Operation Fly Trap


Book Description

"In 2003, an FBI-led task force known as Operation Fly Trap attempted to dismantle a significant drug network in two Bloods-controlled, African American neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The operation would soon be considered an enormous success, noted for the precision with which the task force targeted and removed gang members otherwise entrenched in larger communities. In Operation Fly Trap, Susan A. Phillips questions both the success of this operation and the methods used to conduct it. Balancing her roles as even-handed reporter and public scholar, she brings together personal narratives, crime statistics, gang cultural histories, and extensive public policy analysis to reveal multiple flaws within the U.S. criminal justice system, building a powerful argument that many law enforcement policies in fact nurture, rather than prevent, violence in American society."--Back cover.




Operation Fly Trap


Book Description

In 2003, an FBI-led task force known as Operation Fly Trap attempted to dismantle a significant drug network in two Bloods-controlled, African American neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The operation would soon be considered an enormous success, noted for the precision with which the task force targeted and removed gang members otherwise entrenched in larger communities. In Operation Fly Trap, Susan A. Phillips questions both the success of this operation and the methods used to conduct it. Based on in-depth ethnographic research with Fly Trap participants, Phillips’s work brings together police narratives, crime statistics, gang cultural histories, and extensive public policy analysis to examine the relationship between state persecution and the genesis of violent social systems. Crucial to Phillips’s contribution is the presentation of the voices and perspectives of both the people living in impoverished communities and the agents that police them. Phillips positions law enforcement surveillance and suppression as a critical point of contact between citizen and state. She tracks the bureaucratic workings of police and FBI agencies and the language, ideologies, and methods that prevail within them, and shows how gangs have adapted, seeking out new locations, learning to operate without hierarchies, and moving their activities more deeply underground. Additionally, she shows how the targeted efforts of task forces such as Fly Trap wreak sweeping, sustained damage on family members and the community at large. Balancing her roles as even-handed reporter and public scholar, Phillips presents multiple flaws within the US criminal justice system and builds a powerful argument that many law enforcement policies in fact nurture, rather than prevent, violence in American society.




New Approaches to Drug Policies


Book Description

The US-led war on drugs has failed: drugs remain purer, cheaper and more readily available than ever. Extreme levels of violence have also grown as drug traffickers and organized criminals compete for control of territory. This book points towards a number of crucial challenges, policy solutions and alternatives to the current drug strategies.




Pest Control: Operations and Systems Analysis in Fruit Fly Management


Book Description

These are the proceedings of an Advanced Research Workshop (ARW), sponsored by the NATO Science Panel, entitled "Pest Control: Operations and Systems Analysis in Fruit Fly Management". The ARW was held in Bad Windsheim, Germany during the week of 5 August 1985. The purpose of the ARW was to bring together scientists who are interested in fruit fly problems, but who usually do not have an opportunity to speak with each other, for an intense week of interdisciplinary collaboration. In particular, the group present at the ARW contained a mix of biologists, field ecologists, mathematical modellers, operational program managers, economists and social scientists. Each group has its own professional meetings at which fruit fly problems are discussed, but the point of the ARW was to learn about the problem from the perspective of other fields, which are equally important for the ultimate management of the fruit fly problems. (A list of attendees follows this preface. ) It appears that the ARW successfully met its objective of bringing together a group for interdisciplinary considerations of the problems; I hope that the proceedings do as well. The ARW was structured with formal lectures in the mornings and workshops in the afternoons. For the morning lectures, four different topics were chosen: 1) basic biology and ecology, 2) trapping and detection, 3) control and eradication, and 4) policy issues. Each morning, one lecture from each area was presented.




Terrorism and Tyranny


Book Description

"The war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the new Millennium." So begins Jim Bovard's newest and, in some ways, most provocative book as he casts yet another jaundiced eye on Washington and the motives behind protecting "the homeland" and prosecuting a wildly unpopular war with Iraq. For James Bovard, as always, it all comes down to a trampling of personal liberty and an end to privacy as we know it. From airport security follies that protect no one to increased surveillance of individuals and skyrocketing numbers of detainees, the war on terrorism is taking a toll on individual liberty and no one tells the whole grisly story better than Bovard.




The Extraterrestrials! in an Adventure with the American Army


Book Description

Bored with the usual cattle mutilations and earthling abductions, The Alien Captain and his daring, gray explorers head to Kansas to participate in a crop circle contest. Unfortunately, due in part to a gray navigators poor self-esteem and hereditary earwax problems, another crewmates random Tourettes-driven outbursts, and The Alien Captains obsession with meeting William Shatner at an upcoming Star Trek convention, the grays unintentionally pilot their flying saucer into The Shite Black Hole. Transported back in time the hapless travelers crash in a remote spot in Americas southwest. Having no other options, the grays accept an offer from the Roswell Airfield intelligence officer, Major Marcel, to stay in the bases plush, underground quarters. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Marcels seemingly generous offer comes with a condition: the U.S. Army wants the grays to build a working flying saucer. Initially, they accept this offer, but soon find they are not up to the task of constructing an interstellar spacecraft. The grays also quickly discover they are not actually guests, but prisoners. Their hosts promise of free room and board and all the bowling they can handle is not everything it is cracked up to be. Wanting to return to their home planet of Gliese 581 c., the grays feign the need for a break from spaceship building. They convince Major Marcel to take them on a day trip to Carlsbad Caverns, where they commandeer an army air corps bus and escape to Santa Fe in hope of contacting Gliesean kinfolk manning The Emergency Earth Operations Center for Stranded Graynauts. This is a story of what happens when a happy-go-lucky space trip turns into a not-so-happy-go-lucky road trip. It is the story of barbecuing under a million stars with a ray gun. It is the story of visiting a roadside museum in the desert where sometimes visitors are put on display. It is the story of what it is like to make a mailbox that looks like a UFO. In short, it is the story of what it is like to be an alien in an alien world. But most of all, it is the story of what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.




The Cattleman


Book Description