Los Angeles – praag.org

Beverly Hills Hotel boycotted over ‘human rights’

The Beverly Hills Hotel is part of the Dorchester Collection, a luxury chain owned by the Sultan of Brunei. This week, the tiny, oil-rich southeast Asian country set off a storm of celebrity protests and boycotts by introducing Islamic laws that include death by stoning for homosexuals and adulterers.

Over the past several days, 20 events have been canceled at the Beverly Hills property–a loss of about $2 million in revenue for the hotel, according to Dorchester. Local politicians and celebrities are also boycotting the nearby Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles, the hotel’s more subdued sister property.

British billionaire Richard Branson took to Twitter over the weekend to declare that no Virgin employee or Branson family member will stay at Dorchester hotel “until the Sultan abides by basic human rights.”

Big names like Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres are urging boycotts, and the Beverly Hills mayor and council are calling for Dorchester to sell the famed hotel.

Dorchester, which runs 10 hotels world-wide, is looking to expand globally and has said it is seeking to acquire a luxury property in New York. Hotel analysts say the publicity surrounding protests against the company could complicate efforts to operate a Manhattan hotel, where there is also opposition to the new law.

The participation of Hollywood’s A-list in the boycott has been painful because the hotel has long been a see-and-be-seen spot to eat, sleep and fundraise. The hotel’s Polo Lounge restaurant is one of this city’s prime power-lunch spots. One event earlier this year attracted stars including Will Smith and Sandra Bullock.

Coming events like a “Women in Entertainment” breakfast thrown by the Hollywood Reporter in December, and a “Night Before the Oscars” fundraiser held by the Motion Picture & Television Fund, have been moved from the hotel.

Dorchester’s London-based chief executive, Christopher Cowdray–who has been in Los Angeles this week to speak to hotel employees and customers and to try to quell the political backlash–said that Dorchester hotels is a big employer, pays taxes and “abides by the laws of the countries in which we operate.” He added that the Brunei Investment Agency, the government investment vehicle that owns Dorchester, is a “long-term investor” and that a sale of the Los Angeles-area properties was “unlikely.”

On Tuesday night, the Beverly Hills city council unanimously approved a resolution condemning Brunei for its new laws, and urging Brunei to sell its Beverly Hills property.

Source: WSJ

‘Racist’ police dogs only bite Latinos and Africans

Police officers in Los Angeles have long faced accusations of institutional racism, but now it appears their dogs may be unjustly discriminatory, too.

A new report focusing on the Canine Special Detail of the LA Sherriff’s Department (LASD) has uncovered a vast increase in the number of minority individuals bitten by police dogs since 2004.

And in the first six months of this year, every single victim of a bite by a LASD dog was African-American or Latino.The data was published in a new report by the Police Assessment Resource Centre (Parc), a Los Angeles-based non-profit organisation, devoted to “advancing effective and accountable policing”.

According to Parc records, the number of Latino individuals bitten by LASD canines went up 30 per cent between 2004 and 2012, from 30 to 39 bites. The number of African-Americans bitten increased by 33 per cent over the same period.

Meanwhile, police dog bites caused injuries at a much higher rate than alternative deterrents such as batons, tear gas and even guns. “Large swathes of LASD’s jurisdiction, encompassing generally affluent areas with smaller minority populations, had few [canine] deployments or bites,” the Parc report states.

“Crime rates are lower in these areas, but the stark disparity leads us to wonder why canine deployments seem to occur disproportionately in less affluent areas with larger minority populations.” During the period covered in the report, the largely black or Latino areas of Century, City of Industry, Compton, Lakewood and South LA/Lennox suffered more dog bites than all of LASD’s other 21 districts combined.

A recent investigation by the US Department of Justice also found that in areas policed by the LASD, “African Americans, and to a lesser extent Latinos, are more likely to be stopped and/or searched than whites, even when controlling for factors other than race, such as crime rates.”

The authors of the Parc report recommended that the LASD work on improving its canine-deployment policies, and keep track of the enforcement activities of individual dogs and their handlers. In 2004, a Pennsylvania police dog named Dolpho was suspended from duty, after the German Shepherd displayed a propensity for biting black children.

During the 1980s, some Los Angeles police officers would allegedly refer to black youths as “dog biscuits”.

According to ThinkProgress, Bruce Chase, the officer in charge of the LASD canine unit, said his department intends to reduce the ratio of bites to arrests, a measurement used to gauge the effectiveness of the unit. – The Independent

Rent-a-crowd

So, no one supports your cause? No problem. You can hire supporters, even protesters in the US. A company started last October by 22-year-old Adam Swart provides just this service. In a telephone interview I spoke with Swart about his new found success. “I came up with the idea on a visit to Estonia,” says Swart. At the airport, Swart says he saw a man who was being swarmed by a crowd of excited onlookers. He tells me, “I thought- Why can’t I have that kind of attention?” And so, Swart’s company, Crowds on Demand, was born.

Swart says that business is doing extremely well. According to their website, their office is located in a swanky downtown LA office suite. He says his biggest client so far was a $10k contract, but he would not disclose the client. Not bad for a 22-year-old kid. “We do most of our business through word of mouth. We are able to provide our customers with top-notch service, so they spread the word to other potential clients,” says Swart.

When a reporter asked a paid protester what the protest was for, he told the reporter: “It’s a day to ban guns, I think.” The Event was actually for a new movement called “Purge Day” dealing with mental illness.

Swart says the company does a lot of work in the political realm. He continues to say that they also do work for non-profits and private industries. He cites one recent client, an online marketing group named Virurl, that his company was hired for. According to Swart, having protesters at a convention where Virurl was present increased the company’s revenues by 500%. Apparently the protesters had been hired by Virurl to act against a form of marketing, and Virurl provided a solution to this avenue of marketing. Multiple VIPs were at the convention, and Virurl stuck out when its employees began to show the solution to the protesters concerns to VIPs in the marketing industry.

Swart says that he pays his employees around $15/hour and has a solid staff. He continues, “We are operational in 5 major cities. However, if a big event is proposed then we have been known to travel in order to fulfill our customers demands. We’ve done business in New York, Washington D.C. and Vegas.”

He says that there are many critics, but he enjoys what he does and feels that he is contributing to society. When asked if he ever turns an organization away because of an ideological difference he says that clients are almost never turned away unless they are requesting his company breaks the law.

When I asked Swart whether his company was catering to more liberal, or conservative clients he was unwilling to give a clear answer. Swart seemed to me like a shining star of free market capitalism, so I asked him where he stood on it.

Swarts responded:

“I’m a huge fan of free market capitalism! I believe that the government must foster business and encourage innovation. Government needs to encourage people to innovate… Our government plays a vital role in job production and innovation of technology.”

Although Swart’s understanding of the free market is off-base, I feel perhaps he will develop a greater understanding of it as he matures. Whether you agree with his tactics or not, it is clear that there was a demand, and this young man supplied it. – benswann.com

Saudi princess charged with human trafficking in USA for holding Kenyan maid

A Saudi princess has been charged with human trafficking for allegedly holding a Kenyan maid against her will in a luxury California apartment, news reports said late Wednesday.

Meshael Alayban, 42, was charged on Wednesday after being arrested at her home in a gated community in Irvine, California.

Prosecutors allege Alayban took the woman’s passport and forced her to work as a domestic servant for 16 hours a day, seven days a week for just 220 dollars a month, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A judge set bail of 5 million dollars for Alayban, and ordered her to wear a monitor if released from the women’s jail where she was being held.

“The law of our nation and California does not tolerate people who deprive or violate the liberty of another and obtain forced labour or services,” District Attorney Tony Rackauckas was quoted as saying.

The maid, whose identity was not released, began working for Alayban and her family in Saudi Arabia last year before moving to the US with them, the report said.

When police arrived at Alayban’s home they found four other women from the Philippines, who said their travel documents had also been taken by Alayban.

The Kenyan woman managed to escape from the apartment complex on Tuesday, before boarding a bus and contacting police.

Orange County prosecutors identified Alayban as one of the wives of Saudi Prince Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al Saud. She faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted of human trafficking. – dpa

Chef cooked his wife’s corpse

viens_in_court — David Viens in a wheel chair, photographed in a Los Angeles court

A chef who told Los Angeles police he boiled his wife’s body for four days to hide evidence of her death was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder.

David Viens showed no reaction as the verdict was read. The sister of his victim burst out sobbing.

In a recorded interrogation presented by prosecutors during the trial, Viens, 49, can be heard saying he cooked the body of his 39-year-old wife, Dawn Viens, in late 2009 until little was left but her skull.

“He treated her like a piece of meat and got rid of her,” said Karen Patterson, the couple’s best friend who spoke to reporters outside court.

She was the key witness in Viens’ trial and the person who prodded police to investigate her friend’s disappearance.

At a news conference, she tearfully warned others to take heed of domestic violence among friends and call police. She apologized for failing to call police when Dawn Viens called her during an incident of abuse but begged her not to call police.

“Maybe you have to go beyond your friend’s trust and try to save lives,” she said.

Juror Tal Erickson said it was Viens’ own words in two confessions that convinced them of his guilt.

The chef spoke to authorities from a hospital bed in March 2011 after leaping off a cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes. Authorities say he jumped after learning he was a suspect in her disappearance.

The trial relied heavily on recorded interviews with authorities in which the chef acknowledged the crime in detail.

“I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,” Viens could be heard saying on the recording.

Viens, who attended his trial in a wheelchair, said in the interview that he stuffed his wife’s body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water and kept it submerged with weights.

He said he mixed what remained after four days with other waste, dumping some of it in a grease pit at his restaurant in Lomita, and putting the rest in the trash.

He said he stashed his wife’s skull in his mother’s attic in Torrance. But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.

Erickson told reporters the gruesome evidence shocked jurors.

“A few of us had a hard time sleeping at night,” he said. “I would think about it and ask, ‘Why?'”

If there was any question about the guilt of Viens, it was wiped out by his plunge off the cliff, Erickson said.

“My opinion was if he was innocent, he wouldn’t jump off a cliff,” the juror said.

On the recording played in court, Viens was asked what happened on Oct. 18, 2009, the night his wife disappeared.

He said he had noticed money missing from his restaurant and suspected his wife. They got into an argument, he said, and he forced her onto the floor where he wrapped her up and put a piece of duct tape over her mouth before going to bed.

He awoke to find her dead, and he panicked, he said.

Viens was charged with first-degree murder, which means the killing was premeditated, but jurors had the option of convicting him of that or second-degree murder or manslaughter. The six men and six women on the panel deliberated for about five hours before reaching the verdict.

Erickson said the jury did not believe the killing was premeditated, even though Viens had threatened to kill his wife after finding the money missing.

“Anyone can say that and not follow through,” the juror said.

Viens’ lawyer, Fred McCurry, declined comment on the way out of the courtroom except to say he planned to appeal.

Viens is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 27. He could face 15 years to life in prison.

Dawn Viens’ sister, Dayna Papin, said, “There’s no happy ending. Two families have suffered tremendously. This is a man I’ve known for 20 years who was like a father to me.”

Patterson, the longtime friend, said she would like to visit Viens in prison.

“Even through all this, he is still my friend,” she said. “I struggle with the lovely person who killed another lovely person. I would remind him of how much Dawn loved him.”

She said she was satisfied with the second-degree murder verdict.

“Murder is murder,” she said. – AP