Newspaper de Jour

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msfreeh
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http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... ttlefield/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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msfreeh
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msfreeh
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msfreeh
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sorry,but we missed the debate last night.
We took a straw poll with inmates on Death Row
and CEO's at Goldman Sachs, the best active
barometer of the degree of civilization in America.

We posted the results here.

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

msfreeh
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msfreeh
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msfreeh
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... al-trudeau" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Canada
Think Canada is a progressive paradise? That’s mooseshit
We broker deals for an obscene number of weapons, and we frequently run roughshod over the rights of indigenous people. And don’t even get us started on your favorite wonderboy Justin Trudeau

msfreeh
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... atrol-cars

Teenage LA police cadets arrested for theft of patrol cars, radios and stun guns
Two boys and a girl aged 15, 16 and 17 used sergeant’s name to get the cars then caused police chases that end in two crashes



Link du jour
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mu ... story.html



http://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2017/06 ... mcphee-fbi

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -education

http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/06/fb ... e-in-ga-6/


http://www.rexresearch.com/nordenstrom/nordenstrom.htm



https://indypendent.org/2017/05/the-fed ... isan-fbi/q


The Feds Are Not Our Friends: The Troubled History of Our ‘Nonpartisan’ FBI






Much ado has been made on both sides of the political aisle over the nonpartisan role the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is meant to play within America’s judicial system.

When James Comey sent a letter to members of Congress 11 days before November’s presidential election informing them he had reopened the probe into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, overjoyed Republican lawmakers praised the maneuver as an act of transparency while Democrats chided Comey for influencing the vote. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he had “lost confidence” in the FBI Director.

When President Trump fired Comey this May amid the ongoing investigation into Russian collusion with his campaign, Schumer criticized Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (who up until now has had a reputation as a nonpartisan) for drafting a memo at the White House’s behest that gave Trump cover for axing Comey.

“If Mr. Rosenstein is true to his word,” Schumer told reporters on May 10, “that he believes this investigation must be, quote, ‘fair, free, thorough and politically independent,’ if he believes as I do that the American people must be able to have faith in the impartiality of this investigation, he must appoint a special prosecutor and get his investigation out of the hands of the FBI and far away from the heavy hand of this administration.”

Trump’s political opponents got what they wished for two days later when the Justice Department announced former FBI Director Robert Mueller would be stepping in as special counsel to investigate Trump. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers who soured on Comey during the Russian probe have defended his firing. The president complained on May 19 that he is the victim of “the greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.”

Whenever either political party has been wounded by the FBI of late its members have called for a return to impartiality, to nonpartisanship. But the bureau is undeserving of such sentimental longing. Its history of using extrajudicial means to achieve political aims goes back to its founding.

The FBI particularly does not take well to critics, as Marcus Garvey found out. In 1919, the founder of the 4-million strong, multinational United Negro Improvement Association, wrote an article in the Negro World criticizing underhanded investigators. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover directed his agents to find cause to deport Garvey as an undesirable alien (hiring their first Black agents to do the job). Finding no grounds for prosecution, the FBI manufactured a mail fraud case against Garvey. He served five years in prison and was deported. This was one of the FBI’s first big political acts, along with rounding up and deporting roughly 6,000 foreign-born radicals, including the Russian anarchist Emma Goldman, during the Red Scare of 1919.


Emma Goldman’s mug shot. The Russian anarchist was among roughly 6,000 foreign-born radicals rounded up and deported during the Red Scare of 1919.
The National Lawyers Guild incurred Hoover’s wrath in 1950 when it issued a “Report on the Alleged Practices of the FBI,” among which were warrantless searches and breaches if attorney-client privilege. The report — based on documents released in McCarthy-victim Judith Coplon’s trial — concluded: “On a strictly numerical basis, the FBI may commit more federal crimes than it ever detects.”

Documents subsequently released revealed that, over the course of four decades, the bureau used more than 1,000 informants, tapped phones and broke into Guild offices to steal membership lists. The FBI compiled biographies on 125 Guild officers and members, justifying its scrutiny because the Guild “consistently favored measures beneficial to labor,” advocated progressive taxation and supported anti-lynching legislation.

In 1961, Hoover directed his agents to gather information on twelve leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement “concerning their weaknesses, morals, criminal records, spouses, children, family life, education and personal activities,” as part of the Counterintelligence Program known as COINTELPRO. During the 60’s and 70’s, when the movement for independence was strongest, an estimated 75,000 Puerto Ricans were under surveillance.

In the 1980’s, participants in a hodgepodge of left-wing political causes — the sanctuary movement, the nuclear freeze movement, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) — were all spied upon by the FBI, as shown by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ross Gelbspan. His 1991 book, Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI detailed how the FBI used a Salvadoran ex-Baptist Minister named Frank Varelli to turn CISPES from a peaceful opponent of U.S. intervention in Central America into “an agent of domestic terrorism.”

A decade earlier on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, there had been 57 violent deaths of Native Americans, none of which were investigated by the FBI. In 1973, the American Indian Movement (AIM) began a 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, site of George Custer’s infamous 1890 massacre. The FBI, Bureau of Indian Affairs and state police laid siege to the occupation, resulting in two deaths, 562 arrests and 185 federal indictments. Despite all the FBI’s efforts, few charges resulted in convictions. Rather, so much evidence of government misconduct and witness manipulation came to light that FBI Associate Director Mark Felt came to Rapid City to testify in court to defend his agency against the critics.

There is no evidence that the Feds circling the White House are doing anything other than what the FBI has always done — defending the political status quo.
Attorney William Kunstler, representing AIM activists Dennis Means and Russell Banks, noticed during the trial a door repeatedly opening and shutting. Kunstler quietly motioned to the judge, walked over to the door and yanked it open. Two FBI agents practically fell into the courtroom. They thoroughly denied they had been listening in.

Unbeknownst to AIM at the time, Kerr McGee and Union Carbide had by then discovered uranium in the Black Hills. The 22.5 million acres recognized as Indian territory by the 1868 treaty were ultimately whittled down to less than half that size. It did not serve corporate interests, nor the FBI’s, to have AIM asserting their right to control their own resources.

Not content with witness-tampering, after 9-11 the FBI began aggressively recruiting informants to spy on Muslim communities, utilizing coercive tactics like putting them on a “no fly” list unless they agreed to spy. Shahed Hussein, facing criminal charges of his own, successfully entrapped four petty criminals in Newburgh with a fake plot to bomb a Bronx synagogue in 2009. Before that, using a slightly different identity, Hussein was able to convict a pizzeria owner in Albany of material support for terrorism.

FBI agent Robert Fuller ran both the Newburgh sting and one in Fort Dix in 2006 in which 5 Albanian brothers were tricked into buying weapons supposedly for an attack on military personnel. They were sentenced to life plus 30 years. Each sting took 13 to 16 months to bear fruit, in the form of chargeable offenses. When one of the five, early in the operation, tried to make a report of the weapons trading to the FBI, the FBI refused to accept the report.

James Comey deserves credit for racing to Alberto Gonzales to the bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft in March 2004 to thwart an extension of the NSA’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping. But it was also Comey (under then-FBI Director Robert Mueller) who asserted in May 2002 that the United States could pick up and detain American citizen Jose Padilla in a Navy brig, without access to counsel, hold him for years and interrogate him without articulable suspicion “to see what he knows” of alleged terrorist conspiracies. This was the trial created the designation “enemy combatant” and Padilla was the guinea pig.
Asked in an interview if he intended to present the charges to a grand jury as required by the Fifth Amendment, Comey answered no. “I don’t believe that we could use this information in a criminal case,” he explained, “because we deprived him of access to his counsel and questioned him in the absence of counsel. . . We’ll figure out down the road what we do with José Padilla.”

Former FBI Director and now Special Counsel Robert Mueller chose as General Counsel to the FBI Valerie Caproni, in August 2003. A report made by the Office of Inspector General Glenn Fine found that between 2003 and 2006, Ms. Caprioni approved the use of so-called exigent letters containing false information to obtain personal phone records for more than 5,500 numbers in 722 locations. Rather than being fired as some in Congress urged, she was appointed a federal judge for the Southern District of New York in September 2013.

While Comey was fired for the Russian inquiry (Trump himself has basically admitted as much) and Mueller’s appointment as special counsel certainly puts the president in hot water, viewed through an historical lens these recent developments do not indicate the FBI has somehow become apolitical nor that it is on the side of activists opposing Trump. There is no evidence that the Feds circling the White House are doing anything other than what the FBI has always done — defending the political status quo, in this case from a man in the seat of power who so clearly reveals its flaws. Business could soon be back to usual.

____



http://www.standardnewswire.com/news/8510612621.html

Judicial Watch Demands FBI Recover Records Unlawfully Removed by Former Director James Comey – Warns of Lawsuit
Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch, 202-646-5172

WASHINGTON, June 15, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch today announced it sent Acting FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe a warning letter concerning the FBI's legal responsibility under the Federal Records Act (FRA) to recover records, including memos Comey subsequently leaked to the media, unlawfully removed from the Bureau by former Director James Comey. The June 14 letter from Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton states:

As you are well aware, former FBI Director James Comey gave sworn testimony last week before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Among other things, Mr. Comey confirmed that, while in office, he created various memoranda regarding his meetings with President Trump. Mr. Comey also confirmed that, after his departure from the FBI, he provided at least some of these memoranda to a third party, Columbia Law School Professor Daniel Richman, for the purpose of leaking them to the press. Various media outlets now have reported that Professor Richman has provided these memoranda to the FBI. It is unclear whether he still retains copies of the memoranda.

I am writing to you on behalf of Judicial Watch, Inc., a not-for-profit educational organization that seeks to promote transparency, accountability, and integrity in government and fidelity to the rule of law. In furtherance of its public interest mission, Judicial Watch regularly requests access to the records of the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act and disseminates its findings to the public. In fact, on May 16, 2017, Judicial Watch submitted a FOIA request seeking these specific memoranda removed from the FBI by Mr. Comey. Judicial Watch also has pending FOIA lawsuits in which the memoranda may be at issue.

These memoranda were created by Mr. Comey while serving as FBI director, were written on his FBI laptop, and concerned official government business. As such, they indisputably are records subject to the Federal Records Act. 44 U.S.C. §§ 2101-18, 2901-09, 3101-07, and 3301-14. The fact that Mr. Comey removed these memoranda from the FBI upon his departure, apparently for the purpose of subsequently leaking them to the press, confirms the FBI's failure to retain and properly manage its records in accordance with the Federal Records Act. Even if Mr. Comey no longer has possession of these particular memoranda, as he now claims, some or all of these memoranda may still be in possession of a third party, such as Professor Richman, and must be recovered. Mr. Comey's removal of these memoranda also suggests that other records may have been removed by Mr. Comey and may remain in his possession or in the possession of others. If so, these records must be recovered by the FBI as well.

MORE: http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room ... mes-comey/




http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/j ... ed-after-/

NATION

Black Michigan man convicted on single hair freed after 41 years
Thu., June 15, 2017, 1:10 p.m.a


https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... e-disaster

Houston fears climate change will cause catastrophic flooding: 'It's not if, it's when'
Human activity is worsening the problem in an already rainy area, and there could be damage worthy of a disaster movie if a storm hits the industrial section





https://rightsanddissent.org/news/categ ... -newswire/


Dissent NewsWire

Demand That Charges Against Winner Be Dropped

June 15, 2017 by BORDC/DDF

Demand That Charges Against Winner Be DroppedOn this centennial of one the worst pieces of legislation ever passed, join us in standing up to yet another abuse of it. Reality Winner and all other whistleblower should not be charged with any crime at all.
We Won! No Spy Planes Over Miami.

June 14, 2017 by Sue Udry

Responding to community outcry, police director Juan Perez withdraws his proposal to implement a Wide Area Surveillance program in Miami Dade County
Why Is A Senate Committee Bringing Message of Anti-Muslim Street Protests Onto Capitol Hill?

June 14, 2017 by Rights & Dissent

Why Is A Senate Committee Bringing Message of Anti-Muslim Street Protests Onto Capitol Hill?If the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) is interested in learning more about terrorism and effective strategies to protect against it, they should call as witnesses experts on terrorism, not purveyors of half-truths and innuendo.
Why Wide Area Surveillance is a Big Deal

June 12, 2017 by Susan Gaissert

Why Wide Area Surveillance is a Big DealMilitarization of American police forces is becoming more and more common and, as a result of digital-age technologies and the use of smaller-scale surveillance cameras both publicly and privately, many people living in the United States today believe they have no privacy and, indeed, no right to expect privacy. They are misinformed.
UN Experts Decry Surge in Anti-Protest Bills in US States

June 10, 2017 by Suraj K Sazawal

UN Experts Decry Surge in Anti-Protest Bills in US States“These state bills, with their criminalization of assemblies, enhanced penalties and general stigmatization of protesters, are designed to discourage the exercise of…fundamental rights.”
Spy Planes Over Miami

June 8, 2017 by Sue Udry

Spy Planes Over Miami The highly invasive technology was developed by the US Air Force during the Iraq War and features Cessna airplanes flying over an area filming all that goes on in a 32 square mile area below. But activists are fighting it.
Who Is This Guy? Trump Nominates Christopher A. Wray To Be FBI Director

June 7, 2017 by Sue Udry

Who Is This Guy? Trump Nominates Christopher A. Wray To Be FBI DirectorTrump announced his nominee via twitter this morning. Wray isn’t a household name, even among civil liberty advocates, so we’re still researching those details. Here’s what we’ve got so far…
Expansive Protections Against Police Abuses Win Approval in Providence

June 2, 2017 by Shahid Buttar

Expansive Protections Against Police Abuses Win Approval in ProvidenceOn Thursday night, the capital of the smallest state in the union adopted a wide-ranging police reform measure with national and historic implications. The ordinance was inspired by our Local Civil Rights Restoration Act.
So Maybe it ISN’T Constitutional to Deafen Protesters?

June 2, 2017 by Rights & Dissent

So Maybe it ISN’T Constitutional to Deafen Protesters?US District Judge Hon. Robert W. Sweet denied a bid by the City of New York to dismiss key assault and battery, excessive force, and failure to train claims in a landmark federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of NY and NYPD officers who used an LRAD “sound cannon” against Black Lives Matter protesters, journalists, and bystanders in December of 2014.
Senators push Justice Department nominee for answers on secret law

June 1, 2017 by Jesse Franzblau

Senators push Justice Department nominee for answers on secret lawThe OpenTheGovernment coalition advocated for questions that would shed light on the Justice Department’s justifications for withholding OLC opinions, including opinions justifying controversial policies such as mass surveillance practices, targeted killing programs, and use of torture in interrogation practices.
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https://robertscribbler.com/



Melted Texas-Sized Section of Ross Ice Shelf Surface During 2016
“In West Antarctica, we have a tug-of-war going on between the influence of El Niños and the westerly winds, and it looks like the El Niños are winning. It’s a pattern that is emerging. And because we expect stronger, more frequent El Niños in the future with a warming climate, we can expect more major surface melt events in West Antarctica (emphasis added).” — David Bromwhich, co-author of a recent study identifying massive summer surface melt in West Antarctica during 2016.

******

If you’re concerned about human-caused global warming, then you should also be concerned about ice. In particular — how warming might melt a miles-high pile of the frozen stuff covering the massive continent of Antarctica.

During recent years, scientists have become more and more worried as they’ve observed warming oceans eating away at the undersides of floating ice sheets. This particular process threatens numerous cities and coastal regions with swiftening sea level rise as ice margins melt and glaciers the size of mountain ranges clamor for release into the world’s oceans.

Major Antarctic Surface Melt Event During 2016

But another potential process in a still warmer world threatens to compound the impact of the heating waters that are already melting so many of the world’s glaciers from the bottom up — large scale surface melt.



(A major warming event during January of 2016 turned a Texas-sized section of Antarctica’s surface into slush. This occurred as a storm running in from the Southern Ocean delivered warm air and rainfall to sections of West Antarctica. Scientists are concerned that more major surface melt is on the way for Antarctica as the Earth’s climate heats up and that repeated warming and rainfall events in this typically-frozen region may further quicken rates of sea level rise. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

During January of 2016, as a very strong El Nino was combining with human-caused global warming to spike atmospheric temperatures to 1.2 C above 1880s levels, something pretty strange and concerning happened. Over the course of about 15 days, a 300,000 square mile section of the Ross Ice Shelf surface and nearby lands over West Antarctica experienced melting. This mass slushing across Antarctica’s surface occurred as a warm storm swept in from the Southern Ocean (see image above) to deliver an unheard of rainfall event to the region.

West Antarctica is typically too cold for such weather. It is also often too dry. The region is well know by climate researchers as a frozen desert. But as human-forced climate change has warmed the nearby ocean, warm, moist winds blowing in from these heating waters have become more frequent.

Westerlies Interrupted by Warming Ocean

Antarctica is typically protected by strong westerly winds that keep both heat and moisture out. But a warming ocean environment, according to Ohio State researchers, is enabling El Nino to interrupt these westerlies and hurl increasing volumes of heat and moisture over the glaciers of Antarctica. In 2016, these winds bore with them an odd rainstorm that set off a massive surface melt event.



(Surface melt over a large section of West Antarctica lasted for as much as 15 days as heat and moisture from the surrounding ocean beat back a protective barrier of westerly winds and invaded the frozen continent. According to scientists, these events are likely to become more frequent and long-lasting as the climate warms. Image source: Ohio State University.)

When combined with already-active melt from ocean warming, surface melt could further serve to destabilize ice sheets and swiften sea level rise. This was exactly the concern that David Bromwich, an Antarctic researcher at Ohio State and co-author of the paper that identified this strange event highlighted in this statement (please see related Washington Post article here):

“It provides us with a possible glimpse of the future. You probably have read these analyses of West Antarctica, many people think it’s slowly disintegrating right now, and it’s mostly thought to be from the warm water eating away at the bottom of critical ice shelves. Well, that’s today. In the future, we could see action at the surface of these ice shelves as well from surface melting. So that makes them potentially much more unstable (emphasis added).”

It’s worth noting that this particular storm, though unusual and noteworthy, did not produce too much in the way of surface melt ponding. Instead, the storm turned a large section of the Antarctic surface to a slurpee-like slush. But this event did deliver a considerable amount of heat to the Ross Ice Shelf region. And repeated instances could serve to seriously soften this massive ice formation.

Eventually, as warming worsens, significant surface melt and flooding could help to shatter large buttressing ice shelves like Ross or even generate risks of surface glacial outburst flooding in instances where permanent surface melt lakes form behind an ice dam. But the primary concern at this time is that these warm rain events provide a compounding melt influence that adds to risks for more rapid sea level rise this Century.

Links:

Widespread Snowmelt in Antarctica During Unusually Warm Summer

Scientists Stunned by Antarctic Rainfall and Melt Area Bigger Than Texas

Scientists Report Large Scale Surface Melting Event in Antarctica During 2015-2016 El Nino

The Ross Ice Shelf

Earth Nullschool



http://harvardmagazine.com/2016/07/naom ... ate-change


NEWS
Naomi Oreskes on How to Write about science



HISTORY OF SCIENCE professor Naomi Oreskes talks about climate change the way one might expect of both an earth scientist and a historian. “Science has to be part of the conversation on climate change,” she says, “but it’s not the whole conversation. At this time, I actually don’t think it’s the most important piece. There’s a basic issue of justice here, and we desperately need economists and sociologists and philosophers and artists to be heard.” Her humanist instincts allow her to move a wide audience in a way most scientists never achieve. Her work has helped broaden the public’s acceptance of climate change as an issue of scientific consensus rather than debate, and for taking up this public mantle of climate change advocacy, she will be honored with the Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication this winter. Oreskes recently talked to Harvard Magazine about the climate-denial industry, the political role of scientists, and writing about academic research for a wide audience.

Oreskes insists that she never intended to become a “climate-change warrior.” In 2004, when she was researching how scientific consensus and dissent emerge, she published “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” a review of the scientific literature that made clear the widespread agreement among scientists that climate change is real and created by humans. One journalist, she remembers, thanked her for the article; every time he wrote about climate change, he told her, readers accused him of bias for not covering the contrarian side, and her paper helped him show that there was no legitimate contrarian side.

Then she became the target of attacks herself. “So I ended up trying to figure out why I was being attacked for publishing a fairly straightforward analysis of the state of scientific discussion, and what I discovered was a remarkable story, which at the time was not understood. There was an organized climate-change denial network—a group of people and think tanks largely funded by the fossil-fuel industry, who were deliberately trying to persuade the American people that there was a big scientific debate about climate change.” In hindsight, that network might agree that it erred in targeting a historian of science who was also a good writer. In 2010, she published Merchants of Doubt, about the strategies used by the tobacco, fossil-fuel, and other industries to undermine the authority of scientists. The book captured a wide audience at a moment when climate change was gaining acceptance as an issue of public concern.

It isn’t just the business interests of the fossil-fuel industry that drive climate denial, Oreskes stresses. “It’s also about an ideological argument about the role of government. This is partly why it resonates with a lot of people who don’t necessarily have stock in ExxonMobil.” Anti-government ideology has made climate denial particularly hard to counter, she believes, because its purpose is to politicize science, and scientists don’t like to be political. “Imagine you’re a science professor and you want to teach factual information. But if you stand up in class and say climate change is real, you can be accused by your students of being political in the classroom. I have been accused of this.”

Should academics become more comfortable, then, taking moral and political positions related to their work? There’s been a move among economists, for example, to think more seriously about questions of distribution and fairness. Oreskes answers in two parts. “I think economics is different because all the social sciences are engaged with questions about society,” she argues. “For many years, the economics profession tried to put forward the idea of economics as a value-neutral science. I think that was intellectually erroneous. I don’t think you can have a discussion about the distribution of goods and services that isn’t at least in some ways implicitly involved with creating a just world.” The natural sciences, she argues, are different because scientists can answer empirical questions in a way that doesn’t diminish moral questions. “If we’re asking, ‘Has the planet warmed up?’ that’s a question about the chemistry of the earth, and it can be answered with empirical data and it can be separated from the question of what we should do about it. I think it’s important for scientists to be clear in their minds about that separation.”

Questions about the moral and civic dimensions of climate change are for other thinkers to answer, Oreskes suggests. “Much more we’re seeing people in the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, realizing that we need to hear their voices. Ultimately, if you ask, ‘Why does climate change matter?’ The answer gets back to questions of our values and the common good. Climate change matters because people are getting hurt, because people are going to lose their livelihoods and communities, because the people who will be hurt the most are not the people who created the problem.”

In this respect, Oreskes says she’s often been misinterpreted. “Sometimes people think that because I am very publicly engaged in discussing climate change, that means that I think all scientists should be,” she says. “But that is not my view. We need some scientists to explain the science, but most scientists just want to do science, and that’s fine. Moreover, if we start getting into the moral questions, well, scientists are not necessarily the best experts.”

On some level, it appears that climate-change denial is diminishing among politicians who wish to be taken seriously, or is, at least, becoming less acceptable than it once was. That may appear to be true, she says, but denialists understand that the debate is a moving target, and adjust their arguments to the political climate. Even if it’s less acceptable to deny climate change outright, that is a separate question from whether the nation is prepared to do anything about it. “There was a time when the tobacco industry denied that tobacco was harmful. Then they said, ‘OK, there’s some harm, but people are grown-ups, and they can decide for themselves.’ We see the same thing to some extent with climate denial. People first said there is no climate change. Then they said it’s not caused by people. Then they said there is climate change and it’s caused by people, but it would be too expensive to fix.”

“Donald Trump has said publicly that climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese in order to undermine our economy,” Oreskes adds. His widespread appeal might support the theory that the group she calls “merchants of doubt” has weakened the legitimacy of science in the minds of ordinary Americans. Still, she complicates the narrative that the public is mistrusting of academics: “Public-opinion polls show that the American people still overall trust science and scientists much more than they trust politicians or business leaders.”

A frequent writer for the public, Oreskes has reflected a great deal on the role of the media in people’s understanding of academic research. It can be difficult even for responsible journalists to write about a single study or idea without overstating its significance. What might writers do to be more honest in their reporting? Is it ever legitimate to write a news story about a single study—a practice that’s pervasive in the media, including this magazine? “In a perfect world, the answer would be no,” she responds. “On some level, it is irresponsible. But there’s tremendous pressure to do that. Scientific knowledge is never based on one paper, not even the most important papers in the history of science.”

Reporting on isolated studies can not only create confusion about the intellectual process, but also undermine faith in the process itself. If the press embellishes one study and its findings are later repudiated, as often happens, that can create the impression (potentially ripe for exploitation by merchants of doubt) that scholars are always changing their minds. To science writers thinking about these questions, Oreskes offers the following advice. Beyond the need to contextualize a study even more than seems necessary, journalists should also consider it a duty to challenge editors who ask for a dishonest story. If that means taking more time than the writer has been assigned, she jokes, that’s okay, because “science stories are rarely emergencies.”




FBI Octopus


FBI gives classified briefing on Hawaii security threats to industry ...
Hawaii News Now
The FBI held a closed-door briefing Thursday morning with some of the state's top businesses to talk about current security threats facing their industries.
a[/quote]


msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Newspaper de Jour

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msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Newspaper de Jour

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chic ... story.html

When J. Edgar Hoover told Chicago FBI to set the Mafia on Dick Gregory

Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory — who died this weekend at 84 — famously quipped when he ran for president in 1968 that, if he won, "the first thing I would do is paint the White House black."

It was a joke, of course. George Wallace, the segregationist former Alabama governor who placed third in the 1968 election, got more than 200 times as many votes as Chicago-based Gregory, a write-in candidate.

But FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wasn't taking any chances — he considered Gregory such a threat that he ordered the Chicago office of the FBI to enlist the Outfit in an effort to "neutralize" the comedian during the race.

Noting that the fearless Gregory had recently mocked the Outfit as "the filthiest snakes that live on this earth," Hoover wrote a memo to the special agent in charge in Chicago, Marvin Johnson, telling him to "consider using this statement in developing a counter-intelligence operation to alert La Costra Nostra (LCN) to Gregory's attack on LCN."


Beyond his forceful advocacy for African-Americans, Gregory's "crime" appears to have been criticizing the president and publicly discussing Hoover's habit of using opponents' sex lives against them.

Dick Gregory, groundbreaking comedian and activist who ran for Chicago mayor, dies at 84
A trawl of the archives shows that Gregory frequently butted heads with law enforcement and the Democratic machine in Chicago in the 1960s. Arrested at multiple sit-ins, he was hosed down by Mayor Richard J. Daley's Bridgeport neighbors, who turned their sprinklers on him and chanted "2, 4, 6, 8, we don't want to integrate!" when he led a march against racism in schools on Daley's home (Daley later turned down the chance to celebrate "Dick Gregory Day" with the black mayor of Gary).


In his book, "Write Me In," he complained that the machine stymied his campaign for mayor by placing the pencils used to write in candidates' names on long strings that could be seen beneath the curtain of the voting booth.

And he recalled a notorious incident in which, to support his presidential campaign, he issued fake dollar bills with his photograph on them. The bills were good enough to fool vending machines of the time, prompting an FBI and Treasury Department probe that landed Gregory in hot water. Gregory beat the case, he said, by telling them, "Until you have money with black people on it, don't tell me that looks like American money!"


Link du jour
http://www.thesullenbell.com/2017/08/21 ... s-on-deck/


http://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/21/dr ... ve-bannon/


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3430340

https://www.theguardian.com/world/galle ... n-pictures


http://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/21/3- ... ng-center/


http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3429886


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t8ER_U_Ph6A


http://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/21/ad ... ice-death/






http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/valley/ob ... 17717.html

Oklahoma City bombing attorney Jesse Trentadue's son in law
dies in plane crash


Driggs, Idaho, resident Russell “Rusty” Taylor Cheney died April 10. He was 34. His family provided the following.




also see


http://www.the-office.com/okc-witnesses.htm

THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING:

ONE BY ONE...

PEOPLE WHO SAW TOO MUCH
PEOPLE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

PEOPLE WHO ASKED TOO MANY QUESTIONS

GOOD PEOPLE - PEOPLE WHO GAVE A DAMN
ABOUT THEIR FAMILIES, THEIR FRIENDS, THEIR NEIGHBORS
ABOUT THEIR COUNTRY

WERE MURDERED
AND THE CRIMES WERE COVERED UP
BY PEOPLE THEY, AND WE
ONCE BELIEVED WERE WORTHY
OF OUR TRUST

http://www.the-office.com/okc-witnesses.htm



THE WITNESSES: Within minutes of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, all available on-duty and off-duty police, fire and medical personnel from throughout the metropolitan area responded to the scene. Citizens and rescue crews teamed up to ensure the injured were treated and transported as quickly as possible.

In the first minutes following the blasts that devastated the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, the morning of April 19, 1995, a number of selfless individuals risked life and limb to rescue many of the victims. They were quickly joined by others.

Among the very first to arrive on the scene were Oklahoma City police officers, Terrance Yeakey, Gordon Martin and Ken Griffin, a number of Oklahoma City firefighters, Dr. H. Don Chumley, and General Services Administration planner Michael Lee Loudenslager.



Mike Loudenslager
In the aftermath of the bombing, the name Mike Loudenslager holds particular significance in the hearts of many in and around Oklahoma City. And this is so, because of the forewarning he gave to a number of those families who had children in the Murrah Building's day-care center.

In the weeks preceding the bombing, Michael Loudenslager, 48, had become increasingly aware that large amounts of ordnance and explosives were being stored in the building and as a result he, (along with the operator of the day-care center) strongly urged a number of parents to take their children out of the Murrah Building.

This situation arose after other employees became concerned with an increased amount of ordnance (missiles) being brought into the building by the B.A.T.F. and D.E.A. As a result of this concern, a grievance was filed with G.S.A. by the building's security director, whose wife ran the day-care center.

The result was, the security director, the man who who had filed the complaint citing the danger to the Murrah Building's occupants, lost his job there.

Then, after some remodeling work had been done to the day care center, and the operator (the security director's wife) notified Fire Marshals of the work's completion, (as was required by her license) Fire Marshals were denied access by federal agents, and were instructed to leave.

And then... the day-care operator lost her contract.

After hearing rumors about an impending bombing and feeling the risk was too great not to say anthing, Michael Loudenslager and the day-care center operator began speaking with parents, many of whom chose to remove their children. Because of their warnings, far fewer children were in the day-care center on that horrible Wednesday morning than there otherwise would have been. A number of families, in and around Oklahoma City, have these two people to thank for their children's lives today.

At the time of the bombing, Loudenslager was in court. Shortly after the bombing, Loudenslager was among those who were actively helping in the rescue and recovery effort. A large number of those at the bomb-site either saw or talked with him.

During the course of the early rescue efforts, however, Mike Loudenslager was seen and heard engaging in a loud, angry exchange with someone there.

Much of his anger stemmed from the fact he felt the B.A.T.F. was in large part responsible, not only for the bombing, but for the death and injury to those inside, particularly the nineteen children who died as a result of the blast.


Her name was Baylee. She died

To the utter astonishment of a large number of police officers and rescue workers therefore, it was later reported that G.S.A. employee Mike Loudenslager's body had been found inside the Murrah Building the following Sunday, at his desk on the first floor, supposedly a victim of the 9:02 A.M. bombing.

The problem with the "official" story then, is that Loudenslager already been seen alive and well by numerous rescue workers at the bomb-site after the bombing, where he was actively engaged in the urgent task of rescuing critically injured victims.

Yes he is officially listed as one of the 168 bombing fatalities.

But Mike Loudenslager was murdered at the site, sometime after the bombing.

The question now becomes: Was he murdered and placed at his desk? Or, was he simply murdered and said to have been found at his desk?.

The Federal government had sequestered the area; no one who did not have official approval was allowed in.

This considerably narrows the list of suspects.

Michael Lee Loudenslager was survived by his wife, Betty, and one son.

Loudenslager's murder is unquestionably one of the most important sidelights of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Jack Colvert, Jackie Majors and Buddy Youngblood had also been at the Murrah Building that morning. Each saw Mike Loudenslager alive and well after the bombing.

They'e all dead.

So are Dr. H. Don Chumley and Officer Terry Yeakey.

As are, it is now said, about thirty people who either knew too much, or asked too many questions.

At least two attempts have been made on the life of Officer Gordon Martin.

Others who were there that morning have also felt threatened.

Many police officers and emergency services personnel still fear for their personal safety.

And for good reason..








FBI Octopus

http://www.fosters.com/news/20170821/fo ... -nonprofit


Former deputy chief named president of Rochester FBI nonprofit
Foster's Daily Democrat-
ROCHESTER — Rochester's former deputy police chief has been named the president of the FBI National Academy Associates. Dumas retired from the ...

Posted at 4:32 PM
Updated at 4:32 PM

ROCHESTER — Rochester’s former deputy police chief has been named the president of the FBI National Academy Associates.

Dumas retired from the Rochester Police Department after 21 years of service in April 2016 to become the chief of the Rowley, Mass., Police Department. As president of the FBINAA for the next year, Dumas will lead the nonprofit association and its more than 16,000 members as it works to improve law enforcement expertise.

“The FBI is not broken,” Dumas said in a statement released by the association. “The FBI National Academy Associates is not broken. Law Enforcement is not broken. What members of the FBI do, what members of the National Academy Associates do, and what the members of law enforcement do is we lead. And we do it willingly and we do it without fear.”

Dumas is an active member of the FBINAA’s New England chapter and a graduate of the 226th Session of the FBI National Academy Training Program. Dumas holds a bachelor’s degree from Auburn University at Montgomery in justice and public safety, as well as a master’s degree in administrative leadership from the University of Oklahoma, an academic partner of the FBINAA.



Rochester Police Commissioner Bruce Lindsay heavily praised the “very intellectual” Dumas and his many accomplishments while stating that Dumas will be a great president for the FBINAA.

“I have a lot of respect for him, and I’m not just saying that because everyone says that,” said Lindsay. “We were really happy he got a chief’s position in Massachusetts, but it was really a loss for us. He makes an impact when he walks into the room. I was a professor at the University of New Hampshire for 38 years, and I’ve told him he would’ve made an excellent professor because of the way he communicates information and energizes you with his enthusiasm.”

Members of the FBINAA are senior law enforcement professionals and graduates of the national academy. The association’s mission is “Impacting communities by providing and promoting law enforcement leadership through training and networking.”



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

L.A. County sheriff's sergeant is charged after accusations he demanded sexual favors from a subordinate
Maya Lau Maya LauContact Reporter
A Los Angeles County sheriff’s sergeant is accused of fondling a deputy he supervised and forcing her to provide sexual favors in their workplace in exchange for his approving her time-off requests, according to a district attorney’s memorandum.





https://www.sciencenews.org/article/rwa ... ogy-murder


A look at Rwanda’s genocide helps explain why ordinary people kill their neighbors
Rather than blindly obeying orders, perpetrators felt a sense of duty





http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2017 ... mants.html

Drug convictions tossed over FBI agent, informant testimony


Updated on August 21, 2017 at 3:52 PM Posted on August 21, 2017 at 3:05 PM

TRENTON -- Testimony from an FBI agent and a confidential informant about a cocaine deal the informant recorded was not properly qualified at trial, leading a state appeals court to wipe out the convictions of a Trenton man





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3430240

Court cop indicted for forcing woman to perform sex act inside Brooklyn courthouse


BY CHRISTINA CARREGA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, August 21, 2017, 5:27 PM



http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... ow-key-way


The Very Strange Indictment of Debbie Wasserman Schultz's IT ...
National Review-
And there is, in addition, the question I raised a month ago: Why did the FBI ... The FBI was sufficiently attuned to the Awans' criminality that its agents went to the ...


http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/footb ... -1.3429978

De Blasio, O'Neill support NYPD cops who rallied for Colin Kaepernick in Brooklyn: 'We’re entitled to our own opinions'
BY ERIN DURKIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Monday, August 21, 2017, 3:57 PM





https://boston.curbed.com/2017/6/22/158 ... -victorian



Tim Wright was my boss at BNN TV in Boston
He is the grandson of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t8ER_U_Ph6A


also see

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4d1slVlmldY




https://robertscribbler.com/2017/08/21/ ... pens-wide/

The Economist Sounds Death Knell for the Internal Combustion Engine as Pathway toward Carbon Emission Reductions Opens Wide
by robertscribbler
Earlier this month, The Economist prophetically declared that the "death of the internal combustion engine" is at hand. That the end for this inefficient fossil fuel burning monstrosity was "in sight." And that, ultimately, "days were numbered" for a design that has so efficiently and so harmfully injected billions of tons of pollution into the Earth's atmosphere.



(Gigafactories like this one being built in Nevada and numerous others being built in Southeast Asia are helping to enable a combined electrical vehicle and grid based renewable power revolution. Note that the Tesla gigafactory is still far from complete even though it is currently producing 5 GWh of lithium batteries per year. Production by end 2018 is expected to hit 35 GWh per year and ultimate production could hit as high as 150 GWh per year.)

The Economist notes that performance gains for electrical vehicles are quickly outpacing those of internal combustion engine based vehicles. That "today's electric cars, powered by lithium-ion batteries, can do much better." It finds that electrical vehicles are simpler to manufacture, easier to maintain, and easier to improve than traditional vehicles. It points to the fact that transportation based emissions alone result in 53,000 premature deaths each year in the U.S. vs the 34,000 who die due to car related collisions. And it cites research showing that transferring existing vehicles to electrical vehicles would reduce vehicle based carbon emissions by 54 percent using present grid sourced electricity generation. But it also rightly notes that as the grid becomes more and more dominated by renewable based energy systems, vehicle-based emissions will fall further -- eventually reaching zero on a grid fully supplied by sources like wind and solar. Finally, The Economist notes that when mated with automation and ride share, EVs have the potential to reduce the number of vehicles on the road upwards of 90 percent (in the most optimistic assessments).

EVs are disruptive in that they're becoming increasingly easy for start-up companies to produce -- even if they are more difficult for traditional auto manufacturers who have heavily invested in fossil fuel based vehicle production infrastructure and parts chains. The result is that numerous independent EV shops are cropping up and that countries and industries who were not traditionally auto manufacturers are capable of making serious new entries. Tesla was an industry leader in this regard. But many such businesses are emerging all over the world from the U.S. to China to Europe to India and beyond.



(Increasing predictions for rate of EV build through 2040. Image source: The Economist.)

Moreover, the predicted rate of EV adoption just keeps rising. The Economist points out that UBS expects that 14 percent of all new vehicles in 2025 will be electric. And while UBS is among the more optimistic prognosticators, even traditional oil companies like Exxon are being forced to acknowledge that EVs will take larger and larger portions of the auto market. In just one year, from 2016 to 2017, Bloomberg adjusted its expected rate of new EV sales in 2040 upward from 400 million to 520 million, OPEC from 50 million to 250 million, and Exxon from 80 million to 100 million (see graphic above).

Such large and expanding build rates will certainly enable more and more rapid rates of global carbon emissions reductions. Not just through direct carbon emissions removal by replacing ICE based vehicles with EVs. But also by enabling the mating of batteries with renewable energy systems around the world. Tesla, which is today producing 5 gigawatt hours of battery storage in 2017 from its Gigafactory in Nevada is now starting to do just that. In South Australia, Tesla is involved in mating wind energy with battery storage even as it pursues a similar project in New Zealand. and following its completion of a solar and battery based storage system for Kauai Hawaii.



(The amount of batteries available for both EVs and grid based storage is set to rapidly expand. Note that Tesla recently announced that its Nevada Gigafactory could eventually produce 150 GWh per year of battery storage. Image source: The Economist.)

By 2018, rate of battery production at the Tesla plant will accelerate to 35 GWh per year with the plant ultimately able to achieve near 150 GWh per year (according to Musk). Similar very large battery production plants are being built in Europe and China, with a number likely also slated for India in the near future. And the batteries produced in these plants can be used either in EVs or as a massive and growing energy storage pool that's already capable of directly replacing coal and gas plants now operating on electrical grids.

Such was the economic reality for the Liddel Coal Plant in New South Wales Australia when AGL Energy decided it was more economic to replace the plant with wind, solar and batteries than to continue to burn coal and gas as a baseload energy supply. And this decision was made under present economic realities. Now imagine what those economic realities will look like when the world is producing more than an order of magnitude more battery storage each year at much lower cost and as wind and solar costs continue to fall. In other words, the electrical vehicle revolution is enabling the renewable power revolution and vice versa. And both are bringing forward the time when global carbon emissions start to consistently drop off. To support the advancement of one is to support the advancement of both -- to the larger overall benefit of more rapid global carbon emissions reductions and a quickening ability to address the very serious issue that is human-forced climate change.

Links:

The Death of the Internal Combustion Engine

After Electric Cars, What Will it Take For Batteries to Change the Face of Energy?

Tesla Could Triple Planned Battery Output of Gigafactory 1 to 150 GWh

China is About to Bury Elon Musk in Batteries

Tesla to Build World's Largest Lithium Ion Battery Plant in South Australia

The Economist Announces Death of the ICE

Liddel Coal Plant in New South Wales Will be Replaced By Wind, Solar and Batteries

Tesla Powerpack Will Join Wind Turbine at New Zealand Salt Factory

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Newspaper de Jour

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ef=opinion



The Photos the U.S. and Saudi Arabia Don’t Want You to See
By Nicholas Kristof
AUG. 29, 2017

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