CLOSED

Once again, I'm tired of the Oread Daily and plan to move on to other projects for a while.  I'm sure the Oread Daily will return, but I don't know when. 


Meanwhile, 


FIGHT RACISM
SAVE THE PLANET

THEY CALL IT ART, WE CALL IT RACIST CRAP

.

I know I'll catch shit for this, but I'm supporting indigenous protesters in Australia who temporarly shut down an art exhibit which was far more than offensive. 


The protesters said the images portray the denigration of Aboriginal people and are highly offensive.


The protesters forced the temporary closure of an exhibition of paintings at the Wollongong City Gallery. The exhibition, called No Country For Dreaming, is by nine-times Archibald finalist Paul Ryan.


No, I haven't a clue as to what an Archibald finalist is and I don't much care either.


The CEO of the Illawarra Aboriginal Land Council, Sharralyn Robinson put it rather simplye to Australian Broadcasting Network (ABC), "I don't find anything humorous about an Aboriginal boy hanging from a tree and the title saying, 'the local boys just seem to be hanging around all day."




Ryan says the exhibit is really meant to be critical of Australia's past treatment of its indigenous population.  To his benefit, I suppose, he has offered to meet with and apologise to people affected by the works.  On the other hand, he has also said he isn't in the least repentant about his exhibit.


I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be thrilled with an art exhibit which featured colorful depictions of my relatives taking their last breaths while being gassed in the "shower stalls" of this or that lovely camp.

Sharralyn Robinson

I know about defending the rights of artists and all that, but come on, what about the rights of others...this isn't sex or religion were worrying about here, this is GENOCIDE.


How about a nice art exhibit of African Americans women being raped by white slave owners, or maybe we could have one of American Indians pictured dying in the last stages of small pox.  Of course, we could add some snappy little titles to the paintings, something catchy.


I guess I'd say let the galleries put up what they want, let the artists paint what they want, and support the people protesting however they want...and we'll see what happens.


But then what do I know.  I am not an artist. Everything I paint looks something like a turtle...and my wife once suggested selling everything in the Philadelphia art museum to help the poor of the city.


What a quaint notion.


The following is from the Illawarra Mercury.

Uproar over Paul Ryan's paintings

BY SHANNON TONKIN

14 Oct, 2010 04:00 AM

The Illawarra's indigenous community has condemned a Wollongong art exhibition as showcasing derogatory and sexually explicit paintings of Aborigines during European settlement.

Award-winning Thirroul artist Paul Ryan's new exhibition at Wollongong City Gallery, No Country for Dreaming, has been slammed as "offensive" by prominent indigenous leaders Richard Davis and Sharralyn Robinson.

They say the nature of the paintings and accompanying titles, including the use of the word "abo" in one, are disturbing and hurtful to their people.
Public outcry led to the temporary closure of the exhibition on Tuesday afternoon, but it was re-opened to the public yesterday.

One of the images shows an Aboriginal man's body hanging from a tree, titled "The local boys just seem to hang about all day".

A painting of an English officer holding the head of an Aborigine is captioned "Dearest mummy, having a jolly good time here in australia, the food's appalling but the hunting's first class. wish you were here, arthur."

Another image that has caused an outcry depicts an Aboriginal man seemingly performing a sex act on an English officer.

The painting is titled "Taking a shine to the locals".

Ms Robinson, chief executive of the Illawarra Aboriginal Land Council, said she had been alerted to the exhibition by members of the indigenous community, prompting her to visit the gallery on Tuesday afternoon.

"I was horrified with what I saw and deeply offended," she said.
"I can't believe the gallery would allow such an exhibition to hang."

Mr Davis said there was outrage in his community.

"We're disgusted that this type of work is in a public gallery.
"How can that be considered art?" he said.

Wollongong MP Noreen Hay said Mr Ryan should have consulted with the indigenous community and not proceeded in exhibiting the works without their endorsement.

But Mr Ryan, speaking to the Mercury yesterday from Bali, said the titles were "deliberately and overtly ironic" to highlight the "violent nature" of Australia's colonial past.

EVAPOTRANSPIRATION????

More bad news.

COMING SOON TO A PLANET NEAR YOU

Ever heard of the word "evapotranspiration?"       


I never had, but it is a word we should be flowing off our tongues.  

Why, because a recent study has found that large areas of the Southern Hemisphere (and probably beyond) are drying out...like really drying out.  Dead dry soil is not such a good thing for plants, animals and insects and it actually increases global warming to boot.

All of this has to do with evapotranspiration, which is the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere.


What is going on in large parts of the world is that similar to the dryest parts of deserts where virtually all the water from the soils surface has gone bye bye and what that then means is that there is nothing to release into the atmosphere.


"If that's the case, the consequences could be serious. They could include reduced terrestrial vegetation growth, less carbon absorption, a loss of the natural cooling mechanism provided by evapotranspiration, more heating of the land surface, more intense heat waves and a "feedback loop" that could intensify global warming." the study said.


That doesn't sound good to me.


The following is from Science Daily and will make more sense than what I just wrote above.

Huge Parts of World Are Drying Up: Land 'Evapotranspiration' Taking Unexpected Turn

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2010) — The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a group of researchers conclude in the first major study to ever examine "evapotranspiration" on a global basis.

Most climate models have suggested that evapotranspiration, which is the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere, would increase with global warming. The new research, published online this week in the journal Nature,found that's exactly what was happening from 1982 to the late 1990s.

But in 1998, this significant increase in evapotranspiration -- which had been seven millimeters per year -- slowed dramatically or stopped. In large portions of the world, soils are now becoming drier than they used to be, releasing less water and offsetting some moisture increases elsewhere.

Due to the limited number of decades for which data are available, scientists say they can't be sure whether this is a natural variability or part of a longer-lasting global change. But one possibility is that on a global level, a limit to the acceleration of the hydrological cycle on land has already been reached.

If that's the case, the consequences could be serious.

They could include reduced terrestrial vegetation growth, less carbon absorption, a loss of the natural cooling mechanism provided by evapotranspiration, more heating of the land surface, more intense heat waves and a "feedback loop" that could intensify global warming.

"This is the first time we've ever been able to compile observations such as this for a global analysis," said Beverly Law, a professor of global change forest science at Oregon State University. Law is co-author of the study and science director of the AmeriFlux network of 100 research sites, which is one major part of the FLUXNET synthesis that incorporates data from around the world.

"We didn't expect to see this shift in evapotranspiration over such a large area of the Southern Hemisphere," Law said. "It is critical to continue such long-term observations, because until we monitor this for a longer period of time, we can't be sure why this is occurring."

Some of the areas with the most severe drying include southeast Africa, much of Australia, central India, large parts of South America, and some of Indonesia. Most of these regions are historically dry, but some are actually tropical rain forests.

The rather abrupt change from increased global evapotranspiration to a near halt in this process coincided with a major El Nino event in 1998, the researchers note in their report, but they are not suggesting that is a causative mechanism for a phenomenon that has been going on for more than a decade now.

Greater evapotranspiration was expected with global warming, because of increased evaporation of water from the ocean and more precipitation overall. And data indeed show that some areas are wetter than they used to be.

However, other huge areas are now drying out, the study showed. This could lead to increased drought stress on vegetation and less overall productivity, Law said, and as a result less carbon absorbed, less cooling through evapotranspiration, and more frequent or extreme heat waves.

Some of the sites used in this study are operated by Law's research group in the central Oregon Cascade Range in the Metolius River watershed, and they are consistent with some of these concerns. In the last decade there have been multiple years of drought, vegetative stress, and some significant forest fires in that area.

Evapotranspiration returns about 60 percent of annual precipitation back to the atmosphere, in the process using more than half of the solar energy absorbed by land surfaces. This is a key component of the global climate system, linking the cycling of water with energy and carbon cycles.

Longer term observations will be needed to determine if these changes are part of decadal-scale variability or a longer-term shift in global climate, the researchers said.

This study was authored by a large group of international scientists, including from OSU; lead author Martin Jung from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany; and researchers from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland, Princeton University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, Harvard University, and other groups and agencies.

The regional networks, such as AmeriFlux, CarboEurope, and the FLUXNET synthesis effort, have been supported by numerous funding agencies around the world, including the Department of Energy, NASA, National Science Foundation, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States.

HAITI IS DYING A SLOW DEATH

It has been been nine months since the quake and more than a million Haitians are still living and dying homeless or living in tents.  Amazingly little of the rubble has been removed.  Amazingly many of the people are barely surviving...or not.
Millions are hungry.


Despite more than a billion pledged dollars of relief, there is no relief.


BUREAU DES AVOCATS INTERNATIONAUX says,


 "...more than one fifth of the population – continue to be exposed to hazardous conditions, uncertainty, threats of eviction, extortion, various crimes including sexual violence, and epidemics, preventing them from operating within the confines of normal social life."


Where has the money gone.  First, remember that pledged money is not real money.


Betty Pleasant spent three days (Aug. 30-Sept. 1) in Haiti with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Global Mission and since her return she has often been asked what happened to the money?  


Her response, printed in the Los Angeles Wave, is simple and to the point, 


"There are two responses to that question: Who knows? And God knows. I and several of my journalist colleagues have been asking that question of humanitarians, service providers and government officials in Haiti, in Washington, D.C., and in Los Angeles and we find that people either don’t know or they won’t talk about it."


The following is from the San Francisco Bay View.




NINE MONTHS AFTER THE QUAKE, A MILLION HAITIANS SLOWLY DYING

Don’t miss the great Randall Robinson discussing ‘An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President’ with Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee and Walter Turner of KPFA’s Africa Today on Saturday, Oct. 16, 5 p.m., at the Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St., Berkeley – presented by Marcus Books, benefiting the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund

by Bill Quigley

Even the sturdier shelters like this one offer little or no protection from heat, rain, thieves, rapists, or high winds and hurricanes. A million Haitians live like this, or worse, and right now thousands are being forced out of these camps with nowhere at all to go. – Photo: Gallo-Getty

“If it gets any worse,” said Wilda, a homeless Haitian mother, “we’re not going to survive.” Mothers and grandmothers surrounding her nodded solemnly.

We are in a broiling “tent” with a group of women trying to raise their families in a public park. Around the back of the Haitian National Palace, the park hosts a regal statute of Alexandre Petion in its middle. It is now home to 5,000 people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake.

Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless in Haiti.

Haiti looks like the quake could have been last month. I visited Port au Prince shortly after the quake and much of the destruction then looks the same nine months later.

The Associated Press reports only 2 percent of the rubble has been removed and only 13,000 temporary shelters have been constructed. Not a single cent of the U.S. aid pledged for rebuilding has arrived in Haiti. In the last few days the U.S. pledged it would put up 10 percent of the billion dollars in reconstruction aid promised. Only 15 percent of the aid pledged by countries and organizations around the world has reached the country so far.

With other human rights advocates from the Center for Constitutional Rights, MADRE, CUNY Law School, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, I am huddled under faded gray tarps stamped U.S. Aid. Blue tarps staked into the ground as walls. This is not even the hot season, but the weather reports the heat index is 115.

The floor is bare dirt, soft from a recent rain. Our guide works with a vibrant grassroots women’s organization, KOFAVIV, which is working with women in many camps, and she encourages residents to tell us their stories.

Anne has seven children. She would really love to have a tent. She and her family live on a small plot of dirt 8 feet by 8 feet. Sheets are tied to pieces of wood to keep out the sun. Plastic sheeting covers the ground.

When it rains everything they have is soaked. She begs every day for food.

Therese has three children, 12, 11 and 9. She has lived in the camps since the quake. A few weeks ago when she went to get a bucket of water, some men grabbed her and raped her. Before the quake she worked as a street vendor but has no money to buy supplies to sell. She prays all day every day for help.

Caroline lived with her husband and three children in an apartment in downtown Port au Prince. The quake took her husband and left the rest of the family homeless. She was raped in the first camp she settled in. When she moved, she was raped again and fought back with KOFAVIV. She and other women set up their own security with whistles and flashlights to protect each other. They push the police to arrest. Her life is now in danger because the rapists know who she is, and she is vulnerable.

We hear from dozens of other mothers and grandmothers – Alana, Beatrice, Celine, Marcie, Rene, Wilda and others. This is what they tell us.

There is no electricity at all in the camps. Some have lights on poles that work some of the time. Many have no lights at all.

Imagine a child who is dear to you having nowhere else to play … or to live. – Photo: Ramon Espinosa, AP

There is no food. The children are terribly hungry. The food aid program was terminated in April and nothing took its place. The authorities cut off the food so people would leave the camps, but where is there to go?

Water is hard to find. For the people in Petion Park, water is delivered by truck to a central site a block or two away in the middle of several camps.

Thousands of people line up twice a day to get water before it runs out. In another camp we visited Sunday, Camp Kasim, there was no water at all for hundreds of families and none scheduled to be delivered until Monday at the earliest. Boys and girls surged around a pipe several blocks away trying to capture some water in Oxfam marked buckets.

People are coughing, sniffling and their eyes watering. Quiet babies are the norm. Many people have skin rashes and vaginal infections. There are several volunteer clinics but usually only the very sickest are seen because so many people need help. The biggest camps now have some toilets but not enough. Drainage is a big problem especially now during the rainy season.

Children cannot be kept in the suffocating tents. They play in the muddy paths. They would love to return to school but there is no money.

Security is a huge problem. Less than a dozen of the thousand plus camps have official security at night. During the day the police may come around or maybe the heavily armed MINUSTAH U.N. forces will patrol. But at night security forces vanish. With little or no light at night, tens of thousands of unguarded sheet structures and canvas walls offer thieves and gangs an inviting target.

Violence against women and girls is widespread. Women who go to the latrines at night are attacked. Some women talk of carrying rape babies. Others will do anything for the crudest abortion. When they go to the police and ask them to investigate, officers demand money for gas. Even those who pay the police usually end up frustrated. There is a sense of impunity.

There are an estimated 1,300 “camps” of homeless people in Haiti. Homeless people live literally everywhere. People are camped in the middle of many streets. Shanty structures are built right up to the edge of streets. Every park, every school yard, every parking lot appear to have people living under sheets or lean-to tents.

The most fortunate families live in modest plastic tents. The newest tents are royal blue with red flags with yellow stars on them – donated in the last week from China. Less fortunate families, and there are many of them, live under faded sheets stretched between wooden poles made from tree branches. Within the camps there are dirt paths – some only inches wide. Tents and sheet shelters are side by side – inches apart.

Evictions are starting. Churches are pushing people off their property. Schools which are reopening are turning off the water to the people camped in the ball fields. Some in authority are openly saying that people must be forced out the camps. But only 13,000 temporary structures have been built and they are far away from family, school, jobs and healthcare. There is no place to go.

The U.N., which effectively runs Haiti with the Haitians and the U.S., holds meetings nearly every day to coordinate responses to dozens of issues like security, food, water, reconstruction and gender violence. Human rights advocates in Port au Prince complain that no meetings are conducted in Kreyol, the language of the Haitian people.

Yet there is hope. The Haitian mothers and grandmothers we heard from are fighting for their lives. KOFAVIV and BAI and other grassroots human rights groups are speaking out, demonstrating, educating the people in the camps and working together for social justice.

During a torrential downpour Saturday, dozens gathered on folding chairs under the front porch overhang of BAI to work on how to get the U.S., the U.N., Haiti and the NGOs to do their jobs.

Together the people have a chance. As one woman who works against violence told us, “If there is one woman and one man, maybe the man will win. But if the woman uses whistles to alert other women and gets other women to show up, maybe the man will see he is going to lose and will run away.”

Meanwhile, Wilda and a million other Haitians are slowly dying from starvation, illness, lack of security and neglect. Nine months after the quake.
=====================================

Bill Quigley is legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. He has worked in Haiti for years with Bureau des Avocats Internationaux and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. He wrote this article from Port au Prince with help from Laura Raymond and Sunita Patel. You can contact Bill at Quigley77@gmail.

From the Bay Area to Port-au-Prince: Creating Food Sovereignty in Haiti

This is another event not to miss.The keynote speaker is Pierre Labossiere, Haitian activist with the Haiti Action Committee, who will frame the evening, followed by discussions focused on how Food Justice and Food Sovereignty are working out on the ground in Haiti and locally.

Host is Weyland Southon of KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio. Speakers are Eric Holt-Giménez, executive director of Food First, and Nikki Henderson, executive director of People’s Grocery. Musician Tacuma King and Bay Area Youth Arts will perform. Enjoy local, sustainably sourced refreshments. The program starts at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Cost: $10-$10,000 sliding scale. For more information, contact beck@ecologycenter.org, (510) 548-2220, ext. 233.

Proceeds from the series benefit the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) sustainable agriculture programs. For more details, call (510) 548-2220, ext. 233, or visit ecologycenter.org.

Related Posts

• Too little too late for Haiti? Six sobering points
• Ten things the U.S. can and should do for Haiti
• Haiti: Mobile schools in the earthquake zone
• Mercenaries circling Haiti
• Haitians seek shelter and survival, New Orleanians send bargeloads of aid

PHELPS KLAN ATTACKED BY RIGHT WING JEWISH ASSEMBLYMAN

Assemblyman Dov Hikind gives the Phelps Klan
a piece of his mind

 Sorry to bother you with the filthy Westboro Baptist Church again, but here goes.


I'm backing Brooklyn Assembyman Dov Hikind (D) in the punch out with Shirley Phelps Roper as her family shouted anti-Jewish slurs outside a Jewish school in Brooklyn.  Hikind, the son of a Holocacust survivor, said, “There are anti-Semites in this world.  Do you ignore them or do you confront them?”

He continued, “You have haters coming into the heart of your community — I could not ignore that. You have to confront evil.”

A few days before the Topeka assholes arrived, Hikind releaded the followiong statement to Yeshiva World, 

"The Westboro Baptist Church is nothing more than a veiled neo-Nazi group spewing venom and bile indiscriminately. It is this kind of vitriol and loathing which led to the death of six million men, women, and children at the hands of Nazi Germany. In an open letter on their website to the “elect Jews,” this detestable group states that God hates Israel and that the Jews deserved the Holocaust. As a representative of the largest contingent of Holocaust survivors, and as a child of survivors, I cannot and will not stand idly by while these sick individuals disparage and vilify Jews, rehashing age-old anti-Semitic canards such as Jews killed Jesus. My family and I will be there this coming Monday to denounce this despicable and vile group.”

I also want to thank all those who slashed the tires of the church's vehicles.


The Phelps Klan was in town for it's regular "protest" at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin on Coney Island Avenue, as well as Chabad of Kensington and Yeshiva Torah Teminah.


Personally, I think a rumble between the Chabadniks and the Phelps Klan would be fun to watch and ultimately my money would be on the Chabads.  They're in shape from all that singin and dancin and they can shout out to God/Hashem with the best of them.  As for Chabad's feelings about homosexuality, well they think it is against Jewish Law and all that, but wouldn't write those suffering from the "gay" out of the community.


Accoreding to Yeshiva World News (I don't cite them often) in anticipation of the arrival of the hate mongers from Top[eka, "...local residents handed out flyers regarding a “Nazi protest” which was being held outside Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, and Yeshiva Torah Temimah, and called for a counter demonstration."  


Yeshiva World News also wrote,  "it is totally unacceptable to permit such a group to stage a protest directly outside the windows of classrooms packed with children with the words “Your Rabbi is a ____”(obscenity not fit to publish on YWN). Why must children be forced to read such a hateful slur? Is this not a hate crime? If that statement was found graffitied onto a wall near a Yeshiva, the NYPD Hate Crimes Unit would probably investigate it as a Hate Crime. Why not now?"


Actually, that is a pretty good question.


As for Assemblyman Hikind, he isn't really all that much better than the Phelps family.  Here are just a few tidbits about the guy:


Hikind has urged the New York Police Department to implement a policy of racial profiling in subway bag searches, which would affect individuals who appear to come from Middle Eastern or Muslim backgrounds. Hikind defends this policy on the grounds that it would work far more effectively to combat terrorism than the current policy, instituted in 2004, which uses random bag searches. (Searches based on racial profiling have been called racist and demeaning by civil rights groups. The NYPD released a statement against Hikind's proposal of racial profiling for terrorists). He believes that the terrorist profile (that of Arab-American Muslims) should be targeted as it is the one currently engaged in terrorism in current world events.

Hikind was a follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League and knew Rabbi Kahane very well, and is active in right-wing Jewish causes.

After voting against a same-sex marriage bill in the New York State Assembly, Hikind noted that same-sex marriage can lead to the acceptance of incest, maintaining that, "If we authorize gay marriage in the state of New York, those who want to live and love incestuously will be five steps closer to achieving their goals as well."

Hikind voiced support for five Jewish teenagers who were charged with hate crimes for allegedly beating a Muslim man while shouting racial slurs at him. Hikind insisted that it was actually the victim who provoked the teenagers.

Hikind came under fire for voicing his support of banning non-Jewish victims from being mentioned in a Holocaust memorial being built in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn




The following is from the Gothamist.

Assemblyman Tried To Punch Westboro Hate Mongers

Assemblyman Hikind lunges at Phelps-Roper (WPIX)

Yesterday the Westboro Baptist Church, the group thatregularly protests at funerals of those who served in the military (prompting the father of a slain soldier to sue the church's pastor), had a few of its protesters in Brooklyn and Manhattan yesterday to spread its provocative gospel of "God Hates Fags," "Thank God For 9/11," and "Your Rabbi Is A Whore." At one location in Brooklyn, Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) was so incensed he tried to punch out Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of the church's founder Fred Phelps. According to WPIX:

Hikind interrupted an interview Phelps-Roper was doing with PIX 11 News to slap the posters, saying "Come on!" Phelps-Roper shouted, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" while police supervisors grabbed the Assemblyman by the waist. "How dare you have those signs!" Hikind yelled. He then warned the Kansas group, "Just be careful the rest of your day in Brooklyn."

Hikind also called Phelps-Roper a "whore" (you can see video below). Yeshiva World News reports that the Westboro protesters' minivan's tires were slashed: "They were seen a short while later getting their flat fixed at a local tire-repair shop. 'The only thing I’m sad about, is that all four of their tires weren’t slashed', Dov Hikind told YWN."

When the protesters arrived in Manhattan, one of the counterprotest signs they were were confronted with was "God Hates Signs."

------------------
NOTE: Ironically, Chabad is obvoulsy not pushing the famous "gay agenda."  Their position is,, "Jewish law unconditionally prohibits the homosexual act. Just as the heterosexual act is prohibited outside of marriage, regardless of personal desires, attractions or inclinations, so the homosexual act is forbidden."  However, unlike the Phelps Klan they aren't out to burn gays.  When asked if gays and lesbians fit into the Jewish community, the Chabad reply is, "A Jew belongs within a Jewish community. There are no application forms and no qualification requirements. He's Jewish—that's where he belongs. Period. We all have our challenges, our shortcomings, our feelings...and our failures in battle as well...and with all that, we are a community of Jews."

A TALE OF TWO COPS OR WHY ISN'T OFFICER RICHARD CHRISMAN IN JAIL AND WHY IS OFFICER SERGIO VIGILLO CATCHING HEAT

Why isn't Richard Chrisman in jail.  After all he shot and killed a man who was in his underwear, a man who was unarmed.  In fact, Chrisman didn't just shoot the man, he screamed at him, tear gassed him and tasered him.


Oh, that's right, its OFFICER Richard Chrisman.


Officer Chrisman, is out on bail, charged only with aggravated assault.


You know what police officer is having to defend himself not from the commuinity but his comrades.  That would be officer Sergio Vigillo who refused to cover up for his fellow copper and told the truth about what happened.


The Phoenix New Times reports, "In the initial police report, Officer Vergillo claims Chrisman held a gun to the head of the victim, 29-year-old Daniel Rodriquez, after Rodriquez told him he needed a warrant to be in his house.

"I don't need no warrant, motherfucker," Vergillo says Chrisman told Rodriquez, while holding a gun to his head."'

Craig Mehrens, the attorney for Officer Richard Chrisman says Vigillo is lying. "We already know he's lying," Mehrens says. "Officer Vergillo's version doesn't even make sense. 

"I don't know why people lie," Mehrens says.

Some of Chrisman's defenders say Vigillo testimony is racially motivated becasue he is Latino.  

There is one problem with that argument though.  It seems that Officer Vigillo is Italian.  


Officer Vigillo's sister,Gina Fast, said he told the truth even though he knew he'd catch shit for it. "He knew there would be repercussions, but he said he had to do the right thing," Fast said.


"He (Vigillo) said a few times, 'Gina, I was just a foot away. Gina, he was shot right through the chest," Fast said of her brother's version of the incident.


THE FOLLOWING IS FROM KPHO TV.


You should also read the article "SISTER DEFENDS OFFICER FOR TELLING TRUTH"


PROTESTERS WANT OFFICER IN SHOOTING JAILED



PHOENIX -- For the past six days, protesters have taken to the streets and demanded that a Phoenix police officer accused in the shooting of an unarmed man on Oct. 5 be returned to jail.

Officer Richard Chrisman was charged with aggravated assault with a weapon after he shot Daniel Rodriquez during a domestic call.

Chrisman on Wednesday was released on bond, assisted financially by the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association.

"This is an injustice, killed an unarmed man in his underwear," said a protester identified only as Henry.

"He did the crime, he needs to do the time," Henry said. "He shouldn't be out roaming in the streets."

Chrisman's partner, Officer Sergio Virgillo, provided back-up the day of the shooting and claims Chrisman's actions were extreme.

"This individual at this point is charged with aggravated assault, which is, under our law, bailable," said Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon.

Gordon said he feels that Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley's will handle the case properly.

"We treat everyone the same, and that's bad guys get prosecuted and arrested and good guys are protected," Gordon said.

"That's completely wrong," said protester Carlos Galindo. "If we don't keep pressure on Phil Gordon and Rick Romley, we're not going to see a change in how police handle cases in south Phoenix, or handles cases with minorities."

Galindo said he feels Chrisman is receiving special treatment because of his status as an officer, and wants to talk with Romley in hopes that he'll reconsider how the nine-year police veteran is prosecuted

"I think Phil Gordon has consistently helped the Phoenix Police Department cover up shoddy investigations, failed investigations," Galindo said.

Gordon said the process "is working ... the only thing that can happen is it could be prejudiced by individuals who are trying this in the court of public opinion as opposed to a court with a jury of its peers."

"Mayor, why is he out on the street?" Henry asked during Sunday's protest. "If the process is working, why is this (man) out on the street?"

Police said the investigation is ongoing and Chrisman's charges can be changed.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office said it is is reviewing the case.