following statement:

"The FATF is particularly concerned that a series of presidential decrees in Uzbekistan has effectively repealed the anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime in that country and generates a money laundering/financing of terrorism (ML/FT) vulnerability in the international financial system." [FATF, February 28, 2008 (.pdf)]

These stark warnings have generated remarkably little media attention.

In the global financial system, loopholes in one jurisdiction can have repercussions worldwide. For example, if a wealthy Saudi Arabian wanted to discreetly sponsor some jihadis bound for Afghanistan, lax anti-money laundering laws in neighboring Uzbekistan might make his life easier. Or, suppose someone with suitcases of cash from the opium trade wanted to bank that money to buy some weapons. Uzbekistan might be a good place to do that.

This week, the US is sending a diplomat to Uzbekistan for talks:

But, in a possible sign of political relaxation in a country the West says tolerates little dissent, the government has pardoned six jailed human rights activists this year.

President Islam Karimov, ruling Central Asia's most populous nation since 1989, has also promised to liberalize Uzbekistan's rigid financial system and he has softened his critical stance towards the West.

Some Tashkent diplomats have linked the shift in Uzbekistan's stance to Karimov's bid to emerge from global isolation.

Uzbekistan has large gas and oil reserves and is also among the world's top 10 gold producers and the No. 2 cotton exporter.

Acting U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia Pamela Spratlen was due to arrive in the Uzbek capital Tashkent for talks later on Thursday, an embassy statement said.

"We are convinced that the involvement of the Uzbek government in a discussion on a broad range of topics that are on our bilateral agenda," the statement quoted U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Richard Norland as saying.

He listed potential topics as regional safety, trade and investment, cultural exchange and human rights. [Reuters]

It's not clear whether the timing of the US visit had anything to do with the recent changes in Uzbekistan's money laundering laws. 

Smoking Gun exposes Tupac document forgery

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that associates of Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs murdered rapper Tupac Shakur in 1994.

Yesterday, the Smoking Gun revealed that the Times had been duped by an incarcerated forger:

The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs's trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion "Suge" Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur's shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as "a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug." [TSG]

The Times has since issued an apology. (Scroll down to read the story as it appeared on March 17.)

How a sociologist became "gang leader for a day"

Cool item from the Crime and Justice newsletter compiled by Ted Guest:

How Sociologist Became "Gang Leader For A Day"

For seven years, sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh led a  double life in Chicago, reports National Public Radio. For days, Venkatesh stayed inside one of Chicago's  worst housing projects living with poor families and hanging out with gang members. Then he returned to he tony Hyde Park neighborhood, where he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago.

Now at  Columbia University, Venkatesh ventured into Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes housing project in the  1990s to do research for his doctorate. He befriended the leader of the Black Kings, one of the largest and most violent crack-dealing gangs, and led the group for a day. Venkatesh's new book, Gang Leader for a Day, describes his years inside the projects and how residents and gang members interacted, coexisted, and raised families. Venkatesh's guide during his research was J.T., the leader of the Black Kings who took an interest in the budding academic and showed him the ropes inside the projects. Though J.T. had a college degree, he left corporate America to run a drug operation that made him up to $100,000 a year. National Public Radio

By coincidence, I recently started reading Venkatesh's earlier book about the Robert Taylor Homes, American Project. The writing style is atrocious but the content is fascinating.

In the course of his Chicago fieldwork, Venkatesh obtained the hand written records of a crack dealing gang in the Taylor Homes. Economist Stephen Levitt drew heavily on these records for a chapter of his successful popular work, Freakonomics. The chapter is called "Why Do Crack Dealers Live With Their Mothers?"

Religious vigillantes killed 40 women in Basra

Juan Cole points to a horrifying news item about religious vigilantes in Basra suspected of murdering at least 40 women in the past year:

By  SINAN SALAHEDDIN  

BAGHDAD (AP) — Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against "violating Islamic teachings," the police chief said Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf blamed sectarian groups that he said were trying to impose a strict interpretation of Islam. They dispatch patrols of motorbikes or unlicensed cars with tinted windows to accost women not wearing traditional dress and head scarves, he added.

"The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior," Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in Basra, an oil-rich city some 30 miles from the Iranian border and 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

"Those who are behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from this religion," Khalaf said.

"Your makeup and your decision to forgo the headscarf will bring you death," according to the red graffiti proliferating in certain districts.

Notes are found affixed to the mutilated bodies that explain why the victim was targeted. Stated motives include alleged adultery and violations of "Islamic teachings."

The authorities estimate that the true death toll exceeds the 40 murders reported so far. Many families are too afraid to come forward, they say.   

Trent Lott's brother-in-law and nephew indicted on federal bribery charges

Trent Lott's brother-in-law and nephew were indicted by a grand jury for allegedly conspiring to bribe a judge.

$22 theft got Queens pickpocket 15-to-life

A Queens judge sentenced a pickpocket to 15-to-life for stealing $22. (link fixed)
 

Undercover police officers busted the perp in 2004 as he tried to boost an old man's wallet on a city bus.

Prosecutors offered him an 8-month sentence if he were willing to plead guilty. He refused. Prosecutors then petitioned the court to designate him as a persistent felony offender.

Queens judge Arthur Cooperman was willing to play along, even though the pickpocket had no history of violence:

Truesdale was found guilty in June 2005 of grand larceny, possession of stolen property, three counts of jostling (bumping into the attended victim), and possession of a burglar's tools (the sweatshirt). In a hearing to determine if Truesdale was a persistent felony offender, his trial lawyer argued that his crimes were nonviolent and were committed only to feed drug and alcohol addictions that Truesdale was seeking help to control. Cooperman wasn't swayed, ruling that Truesdale—who by then had served four state-prison stints under three different names—deserved the "persistent" tag, and sentencing him to 15 years to life on the top charge and a year each, to run concurrently, on the other five counts. [Village Voice]

Luckily the court of appeals threw out the persistent felony offender designation last month.

Coroner: Journalists executed in East Timor

A coroner in Sydney has ruled that five Austrialan-based journalists were deliberately killed by Indonesian special forces to stop them from exposing the invasion of East Timor in 1975:

The deputy coroner of New South Wales, Dorelle Pinch, said there was enough evidence to constitute a war crime.

She said two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander were killed by Indonesian special forces to stop them exposing the invasion of East Timor.

Official Indonesian reports always said they were killed in crossfire. [BBC]

A spokesman for the Indonesian foreign ministry told the BBC that the coroner's findings will not change the official account of the killings.

Giuliani says he used "intensive questioning"

An interviewer asked presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani whether he knew more about torture than his opponent John McCain. Giuliani replied:

MR. GIULIANI: I can't say that I do but I do know a lot about intensive questioning and intensive questioning techniques. After all, I have had a different experience than John. John has never been - he has never run city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people, and he has never run a law enforcement agency, which I have done.

Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn't use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is.  Intensive question has to be used.  Torture should not be used.  The line between the two is a difficult one. [Bloomberg]

Does he mean that he abused prisoners a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? I wonder if Giuliani's loose talk could result in investigations of some of his old work as AUSA between 1983 and 1989.

Speaking of the mafia... Maybe Giuliani should have asked a few more questions of his buddy Bernie Kerik. Giuliani testified in 2000 that his aide told him about Kerik's ties to an allegedly mafia-linked company. In 2006, Kerik pleaded guilty to allowing the company to do $165,000 worth of free work on his Bronx apartment.

Update: Joe Conason questions some of Giuliani's more overblown claims about his record on terrorism, with the help of formerly sealed testimony obtained by Wade Barrett of the Village Voice. On the campaign trail, Giuliani claimed that the threat of Osama Bin Laden was obvious to him before 9/11, however he testified to the 9/11 Commission that he wasn't even briefed about Al Qaeda until after the attacks.

Barret notes that Giuliani and Mukasey go back a very long way.