POLICING BY CONSENT

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msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Welcome to Prison Legal News!
Prison Legal News (PLN), a project of the non-profit Human Rights Defense Center, is a 72-page monthly magazine that reports on criminal justice issues and prison and jail-related civil litigation, with an emphasis on prisoners' rights. PLN has published continuously since 1990 and covers a wide range of topics that include prison labor, rape and sexual abuse, misconduct by prison and jail staff, prisoners' constitutional rights, racial and socioeconomic disparities in our criminal justice system, medical and mental health care for prisoners, disenfranchisement, rehabilitation and recidivism, prison privatization, prison and jail phone rates, women prisoners, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), prison censorship, the death penalty, HIV and hep C, solitary confinement and control units, and much more.
In 2013, PLN received the First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. 
This website includes all of PLN's articles published since 1990 plus thousands of other articles, case reports, publications and pleadings. 
To search PLN's articles and other content, click "Search Content" on the top menu bar. For recent news articles that mention PLN and the Human Rights Defense Center or quote PLN staff, click "In the News" (which also includes our press releases). For our litigation project, which tracks our First Amendment lawsuits, public records cases and other legal actions, click "Litigation."
PLN's monthly magazine is a subscription publication. We have thousands of subscribers nationwide, and around 65-70% are incarcerated. We also offer website subscriptions that provide full access to all content on our website (most of our news content is free, but a subscription is required to access some of our legal content). For subscription options and fees, please click on "Subscribe" on the menu bar.
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msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

Bonus Read

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/31/for ... -a-target/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
TERROR FBI EMPLOYEE NOW FINDS HIMSELF A TARGET
Trevor Aaronson
Aug. 31 2016, 10:37 a.m.
Photo: Milli Apelgren for The Intercept
AS AN FBI surveillance employee, Ray Tahir spent the last decade tailing Muslims in counterterrorism cases.

Among the investigations whose surveillance Tahir led were those of the charity Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Texas and North Carolina’s Daniel Patrick Boyd, who with others was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to commit murder, maiming, and kidnapping overseas.

Both FBI cases had their critics. The American Civil Liberties Union described the prosecution of Holy Land Foundation as “discriminatory enforcement of counterterrorism laws.” In the Boyd case, as in other informant-led FBI stings, there are questions about whether the men convicted would have done anything at all were it not for the FBI’s involvement.

As the FBI targeted Muslims in the United States following the 9/11 attacks, Tahir was among the front-line employees who made some of these cases possible.

Now, he alleges, he has become a target himself.

On May 11, 2012, Tahir was at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., fighting to keep his $78,000-per-year job. A 26-year FBI veteran, Tahir was a member of the Mobile Surveillance Team, a special unit that monitors suspects of espionage and terrorism.

Tahir, who had been called for a hearing at the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was accused of making personal charges on his covert credit card, unauthorized gasoline purchases, and lack of candor. He had been placed on suspension pending the hearing.

The FBI employee had admitted to his supervisors that he made more than 200 personal charges during a four-year period, many of them for groceries at stores like Harris Teeter and Food Lion. He ran up a balance of $10,000, which he’d begun to pay back by the time he was called to headquarters; he blamed the charges on personal financial troubles.

But Tahir denied the unauthorized gasoline purchases and maintained that he had been candid while he was under investigation, though he did admit that he changed the address where the card’s statements were to be sent in order to hide his personal spending from supervisors. Nevertheless, Tahir thought that if he admitted to the credit card purchases, explained the circumstances, and apologized, he’d walk away with a suspension. He knew other FBI employees had received reprimands or suspensions for similar transgressions.

Five minutes into his hearing, Tahir was recounting his FBI career to the woman who was his judge and jury — Candice M. Will, the assistant director for the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

FBI agents guard the entrance to the Holy Land Foundation in Richardson, Texas, Dec. 5, 2001. Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
As Tahir recounted his work at the FBI, including eight years in Dallas, where he was involved in the investigation of the Holy Land Foundation, Will suddenly cut him off.
“What kind of name is Tahir?” she asked.

“It’s Turkish, ma’am.”

Tahir then continued to describe his career.

After Dallas, he moved to North Carolina, where he established another Mobile Surveillance Team unit and was responsible for surveillance of Boyd and his alleged co-conspirators.

During the hearing, Will expressed frustration that Tahir attempted to minimize, in her view, what he’d done. Tahir explained that he never submitted the personal charges for reimbursement from the government; those charges simply piled up on the card.

“The charges will exceed the amount you’re reimbursed when you’re putting personal charges on a government card,” Will said firmly. “The government’s not going to reimburse you for that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tahir said.

Tahir, who had been suspended once before for misusing his government credit card, became conciliatory later in the hearing.

“I understand I did something wrong. I wake up every day and pray to God that I get my job with the FBI back, because that’s all I know, ma’am,” Tahir told Will. “I’ve sat in a car for 26 years and done surveillance, and right now, to go out in the private sector and say, ‘Hey, can I get a job sitting in a car eight hours a day in the middle of the night for you?’ I’m not marketable.”

Will’s Office of Professional Responsibility ruled to terminate Tahir for all three charges of misconduct.

Tahir appealed the decision internally to the Disciplinary Review Board, which dropped his charge of unauth


1.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/31/politics/ ... i-threats/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is blogging about beheading FBI
agents a criminal threat or free speech?
By Scott Glover, CNN
Updated 8:58 AM ET, Wed August 31,



2.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... pills.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BREAKING BAD
Ohio Sheriff Accused of Pilfering Pills

08.31.16 1:00 A
Something is rotten in one Ohio Sheriff’s Department, where the sheriff was stripped of his badge and gun last week—for allegedly stealing painkillers from police disposal boxes—and where the detective who fingered him was himself put on paid leave over claims he’d compromised an investigation into the brutal murder of a single mother


3.

http://ticklethewire.com/2016/08/31/hom ... niversary/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Duke University for 9/11 Anniversary


Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson will discuss counterterrorism and new threats to the U.S. at Duke University’s Stanford School of Public Policy on Sept. 8, just three days before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Duke Today reports the event is free and open to the public.

Johnson, who took the helm at Homeland Security in 2013, will bring a lot of experience




4.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2772975" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Milwaukee pol thrown to ground at scene of fatal police shooting

: Wednesday, August 31, 2016, 4:15 PM


Wisconsin state lawmaker who was thrown to the ground and arrested Tuesday night at the scene of a fatal police shooting and violent unrest in Milwaukee said he was just trying to help.

Rep. Jonathan Brostoff went to the Sherman Park neighborhood at 10 p.m. after hearing of the arrests of approximately 10 people, he said. Residents had complained that 30 to 40 people gathered around 8 p.m. near the area where Sylville Smith, 23, was fatally shot by an officer earlier this month.



5.


Texas teacher slammed to ground by Austin cops files lawsuit

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2772868" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wednesday, August 31, 2016, 11:58 AM



Breaion King sues city of Austin for violent arrest
Austin American-Statesman


00:00 / 01:35
A Texas teacher who was slammed to the ground by cops and told blacks have "violent tendencies" has filed a lawsuit against the city of Austin.

Dashcam video shows Breaion King, who is black, being shoved to the ground by a white officer during a traffic stop in June 2015. Later, another Austin officer can be heard making the remark after engaging in a discussion with King.

Police Chief Art Acevedo publicly apologized, and launched a departmental probe. King's lawyer Erica Grigg said that when King contacted city leaders to have larger discussions about her arrest, she got little response.



6.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.2773057" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
NYPD won't reveal any actions on cop who choked Garner: Bratton



Updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2016, 2:45 PM




7.


Atlanta cop James Burns indicted on murder charges


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/e ... -1.2773319" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wednesday, August 31, 2016, 5:37 PM


ATLANTA — A grand jury on Wednesday charged a white former Atlanta police officer with felony murder and other crimes in the death of an unarmed black man.

The Fulton County grand jury also indicted James Burns on charges of aggravated assault, making a false statement and two counts of violation of oath of office in the June 22 killing of 22-year-old Deravis Caine Rogers, according to defense attorney Drew Findling. Burns has been out on bond since his arrest.

Prosecutors said Burns fired into Rogers' vehicle while responding to a call about a suspicious person, even though Burns wasn't in danger and had no way to identify Rogers as the reported suspicious person.



8.


http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wh ... unist-ties" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

When the FBI grilled
Julia Child Over Her Alleged Communist Ties
No stone left unturned.
By Matthew Guariglia AUGUST 31, 2016


9.

Series on Waco siege picked up
Fox News-
The series is based on two biographies, “A Place Called Waco,” written by one of the nine survivors of the fire, and “Sinful Messiah,” by a FBI agent in charge of ...

10.

http://www.thelandesreport.com/votingma ... panies.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
RAW NOTES: VOTING SYSTEMS ORGS AND COMPANIES  privatizing, monopolizing, & politicizing the voting process... around the world  (3/2/10:  sorry, some of this info is out-of-date. will work to update asap)

NEWS:  9/3/09 - ES&S has bought Diebold - now counts 80% of all votes in America!  http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/diebold-sells/

http://www.electiontech.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; "The Election Technology Council (ETC) consists of companies which offer voting system technology hardware products, software and services to support the electoral process. These companies have organized as an association to work together to address common issues facing our industry. Current members of the ETC are: Advanced Voting Solutions, Danaher Guardian Voting Systems, Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, Perfect Voting System, Sequoia Voting Systems, and UniLect Cor... (Continued)"

The voting technology business is dominated by Republican-leaning U.S. and foreign corporations. Today, two Republican-controlled corporations, Election Systems and Software ( ES&S) and Diebold Voting Systems, and a British-based company, Sequoia, control about 80% of the vote count in the U.S.. But many other corporations are also involved in the elections industry (see below). Meanwhile, the long history of election upsets due to voting machine "glitches", that overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates, continues to grow. See:http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachineErrors.htm 

Will future elections feature The Battle of the Backdoors to voting software?  Military defense contractors that also provide election services include: Accenture (a business partner of Halliburton, also a defense contractor), Diebold Voting Systems, Northrop Grumman/Diversified Dynamics/TRW (partners with Science Applications International Corporation, SAIC, also in defense industry), General Dynamics/Computing Devices Canada, Unisys (partners with ES&S), National Semiconductor Corporation, Hart Intercivic, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, and Perot Systems Government Services, Inc..

Government Oversight: There is no federal agency that has regulatory authority over the elections industry according to Brian Hancock, spokesperson for the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and Jorge Martinez, spokesperson for the Department of Justice (DOJ). No agency or organization even has a complete list of voting machine companies. Using a rough estimate, there are about 70 voting machine companies worldwide, with at least 48 based in the U.S.. The FEC lists only 19, the Texas-based National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) lists 16 that are 'industry certified' (which are outmoded and voluntary guidelines), while the IFES Buyers Guide lists about 64 companies worldwide that appear to be engaged in electronic voting. Meanwhile there is one company that is 'flying under the radar' of both the FEC and NASED, that is the Bermuda-based Accenture (formally Andersen Consulting) that has the contract for the online military vote in 2004. 
 
Ownership:  There are no government standards or restrictions on who can sell and service voting machines and systems. Foreigners, convicted criminals, office holders, political candidates, and news media organizations can and do own these companies. It appears that these companies are dominated by members of the Republican Party and foreign investors. Jack Kemp, a former GOP candidate for vice president in 1996 and a possible candidate for Governor of California this year, is on the board of directors for Election.com, while Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) was the past president of the company (AIS) that counted the votes in his first election and an investor in the company (ES&S) that counted the votes in his second election. At least four companies are foreign-owned: Sequoia (UK), Accenture/Election.com (UK Bermuda), EVS (Japan), and N.V. Nederlandsche Apparatenfabriek (Netherlands). Election.com was formerly owned by Osan, Ltd., a Saudi Arabian firm. Many voting machine companies appear to share managers, investors, and equipment which raises questions of conflict-of-interest and monopolistic practices. 

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

Heat is Online
1.

https://robertscribbler.com/2016/09/16/ ... fore-2035/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Approaching the First Climate Tipping Point — On Track to Hit 1.5 C Before 2035
July 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded. That record lasted for all of one month as global temperatures remained at record-high levels through August, resulting in a tie with July during a period when the Earth typically cools.

Given natural variability, we might expect August to remain hot if an El Nino were forming in the Pacific, but at that time, with a weak La Nina struggling to fire off, the exact opposite was the case. In other words, the El Nino/La Nina cycle, which typically helps to drive global warm and cool periods, was pointed in the direction of ‘cool’, but the world remained near record-hot
2.

Sea ice
Arctic sea ice shrinks to second lowest level ever

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... r-recorded" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Link du jour

http://www.montefrank.com/index.php/201 ... -identity/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://whowhatwhy.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... th-people/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1.


http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1129/ ... -91213233/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


LAPD sergeant who leaked recording of 'Django' actress sues city to block release of his employment records


Actress Daniele Watts and Brian Lucas speak during a 2014 interview about their controversial encounter with an LAPD officer.
BY MATT HAMILTON AND KATE MATHER
September 16, 2016, 8:00 a.m.



2.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1130/ ... -91200243/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Teenager at center of Bay Area police sex crimes scandal will return to California to testify against cops

The alleged victim in the Bay Area police sex scandal will return to California to testify against officers expected to be charged, according to her attorney.

September 14, 2016, 8:40 p.m.
The teenager whose allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of several police officers rocked the Bay Area law enforcement community will return to California to testify against them, her attorney said Wednesday.

Jasmine Abuslin, 19, of Richmond, was freed from the Martin County Jail in Florida on Wednesday morning after accepting a plea deal to settle allegations that she bit a security guard during a violent clash at a drug rehabilitation facility last month. 

Pamela Price, an Oakland civil rights attorney who is representing Abuslin, said Abuslin now plans to return home, where she will serve as the key witness in the prosecution of at least seven current and former East Bay law enforcement officers.

“We’re going home as soon as we can,” Price said at a news conference in Stuart, Fla.

She was originally arrested on a charge of felony aggravated battery, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in state prison, but Florida prosecutors downgraded the charge to simple battery, a misdemeanor, earlier this week.

Richard Kibbey, the defense attorney representing Abuslin in Florida, said the plea deal stipulated that Abuslin would serve no more jail time and plead no contest to the misdemeanor charge.

Abuslin, who has previously used the pseudonym Celeste Guap, asserted during a television news interview earlier this year that she had had sex with at least a dozen Oakland police officers, and that some of the encounters occurred while she was underage. She also accused officers of leaking information to her about planned prostitution raids in exchange for sex.

The scandal soon widened to include accusations against members of four other East Bay law enforcement agencies.

The Times no


3.


http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/local-n ... 0103-story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Expensive equipment stolen from ATF vehicle in Detroit

Expensive equipment was stolen from an ATF vehicle in Detroit.
By: Hannah Saunders
POSTED:SEP 15 2016 10:13PM EDT
UPDATED:SEP 1



4.


http://ticklethewire.com/2016/09/16/sus ... e-arrests/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A man arrested twice on suspicions of robbing banks has sued the FBI, the city of Denver and its police department, claiming he was falsely arrested and subjected to excessive force and malicious prosecution.

FOX31 reports that officials dismissed bank robbery charges against Steve Tally, who is now homeless and is seeking $10 million.



5.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/16/gan ... hack-info/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

AP and Vice sue FBI for San Bernardino iPhone hack info
Engadget
Vice Media and the Gannett Satellite Information Network, parent company to the Associated Press and USA Today, filed suit against the FBI in federal court on ...




6.

https://sputniknews.com/europe/20160916 ... tline.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Real Secret Agents on New 'Call a Spy' Hotline Answer Your ...
Sputnik International-
"We have a lot of them, including for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, NSA, CIA, FBI, BND (Germany's federal intelligence service), and the BfV ...


7.

http://www.techworm.net/2016/09/two-hac ... -feds.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Two hackers who entered into Hack The Pentagon program leaked ...
Techworm-
FBI has arrested two men from North Carolina for supposedly participating in the Hack The Pentagon program to target high-ranked federal officials.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

Link Du Jour

http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post ... ker-163286" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/201609 ... from-widow" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


https://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons ... ity-guard/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1.


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ahm ... -1.2799515" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The father of accused terrorist bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami charges the FBI, despite his warnings, botched a 2014 probe into his violent and radicalized son.

“They did not do the job,” Mohammad Rahami said Tuesday near his First American Fried Chicken takeout restaurant


2.


http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/local/f ... 56311.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Former State Rep. “Dick” Burnett dies
San Angelo Standard Times
Richard J. "Dick" Burnett, a former state representative, San Angelo Police Chief and FBI agent assigned to the John F. Kennedy assassination investigation, 



3.

http://www.curvemag.com/Lifestyle/Long- ... rt-1-1474/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Long-Lived Lesbian And Former FBI Agent Rocks Guitar: Susan SurfTone (Part 1)
"I never understood the gender difference."

BY GILLIAN KENDALL FOR LONG-LIVED LESBIAN

Published: 2016.09.20 10:45 A

4.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/rubi ... g-42224039" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Rubio Asks FBI to Share Assistance Info After Pulse Shooting
ABC News-
Special Agent Amy Pittman, an FBI spokeswoman in Tampa, didn't respond to an email and phone call. Rubio suggested that the FBI should contact the ...


5.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+age ... w&dpr=1.33" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

State Police Acknowledge Ammunition, Rifle Scope Missing
Hartford Courant-
The Courant first reported the FBI investigation into the missing equipment last ... State police internal affairs officers and an FBI agent seized computers and ...





FBI Octopus....watching their tentacles grow

http://www.journalinquirer.com/page_one ... d7c37.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Former fed coaches EH students on cop stops
Journal Inquirer-
EAST HARTFORD — East Hartford High School juniors got a sobering lesson Friday from former FBI agent and federal prosecutor Quentin Williams on how to ...




http://community.seattletimes.nwsource. ... drivers30m" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Local News | 'Driving While Female' study assails police | Seattle Times ...
NWsource › archive › slug=womendrive...
May 30, 2002 - It's been dubbed "driving while female": A male police officer targets a woman for a traffic stop, then uses the power of the badge to sexually ...


Driving While Female - Samuel Walker
samuelwalker.net › 2010/06 › dwf2002


"DRIVING WHILE FEMALE”: A NATIONAL PROBLEM IN POLICE MISCONDUCT. A Special Report by the. Police Professionalism Initiative. University of Nebraska at ...

http://azjewishpost.com/2016/even-israe ... s-it-does/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Even Israel doesn't do ethnic profiling the way Donald Trump thinks ...
Jewish Post-
... Pomerantz, the counterterrorism expert at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and a retired FBI agent, referring to Israel's security establishment.


http://www.kiiitv.com/news/local/securi ... /321935953" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Security teams already preparing for Super Bowl 51
KIII TV3-
“It's tough,” said Jim Conway, who worked as an FBI agent for 26 years. ... According to authorities, the FBI and HPD have created a Super Bowl security task ...


https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/na ... should-it/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Nashville May Decriminalize Tonight. But Should It?
Leafly-
Nashville Metro Councilman Russ Pulley, a former police officer and FBI agent, says the goal is not to take it easy on offenders who are arrested for more serious ...




Local FBI Agent Hosts Presentation on Cyber Safety
KNWA-
University of Arkansas Alum and FBI Special Agent Shun Turner gave tips on how to protect minors from inappropriate content, cyber bullying, and solicitation.


UCSF Plans Events for National Cyber Security Awareness Month
UCSF News Services-
The events kick off with a talk by FBI Special Agent Kevin Phelan, who runs the agency's Palo Alto, Calif., office. His team conducts investigations related to ...






http://www.headwatersproductions.com/pr ... icle5.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Edward Rodgers was in charge of investigating cases of Child Abuse at the FBI

THE DENVER POST - Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire
May 17, 1990
Sisters win sex lawsuit vs. dad $2.3 million given for years of abuse
Two daughters of former state and federal law enforcement official Edward Rodgers were awarded $2.319,400 yesterday, after a Denver judge and jury found that the women suffered years of abuse at the hands of their father.
The award to Sharon Simone, 45, and Susan Hammond, 44, followed testimony of Rodgers’ four daughters in person or through depositions, describing repeated physical abuse and sexual assaults by their father from 1944 through 1965.


Monday August 8, 2005 Longtime FBI agent sentenced to prison on child porn count

also see http://www.policeone.com/news/113935-Lo ... hild-Porn/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 A longtime FBI agent who helped arrest mountain-man Claude Dallas and was involved in a deadly 1984 siege involving white supremacists in Washington state is going to prison for 12 months after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.

http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/21553776/fb ... l-shooting" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI agent involved in fatal shooting
Posted: Mar 08, 2013
By WRCB Staff -

(WRCB) - The FBI says an agent was involved in a fatal shooting during an East Tennessee child pornography investigation.

FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/was ... hief_x.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM

The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.

John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.


http://blog.al.com/live/2009/04/mobile_ ... abu_1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

local attorney arrested
On child indecency accusations
 22 Apr 2009

MOBILE, Ala. - Mobile Police arrested 52-year-old Phillip Kent Baxley on child indecency charges. Baxley is a local attorney in Mobile, but he's also a former coach and acting president for the Mobile Soccer Club.




http://www.technewsworld.com/story/83910.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Congress to Bureaucrats: Trust No One
TechNewsWorld-
Hackers love perimeter-only defenses, said Cryptzone Chief Security Officer Leo Taddeo, a former FBI special agent. When he was head of the cyberdivision for ...


6.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/p ... es-against" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The ACLU of Connecticut is suing state police for fabricating retaliatory criminal charges against a protester after troopers were recorded discussing how to trump up charges against him. In what seems like an unlikely stroke of cosmic karma, the recording came about after a camera belonging to the protester, Michael Picard, was illegally seized by a trooper who didn’t know that it was recording and carried it back to his patrol car, where it then captured the troopers’ plotting.

“Let’s give him something,” one trooper declared. Another suggested, “we can hit him with creating a public disturbance.” “Gotta cover our donkey,” remarked a third


7.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.2800836" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NYPD cop charged in fatal DWI crash has license suspended again




NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 12:13 PM



Former NYPD cop Nicholas Batka. (VIA FACEBOOK)
A former NYPD cop indicted for drunkenly crashing his car into innocent pedestrians, killing one, had his license suspended for a second time by a Brooklyn



8.


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/dow ... -1.2800649" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


A pack of sadistic corrections officers at Downstate Correctional Facility beat an inmate to near-death in November 2013 — and one kept a clump of dreadlocks torn from his head as a "trophy," bombshell court papers say.

Kathy Scott, George Santiago, Jr. and Carson Morris are accused of violating inmate Kevin Moore's civil rights in relation to the beatdown.

They are also accused of trying to cover up the incident that left Moore hospitalized for some 17 days, according to an indictment filed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday.



9.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/fac ... -1.2800590" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cop facing fine for accepting lavish meals gets big promotion
BY JOHN MARZULLI ROCCO PARASCANDOLA GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 9:34 AM

The NYPD's Diana Pizzuti, who is being promoted to Chief of Personnel, in 2007. (DELMUNDO, ANTHONY FREELANCE NYDN/ANTHONY DELMUNDO)
The city’s top cop has promoted NYPD Assistant Chief Diana Pizzuti, who likely will have to pay a fine for violating city conflict of interest rules, to Chief of Personnel, sources told the Daily News.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill promoted Pizzuti, the former commander of Queens North, and tapped Deputy Chief Juanita Holmes, the former head of the Domestic Violence Unit, to take her place, sources said.

Holmes becomes the first female black borough commander in the city’s history.


Pizzuti, Assistant Chief James Secreto and retired Transportation Chief James Tuller received letters in June from the Conflict of Interest Board informing them that the board found "probable cause" that they had violated a provision of the City Charter barring public servants from receiving gifts worth more than $49.

NYPD cops face fines for dining with ex-Queens Library big
A source said they are still hammering out the details with the board to each pay a $1,500 fine to settle the matter.

A high-ranking police source said O’Neill was aware of the Conflict of Interest Board finding, but examined h


10.

https://www.policeone.com/police-produc ... s-charges/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Chicago officer indicted on civil rights charges
Marco Proano was indicted on two counts of deprivation of rights after he allegedly used unreasonable force during a 2013 traffic stop



CHICAGO — A Chicago police officer who was videotaped firing shots that injured two black teenagers inside a car was indicted on federal civil rights charges.


11.


https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/21/g ... terrorism/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

George H.W. Bush, the CIA and a Case of State Terrorism
September 21, 2016

From the Archive: Forty years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing Chile’s ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state terrorism that the CIA and its director George H.W. Bush tried to cover up, Robert Parry reported in 2000.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... vil-rights" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Woman wrongly jailed 96 days without bail appeals denial of civil rights violation

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

ALERT


DHS, FBI: Terrorists Looking to Strike Thanksgiving Parades, Black ...
Breitbart News-Nov 23, 2016
The FBI has also identified shopping malls, special events, and crowded venues in Washington D.C. and Virginia as “target-rich zones,” noting ...



Nichols says bombing was FBI op | Deseret News
Deseret News › article › Nichols-says-bo...
Feb 21, 2007 - A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake ... Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the ...





Did Eric Holder Cover Up FBI's Role In '95 OKC Bomb Plot? | American ...
American Free Press › did-holder-cover-...
Dec 31, 2011 - An affidavit from Oklahoma City conspirator Nichols about the ... Both were handled by FBI agent Larry Potts, a senior FBI official who had allegedly  ...




http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/ ... 86583.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BEAUFORT NEWS
NOVEMBER 25, 2016 12:31 PM
Residents across Beaufort County use debris to bring hope, help after Matthew


Fender said he was looking for an outlet to funnel his frustrations following the storm and to try to bring the Harbor Island community together. With the help of his wife, Donna, the debris-snowman idea was created.
When he was an FBI agent, Fender said he was on the ground for many disasters, including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the Pentagon terrorist attack on 9/11.


http://ticklethewire.com/2016/11/24/boo ... ice-force/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Book Excerpt: An Ex-Detroit Police Officer Writes About Racism and the Racial Divide on the Police Force

Mike Cowling served in the Detroit Police Department from 1972-90 and worked uniform patrol, a felony plainclothes car and 16 years as an undercover narcotics officer. The white former officer writes in his new book, “Force Divided,” about the racial divide in the department and racism he saw among white and black officers.

“Yes, the ugly force of racism is alive and well in the Detroit Police Department, and it exists on both sides,” he writes u


https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/20 ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The FBI just got access to Twitter data. Should you be concerned?


NOVEMBER 24, 2016
The FBI recently signed a deal that will give it access to monitor Twitter’s “firehose” — every tweet posted publicly each day, roughly 500 million of them.

The move has raised privacy concerns and claims that Twitter is not being consistent



http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.2887374" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Theater & Arts
CNN broadcasts porn instead of 'Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown'
BY BRIAN LISI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, November 25, 2016, 3:1



FBI Octopus


Fighting against sex trafficking: A survivor shares her story


 
http://www.kmvt.com/content/news/403010126.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Fighting back against sex trafficking

Surviving a life of sex trafficking
| Posted: Fri 9:11 AM, Nov 25, 2016  |  Updated: Fri 9:11 AM, Nov 25, 2016

OMAHA, Neb-- Anna Brewer, a former FBI Special Agent, spent a lot of time investigating sex-trafficking. She recently joined the board for Magdalene Omaha - a safe haven for sex-trafficking victims. She decided to get involved because she saw first-hand what kind of impact this lifestyle has on a victim.

"But I'm also fed up with the buyer and the consumer, and the fact that those people live among us, yet they think they go un


FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/was ... hief_x.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM

The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.

John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.

another backstory anecdote and then I will sign off.

FBI informant Kimball was released from prison early to work for the FBI agents. He continued his serial killing of women funded by your tax dime on the payroll of the FBI.

see link for full story
http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-informant- ... id=8772640" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


http://observer.com/2016/11/nutley-comm ... j-guv-run/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Nutley Commissioner Rogers at the Edge of a 2017 NJ Guv Run
Observer
He was promoted to the rank of Lt. Commander and assigned to the U.S. Northern Command as a Senior Naval Intelligence Officer for the FBI National Joint ...





http://motherboard.vice.com/read/warran ... ly-expires" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Warrant Canary for Activist Email Service Riseup Seemingly Expires
Motherboard-
Warrant canaries are often used to blow the whistle around National Security Letters; demands for information the FBI can send to companies without obtaining ...





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2887236" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Will Sims murdered by three white men in Calif. hate crime

Friday, November 25, 2016, 12:56 PM



Will Sims was shot and killed by 3 white men in a California hate crime. (HANDOUT)
Just days after Donald Trump’s election, in El Sobrante, Calif., about 20 miles north of San Francisco, something truly terrible happened. I honestly believe it must be viewed in the context of the wave of hate crimes that swept our nation immediately after Trump’s win. Except most of us are just now learning that it took place.

Will Sims, 28, an accomplished musician and vocalist, widely hailed as a gentle, peaceful, gifted soul, was murdered in a vicious hate crime. He was targeted, robbed, beaten, then shot, and left on the street to die. When the police found him on the street on Nov. 12, he was already dead.

Police have openly stated that Sims was targeted by the three wh



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -prosecute" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hate Crimes Are Rising But Don't Expect Them to be Prosecuted
Mother Jones
Last week, the FBI announced there were 5,850 hate crimes in 2015—a 7 percent increase over the year before. But that total, which is based on voluntary



TWO Stories


One by FBI Presstitutes



1.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/world ... media.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One by One, ISIS Social Media Experts Are Killed as Result of FBI ...
New York Times-Nov 24, 2016
One by one, American and allied forces have killed the most important of roughly a dozen members of the cell, which the F.B.I. calls “the Legion ...




2



Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats? - The Intercept
https://theintercept.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; › 2015/02/26 › f...
Feb 26, 2015 - Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS ... parents into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the ..




Secret Pentagon Report Reveals US "Created" ISIS As A "Tool" To Overthrow Syria's President Assad | Zero Hedge
Zero Hedge › news › secret-pentagon-re...
May 24, 2015 - Secret Pentagon Report Reveals US "Created" ISIS As A "Tool" To .... Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, FBI, ...




Terrorism Created By The FBI: Trevor Aaronson Says US Should Be Blamed For Creation of ISIS, Al Qaeda And Domestic Terrorism (VIDEO ...
http://www.hngn.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; › articles › terrorism-cre...
Jun 8, 2015 - "The F.B.I. is responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than any other organization," investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson claims .



84 Years Ago Today, the FBI's Crime Lab Opened in DC
Washingtonian.com-Nov 24, 2016
From fingerprinting and ballistics to handwriting analysis and moulage, the FBI's Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory is known for assisting ...



CNN - FBI whistle-blower leaves, gets $1.16 million - February 27, 1998
CNN.com › fbi.whitehurst
Feb 27, 1998 - WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Frederic Whitehurst, the whistle-blower who triggered an overhaul of the FBI's world-renowned crime lab and claimed he ...
Bad FBI Science | The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; › bad...
Apr 24, 2015 - Dr. Frederic Whitehurst knows a thing or two about FBI lab scandals. As a “supervisory special agent” and noted forensic scientist, he began ...
Four Questions About the FBI Lab Scandal | Whistleblower Protection Blog
http://www.whistleblowersblog.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; › articles
Jul 30, 2014 - Dr. Frederic Whitehurst. July 30, 2014 – Another front-page story about the FBI Lab Scandal appeared in the Washington Post today. In this story ...
Interview 502 – Dr. Frederic Whitehurst on the FBI Crime Lab : The Corbett ...
https://www.corbettreport.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; › intervie...
Apr 25, 2012 - A former Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI Crime Lab, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst joins us to discuss a startling new report on how the Justice ...
Former FBI Whistleblower Fred Whitehurst Weighs In on Hair Analysis Allegations - Innocence Project Innocence Project
Innocence Project › former-fbi-whistlebl...
Apr 28, 2015 - Whitehurst is a former FBI forensic scientist who went public with concerns about inadequate crime lab practices in the mid-1990s. In 1998 ...



http://artvoice.com/2016/11/25/defense- ... Di18GZOm2c" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




News 
Defense Team Tried to Demonstrate Parlato’s Innocence; were told they had orders to Indict
November 25, 2016



 It might be informative to readers to get a peek inside the US Attorney’s investigation and prosecution of an American citizen.
     The Parlato case might be a good example of how the office works.
     While trying to show the US Attorney’s office, then under William Hochul, that indicting him was a deep injustice, Parlato, who has professed his innocence, retained former New York State Attorney General and former US Attorney Dennis Vacco; former Federal Magistrate Judge Carol Heckman; former Assistant US Attorney [under Preet Bharara] Brian Feldman, and Parlato’s two civil litigation lawyers, Ralph Lorigo and James Roscetti, who had successfully battled serial litigant Shmuel Shmueli for years.

Brian Feldman, a former AUSA, made a serious, three-months long effort to try to persuade AUSA Anthony Bruce that it was wrong to indict Frank Parlato. During that time, AUSA Bruce reportedly erupted with anger repeatedly, often swore profusely, refused to listen to exonerating information and only wanted to know if Parlato would take a plea deal, otherwise he would be indicted.

“We provided so much information to the U.S. Attorney’s Office on so many topics,” Ralph Lorigo told the Buffalo News, expressing surprise at how the government ignored all the documentary, exonerating evidence. “I’m very taken aback by what I read in the indictment.”
 

     Every one of these lawyers, all known for their long history of integrity, went on the record with the US Attorney that they believed Parlato was innocent of criminal wrongdoing.
Former Magistrate Judge Heckman and former Assistant US Attorney Feldman gave a 126 slide Power Point presentation showing extensive, exonerating evidence to Assistant US Attorney Anthony Bruce, FBI Special Agent Brian Burns and others with the US Attorney’s office, then under Hochul.
 Assistant US Attorney Bruce reportedly sat there with his legs folded, not taking notes, expressing great annoyance and rudely urging former Magistrate Judge Heckman to hurry up. FBI Burns reportedly made it a point at times to heckle, laugh and scoff during the presentation.
Afterward AUSA Bruce told former Magistrate Judge Heckman that he had “marching orders” from US Attorney Hochul to indict Parlato.
Former New York State Attorney General Vacco presented an exhaustively documented “White Paper” to AUSA Bruce and FBI SA Burns which argued that the government’s theories were demonstrably wrong and that the issues in dispute were at best civil and not criminal matters.
  AUSA Bruce reportedly told Vacco that, based on the time FBI Agent Burns and an IRS agent had invested in the case, he had to have at least one fraud (for the FBI) and one tax (for the IRS) felony count.

He was both the New York State Attorney General and a US Attorney, making Dennis Vacco probably the most prominent, well known and best qualified prosecutor in Western New York.
Vacco went to bat for Parlato, writing a comprehensive “White Paper” which Vacco put his name to and which clearly showed he believed Parlato was innocent and that the government wrongly asserted theories of criminal liability which included actual mistaken identification of critical documents. These serious mistakes by the government may have spread to the grand jury.
 

     AUSA Bruce offered Parlato, over a ten month period in 2015, a series of plea deals – each with lower contemplated sentences, from four years, to two, to less than a year and finally one with a possible halfway house and/or home confinement – all with two felony counts – one for the FBI and one for the IRS.
     Most offers were accompanied with deadlines of “take the plea or be indicted”.
Parlato refused to accept any plea deal since he claimed it would require him to lie to the judge in admitting to a crime he did not commit.
     Parlato was indicted on Nov. 20, 2015 and faces 20 years if convicted on all counts.
 Parlato has said he has come to realize that the decision to indict him was decided long before his attorneys met with the US Attorney’s office under Hochul.
     He also said he understood that most people are not in a position to fight the enormous forces of the government, and even though they are innocent might be tempted to take a plea deal.
In spite of extensive, exonerating and documentary evidence presented to the government, FBI Agent Burns allegedly ignored documents in his possession and, as alleged in Parlato’s recent motion, made 38 “inaccurate” statements in his affidavit filed with Hon. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder, Jr. during the prosecution’s secret (ex parte) hearing to seize Parlato’s funds.
Parlato said that FBI SA Burns must have felt he needed to insert these inaccuracies since he had documents in his possession that contradicted the false claims made in the affidavit. However, without the inaccuracies, Magistrate Judge Schroeder might have declined to approve the seizure or called for a hearing during which Parlato’s attorneys would have been permitted to appear and explain why it was unjust that their client’s funds should be seized before there was a trial proving any wrongdoing.
How many of the 38 alleged inaccuracies which FBI SA Burns inserted into his affidavit before Magistrate Judge Schroeder were also presented to the grand jury is unknown by the





http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fb ... frequently" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The FBI Is Wrongly Telling People To Change Passwords 'Frequently'
Motherboard-
It seems like everyone these days is a little bit paranoid about getting hacked. That's good! While there's no need to be paranoid, it's good to be aware of the ...

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

Heat Is Online

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hot ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
NATION
The hottest year in history sees the election of a new president who questions climate science

https://robertscribbler.com/2016/12/22/ ... ble-power/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is What The Resistance Looks Like — Cities, States and Nations Run on 100 Percent Renewable Power
The sparks of resistance to a harmful domination of energy supplies by the fossil fuel industry are out there. They are the lights of clean power generation blooming like stars across a world blackened by smokestack emissions and imperiled by climate change.

****

In the U.S., backward-looking republicans like Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, James Inhofe and Mitch McConnell appear to be gearing up to fight against both a necessary and helpful science that provides us with a life-saving awareness of the threats posed by human caused climate change and a highly beneficial renewable energy renaissance that has now gone global. Trump’s presidential cabinet is filled to the brim with climate change deniers and fossil fuel pushers. Pledges to de-fund climate science, implied threats to fire employees at the Department of Energy who worked on climate and renewable energy related issues, and belligerent boasting about dismantling much-needed policies like the Clean Power Plan, EPA fuel efficiency standards, and the Paris Climate Summit abound.

It’s the great loud, sad, and ignorance-filled reaction against a better future. A political and legislative backlash funded by oil, gas, and coal company campaign donations, advertising dollars, and indirect media investments. One that seeks to remove the possibility for a time when energy does not pollute the air or water — resulting in 7 million premature deaths each year globally. For one when



Blink Tank


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AjXWjtkrFUk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;






http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-worl ... heir-eyes/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Homeland Security agents took $15M in bribes, closed their eyes
The Seattle Times-
Homeland Security agents took $15M in bribes, closed their eyes ... And Mark Morgan



http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news-cops- ... ing-claims" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Feds look into retired WV trooper’s beating claims
Kate White , Staff Writer
December 28, 2016








https://www.scmagazine.com/federal-inte ... le/628502/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



by Larry Jaffee
December 28, 2016
Federal intelligence agencies sued over Russian Interference in U.S.






A quick response to the FOIA requests is not expected.
Two transparency gadflies are suing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. four federal intelligence agencies to disclose all evidence related to alleged interference by the Russian government in the 2016 presidential election.
Separately, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a separate FOIA request on the same topic.
Invoking the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Vice investigative journalist Jason Leopold and Massachusetts Institute of Technology academic Ryan Shapiro in their lawsuit are seeking judicial relief to force the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to release publicly all records that informed the highest levels of the U.S. government that there had been tampering with the electoral process. The defendants include the FBI, CIA and the Department of Justice.
“The American public absolutely deserves to know what role Russian interference played in President-elect Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, and how U.S. intelligence agencies responded to any such Russian interference,” Shapiro said in a statement. “





JonBenet Ramsey's Brother Sues CBS for $750 Million Over 'The ...
SFGate-
... James R. Fitzgerald, a retired FBI agent; Stanley B. Burke, a retired FBI agent; Dr. Werner Spitz, a forensic pathologist; and Dr. Henry Lee, a forensic scientist






http://louisianarecord.com/stories/5110 ... ation-suit" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Police captain accused of tampering with evidence at murder ...
The Louisiana Record-
Hayes' attorneys initially refused to identify their witness to anyone, including the FBI. However, Criminal District Judge Camille Buras ordered the witness to be ...






https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161 ... -use.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

South Carolina Legislators Introduce Three Bills Targeting Police Stingray Use
from the some-fullwits-hidden-among-the-halfwits dept
It's really, really difficult to give the South Carolina legislature any credit whatsoever. In the past few years, it has offered up bills that:
- required journalists to register with the government before enjoy their First Amendment rights (to make a point about the Second Amendment)
- criminalized profanity in public forums (including the internet)
- criminalized the recording of criminal acts
- required computer sellers to install default porn blockers in devices (that could be removed for $20)
The track record of this state's legislature is less than stellar. Hell, it's less than passable. 1/5 would not re-elect.
But there are still a few legislators with good ideas trying to do good things within the confines of a state where adultery is still considered a criminal act. The Tenth Amendment Center briefly highlights three new bills targeting law enforcement Stingray device use, all with their own merits.
The first, brought by state rep J. Todd Rutherford, is the most extreme of the three.
The legislation would prohibit any state or local law enforcement agency in South Carolina from purchasing cell site simulators, commonly known as “stingrays.”
At this point, use of these devices by South Carolina law enforcement is unconfirmed. If, indeed, no agencies are in possession of IMSI catchers, this bill would maintain the status quo. If agencies are already in possession of the devices, the bill would require these agencies





http://m.mondovisione.com/media-and-res ... 0-million/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Another DOJ fix for Cable Corp

DOJ knocks $20 million off minimum fine.



U.S. Department Of Justice: General Cable Corporation Agrees To Pay $20 Million Penalty For Foreign Bribery Schemes In Asia And Africa
General Cable Corporation, a Kentucky-based manufacturer and distributor of cable and wire, entered into a non-prosecution agreement and agreed to pay a $20 million penalty, reflecting a 50 percent reduction off the bottom of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines fine range, to resolve the government’s investigation into improper payments to government officials in Angola, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia and Thailand to corruptly gain business



http://www.thelibertyconservative.com/s ... ent-calls/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Secret Law Enforcement Cell-Phone Surveillance System Can Jam ...
The Liberty Conservative-
The FBI reportedly has 194 Stingray devices in use; the Marshals Service has 70; Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 59, and the Internal Revenue ...







http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/lett ... 48089.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Washington Times
Why FBI Director Comey should be in jail
The Olympian
When FBI Director James Comey informed Congress that he had discovered new material related to Hillary Clinton's private email server, he drew sharp







http://cbs12.com/news/local/4-deputies- ... an-4-weeks" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Behind the Badge: 4 PBSO deputies arrested in less than 4 weeks
WPEC-
The fourth was done by the FBI with the help of the sheriff's office. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office released the following statement: “The Palm Beach ...






FBI threatens cop Mark Dougan who blew whistle on PBSO cop corruption
Here is his new websites


http://PBSOTalk.ru/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mark_Dougan" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-s ... le/2610425" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Secret Service is its own worst enemy

By GARY BYRNE • 12/27/16 7:00 PM

On Inauguration Day, the extensive premises of Washington, D.C., will





http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKSinvestSS.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


American History  > The Assassination of JFK  >
JFK Theory: FBI/Secret Service

After the death of John F. Kennedy, his deputy, Lyndon B. Johnson, was appointed president. He immediately set up a commission to "ascertain, evaluate and report upon the facts relating to the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy." The seven man commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and included Gerald Ford, Allen W. Dulles, John J. McCloy, Richard B. Russell, John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs.

Lyndon B. Johnson also commissioned a report on the assassination from J. Edgar Hoover. Two weeks later the Federal Bureau of Investigation produced a 500 page report claiming that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. The report was then passed to the Warren Commission. Rather than conduct its own independent investigation, the commission relied almost entirely on the FBI report.

Mark North (Act of Treason) and George O'Toole (The Assassination Tapes) both believe that J. Edgar Hoover either knew of plans to kill Kennedy and did nothing to stop them, or he helped to organize the assassination. In his book, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) Peter Dale Scottprovides information that Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped to cover-up the real identity of the people who assassinated John F. Kennedy.

In his book, Best Evidence, David Lifton claims that members of the Secret Service agents were involved in the killing of Kennedy. This included providing the assassins with a good opportunity to kill Kennedy. Lifton was highly critical of the behaviour of William Greer, Roy Kellerman and Winston G. Lawson during the assassination. Lifton believes that after the assassination of Kennedy they hijacked the body in order to alter the corpse. In the book, Mortal Error, Bonar Menninger, claims that SS agent George Hickey killed Kennedy by accident.


James H. Fetzer believes the Secret Service played a role in the assassination. In his book, Assassination Science, he writes: "I have discovered at least fifteen indications of Secret Service complicity in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, from the absence of protective military presence to a lack of coverage of open windows, to motorcycles out of position, to Secret Service agents failing to ride on the Presidential limousine, to the vehicles arranged in an improper sequence, to the utilization of an improper motorcade route, to the driver bringing the vehicle to a halt after bullets began to be fired, to the almost total lack of response by Secret Service agents, to the driver washing out the back seat with a bucket and sponge at Parkland Hospital, to the car being dismantled and rebuilt (on LBJ's orders), to the driver giving false testimony to the Warren Commission, to the windshields being switched, to the autopsy photographs being taken into custody before they were developed".


Clint Hill, Roy Kellerman, and William Greer after
giving evidence to the Warren Commission (March, 1964)
(P1) William Manchester, The Death of a President (1967)

There was a sudden, sharp, shattering sound. Various individuals heard it differently. Jacqueline Kennedy believed it was a motorcycle noise. Curry was under the impression that someone had fired a railroad torpedo. Ronald Fischer and Bob Edwards, assuming that it was a backfire, chuckled. Most of the hunters in the motorcade - Sorrels, Connally, Yarborough, Gonzalez, Albert Thomas - instinctively identified it as rifle fire.

But the White House Detail was confused. Their experience in outdoor shooting was limited to two qualification courses a year on a range in Washington's National Arboretum. There they heard only their own weapons, and they were unaccustomed to the bizarre effects that are created when small-arms fire echoes among unfamiliar structures - in this case, the buildings of Dealey Plaza. Emory Roberts recognized Oswald's first shot as a shot. So did Youngblood, whose alert response may have saved Lyndon Johnson's life. They were exceptions. The men in Halfback were bewildered. They glanced around uncertainly. Lawson, Kellerman, Greer, Ready, and Hill all thought that a firecracker had been exploded. The fact that this was a common reaction is no mitigation. It was the responsibility of James J. Rowley, Chief of the Secret Service, and Jerry Behn, Head of the White House Detail, to see that their agents were trained to cope with precisely this sort of emergency. They were supposed to be picked men, honed to a matchless edge. It was comprehensible that Roy Truly should dismiss the first shot as a cherry bomb. It was even fathomable that Patrolman James M. Chaney, mounted on a motorcycle six feet from the Lincoln, should think that another machine had backfired. Chaney was an ordinary policeman, not a Presidential bodyguard. The protection of the Chief Executive, on the other hand, was the profession of Secret Service agents. They existed for no other reason. Apart from Clint Hill - and perhaps Jack Ready, who started to step off the right running board and was ordered back by Roberts - the behaviour of the men in the follow-up car was unresponsive. Even more tragic was the perplexity of Roy Kellerman, the ranking agent in Dallas, and Bill Greer, who was under Kellerman's supervision. Kellerman and Greer were in a position to take swift evasive action, and for five terrible seconds they were immobilized.

Why was William Manchester critical of the way the Secret Service responded to the shooting at the motorcade in the Dealey Plaza?



Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia

(P2) William Greer interviewed by Arlen Specter on behalf of the Warren Commission (9th March, 1964)

Arlen Specter: Now, how many shots, or how many noises have you just described that you heard?

William Greer: I know there was three that I heard - three. But I cannot remember any more than probably three. I know there was three anyway that I heard.

Arlen Specter: Do you have an independent recollection at this moment of having heard three shots at that time?

William Greer: I knew that after I heard the second one, that is when I looked over my shoulder, and I was conscious that there was something wrong, because that is when I saw Governor Connally. And when I turned around again, to the best of my recollection there was another one, right immediately after.

Arlen Specter: To the best of your ability to recollect and estimate, how much time elapsed from the first noise which you have described as being similar to the backfire of a motor vehicle until you heard the second noise?

William Greer: It seems a matter of seconds, I really couldn't say. Three or four seconds.

Arlen Specter: How much time elapsed, to the best of your ability to estimate and recollect, between the time of the second noise and the time of the third noise?

William Greer: The last two seemed to be just simultaneously, one behind the other, but I don't recollect just how much, how many seconds were between the two. I couldn't really say.

Arlen Specter: Describe as best you can the types of sound of the second report, as distinguished from the first noise which you said was similar to a motorcycle backfire?

William Greer: The second one didn't sound any different much than the first one but I kind of got, by turning around, I don't know whether I got a little concussion of it, maybe when it hit something or not, I may have gotten a little concussion that made me think there was something different to it. But so far as the noise is concerned, I haven't got any memory of any difference in them at all...

Arlen Specter: Did you step on the accelerator before, simultaneously or after Mr. Kellerman instructed you to accelerate?

William Greer: It was about simultaneously.

According to William Greer, how did he react when he first heard the shots being fired at President John F. Kennedy?

(P3) Roy Kellerman interviewed by Arlen Specter, John S. Cooper and Gerald Ford on behalf of the Warren Commission (9th March, 1964)

Arlen Specter: When was it that Mrs. Kennedy made the statement which you have described, "My God, what are they doing?"

Roy Kellerman: This occurred after the flurry of shots.

Arlen Specter: At that time you looked back and saw Special Agent Hill across the trunk of the car, had your automobile accelerated by that time?

Roy Kellerman: Tremendously so; yes.

Does Roy Kellerman agree with the testimony of William Greer?

(P4) Michael L. Kurtz, Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination From a Historians Perspective (1982)

The Zapruder and other films and photographs of the assassination clearly reveal the utter lack of response by Secret Service agents Roy Kellerman and William Greer, who were in the front seat of the presidential limousine. After the first two shots, Greer actually slowed the vehicle to less than five miles an hour. Kellerman merely sat in the front seat, seemingly oblivious to the shooting. In contrast, Secret Service Agent Rufus Youngblood responded instantly to the first shot, and before the head shots were fired, had covered Vice-President Lyndon Johnson with his body.

Trained to react instantaneously, as in the attempted assassinations of President Gerald Ford by Lynette Fromme and Sara Jane Moore and of President Ronald Reagan by John Warnock Hinckley, the Secret Service agents assigned to protect President Kennedy simply neglected their duty. The reason for their neglect remains one of the more intriguing mysteries of the assassination.

Does Michael L. Kurtz agree with the accounts of William Greer (P2) and Roy Kellerman (P3)?

(P5) Joachim Joesten, How Kennedy Was Killed (1968)

One of the most eminent authorities on the subject, former Secret Service chief U.E. Baughman, who headed that agency from 1948 to 1961, has publicly taken issue, in several newspaper interviews, with the lack of adequate precautions which is so painfully apparent in the Dallas tragedy.

A UPI dispatch from Washington, dated December 8, 1963 quoted Mr. Baughman as saying that "there are a lot of things' to be explained" concerning the assassination.

One thing Baughman wanted to know - nobody has explained it yet - is why Lee H. Oswald was permitted to leave

the Book Depository after the shooting.

He asked, also, assuming that the shots did come from the sixth-floor window of that building, why the Secret Service didn't immediately pepper that -window with machine gun fire?

This is one of the most obvious - and least asked - of all "unanswered questions" about the Kennedy murder. Why, indeed, was all the shooting done only by one side - that of the assassins?

There were dozens of Secret Service men on the scene, all former FBI agents and tested marksmen, quick on the trigger and with their service guns and submachine guns at the ready - to say nothing of the hundreds of Dallas policemen who were also present when the President died in a hail of bullets. And not a single shot was fired by any of these alert guardians of the law!

Had the Secret Service men reacted as Baugham says they should have, by instantly 'peppering' the TSBD window with machine gun fire, the sniper crouching behind that window would certainly not have been able to get off a second or third shot, as the Commission says he did.

In a subsequent interview with Seth Kantor of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, Mr. Baughman declared that it was a "basic, established rule" of the Secret Service to see to it that people were kept out of the upper stories of buildings along a presidential parade route. The manager of the Texas School Book Depository therefore "should have been under firm instructions by the police" to close the upper floors of that building to unauthorized persons...

The Secret Service couldn't spare a man either for checking the grassy knoll, a textbook location for a guerilla-type ambush. This breathtaking deficiency came to light when there were reports that a man who identified himself as a member of the Secret Service was encountered near the knoll just after the assassination. These reports drew a firm denial from the Secret Service which stated explicitly that it had no man posted there. It would have been better for the Secret Service to have said that the knoll had been swarming with agents who didn't notice a damn thing than thus to admit another such glaring dereliction of duty.

According to former Secret Service chief U.E. Baughman, what mistakes were made during the visit to Dallas?

(P6) Evidence of four police officers protecting the motorcade about what the presidential car did when the shots were fired in the Dealey Plaza.

James Chaney (motorcyclist on motorcade): "From the time the first shot ran out, the car stopped completely, pulled to the left and stopped."

Bobby Hargis (motorcyclist on motorcade): "The car stopped immediately after that and stayed stopped for about half a second, then took off."

Earle Brown (police officer on overpass): "When the shots were fired, it (the car) stopped."

J. W. Foster (police officer on overpass): "Immediately after Kennedy was struck... the car pulled to the curb."

Do these accounts support the testimony of William Greer and Roy Kellerman?

(P7) The Warren Commission Report (September, 1964)

The Commission has concluded that some of the advance preparations in Dallas made by the Secret Service, such as the detailed security measures taken at Love Field and the Trade Mart, were thorough and well executed. In other respects, however, the Commission has concluded that the advance preparations for the President's trip were deficient.

Although the Secret Service is compelled to rely to a great extent on local law enforcement officials, its procedures at the time of the Dallas trip did not call for well-defined instructions as to the respective responsibilities of the police officials and others assisting in the protection of the President.

The procedures relied upon by the Secret Service for detecting the presence of an assassin located in a building along a motorcade route were inadequate. At the time of the trip to Dallas, the Secret Service as a matter of practice did not investigate, or cause to be checked, any building located along the motorcade route to be taken by the President. The responsibility for observing windows in these buildings during the motorcade was divided between local police personnel stationed on the streets to regulate crowds and Secret Service agents riding in the motorcade. Based on its investigation the Commission has concluded that these arrangements during the trip to Dallas were clearly not sufficient.

The configuration of the Presidential car and the seating arrangements of the Secret Service agents in the car did not afford the Secret Service agents the opportunity they should have had to be of immediate assistance to the President at the first sign of danger.

Within these limitations, however, the Commission finds that the agents most immediately responsible for the President's safety reacted promptly at the time the shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository Building.

What criticisms did the Warren Commission make of the Secret Service on 22nd November, 1963?

(P8) House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979)

Findings of the Select Committee on Assassinations in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963.

The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy....

Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of their duties. President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was conducted. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive.

The Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties.

The Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas; in addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper.

In what ways was the House Select Committee on Assassinations critical of the Secret Service?

(P9) James H. Fetzer, Assassination Science and the Language of Proof, included in Assassination Science (1998)

I have discovered at least fifteen indications of Secret Service complicity in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, from the absence of protective military presence to a lack of coverage of open windows, to motorcycles out of position, to Secret Service agents failing to ride on the Presidential limousine, to the vehicles arranged in an improper sequence, to the utilization of an improper motorcade route, to the driver bringing the vehicle to a halt after bullets began to be fired, to the almost total lack of response by Secret Service agents, to the driver washing out the back seat with a bucket and sponge at Parkland Hospital, to the car being dismantled and rebuilt (on LBJs orders), to the driver giving false testimony to the Warren Commission, to the windshields being switched, to the autopsy photographs being taken into custody before they were developed, and more.

What evidence does James H. Fetzer provide to support his view that the Secret Service might have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

(P10) Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (1978)

The possibility that Oswald was encouraged or assisted in the act by some unknown party can certainly not be excluded. But there is one piece of evidence which strongly argues against the possibility that Oswald was part of an intelligent and purposeful conspiracy - the note which Oswald purportedly wrote to the FBI a week or so before Kennedy arrived in Dallas.

In this note, Oswald threatened to blow up the local FBI headquarters in Dallas unless FBI agents stopped harassing his wife. The note itself was never divulged to the Warren Commission. Instead, after Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby, the local FBI agent, undoubtedly on orders from his superiors destroyed the note. Its existence was only admitted by FBI officials in 1975 when FBI employees in Dallas, who had seen the note, revealed its contents. They testified, moreover, that Oswald had delivered the note to the FBI office.

If there was a conspiracy, it is difficult to understand why it should risk revealing itself to the FBI by having Oswald, their; main actor, walk into the FBI office with a threatening note. He might have been arrested on the spot, or at the very least, the FBI could have been expected to warn the President security force that Oswald, who was employed on the President's route, had made a violent threat to federal officials. Even if the conspirators only meant to frame Oswald, the delivery of the note would jeopardize that plan since it risked having Oswald arrested prior to the President's arrival. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that, if the note is authentic, Oswald was not part of a conspiracy.

Why does Edward Jay Epstein believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a FBI agent?

(P11) Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)

The House Committee on Assassinations confirmed that the Hosty entry had been deleted in the retyping of the memo. It called the incident "regrettable," but "trivial", even though what was at stake was an apparently false statement by FBI officials under oath....

The FBI's handling of Hall, and of the whole Odio story, suggests they had something to hide. To begin with, the agents they sent to interview Silvia Odio, and who asked no questions about the "double agent" story, were James P. Hosty, Jr., and his partner, Bardwell D. Odum. Hosty also interviewed Juan B. Martin, the man Odio had been interested in buying arms from; yet his write-up of this interview is utterly trivial and makes no reference to gunrunning at all.

James Hosty was hardly the right agent to send for an impartial investigation. As the FBI agent assigned to handle both arms trafficking and the Oswalds before the assassination, Hosty quickly became a party to some of the FBI's most serious cover-up activities. On November 24, 1963, long before he finally interviewed Silvia Odio in December, Hosty had already destroyed a threatening note which Oswald had left for him at the Dallas FBI office. He had done so on orders from his boss, Gordon Shanklin, which almost certainly came from Washington.

Why does Peter Dale Scott believe it was significant that the FBI employed James Hosty to interview Silvia Odio and Juan B. Martin?

(P12) Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins (1988)

According to Dallas Police Lieutenant Jack Revill, an F.B.I, agent came up to him at Dallas police headquarters at 2:50 P.M. and said that the Bureau had "information that this suspect was capable of committing the assassination." The agent who brought this welcome news and was the first to mention the name of Lee Harvey Oswald was none other than James Hosty.

Was Hosty merely an innocent messenger, or had he and possibly others in the Bureau been involved in a plot to set up Oswald as the patsy? If F.B.I, employees had been part of the conspiracy, then that might explain why the Bureau had mysteriously failed to act on the warning sent over its telex system five days before the assassination and why no one responded to the letter of warning that Richard Case Nagell claimed to have sent to J. Edgar Hoover. It also might explain why Oswald, who evidently did not get along with Hosty and may have sensed that he was being set up, had sent a telegram to the secretary of the Navy ten days before the assassination.

I began to formulate a possible scenario. Long in advance, the engineers of the assassination had selected the idealistic and gullible Oswald as a patsy. His close-mouthed intelligence background helped assure not only success in the venture but subsequent support from the government, which would not want to admit that the assassination originated in its own intelligence community.

If Oswald was on the government payroll as a confidential informant in Dallas and New Orleans, he might well have believed that his job was to penetrate subversive organizations, including Fair Play for Cuba and perhaps Guy Banister's apparatus, in order to report back to the F.B.I, about them. Along the way, he was allowed to penetrate a marginal part of the assassination project, again with the idea that he was engaged in an officially sponsored effort to obtain information about it. He may even have filed reports on the plot to kill the President with his contact agent, James Hosty. When Oswald sensed that Hosty was not responsive, he may have gone over his head and telegraphed some kind of warning to the secretary of the Navy, who in turn may have informed the F.B.I.'s Washington headquarters, which then sent out its warning telex.

What did Jim Garrison believe James Hosty's role was in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?

(P13) Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)

Such an explanation is less plausible for the FBI's interference with leads that appeared to be guiding its agents to the actual assassins of the President - a case, seemingly, of obstruction of justice, or worse. How else should one assess the response of FBI headquarters to a report from Miami that Joseph Adams Milteer, a white racist with Klan connections, had in early November 1963 correctly warned that a plot to kill the President "from an office building with a high-powered rifle" was already "in the working"? These words are taken from a tape-recording of a discussion between Milteer and his friend, Miami police informant Bill Somersett. Miami police provided copies of this tape to both the Secret Service and the FBI on November 10, 1963, two weeks before the assassination, and this led to the cancellation of a planned motorcade for the President in Miami on November 18.20

Although an extremist, Milteer was no loner. Southern racists were well organized in 1963, in response to federal orders for desegregation; and Milteer was an organizer for two racist parties, the National States Rights party and the Constitution party. In addition he had attended an April 1963 meeting in New Orleans of the Congress of Freedom, Inc.,

which had been monitored by an informant for the Miami police. A Miami detective's report of the Congress included the statement that "there was indicated the overthrow of the present government of the United States," including "the setting up of a criminal activity to assassinate particular persons." The report added that "membership within the Congress of Freedom, Inc., contain high ranking members of the armed forces that secretly belong to the organization."

In other words, the deep politics of racist intrigue had become intermingled, in the Congress as elsewhere, with the resentment within the armed forces against their civilian commander. Perhaps the most important example in 1963 was that of General Edwin Walker, whom Oswald was accused of stalking and shooting at. Forced to retire in 1962 for disseminating right-wing propaganda in the armed forces, Walker was subsequently arrested at the "Ole Miss" anti-desegregation riots. Nor was the FBI itself exempt from racist intrigue: Milteer, on tape, reported detailed plans for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., whom Hoover's FBI, by the end of 1963, had also targeted for (in their words) "neutralizing... as an effective Negro leader."

Four days after the assassination Somerset! reported that Milteer had been "jubilant" about it: "Everything ran true to form. I guess you thought I was kidding you when I said he would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle." Milteer also was adamant that he had not been "guessing" in his original prediction. In both of the relevant FBI reports from Miami, Somersett was described as "a source who had furnished reliable information in the past."

Why was Peter Dale Scott critical of FBI's behaviour in the weeks leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

(P14) Matthew Smith, JFK: The Second Plot (1992)

One of the outstanding examples of a witness being frustrated in his attempt to speak out when he had something important to say is to be found in the story of Abraham Bolden. Abraham Bolden was a member of the White House detail of the Secret Service, and was the first negro to be appointed to that body. Bolden had heard of a Chicago plot to kill the President and was anxious to tell what he knew. He was also critical of the personnel appointed to guard the President, claiming they were lax in their duties. It was believed that an attempt on Kennedy's life had been foiled on 1st November in Chicago, but three weeks before he was killed in Dallas, and it would have been extremely embarrassing to the Warren Commission, heavily involved in establishing their "lone killer - no conspiracy" theory, to have had Bolden telling of a Chicago plot. Bolden's superior officers blocked his request. A few months later Abraham Bolden was charged with soliciting a huge bribe for disclosing secret information on a counterfeiter, Joseph Spagnoli, and he was jailed for six years. Spagnoli later confessed he had lied about Bolden, at the request of Prosecutor Richard Sikes, he claimed. In spite of this Bolden was made to serve his full sentence.

What is the significance of the story of Abraham Bolden in the search to discover who was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

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Trump's Long History With The FBI: In 1981, He Offered To “Fully ...
Tech Featured-
According to a 1981 FBI memo, Trump offered to “fully cooperate” with the bureau, proposing that FBI agents work undercover in a casino he was considering ...


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Former FBI Agent to Speak to Norwalk Students about How to ...
Patch.com-
NORWALK, CT — Quentin Williams, a former FBI agent and federal prosecutor, is scheduled to speak to Norwalk High and Brien McMahon High School ...



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Rapper Soulja Boy charged with possessing gun stolen from Huntington Beach police


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Squalls, likely tornadoes, damage Palm Beach County, Miami-Dade ...
Sun Sentinel-
"It was a majestic tree," said Wayne Barnes, 69, a retired FBI agent who lives nearby. "It made a big opening in the sky." Additionally, it is forecast to be another ...
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Van Wagner's new hire will target global events
New York Business Journal-
Her husband, Bobby Chacon, is a retired FBI agent and a technical adviser on the television show “Criminal Minds,” and they both wanted to remain closer to ...



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FBI Decides It's Finally Time To Do A Terrible Job Of Defending Civil ...
Techdirt-
The FBI tries to spin this as a limited-use tool that only affects convicted criminals. But even in its defense of the process, it can't help but enthuse about the near ...



from the G-men-say-it's-totally-legal-and-whatnot dept
Perhaps sensing the wave of civil asset forfeiture reform might eventually come crashing against the seized beach houses of the federal government, the FBI has decided to post a defense of the oft-abused process at its website.
The post speaks in warm terms about federal partnerships with state law enforcement agencies -- partnerships often abused by local authorities to route around restrictive state laws governing forfeiture. Of course, there's no mention of this particular facet of federal partnerships in the FBI's post. Instead, the post does all it can to portray it as a legitimate tool of law enforcement, rather than the analogue for legalized theft it's become.
The FBI tries to spin this as a limited-use tool that only affects convicted criminals. But even in its defense of the process, it can't help but enthuse about the near lack of limitations it enjoys.
Many—though not all—federal crimes have forfeiture provisions, but just about every law the FBI is charged with enforcing has some forfeiture aspect—from organized crime activities, financial frauds, drug trafficking, and cyber crimes to public corruption, child pornography, human trafficking, and terrorism.
Not "Just For Drug Dealers™," as so often seems to be the case. All sorts of criminal acts -- even those committed with zero criminal intent -- can result in people (or their parents, relatives, roommates, etc.) losing their property to the government. How many laws allow for forfeiture? The FBI doesn't say, but it's probably in the thousands. Here's a recent federal criminal law count:
There are at least 5,000 federal criminal laws, with 10,000-300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally.
"Many" is the word the FBI uses, so it's not just the rogue's gallery they trotted out in defense of the controversial process. It also can be owners of small restaurants or guitar manufacturers or whoever runs afoul of a few hundred thousand federal regulations.
But don't worry, says the Feeb, we have to do stuff to take stuff.
In all Bureau cases, the burden of proof to demonstrate that the property in question is forfeitable under the applicable federal law rests with the government.
This looks like it means the government has to prove the seized property is directly derived from criminal activity. But that's not what the sentence actually says. All the government has to prove is that the law provides for its forfeiture. Actually proving seized property is derived from criminal activity isn't something the government has to do. It only has to do this if the seizure is challenged. If it isn't, the normal boilerplate assertions about agents' information and belief are usually enough to net the government some extra spending money or fine auctionables.
The real fun begins when the FBI talks about civil forfeiture -- the process in which assets are treated as suspected criminals while the suspected criminals who own the property are sidelined by the legal process.
Civil forfeiture [...] is brought against property rather than the actual wrongdoer—it’s not dependent on a criminal prosecution, it’s based on the strength of the evidence at hand, it’s available whether the owner of the property is living or dead, and it allows us to obtain the assets of fugitives who have escaped the arm of the law or subjects who reside outside our borders.
This is law enforcement's favorite brand of forfeiture, as it eliminates tons of paperwork, arraignments, courtroom testimony, Fourth Amendment "technicalities" that spring suspected criminals, and dangerously unpredictable juries.
The most laughable part of this sentence is what the FBI claims civil forfeiture is used against -- fugitives and foreigners. In "many" cases (to borrow the FBI's vague term), the people assets are taken from are not only not fugitives or foreigners, they're also left uncharged and unjailed while their belongings begin the streamlined process of becoming government assets.
The FBI freely admits it engages in another form of parallel construction to better ensure the government ends up with something in every forfeiture case.
In some instances, the FBI—in conjunction with U.S. Attorney’s Office—will run parallel criminal and civil forfeiture cases. There are several reasons for this. Parallel proceedings help us get the proceeds of a crime back to the victims more quickly. Also, if the case involves depreciating assets (like cars), we can civilly forfeit those assets faster than in the criminal proceeding, then liquidate the assets and get them back to the victim at a better return than if we had held the assets until the criminal case was completed. We also do parallel cases to ensure we can forfeit the assets civilly in case the defendant flees or dies before the forfeiture order is handed down.
Handy. If the government can't get a conviction, it can still possibly take property from someone it couldn't prove was an actual criminal. By running them in parallel, defendants are left with almost no time to fight for the return of their property after they're exonerated.
And there's another laughable statement hidden in this paragraph: the notion that asset forfeiture has anything to do with "returning" the proceeds of criminal activity to victims. The FBI says it has returned $100 million over the last two years to crime victims. Sounds impressive, but that's only when presented without context, as the FBI does here. Scott Shackford of Reason provides some much-needed fiduciary bracketing:
In just 2014 the federal government deposited $5 billion in seized assets. That was just one year. So this $100 million in restitution over two years is a drop in the bucket compared to what they've taken. Most of the money is kept for themselves or shared with local law enforcement agencies.
The government's do-gooding only looks like do-gooding when deprived of context. The FBI -- and countless local law enforcement agencies now facing pushback from legislators and

FBI Probing Sundance Cyberattack as Filmmakers Cry Foul (Exclusive)
11:17 AM PST 1/23/2017 by Tatiana Siegel


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/f ... oul-967417" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




Tibrina Hobson/Getty
A Sundance spokesperson said: "The FBI is reviewing the case. At this point, we do not have any reason to believe the cyberattack was targeted towards a specific film."
The plot is thickening in the tale of the mysterious cyberattack that crippled the Sundance Film Festival's box-office systems over the weekend.
The FBI is investigating the hack and is working with Sundance officials to identify the culprit, a festival spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter. Although the festival was able to get its ticketing systems back online within an hour of the Saturday breach, multiple other denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Sundance’s IT infrastructure followed. A DDoS attack works by flooding the bandwidth or resources of a targeted server.
Reached for comment, an FBI spokesperson says the agency is looking into the matter. A Sundance Film Festival rep offers the following statement: "The FBI is reviewing the case. At this point, we do not have any reason to believe the cyberattack was targeted towards a specific film. No artist or customer information was compromised."
At the time of the hack, the festival offered little in the way of explanation of what happened, but hinted that filmmakers at the annual celebration of independent cinema may have been the target. "We have been subject to a cyberattack that has shut down our box office," the festival tweeted. "Our artist’s voices will be heard and the show will go on.”

See More
Sundance: THR's Photo Portfolio of Kristen Stewart, Dave Franco, 'Big Sick' Cast and More

One producer of a Sundance documentary critical of the Russian government believes his film could have played a role in the attack.
“There's been speculation that our film may have sparked retribution,” Icarus consulting producer Doug Blush tells THR. “It does not paint a flattering picture of [president Vladimir] Putin.”
Icarus, which made its world premiere at the festival the day before the hack, centers on a Russian doctor who oversaw and then spoke out about Russia's widespread state-sponsored sports doping. The Bryan Fogel-helmed film, which is being pitched to distributors, has played throughout the weekend in Park City at screenings for both press-and-industry and the public.
Icarus isn’t the only Sundance film that could antagonize the Russian government and Putin. Evgeny Afineevsky’s Cries From Syria -- one of several docs tackling the war-torn nation -- also takes a critical look at Putin and Russia's military intervention in Syria. Cries From Syria made its world premiere at Sundance on Sunday, the day after the initial box-office cyberattack.
Afineevsky, who is Russian but has lived in the United States for 17 years, downplays the idea of a connection between his film and the hack.
“If it was Russia, they would have blown the whole system out,” he says.
Russia, of course, has been at the center of a U.S. government probe into the hack of the Democratic National Committee before the November election. But other projects playing at the festival take aim at groups known to have hacking capabilities. The New Radical looks at the new cyber-warfare b


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Microsoft Asserts Clients' Rights in FBI E-Mail Searches Fight
Bloomberg-
s effort to halt the FBI's so-called sneak-and-peek searches of e-mails may ride on whether it's allowed to defend its customers' constitutional rights. The judge ...
Microsoft to argue in Seattle court Monday for right to inform users ...

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Dd the Feds Indict the Wife of Orlando Shooter for Sins of Her Husband?
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The JFK lover who revealed cracks in his facade: New book looks at Kennedy’s vulnerability
Danielle Paquette, Washington Post 01.23.2017



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Judge orders Sorrento and ex-police chief to pay $40K in legal fees
A federal judge has awarded nearly $40,000 in fees to attorneys for a woman who accused a former Louisiana police chief of sexually assaulting her in his office while she was drunk and he was on duty.
The woman's lawyers sought nearly $90,000 in fees, but



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76 rape kits submitted from Athens County since 2011
The Post-
The FBI's website defines CODIS as a “program of support for criminal justice DNA databases as well as the software used to run these databases.” “It's pretty ...


FBI agents protected Cohen?

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FBI OCTOPUS


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Former FBI Criminal Investigations Director Joins DLA Piper in Miami
Lawfuel (blog)-
Former FBI Criminal Investigations Director Joins DLA Piper in Miami. January 23, 2017 by LawFuel Editors

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

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Pending Lawsuit Seeks to Expose Trump’s Neo-Nazi Connections
Posted by Bill Conroy - January 29, 2017 at 9:40 pm
US President Donald Trump Has Surrounded Himself With Advisors Who Are Sympathetic to White Supremacist Ideology
A lawsuit pending in federal court in Kentucky since this past April may shed some light on the oppressive executive orders issued recently by President Donald Trump that target refugees worldwide as well as immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations.
The executive orders ban Syrian refugees from entering the US, temporarily suspend all refugee entries into the country and block citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the US for at least 90 days, even if they are legal US residents. The president’s orders left hundreds of people stranded in airports, many fleeing war zones or government persecution in their home countries, sparked nationwide protests and prompted federal judges in four states to issue rulings blocking part of Trump’s orders pending further court review.
Pleadings filed in the Kentucky case contend that it is likely Trump and his inner circle have more than a coincidental relationship with the various white supremacist groups that frequented his election campaign rallies. Recently, Narco




http://bordc.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Evelyn Turner: “Sessions tried to jail me for helping people vote”


February 8, 2017 – Evelyn Turner, a longtime civil rights and voting rights advocate recounts her past encounters with Sessions in a new piece in USA Today: “While my husband and I were trying to help black people vote in Alabama, Jeff Sessions was trying to put us in jail.”

Oakland City Council to Consider Surveillance Ordinance


February 7, 2017 – Believe it or not, there’s some good news. The Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission, which is chaired by BORDC/DDF Patriot Award winner Brian Hofer, in January approved and passed to the Oakland City Council an ordinance that calls for close scrutiny of the city’s spy



http://whowhatwhy.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CATEGORIES: DEEP POLITICS
FEBRUARY 7, 2017 | PETER DALE SCOTT
Donald J. Trump and the Deep State, Part 2
The world’s richest are now more likely to be Internet billionaires than traditional “captains of industry.” However, these young mavericks are still trying to shape the world in a way that suits them. With regard to the deep state, the players may have changed, but the game remains the same.


CATEGORIES: DEEP POLITICS
FEBRUARY 6, 2017 | PETER DALE SCOTT
Donald J. Trump and the Deep State, Part 1
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump attacked Wall Street, but now he plans to roll back the recent reforms of the financial sector. This action confirms the importance of his connections to big money, both new (often self-made) and old (mostly institutional).




http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-u.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




Tuesday, February 7, 2017
US military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted since 2001 in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan/ Military Times
The U.S. military under former President Barack Obama quietly hid “potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes” from the American public that likely killed hundreds of civilians in war-ravaged Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the Military Times has found.
In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war's expense, manpower requirements and human toll. Those airstrikes were carried out by attack helicopters and armed drones operated by the U.S. Army, metrics quietly excluded from otherwise comprehensive monthly summaries, published online for years, detailing American military activity in all three theaters. 
Most alarming is the prospect this data has been incomplete since the war on terrorism began in October 2001. If that is the case, it would fundamentally undermine confidence in much of what the Pentagon has disclosed about its prosecution of these wars, prompt critics to call into question whether the military sought to mislead the American public, and cast doubt on the competency with which other vital data collection is being performed and publicized. Those other key metrics include American combat casualties, taxpayer expense and the military’s overall progress in degrading enemy capabilities...
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military activity in all three war zones, indicated it is unable to determine how far back the Army’s numbers have been excluded from these airpower summaries. Officials there would not address several detailed questions submitted by Military Times, and they were unable to provide a full listing of annual airstrikes conducted by each of the Defense Department's four military services.  
Now why would the DOD want to publish false information?  Well, it helps in the effort to achieve "plausible deniability" --by denying a US mission took place when the US military commits a potential war crime, like deliberately bombing hospitals or bombing elite counter narcotics forces in Afghanistan, which the USG initially denied.  In fact, an unnamed Army official quoted in the article said he did not consider Apache helicopter attacks airstrikes! While according to Boeing, its manufacturer, “The Apache is the world's best armed, integrated and connected attack helicopter in production and in operational use today. It’s a flying weapons system that is fully integrated. It has options to have missiles, rockets or guns depending on what your enemy is."

If you have no report of thousands of air attacks, instead of bombing ISIS, you can bomb anti-ISIS targets and likely get away with it. There could be so many reasons to hide US military missions.
UPDATE:  From the Sept 7, 2015 Wall Street Journal, we learn that a US "friendly fire" airstrike in southern Afghanistan on Sept 6 "hit a 30 member elite counternarcotics police unit as they were on a mission..." [to stop opium trafficking.  We stopped them all right.]
At least 11 died in "one of the deadliest friendly fire incidents in the country in recent years." Here is the Reuters story. The US denied the strike in Helmand province, but admitted to airstrikes in the adjacent province of Kandahar. According to the Guardian, "The US is the only member of the NATO coalition known to have carried out bombing raids in Afghanistan this year." The AP/WaPo on 9/8/15 reported that, "Brigadier General Shoffner [Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications in Afghanistan] said 'based on information we received [on 9/8], we feel it is prudent to investigate the airstrike our forces conducted in Kandahar.'"
Deliberately falsifying the number of  US airstrikes in Afghanistan makes it impossible to know what was spent, how many Afghanis were killed, and what actually is being "accomplished" in Afghanistan.  

It makes it harder than ever to know why we are in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, what our targets truly are, and what has been done in our name.  As I discussed here, the US presence in Afghanistan can only be explained as a grab for at least a trillion dollars' worth of oil and minerals, a pipeline, and a renewable resource called heroin.  



http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-c ... SKBN15N2UE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Feb 9, 2017 | 4:17pm EST
DEA agent spared prison over concealed strip club ties

David Polos (L), a former assistant special agent-in-charge at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, exits the federal court with his lawyer, Marc Mukasey (R), in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 8, 2017.

A former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent avoided prison on Wednesday after being convicted last year of lying during a national security background check about operating a New Jersey strip club with another agency employee.

David Polos, an ex-assistant special agent-in-charge with the DEA, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe


http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room ... 5-records/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Federal Court Hearing on FBI Clinton Records – Agency Wants Up to Two Years to Turn Over 35 Records

FEBRUARY 06, 2017
Hearing Set for Tuesday, February 7

(Washington DC) – Judicial Watch today announced a hearing will be held Tuesday, February 7, 2017, regarding Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records held by the FBI containing text messages and emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stored on the equipment of Datto Inc., a commercial data management company, as well as FBI records about the device and what materials were recovered on it (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:16-cv-02369)). The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss.

At the previous hearing Tuesday, January 24, 2017, Trump administration lawyers for the FBI informed Judicial Watch and the court that it located 35 FBI records that concern the Datto device and that it may take up to two years to release the records. In addition, the FBI recovered approximately 10,000 messages from the Datto device. The messages were turned over to the State Department to be processed and released on its website.

Tomorrow’s hearing should address whether the Trump FBI will be able to slow walk the release of these records.

Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeks:

All records, including but not limited to emails or text messages (SMSs, MMSs, BBMs, iMessages, etc.), discovered, recovered, retrieved from, or found on any Datto device, equipment, or hardware connected to or used to backup or support former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s clintonemail.com email system.
All records relating to the FBI’s efforts to discover, recover, retrieve, or find emails or text messages stored on the Datto device, equipment, or hardware …
Clinton reportedly was using an online backup service called Datto Inc. to create copies of her data during a time when she and her aides were improperly handling classified material. Datto’s website company promises data is “invincible, secure, and instantly restorable at any time.

Datto announced it had turned over a “hardware device” to the FBI, along with all Clinton emails the company had in its possession, possibly including Clinton’s deleted private emails:

“With the consent of our client and their end user, and consistent with our policies regarding data privacy, yesterday, Tuesday, October 6, Datto delivered a hardware device to the FBI containing all backed up data related to Platte Rivers Networks’ client known to be in its possession,” said the company.

The court hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning:

Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Time: 10 a.m. ET

Location: Courtroom 21

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

333 Constitution Ave NW

Washington, DC 20001


https://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20170206_1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

February 7-8, 2017 -- SPECIAL REPORT. Trump chief adviser was aide to two CNOs during the largest pedophile crime in U.S. naval history
publication date: Feb 6, 2017
Why was Stephen Bannon so prized by the Reagan administration? What did he know and why did he know it?


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/s ... -1.2968513" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


SEE IT: South Carolina police officer punches handcuffed suspect


Thursday, February 9, 2017, 1:57 PM


A South Carolina police officer caught on video punching a handcuffed suspect has been charged with assault.

Leroy Hair, 29, turned himself in Wednesday on a charge of third-degree assault and battery.

James Terry III was stopped



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mou ... -1.2968724" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Mouse walking on crib in Kushner-owned Brooklyn home


Thursday, February 9, 2017, 4:45 PM




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/b ... -1.2968919" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Black man allegedly raped by police officers was accidental


A group of police officers accused of beating and anally raping a black man with a baton did so accidentally, investigators said Thursday.

A 22-year-old man identified as Theo said four police officers sodomized him during an identity check on Feb 2.

One officer was charged with aggravated rape and the others with aggravated assault, Fren

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/03/06/ru ... ock-fraud/

Russian in hacking probe linked to alt-right stock fraud
Posted on March 6, 2017 by Daniel Hopsicker
Pavel ‘Red Eye’ Vrublevsky, a Russian businessman under investigation in the FBI’s probe of Russian hacking in the 2016 Presidential election, shared a business address in John Gotti’s former stronghold of Howard Beach, Queens with a company led by a Tampa Mobster convicted in the “alt-right” stock fraud ring run by Sarasota’s own Andrew Badolato, business partner and Breitbart collaborator of Trump advisor Steve Bannon.

In 2003-2004, Pavel Vrublevsky’s RE Partners LLC listed its business address as 158-49 90th St, a single family residence in Howard Beach the Russians shared with a company involved in pornography and cyber crime, Blue Moon Group Inc.. 
see link for full story



http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/3 ... ree-future


Standing Up for Our Communities: Why We Need a Police-Free Future
Tuesday, March 07, 2017



We are living in terrifying times. With each passing day, the Trump administration unleashes new waves of humiliation, degradation and repression. Many of us fear deportation, the evisceration of the social safety net, imprisonment or detention, ecological calamity, war and similar disasters. For those of us fighting against the violence of policing, the context was already grim. The predominance of suppression policing -- sometimes called "broken windows policing" -- with its mainstays of racial-profiling, sweeps, stop-and-search, ticketing and psychological and physical coercion and abuse, has made day-to-day contact with law enforcement dangerous. Add to these mundane policing practices the very real threat of dying at the hands of law enforcement agents, and the picture becomes even more bleak. Under the current White House, promises to intensify and expand an already vicious system are a signal of very dark days ahead. In a statement released during the first week in office, the Trump administration communicated its law-enforcement priorities. According to this statement, "The Trump Administration, will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it."

The Trump regime's authoritarian tendencies should give us pause. When we consider the ways in which law enforcement has historically been used by authoritarian regimes to suppress dissent, we need to take seriously the state responses we're likely to encounter in reaction to an increasingly large and dynamic anti-Trump protest movement. Whether we are considering the expansion of policing practices -- including profiling, stop and frisk, sweeps and militarized tactical engagements -- or crackdowns on protest and dissent, we know that the surest way to reduce the violence of policing is to reduce contact with the police.

If ever there were a time to fight for the elimination of policing from our communities it is now. Recent weeks have demonstrated just how powerful we are when we come together to resist repression. This groundswell of fight-back should embolden us to build the world we want to live in today, even in the face of violence and fear mongering.

I believe that we have a better chance of living healthy, stable, secure lives if we eliminate policing. Sometimes abolitionists are accused of having unrealistic visions of a future free of the prison industrial complex -- big dreams that may be beautiful but are not practical, visions that are idealistic but too far away from the here and now. My abolitionist praxis looks toward a policing-free future and is rooted in actions toward that end in the here and now.

Here are some ideas about ways to begin building for the abolition of policing today. These are not meant to be a set of prescriptive action steps and time frames. They are not comprehensive. They are simply one set of potential practical steps in a universe of good ideas to help us think about what is possible. And even for people for whom a world without policing is impossible to imagine, it is possible to take practical steps toward an ever-shrinking reliance on and relationship to law enforcement. The most important thing is to begin to take some steps today and to keep practicing moving in that direction.

Today

Take stock of your context. How cognizant are you about the reach, impact, or omnipresence of law enforcement in your daily life? What are your own habits and inclinations in engaging with law enforcement policies, practices and agents? What is your consciousness of the presence of mechanical and human tools of surveillance and law enforcement?


Assess your vulnerabilities (both perceived and experienced) and your available resources. Regardless of whether or not your common sense would lead you to engaging law enforcement, what kinds of situations could you envision in which you would feel at enough risk that you would seek help or intervention? What would you hope to achieve by seeking that kind of support? What resources do you already have at your disposal -- people, networks, organizations, educational materials, financial resources, etc. -- that you could employ toward those ends? What kind of preparation or cultivation would you need to do to make those resources accessible and applicable to the situations in which you feel vulnerable or need help or intervention? What else do you need to btervention and toward practices and tools that make law enforcement more and more irrelevant?




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.2990774

The Queens District Attorney has indicted two NYPD detectives accused of making up a story to justify a bogus drug arrest that landed an innocent 47-year-old man in Rikers Island for more than six weeks, officials said Tuesday.

A grand jury found enough evidence to charge Detective Kevin Desormeau with first-degree perjury, offering a false instrument for filing, official misconduct and making a punishable false written statement


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2991412





N.C. cop won’t face charges for slamming
black female high school student




Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 10:39 PM







http://boydownthelane.com/2017/03/02/un ... ses-skill/

uncertainty, crises, skill
2017/03/02 Uncategorized Asimov, bots, computer languages, crisis management, disaster, e-books, game theory, incident management simulation, inequality, jazz, keyboard skills, learning, making echoes, modeling, risk assessment, survival, transcendence, uncertainty, wargaming, writing craft
uncertainty crises skill

I was feeling pretty good about the progress I’d made in the craft of writing — but then I read the first few pages of The Echo Maker by Richard Powers.

In a recent re-arranging of office and library, the book had jumped into my hand: ‘remember me? This was set aside for later. It’s later’.

You can read all the kudos about it yourself but, for me, it’s a lesson in how to write and I shall enjoy finishing it.

[&&]{**}[##]

If you’re into reading e-books, you might want to click on this link from booktalk’s bookbub

[&&]{**}[##]

music compilations of jazz for studying, reading and working

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jCyFVgmSSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsD_yczGIg8



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9iWFHw5K84

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn7Iwtf50FE

[&&]{**}[##]

https://qz.com/886038/isaac-asimov-wrot ... he-did-it/

[&&]{**}[##]

There are lots of lessons in writing on my bookshelves, including the course of writing creative nonfiction and the as-yet-unfinished brilliant-but-difficult-to-slog-through Building Great Sentences.

And the fifty-odd books on the craft, plus all the handbooks, thesauri, dictionaries, and other tools. And the 45 e-mails from writing craft groups tucked away for safe-keeping. And the list of writing “assignments” from within the book The Butterfly Hours, whose author Patty Dann taught a class at a local writer’s collaborative.

I added sixteeen of the topics listed on pages 128-129 to my own personal file of topics to write about; so far I’ve finished five of them.


http://bordc.org/news/preventing-violen ... g-dissent/

Preventing Violence Against Police or Silencing Dissent?

February 9, 2017 by Chip Gibbons


President Donald Trump today announced a crackdown against violence aimed at police. His  Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers is one of three executive orders he signed today meant to promote “law and order,” which included a conflation of “illegal immigration,” drug trafficking, and violent crime.

While law enforcement officers–like all human beings–deserve to be protected, the immediate purpose of the order is at odds with reality.  In most states, there are already serious and stringent enhancements to sentencing, including the death penalty, if a homicide victim is a police officer. Further, in spite of a number of high profile killings of police officers, such killings declined both in 2016 and 2015. In fact, in spite of upticks in crime in three cities, violent crime remains at historic low.

So back on planet Earth, Trump’s assertions of carnage in America’s cities, and that America’s law enforcement officers are under siege just doesn’t comport with reality. So why then is Trump pursuing these matters?

For starters, a number of figures close to him, such as his Attorney General Jeff Sessions, are set on fighting the bi-partisan shift in policy around criminal justice that includes a détente in the failed War on Drugs and efforts to make a dent in mass incarceration. With increased attention being paid to the number of Blacks being killed at the hands of police, the issues of excessive force and racism have also been pushed to the forefront.

To Trump and Jeff Sessions, the Movement for Black Lives and campaigns for police accountability amount to a war on cops which is responsible for the non-existent increase in crime or attacks on law enforcement. During Ted Cruz’s bizarre “War on Police” hearing last year, Sessions stated that because of “marches and protests” police were “sitting under the shade tree.”

The logic here is clear, if you protest against the police, you have blood on your hands. Thus, you should keep quiet. And by equating protesters with violence against law enforcement, it opens the door for repression.

Blue Lives Matter

This isn’t just happening on the federal level. Given the stringent penalties for violence against law enforcement it may seem odd that some are positing that state statutes need to be amended to include law enforcement. Yet, a number of self-described “Blue Lives Matters” bills would do just that.

Blue Lives Matters is, of course, a direct reference to Black Lives Matter. It is an attempt to somehow equate the killing of a law enforcement officer, which carries some of the severest penalties imaginable, with the killing of Blacks by police, crimes that are often committed with impunity. Like Trump and Sessions, proponents of Blue Lives Matter laws have tried to blame the Black Lives Matter movement for placing law enforcement under a state of siege, a notion that is not only not based in fact, but serves to demonize political dissent.

Louisiana has already passed a Blue Lives Matter bill, Mississippi seems poised to enact one, and Wisconsin is considering. A federal version of the bill was introduced into Congress during the last session, and although it languished, a similar bill seems likely to reappear.

So what have Blue Lives Matter bills accomplished? In Louisiana, they have led to individuals who allegedly “resisted arrest” being charged with hate crimes. This means a relatively minor encounter with law enforcement can quickly lead to being charged with a hate crime. In October 2016, an individual was charged with a hate crime for yelling obscenities at police officers during his arrest, though the District Attorney declined to prosecute.

These bills have a number of critics. They have been opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, and even the United Nations Special Rapporteur On The Rights To Freedom Of Peaceful Assembly And Of Association has raised concerns with them. He said,  “unintentional or accidental touching which may easily occur in a context of an assembly could be elevated to a hate crime. Again, such crime conceptions have chilling effects on the exercise of assemblies.”

Conclusion

It goes without saying that no one should ever be the victim of a violent crime, but violent crime is not out of control nor is there a spike in violent crime against police officers, who already receive a number of special protections from such offenses. At time when there is growing concern over systemic racism, unchecked police brutality, mass incarceration, and militarized police being used against protesters, as witnessed at Standing Rock, such claims are not merely factually wrong, they are attempts to create obfuscate the truth and repress social movements.

This rhetoric and the policies that stem from it are not about protecting law enforcement from violence; they are about silencing dissent.





http://www.vachss.com/updates_page.html

There's all kinds of reviews ... and all kinds of reviewers. But when a giant such as Charles de Lint takes notice of a work, that alone is a review. We are honored.

     I can't imagine Oprah reading the Cross series, but in the 1990s she read a passage from Another Chance To Get It Right during an interview she was conducting with Vachss, and the book hasn't been out of print since then. She was, as were so many others, enthralled with this collection of original stories, poetry and allegory, combined with the gorgeous black & white art by Geof Darrow and others, all of it celebrating the potential of parenting.
     The rights and protection of children is a theme than runs through most of Vachss's books, but this is as clear a mission statement as you're going to get from the author, filled with beauty and despair, sadness and hope. It should be required reading for every new parent. It should be required reading for anyone who cares about kids and cares for kids. Andrew deserves our thanks for writing this book.
     This twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new cover by Darrow and other new material but but the core thrust remains the same as when it was first published.
     Highly recommended.

Source: Fantasy&ScienceFiction (forthcoming: March/April issue)
Books To Look For: Charles de Lint (pp. 70-71)



http://www.globalresearch.ca/julian-may ... na/5578395

Julian Mayfield and Independent Ghana
Center for Research on Globalization
FBI files reveal the agency's attempt to link Mayfield with the Communist Party of Puerto Rico (PCP) and the Movimiento Pro Indepdencia de Puerto Rico.



http://www.smobserved.com/story/2017/03 ... /2702.html

Coast Guard Plays War Games with FBI, LAPD, LASD, LAFD, LBPD ...
Santa monica Observed-
The Coast Guard, along with members of the FBI, LA Port Police, LA Police Department, LA Sheriff's Department, LA Fire Department, Long Beach Police ...



https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/ ... story.html

FBI director speaks at ribbon-cutting for new local headquarters in Chelsea






FBI Director James B. Comey spoke at a ribbon-cutting for the agency’s new facility in Chelsea — its first in a stand-alone building for the Boston region’s headquarters.

  MARCH 08, 2017
FBI Director James Comey met with area law enforcement officials Tuesday, promising to strengthen partnerships between federal, state, and local authorities.

Comey met with about 40 law enforcement heads from Everett to New Hampshire over lunch before taking part in a ribbon-cutting to announce the opening of a new headquarters in Chelsea for the FBI’s Boston field office, which covers Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.


It is the first time the FBI’s Boston office has been in a stand-alone building, and the first time it has been outside of Boston.

Comey did not take


http://www.news.com.au/finance/business ... 86a1e75325



Wilkileaks Vault 7 dump
reignites conspiracy theories surrounding death of Michael Hastings
MARCH 8, 20173:15PM

WikiLeaks releases thousands of CIA "hacking" documents

Staff writersnews.com.au
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Google+Share on RedditEmail a friend
DID the CIA assassinate journalist Michael Hastings?
WikiLeaks’ release on Tuesday of a massive trove of secret CIA documents has reignited conspiracy theories which have swirled since 2013, with revelations the spy agency was attempting to remotely hack vehicles.
“As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks,” WikiLeaks writes. “The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.”
Hastings, an acclaimed war correspondent and vocal critic of government mass surveillance, died in the early hours of Tuesday, June 18, 2013, when his Mercedes C250 Coupe apparently lost control and burst into flames before slamming into a palm tree.
Witnesses to the accident, which occurred around 4:25am in the leafy Hancock Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles, said the car appeared to be travelling at top sp



http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html


The Mercury News
Man falsely accused of child sex abuse by Sacramento police wins ...
Los Angeles Times-
The detective reported the case to the FBI and a special agent told her the bureau would subpoena Facebook for information on the “Pater Noster” account, 





http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/31507/61/


Snowden: CIA Files Show "Recklesness Beyond Words"
MINA
His conclusion, one which many of the so-called conspiratorial bent would say was well-known long ago: "Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew ab



http://www.mmcthemonitor.com/2017/03/he ... hallenged/
Hegemonic Control of the Law is Challenged
The Monitor
... the image that would be remembered when the BPP was criminalized and said to be the greatest threat to internal security by F.B.I Director J. Edgar Hoover.



http://www.fox23.com/news/former-tulsa- ... /500570169

Former Tulsa County sheriff defends use of racial slurs in civil rights ...
KOKI FOX 23-
He testified about it during a civil rights case involving the death of an inmate at the Tulsa County Jail. He said the term was used by the FBI in the 1960s and ...

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

JFK Diary Regarding Hitler's "Suicide"

Thursday, March 30, 2017 6:04 PM
Click to View Full HTML




https://wearechange.org/jfk-diary-shows ... d-suicide/

[https://wearechange.org/wp-content/uplo ... 32x315.png]<https://wearechange.org/jfk-diary-shows ... d-suicide/>

JFK Diary Shows He Questioned Whether Or Not Hitler Committed Suicide<https://wearechange.org/jfk-diary-shows ... d-suicide/>
wearechange.org
A diary written by JFK, shows that both he and Russian officials questioned the official story surrounding Adolf Hitler's death.




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gar ... -1.3013830



The disciplinary record of the NYPD cop who killed Eric Garner using a chokehold should remain officially hidden from the public – though the documents leaked just last week, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

The Appellate Division First Department in Manhattan unanimously reversed a lower court ruling ordering the city to disclose a summary of Daniel Pantaleo’s disciplinary record.

The unanimous decision by the five judge panel found that Pantaleo’s record was precisely the type of “personnel records” relevant civil service laws were designed to keep under wraps.

“In light of the widespread notoriety of Mr. Garner’s death and Officer Pantaleo’s role therein, and the fact that hostility and threats against Officer Pantaleo have been significant enough to cause NYPD’s Threat Assessment Unit to order around-the-clock police protection for him and his family, and notwithstanding the uncertainty of further harassment, we find that the gravity of the threats to Officer Pantaleo’s safety nonetheless demonstrate that disclosure carries a ‘substantial and realistic potential’ for harm, particularly in the form of ‘harassment and reprisals,’ and that nondisclosure of the requested records under Civil Rights Law is warranted,” Justice John Sweeny Jr. wrote.

CCRB worker forced to quit for info leak on cop who killed Garner
The Legal Aid Society had sued for a summary of Pantaleo’s disciplinary record under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, arguing that the summary did not constitute the cop’s “personnel file.”


Daniel Pantaleo’s NYPD disciplinary record will remain obscured from public view — but the mandate is only a formality, as a rogue CCRB employee leaked them last week. (JEFF BACHNER)
The judges rejected that argument.

“There is no question that the summary sought involves one officer and are part and parcel of his personnel file,” Sweeny wrote.

The decision represents a significant precedent for police reform advocates seeking to hold police officers accountable. They can still appeal to the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals.

Two cops testify in Eric Garner case at Brooklyn Federal court
But Pantaleo’s record has already been released.


Pantaleo killed Eric Garner with an NYPD-banned chokehold in 2014. (ACQUIRED BY: TOMAS E. GASTON)
Last week, the website Think Progress posted the record, which was provided by a former Civilian Complaint Review Board employee.

The leak showed that Pantaleo had had four civilian complaints substantiated against him, but was only docked two vacation days as punishment, prior to killing Garner on Staten Island in 2014.

In all, seven CCRB complaints — including 14 allegations — were made against Pantaleo before the



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ccr ... -1.3007427

The Civilian Complaint Review Board employee who leaked information about the cop who put Eric Garner in a deadly chokehold has been forced to resign, officials said Thursday.

Faced with the prospect of termination for divulging reports on NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, the worker chose to pack it in, sources with knowledge of the case said.

The employee, who was hired as an investigator, was considered a “junior staff person” who worked for the CCRB for less than a year and did not work on any complaints against Pantaleo, sources said.

The CCRB confirmed Thursday that the leaked information was authentic.

Eric Garner's mom meets Omarosa at White House for probe update
“After a swift and thorough internal investigation, the Civilian Complaint Review Board identified the employee who was the source of the leak,” Jerika Richardson, senior adviser and secretary to the board said in a statement. “As of today, that individual no longer works at CCRB.

Heat is Online

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-change





Dead Sea evidence of unprecedented drought is warning for future
A 30-metre layer of salt discovered beneath Dead Sea reveals drought worse than any in human history – and it could happen again

Tim Radford for Climate News Network, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Wednesday 29 March 2017 07.48 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 29 March 2017 09.45 EDT

Far below the Dead Sea, between Israel, Jordan and Palestinian territories, researchers have found evidence of a drought that has no precedent in human experience.

From depths of 300 metres below the landlocked basin, drillers brought to the surface a core that contained 30 metres of thick, crystalline salt: evidence that 120,000 years ago, and again about 10,000 years ago, rainfall had been only about one fifth of modern levels.

The cause in each case would have been entirely natural. But in the region where human civilisation began, already in the grip of its worst drought for 900 years, it is a reminder of how bad things could get and a guide to how much worse human-induced climate change could become.

Syria’s drought 'has likely been its worst in 900 years'
Read more
“All the observations show this region is one of those most affected by modern climate change and it’s predicted to get dryer. What we showed is



Link du jour
http://www.thesullenbell.com/2017/03/21 ... er-choice/

http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... apitation/


http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries ... story.html



http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3012033

Cop dodges jail time after pleading guilty to attack of NYC woman



NYPD cop was sleepwalking, not drunk, when he hit woman
BY BEN KOCHMAN ROCCO PARASCANDOLA RICH SCHAPIRO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, March 30, 2016, 2:45 PM

A doctor has diagnosed Eugene Donnelly with post-traumatic stress disorder and various sleep disorders dating to the May 2012 shooting. (MICHAEL SCHWARTZ /FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
Keep dreaming, pal.

A hero-to-zero Bronx cop charged with breaking into a woman’s apartment and drunkenly assaulting her was actually sleepwalking, his lawyer claimed Tuesday.

"Our report shows that it wasn't an alcoholic blackout. It was sleepwalking," lawyer Michael Marinaccio said after Officer Eugene Donnelly appeared in Bronx Supreme Court, where he faces misdemeanor assault and burglary charges.

Prosecutors say a drunken Donnelly, 27, roughed up his victim after barging into her Woodlawn apartment in June 2014 wearing only his underwear.

The alleged attack took place hou



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/t ... -1.3013067

Tenn. deputy celebrating 26th birthday killed in police shooting


March 29, 2017, 3:39 PM


UPDATE: Chattanooga police fatally shoot Hamilton County Sheriff's Office deputy04:20

UPDATE: Chattanooga police fatally shoot Hamilton County Sheriff's Office deputy
WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather & Sports
Police officers fatally shot an off-duty Tennessee sheriff's deputy who was celebrating his birthday with friends after he refused to drop his weapon, officials said.

Daniel Hendrix, a corrections officer with the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, was celebrating his 26th birthday with two female off-duty Chattanooga police officers when the incident occurred at a Shawnee Trail home at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said.

Hendrix suddenly became agitated and was carrying his personal gun when he lashed out at the female officers. The women managed to flee the home and one of them called 911, the TBI said.


Deputy Daniel Hendrix was fatally shot in Chattanooga, Tenn., while celebrating his birthday. (FACEBOOK)
Two on-duty Chattanooga police officers responded to the home and found Hendrix armed in the backyard, investigators said. The officers commanded Hendrix to drop his weapon, but he didn’t comply — prompting one officer to fire at him at least four times, witnesses and officials said.

Baltimore police show bodycam video of SWAT fatally shooting man
Hendrix was taken to a hospital, where he died.


The scene where Deputy Daniel Hendrix was fatally shot Wednesday. (AP)
In a statement, Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond offered condolences and prayers to Hendrix’s family. He called the shooting an “unfortunate incident.”

The corrections officer worked with the Hamilton department since 2013. He was charged with assaulting a female inmate at Silverdale Detention Center in 2015, but was cleared of all charges and eventually returned to his duties, according





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/m ... -1.2969047



Md. teen fatally shot by cop one day after making bond (GRAPHIC)


Friday, February 10, 2017, 7:56 AM


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/de- ... -1.3013258

Mayor de Blasio defended the process that allowed the cop who killed Ramarley Graham to resign before he was fired — and said he’d only meet with the victim’s mom under certain conditions.

Officer Richard Haste quit Sunday night, after an NYPD department trial found him guilty of exercising poor judgement and “intent to cause physical injury” in the February 2012 shooting death of Graham, 18, who was unarmed.

Graham’s mother, Constan






http://touch.latimes.com/#section/2426/ ... -92925292/

March 30, 2017
Mexican state attorney general arrested at U.S. border in San Diego on drug trafficking charges



Federal agents in San Diego have arrested the attorney general for the Mexican state of Nayarit on charges that he conspired to smuggle heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into the U.S.

Edgar Veytia, 46, was detained Monday at the U.S. border in San Diego on an indictment handed down by a grand jury in New York, Ralph DeSio



http://resistancereport.com/resistance/ ... -internet/



Republicans in Congress just voted to allow Americans’ browser history to be bought and sold. A genius crowdfunding campaign wants to use that against them.

The website searchinternethistory.com is attempting to raise $1 million in order to put in bids to purchase the internet history of leading Republicans and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) members. The first histories the site aims to buy are those of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

“If it takes a million dollars to get real change, I am sure a million people are willing to donate $1 to help ensure their private data stays private,” wrote Adam McElhaney, who launched a GoFundMe campaign for the endeavor.

McElhaney clarified on the GoFundMe campaign’s site that while he understands the privacy risks of using social media, the privacy rules Congress just eliminated goes far beyond what he feels is acceptable.

“I understand that what I put on the Internet is out there and not private. Those are the risks you assume. I’m not ashamed of what I put out on the Internet,” he wrote. “However, I don’t think that what I lookup on the Internet, what sites I visit, my browsing habits, should be bought and sold to whoever. Without my consent.”

McElhaney, who describes himself as “a privacy activist & net neutrality Advocate,” argues that since both houses of Congress have passed bills allowing anyone’s browser history to be sold and purchased by major telecom giants like Verizon, that the American people should be able to buy the browser records for their elected officials. If successful, the site aims to publish a searchable database of browser history for every member of Congress who voted to gut former President Barack Obama’s regulations prohibiting corporations from viewing Americans’ browser histories.

“Everything from their medical, pornographic, to their financial and infidelity. Anything they have looked at, searched for, or visited on the Internet will now be available for everyone to comb through,” the site promises, next to a survey of which public official’s browser history should be published first. “Since we didn’t get an opportunity to vote on whether our private and personal browsing history should be bought and sold, I wanted to show our legislators what a democracy is like. So, I’m giving you the opportunity to vote on whose history gets bought first.”

“Help me raise money to buy the histories of those who took away your right to privacy,” McElhaney adds.

Those who don’t have the means to donate money to the campaign are being asked to donate any legal skills they may have, so the site’s administrators can navigate around the tricky legal battlefield of purchasing and publishing the internet history of some of the most powerful people in the United States.

As of this writing, the campaign has raised nearly $100,000.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

Remote Viewing May 2017: Farsight Predictions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CU2pseVnec






https://robertscribbler.com/2017/04/28/ ... ate-march/

In Defense of Our Earth — A People’s Climate March
I think it can be fairly said that we are a people who believe in a better future. That the ideals of America are founded on building prosperity and expanding prospects — not only for ourselves, but for our fellows and for those generations that are to follow.
Americans have often been described as a ‘can-do’ kind of people. A people who will undertake any challenge to advance or protect our nation and to graciously extend her kind virtues to the huddled masses of a troubled world. Be it the freeing of slaves, the emancipation of women, the facing down of tyrannical dictators, the liberation of scientific inquiry, or the exploration of our Earth and the vast realm of space we have doggedly decided to march forward and on.
But today we are confronted by a new trouble. A trouble that was, in many ways, an unintended consequence of past progress. For as we industrialized, as a nation and as a global society, we also burned ancient carbon deposits long buried beneath the Earth. And so we expelled a great cloud of the most dangerous of gasses into the Earth’s atmosphere.
We didn’t know it so well at the time. But the carbon dioxide spewing from William Blake’s dark Satanic Mills was the same gas that in excess produced the worst and most horrific global die-offs in the great and deep, deep history of our Earth. Times of great mass extinction due to rising global heat that bear the infamous names — Permian, Triassic, Paleocene, Devonian and Ordovician. Blake, living today, would be terrified how right he was to call those mills Satanic. To learn what our scientists now have told us. But even then, he surely had an inkling. For the Bible itself warns — those who destroy the Earth shall be destroyed. And in 1808 the wanton destruction of the Earth and its airs by the pollution caused by fossil fuel burning was visibly evident if not so scientifically proven and explored as it is today.
Today, if we continue to burn fossil fuels as we have for the past 200 years or so, the world will again surely experience another such extinction. We already see the outliers of this crisis now — in the growing number of people bereft of land and home and livelihood as seas rose, or crops were destroyed by worsening storms and droughts, or lands and animals were lost to wildfires, or as reefs and fisheries were killed off by the warming, acidifying waters of our oceans. But what will come over the years and decades and centuries if we do not turn back from this horrid burning of fossil fuels and the dumping of their carbon into the atmosphere will be far, far worse.

What kind of world is this to make for our fellow human beings? What kind of future to leave for the generations that follow? Surely not the better one that we all work and hope for. Surely not one that honors the can-do, make the world a better place spirit of America.
But despite our worsening prospects and the dark and heavy clouds that now hang over the global climate, we have a window of opportunity in which to act. Our tools to confront climate change in the form of renewable energy systems like wind and solar and electrified transportation are growing more capable. And further innovation and change in our actions as people and nations can yet enable us to draw down the awful pall of heat trapping gasses that now hangs above us. These are things we can and must do if we are a moral people with any kind of vision, foresight and compassion.
This is our moment. The moment when we decide to make the choice to act and to save so many of the very precious things we all hold dear or to turn away from action and condemn each and every person and being now living or that will live to an age of terror and darkness the likes of which Earth has not seen in all of half a billion years.
So I’m asking you for your help. I’m asking you to make the choice to act. To join the People in their march for climate justice tomorrow. To support all the voices that are now speaking out. To lift your own voice to our growing chorus.
For the love of life and of all good things — we simply must act now.







Link du jour

http://boydownthelane.com/2017/04/26/so ... ing-right/


https://rightsanddissent.org/



http://www.thesullenbell.com/2017/04/26/whats-goin-on/






http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... orge-webb/





George Webb deserves your time and attention
April 29, 2017 Uncategorized Baxter Dmitry, double-garroting, George Webb, Hillary watch, Macron, Major Major, MS-13, Nikki Haley, North Korea, Obama’s pay day, Operation Condor, Presidential language, Putin, square clouds





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3120404
A look at President Trump and Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s similarities ahead of their possible meeting


http://www.politico.eu/article/will-tru ... jfk-files/











History Dept.
Will Trump release the missing JFK files?
Unless the president intervenes, we’ll soon know more secrets about the Kennedy assassination.

4/30/17, 4:01 AM CET
Updated 4/30/17, 4:26 PM CET

The nation’s conspiracy-theorist-in-chief is facing a momentous decision. Will President Donald Trump allow the public to see a trove of thousands of long-secret government files about the event that, more than any other in modern American history, has fueled conspiracy theories — the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy?
The answer must come within months. And, according to a new timeline offered by the National Archives, it could come within weeks.
Under the deadline set by a 1992 law, Trump has six months left to decide whether he will block the release of an estimated 3,600 files related to the assassination that are still under seal at the Archives. From what is known of the JFK documents, most come from the CIA and FBI, and a number may help resolve lingering questions about whether those agencies missed evidence of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s death. As with every http://boydownthelane.com/2017/04/26/so ... ht/earlier release of JFK assassination documents in the 53 years since shots rang out in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, it is virtually certain that some of the files will be seized on to support popular conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s murder; other documents are likely to undermine them.
There is no little irony in the fact that decision will be left to Trump, long a promoter of so many baseless conspiracy theories about everything from his predecessor’s birthplace to the notion that the father of one of his campaign-trail rivals was in league with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
For the first time, the Trump White House is acknowledging that it is focused on the issue, even if it offers no hint about what the President will do. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Politico last week that the Trump administration “is familiar with the requirements” of the 1992 law and that White House is working with the National Archives “to enable a smooth process in anticipation of the October deadline.”
There is no little irony in the fact that the decision will be left to Trump, long a promoter of so many baseless conspiracy theories about everything.
Under the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the library of documents about Kennedy’s death must be made public in full by the deadline of this October 26, the law’s 25th anniversary, unless Trump decides otherwise. It is his decision alone.
The prospect of the release of the last of the government’s long-secret JFK assassination files has long tantalized historians and other scholars, to say nothing of the nation’s armies of conspiracy theorists, since no one can claim to know exactly what is in there.
Martha W. Murphy, the Archives official who oversees the records, said in an interview last month that a team of researchers with high-level security clearances is at work to prepare the JFK files for release and hopes to begin unsealing them in batches much earlier than October — possibly as early as summer.
Beyond releasing the 3,600 never-before-seen JFK files, the Archives is reviewing another 35,000 assassination-related documents, previously released in part, so they can be unsealed in full. Short of an order from the president, Murphy said, the Archives is committed to making everything public this year: “There’s very little decision-making for us.”
Many of the documents are known to come from the files of CIA officials who monitored a mysterious trip that Oswald paid to Mexico City several weeks before the assassination – a trip that brought Kennedy’s future killer under intense surveillance by the spy agency as he paid visits to both the Soviet and Cuban embassies there. The CIA said it monitored all visitors to the embassies and opened surveillance of Oswald as soon as he was detected inside the Soviet compound for the first time.
Other documents are known to identify, by name, American and foreign spies and law-enforcement sources who had previously been granted anonymity for information about Oswald and the assassination. At least 400 pages of the files involve E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA operative turned Watergate conspirator who claimed on his deathbed that he had advance knowledge of Kennedy’s murder.
The documents were gathered together by a temporary federal agency, the Assassination Records Review Board, that was established under the 1992 law. In an interview last month, its former chairman, Judge John R. Tunheim of the Federal District Court in Minnesota, said he “wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something important” in the documents, especially given how much of the history of the Kennedy assassination has had to be rewritten in recent decades.
He said he knew of “no bombshells” in the files when the board agreed to keep them secret two decades ago, but names, places and events described in the documents could have significance now, given what has been learned about the assassination since the board went out of business. “Today, with a broader understanding of history, certain things may be far more relevant,” he said.
Murphy, the Archives official, said she, too, knew of no shocking information in the documents – but she said her researchers were not in a position to judge their significance. “As you can imagine, we’re not reading them for that, so we’re probably not the best people to tell you,” she said. “I will say this: This collection is really interesting as a snapshot of the Cold War.”
The Review Board, created by Congress to show transparency in response to the public furor created by Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-minded 1991 film “JFK,” did force the release of a massive library of other long-secret documents from the CIA, FBI, Secret Service and other federal agencies, as well as from congressional investigations of the assassination.


Many showed how much evidence was withheld from the Warren Commission, the independent panel led by Chief Justice Earl Warren that investigated the assassination and concluded in 1964 that there was no evidence of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s death.
The documents showed that both the CIA and FBI had much more extensive information about Oswald — and the danger he posed to JFK — before the assassination than the agencies admitted to Warren’s investigation. The evidence appeared to have been withheld from the commission out of fear that it would expose how the CIA and FBI had bungled the opportunity to stop Oswald.
The documents showed that both the CIA and FBI had much more extensive information about Oswald — and the danger he posed to JFK — before the assassination than the agencies admitted to Warren’s investigation.
Under the 1992 law, agencies may make a final appeal to try to stop the unsealing of specific documents on national security grounds. But the law grants only one person the power to actually block the release: the president. The law allows Trump to keep a document secret beyond the 25-year deadline if he certifies to the National Archives that secrecy was “made necessary by an identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or conduct of foreign relations” and that “the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
Both the CIA and FBI acknowledged in written statements last month that they are reviewing the documents scheduled for release; neither agency would say if it planned to appeal to the White House to block the unsealing of any of the records. “CIA continues to review the remaining CIA documents in the collection to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to any previously-unreleased CIA information,” said agency spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak. The FBI said it had a team of 21 researchers assigned to the document review.
According to a skeletal index of the documents prepared by the Archives, some of the files appear to involve, at least indirectly, a set of conspiracy theories that Trump himself promoted during the 2016 campaign – about possible ties between Cuban exile groups in the United States and Oswald.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promoted an article published last April in the National Enquirer that suggested a connection between Oswald and the Cuban-born father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination. The article was based entirely on a 1963 photograph that showed Oswald, a self-proclaimed Marxist and champion of Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution in Cuba, handing out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans with a man who, the tabloid suggested, was Cruz’s father, Rafael.

The Cruz family denied that the senator’s family was the man depicted in the photo and that Rafael Cruz had any connection to Oswald; there is no other evidence of any connection.
The National Archives index shows that the documents to be released this year include a 86-page file on a prominent CIA-backed anti-Castro exile group that Oswald appears to have tried to infiltrate in New Orleans, his hometown, in order to gather information that might be of use to the Castro government.
Judge Tunheim said that Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in September and October 1963 figures directly or indirectly in many of the documents that remain under seal, including the internal files of CIA operatives who worked at the American embassy there.
Historians agree that the trip, which Oswald apparently undertook in hopes of obtaining a visa to defect to Castro’s Cuba, much as he had once tried to defect to the Soviet Union, has never been fully investigated.
“I still think there are loose threads in Mexico City that no one has ever explored,” Tunheim said. “It was a bizarre chapter – there’s no question about it.” Previously declassified CIA and FBI documents suggest that Oswald openly boasted to Cuban officials there about his intention to kill Kennedy and that he had a brief affair with a Mexican woman who worked in Cuba’s consulate. The American ambassador to Mexico at the time of the assassination said later that he believed the woman had probably been working for the CIA.
Tunheim said the Review Board agreed to keep the Mexico-related documents secret in the 1990s at the request of the State Department, the CIA and other agencies that warned that their release could do damage


something wrong something right
2017/04/26 Uncategorized ‘flying a flag’, Chaukeedar, concentration of forces, Deep Work, joy, TED talks
something wrong something right
“… The idea that we informed people, who can see behind the curtain of the power elite, as well as all peace-loving people who feel intuitively that there simply is something wrong in the world, can recognize each other, talk, exchange ideas and encourage each other, seems very uplifting and joyful. To me it is thus not simply a matter of “flying a flag”, but to be able to better interconnect also in real life….
I launch something.
Neighbor Gabriel has put me the idea.
White.
The white flag is swung in wars, and who waves the white flag, sais: I have laid down my arms. I want peace and I am ready for a dialogue.
The vision:
All the world is full of white flags.
The idea:
I was at a Monday meeting at the Brandenburg Gate [note by Chaukeedaar: In Berlin and 50 other german cities there were public meetings for peace every monday night for the last couple of weeks, mainly initiated by people from the truth movement and alternative media, see one of the great speeches of Ken Jebsen]. It was full of people there who want to change things. The people stood there and waited for things to come. When Ken Jebsen put his concise words, they clapped enthusiastically.
That’s good, that’s okay. And it is not enough .
The same people go home and feel alone with their concerns…..
Imagine. In Munich, cars are driving with white flags. In Washington, white cloths are hanging in the windows. When shopping you will see a fellow-man with a white bracelet.
Everywhere is white. White contains it all. It needs no explanation. I know: This guy flags. She shows white. I can talk to him about anything even remotely related to the world situation, to politics, to monetary problems, to corruption.
And, more importantly, I can talk to him about everything that has to do with a joyful, healthy, creative life.
Please imagine that vividly. Through the means of a simple symbol a massive concentration of forces can be achieved.
Pass on this idea with your own inner fire.
I will poke other bloggers with it…..”
https://chaukeedaar.wordpress.com/2014/ ... for-peace/









http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/04/28/bu ... more-13802

← Russian Oligarch in Election Probe Linked to Drug Cartel
BUSTED IN BARCELONA: MEET RUSSIAGATE’S JOHN DEAN
Posted on April 28, 2017 by Daniel Hopsicker
Russian Peter Levashov would have fared better if his wife was a gangster’s moll, who knew when to keep her mouth shut. Instead, she’s a socialite in St. Petersburg, Russia, who told journalists her hacker hubby was busted for “creating a virus linked to Trump winning the election.”
Almost immediately The New York Times began walking the story back.

The Big Fix after The Big Hack?
When Russian Spam Lord Peter Levashov ankled off to jail in Barcelona two weeks ago, his wife was left alone—not home alone in St. Petersburg, where she and her husband live, but in a strange country, Spain. Approached by a Russian-speaking reporter, she perhaps understandably talked freely, volubly, and emotionally.
One day later, The New York Times did everything but accuse her of lying. As they say in scripts for bad TV comedy TV pilots, “Hilarity ensued.”The immediate ntroversy was over whether Levashov was peddling dick pills, get-rich-quick schemes, counterfeit drugs, work-at-home scams and pump-and-dump penny stock scams.. . or was he instead using his powerful algorithmic bots to hack the U.S. election? Could he have been doing both at the same time? Opinion varied.
What doesn’t vary: the names of Levashov’s American partners. These so-far-unidentified names — when made public, as they undoubtedly soon will be— will prove useful to puzzling out the big question about the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion in the Russian hacking of the 2016 Presidential election.
Sifting the real from the fake news in coverage of Levashov’s arrest in Spain, was the immediate priority. Capturing elite Russian hacker Peter Levashov is a milestone in the quest to bust open the current public embarrassment, which appears —in one man’s opinion—capable of becoming the biggest American scandal since Watergate.
In the Russian election probe the question is whether—given the intrigue swirling around Levashov’s arrest — the fix may already be in.

Likes: Bob Marley, Melancholia, & Catcher in the Rye

Peter’s wife, Maria Levashova, is a socialite in St. Petersburg, where she and her husband live, one of the beautiful people, a sought-after high-end wedding planner.
She’s on Facebook, where she likes Bob Marley, the movie Melancholia, and the classic JD Salinger book “Catcher in the Rye.”
Hardly adequate preparation for a 3 a.m. raid by a dozen grim Spanish policemen wearing funny hats. When Russian Today found her and interviewed her, they headlined it “Wife of Russian programmer ‘suspected of cyber attacks on US’ shares details about his arrest.”
“The wife of detained Russian programmer Pyotr Levashov spoke to Russia Today (the official Russian TV channel) of her anguish at the prospect of never seei





http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2017 ... es-on.html

Thursday, April 27, 2017
French intelligence service piles on with more anti-Assad nonsense--here's why it is BS
According to the LA Times and echoed by many other outlets,
"France’s foreign ministry says deadly sarin gas used in a chemical attack in Syria this month that killed 87 people “bears the signature” of President Bashar Assad’s government.
A six-page report by French intelligence services claims the nerve agent came from hidden stockpiles of chemical weapons that Damascus was supposed to have destroyed under an U.S.- and Russian-brokered deal in 2013."
Here is what you should be aware of as you sift this latest news:

1. Assad gave up 1300 tons (2,600,000 pounds) of his chemical weapons in 2013-14. They were moved out of Syria, loaded on ships, and destroyed by portable shipboard factories far offshore. The process lent itself to skullduggery.

And Damascus was not given the option of destroying its own weapons, nor was it even considered safe to do so in a war zone. They had to be handed over to the West.

How many countries and people had access to Syria's sarin and mustard gas during that process? Was any sarin withheld from destruction? (We should more realistically ask, how much was withheld and who got it?) Who might subsequently have been given some of that material?

2. Since chemical and biological weapons may leave a chemical or genetic signature, and since a major advantage of such weapons is the difficulty of identifying a perpetrator, the smart players do their best to create chem/bio weapons that leave the signature of someone else.

3. If you know the chemical signature of a chemical or biological weapon, even if you cannot obtain someone else's material, you may be able to reverse engineer a specific signature and impute an attack to your enemy.

4. Seymour Hersh and others have noted that weapons from Gaddafi's stockpile were sent from Libya through Turkey to Syria to be given to anti-Assad rebel forces, in a complicated maneuver engineered by the CIA. Sarin was alleged to have been found by police, who arrested al-Nusra rebels in Turkey with 2 kg. of sarin. Using Gaddifi's arms gave the CIA plausible deniability of involvement.

It should not be lost on the reader that anyone giving sarin to Syrian 'rebels' would expect its use to be attributed to Assad.

5. The UN report on chemical weapons in 2013 did not blame Syria, and the UN's Carla del Ponte described evidence favoring the rebels as the perpetrators.

6. Since no Syrian sarin attacks have ever been demonstrated conclusively to be due to Assad or to anyone else (rumors and claims abound, but definite proof has been elusive), France's claim that the recent sarin is from Assad because it matched sarin from an earlier attack is utter nonsense, since we don't know the source of the earlier sarin signature.

7. The French intelligence service authored this report. And the US intelligence services authored the 2003 report of Iraq's WMD, and claimed the 2013 sarin attacks were due to Assad (without proof, read the report here). US and UK intelligence services had something to do with the Trump "golden showers" dossier of trash.

These intelligence services were all carrying out their missions, which sadly have become propaganda, not intelligence.

8. There was no motive for Assad to use chemical weapons in 2013, and no motive today. Instead, strategically, he had much to lose.

Read what a former State Department insider had to say about the unlikelihood Assad used chemical weapons in 2013, in an article in the Atlantic.

9. When you consider the background to the claims about Syria's chemical weapons, the series of stories blaming Assad for attacking his people with sarin this month make less and less sense. Instead, it seems we are reliving Judith Miller's series of NY Times stories that provided the drumbeat to war in Iraq, in 2002-3. We should not be fooled again.
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 11:00 PM 0 comments



http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/04/27/govern ... -mob-ties/

April 27, 2017 | Dan Wise and Russ Baker
Government Must Tell if Trump Associate Had Russian Mob Ties

Several weeks ago, WhoWhatWhy published an investigative story on Donald Trump, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Russian mob. It addressed challenges the FBI faces in fully investigating and reporting to the public what it knows about Trump’s past and his relationships.
One of the figures in that story — and in a followup piece — is a former Trump business associate named Felix Sater. Our article pointed out that Sater, a man with a criminal past, had become a “cooperating witness” for the FBI and had been so while he worked in Trump Tower. He had been high


http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/m ... /99123456/


New 'snitch' allegations rock federal biker case
Detroit Free Press-
And when the FBI raided the Highwaymen's Michigan Avenue clubhouse in southwest Detroit in 2007, they discovered a photograph of one of their two ...

When the U.S. Attorney's Office indicted 91 alleged members and associates of Detroit's Highwaymen Motorcycle Club on allegations of racketeering, drug trafficking, theft and murder for hire, a central thread in the case was gang leader Aref (Steve) Nagi's attempts to root out suspected snitches.
Nagi's preoccupation with informants inside the storied and homegrown motorcycle gang — whose violent history is credited with keeping the Hells Angels out of Detroit — was evident in his rambling, late-night phone conversations, which were secretly recorded by the FBI and introduced as evidence at the 2010 trial in federal court in Detroit.
And when the FBI raided the Highwaymen's Michigan Avenue clubhouse in southwest Detroit in 2007, they discovered a photograph of one of their two confidential informants —with the word "rat" scrawled in black marker across his face.
The case sent more than 30 Highwaymen to prison —- many, including Nagi, for lengthy sentences.
Read more:

Gangster gets 13.5 years for revenge; ordered AK-47 hit on mom, 3 kids


FBI: Gang members arrested in phone thefts from 9 states

But some of those convictions are now being challenged because of new revelations that Nagi himself — a former Highwaymen vice president and the lead defendant — had worked as a confidential informant for federal and local police agencies.
Convicted Highwayman Gary (Junior) Ball Jr., who from his federal prison cell used Michigan's Freedom of Information Act to uncover Nagi's hidden past, says Nagi and his Detroit attorney



http://www.channel3000.com/news/wiscons ... /471908746

Wisconsin, U.S. used flawed hair evidence to convict innocent people
FBI admits errors in 90 percent of cases
Posted: Apr 30, 2017 10:55 AM CDT
Updated: Apr 30, 2017 10:55 AM CDT



FBI OCTOPUS
http://www.ladailypost.com/content/fbi- ... hip-awards



FBI: 2016 Director's Community Leadership Awards
Los Alamos Daily Post-
FBI Director James Comey formally recognized 58 individuals and organizations from around the country Friday for their efforts to build stronger, safer, and more ...




http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/2017 ... n-conflict

Technology, terrorism and modern conflict
Seacoastonline.com-
I attended two meetings this week that highlight the dark side of technology. The first was the monthly FBI InfraGard meeting of the New Hampshire Chapter and ...




http://www.thegurdontimes.com/news/2017 ... nforcement

FBI's program has students in Fort Smith region looking at futures in ...
Gurdon Times-
The FBI's Future Agents in Training (FAIT) 2017 program is not only giving area high school students an in-depth look into the FBI, but is also setting them on the ...







http://tucson.com/news/local/watchdog/a ... 1ded1.html



Audit of misused sheriff's fund indicated no problems
• By Caitlin Schmidt Arizona Daily Star









http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 03636.html



Since the first Nassar accuser went public last September, however, evidence has emerged suggesting Michigan State officials missed far more potential warning signs than officials at USA Gymnastics did. Michigan State employed Nassar and funded his volunteer work for USA Gymnastics, and the majority of his alleged victims encountered him in connection with his work for the school. In lawsuits, victims have alleged making verbal complaints about Nassar to Michigan State officials as far back as the late 1990s. In 2014, both Michigan State police and the university’s Title IX office cleared Nassar of wrongdoing after an assault complaint.






* Only two places left for the Southern Patrol
* Russian Spy Ship Sinks
* Intel on the projected World's Largest Aircraft Carrier
* Big Contract to General Dynamics
* New Class of American Submarines
* Deck Tugs Launched off Flight Deck
* Carrier Killer in Taiwan Navy
* German Facility Just Found

Naturally there is more - there are just the headlines. The full stories were sent to our Members

unsubscribe - to be removed from our roster, simply reply to this email and say - remove


www.sharkhunters.com
The World's ONLY International Source of U-Boat History

sharkhunters@earthlink.net
EarthLink Revolves Around You.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

Link du jour

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ons-office

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... -gold-seam

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hea ... story.html


https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -the-world


https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/07/18/whowh ... eam-media/

PODCAST
JULY 18, 2017 | JEFF SCHECHTMAN
WHOWHATWHY INVESTIGATED RUSSIA’S ACTIONS LONG BEFORE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA




http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/l ... 103811398/

Mutilation probe widens as deportation fears mount
Robert Snell , The Detroit News Published 5:45 p.m. ET July 18, 2017 | Updated 6:50 p.m. ET July 18, 2017

Steve Francis, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigation’s office in Detroit, denied that agents were threatening people with deportation in the nation’s first federal prosecution involving female genital mutilation.

“Homeland Security Investigations special agents conduct all investigative activities with the highest level of professionalism and respect,” Francis said in a statement Tuesday. “Any allegations to the contrary are baseless and without merit.”

The head of the FBI in Detroit defended his agents’ handling of the case.

“The FBI has and will continue to tirelessly investigate allegations involving harm to children, and we will pursue each and every lead in this case, as it is literally some of the most important work that we do,” said David P. Gelios, special agent in charge for the Detroit Division of the FBI.


“At the same time, just as we remain steadfast in our efforts to protect children from harm, FBI special agents adhere to the highest level of professionalism and uphold the constitutional protections afforded to everyone in the United States — victims and defendants alike,” he said. “Any accusations to the contrary are misguided, without merit, and cut against not only what the FBI stands for but also the work performed by the men and women of the FBI every day.”


http://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/form ... SvxBRrsuI/

Former FBI agent’s guilty plea could affect child predator case

Rhonda Cook
10:13 a.m. Monday, July 17, 2017 AJC Homepage




http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index. ... _pris.html

FBI agent Ryan Seese sentenced to prison in two Peeping Tom cases in Hershey | PennLive.com
PennLive.
Dec 28, 2010 - A Dauphin County judge this morning sentenced former FBI agent Ryan Seese, 37 , of Derry Township, to 1 to 23-1/2 months in county prison plus 3 years' probation for two Peeping Tom ...


http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/08/24 ... -scramble/


VT Exclusive: Largest Pedophile Ring in History, 70,000 Members, Heads of State, the Rats Scramble | Veterans Today
Veterans Today › 2016/08/24 › vt-exclus...
Aug 24, 2016 - Millions read the news today, the pedophile ring “busted” or the earlier article about how the FBI ..... We remember former FBI director and founder, J Edgar Hoover, the man who said ritual satanic child ...


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... zen-school


More than 500 boys abused at top German Catholic school
Physical and sexual abuse took place up to 2015 at Regensburger Domspatzen choir school, referred to by some pupils as ‘hell’



http://ticklethewire.com/2017/07/18/dis ... al-prison/

Disgraced Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert Released From Federal Prison

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, 75, who had long been regarded in the public eye as just a Regular Joe from the Midwest — that is until his scandal emerged — has been released from a federal prison hospital in Minnesota and transferred to a halfway house in Chicago, Josh Gerstein of Politico reports.

Hastert pleaded guilty last year to violating money laundering laws in a case that shocked the country and Beltway insiders. The scandal stemmed from hush money he paid to conceal sexual abuse he committed of students while he was a high school teacher and coach several decades ago.

A federal judge in Chicago sentenced him to 15 months.

Hastert was never charged in the sexual abuse cases because of the statute of limitations. But Politico notes that two men are suing him, alleging they were abused as kids.



Defending Rights & Dissent Joins Transparency Groups in Trying to Prevent CIA from Destroying Records

the facade of the Archives of the United States building
July 18, 2017 – The CIA recently received tentative approval from the National Archives and Records Administration to destroy files that allegedly have no historical significance. Defending Rights & Dissent joined the National Security Archives, OpenTheGoverment, and Demand Progress in submitting comments opposing the planned destruction of documents.



http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/0 ... newsletter

Despite parents' pleas, police closed in, and a life was lost in Hingham


His parents said he just needed to sleep. A SWAT team came instead
HINGHAM — As police cars rolled into his pristine suburban neighborhood last Saturday night, past the sprawling Colonials and manicured lawns, and as dozens of officers from across the region surrounded his home, Russell Reeves begged them again and again to back off.

In a bedroom upstairs his son Austin, 26, was distraught over a breakup. He had told his family he needed time alone. With him was his dog and his 9 mm handgun. If you pressure him, if he feels cornered, Reeves said he told the police, this will end with Austin killing himself.

The police listened and nodded and took notes in their notebooks, according to Reeves. And yet, more officers kept coming. Some wore camouflage and carried rifles. They set up bright lights to shine onto the house and drove a military-style vehicle into the backyard. Eventually, they broke seven upstairs windows so a mounted camera could look inside for Austin.

“Please,” the frightened father says he asked them, “why can’t you just let him go to sleep?”


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/k ... -1.3335288


KING: Recent stories of injustice in America you may have missed


Tuesday, July 18, 2017, 12:06 PM


Teenager stuck behind bars for a crime he did not commit will soon lose his college scholarship

Pedro Hernandez graduated from high school with distinction and was recognized for helping many of his peers accomplish the same thing. For all of this, he was awarded a full college scholarship and should be starting college in a few weeks. Except Hernandez is behind bars.

Everything about the case against Pedro Hernandez stinks to high heaven. Over a year ago he was arrested for shooting someone in the Bronx. The shooting victim says Hernandez was not the shooter. Eight different eyewitnesses have said Hernandez was not the shooter. In recorded statements, witnesses to the shooting have said that the officer who arrested Hernandez, David Terrell of the NYPD, threatened them with physical violence if they did not claim Hernandez was the shooter, PIX11 News reports. Officer Terrell is now suspended after being recorded gambling while a suspect sat in his squad car. Yeah, really.

Sadly, in a completely separate incident, a surveillance camera recorded a security officer brutally beating then 15-year-old Pedro Hernandez. That officer was fired and charged with a crime.

KING: Police brutality jumped racial fence with Minn. shooting
Now, if Hernandez is not released from jail soon, he could lose his college admission and scholarship.


Justine Damond was fatally shot by police in Minneapolis.
Texas officer who shot and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards indicted on murder charge

I know. We've seen this before. An indictment is not a conviction — far from it — but you can't get a conviction without this essential step and that's exactly what it is, an essential step. Officer Roy Oliver was indicted on a murder charge in the shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards — a star student, athlete and beloved son. Just two weeks ago Oliver was also charged with aggravated assault for a road rage case that actually happened before he killed Jordan.




https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... y-weakened

America steals votes from felons. Until it stops, our democracy will be weakened
Russ Feingold


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/a ... -1.3335357

Animal rights activists accused of freeing more than 30,000 mink in Minnesota
BY CAITLYN HITT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, July 18, 2017, 12:32 PM





https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... k-fountain

Robot cop found face down in office-block fountain
Machine built to keep humans in check defeated by stairs and fountain in incident where ‘no one was harmed’



http://ticklethewire.com/2017/07/18/sec ... feit-cash/

Secret Service Employee Stole Authentic Money While Examining Counterfeit money
A Secret Service technician whose job was to determine whether suspicious currency was counterfeit pocketed some of the cash that was authentic.

Shaun Qureshi, a 34-year-old Maryland resident who began working in the Secret Service’s Washington field office in 2009 as a”counterfeit technician,” pleaded guilty Friday to one felony count of illegal conversion of property, the Washington Post reports.

Authorities said Qureshi sole between $20 and $200 nearly every day for 22 months, accumulating at least $8,000 between January 2013 to October 2014.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3336070

O.J. Simpson’s friend slams choice of Mark Fuhrman as Fox commentator for parole hearing as a ‘racist and felon’
BY NANCY DILLON
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, July 18, 2017, 4:39 PM


Disgraced cop Mark Fuhrman will turn Fox News' coverage of O.J. Simpson's parole hearing into a nightmare, not a dream team, the football star's best pal told the Daily News on Tuesday.

"He's a racist and a convicted felon," friend Tom Scotto said of Fuhrman. "Everyone saw he's a racist on live TV."

Fuhrman, 65, is due to provide on-air "contributions and analysis" to Fox News during the Thursday parole hearing tied to Simpson's 2008 robbery conviction in Nevada, the network said in a press release.

The Los Angeles Police detective was a notorious figure during Simpson's “Trial of the Century” in 1995. He told jurors he found the bloody glove that seemed to connect Simpson to the shocking murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, but then his tape-recorded use of racial epithets surfaced and shredded his credibility.





http://www.greencarreports.com/news/2018

Honda to debut all-new hybrid next year, plans for long-range EV

July 17, 2017, 4:20 PM



http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html



Former USC medical school dean no longer seeing patients; Pasadena police discipline officer

An overdose, a young companion, drug-fueled parties: The secret life of a USC med school dean
During his tenure, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito kept company with a circle of criminals and drug users who said he used methamphetamine and other drugs with them, a Times investigation has found. Photos and videos captured some of their exploits.




http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/ ... 484849001/

A 2013 Facebook post by Lincoln Charter School announcing the partnership between Thackston and GeoSource provides three GeoSource principals who would be involved in the partnership: Sam Brown, a former federal government operative; Lt. Col. Randy Marcoz, a retired Army intelligence officer; and Courtney West, a former Marine and FBI agent.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

Link du jour


http://www.mdiphotoclub.org/2016/04/april-2016-meeting/





http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nev ... story.html

Participant in Cliven Bundy standoff sentenced to 68 years in prison


FILE - In this April 18, 2014, file photo, rancher Cliven Bundy, flanked by armed supporters, speaks
Rancher Cliven Bundy, flanked by armed supporters in April 2014, speaks at a protest camp near Bunkerville,

The weight of a heavy sentence landed in the quiet federal courtroom Wednesday morning, leaving Gregory Burleson occasionally stroking his graying beard and his attorney pleading unsuccessfully for leniency.

The 53-year-old Burleson was the first to be sentenced for his role in the 2014 standoff between federal agents and supporters of Cliven Bundy near his Nevada ranch.

He got 68 years in prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro did take into account his blindness and frailty — he sat in a wheelchair during the hearing — but she also reminded Burleson of his crimes, which included threatening a federal law enforcement officer, obstruction of justice and interstate travel in aid of extortion.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3357226

Oklahoma sheriff indicted in death of hallucinating inmate restrained in chair for 48 hours
BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 4:59 AM




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/c ... -1.3354377

Top Vatican official Cardinal Pell faces Australian court on 'historical' sex assault charges


Tuesday, July 25, 2017, 9:19 PM






'An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power' with Al Gore: movie


Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 6:00 AM



With Al Gore. The veep is back, with another global warning. movie
It’s a good thing Al Gore is used to disappointments.

His new documentary, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” was supposed to be about how things have changed for the better since 2006’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The bad news is, global warming continues. It may even be getting worse. But the good news is, people are finally doing something about it.

And in the film’s happy ending, the nations of the world sign the Paris Agreement on fighting climate change. Everyone celebrates. Gore heads home to Tennessee.

Al Gore renews his vote to eliminate the Electoral College
That's the upbeat way the film was supposed to leave you.

Except last month President Trump said the Paris deal was lousy, dead, forget about it. He was pulling out.

It’s a huge setback for the agreement, Gore and other global-warming activists. But it doesn’t make “An Inconvenient Sequel” obsolete. It makes it more important than ever.


Because now you're reminded of what the deniers are trying to forget. Ice caps melting into our oceans. Rising tides flooding cities. Disastrous hurricanes and paralyzing droughts.

Al Gore: Trump’s Paris withdrawal is ‘reckless and indefensible'
The material is familiar to anyone who saw the original Oscar-winning “An Inconvenient Truth,” although the footage itself is new.

What’s even fresher, though, is the approach. The first movie was just stiff-as-a-board Gore and his bar graphs. It had the feel of a watch-this-it's-good-for-you slideshow.

This time, though, Gore gets out of the lecture hall and into the streets. We see him trudging through a waterlogged Miami. Carefully crossing a fragile sheet of ice.

And doing what any politician does best — calling in favors, wrangling deals and trying to move a pet cause forward.

Al Gore has 'lengthy and very productive' meeting with Trump
The stakes are high, too. As the movie points out, although now more people are aware of the problem, there's less time to fix it.


It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But Gore keeps plugging away, and even finds signs of hope. Like a tiny town in red-state Texas that's switched its energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

“The less stuff you put in the air, the better it is,” the Republican mayor says flatly. “Common sense.”

“An Inconvenient Sequel” could use more interviews with people like that small-town mayor, folks who know pollution isn't partisan, and clean air and water aren’t political. Maybe the filmmakers will find room for them if they make another sequel.



http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-fren ... story.html


'This seems endless.' Fires force evacuation of 12,000 in 3 French Riviera towns




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3359348


NYPD cop gets 20 years for moonlighting as Bronx coke dealer's muscle


BY STEPHEN REX BROWN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 7:44 PM




http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

L.A. sheriff says he'll appeal decision barring him from giving prosecutors a list of problem deputies



Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell will ask the state Supreme Court to review a recent lower-court decision that barred him from giving prosecutors the names of deputies with histories of serious misconduct, he said in a statement Wednesday.

The appeal, which has not yet been filed, will seek to “establish legal clarity” while balancing the privacy protections of officers’ personnel files, according to the statement.

“Our intent was never to compromise or give away your rights. And at no time was the department seeking to voluntarily turn over information from anyone’s personnel file,” McDonnell said in a video issued internally to deputies on Wednesday.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... l-mckibben


Bill McKibben
Author, Christian, Environmentalist : b. 1960

"America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. At the moment the idea of Jesus has been hijacked by people with a series of causes that do not reflect his teachings. It's hard to imagine a con much more audacious than making Christ the front man for a program of tax cuts for the rich or war in Iraq. We have made golden calves of ourselves -- become a nation of terrified, self-obsessed idols."



https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... contracts/

August 8, 2017
Departments of Correction nationwide are considering privatized electronic monitoring as an alternative to incarceration
From Maine to California, GPS solutions can offer new challenges for the incarcerated and their communities
Written by Beryl Lipton
Edited by JPat Brown
This May, far up the Eastern seaboard, in the tiny coastal community of Machiasport, Maine, frustration and disbelief erupted as they received news of Governor Paul LePage’s budgetary plans for their corner of the world. The 46 employees of the 1000-person town’s minimum security prison all received notice that they would be losing their jobs and the facility’s 100-plus population would be dispersed among the State’s other prisons or released into the world, tethered to the DOC by the use of electronic monitoring.
The legislature ultimately provided funding to keep Downeast Correctional Facility open - at least for a little while longer - but the situation raised a novel question about the appropriate use of GPS monitoring devices as an alternative to incarceration, particularly where local economics are concerned.
The use of electronic monitoring has been growing across corrections and immigrant detention, as law enforcement departments struggle to operate systems in which there’s more demand for jail beds than can be supplied or funded. In response to a nationwide MuckRock survey, the Maine DOC is one of six state DOCs that provided contract materials related to its use of Satellite Tracking of People (STOP), an electronic monitoring equipment company run by Securus, already the most popular company for corrections communications like phones and tablets.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3394313

Mother sues police after 2-year-old receives terrible burns in cop custody (WARNING: Graphic Material

Tuesday, August 8, 2017, 3:06 PM


Link du jour


http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html


https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -more-salt

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3394436

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/n ... -1.3394022

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/trum ... -1.3391740

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3394203


https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... ve-no-hope

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... nald-trump






https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ison-foia/

Senate Bill 1728 would make private prisons subject to Freedom of Information Act
by Beryl Lipton
August 07, 2017
Congress is looking to limit the secrecy of for-profit prison companies, and MuckRock has joined a coalition of 50 nonprofit and public interest organizations to support this cause of transparency and accountability at contract facilities.
Read More



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3395147

Mormon elder James Hamula kicked out of church, first leader excommunication in decades



Tuesday, August 8, 2017, 8:31 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3395172

Mother who Tased her 5-year-old son is charged with a felony


Tuesday, August 8, 2017, 8:53 PM






https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... too-broad/

Customs and Border Protection has a pretty unreasonable definition of “reasonably described”
Even after being provided multiple ID numbers, Agency claims request for contracts is “too broad”
Written by Curtis Waltman
Edited by JPat Brown

With just a 15% success rate for MuckRock requests, and a lethargic 276 day response time, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is not really known for their transparency. As Melissa Crow, of the American Immigration Council, said in an American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) press release just last year, “CBP unfortunately has a long history of ignoring requests for information that may be inconvenient.”



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-ban-usda


Climate change Opinion
The Trump administration's solution to climate change: ban the term
Bill McKibben
The US Department of Agriculture has forbidden the use of the words ‘climate change’. This say-no-evil policy is doomed to fail
People silhouetted in front of a map of the world showing climate change.
‘Also blacklisted is the scary locution reduce greenhouse gases.’


Tuesday 8 August 2017 05.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 8 August 2017 08.34 EDT

In a bold new strategy unveiled on Monday in the Guardian, the US Department of Agriculture – guardians of the planet’s richest farmlands – has decided to combat the threat of global warming by forbidding the use of the words.

Under guidance from the agency’s director of soil health, Bianca Moebius-Clune, a list of phrases to be avoided includes “climate change” and “climate change adaptation”, to be replaced by “weather extremes” and “resilience to weather extremes”.


Trump is deleting climate change, one site at a time

Also blacklisted is the scary locution “reduce greenhouse gases” – and here, the agency’s linguists have done an even better job of camouflage: the new and approved term is “increase nutrient use efficiency”.

The effectiveness of this approach – based on the well-known principle that what you can’t say won’t hurt you – has previously been tested at the state level, making use of the “policy laboratories” provided by America’s federalist system.

In 2012, for instance, the North Carolina general assembly voted to prevent communities from planning for sea level rise. Early analysis suggests this legislation has been ineffective: Hurricane Matthew, in 2016, for instance drove storm surge from the Atlantic ocean to historic levels along the Cape Fear river. Total damage from the storm was estimated at $4.8bn.

Further south, the Florida government forbade its employees to use the term climate change in 2014 – one government official, answering questions before the legislature, repeatedly used the phrase “the issue you mentioned earlier” in a successful effort to avoid using the taboo words.


It is true that the next year “unprecedented” coral bleaching blamed on rising temperatures destroyed vast swaths of the state’s reefs: from Key Biscayne to Fort Lauderdale, a survey found that “about two-thirds were dead or reduced to less than half of their live tissue”. Still, it’s possible that they simply need to increase their nutrient use efficiency.

At the federal level, the new policy has yet to show clear-cut success either. As the say-no-evil policy has rolled out in the early months of the Trump presidency, it coincided with the onset of a truly dramatic “flash drought” across much of the nation’s wheat belt.

As the Farm Journal website pointed out earlier last week: “Crops in the Dakotas and Montana are baking on an anvil of severe drought and extreme heat, as bone-dry conditions force growers and ranchers to make difficult decisions regarding cattle, corn and wheat.”

In typically negative journalistic fashion, the Farm Journal reported that “abandoned acres, fields with zero emergence, stunted crops, anemic yields, wheat rolled into hay, and early herd culls comprise a tapestry of disaster for many producers”.

Which is why it’s good news for the new strategy that the USDA has filled its vacant position of chief scientist with someone who knows the power of words.

In fact, Sam Clovis, the new chief scientist, is not actually a scientist of the kind that does science, or has degrees in science, but instead formerly served in the demanding task of rightwing radio host (where he pointed out that followers of former president Obama were “Maoists”). He has actually used the words “climate change” in the past, but only to dismiss it as “junk science”.

Under his guidance the new policy sh




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ex- ... -1.3394846

Ex-Rikers inmate sexually assaulted by jail officer reads poem at his sentencing: ‘I pray I stop having nightmares


Tuesday, August 8, 2017, 6:08 PM







https://www.muckrock.com

CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the ‘80s Part 1
by Emma Best
August 08, 2017
During the ’80s, CIA’s efforts to shut down the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) access to the Agency not only went on unchecked, but reached a new level of success when the Agency convinced Congress to further consolidate Oversight within the intelligence committees. Not only did this nearly cut the GAO out entirely, but it allowed the CIA to spread its exemption to other agencies eager to avoid an audit.
Read More



http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

L.A. County to pay $1.5 million to settle wrongful-death lawsuit in 2015 shooting



http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html


Should the LAPD use drones? Here's what's behind the heated debate


http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

Former Kern Co. Sheriff's deputies avoid prison for selling marijuana seized in drug raids





https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... nford-epa/


Collapse at Hanford Nuclear Reservation preceded by years of creeping radioactive rot
by Caitlin Russell
August 08, 2017
These days the Hanford Nuclear Reservation has the dubious distinction of being the “most contaminated place in America,” with about 53 million gallons of toxic waste stored at the sprawling 586 square mile facility. While the recent tunnel collapse is the most severe incident yet at the site, inspection reports released by the Environmental Protection Agency through FOIA reveal a history of slow-burning decrepitude at the nuclear waste dump.



https://robertscribbler.com/2017/08/08/ ... now-about/



Denying the Storm: Climate Change Report Findings the Trump Administration Doesn’t Want You to Know About


by robertscribbler
Yesterday, the New York Times published the final draft of a broad-based U.S. climate change report. And given the fact that the Trump Administration, brimming with politically-contrived climate change denial, is still pushing full steam toward a reckless withdraw from the Paris Climate Summit, we're pretty confident that it's hot information they don't want you to get your hands on.

The report carries with it a monumental scientific gravitas. A level of credibility that Trump, even in his wildest fantasies, couldn't hope to achieve. It includes a culmination of research coming from thousands of peer-reviewed studies resulting in the accumulated work of tens of thousands of scientists. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) served as the lead government agency conducting the report. Representatives from three other federal agencies joined with NOAA along with a team of 54 scientist authors and reviewers drawing from both public and private sector institutional knowledge in compiling the report.

The 673 page report represents a massive body of the latest scientific findings on climate change. It includes numerous key advances in understanding which we will take a shot at briefly highlighting for you here.

Humans Are the Primary Cause of Warming by a Huge Margin

The key finding of the report is that humans are causing the Earth to warm very rapidly. The study noted a 95 to 100 percent likelihood that human activity produced the approximate 0.85 C warming since the mid 20th Century and the 0.7 C warming since 1986. For the U.S., the report finds that recent decades have been warmer than any time within the last 1500 years. Meanwhile, it forecasts that future decades will at least be the warmest experienced in tens of thousands to millions of years.



(Tens of thousands of climate scientists agree -- the considerable warming trend we've seen since the 1880s has been caused by human emissions. Image source: Climate Report.)

The report goes on to state that there is no convincing line of scientific evidence that provides a cause for this warming other than human emissions. That the increasingly accurate observations of solar and volcanic activity reveal only very minor nudges to the climate system compared to the vast heat-trapping influence of human-emitted greenhouse gasses. Meanwhile, though natural variability influences like El Nino and La Nina have effects on climate over months and years, the global impact of these natural sources greatly diminish over the course of the decades long warming regime that is now well established.

Future Warming is Locked in, But it Can be Dramatically Reduced by Cutting Carbon Emissions

Overall, the future isn't looking too good. Because of past and current human emissions (coal, oil, and gas burning), the report finds that global climate change is projected to continue throughout this Century and beyond. Rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study, were needed to have a chance of limiting warming to 2 C this Century. But the study found that even an immediate stabilization at present levels of atmospheric greenhouse gasses by ceasing present emissions would result in 0.6 C additional warming compared to recent decades. Longer term, the study points to a necessity that atmospheric CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gasses fall below present levels to meet the goals of preventing 2 C warming over the long term.



Continued emissions result in considerably more warming, according to the study, with temperatures hitting as high as 5 C or more above 1901 to 1960 averages if policies like Trump's result in renewed increases in fossil fuel burning. What this means is that we can considerably limit the amount of damage caused by human-forced climate change if we rapidly cut emissions in the near term. But if we fail to do that, and Trump is leading us down this more dangerous path by killing the Clean Power Plan and backing out of the Paris Climate Summit, then temperatures will rise into extraordinarily hot and harmful ranges.

The study finds with high confidence that we presently remain on the higher emissions scenario pathways excepting a pause in emissions increases during 2014 and 2015. The study also finds that present rates of greenhouse gas emissions reductions are not yet in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Accord.

Extreme Weather is Becoming More Common and More Attributable to Human Caused Climate Change

Perhaps the most important new takeaway from the report is a developing clearer view of the impact of present warming on severe weather events. The report finds that many temperature and precipitation extremes are becoming more common. That the number of high temperature records over the past twenty years greatly exceeds the number of low temperature records. And that heavy precipitation events have increased in both frequency and intensity. Much evidence has been found for a human-caused influence on soil moisture deficits due to evaporation that leads to more rapid drought intensification. And the incidence of large fires in the Western United States has increased significantly since the 1980s and is expected to increase further.



The study also finds that Northern Hemisphere snow cover and water held in snow has declined. That there has been a decrease in snowstorm frequency along the southern margins of snowy areas. That the Arctic is losing more than 3.5 percent of its sea ice coverage every decade and that September sea ice extent is declining by more than 10 percent per decade. That Arctic land ice losses are also accelerating. It notes a contested scientific linkage between the increased severity of winter storms and a rapid observed warming in the Arctic. The study also identifies changes in tornado frequency and notes a possible linkage between thunderstorm wind intensity, increased convection, hail and climate change. Moreover, the study finds a global intensification of thunderstorms overall as the world has warmed. Tropical cyclone peak intensity is expected to ramp up even as typical cyclone formation regimes are altered.

Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that the study identifies an emerging understanding that human-caused climate change is starting to affect larger natural variability based systems like El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the North Pacific Oscillation, the Pacific North American Pattern, the Jet Stream, the size of the Tropics, atmospheric circulation patterns, rivers of moisture and storm tracks to varying degrees and with varying degrees of certainty or uncertainty. These systems not only play a major role in present global weather patterns, but our understanding of how they operate is also critical to our ability to predict weather. So climate change based alterations in these larger systems creates higher levels of uncertainty with regards to extreme weather risks.

The key takeaway of all this being that:

Some extremes have already become more frequent, intense, or of longer duration, and many extremes are expected to increase or worsen, presenting substantial challenges for built, agricultural, and natural systems.

Harmful Impacts to Oceans are on the Rise

Oceans, another key aspect of the health of the Earth's life support system, according to the study, are warming, rising, becoming more acidic, and risk becoming stratified as they lose oxygen.



The study found that the oceans have absorbed 93 percent of the excess heat produced by human greenhouse gas emissions. That this added heat is having a number of serious effects. For one, the rate of sea level rise was found to be faster than at any time in the past 2,800 years. That end Century projections for sea level rise are heavily dependent on future emissions and range from 1 to 8 feet in the study.

The study finds that even present rates of sea level rise have resulted in significant increases in the incidence of coastal flooding. That tidal flooding events has multiplied by 5-10 times the rate observed in the 1960s overall and that the vulnerable Atlantic and Gulf coasts have seen an increase in tidal flooding that is now 25 times times 1960s values due to warming-related sea level rise. As sea level rise accelerates this Century, flooding is expected to considerably worsen -- with the most damaging effects happening alongside the highest levels of possible future greenhouse gas emissions. The study also identified potentially compounding effects from possibly worsening Atlantic storms and heavier coastal rainfall events.



Ocean warming and increasing glacial outflows also have a potential to effect ocean overturning circulation in the upper middle latitudes. Of particular interest is the possible disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) this Century. Recent unconfirmed scientific observation has already pointed to some impacts to AMOC due to warming during recent years. But the report notes that it is presently difficult to validate these observations. Disruption to AMOC would have a considerable impact on North Atlantic weather patterns. It would also reduce both ocean carbon and heat uptake due to a more stratified and less well mixed ocean system. The study identifies a weakening of AMOC of between 12 and 54 percent under worst-case greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.

As risks of ocean stratification risks mount, acidification of the world's waters is rapidly increasing. Atmospheric carbon dioxide rising above 400 parts per million was found to worsen detrimental effects by increasing ocean acidity levels. The study found that the rate of ocean acidification increase was unparalleled in the past 66 million years at least. That higher rates of fossil fuel burning and greenhouse gas emissions would result in another doubling or more of ocean acidity by the end of this Century.

Heating, stratifying, and acidic oceans are also steadily losing oxygen. The study finds that the amount of oxygen held in the oceans is falling coincident with warming. The study identifies a declining ocean oxygen content at intermediate depths and major losses in oxygen in inland seas, estuaries, along coasts, and in parts of the open ocean. Lower oxygen means more ocean dead zones and more toxic anaerobic microbial blooms. Overall ocean oxygen content is expected to fall by 3.5 percent under worst case warming and fossil fuel emissions scenarios by 2100.

Serious Risk of Unanticipated Changes

The level of evidence provided by the study that humans are changing the climate and that these changes are increasingly harmful is mountainous. And this base fact alone is reason enough for a climate change denying Trump Administration to try and bury its findings. But it is perhaps the study's own admitted uncertainty over future risks that reveals how reckless Trump's combined denial of climate change and doubling down on fossil fuel based emissions has ultimately become.



The study itself is based on physical model and consensus science findings. This lends weight to the evidence it has provided in that it is highly qualified. However, the study responsibly indicates the potential weak points of model based consensus studies. Models are notably less able to duplicate higher paleoclimate levels of warming -- indicating an increased likelihood that rates of warming will be more intense than expected and a reduced likelihood that warming will be less intense than expected. The study also cautions that there is another limitation to the ultimate accuracy of model predictions in that models themselves are unable to capture what it calls critical threshold and compound events.

Compound events are described as multiple extreme climate change events occurring at the same time to generate an unanticipated level of harmful disruption. A good example of a compound event is extreme heat risking injury or loss of life, extreme drought harming crops and water supplies in the same region, and both coinciding with a severe or unprecedented wildfire outbreak. Critical threshold events occur when the climate system crosses a tipping point and then radically adjusts to a new climate state. A worrisome critical threshold event is crossing a tipping point in which significant carbon feedbacks from the Earth System occur -- locking in more extreme warming and generating periods in which global temperatures more rapidly spike. Both of these kinds of events have the potential to produce consequences that are difficult or impossible to manage. And the chance of such catastrophic events occurring increases along with higher rates of fossil fuel burning and coinciding higher levels of warming.

The precautionary principle alone demands that we do our best to avoid increasing these uncertain risks even as we steer away from the much more certain harms like sea level rise and generally increasing extreme weather. The science has again given us a more clear, more refined, gift in the form of this very valuable provision of foresight. And yet the current U.S. executive leadership is bound and determined to obstinately ignore or it, cast doubt on it, and do everything possible to cloud the clear and priceless message being sent to us by an army of selfless and dedicated climate researchers.

Links:

Scientists Fear Trump Will Dismiss Blunt Climate Report

Climate Science Special Report

Images taken directly from the report

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ore-deadly


It's a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly
Michael E Mann


Hurricane Harvey Opinion
It's a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly
Michael E Mann
We can’t say that Hurricane Harvey was caused by climate change. But it was certainly worsened by it
Tropical storm Harvey – live updates

Monday 28 August 2017 10.07 EDT Last modified on Monday 28 August 2017 10.26 EDT

What can we say about the role of climate change in the unprecedented disaster that is unfolding in Houston with Hurricane Harvey? There are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding.


What we know so far about tropical storm Harvey
Read more
Sea level rise attributable to climate change – some of which is due to coastal subsidence caused by human disturbance such as oil drilling – is more than half a foot (15cm) over the past few decades (see here for a decent discussion). That means the storm surge was half a foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more flood
In addition to that, sea surface temperatures in the region have risen about 0.5C (close to 1F) over the past few decades from roughly 30C (86F) to 30.5C (87F), which contributed to the very warm sea surface temperatures (30.5-31C, or 87-88F).

There is a simple thermodynamic relationship known as the Clausius-Clapeyron equation that tells us there is a roughly 3% increase in average atmospheric moisture content for each 0.5C of warming. Sea surface temperatures in the area where Harvey intensified were 0.5-1C warmer than current-day average temperatures, which translates to 1-1.5C warmer than “average” temperatures a few decades ago. That means 3-5% more moisture in the atmosphere.

That large amount of moisture creates the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding. The combination of coastal flooding and heavy rainfall is responsible for the devastating flooding that Houston is experiencing.

Not only are the surface waters of the Gulf of Mexico unusually warm right now, but there is a deep layer of warm water that Harvey was able to feed upon when it intensified at near record pace as it neared the coast. Human-caused warming is penetrating down into the ocean. It’s creating deeper layers of warm water in the Gulf and elsewhere.

Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge. (As an example of how this works, we have shown that climate change has led to a dramatic increase in storm surge risk in New York City, making devastating events like Hurricane Sandy more likely.)

Finally, the more tenuous but potentially relevant climate factors: part of what has made Harvey such a devastating storm is the way it has stalled near the coast. It continues to pummel Houston and surrounding regions with a seemingly endless deluge, which will likely top out at nearly 4ft (1.22m) of rainfall over a days-long period before it is done.


Michael E Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center and author of three books, including The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars, Dire Predictions, and The Madhouse Effect.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ore-deadly




https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/08/25/real- ... fake-news/



PODCAST
AUGUST 25, 2017 | JEFF SCHECHTMAN


A REAL HOME OF REAL FAKE NEWS
The Under-the-Radar Media Company Trump Loves

Chris Ripley, Sinclair Broadcasting Group
Chris Ripley, CEO and President, Sinclair Broadcasting Group. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from ETC-USC / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Lately, the media is just as much in the news as it is covering the news. Most of it we see. The power of Fox and Friends. The daily scoops from The New York Times and Washington Post. Sean Hannity and his talk-radio acolytes, the progressive mantra of MSNBC.

But one outlet is more pervasive than all these. Its 173 television stations, soon to be 216, broadcast into the living rooms of three-quarters of American homes. Its stations feed a daily diet of Trumpisms. Former FCC Chairman Michael Copps, has called it “the most dangerous company most people have never heard of.”

How did it get so powerful? Who runs it? And why, during the 2016 campaign, did it do 15 interviews with Donald Trump and zero with Hillary Clinton?

These are just a few of the questions in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, as Jeff Schechtman talks to journalist Lucia Graves. Graves is a US correspondent for The Guardian who has looked deeply into Sinclair and whose article This is Sinclair, “the most dangerous US Company you never heard of,” appears in the August 17th issue of The Guardian.


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Full Text Transcript:

As a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. We try to ensure that these transcripts do not include errors. However, due to a constraint of resources, we are not always able to proofread them as closely as we would like and hope that you will excuse any errors that slipped through.

Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to Radio WhoWhatWhy. I’m Jeff Schechtman. Mostly as a result of the cacophony of news about the media itself, we know who the players are. The blonde ambition of Fox, the blaring at war posture of Breitbart, Talk Radio and its collection of Hannity acolytes, the progressive voice of MSNBC, and the renewed investigative journalism of The Washington Post and The New York Times.
However, the company you may not know is the one that below the radar may be the most insidious, most effective and most in service of the current administration. Sinclair Broadcasting controls 173 local television stations and is looking to buy 43 more. If it does it will have, to mix metaphors, its right wing tentacles into three quarters of the living rooms of America.
Today, we’re going to focus on Sinclair with my guest, Lucia Graves. She’s a US columnist for the Guardian. She’s previously been a staff correspondent for the National Journal, and a staff reporter at The Huffington Post. It is my pleasure to welcome Lucia Graves here to talk about her article in The Guardian: This is Sinclair, “the most dangerous US company you’ve never heard of.”
Lucia, thanks so much for joining us.
Lucia Graves: Thanks so much for having me today.
Jeff Schechtman: Great to have you here. First of all, tell us a little bit about the history of Sinclair. Where did this company come from? Where did it get started?
Lucia Graves: Well, it’s headquartered just outside Baltimore and it was founded under another name in ’71, actually, but it wasn’t until more recently that it became sort of a political point of interest. The founder was Julian Sinclair Smith and he was described as the patriarch of the Smith family, which now owns Sinclair, and he was more of a technical person. He started out in radio and then sort of gradually shifted to television, but his four sons, who’ve taken over the business, have taken it in a more sort of explicitly political direction.
Jeff Schechtman: And it has been, certainly of late, a blatantly political direction, even more so in many ways than Fox and what we’ve seen there in terms of it’s really insisting that it’s message get out through its local stations.
Lucia Graves: Yeah, well I think one of the concerns that a lot of people have is the apparent relationship it has with Trump’s FCC, the regulatory body for media in the US. Since Trump took office, the head of the FCC has made a number of moves that make it easier for Sinclair to expand its reach to 72 percent of American households, which is twice the number of households that used to previously be legal, but they’ve relaxed regulations to make it possible for Sinclair to move forward with this big merger. And they haven’t signed off. There’s still an approval process that needs to take place, but people expect that the FCC is working hand in hand with Sinclair and I think that most people believe it’ll be approved.
Jeff Schechtman: Talk a little bit about these 10-minute political commentaries that Sinclair has made their local stations run that you talk about in your article.
Lucia Graves: Well, so one of the reasons people don’t know what Sinclair is is because, unlike the sort of big national syndicates like Fox or ABC, Sinclair is partners with local news stations, so it will show up just as your local NBC affiliate or ABC affiliate, whatever the syndicate is, but there are trademark elements of Sinclair stations, and one of them is what you mentioned: they must run 10-minute political commentary segments. And April Sinclair hired Boris Epshteyn, who’s a former campaign spokesman for Donald Trump and works in the White House Press Office, so I think it’s not surprising that a lot of these 10-minute commentary segments sound a lot like Trump’s messaging from the White House and that they’re beamed into 72 percent of American households through the television.
The power of that is pretty disturbing, especially given the war on media that Trump has waged since taking office. This will essentially allow him to not cooperate with the more traditional outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post because he can go around them. His former spokesman has the 10-minute political segments that just get beamed into people’s televisions, so it really changes the incentive for him.
Jeff Schechtman: It’s interesting that this also started during the campaign when the Sinclair stations did numerous interviews with Trump and zero interviews with Clinton.
Lucia Graves: Yeah, that was a cause for concern with a lot of people. David Smith has said, the main brother in charge, he was CEO for almost 30 years until stepping down to a sort of more senior advisory role. Since Sinclair’s been in the limelight these last couple of months, he likes to keep a low profile.
Jeff Schechtman: To what extent do you think that Sinclair is going to be able to continue to keep this low profile? There seems to be more attention focused on it lately, and you mentioned in your Guardian story that there’s suddenly some interest in congress in what Sinclair has been doing and the lax FCC regulatory aspect of it.
Lucia Graves: Well, the kind of reach that Sinclair is going to have and the blatant way that it’s embraced Trump’s messaging, both through television and there’s recent online acquisition of the new site Circa, means that it is going to be a lot more in the spotlight.
During the campaign when, as you mentioned, it gave 15 interviews to Donald Trump and zero to Hilary Clinton and things like that, it was sort of out shown, I would say, by Fox news and people. Fox news is branded as a conservative outlet, people know what that is and Murdoch, the Chairman of Fox News, has been in the limelight for decades, so I think there was a lot more interest at the time around Fox. But given, I think, Trump’s increasing favoritism towards Sinclair and the huge $3.9 billion merger, that’s going to be changing very rapidly.
Jeff Schechtman: You mentioned Circa a few moments ago, this website that Sinclair is in the process of purchasing, or I guess has purchased. Talk a little bit about what that is and what do you think they hope to do with it.
Lucia Graves: Well, Circa is one of the relatively recent additions to their portfolio and it started out as a mobile news app. It was out of Silicon Valley; had nothing to do with Sinclair, the Smith brothers who own Sinclair. But they acquired it ostensibly because for the innovative things it was doing with mobile applications, but it’s really just being used as a very traditional news site online with these short articles. They don’t even necessarily have a byline, an author byline on them, so it’ll just say “by Circa staff.”
Some of the stories read kind of like an aggregated BuzzFeed article, you know, just not very much content kind of pulling from the internet, and some of them have sort of a pro-Trump bent, so I think the perception is that this is going to be the new Breitbart for him, sort of a favored website that he can leak things to that he doesn’t want to give to The Times or The Post or more outlets with real trained reporters.
Another thing that happened was with The Tribune merger, ahead of the Tribune merger, Tribune got rid of some of its properties that it had been building with investigative journalists and feature writers. They just, I think in August, started staffing up for a new investigative website at Tribune, and as soon as it became apparent, before it was announced, but as soon as it became apparent the Tribune was going to be acquired by Sinclair, they started firing those journalists or sort of like laying off everyone who was associated with that new investigative hard-hitting team and I think in favor of things like Circa, which is the model that Sinclair likes.
Jeff Schechtman: Given how big Sinclair is, how many people work there, how many employees they have that have come from a diverse background, what does your reporting tell you in terms of any potential pushback within Sinclair, within the organization among employees to its hard right agenda?
Lucia Graves: Well, this is something that’s been apparent, going on for some time. I mean, I think that even 15 years ago, people graduating from journalism school would be told don’t go to work for Sinclair. They pay people terribly, they get rid of veteran reporters. It was just seen as a cheap unkind employer and not a place to go if you wanted to have real experience, and since then the political agenda has become part of that concern.
There were some good reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post on what has happened with Sinclair taking over local affiliate stations in Washington, DC and also in Washington State, and the sort of concerns that veteran reporters had there at the initial transfer of power and then also how quickly they shed all of their talent, both because more senior experienced reporters are expensive or more expensive than people just out of college. But also because I think there’s a perception that they might have a better understanding of what constitutes real journalism and make trouble for Sinclair when they try to push these 10-minute segments and that kind of thing.
Jeff Schechtman: One of the other rules that Sinclair is trying to get eliminated, which is something that the FCC has had as a rule for a long time, is this requirement that local news stations actually have a local studio in the community that they broadcast from. Talk a little bit about that.
Lucia Graves: Yeah, so in addition to paving the way for Sinclair’s merger, the FCC is proposing that one of its most fundamental rules that requires you having an actual physical studio where you’re doing the broadcasting in order to be considered a local news studio and treated with what are frankly federal protections for local news, that that be eliminated which will make it possible for Sinclair to do a lot more nationally pushed segments from its headquarters.
One of the reasons you don’t hear the name Sinclair is because it’s supposed to be something that’s produced. It’s supposed to be the news you’re watching is produced by a local studio by local journalists who are embedded in the community and who you have come to know, but under the new federal guidelines that they are changing, that may very well no longer be the case.
And also it may not even be apparent that that’s changing because Sinclair doesn’t say anywhere on the station that it’s Sinclair. You just may the faces of your local newscasters change and you may see more of the segments, but viewers won’t actually know that this is happening, necessarily.
Jeff Schechtman: Tell us a little bit about what went on with the Sinclair station in Montana during the recent special election, during the recent special congressional election up there, where there was this last minute kerfuffle, this fight between a reporter and one of the candidates.
Lucia Graves: I’m glad you asked about that. That’s a interesting case. So, this was my colleague, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, who works in the DC office with me, covering US congressional candidate Greg Gianforte’s election in Montana. Ben, my colleague, was asking him a question about the GOP health care bill and the candidate got agitated and assaulted him, threw him on the ground. And Ben had a recording of all of this that was being aired nationally on The Today Show, and it was hands down the biggest political story in the state that night.
However, the local NBC affiliate, which had recently been bought by Sinclair, refused to air Jacob’s audio recording of the incident in which he is assaulted, and it’s clear from the recording what’s happening. He sort of narrates it as it’s occurring. It’s an NBC affiliate station, even though it’s owned by Sinclair, and NBC executives in New York were pretty irate to not have the biggest political story of the day, at a very sensitive time, coming right before the election.
I actually was able to read the email exchange between the local producer in Montana and NBC executives in New York, and the news director there said things like, “Oh well, The Guardian is a liberal outlet. It can’t be trusted.” I mean, never mind that NBC is also branded as a liberal outlet, and this is one of the differences between major national outlets and Sinclair, which purports to have no political outlook whatsoever, even though to look at the organization and the donations of the people who run it, that’s clearly not true.
So anyways, they refused to run the audio and Greg Gianforte, who’s now in congress, went on to win the election the following day. And another interesting detail here is I called the local news producer who made this decision and asked her if it was influenced by Sinclair executives, and they had denied that it was influenced by Sinclair and they also know that they were in transition, having been bought by Sinclair, but that it wasn’t finalized at that point and made a lot of denials to that effect.
But the day after, there was a police report filed on my colleague’s assault. Fred Smith, the Vice President of Sinclair, donated $1,000 to Greg Gianforte. He’s, at this point, making national headlines all over the country for having assaulted a reporter, so for a news executive to donate to a candidate after that I think sends a very clear message that is frankly hostile to journalism.
Jeff Schechtman: Is Sinclair concerned that there will be eventually or might be pushback from its various suppliers from the NBCs of the world and the CBS’s of the world, the companies that supply the content for these local stations?
Lucia Graves: Yeah, you know, that’s a great question. It’s a business question too, obviously as well as a political question, and sort of a journalistic integrity question. So far, the main source of that kind of push back that I’m aware of is Rupert Murdoch saying that he may pull his Fox affiliate stations from Sinclair and go with a lesser known company with less influence, but I think the best seen is sort of that threat and he hasn’t moved forward with that at this point. I think it’s because Sinclair is seen as being a threat, potentially, to Murdoch’s conservative news empire, so it would be more of a business consideration, I think, than anything about journalistic integrity that is at this point moving people.
Jeff Schechtman: Have any of the other companies, NBC, or any of the others really talked about pushing back on this and pulling their programming, their entertainment programming from Sinclair stations?
Lucia Graves: At this point I have not heard anything to that effect, no. NBC did push back around this particular incident in Montana, sort of asking why it wasn’t being covered, and I know there are other examples of case by case things like that, but that would be a major financial decision with a lot of business implications for the company, so at a time when Sinclair is immensely powerful and positioned to become more powerful still, and with that expanded reach comes more clout, I think it’s going to be harder than ever for people to say no to Sinclair.
Jeff Schechtman: Lucia Graves, her article in The Guardian is This is Sinclair, “the most dangerous US company you’ve never heard of.”
Lucia, thank you so much for spending time with us here on Radio WhoWhatWhy.
Lucia Graves: Thank you so much for having me today.
Jeff Schechtman: Thank you.
Thank you for listening and joining us here on Radio WhoWhatWhy.org. I hope you join us next week for another Radio WhoWhatWhy.org podcast. I’m Jeff Schechtman.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... ist-arrest

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... al-warming

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... 40000-fine

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https://www.muckrock.com/foi/virginia-1 ... ars-36073/


Dear Dr. Zywicki:

Under the The Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), located § 2.2-3700 et seq. of the Code of Virginia, we are requesting access to attendance information for judges at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School’s Law and Economics Center’s events, conferences, and seminars. Specifically we are seeking the following information:

1) Exact day, month, year, and conference for the judge’s attendance; 2) Syllabi for each conference; 3) Date of letter of judge’s application to the conferences.

We request that the information we seek be provided in electronic format, and I would like to receive it by e-mail, through a digital dropbox, or on a CD-ROM.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
From: Leslie A Loucks
05/04/2017
Subject: FW: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Good Morning,
This is in response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by email dated May 3, 2017. The Code of Virginia limits the application of FOIA in §2.2-3704. A. to citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia, representatives of newspapers and magazines with circulation in the Commonwealth, and representatives of radio and television stations broadcasting in or into the Commonwealth. As our primary obligation is to serve the good people of Virginia, we must respectfully decline your request.

[GMUGrn] Office of University Counsel
Leslie Loucks
Legal Assistant
George Mason University
4400 University Dr., MS2A3
Fairfax, VA 22030
Phone: (703) 993-3575

image001

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From: George Mason University
05/17/2017
Subject: None
Good morning Joseph,

I apologize, I had thought my substitutes had gotten back to you while I was away.

I received this response from the Law School when I asked about this request:
The LEC has been running programs at George Mason University since 1986. Prior to 2010, records were not even kept electronically. This would entail thousands of hours of work.

Therefore, if you would like to go forward with your cost as written, it will cost over $1,000. Because the cost estimate is over $200, I would require a deposit in the full amount of the estimate, pursuant to Virginia Code § 2.2-3704 (H), before proceeding with your request.

We did respond to a previous request (see attached request from this February) from ProPublica for a list of judges who attended events at the LEC as follows:

“For the years 2010 through 2016, there are 70 files (one for each event during that time at which the Center hosted state or federal judges), each with a complete list of the judges who attended the event, as well as the name and date of the event. The Center has not held a judges event in 2017, so there are no responsive documents for this year.
The Law & Economics Center informs me that their records are not very good for years prior to 2010, when there was a leadership change at the Center: there is a comprehensive list of all the judges who attended a Law & Economics Center event from 1976 through and including 2009. But this list does not specify which events the judges attended, and the Center does not have any records that would allow them to identify the attendance at specific events during that time period. In addition, please note that this list includes not only judges who attended programs sponsored and hosted by the Law & Economics Center, but also includes judges who participated in programs hosted by other organizations (such as a state bar association) where the Law & Economics Center sponsored and/or hosted only a small portion of the overall event – such as a workshop or panel presentation. The list does not distinguish between the two types of participation.”

Since we have already produced these records for ProPublica, we can send them to you without cost.

Please let me know if you would like to proceed with your request as written, in which case I will ask the Law School for a more detailed cost estimate, and/or if you would like to receive the ProPublica response without charge.

Regards,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Woodley, J.D.
FOIA Compliance Officer
George Mason University
703-993-5115
From: MuckRock
05/31/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Hello Elizabeth,

Thanks so much for your letter. I'm wondering whether you might be able to provide some clarification on this request, because the proposed estimate would seem to make complete fulfillment of this request cost prohibitive. Would you be able to provide a revised estimate to estimate provision of materials that are already electronically held? Could you also please give a sense of how the non-digitized materials are kept, and would it be possible to inspect them in-person before selecting which should be paid for and copied?

Thanks so much for your time and help.
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
06/09/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Good morning Joseph,

I contacted the Law School again with your request for clarification and received the following information from the LEC:

The LEC has been able to arrange access to an old electronic archive of LEC documents that date back to the first judges program held after the LEC relocated to George Mason University in 1986. The most recent documents appear to be from 2007 or so. My preliminary search shows that we have records that include the name and dates of each program, a list of judges who attended each program, and a course outline or agenda for most of the programs. I estimate there are between 400 and 700 responsive documents, and that it’ll take one of my program assistants eight to twelve hours to pull copies of them, plus time for me to inspect the material to ensure all responsive documents have been produced.

There still appears to be a gap in our records from late 2007 through early 2010. If any responsive records from that time are contained in the electronic archive, we will produce them.

From the January and February 2017 FOIA requests, I have already gathered a large portion of the documents beginning in 2010 through 2017. (Since the last request, though, we have held three programs for judges, so responsive documents for those would have to be added to the compilation.) That said, the requester is asking for two additional bits of information that will have to be searched for and copied de novo: (1) information regarding the curriculum for each of the judicial programs and (2) the date on which every judge applied to attend each program. Producing responsive records regarding the curriculum won’t be terribly difficult. I would estimate somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to sixteen hours’ time. However, we do not have records of the application date for programs prior to February 2013. Applications for programs earlier than 2013 were generally made by completing and mailing in a postcard-size form or by telephone communication. None of those records appear to have been kept, as there didn’t seem to be any reason for doing so.

Beginning in 2013, we started using an online registration portal for judges programs. However, the date on which an application was submitted was not expressly stored, though it appears that it was captured by the software. To gather the information for the requestor, I will have to have a program assistant examine the electronic record of every judge who’s attended an LEC program since February 2013 and record the application dates individually. With approximately 2,150 records that have to be visually inspected, that could easily take 100 to 140 hours or more.

Regarding the question about non-digitized information: Nearly all the documents responsive to this request are available in digital format (Much of that work was completed in fulfillment of the January and February 2017 FOIA requests.) The only non-digitized records that may need to be searched would be physical copies of the program booklets for events held between 2010 and 2015. But even for those years, we have electronic copies of the syllabus or agenda for the majority of events.

In total, we’re looking at the following estimated number of hours to prepare all the documents responsive to this request:

• Responsive records for the period 1986 through 2007: 8 to 12 hours of a program assistant’s time at $30.79 per hour, and approximately 2 to 4 hours of my time at $108.05 per hour.
• Responsive records for the period 2010 through 2017 (excluding the date judges applied to attend each program): 10 to 16 hours of a program assistant’s time at $30.79 per hour, and approximately 4 to 6 hours of my time at $108.05 per hour.
• A record of the date on which judges applied to attend programs from February 2003 through 2017: at least 100 to 140 hours of a program assistant’s time at $30.79 per hour, and approximately 10 to 20 hours of my time at $108.05 per hour.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this information, and please let me know how you would like to proceed with this request.
Regards,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Woodley, J.D.
FOIA Compliance Officer
George Mason University
703-993-5115

~WRD000

Download
From: Peter Gehred
07/24/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Hi Elizabeth,

Thank you for your thorough response.

Regarding these records: "• Responsive records for the period 1986 through 2007: 8 to 12 hours of a program assistant’s time at $30.79 per hour, and approximately 2 to 4 hours of my time at $108.05 per hour." We would like to provide the funds to supply these records. Once we have those records, we will have a better idea of how or whether we want to proceed on additional years.

Let us know how to arrange payment, and we look forward to working with you to obtain these records.

Best regards,
Peter
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
07/24/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Hello Joseph,

Since the estimated cost of your revised request is over $200, we would require a deposit in the full amount of the lowest estimate if you would like us to continue to process your request. (Virginia Code § 2.2-3704 (H))

Therefore, if you would like Mason to respond to this portion your FOIA request, please send a check in the amount of $462.42 (the lowest estimate for the records you have requested) made out to George Mason University, to:

George Mason University
Attn. Elizabeth Woodley, MSN 2C2
4400 University Dr.
Fairfax, VA 22030

Once we receive your deposit, we will begin the FOIA response. If the response ends up costing greater or less than this amount, we will bill you or refund you the difference.

Please let me know if you have questions about this request or George Mason University’s process.
Regards,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Woodley, J.D.
FOIA Compliance Officer
George Mason University
703-993-5115
From: MuckRock
07/26/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Hello Ms. Woodley,

Thank you very much for your help. We are happy to provide the full deposit for the materials. However, due to matters of record keeping on our end, we're hoping that you could please provide an invoice addressed in the following manner:

Fondation Jean-Jacques Laffont
21 allée de Brienne
31015 Toulouse Cedex 6, France

It would be greatly appreciated. Once the official invoice is ready, I'll provide payment accordingly.

Thanks so much for your help.
From: Peter Gehred
07/31/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
To Clarify:
The invoice can easily be e-mailed to the following e-mail addresses:
Send the invoice to : Cynthia Diaz <cynthia.diaz@tse-fr.eu> or Celine Claustre <celine.claustre@tse-fr.eu>
And make sure to CC daniel.li.chen@gmail.com.

Thank you!
From: MuckRock.com
08/15/2017
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/18/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Good afternoon,

Please forgive the delay on this update, I am working on several FOIA requests this week. I have been corresponding with Daniel Chen (copied) about the deposit for this request. I have not yet received the deposit check, but I have received the response from the LEC and I will be able to send it as soon as I receive the deposit. I asked the LEC to begin gathering their response when Daniel confirmed that he had sent the check. Please let me know if you have further questions about this response.
Regards,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Woodley, J.D.
FOIA Compliance Officer
George Mason University
703-993-5115

~WRD000

Download
From: Daniel Chen
08/19/2017
Subject: Re: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
*Dear Elizabeth,*

*I am sorry to know that you have not received my check yet. According to
the bank it was delivered to you by August 10, 2017. This is the 3rd time
that I am sending the confirmation from my Fidelity account:*

[image: Inline image 1]

[image: Inline image 3]

*Will you kindly ask GMU if they had received a check to you?*

*Many thanks,*
*Daniel*

Screen Shot 2017-08-18 at 10.46.53 PM

Download

~WRD000

Download

Screen Shot 2017-08-18 at 11.23.24 PM

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Good morning all,

I have reached out to our mailroom and not received a response. I believe they are undergoing a renovation and deliveries may have been delayed or mis-sent accordingly. Therefore, I will assume that the check has been received and is making its way to me and will send the records. They will come in 15 different emails due to the large size of the files involved. I believe that no records have been redacted or withheld from this request. Let me know if you do not receive an email (they will be numbered 1-15) or if you are not able to open any attached files.
Regards,

Elizabeth

image002

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image003

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image001

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From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 1 of 15
Here is part 1

Part 1

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 2 of 15
Here is part 2.

Part 2

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 3 of 15
Here is part 3.

Part 3

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 4 of 15
Here is part 4.

Part 4

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 5 of 15
Here is part 5.

Part 5

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 6 of 15
Here is part 6.

Part 6

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 7 of 15
Here is part 7.

Part 7

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 8 of 15
Here is part 8.

Part 8

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 9 of 15
Here is part 9.

Part 9

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 10 of 15
Here is part 10.

Part 10

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 11 of 15
Here is part 11.

Part 11

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 12 of 15
Here is part 12.

Part 12

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 13 of 15
Here is part 13.

Part 13

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 14 of 15
Here is part 14.

Part 14

Download
From: Elizabeth I Woodley
08/23/2017
Subject: GMU FOIA Response 15 of 15
Here is the last part- let me know if any didn't send or won't open!

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Woodley, J.D.
FOIA Compliance Officer
George Mason University
703-993-5115

Part 15

Download
From: Daniel Chen
08/25/2017
Subject: Re: Freedom of Information Act Request: Judge Attendance at Events, Conferences, and Seminars
Dear Elizabeth,

Thank you very much for your emails numbered 1-15 with the attached files.

Hope to thank you in person at GMU or other places soon.

Have a nice weekend!
Best,
Daniel

--
http://nber.org/~dlchen/

image003

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image002

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image001

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From: Daniel Chen
08/25/2017





https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... 0-patients

German nurse suspected of murdering at least 90 patients
Police say they have found evidence that Niels Högel, who was jailed for killing two patients, murdered more with lethal drug







see link for FBI response


https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... ose-25532/

To Whom It May Concern:

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:

Myles Joseph Ambrose (July 21, 1926 – June 3, 2014), who was the Commissioner of Customs under president Richard M. Nixon and in January 1972 was appointed director of the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE), a drug enforcement agency tasked primarily with the US federal government aiding local drug enforcement. His death has been widely reported. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ob ... story.html

Please conduct a search of the Central Records System, including but not limited to the Electronic Surveillance (ELSUR) Indices, the Microphone Surveillance (MISUR) Indices, the Physical Surveillance (FISUR) Indices, and the Technical Surveillance (TESUR) Indices, for both main-file records and cross-reference records at FBI Headquarters, all field offices and all resident agencies. If some records may be released immediately while others require a review, I request a two-tiered release.

I am making this request as a member of the news media, and request classification as such. I have previously written on intelligence agencies such as CIA and FBI. http://andmagazine.com/us/1431865273.html

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Michael Best

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.businessinsider.com/justice- ... ice-2017-9


The Justice Department's most recent attempt to be pro-cop actually hurts police officers
The Marshall Project
Chiraag Bains, The Marshall Project
Sep. 23, 2017, 12:43 PM 1,352

Attorney General Jeff Sessions makes a statement at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. Associated Press/Susan Walsh
In January 2012, Sheriff Doug Gillespie of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sent a team to Washington, D.C. to ask the Justice Department for help. The LVMPD had been the subject of a five-part series published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal just months before.

The paper's investigation covered 20 years of shootings by the department. It concluded that many of the incidents were avoidable and accused the LVMPD of being an "insular" agency that celebrated "a hard-charging police culture while often failing to learn from its mistakes." Two weeks after the last piece ran, an LVMPD officer killed an unarmed, mentally ill, black veteran.

When the LVMPD team got to Washington, they met with the DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the department enrolled in a new program called Collaborative Reform. Through the program, COPS studied the LVMPD's use of deadly force, training, and accountability structures and provided recommendations for change. The department committed to implementing the reforms.

By the time COPS released a follow-up report two years later, police shootings were down, force investigations had become more rigorous and transparent, and officers had redoubled efforts to build trust in the community. Sheriff Gillespie said it was his proudest day in 34 years of policing.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last week he is killing the DOJ's Collaborative Reform program as part of a "course correction" that better fits his priorities. As the LVMPD example illustrates, to do so is a mistake. It may align with the Trump administration's pro-cop rhetoric, but eliminating Collaborative Reform robs police departments and the communities they serve of a resource they actually want.





https://vtdigger.org/2017/09/24/leahy-g ... ckQPdEpChC

Leahy and Grassley call for Justice Department whistleblower protections

By Elizabeth Hewitt
Sep 24 2017

Patrick Leahy, Chuck Grassley
Sen. Patrick Leahy, left, with Sen. Chuck Grassley. Photo by Jasper Craven/VTDigger

WASHINGTON — In a letter to Attorney General Jeff Session this week, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, say they are concerned that the Department of Justice has been slow to implement reforms to protect whistleblowers in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Leahy, the longest serving member of the committee, wrote that the department has not yet corrected several issues identified in a 2014 internal review.

“While the Department has taken initial steps to improve the timelines and effectiveness of its whistleblower program, it has failed to implement most of its own recommendations,” Grassl



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bla ... -1.3519816

Black detectives to sue NYPD for alleged racial discrimination
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, September 25, 2017, 10:44 AM





http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/27/us/fb ... gents.html


F.B.I. Is Accused of Intimidation By Attorneys for Hispanic Agents - NYTimes.com - The New York Times
The New York Times › 1988/08/27 › fbi...
Aug 27, 1988 - The plaintiffs' attorneys, Hugo Rodriguez and Antonio Silva, said the bureau had kept watch on them and possibly begun an investigation to discredit them. Mr. Rodriguez, who resigned from the ..





http://articles.latimes.com/1988-10-02/ ... cial-agent


Job Practices : FBI Guilty of Bias Against Latino Agents

EL PASO, Tex. — A federal judge Friday ruled that the FBI is guilty of racial discrimination in employment and promotional opportunities for its 311 Latino agents.

The 90-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Lucius Bunton, while finding generally for the minority agents, exonerated the agency on the issue of religious discrimination. It also held that the FBI did not retaliate against its Latino agents as a class for testifying against the agency in the case.

The judge, however, ruled that there was retaliation individually against Bernardo Matias (Matt) Perez, 49, the agent who originally filed the suit last year. He is the assistant special agent in charge of the El Paso FBI office.

Damages Trial Slated

"The court found a pattern and practice of discrimination in conditions of employment and promotional opportunities as to the plaintiff class," said attorney Hugo Rodriguez of Albuquerque, N.M., one of two lawyers for the plaintiffs.



Rodriguez said Perez, as an individual, prevailed on "every issue" except that of religion.

Bunton said that a trial to determine damages will be held in November in El Paso. The agents have asked for $5 million in damages and a change in procedures in the way the FBI treats its minority employees.

Bunton was in his headquarters in Midland, Tex., when the ruling was released in El Paso. The 90-page ruling, signed by Bunton in Midland Thursday, was mailed overnight to El Paso for release Friday, but a malfunction in the copying machine at the district clerk's office in El Paso delayed release of the entire ruling.

The 311 Latino FBI agents contend that they were disciplined too harshly, promoted too rarely and given unpopular assignments. The FBI maintains that since Latinos represent only 4.5% of the agency, simple mathematics has kept them from reaching the top.

Candid Testimony

About 45 Latino agents defied the FBI's unwritten rule to maintain public loyalty, offering candid, bitter testimony in the trial. Most said they feared retaliation, which the FBI vehemently said would not take place.

During the nine-day trial in August, Bunton ordered the FBI to ensure that the witnesses would be free from retaliation.

"I am intent upon being sure that the fabric of the bureau is such that there is no racist activity nor discriminatory conduct," FBI director William Sessions promised on Thursday, "regardless of the outcome of a particular lawsuit."

The suit, filed in January, 1987, contends that the FBI discriminates against Latino agents on the basis of race, religion and national origin. The ruling in favor of the agents could be a monumental embarrassment for the FBI, which is charged with protecting civil rights.

Credentials Cited

Antonio Silva, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said statistics are not the reason Latinos have not ascended to high posts in the FBI.

"These individuals are the creme de la creme , and if they cannot break down the barriers (to advancement), then the chances that other individuals with lesser credentials can do so are very slim," Silva said.

Latinos represent about 8% of the U.S. population, but only 430, or 4.5%, of the FBI's 9,597 agents are Latino. The agents, however, noted that Latinos are assigned to about 25% of the bureau's undercover work, considered an unpopular assignment.



No Latino serves in the top two grade levels of the FBI, and only one Latino--who is not a plaintiff in the suit--leads one of the FBI's 58 field offices. Only one black agent heads a field office, in Philadelphia.

Black Agent Sues

Donald Rochon, a black FBI agent now working in Philadelphia, also is suing the FBI for discrimination. A judge dismissed many of his claims, but Rochon is amending his complaint and plans to pursue his case.

Latino agent Fernando Mata, based in Miami, testified that he was told "that as a person who spoke with an accent and who had dark skin, who looked Latino, that it would be bad for me to represent the FBI."

Perez, 49, who became an FBI special agent on Sept. 16, 1963, said he was demoted from special agent in charge in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to assistant special agent in charge in Los Angeles and, once there, denied a promotion.

He maintains that the FBI has systematically discriminated against Latinos.

But John Glover, one of three executive assistant directors to Sessions and the bureau's highest-ranking black, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May at a joint appearance with Sessions that if there is a problem of racial discrimination, "It is an isolated problem."









https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ret-emails


Deloitte hit by cyber-attack revealing clients’ secret emails
Exclusive: hackers may have accessed usernames, passwords and personal details of top accountancy firm’s blue-chip clients

Monday 25 September 2017 08.00 EDT Last modified on Monday 25 September 2017 10.07 EDT

One of the world’s “big four” accountancy firms has been targeted by a sophisticated hack that compromised the confidential emails and plans of some of its blue-chip clients, the Guardian can reveal.

Deloitte, which is registered in London and has its global headquarters in New York, was the victim of a cybersecurity attack that went unnoticed for months.

One of the largest private firms in the US, which reported a record $37bn (£27.3bn) revenue last year, Deloitte provides auditing, tax consultancy and high-end cybersecurity advice to some of the world’s biggest banks, multinational companies, media enterprises, pharmaceutical firms and government agencies.

The Guardian understands Deloitte clients across all of these sectors had material in the company email system that was breached. The companies include household names as well as US government departments.

So far, six of Deloitte’s clients have been told their information was “impacted” by the hack. Deloitte’s internal review into the incident is ongoing.

The Guardian understands Deloitte discovered the hack in March this year, but it is believed the attackers may have had access to its systems since October or November 2016.

The hacker compromised the firm’s global email server through an “administrator’s account” that, in theory, gave them privileged, unrestricted “access to all areas”.

The account required only a single password and did not have “two-step“ verification, sources said.

Emails to and from Deloitte’s 244,000 staff were stored in the Azure cloud service, which was provided by Microsoft. This is Microsoft’s equivalent to Amazon Web Service and Google’s Cloud Platform.





https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ctionfront

We Charted Arctic Sea Ice for Nearly Every Day Since 1979. You’ll See a Trend.
By NADJA POPOVICH, HENRY FOUNTAIN and ADAM PEARCE SEPT. 22, 2017





What a few molecules of CO2 did to the city of Houston.

Time to take the Denali out for a spin, eh?



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ery-effort

Houston after Harvey: city faces huge hurdle to recovery
Texas region is grappling with the slow grind of bureaucracy, the urgent need to clear detritus and the natural desperation to return quickly to normal life
by Tom Dart in Houston




also see


https://www.boston.com/news/national-ne ... uerto-rico

Hurricane’s impact: ‘There will be no food in Puerto Rico’





https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/09/24/o ... evelopment

Ohio Communities Face 'Voter Suppression' in Push to Rein in Oil and Gas Development
By Simon Davis-Cohen • Sunday, September 24, 2017 - 06:03

Three years in a row, communities in Ohio have attempted to vote on initiatives that would grant them greater say over oil and gas development in their jurisdictions, but over and over again, appointed officials, some with direct ties to the fossil fuel industry, have put up roadblocks preventing these initiatives from reaching the ballot.

“We’re losing our ability to legislate and be a check and balance on the government,” Tish O’Dell of the Ohio Community Rights Network told DeSmog on September 15.

O’Dell had just learned that yet another local ballot measure — this one in Bowling Green, Ohio — was facing a possible legal challenge. “The Bowling Green initiative is the only one that made it through all the administrative hurdles to get on [the ballot],” O’Dell said.

It is the latest in a flurry of anti-fossil fuel ballot initiatives across Ohio which have gained the required number of signatures but likely won’t appear on ballots come election day. This year, initiatives in Youngstown, Medina County, and Athens County have all been taken off the ballot.

Fracking Backlash

These ballot initiatives are a response to the surge in activity related to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and pipeline development in Ohio and would establish new county charters or amendments to city charters that elevate the communities’ governing authority over legal privileges enjoyed by the industry.

Since 2015, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, non-elected local boards of elections, and the Ohio Supreme Court have struck a total of 10 proposed county charters from Ohio ballots. Initiatives have been removed for Athens (2015, 2016, and 2017), Fulton (2015), Medina (2015, 2016, 2017), Meigs (2015, 2016), and Portage (2016) counties.

The officials placing roadblocks in the way of the county charters often have close connections to the very industry threatened by the local initiatives. Husted, a lead 2018 candidate for governor, has been the beneficiary of large campaign contributions and fundraising events put on by the oil and gas industry. And some of the local boards of elections have even closer ties to Ohio’s powerful fossil fuel industry. For example, one member of the Meigs County Board of Elections that took a county initiative off the ballot last year is Ohio Gas Association President Jimmy Stewart.

Ballot Battles

In Medina, whose initiative has been removed each of the last three years, the movement to pass a new county charter was largely in response to the contentious NEXUS gas pipeline and a proposed gas compressor station. After the pipeline company surveyed private land without a federal permit, legal and physical standoffs ensued with local prosecutors and landowners. But no public votes have been allowed in Medina. In August, the NEXUS pipeline was approved and permitted by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The Bowling Green initiative is actually an amendment to the existing city charter and would complicate matters for developers of the NEXUS pipeline. Though the pipeline would not pass through city limits, it would be barred from traversing a piece of farmland owned by the city. NEXUS would pass within 700 feet of the Bowling Green regional drinking water treatment plant and burrow beneath the nearby Maumee River. A similar procedure for the Rover pipeline project resulted in millions of gallons of drilling liquid spilled in Ohio’s Tuscarawas River.

Like the others, Bowling Green’s ballot initiative includes a “Community Bill of Rights,” creating new protections for local citizens and the natural world by granting ecosystems standing in court and elevating local democratic decisions above corporate legal privileges.

But unlike the others, the Bowling Green initiative was actually placed on the November ballot by its board of elections. Now, however, local citizen David W. Espen is arguing that five signatures should be invalidated and the initiative therefore rescinded since petitioners had collected only one more valid signature than needed to appear on the ballot. Espen's lawyers also claim that the initiative exceeds the municipality’s powers and therefore should not be up for a vote.

However, local petitioner Lisa Kochheiser thinks the challenge came “from somewhere higher.”

“He wasn’t even present at the hearing,” she said. “This did not come from an individual.” Espen, who is reportedly part of a local plumber-pipefitter union, did not show up for his protest hearing against the ballot measure. He is represented by Columbus-based law firm McTigue & Colombo. Last year the firm wrote briefs for the American Petroleum Institute and Affiliated Construction Trades Ohio Foundation, which defended the practice of keeping anti-fracking initiatives off local ballots.

“Essentially what they’re trying to do is to erase a 100-year-old right to local democracy in Ohio through the citizen-led initiative and referendum,” said Kochheiser.

Who Decides What Voters Can Decide?

On September 19, the local board of elections rejected Espen's protest. That same day he appealed the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court.

On September 21, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled against the Medina, Athens, and Youngstown initiatives, definitively striking them from the November ballot. In their appeals, petitioners argued that the law governing the initiative and referendum process protects citizens’ right to vote on qualified initiatives and that the boards of elections are overstepping their authority by interpreting the constitutionality of initiatives before voters can weigh in. It’s all a repeat of 2015 and 2016, apart from one very significant difference.

In early December 2016, a section was added to a state foreclosure law (HB463) giving local boards of elections unprecedented new powers to remove initiatives from the ballot. As the Ohio Legislative Services Commission wrote, the law, “requires a board of elections or the Secretary of State to invalidate a local initiative petition if the board or Secretary determines that the petition or any portion of it does not fall within the scope of the local government’s constitutional authority to enact.”

If the local ballot initiatives were to pass, the state and the oil and gas industry would likely sue to overturn them. But the political ramifications for the industry could be significant: the public would see more directly industry efforts to quash a democratically passed law.

Supporters of the initiatives contend that the oil and gas industry is seeking to avoid such public relations backlash by preventing the votes from occurring. “Isn’t this another form of voter suppression if only a few get to decide what we can actually vote on?” asks O’Dell.

Yet one successful effort to pass a municipal Community Bill of Rights occurred last fall in Waterville, Ohio, which sits just across the Maumee River from the Bowling Green water treatment plant. The NEXUS pipeline passes directly through Waterville city limits.

On August 28, Nexus Gas Transmission, LLC filed for a permit to complete work in Waterville. In response, however, the Waterville municipal administrator wrote, “In reviewing your Application, we find that it is in conflict with…The City of Waterville Community Bill of Rights.” The letter goes on to say this law has “tied the hands of the City with respect to the granting of any permission for infrastructure or transportation supporting the extraction of hydrocarbons, including but not limited to pipelines. We are therefore unable to approve your Application.”

Waterville shows what could be if these ballot initiatives are allowed a vote: a genuine face-off between the oil and gas industry and local communities.







http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/footb ... -1.3518538


Why President Trump siding with Nazis wasn’t enough to anger America but arguing with athletes is
Carron J. Phillips
CARRON J. PHILLIPS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, September 25, 2017, 7:00 AM





Link du jour

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/09/19/e ... -head-ferc

http://www.climatecentral.org

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... nds-voting


https://www.boston.com/sports/new-engla ... s-divisive

http://www.finalcall.com/perspectives/i ... 3-2001.htm








https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/09/21/w ... ate-change

Why Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Won't Lead to Action on Climate Change
By Guest • Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 12:46


By Scott Gabriel Knowles, Drexel University

It’s not easy to hold the nation’s attention for long, but three solid weeks of record-smashing hurricanes directly affecting multiple states and at least 20 million people will do it.

Clustered disasters hold our attention in ways that singular events cannot — they open our minds to the possibility that these aren’t just accidents or natural phenomena to be painfully endured. As such, they can provoke debates over the larger “disaster lessons” we should be learning. And I would argue the combination of Harvey and Irma has triggered such a moment.

The damages caused by the storms will undoubtedly lead to important lessons in disaster preparation and response. For many, though, the most urgent call for learning has been to acknowledge at long last the connection between climate change and severe weather.

Will this cluster of disasters provide the lever that will move climate change in the United States from a “debate” to an action plan?

It’s easy to view disaster history in this cause-effect way — to hop in time from disaster to disaster and spot the reforms as though they naturally emerge from adversity and commitment to change. But as a historian with a focus on risk and disasters, I can say this view can be misleading.

Generational Reform

Early in the 20th century, the United States went through an era of profound concern over urban disasters that seemed to threaten city life itself.

In December 1903, the Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago killed over 600 audience members due to faulty construction. Just over a month later, in February 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire consumed 140 acres of the city. That same month, a major fire ravaged Rochester. In June of the same year over 1,000 people died due to a fire aboard the General Slocum steamship in New York City.

Newspapers of the era were full of anger and fear over the dangers of fire and the unscrupulous actions of greedy builders and ship line operators. Despite the intensity of this 1903-04 disaster cluster, Americans would see many more such disasters (San Francisco 1906, Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 1911) before consequential reforms in fire safety were passed into law.


The Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago in 1903 shocked and outraged the country, but it took years before any societal action on fire hazards took hold. AP Photo
Eventually those reforms did arrive, but not all at once, and not with one bill. The reforms were distributed in building codes, city plans and product safety standards that came into place by the 1930s. The disasters defined moments in time; reform was generational.

The aftermath of September 11 provides another telling example. The disaster led to multiple investigations and studies, including the best-selling 9/11 Commission Report. Perhaps the most lasting effect of September 11 was the restructuring of government that created the Department of Homeland Security.

However, we should be careful when we leap quickly from disaster to reform. The federal response to 9/11 appeared swift and decisive but was in fact following a script set in place over the previous decade through repeated attempts by some policymakers to reshape the government’s capacity to respond to the terrorism threat.

It took years for scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to finally explain the exact causes for the collapse of the Twin Towers. And in doing so, they uncovered fire, structural and evacuation vulnerabilities in the towers. These flaws were first witnessed in the 1993 bombing but dated back to the 1960s when the buildings were designed and built. The September 11 reforms did come, but only as part of a broad continuum of concern, research and debate over policy choices that had long preceded that terrible day.

Slow-moving Disasters Versus Events

This brings us back to Harvey, Irma and the climate change connection. We have not seen any storm-day conversions on climate change in the Trump administration — indeed, EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt remarked that it was “insensitive” to even broach the topic while the storms were still active.

There is plenty of evidence in social psychology to indicate that individual perceptions of risk — or individual commitments to an ideology — cannot be easily shaken be external factors, even factors as dramatic as storms like Harvey, Irma or even Katrina.



This fits the historical pattern: Clustered disasters might sharpen our senses to the risks in our midst and even disturb our complacency, but they will not necessarily lead directly to new legislation or personal ideological shifts. Strong commitments to land use, profits and real estate development have historically militated against calls for caution, restraint and mitigation, even though these types of laws make Americans safer from disasters. This dynamic will not be altered by two hurricanes, no matter how terrifying their effects.

Better indicators of change, drawing from history, have proven to be events that cluster over much larger stretches of time. A “slow disaster” frame allows civil society and scientific researchers to build a case for change that is strengthened by disaster events. For example, the red alert about the toxicity of DDT raised by Rachel Carson in 1962 had immediate effects, but that was only one early step in a series of events that followed. It should be seen as part of a much more impactful and slower process of reform that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and a wave of environmental regulations that took effect in that decade.

This relationship between discrete disaster events and slow disaster eras is a critical one for us to understand. We might just now be at the very beginning of such an era in the public consciousness over the connections between disasters such as hurricanes, fires, droughts and the slow disaster of climate change.

It’s frustrating for people who want quick government action on climate change to be told they should play a “slow disaster” game. And why shouldn’t they be angered if they have experienced the loss of a loved one or a home in the disasters of these past weeks? Still, it’s useful for us to see that even the most devastating disasters are probably points on a longer timeline — one that might lead to reform if and when broad-based political action prepares the way.

Indeed, disaster victims making common cause with scientists and engineers has been one proven way to bring about a type of learning from disaster that might be more effective towards achieving ambitious changes. These could include the United States reentering the global community on climate action and the passage of laws that would require climate change planning to affect future construction.

The ConversationBut the hurricanes of Harvey and Irma will be a catalyst for a new age of realism regarding the hazards of climate change only once civil society and our politicians recognize them as part of a pattern that stretches over decades, not weeks. Our urgency to learn from disaster is important, and it is a moral imperative. We would be wise to harness this urgency to form a generational commitment to reducing the suffering from disasters.

Scott Gabriel Knowles is Professor of History at Drexel University.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/15/guide ... s-protest/

OCTOBER 15, 2017 |
GUIDE ON HOW RACISTS WANT BLACKS TO PROTEST




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pil ... -1.3564865

Pilot boots New York activist Tamika Mallory from American Airlines flight over seat dispute
BY ERIN DURKIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 15, 2017, 4:09 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3564645


Trump accuser subpoenas his campaign for all documents relating to sexual misconduct allegations
BY JASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 15, 2017, 1:30 PM





http://www.latimes.com/sns-bc-oh--racia ... story.html

Ohio sheriff's deputy resigns after racial slur accusation
Associated Press

An Ohio sheriff's deputy has resigned after being accused of using a racial slur at a Columbus bar.

Erie County deputy Justin Smith submitted his resignation letter Thursday after being placed on paid administrative leave Oct. 5.

Sheriff Paul Sigsworth said Smith was attending narcotics training in Columbus when he became intoxicated on Oct. 2 and used a racial slur while referring to a Sandusky-area attorney in front of co-workers at a bar.

Sigsworth said Smith resigned rather than face the possibility of being fired. Smith worked 13 years as an Erie County deputy and corrections officer.





Smith is not worried as there are other police departments he can find work




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3564794

Trump’s pick to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy has 'troubling' ties to pharmaceutical industry
BY ERIN DURKIN DENIS SLATTERY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 15, 2017, 3:09 PM





https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/12/ameri ... integrity/

ARE AMERICANS BEGINNING TO CARE ABOUT ELECTION INTEGRITY?
A Progress Update on Reinforcing American Voting Systems







3rd largest media conglomerate in US frames story as a Liberal thang!

look at who owns the LA Times see

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tronc

http://www.latimes.com/about/pressrelea ... story.html



http://www.latimes.com/sns-bc-wi--madis ... story.html

Liberal group: Delayed DOJ blood tests led to fatal crash


Prosecutors were waiting for the state crime lab to complete blood tests on a repeat drunken driver this summer when he struck and killed a man changing a flat tire along the interstate.

Results of the blood work could have kept Frank Schiller behind bars, canceling his bail and preventing the fatal accident, a liberal advocacy group charges. The test results were sent to prosecutors on July 11, three days after the crash and more than three months after they were submitted to the crime lab for processing.

It's impossible to know whether a judge would have revoked Schiller's bail and put him behind bars before the fatal crash if prosecutors had gotten the blood work sooner. But delays in crime lab test results almost certainly will be an issue in Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel's re-election campaign next year.

Scot Ross, director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, said delays have become a systemic problem under Schimel's leadership.


"This case is an example of how tragic consequences of those delays can be and how important it is that it get fixed," Ross said.

Deputy Attorney General Paul Connell said a string of court decisions allowed Schiller to remain free on bail despite multiple arrests before the crash and played a bigger role Peter Enns' death than the delay in blood work.

"There is nothing unusual about this case," DOJ spokesman Johnny Koremenos said. "The reason Mr. Schiller was out, driving around after being charged has nothing to do with the results of the toxicology report. As you know, Mr. Schiller was out on bail after being arrested on these other occasions."

Schiller was charged in Milwaukee County in March with driving under the influence. He had been convicted of drunken driving four times before. Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Grace Flynn released him the same day he was charged with the condition that he stay sober.


Less than a month later he was back in trouble, charged with drug possession and bail jumping in Washington County. He was released on a $500 cash bond only to be charged again in mid-June with drug possession in two separate Waukesha County cases. He went free on $1,000 bail on June 29.

Ten days later, on July 8, Schiller was heading east on Interstate 94 near Delafield when he tried to pass other cars on the shoulder and struck Enns, who had stopped to help another driver change a flat tire, according to court records. Prosecutors leveled a host of charges against him on July 13, including homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle.

Blood tests in the March case were finalized on June 12 but weren't sent to Milwaukee police until July 11, three days after the crash, Koremenos said.

"There is a series of reviews and checks toxicology work must go through before being released to the submitting agency," Koremenos said. He did not elaborate. The Associated Press filed an open records request for the test results but the DOJ denied it because Schiller's case was still pending.

According to DOJ's website, the average turnaround time in 2014 for blood and other bodily fluid tests was 32 days in 2014. By 2016, Schimel's second year in office, the average turnaround time had risen to 52 days. Koremenos said so far this year the crime lab's toxicology unit's average turnaround time is 56 days.

Schimel created 11 temporary crime lab positions in August, eight weeks after Schiller's fatal crash, to speed up evidence processing. He said at the time that police submissions had risen 49 percent from 2015 to 2016 and 31 percent from 2016 to 2017. Earlier this month Schimel appointed DNA analyst Nicole Roehm to lead the crime lab. She replaced Jana Champion, who retired.

Koremenos said Champion's retirement had been scheduled and Schiller's case wasn't the impetus for the additional hires. He said the agency wasn't aware "of the intricacies of this case" until The AP inquired about it.

Milwaukee County Assistant District Jim Griffin, who is handling Schiller's March drunken driving case, didn't return messages about whether the blood results would have prompted him to seek to revoke Schiller's bail.

Schimel faces former federal prosecutor Josh Kaul in the November 2018 elections. Kaul campaign manager Ashley Viste declined comment.

Schiller





Blink Tank



http://lifeitself.vhx.tv




https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/fbi-inf ... port-foia/


FBI authorized informants to break the law 22,800 times in 4 years

Dell Cameron and Patrick Howell O'Neill— Aug 23, 2016 at 1:51PM | Last updated Aug 23, 2016 at 4:49PM




http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/16 ... a-danger16

Informants May Get a Pass on Murder - latimes
Los Angeles Times
Mar 16, 2003 · For decades in cities from coast to coast, FBI agents recruited killers and crime bosses as informants and then looked the other way as they continued to commit violent crimes.When the practice.



https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... t/2613305/

Exclusive: FBI allowed informants to commit 5,600 crimes - USA Today
USA Today › fbi-informant-crimes-report
Aug 4, 2013 · WASHINGTON — The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's ...




FBI informants who caused mayhem on the side





BOSTON – Here are 11 dangerous criminals who received a measure of protection from the FBI while serving as informants. Most informed in organized crime or political corruption cases, but a few were involved in highly political cases in the turbulent 1960s.

Details are drawn from interviews, court records and published reports.



**** CAIN, aka RICARDO SCALZETTI.

He was a sheriff's investigator in Cook County, Ill., who joined the mob and rose to become right-hand man to Chicago boss Sam Giancana. Cain was convicted of conspiracy in a robbery and sentenced to 10 years in prison. An FBI informant who helped solve that crime was murdered after Cain helped unmask him. Nevertheless, Cain was later recruited as an FBI informant.

"We had been turning a blind eye on his machinations as he tried to take over gambling in Chicago. What an ambition! The deal was that we would not focus on his activity if he spun off his competitors to us," Cain's FBI handler, William Roemer, wrote in his book, "Accardo: The Genuine Godfather."

While informing for Roemer, who is now dead, Cain became a suspect in a 1972 gangland killing. Roemer said he initially dropped the informant, but Cain wasn't prosecuted and soon went back to informing for Roemer.

Cain was killed in an apparent mob hit in 1973. Years later, Roemer remembered him as "one of my closest friends."



GREGORY "THE GRIM REAPER" SCARPA SR.

He was both a Colombo family mob captain in New York City and longtime FBI informant. Scarpa sided with mob boss Carmine Persico in the early 1990s in a war to put down a family mutiny. Authorities came to suspect that Scarpa, while acting as an informant, took part in as many as 13 murders by the Persico side.

Hearing of one Scarpa murder, handler Lindley DeVecchio slapped a desk and declared triumphantly, "We're going to win this thing!" another agent later testified. Government prosecutors later conceded that evidence suggested DeVecchio leaked information to Scarpa, including names of enemies cooperating with the FBI. DeVecchio later said FBI supervisors knew of the murder suspicions but let him keep using the informant.

Scarpa eventually pleaded guilty to committing three of the murders and playing a role in others.



MICHAEL BURNETT, aka MICHAEL RAYMOND.

A swindler who was sentenced to 13 years for fraud in 1979, he was also suspected in at least five murders dating back to the early 1970s. Authorities believed the killings were Burnett's way of eliminating witnesses to his scams. Nevertheless, he was enlisted as an informant in FBI stings on corrupt public officials in Chicago and New York in the 1980s.

Florida police who wanted to talk to Burnett about murders say the FBI isolated him while he worked as an informant. Later, he was charged with a 1975 murder, but the case collapsed when a witness recanted. He was finally sentenced to life in prison for plotting the 1994 murder of a witness set to testify against him in a bank fraud case.

The prosecutor, Margaret Giordano, assistant U.S. attorney in the New York borough of Brooklyn, calls Burnett "a serial killer in the true sense of the word – except he is motivated by greed." She says the FBI was aware of the murder suspicions during his years as an informant.



LENNY PATRICK.

He rose to become a lieutenant in the Chicago mob and later admitted in court to killing six men. Faced with racketeering accusations, he agreed in 1989 to become an FBI informant, wearing a wire to a meeting with Chicago mob boss Gus Alex. Paid $7,200 over two months as an informant, Patrick kept working as a mob leader, according to FBI handler Roemer.

Patrick testified against Alex in 1992 and helped send him to prison. Once asked in court about suspicions he had killed more than the six victims he acknowledged, Patrick replied in a raspy voice, "No, I've run out of cemeteries." Patrick later joined the federal Witness Protection Program.



JAMES "WHITEY" BULGER and STEPHEN "THE RIFLEMAN" FLEMMI.

Boston mobster Bulger worked as an FBI informant throughout the 1980s, and Flemmi, his top lieutenant, did so off and on from 1965 to 1990.

Much of the information they provided was about Boston's Angiulo crime family, which was virtually wiped out in a series of criminal cases brought by Boston-based FBI agents. As the Angiulos lost their grip, Bulger and Flemmi took over control of loan-sharking, gambling and other rackets in greater Boston.

According to court testimony, Boston FBI agents were aware of many of Bulger and Flemmi's crimes, including murders, but looked the other way, occasionally even tipping them off when state police or other agencies were on their trail. According to testimony, Bulger also bribed FBI agents while working as an informant.

Flemmi is now serving 10 years for obstruction of justice and other offenses and awaiting trial on a federal racketeering case. Bulger, a fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list, is also under indictment on racketeering charges.

Prosecutors blame the two gangsters for 18 murders, 11 committed while Bulger was working as an FBI informant.



VINCENT JAMES "JIMMY THE BEAR" FLEMMI.

Stephen's younger brother, Jimmy was recruited as an FBI informant in 1965, even though the bureau knew his goal was to become Boston's top hitman. He is believed to have killed at least eight people.

FBI documents show that Boston agents allowed innocent men to go to prison for one of the murders they knew their informant had committed. Flemmi died in prison in 1979 after Massachusetts authorities convicted him of attempted murder in another case.



GEORGE STINER and LARRY STINER.

During the social tumult of the late 1960s and early '70s, then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover identified the Black Panthers as the single greatest threat to the internal security of the country. In 1969, two leaders of the Panthers were killed at the University of California. Two brothers, George and Larry Stiner, members of a rival black nationalist group, the United Slaves, were convicted of conspiracy to commit the murders and were sentenced to life in prison. Both were FBI informants at the time of the murders, according to former agent Wesley Swearingen, who worked in the Los Angeles office.

Subsequently, a May 26, 1970, FBI memo obtained by a congressional committee disclosed that Los Angeles agents had laid a plan to secretly advise the United Slaves of the time and location of Black Panther events "in order that the two organizations might be brought together and thus grant nature the opportunity to take her due course."

The Stiners escaped from San Quentin in 1974. Larry Stiner turned himself in 19 years later; his brother George remains at large.



GARY THOMAS ROWE JR., aka THOMAS NEAL MOORE.

In the 1960s, Rowe was an FBI informant who helped convict three Ku Klux Klan members of federal rights violations in the killing of a civil rights volunteer in Alabama. The state charged Rowe with the murder, but the case was dropped after the federal government said his work as an informant gave him immunity.

He admitted to congressional investigators that he had beaten blacks, with the permission of his FBI handlers, in order to maintain his credibility with Klansmen. He said agents told him: "We know it's something you have to do, and we understand it, and we need the information."

After five years as an FBI informant, Rowe went into the federal Witness Protection Program. He died of a heart attack in 1998.

––

ROBERT FOLEY.

A roughneck from rural Kentucky, Foley first killed in 1976, shooting a man who called him a name. He was given a 35-year sentence but won parole in four years. In 1991, he was again in legal trouble on forgery and weapons counts. However, an FBI agent went before an Ohio judge and helped Foley gain release to work for the bureau as an informant.

Eight months later, while helping the FBI, he shot two brothers to death after a fist fight during a party at his home, pumping a total of 12 rounds into them. Eventually, he was convicted of those two murders and four others that took place in 1989 – the first for informing on him to his parole officer and the three others because they were witnesses. The family of the two brothers eventually sued the FBI for $12 million, saying it was responsible for their murders.

The bureau acknowledged that it broke its own rules in handling Foley, but it argued it could not foresee the murders and Foley wasn't technically an employee. A judge dismissed the suit. The bureau said several agents were "mildly sanctioned." Foley has claimed he was framed for all the murders and remains on death row in Kentucky.




http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/3660 ... corruption


HPD officer, former officer arrested







http://www.theitem.com/stories/congress ... ons,297132


Congress calls on FCC to silence cellphones in prisons
Posted Sunday, October 15, 2017 6:00 am





http://www.portlandcopwatch.org/PPR71/doj71.html

City of Portland Oregon Disbands Oversight Board Meant to Ensure Police Reform


After two years of the City failing to follow an imperative in the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Settlement Agreement requiring the Mayor (Police Commissioner) to attend two meetings per year of the Community Oversight Advisory Board (COAB), new Mayor Ted Wheeler showed up at what turned out to be COAB's last meeting. Making matters worse, Wheeler did not act to extend the seven remaining COAB members' terms for another year, or at least until a new system was devised. Meanwhile, the City's appeal of Judge Michael Simon's order for them to return to federal court to explain their plans for re-inventing the COAB (PPR #70) is headed to mediation at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Oregonian, March 24).

Although the Mayor appeared sympathetic to those attending the January 26 meeting and the idea of continuing COAB, he did not reappoint or support the reappointment of any of the seated members. Neither Wheeler nor any other member of Council made moves to fill the eight empty seats. Wheeler could have filled the seat vacated by former Mayor Charlie Hales' representative, who resigned last June (PPR #69). Commissioner Amanda Fritz gets some credit as her appointee, Dr. Rochelle Silver, was the only Council appointee who didn't resign; however, Fritz also failed to extend Silver's term.

COAB met October 27 and November 10, but did not meet in December or mid-January because of snow, so their last meeting was only the third held since July. They adopted a recommendation for the Bureau to eliminate the "gang list" which was revealed to be racially imbalanced (also PPR #70). Because of ongoing tension, the Board refused to allow the Compliance Officer/Community Liaison (COCL) to present findings of a community survey, even though COAB helped design the survey in the first place (see sidebar).

The formation of COAB was required by the Agreement stemming from DOJ's lawsuit against Portland for use of excessive force. After COAB spent much of its time examining and rewriting police Directives (policies), the City became increasingly unsupportive. COAB recommended changes to the Bureau's rules about bias-free policing, use of force and other matters which would hold individual officers accountable for misconduct, as well as police training methods. For the most part, they never received feedback from the Bureau or DOJ.

Some officers appointed to advise COAB were hostile to the Board's policy recommendations. One officer attempted to have COAB members removed (PPR #67). Although the attempt was unsuccessful, it indicated the attitude of officials who do not support reform.

The City took a passive aggressive posture toward the COAB. In addition to refusing to replace COAB members who resigned, they placed the Board on hiatus for two months before the second annual status conference in Simon's courtroom to examine the City's progress.

When Wheeler attended the COAB meeting, he promised to examine the 50+ recommendations the Board made. The five COAB members present voted to ask to be reappointed for another year to continue doing work.

Wheeler failed to take further action, and COAB was allowed to expire. Despite Portland's reputation as a progressive city, they seem to be hoping Attorney General Jeff Sessions will keep his promise to stop investigating local police for constitutional violations. Even if the City never emerges from mediation sessions with the DOJ, the Portland Police Association, and the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform with a "COAB 2.0" plan, there may be nobody left in the federal government to hold Portland accountable.

In the COCL's revised 1st/2nd Quarter report, only 15 of 61 community recommendations were fully incorporated. Among the rejected changes, the COCL refused to suggest the Behavioral Health Unit's Advisory Council hold public meetings or come to COAB with draft proposals so they can be vetted in a public setting. On the other hand, they did clarify they want officers to be separated immediately after a shooting incident, but are ok with written notification being generated in 2-6 hours (the previous draft made it sound as if officers could talk to one another for that whole time period). They also changed the words "community activists" to "community members" in describing who disrupted COAB meetings. However, all they did to take responsibility for COAB's demise was to say there was a "strained relationship between the Chair and certain members of the COAB," which is an understatement at best and ignores the Chair's heavy-handed tactics to control people attending meetings.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com/2017 ... ckage.html

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Perfect Love in a Tiny Package


I’ve become a grandfather.

My granddaughter Vera is a month old. My wife and I are getting to know her by singing silly songs, carrying her around, and watching her rapid development at this very young moment.

Everyone who hears the news congratulates me in a different way than new parents are congratulated. The lives of new parents are forever transformed by new responsibilities. That’s long ago in my past. This time, experienced grandparents tell me how much fun I will have.

Connecting as a grandparent has been transformed by social changes over the past few decades. The increasing geographic mobility of American families means that many grandparents live too far away for regular visits. But even though we were over 1000 miles away when she was born, we could see Vera every day via a video chat. Keeping in contact with family across generations has never been easier.

Naturally new technology brings new dilemmas. Coming from a generation where party lines were still common and there was only one screen in a household, grandparents of my age are likely to disapprove of young children carrying video games and movies around in their pockets.

Social change creates the potential for generational conflict centered on grandchildren. Grandparents visit and then go away. We cuddle and sing songs and read books, but we don’t take on the heavy daily duty of parenting. We follow the parents’ lead, help rather than make big choices. We change diapers, but don’t decide whether cloth or paper. We feed, but don’t pick out what baby eats. We don’t decide how to decorate the nursery, whether or not to follow the traditional gendered color choices for clothing, or how much screen time will be allowed. After each visit, we go back to our own lives, eagerly anticipating the next visit.

One of the delights and pitfalls of grandparenting is highlighted in a how-to produced by the Guardian newspaper, called “10 ways to be a fabulous grandparent”. They advise: “stick to the parents’ rules when you’re looking after the children … mostly.” Experienced grandparents often say that “spoiling” the child is a great joy. The child soon learns that grandparents often have license to allow forbidden things, like sweets or later bedtimes. But differences in rules can bring conflicts with the parents. The Guardian advises grandparents: “Accept that you have no control: The hardest thing about parenting is being responsible for everything. And the hardest thing about grandparenting is accepting that you’re not.”

The real fun of grandparents is their difference, but that doesn’t have to include extra leniency. What I treasured about visiting my grandparents were the new card games they taught me, the exotic foods my grandmother prepared, the different conversations we had, the strange magazines lying around, the unfamiliar TV programs they watched.

Becoming a grandparent changes familial relationships. A child becomes a parent, assuming responsibilities and making decisions once reserved for the grandparent. Those decisions inevitably become comments, positive or negative, on the grandparent’s parenting. Some of these choices are socially determined by evolving conventions of good parenting. Fathers in the delivery room and breast-feeding are no long uncommon. Putting baby to sleep on her stomach under a blanket is now taboo. These shifts can appear to represent rejection of the grandparent’s child-rearing practices.

How one acts as a grandparent is not entirely a matter of choice. Not all grandparents can afford to view grandparenting as a series of fun visits. About 1 in 10 grandparents in the US live with their grandchildren. About 6% of children under 18 live with their grandparents and that percentage is dependent on race: 12% of African-American children live in grandparent-headed households, but only 4% of white children.

Historical social shifts have changed the relationships among generations. Rising divorce rates and increasing numbers of families where both parents work encourage more regular grandparental care for children. Economics play a key role. The recent depression increased by 20% the number of children mainly cared for by their grandparents.

Of the 20 million pre-schoolers in the US, about a quarter were cared for regularly by their grandparents, about a third of children under 2. Typically grandparents provide care when mothers are employed full-time, and are more likely to jump in as caregivers for single mothers in poverty.

Even when parents are capable of taking care of children by themselves, grandparents are invaluable. A friend told me that parenting is a humbling experience, placing young adults before difficult decisions: should I feed now or later? should I let the baby cry itself to sleep? which bit of contradictory advice from books, friends and internet should I listen to? Grandparents don’t have all the answers, but we can bring extra hands, patience and skill to the most important human task – bringing up baby.

Vera doesn’t care about conflicts between parents and grandparents over who makes the rules. She doesn’t care about rules. Right now she single-mindedly seeks warmth and love and a dry diaper. I can provide those.

That’s the best thing grandparents can do.

Steve Hochstadt
Missoula, Montana
Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, November 7, 2017




https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/11/08/whowh ... big-radio/

NOVEMBER 8, 2017 | WHOWHATWHY STAFF
WHOWHATWHY EDITOR RUSS BAKER TALKS JFK RECORDS RELEASE WITH BIG RADIO
Lee Harvey Oswald, Richard Helms
Lee Harvey Oswald (left) and CIA Director Richard Helms. Photo credit: CIA / Wikimedia and National Archives
In the interviews below, Russ Baker explores various issues, but they all have one thing in common — they demonstrate the enduring power of the Deep State. The first concerns the long-withheld documents concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The mainstream media is having trouble putting into context the promised JFK records release, and President Donald Trump’s decision to hold back some of those records — because they all work off the same flawed script. In a brief interview with Los Angeles radio station KNX, WhoWhatWhy Editor-in-Chief Russ Baker sets the record straight on what is at stake here.

In a second of two radio interviews with host Peter Boyles on 710KNUS in Denver, Russ reveals the answer to an intriguing paradox: Why has the Bush family been outspoken against fellow Republican Donald Trump — after holding their tongues during eight years of the Obama presidency?

He also discusses why the mainstream media has such a hard time accepting the possibility that the US intelligence/military coup d’etat machine — which was overthrowing elected leaders worldwide during the 1950s and 60s — might have turned against President John F. Kennedy.




https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... oe-trento/

November 7, 2017



FBI file shows what the Bureau thought of a young Joe Trento


Memos in Aristotle Onassis’ file refer to the journalist as “increasingly abusive” and “particularly obnoxious,” as well as allege he fabricated a response from the Bureau
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
In 1968, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a run-in with a young Joe Trento early in his reporting career. According to the FBI’s version of events, it didn’t go well.

A pair of memos from Aristotle Onassis’ file shows that the FBI felt Trento was so abusive and obnoxious that it justified hanging up on him and not returning his call when he called again. The second memo alleges that Trento claimed the FBI’s spokesman confirmed the existence of a letter despite the FBI having offered a clear “no comment” response that explained the Bureau’s files were confidential.

A memo dated November 27th, 1968 outlines the beginning of this encounter between Trento and the Bureau. The memo describes a call from Trento on the 25th, wherein Trento asked the FBI about an alleged letter from Hoover to the Maritime Commission about Onassis in the mid ’40s, with the Director allegedly saying “something to the effect that Onassis bore watching.” The FBI responded by saying that they couldn’t help Trento and that their files were confidential and for official use only. At this, “Trento became highly upset” and “demanded to talk to Mr. Hoover personally.” He was again told that “the FBI could be of no help whatsoever.”



Describing Trento as “quite youthful and inexperienced as a newsman,” the Bureau said he “became increasingly abusive” until the FBI felt it was necessary to end the call. After this, Trento apparently tried to call someone else at the FBI about the same information. This call went unreturned.



The next day, a caller reached the Maritime Commission. Though they refused to identify themselves, the timing and the citing of Worldwide Features strongly suggests it was Trento. The caller asked about the letter, only to be told by the Maritime Commission that they didn’t have a copy of it and that if they did, it “would be the property of the FBI.” The caller told the Maritime Commission that they had already found a copy of the letter at the National Archives.



Based on the date cited by the caller, the Bureau was able to locate a copy of the letter. While it was written by the Director, the note to watch Onassis was clearly provided by an informant, and Hoover was merely relating the information. The Bureau’s memo ended by noting that they would “of course furnish no information whatsoever” to Trento or Worldwide Features.



A second memo, dated December 17th, describes some of the fallout. After a brief summary of the previous events, calling Trento “particularly obnoxious,” the memo explains that an issue of the National Enquirer, dated December 29th, included a copy of the letter and an article about it under the byline of Roger Langley. As described by the memo, the article alleged that “an FBI spokesman confirmed that such a letter existed and confirmed that it had a dossier on Onassis.” This was “nonsense” according to the Bureau, as the reporter had been told nothing. The copy of the letter in the Enquirer’s article the same letter the Bureau had located and which Trento had asked about.



To its credit, the Enquirer correctly describes the information in the letter as having been provided by an informant and not Hoover’s personal judgment. The appears to match the FBI’s characterization of it, with the article’s description of the discussions with both the Maritime Commission and the FBI being at odds with the FBI’s written record from before the article’s publication. Though the Bureau doesn’t seem to have positively identified Trento as playing a role in the Enquirer’s article, the timing is highly suggestive and the Enquirer appears not to have independently reached out to either the Bureau or the Maritime Commission. Under the circumstances, the Bureau’s assumption of Trento’s role seems reasonable.



The FBI appears to have recommended no action be taken on the matter beyond recording the matter in the Bureau’s files. Both memos were stamped “Crime Research” and included in the file on Aristotle Onassis.



Attempts to reach Mr. Trento for comment by email prior to publication were unsuccessful, as the email address located no longer seems to be functional. You can read the relevant section of the FBI file below, along with a copy of the letter and the article from the National Enquirer:

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3620406

Suffolk County DA Thomas Spota resigning Friday after allegedly covering up police chief beating
BY ANDREW KESHNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 10:54 PM







http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/dead ... 341359.php

2.4 million trees are dead in Yosemite National Park


By Amy Graff, SFGATE Updated 3:23 pm, Wednesday, November 8, 2017


Among Yosemite's emerald forests, parched brown timber poke out like matchsticks waiting for a spark.
There are 2.4 million dead trees within about 131,000 acres of the national park, according the latest fall count, says park spokesperson Scott Gediman.
"As long as these things have been tracked, it's the most dead trees we've seen in the park," Gediman says.




https://www.courthousenews.com/flagstaf ... deral-law/


Flagstaff Moves to Ban Uranium Hauling – Despite Federal Law
November 8, 2017 SCOTT BUFFON





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3620075

Palm Springs City Council now entirely queer after election of transgender, bisexual women
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 6:44 PM




http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/08/19 ... 0-million/

19 more Colorado cities and counties vote in favor of city-owned internet, while Fort Collins approves $150 million to move forward
The 18 join nearly 100 others that have gained the right to explore whether municipal broadband is feasible

Link du our

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http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/08/pa ... rseyville/


https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/38732/


http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/08/b ... -new-skin/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/07/de ... n-results/





https://www.courthousenews.com/man-kill ... testifies/

Man Killed by Police Was No Threat, Officer Testifies
November 7, 2017
PHOENIX

A police officer who served alongside a former Mesa, Arizona, officer on trial for second-degree murder testified Tuesday that no one ever saw a weapon on the victim.

Philip “Mitch” Brailsford is charged with one count of second-degree murder in the 2016 shooting death of Daniel Shaver, 26, at a La Quinta Inn & Suites in Mesa, 20 miles east of Phoenix. Shaver was unarmed.

Shaver was staying at the hotel for work when he invited a man and a woman to his room for drinks. While there, he showed them an air rifle that he used for his pest control job.

A couple at the hotel jacuzzi saw the men handling the rifle through the window of Shaver’s hotel room and reported it to the hotel, which called 911.

Officer Brian Elmore was one of the officers that responded to the call. He and Brailsford were both assigned to handle AR-15 rifles when they arrived in the hallway outside Shaver’s hotel room.

Once there, Shaver and his female guest, Monique Portillo, were ordered to come out.

“Did anyone ever see a weapon on Daniel that night?” prosecutor Susie Charbel asked Elmore. “Did you ever see a rifle or anything sticking out from his shorts?”

Elmore replied that he did not.

“Did anyone ask Daniel if he had any weapons on him at the time?” Charbel asked.

“I don’t recall so,” Elmore answered.

Portillo and Shaver were ordered to drop to the ground and crawl toward the officers. Portillo crawled over first, but when Shaver crawled toward the officers, Brailsford fired a number of shots, killing him.

Brailsford says the shooting was justified because he saw Shaver reach toward the waistband of his basketball shorts.

Michael Piccarreta, an attorney for Brailsford, told the court one has to look at the context of the whole event to fully understand the shooting.

“In this case, the context began when there was a man on the fifth floor, in the window pointing a rifle out, scaring people who thought he was looking for targets,” Piccarreta said. “Until someone is an active shooter, they are not an active shooter.”

Elmore testified that when he was in the hotel hallway, he did not know if Shaver was armed or what was in the pockets of his basketball shorts.

He also later told the court that he doesn’t remember being told that Shaver was scaring people with his rifle, and was looking for a target.

“You had no information about Mr. Shaver’s intent. No one ever gave you any information about why he had a rifle or anything in his room,” Charbel said.

“That’s true,” Elmore replied.

Shaver, who had been drinking the day of the shooting, appeared to be confused about what to do with his hands when ordered to leave his hotel room.

“When he first put his hands behind his back, you pulled up your weapon,” Charbel said. Despite Shaver’s movement, Elmore did not fire his rifle.

“Did you put your finger on the trigger then?” Charbel asked.

“I don’t believe I did,” Elmore said.

The court heard testimony from Portillo last week. She testified Shaver pleaded with officers not to shoot him and was crying during the incident.

The trial could run through the end of November.



Related
Jurors See Footage of Officer Shooting of Unarmed Man
October 26, 2017
In "Criminal"
Parents Sue Arizona Cop Accused of Murdering Their Son
January 13, 2017
In "Civil Rights"
Police Shooting Victim Begged for His Life, Witness Testifies
November 2, 2017
In "Criminal"






http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/08/de ... ive-force/


Denver police corporal disciplined for failure to use body camera, inappropriate force
Police recruit’s camera showed Corporal Daniel Morehead placing his foot on handcuffed suspect’s chest







https://robertscribbler.com/2017/11/08/ ... ind-syria/


Upside Down America: Trump’s Shameful Failure to Ratify Paris Puts U.S. Behind Syria
by robertscribbler
We all know someone who thinks this way. Put a stack of scientific evidence in front of them that reaches to the moon, and they will still disbelieve that human-caused climate change is real, harmful, and getting to be so bad that it's increasingly capable of wrecking our lives. It is the very definition of 'head-in-sand' thinking. A pro-fossil fuel PR and politically-driven neurosis that American ideologues and other quacks appear to have perfected -- afflicting so many of us through the medium of viral misinformation.

But such views of denial have real and devastating consequences in that they have crippled the necessary societal and governmental response to a growing crisis.

Just a reminder -- it's Election Day!! That, on climate, US is now most backward in world b/c of Republicans. #GOTV https://t.co/N5idp5wJfc

— Robert Fanney (@robertscribbler) November 7, 2017

(Yesterday, democrats created a blue wave election in repudiation of bad republican/Trump policies including Trump's refusal to sign the Paris Climate Agreement. Members of the #Resistance cited Paris as one of the key reasons for demonstrated unity in support of democrats -- both progressive and moderate -- in opposition to Trump and in favor of helpful climate and energy policies.)

Just ask the 3.4 million people of Puerto Rico who have now gone for 49 days without power after a global warming fueled storm leveled their island. One hundred thousand of them -- the lucky ones -- have managed to escape this parcel of U.S. territory and avoid living in a world without access to electricity, water, reliable food supplies, decent transport, and medical care. They are now some of the likely 20-30 million refugees that will be produced by worsening climate change related weather, wildfires, sea level rise, and crop disruption this year alone. A number that will rapidly grow in years to come if we don't adequately address the key disaster enablers -- a warming planet and rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Upside Down America

Here, in the land of the American Dream, the dream is being slowly crushed by fossil fuel burning. And, yes, too by people like Trump who are working to prevent government policies that move us away from that harmful energy source and the carbon emissions that keep making the problem worse and worse and worse.

320,000 tweets have already been posted with the hashtag #COP23 https://t.co/A5JUHpOGjK Follow the conversation on @UN Climate Talks Live pic.twitter.com/uKtJ601USy

— UN Climate Change (@UNFCCC) November 8, 2017

(COP 23 seeks to build on the momentum already developed under the Paris Climate Agreement.)

Yesterday, with Syria's signature of the Paris Climate Agreement, the U.S., under Trump, is now the only nation that is not a party to it. Though not the ultimate ideal response to climate change, the Paris Agreement, if held to, will move the world rapidly away from the high level of harmful fossil fuel burning and related carbon emissions that are presently ongoing. Paris alone is not enough to prevent about 3 degrees Celsius worth of warming this Century. A level of warming that will bring a number of far worse climate outcomes than we see today. But it does get us off the very harmful path toward 5 C or more that comes from business as usual coal, gas and oil burning. The world, and the ratifiers of Paris -- who now include everyone but Trump's upside down version of America -- recognize that the agreement is just the first step in a number of necessary global policy moves to address climate change (hence the convening of COP 23 in Bonn). A response that will need to rapidly escalate if we are to preserve the safety and stability of modern civilization.

Toxic Thinking = Terrible Policy

Trump's moves seem completely irrational, idiotic, and nonsensical to anyone who understands the reality of climate and the severe harm that ultimately comes from fossil fuel burning. It does, however, make sense in the frame of a kind of small-minded world-view. One that puts the profits and protection of a single industry over the short term ahead of the safety of everyone and everything else over the medium to long term. Trump's actions are directly aimed at protecting environmentally destructive fossil fuels from more advanced and less harmful energy sources. His action is less U.S. interest focused than it is aimed at protecting a global industry. For a sitting President would recognize the substantial benefit of the hundreds of thousands of jobs the renewable energy industry is creating even as it replaces more feeble job producers like coal.



(It's an upside down world that features the U.S. as the only global climate policy laggard. Trump's world. Image source: World Resources Institute.)

The U.S. has long been a renewable energy innovator. A leader in solar, wind, and electrical vehicle technology. And we are certainly capable of helping to lead the world both away from ever-worsening climate nightmares even as we begin to realize the amazing health and economic benefits granted by clean energy. Trump, however, like many of his republican fellows, appears bound and determined to sabotage this new, jobs-rich, industry in favor of the older, dirty and very dangerous fossil fuels. That's where his own economic and political interests lie. That can be the only explanation for his otherwise irrational actions that now run counter to the far more rational leadership of the entire world.

robertscribbler | November 8, 2017 at 5:53 pm

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... nk-serpico

Frank Serpico
Retired Police Detective, Author, Lecturer: b. 1936

"A policeman’s first obligation is to be responsible to the needs of the community he serves…The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which an honest police officer can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. We create an atmosphere in which the honest officer fears the dishonest officer, and not the other way around."
1971: Became the first New York City policeman in history to testify about widespread corruption in the department.
1972: Received the NYPD's higest award, The Medal of Honor.
After being shot and testifying about corruption in the NYPD, Serpico lived in Europe for nearly a decade.
Al Pacino played Serpico in the 1973 movie about his life.






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/b ... -1.3652199



Baltimore detective was due to testify in cop corruption case one day before he was fatally shot in the head



November 22, 2017, 11:00 PM


A Baltimore police detective was shot in the head during an investigation one day before he was due to testify against indicted officers caught up in a corruption scandal that has rocked the city.

Sean Suiter, an 18-year veteran with the department, approached a suspicious man while he was investigating a homicide in the West Harlem neighborhood with his partner last Wednesday, police said.

Suiter was shot in the head and taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center where he died on Thursday — the same day he was scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury in a case involving members of the department’s Gun Trace Task Force, the Baltimore Sun reported.


The eight officers, indicted on federal racketeering charges, were tasked with raiding homes in an effort to confiscate illegal guns and cut down on violence in the city.

They are accused of robbing civilians, coordinating with drug dealers to split profits on the drugs they confiscated, filing false paperwork and committing overtime fraud.


Earlier Wednesday, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis cleared up the timing of Suiter’s death, saying there was no indication the detective was targeted in his connection to his testimony.

He also added that Suiter was not being investigated as part of the probe into the Gun Trace Task Force.


“The BPD and FBI do not possess any information that this incident … is part of any conspiracy,” Davis said.

Suiter had



https://bangordailynews.com/2017/11/22/ ... -revealed/


Hidden for 50 years, famed photographer’s images of rural Maine’s ‘guts’ revealed





https://events.battleforthenet.com/#eve ... otestrally

Verizon-lawyer-turned-FCC-Chair Ajit Pai just released his final plan to kill net neutrality earlier today. We’re fighting back with a massive, nationwide day of protests at Verizon stores on December 7.

Find a protest at a Verizon store near you.



This is it. Today, Verizon-lawyer-turned-FCC-Chair Ajit Pai released his final plan to kill net neutrality.

It’s a great early Christmas present for Verizon, Comcast, and the rest of Big Cable, but terrible news for pretty much everyone else who uses the internet.

We’re not backing down from defending the internet we all know and love. Today we’re announcing December 7 will be a massive, nationwide day of protests at Verizon stores across the country.

Click here to find a Verizon store protest near you on December 7.

Before becoming Trump’s FCC Chair, Ajit Pai was a top lawyer at Verizon. And he’s acting like he’s still on their payroll.

Instead of looking out for ordinary Americans who depend on a free and open internet for their healthcare, education, and livelihoods, Pai is paving the way for monopolistic ISPs to block and censor what we see online, and push anyone who can’t pay extra fees into “internet slow lanes.” The impact on free speech and innovation online will be devastating.

Pai and his buddies on Team Cable have gone out of their way to make it sound like they support the free and open internet, just not the supposedly “burdensome regulations” of Title II.

But make no mistake: Without Title II, there. is. no. net. neutrality.

Save Title II net neutrality. Find a protest at a Verizon store near you.

Verizon may think it's won control of the internet thanks to its crony at the FCC. But what they really did is awake the fury of the internet.

Already today, internet users made an astonishing 75,000 phone calls to Congress through BattleForTheNet.com. Now we need to take that energy and hit Verizon where it hurts – their profits – with protests at their stores during the busy holiday shopping season.

We won’t kid you – we are one very big step closer to losing net neutrality for good. But all is not lost.

There are still dozens of lawmakers on the fence who can intervene and force Pai back from this awful plan to kill net neutrality. They need to see and hear an enormous public outcry before they will act – and that’s why many of these protests will march afterward to nearby district offices for members of Congress and demand action.

Join your fellow internet users December 7 to save net neutrality. Find a Verizon store protest near you.

Thanks for taking action,

Carli Stevenson
Campaigner
Demand Progress

P.S. Don’t see a Verizon store protest in your city yet? Click here to start your own. It’s easy and we’ll be in touch with all the info you’ll need.







https://apnews.com/6ab8a7f65649466dbbec ... s-in-place

Report: NYPD needs more LGBTQ interaction protocols in place









https://www.npr.org/2017/11/22/56567723 ... so-a-witne


Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein Supervises Mueller Probe But He's Also A Witness



November 22, 20175:00 AM ET



https://apnews.com/d1d34475f64b4951b847 ... edia-posts


Teacher on paid leave following social media posts critical of police


ASHLAND, Wis.

An Ashland elementary school teacher has been suspended because of a social media post about the fatal shooting of a Native American 14 year old student by a sheriff’s deputy.

Ashland Superintendent Keith Hilts says the posts by Ojibwe language instructor Sandra Gokee were defamatory and inflammatory.

KBJR-TV reports the superintendent says Gokee’s messages have created tension with law enforcement and racial friction in the school. One posting on Gokee’s Facebook page says Jason Pero was “murdered by police.”






http://citizensvoice.com/news/embattled ... -1.2271015

Embattled police officer lands job in Larksville





https://apnews.com/9f8ea96ce1424a14b9c3 ... d-by-chief

Prescott Valley offers reward for gun misplaced by chief


PRESCOTT VALLEY, Ariz.

Prescott Valley is now offering a $500 reward for the safe return of Police Chief Bryan Jarrell’s missing handgun.

The department’s announcement of the reward follows its earlier disclosure that Jarrell said he last had the gun Nov. 9 but didn’t realize it was lost until four days later.

Jarrell says he accidentally left the handgun in a restroom stall while he was changing clothes.



http://samuelwalker.net/wp-content/uplo ... wf2002.pdf

Driving While Female -


Samuel Walker
PDFSamuelWalker.net › 2010/06 › dwf2002
"DRIVING WHILE FEMALE”: A NATIONAL PROBLEM IN POLICE MISCONDUCT. A Special Report by the
Police Professionalism Initiative. University of Nebraska at Omaha. Samuel Walker and Dawn Irlbeck.







https://bangordailynews.com/2017/11/21/ ... g-illegal/


Maine sheriff on explicit photo: ‘I did nothing illegal’


SOUTH PARIS, Maine — Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant, who admitted early Tuesday evening that he sent a sexually explicit photo to a woman while in his office and in uniform, said he did not break the law.

“I did nothing illegal,” he told the Bangor Daily News after a regularly scheduled budget meeting at the courthouse in South Paris. “It was an adult thing that happened two years ago.”


Gallant, who first made the admission to CBS 13, is serving his third term as Oxford County sheriff. He told the TV station he plans to step down from his other role as president of the Maine Sheriffs’ Association.

The Maine Sheriffs’ Association issued a statement late Tuesday saying it was aware of the incident.

“The Maine Sheriffs do not condone the inappropriate actions of the Oxford County Sheriff,” it said.

First Vice President Sheriff Kevin Joyce will be acting president of the association, which includes all 16 of Maine’s sheriffs, their chief deputies, jail administrators and patrol supervisors.


When asked by the BDN if he also would step down as sheriff, he said only, “I was elected by the people of Oxford County.”

Gallant declined to comment on how the the photograph came to light and said, “I’ve talked enough today.”

He also would not comment on whether the incident was isolated or whether he would apologize for his actions.

The atmosphere at the courthouse and around the state police depot in South Paris was tense, with the on-duty supervisor and several state troopers refusing to discuss the situation.



https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/law- ... e48164430f

Law Enforcement Arrested for Trading in Child Rape
The following summary of 103 law enforcement officers (LEOs) arrested for trading in child rape updates earlier research. In November 2014, I profiled seventy local and state police officers arrested on child pornography related charges — Police Trading in Child Rape & Torture. My research was out of date almost as soon as I hit publish. A year later I posted When Law Enforcement is the Perpetrator reviewing one month, November 2015, when more than two LEOs per week were in the news for trafficking in child sex abuse. This research is not comprehensive but rather a small sample of LEOs arrested and does not include federal law enforcement. Without institutional support, conducting a complete study of all local, state and federal law enforcement has not been possible.
As for the weak argument someone always seems to make, “there is a certain number of pedophiles in the population and the number within law enforcement is perfectly normal” — let me respond. No pedophile should ever wear a badge, carry a gun and swear an oath to serve and protect. Not one person trading in child rape should ever be employed in law enforcement. Ever. Period. If we cannot keep pedophiles out of law enforcement, what kind of country have we become? If law enforcement cannot keep child rapists out of their ranks — what kind of “protection” are we paying for with our tax money?
Imagine, as you read these arrests, you are a parent reporting to police your child has been raped, or is missing or trafficked. How do you think the police here might have handled your complaint? How well do you think your children are being protected? These are real children being raped and tortured in the videos and images. American children. Every time an image/video is shared that child is trafficked again. Far too many police are involved in the trafficking.
For further information, please see the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (NPMRP) at Cato Institute and the Associated Press (AP) year long investigation, 2015, into police misconduct.





Link du jour


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3653106


http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/21/gl ... derstorms/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/22/co ... l-cruelty/


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3649619

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik ... story.html

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https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... f-mourning








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Judge reprimanded after offering offenders shorter sentences if they got vasectomies
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, November 22, 2017, 2:55 AM






http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3650952



Guards convicted of beating prison inmate, covering it up
Wednesday, November 22, 2017, 11:01 AM






https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... cci-ingram

Becci Ingram
Dramatist, Activist for Disability Rights: 1974 - 2000

"I have a dream that can open your eyes I believe that dream never dies. I dream of a world where all people can be free, Overweight people, and gay people, and people like me. "





http://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/05/co ... r-program/

January 6, 2017 at 10:48 am

Colorado’s Department of Corrections is wasting as much as $44 million annually because it has not fixed problems in a treatment program intended to prepare sex offenders for release from prison, a recent state audit found.

An analysis by auditors showed that nearly 1,300 prisoners in December 2015 had passed their parole eligibility date but had not received sex-offender treatment. It determined the potential cost to taxpayers by calculating the annual cost for their prolonged incarceration.

Delays in treatment are especially problematic for lifetime-supervision offenders, who must complete the treatment before they can be released from prison, according to the audit. Problems in the department’s Sex Offender Treatment and Monitoring program effectively keep these offenders in prison indefinitely. Others, who face fixed sentences, are released without treatment that is supposed to reduce recidivism, according to the audit.




http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/22/tr ... oug-jones/

The Denver Post


POLITICS
Trump says man who helped convict Klan members in race bombing case is “soft on crime”







https://apnews.com/ce4262bfb13a4586a461 ... -in-attack

Police K-9 kills family dog in attack



NEW CITY, N.Y.

The Rockland County Sheriff’s Office is investigating after a police K-9 killed a family’s dog in an unprovoked attack in New York.

Police say the attack happened in New City around 7 a.m. Tuesday. Tom Forde tells WCBS-TV a nanny was walking his family’s Cavapoo when the police dog attacked it.

Authorities say Detective Dwayne Defino was able to get the German shepherd off of the smaller dog. Defino took Fordes’ dog back to their home.






http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com/2017 ... r-you.html


This Tax Cut Is Not For You


The news is all about tax cuts. For corporations, the news is good – both the Senate and House plans cut corporate taxes by nearly half. For real people, not such good news, unless you are rich. These plans are complicated and subject to change, but one thing is clear. This is not a middle-class tax cut.

It’s not a tax cut for teachers, whose $250 deduction for classroom supplies is eliminated.

It’s not a tax cut for middle-class and working-class families who work for colleges and universities, because the House bill classifies their children’s free tuition as income. They would get a tax increase of thousands of dollars on tuition costs of $10,000 to $40,000 a year.

It’s not a tax cut for middle-class families in states with high taxes, like New York, New Jersey and Illinois. The Senate bill eliminates deductions for property taxes and state income taxes; the House bill allows a deduction for up to $10,000 in property taxes. About 30% of all taxpayers claim these deductions, including half of middle-class taxpayers who make $50 - $100,000 a year.

It’s not a tax cut for families with high medical expenses. People who have to spend more than 10% of their income on health care could no longer deduct that amount, according to the House bill. About 9 million people, with average income of $55,000, take that deduction every year. People in nursing homes and families with disabled children often need that deduction to make ends meet.

This is not a middle-class tax cut. It will only lower some middle-class families’ taxes for a few years. But Republican leaders won’t say that. Two weeks ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan said: “according to the Joint Committee on Taxation – which is the official scorekeeper of these things – every single person, every rate payer, every bracket person gets a rate cut.” But he was doubly lying. First, while every category of taxpayers would see an average reduction of taxes, not everybody in each category gets a cut. If the House version becomes law, 10% of taxpayers in the middle income range would pay $1000 more in taxes next year and every year.

Second, the cuts for the middle class don’t last long. Senate Republicans made the tax cuts for individuals temporary, expiring in 2025, while the tax cut for corporations is permanent. Whatever benefit middle-class families gain disappears in a few years. That is clear from an exhaustive analysis by Ryan’s own scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation. By 2025, the Senate bill would increase taxes for Americans whose income is under $50,000 and collect about the same from those with incomes between $50,000 and $500,000. Only those making over $500,000 a year will still see a tax cut by then.

President Trump has broken the promises about taxes made by Candidate Trump. Candidate Trump said, “the hedge fund guys, they’re going to be paying up,” meaning they would no longer get a special low rate for their income. He repeated this many times, saying they are “getting away with murder.” Both the Senate and House bills leave that tax break intact. The most important promise Trump made was that the tax cut was for the middle class. Just two months ago, he said his tax plan was “not good for me, believe me” and “there’s very little benefit for people of wealth.” Don’t believe him. This month he urged a cut in the rate for the richest Americans and an end to the estate tax for inheritances over $11 million.

But you can believe that Trump is still trying to kill Obamacare. With his encouragement, Senate Republicans eliminated the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that everyone have health insurance. As we learned during the health care debate, this means insurance premiums will go up for millions of Americans, wiping out any tax cut they might get.

What would a real middle-class tax cut look like? Reduce taxes on Social Security benefits. If you receive other retirement benefits, then you’ll probably pay taxes on some or most of your Social Security income. Only if your total family income is less than $32,000 is your Social Security income free of tax. Millions of middle-class retirees would benefit if that threshold were raised. Pay for that by ending the tax boondoggle for hedge fund managers.

The Republican tax cut is not about economic policy and is certainly not for the middle class. It is political legislation about economic issues: cut corporate taxes to satisfy Republican donors and try again to kill Obamacare. Mainly it is a backwards reduction in the size of government. First create a giant deficit, much larger than the deficit that Republicans have been saying for years would bankrupt the country. Then later start screaming about deficits again and cut government spending to fit reduced revenues by slashing the programs that most Americans need to keep afloat – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Only 25% of Americans approve of the Republican tax bills. The more Republicans know about the details, the less they approve. Trump, Ryan and company are trying to pass this giant bill so fast, that most people won’t realize what is happening to them.

Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, November 21, 2017





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/tru ... -1.3651873

Trump Organization cuts ties with struggling Trump SoHo hotel
BY LEONARD GREENE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, November 22, 2017, 7:36 PM







http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3651327

Investigation underway after U.S. Marines caught on video using racial slurs
BY BLAKE ALSUP
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, November 22, 2017, 2:48 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3651608


Suspects in Venezuelan corruption probe hold US passports


Wednesday, November 22, 2017, 7:34 PM







http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/23/th ... mperature/


Thanksgiving heat wave: Denver faces possible record high temperature







http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/22/am ... -michigan/

Lone Tree girl named America’s Top Young Scientist after inventing lead-detecting sensor to help residents of Flint, Mich.
Gitanjali Rao won $25,000 for developing a portable water quality test to help people affected by the Flint water crisis

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.boston.com/cars/car-news/20 ... emi-trucks

Anheuser-Busch orders 40 Tesla Semi trucks






http://interactives.ap.org/2015/betraye ... D=apmobile

EDITOR’S NOTE: A yearlong Associated Press investigation revealed in November 2015 a nationwide problem of sex assault and sexual misconduct by law enforcement officers. The investigation was triggered by the case of former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who on Jan. 21, 2016, was sentenced to 263 years in prison for raping and sexually victimizing eight of his 13 female accusers.

Published: Nov. 1, 2015
Flashing lights pierced the black of night, and the big white letters made clear it was the police. The woman pulled over was a daycare worker in her 50s headed home after playing dominoes with friends. She felt she had nothing to hide, so when the Oklahoma City officer accused her of erratic driving, she did as directed.

She would later tell a judge she was splayed outside the patrol car for a pat-down and then made to lift her shirt and pull down her pants to prove she wasn't hiding anything.

She described being ordered to sit in the squad car as the officer towered over her. His gun in sight, she said she pleaded “No, sir” as he unzipped his fly and exposed himself to her with a hurried directive. “Come on,” the woman, identified in police reports as J.L., said she was told before she began giving the officer oral sex. “I don't have all night.”

The accusations are undoubtedly jolting, and yet they reflect a betrayal of the badge that has been repeated across the country.

A yearlong investigation by The Associated Press has found about 1,000 officers who lost their licenses in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assaults; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having on-duty intercourse.

The AP’s review at once represents both the most complete examination of such wrongdoing and a sure undercount of the problem, limited by a patchwork of state laws. California and New York, for example, had no records because they have no statewide system for revoking the licenses of officers who commit misconduct. And even among states that provided information, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were discovered in news stories or court records.


Bernadette DiPino, police chief in Sarasota, Florida, explains some of the reasons sex misconduct is a problem among law officers.
“It's happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country,” said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “It's so underreported, and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.”

The AP's review is based on a state-by-state pursuit of records on decertification, the process by which a law enforcement license is revoked. Though nine states and the District of Columbia declined to provide information or said they did not track officer misconduct, decertification records from 41 states were obtained and then dissected to determine whether the cause of revocation involved sexual misconduct.

All told, the AP determined that some 550 officers lost their licenses from 2009 through 2014 for sexual assault, including rape, pat-downs that amounted to groping, and shakedowns in which citizens were extorted into performing favors to avoid arrest. Some 440 other officers were decertified for other sex offenses or misconduct, including child pornography, voyeurism in the guise of police work and consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.

About one-third of the decertified officers were accused in incidents involving juveniles.

Overall, the victims were overwhelmingly women and included some of society's most vulnerable — the poor, the addicted, the young. Others had criminal records, sometimes used by the officers as a means for exploitation. Some were victims of crime who, seeking help, found themselves again targeted by men in uniform.

“People are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.”
– Police Chief Bernadette DiPino
The law enforcement officials in these records included state and local police, sheriff's deputies, prison guards and school resource officers. They represent a fraction of the hundreds of thousands whose jobs are to serve and protect. Nevertheless, the AP's findings suggest that sexual misconduct is among the most prevalent complaints against law officers.

Recent cases demonstrate the devastation of such depravity.

In Connecticut, William Ruscoe of the Trumbull Police began a 30-month prison term in early 2015 after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl he met through a program for teens interested in law enforcement. Case records detailed advances that began with texts and attempts to kiss and grope the girl. Then one night, Ruscoe brought her back to his home. The victim told investigators that despite telling him no "what felt like 1,000 times," he removed her clothes, fondled her and forced her to touch him — at one point cuffing her hands.

In Florida, Jonathan Bleiweiss of the Broward Sheriff's Office was sentenced to a five-year prison term in February 2015 for bullying about 20 immigrant men into sex acts. Prosecutors said he used implied threats of deportation to intimidate the men.

And in New Mexico, Michael Garcia of the Las Cruces Police was sentenced in November 2014 to nine years in federal prison for sexually assaulting a high school police intern.

“I felt sick and disgusted that a person wearing this badge, lawfully carrying all that power, a person who I admired and trusted ... would harm me in this way.”– Diana Guerrero


Left: Diana Guerrero, now 21, was a 17-year-old intern at the police department in Las Cruces, New Mexico, when she was assaulted by Michael Garcia, a sex crimes detective (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan). Bottom: Guerrero is seen with other EXCEL intern program participants (Handout).
The victim, Diana Guerrero, now 21, said it had been her dream to become a police officer. She was a diligent student, she said, the good kid who’d always done what she was supposed to do. So when Garcia, a sex crimes detective, invited her on a ride-along in the spring of 2011, she happily accepted.

The two visited a crime scene, and then Garcia drove her to a deserted neighborhood, still under construction, where he reached inside her panties and fondled her, then unzipped his own pants and forced her to touch his genitals, according to court records.

“I knew it was against the law and that (Guerrero) did not want me to do it,” Garcia said in a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. “But I did it anyway.”


Guerrero, interviewed in November 2014 by KOB-TV in Albuquerque, explains how her sexual assault by Michael Garcia has impacted her life.
Guerrero said in court that the assault left her feeling “like a piece of trash” and triggered depression and flashbacks.

“I lost my faith in everything, everyone, even in myself,” said Guerrero, who agreed to her name being published. She put plans to study criminal justice on hold and is no longer sure she will ever become a police officer.

Experts on sex assault believe most victims never come forward, and said fears can be compounded if the offender is an officer. Diane Wetendorf, who started a support group in Chicago for victims of officers, recalls the stories of those who did go to authorities: Some women's homes came under surveillance or their children were intimidated by police. Fellow officers, she said, refused to turn on accused colleagues.

“It starts with the officer denying the allegations — ‘she's crazy,’ ‘she's lying,’” she said. “And the other officers say they didn't see anything, they didn't hear anything.”


Holtzclaw appears in court in Oklahoma City ahead of his trial (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki).
The issue will be in the spotlight in Oklahoma City when former Officer Daniel Holtzclaw goes to trial, beginning Nov. 2, to face accusations of rape, sexual battery or exploitation of 13 women, including J.L. The AP doesn't name alleged victims of sexual assault without consent, and J.L. declined to be interviewed. She immediately reported her accusations in June 2014, and detectives launched a wider investigation.

Police eventually assembled a six-month narrative of alleged sex crimes they said started Dec. 20, 2013, with a woman taken into custody and hospitalized while high on angel dust.

Dressed in a hospital gown, her right wrist handcuffed to the bedrail, the woman said Holtzclaw coerced her into performing oral sex, suggesting her cooperation would lead to dropped charges.

“I didn't think that no one would believe me,” that woman testified at a pretrial hearing. “I feel like all police will work together, and I was scared.”



Syrita Bowen visits "Dead Man’s Curve," where she says she was sexually assaulted by now-fired Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who is accused in the sexual assault or exploitation of 13 women he encountered while patrolling (AP Photo/Eric Gay).
Holtzclaw, 28, a former football star who is now fired from the Oklahoma City Police Department, has pleaded not guilty. His family has said “the truth of his innocence will be shown in court.” His attorney, Scott Adams, would not respond to requests for comment but indicated in pretrial hearings that he will attack the credibility of the accusers, some of whom had struggled with drugs or previously worked as prostitutes.

The youngest of the accusers, who was 17 when she says Holtzclaw raped her on her mother's front porch, said the attack left her unsure about what to do.

“Like, what am I going to do?” she said at the pretrial hearing. “Call the cops? He was a cop.”




BETRAYED BY THE BADGE
Chapter 1 Chapter



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3686190
Body camera footage captures police dog attack on woman taking garbage out
BY CAITLYN HITT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, December 8, 2017, 2:40 PM


http://www.koat.com/article/new-mexico- ... 6/14396758

New Mexico high school shooter was investigated by FBI in 2016

The 21-year-old man who shot and killed two students at Aztec High School in New Mexico on Thursday had previously been investigated by the FBI for online comments about planning a mass shooting.
William Atchison was a former student at the high school, but he didn't graduate, according to the FBI.

Casey Jordan Marquez and Francisco Fernandez, both 17, were killed in the shooting. Atchison died of what police believe to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas said. There were no other injuries.

FBI agent Terry Wade said the FBI had contacted Atchison in March 2016 after he made notable comments on an online gaming forum.

Wade did not specify what Atchison wrote, but said it was something along the lines of: "If you're going to commit a mass shooting, does anyone know about cheap assault rifles?"

Wade said the FBI interviewed Atchison and his family but it closed the case because the man did not have a gun and did not commit a crime.






https://apnews.com/d51f4773acf347c683e8 ... nion-chief
Black police group votes no-confidence in union chief


http://www.daily-journal.com/opinion/co ... e0a1f.html

Pyongyang on the Prairie, Part I



Link du jour


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ine-report



https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h9CAftwO1x8


http://www.joseleivaphoto.com/lifestyle ... d9xzt1dp1n

http://www.dunwalke.com/resources/events.htm



https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/02/black ... ming-book/



Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors on government surveillance and her upcoming book
Posted Dec 2, 2017 by


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/te ... c3f2622325


Texas Challenges Federal Immunity Claim for Officer-Involved Shootings
12/09/2017 08:45 pm ET

The Supreme Court must appreciate that while the chances of a homicide always existed in the early days of the republic, it would have been a fairly rare event. For good or ill, federal policing is a vastly greater enterprise in the 21st century and the danger of criminal wrongdoing, including homicide, has grown exponentially.

Second, and related, until recent times, homicide was always regarded as a state crime. Chief Justice John Marshall did not stir any controversy when he noted in 1821 that Congress had “no general right to punish murder committed within any of the States.” Except for certain federal enclaves, such as a military base or the District of Columbia, murder was not a federal offense. It is thus difficult to fathom that the men who fought the Revolutionary War would accept the idea that federal agents would be immune from the only homicide laws that then existed. Recall that even the British soldiers involved in the Boston massacre stood trial for murder (They were ultimately acquitted with the help of John Adams). When England later tried to grant its soldiers special legal protections, the early Americans complained bitterly and included that grievance in our Declaration of Independence.

Third, federal officials want everyone to believe that they maintain the highest standards and so there is no need for any outside agency to review the conduct of its agents. A quick look at the record casts serious doubt on that claim. During the 1990s, the FBI was rocked by the Ruby Ridge scandal. Vicki Weaver was shot in the head while holding a baby in her arms while standing on her front porch. What’s worth noting here is that that episode wasn’t a case of some rogue, trigger-happy agent. High-ranking officials at FBI headquarters approved illegal shoot-to-kill orders for its supposedly “elite” Hostage Rescue Team. After the incident, the FBI director (a man who was both a lawyer and a former federal judge) promised a personal and intense review, but that was later shown to be a pretense. It is quite disturbing that the bureau’s top brass did not know the law regarding the taking of a human life and then tried to cover up the mess.

In 2004, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice found that different federal police agencies had procedures and standards for reviewing shooting incidents that could result in different conclusions regarding the legality of deadly force. The IG was also rightly troubled that some agencies delegated the shooting review to the very field office where the agent involved was assigned, raising the specter of partiality.

Fourth, the federal bureaucracy has been remarkably successful in obstructing and quashing local prosecutions before they can get traction. Sometimes federal officials will take a soft approach. They admit to the gravity surrounding an incident but then assure local police that the matter will be handled “internally.” Months go by and only token action is taken in the way of accountability. In other cases, federal supervisors will play hardball from the outset—expressing outrage that locals are accusing an upstanding agent of criminal conduct. The agents involved refuse to submit to questioning or provide a formal statement. Sometimes agents are even moved outside the local jurisdiction altogether to obstruct investigators. The point here is that since local officials can be thwarted by such tactics, it could be many years before another immunity case can work its way back up to the High Court for review.

The good news is that there may finally be enough justices on the Court that would be willing to take a fresh look at the immunity doctrine. Conservatives like Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Neil Gorsuch seem inclined to enforce limits on federal power. Sonia Sotomayor has been skeptical of broad claims of police and prosecutorial power. Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently dissented in a case where a Mexican teenager was killed by a Border Patrol agent and a lawsuit was tossed out prior to trial because the teen was standing on Mexican soil when the bullet struck him. Yet another very troubling instance of deadly force by a federal agent.

Interestingly, we know the Court has already taken an interest in this case. The Court receives thousands of petitions every year but only accepts a few dozen for review. Because the odds favor rejection, it is not uncommon for the opposing party in the case to waive its chance to file a written brief with the Court in order to defend the lower court decision and offer reasons as to why the Court should decline review. Kleinert’s attorneys chose that option—initially. But then, quite unexpectedly, the Court formally asked Kleinert’s attorneys to file a response, which they then submitted a few weeks later.

The Kleinert brief says a ruling for Texas would “undo more than a century of settled constitutional law.” But that’s precisely why it is imperative for the High Court to hear Texas’s petition. This mistaken immunity doctrine has gone uncorrected for far too long. Everyone











https://www.westernjournal.com/mueller- ... s-exposed/



Mueller Investigation Rocked: Top FBI Agent’s Election Night Whereabouts Exposed
By Becky Loggia
December 9, 2017 at 2:03pm



https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eyes-t ... 1112139895

FBI agents never pissed on Trump pictures


Overview
Eyes to My Soul: The Rise or Decline of a Black FBI Agent by Tyrone Powers
Unjustified FBI harassment of Black mayors Coleman Young (Detroit), Harold Washington (Chicago) and Marion Barry (Washington, DC); white agents urinating on photographs of President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore; a white agents' fundraiser for white policemen accused of murdering a Black Detroit motorist; agents pasting the picture of an ape over the photo of an African American agent's child; sheet-clad classmates pretending to be Ku Klux Klansmen at the FBI Academy; the mysterious explosion of a "troublesome" Black agent's FBI-issued vehicle -- all of this, too, is the FBI, and former Special Agent Tyrone Powers tells it as only a conscious Black insider could.




https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/so ... re-n828116

South Carolina serial killer Todd Kohlhepp says there are more victims

SHARE

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — A South Carolina man convicted of killing seven people says he has more victims who have not been discovered.

The Herald-Journal of Spartanburg reports that, in an eight-page letter, Todd Kohlhepp wrote that he tried to tell investigators and informed the FBI, but he said "it was blown off." He also wrote, "At this point, I really don't see reason to give numbers or locations."







The 46-year-old Kohlhepp pleaded guilty in May to seven counts of murder for killings that took place over more than a decade, all as he ran a real estate business. He was sentenced to life in prison.

His string of crimes was uncovered in 2016 after police rescued a woman chained at the neck in a storage container and investigators found a body buried in a



https://www.apnews.com/879b1ebdb42744be ... of-silence'

Chicago settles lawsuit alleging a police ‘code of silence’


CHICAGO

Attorneys for the city of Chicago on Friday abruptly ended a civil trial in a case they settled that centered on the question of whether a police detective understood he would be protected by an alleged “code of silence” the night he drove drunk and got into a crash that killed two men.

The terms of the settlement reached with the families of the victims who sued the city were not immediately disclosed.


U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall announced the settlement during a break in closing arguments Friday. The trial stemmed from a wrongful-death lawsuit that the families filed against former detective Joseph Frugoli and the city. They argued that even though Frugoli had been off duty, the “code of silence” helped conceal years of bad behavior and led him to believe he could drive drunk “with impunity.”

The settlement was not completely unexpected after the city’s attorneys admitted earlier in the trial that they had failed to disclose that Frugoli had been involved in a barroom brawl years before the 2009 crash and only received a five-day suspension for it.

The decision to settle the case indicates that the city recognized the admission had seriously damaged their denial of a code of silence, particularly since the judge had said she would tell jurors that they could infer the city intentionally withheld the information when they deliberated.









https://www.apnews.com/095cbb936c2549b7 ... e-shooting
Authorities release video of deadly Arizona police shooting

PHOENIX — Authorities have released the unedited video of an Arizona police officer fatally shooting an unarmed man outside his hotel room as officers responded to a call that someone there was pointing a gun out a window.
The 18-minute body-camera video was released shortly after former Officer Philip Mitchell Brailsford was acquitted Thursday on a murder charge in the January 2016 shooting death of Daniel Shaver of Granbury, Texas.


The release of the full video marks the first time the face-to-face encounter between officers and Shaver has been available to the public outside a courtroom. It was played at the beginning of Brailsford’s trial in late October.

The footage, taken from Brailsford’s point of view, shows the shooting and the tense moments leading up to it.

Officers ordered Shaver to lie down face-first in the hallway and not make any sudden movements or risk being shot.

At one point, Shaver puts his hands behind his back.

“Hands up in the air!” yelled Sgt. Charles Langley, who was leading the police team that responded to the call. “You do that again, we’re shooting you.”

“Please do not shoot me,” Shaver said, sobbing.

He was ordered to crawl toward officers. As he inched forward, he reached toward the waistband of his shorts, leading Brailsford to open fire. He said he believed Shaver was grabbing a handgun to fatally shoot him.

Authorities have said it looked as though Shaver was pulling up his loose-fitting basketball shorts that had fallen down as he crawled.

No gun was found on Shaver’s body, but two pellet rifles related to his pest-control job were later found in his hotel room.

While the acquittal clears Brailsford of criminal liability, Shaver’s widow, Laney Sweet, and Shaver’s parents have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the suburban Phoenix city of Mesa.

Brailsford served as a Mesa officer for about two years before he was fired for violating department policy.

Portions of the video had been released in May 2016 after The Associated Press and other news organizations requested that it be unsealed. The previously released footage showed officers taking cover in a hotel hallway as they waited for Shaver and a woman to exit his room and ended just before they walked out.






https://www.apnews.com/a670ad504b734a1a ... pe,-murder

Chicago to pay $31M to 4 wrongly convicted for rape, murder


CHICAGO

The city of Chicago has agreed to pay $31 million to four men imprisoned for 15 years for a rape and murder they didn’t commit.

The sum to settle their police-misconduct lawsuits appeared Friday in agenda notes of the City Council’s finance committee. It will discuss the settlement Monday.

Michael Saunders, Vincent Thames, Harold Richardson and Terrill Swift were freed after 2011 tests matched DNA from the victim’s body to another man killed in 2008.

An FBI report unsealed this year accused investigators of pressuring the then-teenagers during the investigation of the 1994 rape and killing of 30-year-old Nina Glover. It cited an ex-prosecutor describing how investigators coached witnesses and manipulated the defendants into giving false confessions






https://www.apnews.com/71138ffc457549ea ... sault-case


Milwaukee cop weighs plea offer in sexual assault case


MILWAUKEE
Attorneys are weighing a plea deal in the sexual assault case of a former Milwaukee police officer acquitted in a fatal shooting that sparked riots in the city.

Prosecutors and Dominique Heaggan-Brown’s attorney did not discuss details of the plea offer during a hearing Friday. But they told a judge they’ll have an answer on Jan. 18, the final hearing before trial starts in February if no deal is reached.

Heaggan-Brown was fired in October 2016 after being charged with sexually assaulting two men and soliciting sex from two others. He was later charged with first-degree reckless homicide for killing 23-year-old Sylville Smith in August 2016.




https://robertscribbler.com/2017/12/08/ ... or-action/

As Climate Emergencies Rise — A Call For Action
With climate change enhanced wildfires raging across California during December, now is exactly the time to redouble our resolve to fight against the causes of such widespread destruction. To enact policies aimed at reducing the force of a rising crisis that continues to impact so many of our people with increasing intensity.


In California today, there is a move afoot to set a deadline for banning the very fossil fuel based vehicles that have fanned the fires of climate change across the state. To resolve, by 2040, to take gas powered cars off the road.

Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat and sponsor of this legislative drive, notes that for the State to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, it’s going to have to transition away from fossil fuel based vehicles. Such vehicles represent more than 1/3 of all state carbon emissions. And the state can’t effectively address the carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change disasters without also directly targeting the number of fossil fuel based vehicles in operation.



(According to California’s Air Resources Board, nearly 38 percent of the state’s carbon emissions are due to transportation.)

New electrical vehicle (EV) technology is enabling just such a move. According to Ting:

“The market is moving this way. The entire world is moving this way. At some point you need to set a goal and put a line in the sand.”

If California sets a policy to ban fossil fuel based vehicles by 2040, it will join a growing number of cities and states that have already set similar goals. These include France, the United Kingdom, India, Germany, and Norway. Meanwhile, China is pursuing very aggressive incentives to increase the number of EVs as a means of combating terrible local air pollution and climate change.

Movement by cities and states to ban fossil fuel vehicles and incentivize EVs has an out-sized impact. It signals automakers that EV preference by government is becoming widespread. And because manufacturers have limited capital to spend on new vehicles, this drives a manufacturing preference as well.



(In this National Renewable Energy Laboratory study, the most rapid carbon emissions reductions were achieved in scenarios where large-scale EV deployment was combined with wholesale replacement of coal, oil, and gas fired electricity generation with renewable sources like wind and solar.)

Since EVs are more efficient that internal combustion engine based vehicles, they greatly reduce carbon emissions when tied to even traditional grids. But when linked to renewable power sources like wind and solar, EVs produce zero emissions in operation. This combination enables a far more rapid rate of carbon emission reduction.

In addition, the manufacturing base for EV batteries can also be used to build storage systems for intermittent wind and solar energy. This enables the removal of fossil fuel emitting coal and gas fired generators held in reserve for times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine even as the EVs themselves remove the need for oil based transporation. Such a manufacturing chain also opens up a new market for auto manufacturers — a fact that both Tesla and Hyundai have learned to their benefit.


Because EVs are based on electronic technology that is closely tied to the information age, they can benefit both from synergistic related economies of scale and from various innovations and breakthroughs. This means that EVs already outperform fossil fuel based vehicles in a number of areas. A performance advantage that is increasing and will likely overcome most traditional vehicles by the early 2020s. Because of this advantage, EVs would probably ultimately win out over time. However, the present climate crisis lends urgency to speeding their rate of adoption and in accelerating the rate of harmful fossil fuel based vehicle replacement.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/stat ... ce-cameras

Florida police officers caught disconnecting man's surveillance cameras on his home






https://qz.com/1182962/dutch-police-are ... wear-them/

Dutch police are confiscating expensive clothes from kids who look ...
Quartz-
Police in the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands are taking a controversial approach to reducing crime. They'll soon begin a pilot program targeting young men in designer clothes that the police believe they couldn't afford legally. If it's not clear how the person paid for the clothing, the police may confiscate ...






https://www.pressherald.com/2018/01/17/ ... -profiled/

COPS
Police say Portland officer arrested at Massachusetts nightclub assaulted customers
The police report says Zahra M. Abu pushed crowd members, assaulted the venue's head of security and refused to leave, then later said she was a victim of racial profiling.






http://globegazette.com/news/local/maso ... b50de.html

Mason City police, Cerro Gordo County start mental health relationship


Jan 16, 2018 Updated Jan 16, 2018






http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-gov ... 29924.html

Wichita City manager creates fake Civilian Review Police Board
No Subpoena powers turns board into useless feel good do nothing public relations event

Fire the City Manager


Here’s who will be reviewing police actions on the city’s new advisory board

January 18, 2018 10:47 AM
However, the board won’t be able to conduct its own investigations, subpoena information or compel officers to testify, recommend discipline for specific officers, review active internal investigations or discuss its reviews of officer discipline cases and internal investigations publicly.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-gov ... rylink=cpy

The city released 8 seconds of video from one body camera during the swatting call, but has declined to release footage from before and after the shooting and from additional cameras.

The city also denied The Eagle’s requests for police body-camera footage in two cases last year. The first dealt with an alleged police cover-up and FBI investigation of an off-duty officer who was accused of being involved in a hit-and-run accident after she had allegedly been drinking. The second involves an Iraqi man, his wife and their teenage daughter who were detained and questioned by officers after the man tried to deposit a check at a bank.







https://apnews.com/f5726e4a4ae44e62ac78 ... te-charges



Katherine Kealoha cleared of ethics claims despite charges


HONOLULU — The attorney for the man who filed an ethics complaint against embattled lawyer and Honolulu Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha has called for the removal of the leader of the Office of Disciplinary Counsel because he cleared Kealoha of wrongdoing.




http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/browa ... story.html

Cop found guilty of threatening to release nude photos of ex-girlfriend

The SunSentinel reports jurors decided Wednesday that James Krey, 40, threatened to release the photos and a sex video unless she resigned from her position on the Davie Police Department in suburban Fort Lauderdale. He faces up to 15 years in prison when he’s sentenced in February.



https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/hen ... urces-say/


Sexual harassment probe forced out ex-Henderson police chief, sources say


Editor’s note: The Review-Journal has granted anonymity to multiple sources with knowledge of sexual harassment within the Henderson Police Department and city of Henderson government to protect them from retribution.
A sexual harassment investigation forced out Patrick Moers as Henderson’s police chief last year, but city leaders concealed the reason for his ouster and misrepresented the nature of his separation, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has learned.
The decision to classify Moers’ departure as voluntary was costly to city taxpayers — it allowed him to cash out more than $163,000 worth of unused paid time off. If Moers had been fired for cause, he would have collected nothing.
But sexual harassment allegations against the Police Department aren’t limited to the investigation of Moers. And sources told the Review-Journal that Assistant City Manager Greg Blackburn, who was accused of sexual harassment in 2015 while employed by the city of North Las Vegas, is the subject of a sexual harassment investigation in Henderson.
Moers’ ouster, the additional claims and city leaders’ aversion to openness are byproducts of broad dysfunction within city government, a source said. Officials in key positions are aware of harassment problems, but they protect one another and target those who bring complaints against the city, multiple sources said.






http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_j ... 80117.html

N.J. town where a police chief allegedly compared blacks to ISIS holds town hall 'to heal'
Updated: JANUARY 17, 2018 — 9:53 PM EST




http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryla ... story.html

A Baltimore police officer was caught giving false testimony in court. He's still on the job.


On the witness stand, Baltimore Police Detective Sharod Watson was clear: He’d seen the defendant, Isadore White, on the same Southwest Baltimore block “on a daily basis” for 18 months before witnessing him make a drug sale there and chasing him into a nearby “stash house.”

“Just about every day?” asked John Cox, White’s defense attorney.

“Yes, sir,” Watson said.

White, 20, was charged with possessing a bag of heroin capsules he’d allegedly tossed during the chase, as well as possessing drugs and a gun found in the house on South Calhoun Street that he allegedly used as the base of his drug operation.


The detective’s testimony went to the core of the state’s case, helping to establish White’s link to the address over time.

But it wasn’t true. White was actually in jail for a year of the 18 months in question, awaiting trial on an attempted murder charge that was later dropped.

Confronted with that information, Watson acknowledged his testimony was “factually impossible.”






https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/theres- ... shows.html


GUNS AND WEAPONS
There's 'no evidence' Tasers reduce police use of firearms, new study shows
Research released this week finds that the Chicago Police Department's adoption of Tasers resulted in a reduction in officer injury but no effect on firearm use by law enforcement.
"We find no substitutions between Tasers and firearms," Professor Jeffrey Grogger told CNBC. The study reviewed 36,112 use-of-force incidents in Chicago..



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42730802

Indian boy shot dead in police crossfire
BBC News-
An eight-year-old boy has been killed in crossfire between police and criminals in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, officials say. A police spokesperson told the BBC that Madhav Bharadwaj was playing in a field in Mathura when the shootout happened on Wednesday. He added that it was unclear ...





http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Indict ... 03983.html

Indictment: 2 Wichita police officers, former KHP trooper indicted in illegal gambling investigation


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-amer ... ff-n838941



Family of man fatally shot by police before graduation sues sheriff

At around midnight on June 13, 2017, the King County Sheriff's Office received multiple 911 calls about gunfire and a man lunging “with a knife” in the city of Burien, a suburb of Seattle, according to a Sheriff’s Office statement.

After deputies arrived on the scene, a witness identified the then 20-year-old Le as the suspect and pointed him out walking toward deputies while making stabbing motions, according to police. Two deputies told Le to drop what he was holding, but he allegedly continued advancing. The deputies then unsuccessfully used their Tasers before Deputy Cesar Molina then shot multiple times, hitting Le, according to the release.

Le was pronounced dead at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle on June 14, 2017, the same day he was supposed to graduate from a high school completion program at South Seattle Community College, according to his family.

More than a week after the incident, the sheriff's office said that Le was holding a pen in his hand at the time of the shooting. The lawsuit alleges that the Sheriff's Office knew Le was not armed when he was shot and killed.








http://www.wfmz.com/news/berks/police-o ... /687571312

Police officer surrenders on charges in hit-and-run crash
He subsequently reported car stolen, DA says
Bern Township police Ofc. Doug Brown was charged Thursday in connection with a hit-and-run accident involving two other vehicles in Sinking Spring last month.

Brown admitted to detectives that he was behind the wheel of a car when the crash happened in the 3400 block of Penn Avenue shortly after 2 a.m. on December 11, according to the Berks County district attorney's office.

Brown also admitted to fleeing the scene on foot because he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash, authorities said.

"He actually had called his spouse and his spouse picked him up and took him back to his residence," said District Attorney John Adams. "He has not been charged with DUI. We had insufficient evidence to charge for that offense."

Brown later reported to his insurance company that the car had been stolen, officials said, adding that he contacted the insurance company a few days later to say that his mother had taken the car.




https://www.google.com/search?q=police& ... =723&dpr=2



Hungarian Police Have Arrest Warrant Out for Sebastian Gorka
Daily Beast-
Former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka now has an active warrant out for his arrest in Hungary for “firearm or ammunition abuse,” and had this active warrant pending while serving in the White House. According to Hungarian outlet 444, the warrant was issued on September 17, 2016—before President Trump ...






https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/worl ... lence.html

Myanmar Police Gun Down Marchers in Rakhine Ethnic Rally



https://www.npr.org/2018/01/16/57824718 ... orist-cell

New York Times
Police In Venezuela Say They've Destroyed A Terrorist Cell
NPR-Jan 16, 2018
Authorities in Venezuela say they have destroyed a plot against the president, Nicolas Maduro. In a bloody shootout, government forces attacked what they called a terror cell. Oscar Perez is believed to be among the casualties. He is a former police pilot and actor who urged Venezuelans to rise up against ...




https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/90 ... n-lockdown



Police station rocked by huge explosion - area on lockdown after 'hand grenade attack'

AN explosion has rocked a police station in Malmo, Sweden forcing officers to lock down the area after a suspected hand grenade detonated.





http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/16/europe/de ... index.html

Danish police charge 1,000 young people with 'distribution of child porn'
By Hilary McGann and Antonia Mortensen, CNN
Updated 1:54 AM ET, Tue January 16, 2018





https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2018 ... laint.html


Toronto police board asks for report on sexual harassment policies following sergeant’s human rights complaint
The Toronto police board voted unanimously Thursday to ask Chief Mark Saunders to provide a report on current, ongoing efforts to make sure service members are adhering to workplace sexual harassment policy.






http://samuelwalker.net/wp-content/uplo ... wf2002.pdf



"DRIVING WHILE FEMALE”: A NATIONAL PROBLEM IN POLICE MISCONDUCT. A Special Report by the. Police Professionalism Initiative. University of Nebraska at Omaha. Samuel Walker and Dawn Irlbeck.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

FBI Octopus
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/loc ... er-contest

DEA and FBI looking for students to take part in poster contest
News 5 Cleveland-
DEA and FBI looking for students to take part in poster contest. Tracy Carloss. 11:20 PM, Feb ... The contest is designed to draw attention to the DEA and FBI documentary, Chasing the Dragon. ... The FBI points to statistics that show the average age of the first time opiate user is between the ages of 12 and 17. Teenagers in ...





http://clevelandbanner.com/stories/boy- ... tist,73893

Friends of Scouting
Cleveland Daily Banne
The chosen speaker is Marcus D. Veazey, a former FBI agent and supervisor. Retiring from the FBI in 2013, Veazey now works as an investigative consultant for Unum. The Ocoee District's scouting highlights include more than 600 registered youth, over 350 adult volunteers serving as positive role models for the youth and ...




UPDATE

Prosecutors move to dismiss charges against former Scout leader

January 3, 2007

NEW HAVEN, Conn. --Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges
against a retired FBI agent who was indicted on child sex charges dating
back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader, in response to
the death of his accuser.


William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested in February on charges
he enticed a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual
activity in 1994 and 1995.


http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Form ... -86217.php

Former Scout leader, FBI agent indicted on child sex charges
News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)
Saturday, February 4, 2006


NEW HAVEN A retired FBI agent was indicted Friday on federal child
sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout
leader.
William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested Friday. The federal
grand jury indictment accuses Hutton of enticing a member of his Scout
troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.

"It's obviously devastating. He was an FBI agent in this district and was
reputed in this district," defense attorney Hugh Keefe said.

"The people who worked with him in the U.S. attorney's office and FBI
respected him."

Keefe said the investigation has been going on for years. He would not
discuss the details of the case or how the allegations surfaced.





http://www.oann.com/sen-graham-calls-fo ... e-fbi-doj/

Sen. Graham Calls For Second Special Counsel To Investigate FBI, DOJ






http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-stando ... ice_n.html


FBI told state police not to wear body cameras for 2016 stop of Finicum
OregonLive.com-Feb 2, 2018
Prosecutors say witness testimony, audio and video evidence, plus bullet trajectory analysis yielded one conclusion: FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita lied about firing two shots at the truck of refuge occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum in 2016 after he swerved into a snowbank. The information is detailed in a ...







http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/02/ ... on-urinal/


Hawaii Police Officers Accused Of Making Man Put Mouth On Urinal
February 3, 2018 at 7:14 pm





http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

The heat that has characterized this L.A. winter is forecast to continue next week, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s for the next few days.
The high temperature could reach 81 degrees on Sunday in downtown Los Angeles, cooling to 75 on Monday and Tuesday before potentially spiking up into the low 80s again Wednesday and Thursday, said National Weather Service weather specialist Stuart Seto.
That's above the average — 68 degrees — for this time of year downtown, Seto said. Temperatures throughout the region on Saturday were expected to hover around the low 80s.
And, of course, Los Angeles has barely seen any rain.
Downtown Los Angeles has recorded 1.89 inches of rain since Oct. 1, compared with the average 7.38 inches, Seto said. Last year, the area had seen 14.33 inches of rain by Feb. 2.






Link du jour




https://rightsanddissent.org









http://www.latimes.com/business/technol ... story.html

YouTube will start labeling videos that receive government funding

David Pierson
By DAVID PIERSON
FEB 02, 2018 | 2:55 PM




https://www.rt.com/usa/417814-us-president-fbi-power/

We are going to win:’ Trump can't do anything about FBI despite GOP memo – former CIA official
Published time: 4 Feb, 2018 04:10





http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/T ... 549558.php

Bay Area temperatures break records
By Sophie Haigney and Jenna Lyons Updated 7:20 pm, Saturday, February 3, 2018





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... story.html


Fortress Minneapolis: Largest Super Bowl security operation in ...
Daily Mail-
Black Hawk helicopters and jet fighters will be circling above the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to force down any aircraft that enters the 30 nautical mile no-fly zone. Helicopters equipped with infrared cameras will be in the air and there will be tens of thousands of police and FBI agents on the ground.



https://www.independent.ie/opinion/anal ... 90605.html

Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger
New book details operation to smuggle weapons from US, writes Jim Cusack

February 24 2013 4:00 AM

A new book on the notorious Boston gangster, James 'Whitey' Bulger, details his meetings with the Provisional IRA in setting up the arms smuggling deal which led to the arrest of Sinn Fein TD Martin Ferris in 1984.
The book also says that Bulger's involvement with the IRA "took off" after he began working as an FBI informer and quotes one of Bulger's associates saying that C4 plastic explosive supplied to the IRA came from a corrupt FBI agent who was supposed to be one of the Irish-American gangster's handlers.

The book is written by Boston Globe journalists Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen. Cullen, former crime correspondent for the newspaper, reported on Bulger and his gang for decades and had his life threatened by both Bulger and the corrupt FBI agent, John Connolly, now serving 40 years for involvement in three of the reputed 19 murders carried out by Bulger and his gang. Bulger, who was arrested in California in June 2011, faces trial in June on 19 murder and other charges.





https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... k-history/

February 1, 2018
Who does the CIA get to talk about Black History?
For one the Agency’s earliest programs, they ran through a few options first
Written by Beryl Lipton
Edited by JPat Brown
Here’s an understatement: the African-American community and the United States government’s intelligence apparatus have had a rather complicated and controversial relationship. A dive into the Central Intelligence Agency’s CREST archives reveals a bit of this curious crossover during the CIA’s search for a speaker at the Agency’s 1977 Black History Month celebration, one of its first.

The occasion, which took place on February 14th, ultimately featured C. DeLores Tucker, then-Secretary of State for the State of Pennsylvania and, later, a vocal opponent of gangsta rap. Based on the communications found in the archive, the talk went quite well …



and involved a job offer of indeterminate seriousness that the Civil Rights activist declined.



The theme of the Agency’s Black History program that year was the “historical and contemporary achievements of black American women,” and, according to other materials in the file, it appears that multiple others turned down the Agency offers to speak, including Barbara Jordan, a House Representative from Texas …



and Shirley Chisholm, a Congresswoman from New York.



You can read the full files below and explore for yourself on CREST.





https://www.pressherald.com/2018/02/03/ ... a-message/

Protesters in Portland take a knee to take back a message
Faith-based demonstrators at the jetport ask for the national conversation to return to racial injustice


On the eve of the Super Bowl, nearly 100 silent protesters “took a knee” at the Portland International Jetport to call attention to racial injustice and inequality.

Beginning at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, the protesters – including many clergy members – held signs and knelt on yoga mats, pillows and the hard floor to take back a message they say has been “hijacked” by the debate over the patriotism of NFL players who kneel during the national anthem.

The protesters, some wearing Patriots gear, lined either side of the jetport between the escalators/stairs and baggage claim, leaving plenty of room for disembarking travelers to walk a kind of prayer gantlet in between them. Signs invited the travelers to join them: “Take a Knee in Prayer,” one read. “Will you take a moment to kneel with us in support of justice & kindness for people of color?”

Holding the sign were Andy and Dorothy Grannell of Portland, who are “veterans of 50 years as a transracial family.”



https://www.pressherald.com/2018/02/04/ ... oice-vote/

Our View: Future of initiative process rides on ranked-choice vote
Augusta's dismissive treatment of citizen-initiated laws will be on the ballot this June

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.eldoradonews.com/news/2018/f ... porn-case/

UCSO deputy sentenced in child porn case
Justin Crain to serve 12 years in federal prison
A former Union County sheriff’s deputy was sentenced Thursday to just more than 12 years in federal prison on one count of knowing receipt of child pornography.

According to a release from Duane Kees, United States Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, Justin Grant Crain, 38, of El Dorado, was sentenced to 148 months in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release at the sentencing hearing in the United States District Court in El Dorado.

According to court records, in April 2016, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children forwarded information to the Arkansas State Police that images of child pornography were uploaded to cloud storage associated with a specific phone number. A resulting investigation by the Arkansas State Police and the Department of Homeland Security revealed that the images were uploaded by Crain.

At the time, Crain was a sergeant with the Union County Sheriff’s Office, where he had worked for nearly a year and a half. Prior to working for the sheriff’s office, Crain was an officer with the El Dorado Police Department.

The Arkansas State Police obtained and executed a federal search warrant on Crain’s cellphone while he was at work and found that he possessed over 50 images of child pornography. Crain was arrested on a federal criminal complaint obtained on June 3, 2016, for accessing the internet with the intent to view child pornography and receipt of child pornography.

At the time of his arrest, officials with the sheriff’s department told the News-Times that Crain was terminated from his position in the office after the sheriff learned of the investigation the week before Crain’s arrest.

A subsequent federal search warrant executed by the Arkansas State Police and the United States Secret Service on Crain’s electronic devices found that Crain possessed approximately 850 additional images of child pornography at his home.







http://bangordailynews.com/2018/02/16/p ... d-in-june/


Maine ranked-choice voting backers file suit to ensure system is used in June




Link du jour

http://bangordailynews.com/2018/02/16/b ... s-guitars/





https://apnews.com/7c161d02b7ad44e2be33 ... n-standoff

Jury awards over $37M to family of woman slain in standoff

BALTIMORE A jury has awarded more than $37 million in damages to the family of a Maryland woman who was fatally shot by police in 2016 after a six-hour standoff in her apartment.

The jury took several hours to reach its decision in a civil lawsuit filed against the Baltimore County government and police Cpl. Royce Ruby, who shot Korryn Gaines, The Baltimore Sun reported Friday .


The six-women jury found that the first shot, which killed Gaines and wounded her then 5-year-old son, was not reasonable and violated their civil rights under state and federal statutes, according to the newspaper. It said jurors awarded more than $32 million to Kodi in damages, and $4.5 million to his sister Karsyn. The panel awarded about $300,000 apiece to Gaines’ father, mother and to her estate.

Baltimore County government attorney Mike Field issued a statement afterward saying the county was disappointed with the decision and was reviewing all options, including a possible appeal.

Ruby was previously cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the State’s Attorney. He wasn’t charged and has since been promoted









http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/ ... olice.html

Cleveland swears in new police Internal Affairs head to oversee reforms of officer misconduct investigations




https://apnews.com/6ab4f4a030ae492fb441 ... o-25-years
Trafficker linked to Baltimore police sentenced to 25 years


BALTIMORE A man convicted of heroin trafficking who prosecutors say was protected for years by a corrupt Baltimore detective has been sentenced to 25 years.



http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/ ... 59689.html

Lawsuit blames Rock Hill police pursuit for 2016 crash that led to woman’s death

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: POLICING BY CONSENT

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... ion-75078/

Subject: Freedom of Information Act Request: FOIA - The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
Portal

To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
All records relating to or mentioning the 1973 action crime–drama film The Spook Who Sat by the Door (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spook ... oor_(film) )
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
J Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
06/11/2019
Subject: eFOIPA Authorization Request
Portal
You have successfully requested access to FBI's eFOIPA website.
Please access the efoia.fbi.gov by following this temporary authorization url:
<https://efoia.fbi.gov/authorize/b6f36d0 ... 5f0b2abd8c>.
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
06/21/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.

E501dfdbbf489bff91d44d6d2e99be8f535951632_Q59645_R347196_D2283914
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E501dfdbbf489bff91d44d6d2e99be8f535951632_Q59645_R347196_D2283907
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https://www.humankindness.org/wp-conten ... spring.pdf



Human kindness foundation


https://peopleslawoffice.com/pressure-m ... -memorial/


Pressure Mounts for Mayor Lori Lightfoot to Fund Torture Justice Memorial.
For over a quarter century the People’s Law Office has helped expose and represent people tortured under former police Cmdr. Jon Burge. Recently, the artist and activist-led collective, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) selected a design for a public memorial to honor the Burge torture survivors. The memorial is called Breath, Form & Freedom. It was designed by Chicago artists Patricia Nguyen and architectural designer John Lee.
“Breath, Form and Freedom” is a 1600 square foot structure with a winding hallway that is twelve feet wide and features the names and dates of survivors tortured by Jon Burge and his police in his Midnight crew. Click here to read more about the memorial and the process of choosing it.
While most of the historic reparations legislation package has been implemented Mayor Rahm Emanuel refused to provide funding for the public memorial. Now CTJM is calling on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to fund the construction of the memorial.
In an article published by the Chicago Tribune today, People’s Law Office attorney and co-founder of CTJM, Joey Mogul said “There is no better way in my opinion to name racism … than the city of Chicago building a memorial about these racially motivated police torture cases.” You can read the entire article here.



https://www.ncobraonline.org

NATIONAL COALITION OF BLACKS FOR REPARATIONS IN AMERICA (N’COBRA





https://anarchistnews.org/content/rip-v ... -roz-payne

A friend Ron Payne has died.....
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/24 ... -presente/

RIP Vermont Revolutionary Roz Payne
* Posted on: 22 May 2019
*




We brought Roz to speak at Bates College for our 5th Annual Conference Investigating Crimes Committed by FBI agents held during the 1990’s where she exhibited her drawings done by FBI agents
that were used to create create discord between civil rights groups. She got the drawings from the FBI in response to her FOIA request to the FBI for their Black Panther files. See. http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_612/
More recently I stayed over at her home on my way to interview Dick Gregory who was speaking in Lake Placid at the homestead of John Brown commemorating the anniversary of Brown’s birth.
Roz gave me a copy of her Black Panther DVD collection to pass onto Dick Gregory.

Anyone blessed enough to be in Roz Payne’s prescence got elevated to a higher consciousness....

Bin Voyage my friend





https://www.madcowprod.com/2019/06/05/f ... ald-trump/

From Barry Seal to Donald Trump
By Daniel Hopsicker -
June 5, 2019


This is a story about  ‘connections,’ elite deviance and the CIA.  More specifically,  Donald Trump’s connections, a  word which has a long history of usage in organized crime. 
As in,  ‘He’s connected.’
A member of the Mafia is known as a ‘made guy.’ Someone who’s ‘connected’ has been vouched for by a ‘made guy,’ who typically refers to him as “a friend of mine.”


https://www.madcowprod.com/2019/06/21/h ... rug-busts/

‘Highly mysterious’ China company owned both container ships in Philly Port drug busts
By Daniel Hopsicker -
June 21, 2019


http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com

Saturday, May 18, 2019
NIH: Informed consent "NEEDED" for "most vaccines", AND PATIENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE

Skip navigation
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientins ... 000445.htm

While the legislature has gone mad, fueled by fake news and Pharma largesse, forgotten are our minimum, legal standards that guarantee informed consent and prevent US patients from being forced to comply with vaccinations and other medical procedures.  

Interestingly, the NIH has not forgotten we have this right.

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