Which story is the lie bomb?
Who is the perp?
1.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/politics/ ... erattacks/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI Believes Russia Is Behind Attempted Hacks of Voting Registration Sites
The FBI believes Russia is behind attempted hacks of voter registration sites in more than a dozen states.
FBI Director James Comey relayed his concerns to a House Judiciary Committee hearing Washington, CNN reports.
“There have been a variety of scanning activities which is a preamble for potential intrusion activities as well as some attempted intrusions at voter database registrations beyond those we knew about in July and August. We are urging the states just to make sure that their deadbolts are thrown and their locks are on and to get the best information they can from DHS just to make sure their systems are secure,” he said.
Comey is warring states that would-be hackers are “poking around” voter registration systems.
Comey said the hacking attempts weren’t successful and didn’t compromise voting systems, at least not yet.
“We are urging the states just to make sure that their deadbolts are thrown and their locks are on and to
2.
http://www.thelandesreport.com/donsanto.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Why won't the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate electronic vote fraud?
Is it because the DOJ and FBI have long been involved in it, themselves?
Meet Craig C. Donsanto, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Election Crimes Branch, Public Integrity Section (from 1970-present).
FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
Last edited by msfreeh on December 19th, 2016, 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Are the perps winning the lie bomb race?
Bonus read
http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/10/23/nynj-b ... ty-guards/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
DEEP POLITICS
OCTOBER 23, 2016 | JAMES HENRY
NY/NJ BOMBING: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE INCURIOUS SECURITY GUARDS
Hassan Ali and Abou Bakr Radwan from FBI flyer. EgyptAir Airbus A330-200. Photo credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation and Aero Icarus / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Two men who were sought as witnesses in the bombing of the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan have been identified as a pair of EgyptAir “in-flight security officers.”
Hassan Ali and Abou Bakr Radwan, both Egyptian nationals whose photo was released by the FBI, are not considered suspects. Instead, we are told, they simply happened upon the travel bag containing the bomb and decided to take the piece of luggage, thereby disabling the bomb.They didn’t know what was in it until later.
Really? Two security officers who work for an airline based in Egypt, had no clue they were looking at an improvised explosive device?
The two men were identified after officials tracked their movements, via security cameras, back to the hotel where they were staying.
Mr. Ali “told me he saw it [the travel bag] and thought it was nice,” an EgyptAir official told The New York Times. “He opened the bag to check it out and found a pot.”
They left the “pot” on the sidewalk and walked off with the luggage. The pot was of course a pressure cooker wrapped in duct tape with a cell phone wired to the top.
Really? They had no idea what a pressure cooker stuffed in a bag might be used for? One with a cell phone wired to the top?
Would they not have received some kind of training in the identification of suspicious devices? Had they not heard that pressure cookers, left in bags on the sidewalk, were used in the Boston Marathon bombing?
Based on the image of the men distributed by the FBI, officials determined that around the time of the explosion, the men were walking on W. 27th St., four blocks away from where the other bomb went off — on W. 23rd St. In other words, they likely heard the loud boom and still didn’t figure out what might have been the purpose of their lucky find.
Another strange thing is what the perpetrator used to “hide” the bomb. It’s hard to think of a piece of luggage that would guarantee more attention from scavengers in New York City than a Louis Vuitton travel bag — even if it was a cheap knockoff. Why disguise your explosive device in such a distinctive attention-grabbing piece of luggage?
A video of the two security officers making their find was released by law enforcement to NBC 4 New York. The video shows that the men got a good look at what was in the travel bag. It wasn’t just a quick glance. According to the video’s time stamp, the men spent more than a minute inspecting the bag’s contents. NBC 4 points out that “they take the device out of the bag, set it on the sidewalk, and then examine the top and bottom.”
For some reason, the FBI basically cleared Ali and Radwan of any wrongdoing before they even knew who they were, or had a chance to question them. “As airline security officers, have you had any training in spotting potential bombs?” “Have you ever heard of a pressure-cooker bomb?” “Why do you think a cell phone was wired to the pressure cooker?”
After the story broke, it didn’t appear that Egyptian officials were in any rush to interview them. When an official was asked if they had spoken
Link du jour
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/int ... a4ce5f87ce" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.madcowprod.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... _waco.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
October 23, 2016
Hillary Clinton and the Chain of Command at Waco
By David T. Hardy
Many politicians have a skeleton in their closet. Hillary Clinton has a cemetery, with a sign reading “Waco.”
The 1993 Waco showdown began when federal authorities rushed the communal home of a religious group, killing six of them, and losing four agents in return. The FBI then besieged the place with tanks and other armored vehicles, and ended up with the armored vehicles punching holes in the building, and injecting massive quantities of CS “tear gas.” When that didn’t work, the tanks began to demolish the building, eventually smashing about a quarter of it and damaging the remainder. A fire broke out and 74 people died in the flames, including twenty-one children. It was the deadliest law enforcement operation in American history.
After the tragic debacle, the Clinton administration claimed that Attorney General Janet Reno had been solely responsible for the final assault. There had been no White House input during the siege, and at the end, President Clinton only acquiesced in a decision Reno had made.
Twenty-three years later, there are substantial reasons to doubt the truth of these claims. The evidence is strong that the Clinton White House was calling the shots, and that Hillary played a prominent role.
The first evidence of this came when Vincent Foster, Deputy Counsel to the president and close friend of both Clintons, was found dead in Fort Marcy Park, outside D.C. The cause was attributed to suicide. When the FBI asked Mrs. Foster what might have most stressed her husband, she cited the travel office scandal and Waco. The FBI 302 report noted “LISA FOSTER believes that FOSTER was horrified when the Branch Davidian complex burned. FOSTER believed that everything was his fault.”
But why would Foster have felt guilty -- let alone to the point of despair -- over a decision Janet Reno had made without White House input? How could he have thought “everything was his fault”?
A second piece of information surfaced after a FOIA lawsuit forced release of a videotape made during the siege. In it, an FBI supervisor tells his men that critical decisions are being “made in the White House,” and passed through “that guy Hubbell, Hummel, whatever his name is.”
Webster “Webb” Hubbell had been Hillary Clinton’s law partner back in Arkansas. Bill Clinton had just appointed him Associate Attorney General, the number three man at Justice. But the FBI supervisor is quite specific: Hubbell is not calling the shots, but relaying decisions “made in the White House.” Who in the White House was giving Hubbell his marching orders?
Linda Tripp, White House secretary and Foster associate, described the real Waco chain of command in an on Larry King Live: “[Vincent] Foster, Mrs. Clinton, Webb Hubbell, Janet Reno” – and she described their reaction to the fire and the fiery deaths of 21 children:
L. TRIPP: [A] special bulletin came on [CNN] showing the atrocity at Waco and the children. And his face, his whole body slumped, and his face turned white, and he was absolutely crushed knowing, knowing the part he had played. And he had played the part at Mrs. Clinton's direction.
Her reaction, on the other hand, was heartless. And I can only tell you what I saw.
Foster had a special Waco file. Deborah Gorham, his personal secretary, said that he had a cabinet reserved for his most sensitive files: “There were two. One was Sean Hadden [a White House staffer], and the other was Waco.”
After his death, Foster’s Waco file somehow vanished. Secret Service Agent Henry O’Neil later testified before a Congressional committee that on the night of Foster’s death he encountered Maggie Williams leaving Foster’s office with two handfuls of folders. Williams denied removing any files, and when called upon to explain her presence in Foster’s office that night, claimed she had gone “in the irrational hope that she would find her colleague still alive there.”
Did Hillary call the shots at Waco? If she did, it would explain another great mystery.
By his second term, Clinton had absolutely no use for Janet Reno. Journalist Taylor Branch wrote that Clinton “fairly howled” when describing Reno’s actions, and “said he had not been able to trust her for four years.” (Clinton’s primary upsets were Reno’s appointment of independent counsel to investigate his administration’s many scandals -- the firing and framing of the White House travel office staff, the Whitewater investment scandal, the death of Vincent Foster, the abuse of FBI files, Waco, and Clinton’s sexual affair with Monica Lewinski. It would never occur to Clinton to blame himself for creating the scandals, rather than Reno for dealing with them.). Yet Clinton said he “felt stuck with Reno, despite his resentments…”
Stuck with her? He was the president, and just re-elected. One phone call could have removed her. Presidents commonly change cabinet members, especially at the end of a first term. In his eight years, Clinton had two Secretaries of State, three Secretaries of the Treasury and of Defense, and four Secretaries of Commerce.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2841946" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Teen with IQ of 51 released one year after arrest for terror plot
Sunday, October 23, 2016, 12:46 PM
Peyton Pruitt (right) spent nearly a year in jail. (WBRC)
An Alabama teenager who has an IQ of 51 has been released nearly a year after his arrest for allegedly conspiring online for a radical terror attack.
Peyton Pruitt — a 19-year-old who soils himself and cannot tie his own shoes — faced up to 10 years in prison if he was convicted. But the St. Clair County Circuit Court last month found Pruitt not guilty by reason of mental defect, and said there was no chance he could harm himself or others. The court ordered his release from jail Tues
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016 ... s-say.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
After 46 years, DNA evidence proves Virginia inmate's innocence ...
Toronto Star
Brown is African-American; the woman is white. At trial, an FBI agent testified that Brown's hair was found on a sweatshirt that also contained fibres that matched ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.2841270" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
NYPD test says cops 'may shoot' disturbed man with bat: source
Saturday, October 22, 2016, 9:06 PM
http://www.globalresearch.ca/most-ameri ... ll/5552493" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Most Americans Want Hillary Indicted For Email Scandal – Poll
Center for Research on Globalization-
When split between Republican and Democratic voters, the survey found that 85 percent of Clinton supporters stood by the FBI's decision not to prosecute.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.2841458" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
EXCLUSIVE: Cops accused of corruption set detective on witness
Sunday, October 23, 2016, 4:00 AM
Retired NYPD detective James Harkins. now a private investigator, is "the go-to guy for high-ranking members of law enforcement when they find themselves in hot water."
Two former high-ranking commanders indicted in the NYPD corruption scandal have hired one of the city’s top private investigators to dig up dirt on the government’s star witness, the Daily News has learned.
James Harkins, a retired decorated detective with a build like an NFL lineman, has helped criminal defense lawyers secure acquittals in federal and state trials involving murder, gangland killings and the U.S. Naval Academy sex assault case.
Harkins, 52, has been shaking the trees and beating the bushes on behalf of now retired Deputy Chief Michael Harrington and Deputy Inspector James Grant, who are charged with taking gifts and free vacations from shady businessman Jonah Rechnitz in return for official favo
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/wiki ... stigation/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Exposes Plot to Discredit Clinton Email Investigation
Emails show top Senate Democrats and Clinton camp conspired to smear State Dept. watchdog
by Edmund Kozak | 23 Oct 2016 at 11:59 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/kin ... -1.2841106" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
KING:Will Bronx DA Clark, file charges against cop in Danner's death?
SHAUN KING
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ideos.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI and DoJ are ignoring evidence of crimes in Project Veritas ...
American Thinker (blog)-
This is a Justice Department and an FBI that is dolling out justice based on your politics. If you support Clinton, if you are Clinton, you can engage in all sorts of ...
http://ijr.com/2016/10/719443-fbi-files ... epartment/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI Files Show a Whopping Number of Clinton-Petraeus Emails ...
Independent Journal Review-
According to newly released FBI investigative files, more than 1,000 emails between Hillary Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus were not among the 30,000 emails ...
Organization who assassinated President Kennedy and
Martin Luther King lacks gender parity
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/us/fb ... .html?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
US|Where Are Women in FBI's Top Ranks?
New York Times-Oct 22, 2016
She helped direct teams of F.B.I. agents to New York to collect evidence, set up secure command posts in the streets so agents could discuss classified ...
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Sheriff's, FBI spokeswoman handles 23 years of news
The San Diego Union-Tribune-
When he became special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI office, she was his spokeswoman. And when he moved over to the Sheriff's Department, so did ...
FBI Octopus
Letters: Send Brian Fitzpatrick to Congress
Philly.com
As a longtime FBI agent, Fitzpatrick has protected American citizens, and I trust him to continue to do the same as a legislator. Fitzpatrick was recently endorsed ...
http://www.mindanews.com/top-stories/20 ... y-from-us/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Meiring mystery 14 years later: Duterte still awaits report, apology ...
Minda News
“An affront to Philippine sovereignty,” was how Duterte described to the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) on May 30, 2002 what the “arrogant” FBI ...
http://www.bendbulletin.com/nation/4756 ... telligence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
New trade-regulation debate: Should U.S. share intelligence?
Bend Bulletin-
Ana Montes spent almost 20 years spying for Cuba while working as a U.S. intelligence analyst. Here, her FBI booking photo on the day of her arrest, Sept
Records confirm previous abandonment arrests for SW Atlanta mother
11alive.com-
ATLANTA -- The mother of an 11-month-old baby who disappeared for several hours has been arrested five times for child abandonment, 11Alive has learned.
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Corrupt Government Officials are America's Biggest Fear/ Chapman University Poll
Government Corruption beats Terrorism and Fears of Economic Collapse by a mile. Little wonder, with two presidential candidates who each have crooked foundations (used at a minimum for money-laundering and apparent foreign policy 'quid pro quo's' for the Clinton Foundation). Hillary stole White House furniture and gifts when she left in 2000, while Trump used donations to his foundation to get a life-size portrait of himself painted. Trump used bankruptcies to avoid paying his creditors. Hillary blamed a 12 year old for her own rape, successfully defending the rapist, whom she knew was guilty.
These two low lifes do deserve an award of some kind. How about: "The person I would least want to house sit for me"? Or "the most likely to succeed in covering their own or their spouses' sexual assaults"?
Maybe "Tops at stealing under the guise of a philanthropic foundation"?
Please, America, give them their awards. Make them big, shiny, and definitely gold-plated. Then arrest these two clowns for their many crimes, remind them that felons can't be president or even vote, and let's reset the election season for 2017.
Or just elect Jill Stein for President, who is running as the Green Party candidate. She tells the truth, she is smart (degrees from Harvard and Harvard Med School), has absolutely no taint of corruption, says what she means without asking a focus group, and cares about the country and world. She actually tells you her program, and its a very good one. What a novel candidate.
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D.
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpr ... 1-attacks/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* EU: Yazid Sufaat, also known as “Joe”, who worked for Al-Qaida’s biological weapons program, provided support to those involved in Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks
Posted by Lew Weinstein on October 21, 2016
http://englih.aawsat.com/2016/10/articl ... anizations" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
EU Amends List of Terrorist Individuals, Organizations
Abdullah Mustafa
Brussels-On 11 October 2016, the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) concerning ISIS, al-Qaida and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities removed Yemeni national Nasir Abd al-Karim Abdullah al-Wahishi from the Sanctions List and enacted Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, also known as Joe, to the same list.
Sufaat was accused of being the founding member of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) who worked for al-Qaida’s biological weapons program, provided support to those involved in al-Qaida’s 11 Sep. 2001 attacks in the United States and was involved in JI bombing operations.
He was detained in Malaysia from 2001 till 2008 and was later arrested in 2013 and sentenced to 7 years in Jan. 2016 for failing to report information relating to terrorist acts.
This entry was posted on October 21, 2016 at 9:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Tagged: *** 2001 anthrax attacks, *** Amerithrax, Al Qaida, Yazid Sufaat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
One Response to “* EU: Yazid Sufaat, also known as “Joe”, who worked for Al-Qaida’s biological weapons program, provided support to those involved in Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks”
http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/10/23/nynj-b ... ty-guards/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
DEEP POLITICS
OCTOBER 23, 2016 | JAMES HENRY
NY/NJ BOMBING: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE INCURIOUS SECURITY GUARDS
Hassan Ali and Abou Bakr Radwan from FBI flyer. EgyptAir Airbus A330-200. Photo credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation and Aero Icarus / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Two men who were sought as witnesses in the bombing of the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan have been identified as a pair of EgyptAir “in-flight security officers.”
Hassan Ali and Abou Bakr Radwan, both Egyptian nationals whose photo was released by the FBI, are not considered suspects. Instead, we are told, they simply happened upon the travel bag containing the bomb and decided to take the piece of luggage, thereby disabling the bomb.They didn’t know what was in it until later.
Really? Two security officers who work for an airline based in Egypt, had no clue they were looking at an improvised explosive device?
The two men were identified after officials tracked their movements, via security cameras, back to the hotel where they were staying.
Mr. Ali “told me he saw it [the travel bag] and thought it was nice,” an EgyptAir official told The New York Times. “He opened the bag to check it out and found a pot.”
They left the “pot” on the sidewalk and walked off with the luggage. The pot was of course a pressure cooker wrapped in duct tape with a cell phone wired to the top.
Really? They had no idea what a pressure cooker stuffed in a bag might be used for? One with a cell phone wired to the top?
Would they not have received some kind of training in the identification of suspicious devices? Had they not heard that pressure cookers, left in bags on the sidewalk, were used in the Boston Marathon bombing?
Based on the image of the men distributed by the FBI, officials determined that around the time of the explosion, the men were walking on W. 27th St., four blocks away from where the other bomb went off — on W. 23rd St. In other words, they likely heard the loud boom and still didn’t figure out what might have been the purpose of their lucky find.
Another strange thing is what the perpetrator used to “hide” the bomb. It’s hard to think of a piece of luggage that would guarantee more attention from scavengers in New York City than a Louis Vuitton travel bag — even if it was a cheap knockoff. Why disguise your explosive device in such a distinctive attention-grabbing piece of luggage?
A video of the two security officers making their find was released by law enforcement to NBC 4 New York. The video shows that the men got a good look at what was in the travel bag. It wasn’t just a quick glance. According to the video’s time stamp, the men spent more than a minute inspecting the bag’s contents. NBC 4 points out that “they take the device out of the bag, set it on the sidewalk, and then examine the top and bottom.”
For some reason, the FBI basically cleared Ali and Radwan of any wrongdoing before they even knew who they were, or had a chance to question them. “As airline security officers, have you had any training in spotting potential bombs?” “Have you ever heard of a pressure-cooker bomb?” “Why do you think a cell phone was wired to the pressure cooker?”
After the story broke, it didn’t appear that Egyptian officials were in any rush to interview them. When an official was asked if they had spoken
Link du jour
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/int ... a4ce5f87ce" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.madcowprod.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... _waco.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
October 23, 2016
Hillary Clinton and the Chain of Command at Waco
By David T. Hardy
Many politicians have a skeleton in their closet. Hillary Clinton has a cemetery, with a sign reading “Waco.”
The 1993 Waco showdown began when federal authorities rushed the communal home of a religious group, killing six of them, and losing four agents in return. The FBI then besieged the place with tanks and other armored vehicles, and ended up with the armored vehicles punching holes in the building, and injecting massive quantities of CS “tear gas.” When that didn’t work, the tanks began to demolish the building, eventually smashing about a quarter of it and damaging the remainder. A fire broke out and 74 people died in the flames, including twenty-one children. It was the deadliest law enforcement operation in American history.
After the tragic debacle, the Clinton administration claimed that Attorney General Janet Reno had been solely responsible for the final assault. There had been no White House input during the siege, and at the end, President Clinton only acquiesced in a decision Reno had made.
Twenty-three years later, there are substantial reasons to doubt the truth of these claims. The evidence is strong that the Clinton White House was calling the shots, and that Hillary played a prominent role.
The first evidence of this came when Vincent Foster, Deputy Counsel to the president and close friend of both Clintons, was found dead in Fort Marcy Park, outside D.C. The cause was attributed to suicide. When the FBI asked Mrs. Foster what might have most stressed her husband, she cited the travel office scandal and Waco. The FBI 302 report noted “LISA FOSTER believes that FOSTER was horrified when the Branch Davidian complex burned. FOSTER believed that everything was his fault.”
But why would Foster have felt guilty -- let alone to the point of despair -- over a decision Janet Reno had made without White House input? How could he have thought “everything was his fault”?
A second piece of information surfaced after a FOIA lawsuit forced release of a videotape made during the siege. In it, an FBI supervisor tells his men that critical decisions are being “made in the White House,” and passed through “that guy Hubbell, Hummel, whatever his name is.”
Webster “Webb” Hubbell had been Hillary Clinton’s law partner back in Arkansas. Bill Clinton had just appointed him Associate Attorney General, the number three man at Justice. But the FBI supervisor is quite specific: Hubbell is not calling the shots, but relaying decisions “made in the White House.” Who in the White House was giving Hubbell his marching orders?
Linda Tripp, White House secretary and Foster associate, described the real Waco chain of command in an on Larry King Live: “[Vincent] Foster, Mrs. Clinton, Webb Hubbell, Janet Reno” – and she described their reaction to the fire and the fiery deaths of 21 children:
L. TRIPP: [A] special bulletin came on [CNN] showing the atrocity at Waco and the children. And his face, his whole body slumped, and his face turned white, and he was absolutely crushed knowing, knowing the part he had played. And he had played the part at Mrs. Clinton's direction.
Her reaction, on the other hand, was heartless. And I can only tell you what I saw.
Foster had a special Waco file. Deborah Gorham, his personal secretary, said that he had a cabinet reserved for his most sensitive files: “There were two. One was Sean Hadden [a White House staffer], and the other was Waco.”
After his death, Foster’s Waco file somehow vanished. Secret Service Agent Henry O’Neil later testified before a Congressional committee that on the night of Foster’s death he encountered Maggie Williams leaving Foster’s office with two handfuls of folders. Williams denied removing any files, and when called upon to explain her presence in Foster’s office that night, claimed she had gone “in the irrational hope that she would find her colleague still alive there.”
Did Hillary call the shots at Waco? If she did, it would explain another great mystery.
By his second term, Clinton had absolutely no use for Janet Reno. Journalist Taylor Branch wrote that Clinton “fairly howled” when describing Reno’s actions, and “said he had not been able to trust her for four years.” (Clinton’s primary upsets were Reno’s appointment of independent counsel to investigate his administration’s many scandals -- the firing and framing of the White House travel office staff, the Whitewater investment scandal, the death of Vincent Foster, the abuse of FBI files, Waco, and Clinton’s sexual affair with Monica Lewinski. It would never occur to Clinton to blame himself for creating the scandals, rather than Reno for dealing with them.). Yet Clinton said he “felt stuck with Reno, despite his resentments…”
Stuck with her? He was the president, and just re-elected. One phone call could have removed her. Presidents commonly change cabinet members, especially at the end of a first term. In his eight years, Clinton had two Secretaries of State, three Secretaries of the Treasury and of Defense, and four Secretaries of Commerce.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2841946" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Teen with IQ of 51 released one year after arrest for terror plot
Sunday, October 23, 2016, 12:46 PM
Peyton Pruitt (right) spent nearly a year in jail. (WBRC)
An Alabama teenager who has an IQ of 51 has been released nearly a year after his arrest for allegedly conspiring online for a radical terror attack.
Peyton Pruitt — a 19-year-old who soils himself and cannot tie his own shoes — faced up to 10 years in prison if he was convicted. But the St. Clair County Circuit Court last month found Pruitt not guilty by reason of mental defect, and said there was no chance he could harm himself or others. The court ordered his release from jail Tues
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016 ... s-say.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
After 46 years, DNA evidence proves Virginia inmate's innocence ...
Toronto Star
Brown is African-American; the woman is white. At trial, an FBI agent testified that Brown's hair was found on a sweatshirt that also contained fibres that matched ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.2841270" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
NYPD test says cops 'may shoot' disturbed man with bat: source
Saturday, October 22, 2016, 9:06 PM
http://www.globalresearch.ca/most-ameri ... ll/5552493" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Most Americans Want Hillary Indicted For Email Scandal – Poll
Center for Research on Globalization-
When split between Republican and Democratic voters, the survey found that 85 percent of Clinton supporters stood by the FBI's decision not to prosecute.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.2841458" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
EXCLUSIVE: Cops accused of corruption set detective on witness
Sunday, October 23, 2016, 4:00 AM
Retired NYPD detective James Harkins. now a private investigator, is "the go-to guy for high-ranking members of law enforcement when they find themselves in hot water."
Two former high-ranking commanders indicted in the NYPD corruption scandal have hired one of the city’s top private investigators to dig up dirt on the government’s star witness, the Daily News has learned.
James Harkins, a retired decorated detective with a build like an NFL lineman, has helped criminal defense lawyers secure acquittals in federal and state trials involving murder, gangland killings and the U.S. Naval Academy sex assault case.
Harkins, 52, has been shaking the trees and beating the bushes on behalf of now retired Deputy Chief Michael Harrington and Deputy Inspector James Grant, who are charged with taking gifts and free vacations from shady businessman Jonah Rechnitz in return for official favo
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/wiki ... stigation/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Exposes Plot to Discredit Clinton Email Investigation
Emails show top Senate Democrats and Clinton camp conspired to smear State Dept. watchdog
by Edmund Kozak | 23 Oct 2016 at 11:59 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/kin ... -1.2841106" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
KING:Will Bronx DA Clark, file charges against cop in Danner's death?
SHAUN KING
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ideos.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI and DoJ are ignoring evidence of crimes in Project Veritas ...
American Thinker (blog)-
This is a Justice Department and an FBI that is dolling out justice based on your politics. If you support Clinton, if you are Clinton, you can engage in all sorts of ...
http://ijr.com/2016/10/719443-fbi-files ... epartment/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI Files Show a Whopping Number of Clinton-Petraeus Emails ...
Independent Journal Review-
According to newly released FBI investigative files, more than 1,000 emails between Hillary Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus were not among the 30,000 emails ...
Organization who assassinated President Kennedy and
Martin Luther King lacks gender parity
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/us/fb ... .html?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
US|Where Are Women in FBI's Top Ranks?
New York Times-Oct 22, 2016
She helped direct teams of F.B.I. agents to New York to collect evidence, set up secure command posts in the streets so agents could discuss classified ...
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Sheriff's, FBI spokeswoman handles 23 years of news
The San Diego Union-Tribune-
When he became special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI office, she was his spokeswoman. And when he moved over to the Sheriff's Department, so did ...
FBI Octopus
Letters: Send Brian Fitzpatrick to Congress
Philly.com
As a longtime FBI agent, Fitzpatrick has protected American citizens, and I trust him to continue to do the same as a legislator. Fitzpatrick was recently endorsed ...
http://www.mindanews.com/top-stories/20 ... y-from-us/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Meiring mystery 14 years later: Duterte still awaits report, apology ...
Minda News
“An affront to Philippine sovereignty,” was how Duterte described to the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) on May 30, 2002 what the “arrogant” FBI ...
http://www.bendbulletin.com/nation/4756 ... telligence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
New trade-regulation debate: Should U.S. share intelligence?
Bend Bulletin-
Ana Montes spent almost 20 years spying for Cuba while working as a U.S. intelligence analyst. Here, her FBI booking photo on the day of her arrest, Sept
Records confirm previous abandonment arrests for SW Atlanta mother
11alive.com-
ATLANTA -- The mother of an 11-month-old baby who disappeared for several hours has been arrested five times for child abandonment, 11Alive has learned.
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Corrupt Government Officials are America's Biggest Fear/ Chapman University Poll
Government Corruption beats Terrorism and Fears of Economic Collapse by a mile. Little wonder, with two presidential candidates who each have crooked foundations (used at a minimum for money-laundering and apparent foreign policy 'quid pro quo's' for the Clinton Foundation). Hillary stole White House furniture and gifts when she left in 2000, while Trump used donations to his foundation to get a life-size portrait of himself painted. Trump used bankruptcies to avoid paying his creditors. Hillary blamed a 12 year old for her own rape, successfully defending the rapist, whom she knew was guilty.
These two low lifes do deserve an award of some kind. How about: "The person I would least want to house sit for me"? Or "the most likely to succeed in covering their own or their spouses' sexual assaults"?
Maybe "Tops at stealing under the guise of a philanthropic foundation"?
Please, America, give them their awards. Make them big, shiny, and definitely gold-plated. Then arrest these two clowns for their many crimes, remind them that felons can't be president or even vote, and let's reset the election season for 2017.
Or just elect Jill Stein for President, who is running as the Green Party candidate. She tells the truth, she is smart (degrees from Harvard and Harvard Med School), has absolutely no taint of corruption, says what she means without asking a focus group, and cares about the country and world. She actually tells you her program, and its a very good one. What a novel candidate.
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D.
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpr ... 1-attacks/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* EU: Yazid Sufaat, also known as “Joe”, who worked for Al-Qaida’s biological weapons program, provided support to those involved in Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks
Posted by Lew Weinstein on October 21, 2016
http://englih.aawsat.com/2016/10/articl ... anizations" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
EU Amends List of Terrorist Individuals, Organizations
Abdullah Mustafa
Brussels-On 11 October 2016, the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) concerning ISIS, al-Qaida and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities removed Yemeni national Nasir Abd al-Karim Abdullah al-Wahishi from the Sanctions List and enacted Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, also known as Joe, to the same list.
Sufaat was accused of being the founding member of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) who worked for al-Qaida’s biological weapons program, provided support to those involved in al-Qaida’s 11 Sep. 2001 attacks in the United States and was involved in JI bombing operations.
He was detained in Malaysia from 2001 till 2008 and was later arrested in 2013 and sentenced to 7 years in Jan. 2016 for failing to report information relating to terrorist acts.
This entry was posted on October 21, 2016 at 9:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Tagged: *** 2001 anthrax attacks, *** Amerithrax, Al Qaida, Yazid Sufaat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
One Response to “* EU: Yazid Sufaat, also known as “Joe”, who worked for Al-Qaida’s biological weapons program, provided support to those involved in Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks”
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Are the perps winning the lie bomb race?
Lance Tapley is a former tenant.
He just sent me this email
He is a graduate of Dartmouth,author and avid cross country
skier who led the drive to save Mt Bigelow in Maine.
One son is a architect another a Doctor.
Google. lance tapley maine
Dear Friends,
Here below is a link to my column today, "The Progressive Case for
President Hillary Clinton," in two dailies, the Kennebec Journal in
Augusta, Maine, and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Maine--both print
and online.
http://www.centralmaine.com/2016/11/04/ ... y-clinton/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
If you think doing so is worthwhile, please forward it extensively,
including on Facebook; tweet it; and use any other medium you can. I've
just made it "public" on my Facebook account.
It is Maine-oriented because the state is something of a swing state now
(explained in the piece), but the arguments hold, I believe, for many other
places.
These are desperate times.
Best wishes,
Lance
He just sent me this email
He is a graduate of Dartmouth,author and avid cross country
skier who led the drive to save Mt Bigelow in Maine.
One son is a architect another a Doctor.
Google. lance tapley maine
Dear Friends,
Here below is a link to my column today, "The Progressive Case for
President Hillary Clinton," in two dailies, the Kennebec Journal in
Augusta, Maine, and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Maine--both print
and online.
http://www.centralmaine.com/2016/11/04/ ... y-clinton/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
If you think doing so is worthwhile, please forward it extensively,
including on Facebook; tweet it; and use any other medium you can. I've
just made it "public" on my Facebook account.
It is Maine-oriented because the state is something of a swing state now
(explained in the piece), but the arguments hold, I believe, for many other
places.
These are desperate times.
Best wishes,
Lance
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Are the perps winning the lie bomb race?
http://mattofboston.com/did-asian-hitme ... ent-736776" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Did Asian Hitmen Murder FBI Agent Brown?
November 7, 2016
The Denver Guardian reported that the FBI agent Michael Brown, 42, investigating
Did Asian Hitmen Murder FBI Agent Brown?
November 7, 2016
The Denver Guardian reported that the FBI agent Michael Brown, 42, investigating
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Are the perps winning the lie bomb race?
FBI SEZ IT COULD NOT CRACK IPHONE OF SHOOTER IN CALIFORNIA
http://appadvice.com/post/manhattan-das ... ion/727594" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The Manhattan DA's Office Has 432 Uncracked Apple iOS Devices ...
AppAdvice-
The saga began in February when Apple was ordered by a California judge to assist the FBI to unlock an iPhone 5c used by terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook.
http://appadvice.com/post/manhattan-das ... ion/727594" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The Manhattan DA's Office Has 432 Uncracked Apple iOS Devices ...
AppAdvice-
The saga began in February when Apple was ordered by a California judge to assist the FBI to unlock an iPhone 5c used by terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
http://mattofboston.com/the-dumb-americ ... ice-89724/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The Dumb American Presidents of The Past: Or Were They? The Ignoramus in Office.
December 19, 2016Uncategorized
It is hard to imagine that we have had so many dumb American presidents. I’m not confining this to one party but it appears this characteristic crosses both parties. For years now probably going back to John F. Kennedy, or perhaps even before him, all of those presidents have been engaged in an activity that is truly a waste of time. You would think they had better things to do with themselves.
I say they are dumb because the incoming president who says he is smart does not have to follow what they had to do. Trump said: “I don’t have to be told — you know, I’m like a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years — but eight years.”
You see the self-described smart person is not about to follow what all those other presidents did which can only mean they were dumb. Can you imagine what those prior presidents did? They received daily intelligence briefings.
Trump points it out: “But if they’re going to come in and tell me the exact same thing that they told me, you know, that doesn’t change necessarily. There might be times where it might change. I mean, there will be some very fluid situations. I’ll be there not every day but more than that. But I don’t need to be told, Chris, the same thing every day, every morning, same words. Sir, nothing has changed. Let’s go over it again. I don’t need that.”
Well, I’d suggest we are pretty lucky now that we have a president who is so clever. How did we ever survive all the years up to now with our other presidents being told the same thing over and over again? Were they really all retarded that each morning the intelligence briefing was carried on for a half an hour or more and it just consisted of “sir, nothing has changed. Let’s go over it again.”
But here is the problem that I see. If these presidents that preceded the Trump were not dumb but were clever and smart in their own right what are we supposed to make of all of them receiving daily intelligence briefings and the Trump deciding that he does not need them.
All I can conclude is that the Trump has no idea what the job of president involves. I’ve mentioned before that he is the first president ever to be elected who was not a general, politician or public servant with years of experience. He is a neophyte when it comes to working in the government. Yet at this early stage he has rejected the course followed by his predecessors to get daily briefings but has suggested because his underlings get them he does not have to receive them.
He said: “Now, in the meantime, my generals are great, are being briefed. Mike Pence is being briefed, who is, by the way, one of my very good decisions. He’s terrific. And they’re being briefed.” You have to wonder that if the Trump thinks the briefings are such a waste of time why are all these other people taking the time to listen to them. Is he suggesting that unlike him they are not smart and have to be told the same thing over and over again?
My take on the whole thing is that Trump wants to run the presidency like he runs his business. He knows what is involved in constructing a building, He does not have to be appraised of daily matters.
If he were smart he would know that he is woefully ignorant when it comes to running foreign policy. Things are fluid. They change by the moment, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually. Even if they didn’t, no briefing should ever be the same.
The idea behind day-to-day briefings is to listen and then ask questions and propose solutions. The next day the briefing will answer the questions and discuss the solutions that should bring about more questions. The day after when they come back with answers more questions must be asked and solutions suggested. The next day they are discussed and more questions asked. It is an ongoing process so that the president will have thought about things, raised questions, and received answers. Solutions do not respond to quick judgments. They have to be thought about.
The Trump’s refusal to be briefed, to ask questions, to think about it, propose solutions and have the back and forth required to really understand something is disturbing. He does not understand his job. He is an ignoramus in office.
He will not only not be prepared when a crisis arrives he will have so alienated the intelligence agencies that their work will suffer. They will think if he doesn’t care and is going to act like a cowboy why should we put in all the work to get things right. Sadly America will suffer greatly.
The Dumb American Presidents of The Past: Or Were They? The Ignoramus in Office.
December 19, 2016Uncategorized
It is hard to imagine that we have had so many dumb American presidents. I’m not confining this to one party but it appears this characteristic crosses both parties. For years now probably going back to John F. Kennedy, or perhaps even before him, all of those presidents have been engaged in an activity that is truly a waste of time. You would think they had better things to do with themselves.
I say they are dumb because the incoming president who says he is smart does not have to follow what they had to do. Trump said: “I don’t have to be told — you know, I’m like a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years — but eight years.”
You see the self-described smart person is not about to follow what all those other presidents did which can only mean they were dumb. Can you imagine what those prior presidents did? They received daily intelligence briefings.
Trump points it out: “But if they’re going to come in and tell me the exact same thing that they told me, you know, that doesn’t change necessarily. There might be times where it might change. I mean, there will be some very fluid situations. I’ll be there not every day but more than that. But I don’t need to be told, Chris, the same thing every day, every morning, same words. Sir, nothing has changed. Let’s go over it again. I don’t need that.”
Well, I’d suggest we are pretty lucky now that we have a president who is so clever. How did we ever survive all the years up to now with our other presidents being told the same thing over and over again? Were they really all retarded that each morning the intelligence briefing was carried on for a half an hour or more and it just consisted of “sir, nothing has changed. Let’s go over it again.”
But here is the problem that I see. If these presidents that preceded the Trump were not dumb but were clever and smart in their own right what are we supposed to make of all of them receiving daily intelligence briefings and the Trump deciding that he does not need them.
All I can conclude is that the Trump has no idea what the job of president involves. I’ve mentioned before that he is the first president ever to be elected who was not a general, politician or public servant with years of experience. He is a neophyte when it comes to working in the government. Yet at this early stage he has rejected the course followed by his predecessors to get daily briefings but has suggested because his underlings get them he does not have to receive them.
He said: “Now, in the meantime, my generals are great, are being briefed. Mike Pence is being briefed, who is, by the way, one of my very good decisions. He’s terrific. And they’re being briefed.” You have to wonder that if the Trump thinks the briefings are such a waste of time why are all these other people taking the time to listen to them. Is he suggesting that unlike him they are not smart and have to be told the same thing over and over again?
My take on the whole thing is that Trump wants to run the presidency like he runs his business. He knows what is involved in constructing a building, He does not have to be appraised of daily matters.
If he were smart he would know that he is woefully ignorant when it comes to running foreign policy. Things are fluid. They change by the moment, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually. Even if they didn’t, no briefing should ever be the same.
The idea behind day-to-day briefings is to listen and then ask questions and propose solutions. The next day the briefing will answer the questions and discuss the solutions that should bring about more questions. The day after when they come back with answers more questions must be asked and solutions suggested. The next day they are discussed and more questions asked. It is an ongoing process so that the president will have thought about things, raised questions, and received answers. Solutions do not respond to quick judgments. They have to be thought about.
The Trump’s refusal to be briefed, to ask questions, to think about it, propose solutions and have the back and forth required to really understand something is disturbing. He does not understand his job. He is an ignoramus in office.
He will not only not be prepared when a crisis arrives he will have so alienated the intelligence agencies that their work will suffer. They will think if he doesn’t care and is going to act like a cowboy why should we put in all the work to get things right. Sadly America will suffer greatly.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... ry-21-2017
The Million Women’s March January 21, 2017
Submitted by robert shetterly on 7 February 2017 - 12:00am
What happened?
This was not a protest. It was a clarification. A realignment.
It was not an aggrieved victim struggling to have her lonely voice heard as she implores power to hear truth.
It was power speaking to power. Legitimate power speaking to illegitimate power.
It was a global, universal tweet speaking to an arrogant twit.
The phoenix shaking off the ashes.
It was liberation speaking to domination. Diversity speaking to white patriarchy.
The heart of freedom speaking to the heel of oppression. Right to wrong.
When I watched footage of the hundreds of marches in cities and towns all across America and then discovered that there were masses of people in the streets in other countries, it was clear something significant was happening. The deadly gloom of despair was lifted by the joy of millions of colorful, exuberant, powerful people. The point was tipping. This was not like the massive protests against the lies of the Bush administration in 2003 which propelled us into the Iraq invasion. Consciousness wasn’t raised then in enough people. People now realize an arrogant demagogue surrounded by a covey of ego-bloated generals, billionaire bankers and smug CEOs full of fear-mongering and racism, sexism and war-profiteering, science denial and nature destruction is not the way forward. This was a clarification. A re-set. Howard Zinn said our problem is not civil disobedience, it’s civil obedience. This was the exhilarating freedom of disobedience.
Obedience is uniformity; disobedience is a declaration of new identity. This was the people of the world speaking not so much to power as to each other. We’re in charge. We can shape the future we want, not be prey to what they want. Let’s practice respect. Let’s try love. Let’s embrace peace. Let’s insist on justice. Let’s honor the reality of our place in nature. Let’s build an economy of decency rather than disaster. Let’s base diplomacy on the common good.
As Trump was pathetically obsessed with the size of his inauguration crowd, the world passed him by. On his first day in office, the world passed him by! He’s already an anachronism. Dangerous, but an anachronism. The power has shifted.
Trump is the rock in the river from which we can leap to the other side.
Thank you, women.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/ ... p-backward
The FBI's New FOIA Policy Is a Big Step Backward
Common Dreams-
Dust off your fax machine. The FBI is planning to take a big step backward for government transparency. As of March 1, the Bureau will no longer accept ...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/?p=5576864
How 'New Cold Warriors' Cornered Trump
Center for Research on Globalization-
But the day after Trump was inaugurated, the Post itself reported that the FBI had ... the FBI was trying to head off a plan by Brennan and Clapper to target Flynn.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... on/517746/
How the FBI Is Hobbled by Religious Illiteracy
The Atlantic-
Historians have looked harshly on the FBI's legacy in dealing with religious groups. ... Communism, on the other hand, was an agent of secularism and atheism.
FBI OCTOPUS
http://www.theintell.com/opinion/op-ed/ ... c4e0c.html
Local communities fight lethal battle against drugs
The Intelligencer-
As a former FBI supervisory special agent and current member of the Homeland Security Committee, I am well-positioned to explore the connection between ...
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/win ... e2889.html
Windward Hills residents may challenge GLUC decision
The Guam Daily Post
Windward Hills resident and former chief of police and FBI agent Sen. Frank Ishizaki said that in addition to his concerns over the infrastructure and size of the ...
http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-wyde ... ?r=UK&IR=T
Democratic senator accuses FBI Director Comey of withholding ...
Business Insider-
Sen. Ron Wyden has suggested that FBI Director James Comey is using classification to hide information about possible Russian interference in the US election ...
http://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/ann ... 27637.html
General Assembly reconsiders how Maryland deals with sex crimes
Herald-Mail Media-Feb 25, 2017
The FBI redefined rape about four years ago, he said. "Initially I was against this bill, because I don't like redefining words," he said. "Words have meanings and ...
ANNAPOLIS — For several hours on Tuesday, state legislators in the House Judiciary Committee listened to sometimes excruciating testimony on various pieces of proposed legislation dealing with sexual assault. Then on Thursday, the committee heard more.
In fact, Maryland lawmakers have filed more than 40 bills this year that deal in some way with sexual offenses — ranging from processing evidence in child pornography cases to requiring local governments to audit the number of reportedly unfounded sexual assault cases.
But three bills in particular would fundamentally reshape the way Maryland deals with these crimes, meaning Washington County law enforcement and prosecutors might have to alter their me
Proof of resistance
On Thursday, the Maryland Senate unanimously approved legislation to remove a requirement that prosecutors show evidence that a victim physically resisted a sexual assault in order to prove a crime was committed. A companion bill was one of the 12 heard in the House Judiciary Committee last week.
The House bill's lead sponsor, Del. Kathleen Dumais, D-Montgomery, noted that "one of the things we often talk about when we're talking to young women, particularly at colleges or high school, is that if you are in one of these situations, we actually tell them not to resist if they are concerned about further physical injury or death. We tell them not to resist. … But if it is even a question in a law enforcement officer's mind, that in fact if you didn't resist it's not rape or it's not a sexual assault, we need to make it clear on our statute."
Lisae C. Jordan, executive director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, was blunt.
"Victims of sexual assault should never be required to physically resist the attack," she said.
During a recent review of 124 Baltimore County rape cases that were ruled "unfounded," Jordan said, there was "case after case after case of women saying, 'No, please stop,' crying, saying, 'Don't do that,' saying, 'Stop.' One woman who had vomited and then felt a little bit better, so the perpetrator started to sexually assault her, and she cried and said, 'Stop.' And the officer said to that victim — to all of these victims — 'Did ya hit him? Did ya kick him? What did you do to fight back?'
"And when she said, 'No, I didn't hit him or kick him,' or fight back physically, the officer said, 'Well, ma'am, Maryland's rape law doesn't cover this situation. You were not raped.'
A third of these cases involved this type of scenario, Jordan said.
"We don’t ask a robbery victim if they they resisted — 'Did you push the gun away? Did you tell him that he couldn't rob you?'" added Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger. "We never ask that of any other victim in the state of Maryland … except in the area of sexual assault."
https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... f-inmates/
Video: Deputies caught on camera fighting in front of inmates
The fight had to be broken up by multiple people
Feb 16, 2017
https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... e-records/
Kan. House advances bill limiting access to police records
– Feb 22, 2017
The bill allows the state commission that certifies law enforcement officers to close records about officers who have been fired or disciplined
https://www.policeone.com/officer-shoot ... -assaults/
Missing reports prompt review of Texas police shootings law
Texas is one of seven states that require LE agencies to provide information about officer-involved shootings to the stat
________________________________________
HOUSTON — Police in Texas could soon find it easier to report officer-involved shootings to the state — but they also may pay a price for failing to do so.
Texas is one of seven states that require law enforcement agencies to provide information about officer-involved shootings to the state, and it could become the first to mete out punishment to those that don't.
Related articles
•
Pa. gov. vetoes ban on naming officers involved in shootings
•
St. Louis police going high-tech in analyzing officer-involved shootings
•
Report: 'Vast majority' of police shootings follow armed assaults
Related content sponsored by
State Rep. Eric Johnson says he's is pushing to "put some teeth" into Texas' statute after learning that up to a dozen fatal shootings hadn't been reported since the law went into effect in 2015. He's also trying to create a web portal that would make it easier for law enforcement to report crime data, including officer-involved shootings.
Texas' law, which was sponsored by Johnson, requires agencies to provide information about the shootings in a one-page report emailed to the state attorney general's office within 30 days, but there are no enforcement or tracking mechanisms.
https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... red-again/
Texas cop fired over feces sandwich fired again
– Jan 30, 2017
Matthew Luckhurst was originally given an indefinite suspension in October after giving a homeless man a feces sandwich
The Million Women’s March January 21, 2017
Submitted by robert shetterly on 7 February 2017 - 12:00am
What happened?
This was not a protest. It was a clarification. A realignment.
It was not an aggrieved victim struggling to have her lonely voice heard as she implores power to hear truth.
It was power speaking to power. Legitimate power speaking to illegitimate power.
It was a global, universal tweet speaking to an arrogant twit.
The phoenix shaking off the ashes.
It was liberation speaking to domination. Diversity speaking to white patriarchy.
The heart of freedom speaking to the heel of oppression. Right to wrong.
When I watched footage of the hundreds of marches in cities and towns all across America and then discovered that there were masses of people in the streets in other countries, it was clear something significant was happening. The deadly gloom of despair was lifted by the joy of millions of colorful, exuberant, powerful people. The point was tipping. This was not like the massive protests against the lies of the Bush administration in 2003 which propelled us into the Iraq invasion. Consciousness wasn’t raised then in enough people. People now realize an arrogant demagogue surrounded by a covey of ego-bloated generals, billionaire bankers and smug CEOs full of fear-mongering and racism, sexism and war-profiteering, science denial and nature destruction is not the way forward. This was a clarification. A re-set. Howard Zinn said our problem is not civil disobedience, it’s civil obedience. This was the exhilarating freedom of disobedience.
Obedience is uniformity; disobedience is a declaration of new identity. This was the people of the world speaking not so much to power as to each other. We’re in charge. We can shape the future we want, not be prey to what they want. Let’s practice respect. Let’s try love. Let’s embrace peace. Let’s insist on justice. Let’s honor the reality of our place in nature. Let’s build an economy of decency rather than disaster. Let’s base diplomacy on the common good.
As Trump was pathetically obsessed with the size of his inauguration crowd, the world passed him by. On his first day in office, the world passed him by! He’s already an anachronism. Dangerous, but an anachronism. The power has shifted.
Trump is the rock in the river from which we can leap to the other side.
Thank you, women.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/ ... p-backward
The FBI's New FOIA Policy Is a Big Step Backward
Common Dreams-
Dust off your fax machine. The FBI is planning to take a big step backward for government transparency. As of March 1, the Bureau will no longer accept ...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/?p=5576864
How 'New Cold Warriors' Cornered Trump
Center for Research on Globalization-
But the day after Trump was inaugurated, the Post itself reported that the FBI had ... the FBI was trying to head off a plan by Brennan and Clapper to target Flynn.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... on/517746/
How the FBI Is Hobbled by Religious Illiteracy
The Atlantic-
Historians have looked harshly on the FBI's legacy in dealing with religious groups. ... Communism, on the other hand, was an agent of secularism and atheism.
FBI OCTOPUS
http://www.theintell.com/opinion/op-ed/ ... c4e0c.html
Local communities fight lethal battle against drugs
The Intelligencer-
As a former FBI supervisory special agent and current member of the Homeland Security Committee, I am well-positioned to explore the connection between ...
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/win ... e2889.html
Windward Hills residents may challenge GLUC decision
The Guam Daily Post
Windward Hills resident and former chief of police and FBI agent Sen. Frank Ishizaki said that in addition to his concerns over the infrastructure and size of the ...
http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-wyde ... ?r=UK&IR=T
Democratic senator accuses FBI Director Comey of withholding ...
Business Insider-
Sen. Ron Wyden has suggested that FBI Director James Comey is using classification to hide information about possible Russian interference in the US election ...
http://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/ann ... 27637.html
General Assembly reconsiders how Maryland deals with sex crimes
Herald-Mail Media-Feb 25, 2017
The FBI redefined rape about four years ago, he said. "Initially I was against this bill, because I don't like redefining words," he said. "Words have meanings and ...
ANNAPOLIS — For several hours on Tuesday, state legislators in the House Judiciary Committee listened to sometimes excruciating testimony on various pieces of proposed legislation dealing with sexual assault. Then on Thursday, the committee heard more.
In fact, Maryland lawmakers have filed more than 40 bills this year that deal in some way with sexual offenses — ranging from processing evidence in child pornography cases to requiring local governments to audit the number of reportedly unfounded sexual assault cases.
But three bills in particular would fundamentally reshape the way Maryland deals with these crimes, meaning Washington County law enforcement and prosecutors might have to alter their me
Proof of resistance
On Thursday, the Maryland Senate unanimously approved legislation to remove a requirement that prosecutors show evidence that a victim physically resisted a sexual assault in order to prove a crime was committed. A companion bill was one of the 12 heard in the House Judiciary Committee last week.
The House bill's lead sponsor, Del. Kathleen Dumais, D-Montgomery, noted that "one of the things we often talk about when we're talking to young women, particularly at colleges or high school, is that if you are in one of these situations, we actually tell them not to resist if they are concerned about further physical injury or death. We tell them not to resist. … But if it is even a question in a law enforcement officer's mind, that in fact if you didn't resist it's not rape or it's not a sexual assault, we need to make it clear on our statute."
Lisae C. Jordan, executive director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, was blunt.
"Victims of sexual assault should never be required to physically resist the attack," she said.
During a recent review of 124 Baltimore County rape cases that were ruled "unfounded," Jordan said, there was "case after case after case of women saying, 'No, please stop,' crying, saying, 'Don't do that,' saying, 'Stop.' One woman who had vomited and then felt a little bit better, so the perpetrator started to sexually assault her, and she cried and said, 'Stop.' And the officer said to that victim — to all of these victims — 'Did ya hit him? Did ya kick him? What did you do to fight back?'
"And when she said, 'No, I didn't hit him or kick him,' or fight back physically, the officer said, 'Well, ma'am, Maryland's rape law doesn't cover this situation. You were not raped.'
A third of these cases involved this type of scenario, Jordan said.
"We don’t ask a robbery victim if they they resisted — 'Did you push the gun away? Did you tell him that he couldn't rob you?'" added Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger. "We never ask that of any other victim in the state of Maryland … except in the area of sexual assault."
https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... f-inmates/
Video: Deputies caught on camera fighting in front of inmates
The fight had to be broken up by multiple people
Feb 16, 2017
https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... e-records/
Kan. House advances bill limiting access to police records
– Feb 22, 2017
The bill allows the state commission that certifies law enforcement officers to close records about officers who have been fired or disciplined
https://www.policeone.com/officer-shoot ... -assaults/
Missing reports prompt review of Texas police shootings law
Texas is one of seven states that require LE agencies to provide information about officer-involved shootings to the stat
________________________________________
HOUSTON — Police in Texas could soon find it easier to report officer-involved shootings to the state — but they also may pay a price for failing to do so.
Texas is one of seven states that require law enforcement agencies to provide information about officer-involved shootings to the state, and it could become the first to mete out punishment to those that don't.
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State Rep. Eric Johnson says he's is pushing to "put some teeth" into Texas' statute after learning that up to a dozen fatal shootings hadn't been reported since the law went into effect in 2015. He's also trying to create a web portal that would make it easier for law enforcement to report crime data, including officer-involved shootings.
Texas' law, which was sponsored by Johnson, requires agencies to provide information about the shootings in a one-page report emailed to the state attorney general's office within 30 days, but there are no enforcement or tracking mechanisms.
https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... red-again/
Texas cop fired over feces sandwich fired again
– Jan 30, 2017
Matthew Luckhurst was originally given an indefinite suspension in October after giving a homeless man a feces sandwich
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Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... r-immunity
Trump Defends Michael Flynn After He Offered to Testify Against the President
Former National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn
President Trump is defending former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s offer to testify in ongoing probes of Russian hacking of the 2016 election in exchange for legal immunity.
Trump wrote on Twitter early Friday morning that investigation had become “a witch hunt,” echoing language used by his former campaign adviser’s attorney.
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/
FBI Releases New Batch of 9/11 Photos from Pentagon Attack
One of a recently released batch of photos of the 9/11. Photo via Wiki.
The FBI has released previously unseen photos of the aftermath of the 9/11 attack against the Pentagon.
The 27 photos were posted on the bureau’s website “FBI’s Records: The Vault.”
The American Airlines flight crashed after Al Qaeda terrorists gained control of the plane.
The new photos show interior damage, aerial perspectives and footage from the ground.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/mar/3 ... ng-us-not/
Local FBI leader says agency’s mission is protecting Americans, not playing politics
Mikayla Whitmore
FBI Las Vegas Division Director Aaron Rouse speaks to the media at the local FBI Headquarters, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016.
By Ricardo Torres-Cortez (contact)
Thursday, March 30, 2017 | 2 a.m.
The election of President Donald Trump hasn’t changed how the FBI operates, as the federal agency steers clear of politics despite what “a lot of people would want to have (it be),” said Special Agent Aaron Rouse, the director of the FBI’s Las Vegas division.
"We’re not a political organization; we’re not affected by the politics,” Rouse emphasized to reporters Wednesday from the FBI's Las Vegas headquarters, where he and other special agents spoke.
The “Getting to Know the FBI” meeting with reporters was an effort from Rouse, who was appointed to his position in September, to “bring down the barriers” between the FBI and the public so it understands that investigation methodologies don't quite develop the way they're portrayed in Hollywood.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/6601 ... BI-op.html
Nichols says bombing was FBI op
Detailed confession filed in S.L. about Oklahoma City plot
By Geoffrey Fattah
Published: Feb. 21, 2007 12:00 a.m.
+
Leave a comment
The only surviving convicted criminal in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is saying his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, told him he was taking orders from a top FBI official in orchestrating the bombing.
A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, has proven to be one of the most detailed confessions by Nichols to date about his involvement in the bombing as well as the involvement of others. However, one congressman who has investigated the bombings remains skeptical of Nichols' claims.
The declaration was filed as part of Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue's pending wrongful death suit against the government for the death of his brother in a federal corrections facility in Oklahoma City. Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents when agents mistook his brother for a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.
The most shocking allegation in the 19-page signed declaration is Nichols' assertion that the whole bombing plot was an FBI operation and that McVeigh let slip during a bout of anger that he was taking instruction from former FBI official Larry Potts.
Potts was no stranger to anti-government confrontations, having been the lead FBI agent at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which led to the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, the wife of separatist Randy Weaver. Potts also was reportedly involved in the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, which resulted in a fire that killed 81 Branch Davidian followers.
Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the cover-up of an order to allow agents to shoot anyone seen leaving the Weaver cabin at Ruby Ridge.
When contacted, the FBI's main office in Washington, D.C., said it could not provide immediate comment on Nichols' claims Tuesday.
Nichols claims that, in December 1992, McVeigh told him that "wh
https://article25news.wordpress.com/201 ... -long-ago/
Privacy Died Long Ago
In Uncategorized on 06/03/2013 at 9:12 pm
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart of Cincinnati swears in George H. W. Bush as director of the CIA as President Gerald Ford watches. REUTERS/George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
The great forgotten Cincinnati wiretap scandal
By Gregory Flannery
Americans no longer assume their communications are free from government spying. Many believe widespread monitoring is a recent change, a response to terrorism. They are wrong. Fair warning came in 1988 in Cincinnati, Ohio, when evidence showed that wiretapping was already both common and easy.
Twenty-five years ago state and federal courtrooms in Cincinnati were abuzz with allegations of illegal wiretaps on federal judges, members of Cincinnati City Council, local congressional representatives, political dissidents and business leaders.
Two federal judges in Cincinnati told 60 Minutes they believed there was strong evidence that they had been wiretapped. Retired Cincinnati Police officers, including a former chief, admitted to illegal wiretapping.
Even some of the most outrageous claims – for example, that the president of the United States was wiretapped while staying in a Cincinnati hotel – were supported by independent witnesses.
National media coverage of the lawsuits, grand jury hearings and investigations by city council and the FBI attracted the attention of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).
As Americans wonder about the extent to which their e-mails, cell-phones and text messages are being monitored, they would do well to look back at a time before any of those existed. Judging by what was revealed in Cincinnati, privacy died long before anyone had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or al Q’aeda.
Turbulence
In 1988 Leonard Gates, a former installer for Cincinnati Bell, told the Mount Washington Press, a small independent weekly, that he had performed illegal wiretaps for the Cincinnati Police Department, the FBI and the phone company itself.
A week after the paper published his allegations, a federal grand jury began hearing testimony.
Gates claimed to have performed an estimated 1,200 wiretaps, which he believed illegal. His list of targets included former Mayor Jerry Springer, the late tycoon Carl Lindner Jr., U.S. District Judge Carl Rubin, U.S. Magistrate J. Vincent Aug, the late U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the Students for a Democratic Society (an anti-war group during the Vietnam War), then-U.S. Rep. Tom Luken (D-Cincinnati) and then-President Gerald Ford.
A second former Cincinnati Bell installer, Robert Draise, joined Gates, saying he, too had performed illegal wiretaps for the police. His alleged targets included the Black Muslim mosque in Finneytown and the General Electric plant in Evendale. Draise’s portfolio was much smaller than Gates’s, an estimated 100 taps, because he was caught freelancing – performing an illegal wiretap for a friend.
Charged by the FBI, Draise claimed he had gone to his “controller” at Cincinnati Bell, the person who directed his wiretaps, and asked for help. If he didn’t get it, he said, he’d tell all. When the case went to federal court, Draise didn’t bother to hire an attorney. He didn’t need one. In a plea deal, federal prosecutors dropped the charge to a misdemeanor. Found guilty of illegal wiretapping, his sentence was a $200 fine. The judge? Magistrate J. Vincent Aug.
If Gates and Draise had been the only people to come forward, they could easily be dismissed as cranks – disgruntled former employees, as Cincinnati Bell claimed. But some police office officers named by Gates and Draise confirmed parts of their allegations, insisting, however, that there were only 12 illegal wiretaps. Other officers not known to Gates and Draise also admitted to illegal wiretaps. Some of the officers received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. Others invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.
“Due to the turbulent nature of the late ’60s and early ’70s, wiretaps were conducted to gather information,” said a press release signed by six retired officers. “This use began in approximately 1968 and ended completely during the Watergate investigation.”
The press release, whose signers included former Police Chief Myron Leistler, listed 12 wiretaps, among them “a black militant in the Bond Hill area” and a house on either Ravine or Strait streets rented by “the SDS or some other radical group.”
The retired cops’ lawyer said there were actually three Cincinnati Bell installers doing illegal wiretaps, but declined to identify the third.
The retired officers denied knowledge of “any wiretaps involving judges, local politicians, prominent citizens and fellow law enforcement officers or city employees.”
Getting rid of Aug
Others had that knowledge, however.
Howard Lucas, former security chief at the Stouffer Hotel downtown, said he caught Gates and three cops trying to break into a telephone switching room shortly before President Gerald Ford stayed at the hotel.
“I said, ‘Do you have a court order?’ and they all laughed,” Lucas told the Mount Washington Press.
The four men left. But they returned.
“A couple days later, in the back of the room, I found a setup, a reel-to-reel recorder concealed under some boxes,” Lucas said.
Ford stayed at the Stouffer Hotel in July 1975 and June 1976 – two years after the Watergate scandal, when Cincinnati Police officers claimed the bugging ended.
Then there was the matter of a former guard at the U.S. Courthouse downtown. He said he had found wiretap equipment there in 1986 and 1987, just a year before the wiretap scandal broke.
“I heard conversations you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “I heard a conversation one time. they were talking about getting rid of U.S. Magistrate Aug.”
The wiretapping started with drug dealers and expanded to political and business figures, according to Gates. In 1979, he testified, he was ordered to wiretap the Hamilton County Regional Computer Center, which handled vote tabulations. His handler at the phone company allegedly told Gates the wiretap was intended to manipulate election results.
“They had the ability to actually alter what was being done with the votes. … He was very upset through some of the elections with a gentleman named Blackwell,” Gates testified.
J. Kenneth Blackwell is a former member of Cincinnati Council, and 1979 was an election year for council.
Something went wrong on Election Night, Gates testified. His handler at the phone company called him.
“He was panicking,” Gates testified. “He said we had done something to screw up the voting processor down there, or the voting computer.”
News reports at the time noted an unexpected delay in counting votes for city council because of a computer malfunction.
Cincinnati Bell denied any involvement in illegal wiretapping by police or its own personnel. Yet police officers, like Gates, testified the police received equipment – even a truck – and information necessary to effectuate the wiretaps. The owners of a greenhouse in Westwood even came forward, saying the police stored the Cincinnati Bell truck on their property.
‘Say it louder’
Gates claimed that his handler at Cincinnati Bell repeatedly told him the wiretaps were at the behest of the FBI. He named an FBI agent who, he said, let him into the federal courthouse to wiretap federal judges.
Investigations followed – a federal grand jury, which indicted no one; a special investigator hired by city council, the former head of the Cincinnati FBI office; the U.S. Justice Department, sort of.
U.S. Sen. Paul Simon asked then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to look into the Cincinnati wiretap scandal. Federal judges, members of Congress and even the president of the United States had allegedly been wiretapped. Simon’s effort went nowhere. His press secretary told the Mount Washington Press that it took three months for the Attorney General to respond.
“The senator’s not pleased with the response,” Simon’s press secretary said. “It didn’t have the attorney general’s personal attention, and it said Justice (Department) was aware of the situation, but isn’t going to do anything.”
The city of Cincinnati settled a class-action lawsuit accusing it of illegal wiretapping, paying $85,000 to 17 defendants. It paid $12,000 to settle a second lawsuit by former staffers of The Independent Eye, an underground newspaper allegedly wiretapped and torched by Cincinnati Police officers in 1970.
Cincinnati Bell sued Leonard Gates and Robert Draise, accusing them of defamation. The two men had no attorneys and represented themselves at trial. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Fred Cartolano refused to let the jury hear testimony by former police officers who had admitted using Gates and Draise and Cincinnati Bell equipment. In a 4-2 vote, the jury ruled in the phone company’s favor, officially adjudging the two whistleblowers liars.
During one of the many hearings associated with the wiretap scandal, an FBI agent was asked what the agency would do if someone accused the phone company of placing illegal wiretaps. He testified the FBI would be powerless; it needed the phone company to check for a wiretap.
“It would go back to Bell,” the agent testified. “We would have no way of determining if there was any illegal wiretapping going on.”
The FBI agent was the person Gates had accused of opening the federal courthouse at night so he could wiretap federal judges.
One police sergeant offered no excuses for the illegal wiretapping. Asked why he didn’t bother with the legal niceties, such as getting a warrant, as required then by federal law, he said, “I didn’t deem it was necessary. We wanted the information, and went out and got it.”
At one point, covering the scandal for the Mount Washington Press, I received a phone call from a sergeant in the Cincinnati Police Department. He invited me to the station at Mount Airy Forest, where he proceeded to wiretap a fellow police officer’s phone call. I listened as the other officer talked to his wife.
“Say hello,” the sergeant told me.
I did. There was no response.
“Say it louder,” the sergeant said.
I did. No response.
“You can hear them, but they can’t hear you,” the sergeant said. “Any idiot can do a wiretap. You know that’s true because you just saw a policeman do it.”
Privacy is dead. Its corpse has long been moldering in the grave.
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/29/former- ... t-staffer/
Wednesday, Mar 29, 2017 07:22 PM EDT
Former Rep. Aaron Schock was brought down by an FBI informant staffer
Schock was indicted last year on 24 counts related to alleged misuse of government and campaign funds
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Topics: Aaron Schock, campaign funds, Congress, Corruption, FBI, House of Representatives, Illinois, Informant, Politics News, News
Former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock (Credit: AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Indicted on a slate of corruption charges, Rep. Aaron Schock claims one of his aides illegally gathered evidence against him on behalf of the FBI, a defense motion argued Tuesday. Schock’s attorneys allege that the FBI informant stole thousands of emails from his official House account, in addition to “physical Congressional Office records that were Mr. Schock’s personal property.” Moreover, the motion asserted that the aide tried to “covertly record private conversations with and between Mr. Schock and his staff, including conversations where attorney-client privileged communications were discussed.”
In March 2015, the then-33-year-old Schock resigned as the U.S. Representative for Illinois’ 18th Congressional District after Politico raised questions about tens of thousands of dollars in mileage reimbursements he received for his personal vehicle. During his time in Congress, Schoch was most notable for changing the decor of his office to match “Downton Abbey.”
Months after Schock’s resignation, while the House sergeant-at-arms was overseeing his vacated office, the defense motion alleges that the FBI informant went through the desk of Dayne LaHood, then chief of staff, at the direction of an FBI supervisor and removed fuel receipts, which included Schock’s American Express card information.
According to the defense motion, on the same day, “the CI searched for and seized more than 10,000 emails over several years for himself and another staffer, Shea Ledford, from their government ‘house.gov’ email accounts.”
http://www.startribune.com/media-press- ... 417221963/
Media press FBI for price it paid for tool to unlock iPhone
March 27, 2017 — — FBI Director James Comey has made public enough details about the bureau buying a tool to unlock an iPhone as part of a terrorism investigation that the agency should also release how much it cost, The Associated Press and two other news organizations said in court papers Monday.
The media companies said Comey has spoken "at length and in detail" about the FBI's purchase last year of a tool that enabled it to break into the work phone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two shooters in the December 2015 San Bernardino, California, attack.
They told a judge that now that Comey has publicly offered a ballpark price that the FBI paid, and has spoken generally about the limitations of the tool, the bureau should be forced to provide the news organizations with the information they sought.
The AP, Vice Media LLC and Gannett, the parent company of USA Today, sued the FBI in September under the Freedom of Information Act, requesting details on how much the FBI paid, as well as the identity of the vendor.
"While the FBI may have preferred that Comey not seek to justify the agency's purchase so publicly, by doing so he rendered the price subject to disclosure," lawyers for the media organizations said in the latest filing in the case.
The Justice Department in January provided some heavily redacted records from the transaction, but withheld critical details that the AP was seeking. The government argued that the information it withheld, if released, could be seized upon by "hostile entities" that could develop their own countermeasures and interfere with the FBI's intelligence gathering.
It also said in the court filing that disclosure "would result in severe damage to the FBI's efforts to detect and apprehe
http://www.wikikeywordtool.org/agents-125234153-k.html
agents - FBI Agents Association for active duty FBI agents and former ...
www.wikikeywordtool.org/agents-125234153-k.html
2 hours ago - agents - FBI Agents Association for active duty FBI agents and former agents "Agent-based Computing from Multi-agent Systems to Agent-Based Models: A ...
Former FBI Agent Clint Watts: Trump used Russian propaganda to go after his opponent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeaOL9xLAsI
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... 35efd19131
23 people ask the Justice Department to launch a criminal inquiry into its chief, Jeff Sessions
By Kristine Phillips March 27
Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Alex Brandon/AP)
Nearly two dozen people from five states are accusing Attorney General Jeff Sessions of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his communications with the Russian government and subsequently trying to cover up that lie, according to a complaint sent to the Department of Justice.
The complaint, which names 23 residents, states that Sessions gave false and misleading testimony during his confirmation hearing in January when he told the Senate committee that he “did not have communications with the Russians.” It further accuses the attorney general of covering up the alleged perjury by directing a spokeswoman to make a public statement saying he did not mislead the committee.
“We feel there is probable cause to charge him with a crime,” J. Whitfield Larrabee, a Massachusetts lawyer who represents the 23 residents, told The Washington Post. “We want indictments in the case. We want Attorney General Sessions to be treated just the same as anyone else. We don’t think that just because he’s the attorney general, that there should be a higher standard to bring charges against him.”
[ACLU files ethics complaint against Sessions over communications with Russian ambassador]
Larrabee said the complaint was sent Monday to three Justice Department divisions that investigate alleged crimes and misconduct by agency employees and public officials.
How the agency will handle a complaint against its leader is unclear. Larrabee said the department should appoint a special prosecutor to handle the investigation and prosecution.
A spokesman for one of the divisions, the Office of Inspector General, declined to comment on the allegations. Other Justice Department spokespeople haven’t responded to a request for comment.
The group of complainants, which includes three doctors and a pastor, are from California, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Vermont.
Earlier this month, The Post revealed that Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice last year and did not disclose those communications when asked during his confirmation hearing. The report intensified calls for a congressional investigation i
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... 3548c78e7f
Inspector General: DEA Seizes Money without Ties to Criminal Investigations
Drugs and cash seized in Portland.
By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The DEA is seizing massive amounts of cash from people who are not connected to a criminal investigation, according to a scathing report by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
In the 74-page report released Wednesday, the inspector general cautioned that the DEA may be violating the civil liberties of people whose is seized, the Washington Post reports.
The inspector general concluded the DEA was unable to demonstrate how asset forfeiture practices benefit criminal investigations.
The Post cites one example:
The DEA took more than $70,000 from a piece of checked luggage without doing any more investigation or attempting to question the owner at the airport — instead simply putting a receipt in the bag and sending it on to its final destination.
“Even accepting that the circumstances surrounding the discovery of this large volume of concealed currency justified law enforcement suspicion and seizure, we find it troubling that the DEA would make an administrative forfeiture without attempting to advance an investigation, especially considering that the DEA had opportunities to contact the potential owners of the currency instead of simply providing written notice of the seizure,” the inspector general wrote.
FBI OCTOPUS
New FBI Richmond Outreach Initiative - NBC29 WVIR Charlottesville ...
www.nbc29.com/story/35040334/new-fbi-ri ... initiative
6 hours ago - The FBI Richmond Youth Academy will kick off during the summer of 2017, in a ... Thomas M. Chadwick, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Richmond ...
https://muskegonpundit.blogspot.com/201 ... didnt.html
MuskegonPundit: A very strange story-----FBI agent “didn't try to stop Garland Terrorist
https://muskegonpundit.blogspot.com/201 ... t-didnt.ht...
7 hours ago - FBI agent “didn't try to stop” Garland jihad attackers — did FBI want Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer dead?: "Although we were co-organizers of the event, ...
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum ... 489357/pg1
That Time an Undercover FBI Agent Told One of the 'Draw Mohammed ...
www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message3489357/pg1
"Not only had the FBI been monitoring [one of the gunmen] for years," 60 Minutes recounts, but "there was an undercover agent right behind him when the first ...
Trump Defends Michael Flynn After He Offered to Testify Against the President
Former National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn
President Trump is defending former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s offer to testify in ongoing probes of Russian hacking of the 2016 election in exchange for legal immunity.
Trump wrote on Twitter early Friday morning that investigation had become “a witch hunt,” echoing language used by his former campaign adviser’s attorney.
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/
FBI Releases New Batch of 9/11 Photos from Pentagon Attack
One of a recently released batch of photos of the 9/11. Photo via Wiki.
The FBI has released previously unseen photos of the aftermath of the 9/11 attack against the Pentagon.
The 27 photos were posted on the bureau’s website “FBI’s Records: The Vault.”
The American Airlines flight crashed after Al Qaeda terrorists gained control of the plane.
The new photos show interior damage, aerial perspectives and footage from the ground.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/mar/3 ... ng-us-not/
Local FBI leader says agency’s mission is protecting Americans, not playing politics
Mikayla Whitmore
FBI Las Vegas Division Director Aaron Rouse speaks to the media at the local FBI Headquarters, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016.
By Ricardo Torres-Cortez (contact)
Thursday, March 30, 2017 | 2 a.m.
The election of President Donald Trump hasn’t changed how the FBI operates, as the federal agency steers clear of politics despite what “a lot of people would want to have (it be),” said Special Agent Aaron Rouse, the director of the FBI’s Las Vegas division.
"We’re not a political organization; we’re not affected by the politics,” Rouse emphasized to reporters Wednesday from the FBI's Las Vegas headquarters, where he and other special agents spoke.
The “Getting to Know the FBI” meeting with reporters was an effort from Rouse, who was appointed to his position in September, to “bring down the barriers” between the FBI and the public so it understands that investigation methodologies don't quite develop the way they're portrayed in Hollywood.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/6601 ... BI-op.html
Nichols says bombing was FBI op
Detailed confession filed in S.L. about Oklahoma City plot
By Geoffrey Fattah
Published: Feb. 21, 2007 12:00 a.m.
+
Leave a comment
The only surviving convicted criminal in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is saying his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, told him he was taking orders from a top FBI official in orchestrating the bombing.
A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, has proven to be one of the most detailed confessions by Nichols to date about his involvement in the bombing as well as the involvement of others. However, one congressman who has investigated the bombings remains skeptical of Nichols' claims.
The declaration was filed as part of Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue's pending wrongful death suit against the government for the death of his brother in a federal corrections facility in Oklahoma City. Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents when agents mistook his brother for a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.
The most shocking allegation in the 19-page signed declaration is Nichols' assertion that the whole bombing plot was an FBI operation and that McVeigh let slip during a bout of anger that he was taking instruction from former FBI official Larry Potts.
Potts was no stranger to anti-government confrontations, having been the lead FBI agent at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which led to the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, the wife of separatist Randy Weaver. Potts also was reportedly involved in the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, which resulted in a fire that killed 81 Branch Davidian followers.
Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the cover-up of an order to allow agents to shoot anyone seen leaving the Weaver cabin at Ruby Ridge.
When contacted, the FBI's main office in Washington, D.C., said it could not provide immediate comment on Nichols' claims Tuesday.
Nichols claims that, in December 1992, McVeigh told him that "wh
https://article25news.wordpress.com/201 ... -long-ago/
Privacy Died Long Ago
In Uncategorized on 06/03/2013 at 9:12 pm
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart of Cincinnati swears in George H. W. Bush as director of the CIA as President Gerald Ford watches. REUTERS/George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
The great forgotten Cincinnati wiretap scandal
By Gregory Flannery
Americans no longer assume their communications are free from government spying. Many believe widespread monitoring is a recent change, a response to terrorism. They are wrong. Fair warning came in 1988 in Cincinnati, Ohio, when evidence showed that wiretapping was already both common and easy.
Twenty-five years ago state and federal courtrooms in Cincinnati were abuzz with allegations of illegal wiretaps on federal judges, members of Cincinnati City Council, local congressional representatives, political dissidents and business leaders.
Two federal judges in Cincinnati told 60 Minutes they believed there was strong evidence that they had been wiretapped. Retired Cincinnati Police officers, including a former chief, admitted to illegal wiretapping.
Even some of the most outrageous claims – for example, that the president of the United States was wiretapped while staying in a Cincinnati hotel – were supported by independent witnesses.
National media coverage of the lawsuits, grand jury hearings and investigations by city council and the FBI attracted the attention of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).
As Americans wonder about the extent to which their e-mails, cell-phones and text messages are being monitored, they would do well to look back at a time before any of those existed. Judging by what was revealed in Cincinnati, privacy died long before anyone had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or al Q’aeda.
Turbulence
In 1988 Leonard Gates, a former installer for Cincinnati Bell, told the Mount Washington Press, a small independent weekly, that he had performed illegal wiretaps for the Cincinnati Police Department, the FBI and the phone company itself.
A week after the paper published his allegations, a federal grand jury began hearing testimony.
Gates claimed to have performed an estimated 1,200 wiretaps, which he believed illegal. His list of targets included former Mayor Jerry Springer, the late tycoon Carl Lindner Jr., U.S. District Judge Carl Rubin, U.S. Magistrate J. Vincent Aug, the late U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the Students for a Democratic Society (an anti-war group during the Vietnam War), then-U.S. Rep. Tom Luken (D-Cincinnati) and then-President Gerald Ford.
A second former Cincinnati Bell installer, Robert Draise, joined Gates, saying he, too had performed illegal wiretaps for the police. His alleged targets included the Black Muslim mosque in Finneytown and the General Electric plant in Evendale. Draise’s portfolio was much smaller than Gates’s, an estimated 100 taps, because he was caught freelancing – performing an illegal wiretap for a friend.
Charged by the FBI, Draise claimed he had gone to his “controller” at Cincinnati Bell, the person who directed his wiretaps, and asked for help. If he didn’t get it, he said, he’d tell all. When the case went to federal court, Draise didn’t bother to hire an attorney. He didn’t need one. In a plea deal, federal prosecutors dropped the charge to a misdemeanor. Found guilty of illegal wiretapping, his sentence was a $200 fine. The judge? Magistrate J. Vincent Aug.
If Gates and Draise had been the only people to come forward, they could easily be dismissed as cranks – disgruntled former employees, as Cincinnati Bell claimed. But some police office officers named by Gates and Draise confirmed parts of their allegations, insisting, however, that there were only 12 illegal wiretaps. Other officers not known to Gates and Draise also admitted to illegal wiretaps. Some of the officers received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. Others invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.
“Due to the turbulent nature of the late ’60s and early ’70s, wiretaps were conducted to gather information,” said a press release signed by six retired officers. “This use began in approximately 1968 and ended completely during the Watergate investigation.”
The press release, whose signers included former Police Chief Myron Leistler, listed 12 wiretaps, among them “a black militant in the Bond Hill area” and a house on either Ravine or Strait streets rented by “the SDS or some other radical group.”
The retired cops’ lawyer said there were actually three Cincinnati Bell installers doing illegal wiretaps, but declined to identify the third.
The retired officers denied knowledge of “any wiretaps involving judges, local politicians, prominent citizens and fellow law enforcement officers or city employees.”
Getting rid of Aug
Others had that knowledge, however.
Howard Lucas, former security chief at the Stouffer Hotel downtown, said he caught Gates and three cops trying to break into a telephone switching room shortly before President Gerald Ford stayed at the hotel.
“I said, ‘Do you have a court order?’ and they all laughed,” Lucas told the Mount Washington Press.
The four men left. But they returned.
“A couple days later, in the back of the room, I found a setup, a reel-to-reel recorder concealed under some boxes,” Lucas said.
Ford stayed at the Stouffer Hotel in July 1975 and June 1976 – two years after the Watergate scandal, when Cincinnati Police officers claimed the bugging ended.
Then there was the matter of a former guard at the U.S. Courthouse downtown. He said he had found wiretap equipment there in 1986 and 1987, just a year before the wiretap scandal broke.
“I heard conversations you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “I heard a conversation one time. they were talking about getting rid of U.S. Magistrate Aug.”
The wiretapping started with drug dealers and expanded to political and business figures, according to Gates. In 1979, he testified, he was ordered to wiretap the Hamilton County Regional Computer Center, which handled vote tabulations. His handler at the phone company allegedly told Gates the wiretap was intended to manipulate election results.
“They had the ability to actually alter what was being done with the votes. … He was very upset through some of the elections with a gentleman named Blackwell,” Gates testified.
J. Kenneth Blackwell is a former member of Cincinnati Council, and 1979 was an election year for council.
Something went wrong on Election Night, Gates testified. His handler at the phone company called him.
“He was panicking,” Gates testified. “He said we had done something to screw up the voting processor down there, or the voting computer.”
News reports at the time noted an unexpected delay in counting votes for city council because of a computer malfunction.
Cincinnati Bell denied any involvement in illegal wiretapping by police or its own personnel. Yet police officers, like Gates, testified the police received equipment – even a truck – and information necessary to effectuate the wiretaps. The owners of a greenhouse in Westwood even came forward, saying the police stored the Cincinnati Bell truck on their property.
‘Say it louder’
Gates claimed that his handler at Cincinnati Bell repeatedly told him the wiretaps were at the behest of the FBI. He named an FBI agent who, he said, let him into the federal courthouse to wiretap federal judges.
Investigations followed – a federal grand jury, which indicted no one; a special investigator hired by city council, the former head of the Cincinnati FBI office; the U.S. Justice Department, sort of.
U.S. Sen. Paul Simon asked then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to look into the Cincinnati wiretap scandal. Federal judges, members of Congress and even the president of the United States had allegedly been wiretapped. Simon’s effort went nowhere. His press secretary told the Mount Washington Press that it took three months for the Attorney General to respond.
“The senator’s not pleased with the response,” Simon’s press secretary said. “It didn’t have the attorney general’s personal attention, and it said Justice (Department) was aware of the situation, but isn’t going to do anything.”
The city of Cincinnati settled a class-action lawsuit accusing it of illegal wiretapping, paying $85,000 to 17 defendants. It paid $12,000 to settle a second lawsuit by former staffers of The Independent Eye, an underground newspaper allegedly wiretapped and torched by Cincinnati Police officers in 1970.
Cincinnati Bell sued Leonard Gates and Robert Draise, accusing them of defamation. The two men had no attorneys and represented themselves at trial. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Fred Cartolano refused to let the jury hear testimony by former police officers who had admitted using Gates and Draise and Cincinnati Bell equipment. In a 4-2 vote, the jury ruled in the phone company’s favor, officially adjudging the two whistleblowers liars.
During one of the many hearings associated with the wiretap scandal, an FBI agent was asked what the agency would do if someone accused the phone company of placing illegal wiretaps. He testified the FBI would be powerless; it needed the phone company to check for a wiretap.
“It would go back to Bell,” the agent testified. “We would have no way of determining if there was any illegal wiretapping going on.”
The FBI agent was the person Gates had accused of opening the federal courthouse at night so he could wiretap federal judges.
One police sergeant offered no excuses for the illegal wiretapping. Asked why he didn’t bother with the legal niceties, such as getting a warrant, as required then by federal law, he said, “I didn’t deem it was necessary. We wanted the information, and went out and got it.”
At one point, covering the scandal for the Mount Washington Press, I received a phone call from a sergeant in the Cincinnati Police Department. He invited me to the station at Mount Airy Forest, where he proceeded to wiretap a fellow police officer’s phone call. I listened as the other officer talked to his wife.
“Say hello,” the sergeant told me.
I did. There was no response.
“Say it louder,” the sergeant said.
I did. No response.
“You can hear them, but they can’t hear you,” the sergeant said. “Any idiot can do a wiretap. You know that’s true because you just saw a policeman do it.”
Privacy is dead. Its corpse has long been moldering in the grave.
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/29/former- ... t-staffer/
Wednesday, Mar 29, 2017 07:22 PM EDT
Former Rep. Aaron Schock was brought down by an FBI informant staffer
Schock was indicted last year on 24 counts related to alleged misuse of government and campaign funds
Taylor Link Follow Skip to Comments
Topics: Aaron Schock, campaign funds, Congress, Corruption, FBI, House of Representatives, Illinois, Informant, Politics News, News
Former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock (Credit: AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Indicted on a slate of corruption charges, Rep. Aaron Schock claims one of his aides illegally gathered evidence against him on behalf of the FBI, a defense motion argued Tuesday. Schock’s attorneys allege that the FBI informant stole thousands of emails from his official House account, in addition to “physical Congressional Office records that were Mr. Schock’s personal property.” Moreover, the motion asserted that the aide tried to “covertly record private conversations with and between Mr. Schock and his staff, including conversations where attorney-client privileged communications were discussed.”
In March 2015, the then-33-year-old Schock resigned as the U.S. Representative for Illinois’ 18th Congressional District after Politico raised questions about tens of thousands of dollars in mileage reimbursements he received for his personal vehicle. During his time in Congress, Schoch was most notable for changing the decor of his office to match “Downton Abbey.”
Months after Schock’s resignation, while the House sergeant-at-arms was overseeing his vacated office, the defense motion alleges that the FBI informant went through the desk of Dayne LaHood, then chief of staff, at the direction of an FBI supervisor and removed fuel receipts, which included Schock’s American Express card information.
According to the defense motion, on the same day, “the CI searched for and seized more than 10,000 emails over several years for himself and another staffer, Shea Ledford, from their government ‘house.gov’ email accounts.”
http://www.startribune.com/media-press- ... 417221963/
Media press FBI for price it paid for tool to unlock iPhone
March 27, 2017 — — FBI Director James Comey has made public enough details about the bureau buying a tool to unlock an iPhone as part of a terrorism investigation that the agency should also release how much it cost, The Associated Press and two other news organizations said in court papers Monday.
The media companies said Comey has spoken "at length and in detail" about the FBI's purchase last year of a tool that enabled it to break into the work phone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two shooters in the December 2015 San Bernardino, California, attack.
They told a judge that now that Comey has publicly offered a ballpark price that the FBI paid, and has spoken generally about the limitations of the tool, the bureau should be forced to provide the news organizations with the information they sought.
The AP, Vice Media LLC and Gannett, the parent company of USA Today, sued the FBI in September under the Freedom of Information Act, requesting details on how much the FBI paid, as well as the identity of the vendor.
"While the FBI may have preferred that Comey not seek to justify the agency's purchase so publicly, by doing so he rendered the price subject to disclosure," lawyers for the media organizations said in the latest filing in the case.
The Justice Department in January provided some heavily redacted records from the transaction, but withheld critical details that the AP was seeking. The government argued that the information it withheld, if released, could be seized upon by "hostile entities" that could develop their own countermeasures and interfere with the FBI's intelligence gathering.
It also said in the court filing that disclosure "would result in severe damage to the FBI's efforts to detect and apprehe
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agents - FBI Agents Association for active duty FBI agents and former ...
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Former FBI Agent Clint Watts: Trump used Russian propaganda to go after his opponent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeaOL9xLAsI
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... 35efd19131
23 people ask the Justice Department to launch a criminal inquiry into its chief, Jeff Sessions
By Kristine Phillips March 27
Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Alex Brandon/AP)
Nearly two dozen people from five states are accusing Attorney General Jeff Sessions of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his communications with the Russian government and subsequently trying to cover up that lie, according to a complaint sent to the Department of Justice.
The complaint, which names 23 residents, states that Sessions gave false and misleading testimony during his confirmation hearing in January when he told the Senate committee that he “did not have communications with the Russians.” It further accuses the attorney general of covering up the alleged perjury by directing a spokeswoman to make a public statement saying he did not mislead the committee.
“We feel there is probable cause to charge him with a crime,” J. Whitfield Larrabee, a Massachusetts lawyer who represents the 23 residents, told The Washington Post. “We want indictments in the case. We want Attorney General Sessions to be treated just the same as anyone else. We don’t think that just because he’s the attorney general, that there should be a higher standard to bring charges against him.”
[ACLU files ethics complaint against Sessions over communications with Russian ambassador]
Larrabee said the complaint was sent Monday to three Justice Department divisions that investigate alleged crimes and misconduct by agency employees and public officials.
How the agency will handle a complaint against its leader is unclear. Larrabee said the department should appoint a special prosecutor to handle the investigation and prosecution.
A spokesman for one of the divisions, the Office of Inspector General, declined to comment on the allegations. Other Justice Department spokespeople haven’t responded to a request for comment.
The group of complainants, which includes three doctors and a pastor, are from California, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Vermont.
Earlier this month, The Post revealed that Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice last year and did not disclose those communications when asked during his confirmation hearing. The report intensified calls for a congressional investigation i
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... 3548c78e7f
Inspector General: DEA Seizes Money without Ties to Criminal Investigations
Drugs and cash seized in Portland.
By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The DEA is seizing massive amounts of cash from people who are not connected to a criminal investigation, according to a scathing report by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
In the 74-page report released Wednesday, the inspector general cautioned that the DEA may be violating the civil liberties of people whose is seized, the Washington Post reports.
The inspector general concluded the DEA was unable to demonstrate how asset forfeiture practices benefit criminal investigations.
The Post cites one example:
The DEA took more than $70,000 from a piece of checked luggage without doing any more investigation or attempting to question the owner at the airport — instead simply putting a receipt in the bag and sending it on to its final destination.
“Even accepting that the circumstances surrounding the discovery of this large volume of concealed currency justified law enforcement suspicion and seizure, we find it troubling that the DEA would make an administrative forfeiture without attempting to advance an investigation, especially considering that the DEA had opportunities to contact the potential owners of the currency instead of simply providing written notice of the seizure,” the inspector general wrote.
FBI OCTOPUS
New FBI Richmond Outreach Initiative - NBC29 WVIR Charlottesville ...
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6 hours ago - The FBI Richmond Youth Academy will kick off during the summer of 2017, in a ... Thomas M. Chadwick, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Richmond ...
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MuskegonPundit: A very strange story-----FBI agent “didn't try to stop Garland Terrorist
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7 hours ago - FBI agent “didn't try to stop” Garland jihad attackers — did FBI want Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer dead?: "Although we were co-organizers of the event, ...
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum ... 489357/pg1
That Time an Undercover FBI Agent Told One of the 'Draw Mohammed ...
www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message3489357/pg1
"Not only had the FBI been monitoring [one of the gunmen] for years," 60 Minutes recounts, but "there was an undercover agent right behind him when the first ...
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Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/05/02/7 ... bout-ms13/
7 Things the Trump Administration Gets Wrong about MS13
| May 2, 2017
One of Latin America’s most violent gangs has become a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s campaign to go after the criminal activities it says are committed by undocumented migrants—but the facts it is relying upon are open to question.
Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled to New York to warn members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13, that “we are coming after you” in the aftermath of a series of deaths in Long Island tied to the gang.
But the verbal offensive by both the attorney general and President Trump, which ratcheted up earlier last month, as well as their statements on the origins and evolution of the gang, are for the most part false or misleading.
On April 18, Trump tweeted that the “weak illegal immigration policies of the Obama administration” allowed the MS13 to develop in several US cities. The current president also said that his administration has been expelling gang members at rates never seen before.
In addition, speaking to Fox News, the President stated that the gangs are made up of “illegal immigrants that were here that caused tremendous crime. That have murdered people, raped people — horrible things have happened. They’re getting the hell out or they’re going to prison.”
On the same day that Trump made these comments, Sessions expressed similar thoughts in a separate TV interview and in a speech he gave to an elite group of federal officials, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).
Like Trump, Attorney General Sessions also blamed so-called “sanctuary cities,” which forbid local police forces from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, for facilitating the MS13‘s expansion.
As he had promised during his presidential campaign, upon assuming office Trump began threatening to cut federal funds to these cities if they refused to cooperate with ICE. Only a few of the more than 100 sanctuary cities have given up their sanctuary status. Others that are home to large migrant communities, such as San Francisco; Hyattsville, Maryland; Houston; and Los Angeles have defied Trump.
In addition, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly spoke about the MS13 at a public event held by George Washington University, in Washington, DC.
“They are utterly without laws, conscience, or respect for human life. They take the form of drug cartels, or international gangs like MS13, who share their business dealings and violent practices. Their sophisticated networks move anything and everything across our borders, including human beings,” Kelly said.
Each of these comments comes with its flaws, and at the very least distorts the reality and obscurs the strategies that should be followed to tackle the MS13 threat. In an effort to shed more light on this complex issue, InSight Crime has listed seven aspects of these statements in which the Trump administration is plainly mistaken.
1. Barack Obama’s immigration policies allowed the MS13 to expand across the United States
Trump blames former President Obama, but he may have been more correct if he had pointed the finger at Ronald Reagan. The MS13 and Barrio 18 street gangs were established in the 1980s in Los Angeles. At the beginning, they were made up of young undocumented migrants that came to California escaping the civil war in El Salvador. They were tuned in to rock music and took part in small-scale drug dealing. Some of them had received military or guerrilla-style training.
As Salvadoran news outlet El Faro wrote about the origins of the MS13, very soon the gang began to articulate a violent ideology based by and large on opposition to rival gangs, most notably the Barrio 18.
The gangs migrated to the US East Coast towards the end of the 1990s, as part of the migration waves that saw Latino communities looking for jobs elsewhere in the country. By the beginning of the 2000s, the MS13 began to catch the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Even the fact sheet the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released on April 18 to support Sessions’s statements clearly says that the MS13 was born and began to expand before 2009. “The MS13 has been functioning since at least the 1980s,” the report states.
In 2004, under the George W. Bush administration, the FBI created a special unit targeting the MS13, after members of the gang committed some atrocious homicides.
In 2006, Brian Tuchon, then-head of the FBI’s special unit, told Salvadoran news outlet La Prensa Gráfica that the gang had settled in 42 US states, and had begun to participate in drug trafficking, chiefly as local distributors. Since that time, the FBI and the US State Department have maintained that gangs like the MS13 do not play an important role in the international drug trafficking chain.
The MS13‘s expansion is directly related to the evolution and migration of Central American communities into the United States, and also with the large-scale deportation campaigns that began towards the end of the Bill Clinton administration and intensified during George W. Bush’s two terms in office.
2. US law enforcement has done nothing against the MS13
“It is a serious problem and we never did anything about it, and now we’re doing something about it,” President Trump told Fox News during the April 18 interview.
This is false. In addition to several FBI operations, local police forces and attorneys from counties across the states of Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and California carried out several law enforcement actions against MS13 members during the previous decade.
To give a few examples, federal cases brought by attorneys under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) law in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Arlington, Virginia led to blows that decimated the MS13 cells on the US East Coast for a decade.
In 2007, Greenbelt’s federal court sentenced some 20 members of gangs based in Maryland, DC and Virginia to several years in prison as part of an organized crime case that included charges of homicide, drug possession, illegal use of weapons and rape, among others. Among the defendants was Saúl Hernández Turcios, alias “El Trece,” one of the MS13 leaders in El Salvador.
Again, the DOJ report on the MS13 appears to contradict the president’s words. The fact sheet states: “Through the combined efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement, great progress was made diminishing or severely disrupted the gang within certain targeted areas of the US by 2009 and 2010.” That is, during the Obama administration.
3. More gang members are being deported from the United States than ever before
In his tweet, Trump said that “we are removing [gang members] fast.” Yet there is no data to support this claim. The ICE deportation figures available to the public do not show data from the first three months of 2017, when Trump has been in office. Up until the end of 2016, the percentage of gang members compared to the total deported population was minimal: 0.8 percent, that is, 2,057 individuals “with confirmed or suspected connections to gangs” out of a total of 240,255 deported people that year.
Ever since 2011, when the Obama administration announced that it would prioritize deportations for undocumented migrants with criminal records or ties to illegal groups, Washington has been juggling two distinct figures: the number of people accused or convicted of a crime, and the number of people whose only crime has been violating migration laws by illegally entering the United States. This, according to many pro-immigrant organizations, has only further criminalized migrant communities.
There is no data showing that deportations carried out during the Trump administration have targeted more gang members, and Central American police sources have told InSight Crime that this is not the case.
4. The MS13 is recruiting more in the United States in an attempt to revive defunct ‘clicas,’ and to commit more violent acts
Sessions told OCDETF that “Because of an open border and years of lax immigration enforcement, MS13 has been sending both recruiters and members to regenerate gangs that previously had been decimated, and smuggling members across the border as unaccompanied minors.”
This is, in part, correct. As InSight Crime recently reported, between 2014 and 2016 the FBI and local authorities detected an increase in homicides attributable to the MS13 in Virginia; Boston; and Long Island, New York.
Testimony from a RICO case opened in Boston in 2015 against various MS13 “clicas,” or cells, indicates that orders from the gang’s jailed leadership in El Salvador may have been behind some of these homicides. The court documents also mention a meeting between clica leaders in Richmond, Virginia, in which a spokesperson known as “Ricky” relayed the order to expand the MS13‘s East Coast program.
Federal investigations revealed that some of the Boston homicides could be linked to this order. It is also true that the recent homicides were brutally executed, which is characteristic of the MS13 in Central America.
But Sessions’ statement also distorts the truth. Once again, there is no information that allows the attorney general or Trump’s administration to affirm that these murders are attributable to the arrival of undocumented minors, who began coming to the United States in larger numbers in 2014. In fact, there is no study by federal agencies or academic institutions that proves that there is a significant number of gang members among these minors. On the contrary, a large portion of these undocumented youths who come seeking asylum claim that they are fleeing gangs in the Northern Triangle.
Moreover, there is no evidence that the migratory patterns of gang members are different than those of any other group of migrants, or that they are moving in accordance with a grand plan forged by the MS13‘s Salvadoran leadership to revitalize the organization.
It is nonetheless true that in 2007 the MS13 started to resume recruitment activities and indiscriminate use of violence in some US cities, according to FBI officials who have studied the gang for at least two decades. But these efforts are not directly related to Obama’s migration policies. David LeValley, who until last November was chief of the FBI’s criminal investigations unit in Washington, explains that there have been attempts by the MS13 to regain strength following the RICO prosecutions between 2006 and 2010. This has been occurring “since 2007, after real successes and after the leadership had been decimated,” the FBI agent told InSight Crime in an interview last year.
In more recent years, the MS13 has largely been following the organization’s dynamics in Central America. This includes the gang truce between the MS13, Barrio 18 and the Salvadoran government during the presidency of Mauricio Funes (2009-2014), and the subsequent declaration of war by current President Salvador Sánchez Cerén.
5. Sanctuary cities are more hospitable to the MS13, and the gang can operate freely in them
Sessions told OCDETF that sanctuary cities “dangerously undermine [the process of fighting gangs]. Harboring criminal aliens only helps violent gangs like MS13. Sanctuary cities are aiding these cartels to refill their ranks and putting innocent life — including the lives of countless law-abiding immigrants — in danger.”
This is false. There is no evidence that the “sanctuary” status of certain cities — those that refuse to allow local police to assist ICE in locating and deporting undocumented migrants — has any effect on their crime rates. Evidence indicates that, as in much of the United States, crime rates in sanctuary cities have been decreasing for years. In fact, some studies suggest that crime indicators are actually lower in migrant communities.
7 Things the Trump Administration Gets Wrong about MS13
| May 2, 2017
One of Latin America’s most violent gangs has become a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s campaign to go after the criminal activities it says are committed by undocumented migrants—but the facts it is relying upon are open to question.
Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled to New York to warn members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13, that “we are coming after you” in the aftermath of a series of deaths in Long Island tied to the gang.
But the verbal offensive by both the attorney general and President Trump, which ratcheted up earlier last month, as well as their statements on the origins and evolution of the gang, are for the most part false or misleading.
On April 18, Trump tweeted that the “weak illegal immigration policies of the Obama administration” allowed the MS13 to develop in several US cities. The current president also said that his administration has been expelling gang members at rates never seen before.
In addition, speaking to Fox News, the President stated that the gangs are made up of “illegal immigrants that were here that caused tremendous crime. That have murdered people, raped people — horrible things have happened. They’re getting the hell out or they’re going to prison.”
On the same day that Trump made these comments, Sessions expressed similar thoughts in a separate TV interview and in a speech he gave to an elite group of federal officials, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).
Like Trump, Attorney General Sessions also blamed so-called “sanctuary cities,” which forbid local police forces from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, for facilitating the MS13‘s expansion.
As he had promised during his presidential campaign, upon assuming office Trump began threatening to cut federal funds to these cities if they refused to cooperate with ICE. Only a few of the more than 100 sanctuary cities have given up their sanctuary status. Others that are home to large migrant communities, such as San Francisco; Hyattsville, Maryland; Houston; and Los Angeles have defied Trump.
In addition, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly spoke about the MS13 at a public event held by George Washington University, in Washington, DC.
“They are utterly without laws, conscience, or respect for human life. They take the form of drug cartels, or international gangs like MS13, who share their business dealings and violent practices. Their sophisticated networks move anything and everything across our borders, including human beings,” Kelly said.
Each of these comments comes with its flaws, and at the very least distorts the reality and obscurs the strategies that should be followed to tackle the MS13 threat. In an effort to shed more light on this complex issue, InSight Crime has listed seven aspects of these statements in which the Trump administration is plainly mistaken.
1. Barack Obama’s immigration policies allowed the MS13 to expand across the United States
Trump blames former President Obama, but he may have been more correct if he had pointed the finger at Ronald Reagan. The MS13 and Barrio 18 street gangs were established in the 1980s in Los Angeles. At the beginning, they were made up of young undocumented migrants that came to California escaping the civil war in El Salvador. They were tuned in to rock music and took part in small-scale drug dealing. Some of them had received military or guerrilla-style training.
As Salvadoran news outlet El Faro wrote about the origins of the MS13, very soon the gang began to articulate a violent ideology based by and large on opposition to rival gangs, most notably the Barrio 18.
The gangs migrated to the US East Coast towards the end of the 1990s, as part of the migration waves that saw Latino communities looking for jobs elsewhere in the country. By the beginning of the 2000s, the MS13 began to catch the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Even the fact sheet the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released on April 18 to support Sessions’s statements clearly says that the MS13 was born and began to expand before 2009. “The MS13 has been functioning since at least the 1980s,” the report states.
In 2004, under the George W. Bush administration, the FBI created a special unit targeting the MS13, after members of the gang committed some atrocious homicides.
In 2006, Brian Tuchon, then-head of the FBI’s special unit, told Salvadoran news outlet La Prensa Gráfica that the gang had settled in 42 US states, and had begun to participate in drug trafficking, chiefly as local distributors. Since that time, the FBI and the US State Department have maintained that gangs like the MS13 do not play an important role in the international drug trafficking chain.
The MS13‘s expansion is directly related to the evolution and migration of Central American communities into the United States, and also with the large-scale deportation campaigns that began towards the end of the Bill Clinton administration and intensified during George W. Bush’s two terms in office.
2. US law enforcement has done nothing against the MS13
“It is a serious problem and we never did anything about it, and now we’re doing something about it,” President Trump told Fox News during the April 18 interview.
This is false. In addition to several FBI operations, local police forces and attorneys from counties across the states of Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and California carried out several law enforcement actions against MS13 members during the previous decade.
To give a few examples, federal cases brought by attorneys under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) law in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Arlington, Virginia led to blows that decimated the MS13 cells on the US East Coast for a decade.
In 2007, Greenbelt’s federal court sentenced some 20 members of gangs based in Maryland, DC and Virginia to several years in prison as part of an organized crime case that included charges of homicide, drug possession, illegal use of weapons and rape, among others. Among the defendants was Saúl Hernández Turcios, alias “El Trece,” one of the MS13 leaders in El Salvador.
Again, the DOJ report on the MS13 appears to contradict the president’s words. The fact sheet states: “Through the combined efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement, great progress was made diminishing or severely disrupted the gang within certain targeted areas of the US by 2009 and 2010.” That is, during the Obama administration.
3. More gang members are being deported from the United States than ever before
In his tweet, Trump said that “we are removing [gang members] fast.” Yet there is no data to support this claim. The ICE deportation figures available to the public do not show data from the first three months of 2017, when Trump has been in office. Up until the end of 2016, the percentage of gang members compared to the total deported population was minimal: 0.8 percent, that is, 2,057 individuals “with confirmed or suspected connections to gangs” out of a total of 240,255 deported people that year.
Ever since 2011, when the Obama administration announced that it would prioritize deportations for undocumented migrants with criminal records or ties to illegal groups, Washington has been juggling two distinct figures: the number of people accused or convicted of a crime, and the number of people whose only crime has been violating migration laws by illegally entering the United States. This, according to many pro-immigrant organizations, has only further criminalized migrant communities.
There is no data showing that deportations carried out during the Trump administration have targeted more gang members, and Central American police sources have told InSight Crime that this is not the case.
4. The MS13 is recruiting more in the United States in an attempt to revive defunct ‘clicas,’ and to commit more violent acts
Sessions told OCDETF that “Because of an open border and years of lax immigration enforcement, MS13 has been sending both recruiters and members to regenerate gangs that previously had been decimated, and smuggling members across the border as unaccompanied minors.”
This is, in part, correct. As InSight Crime recently reported, between 2014 and 2016 the FBI and local authorities detected an increase in homicides attributable to the MS13 in Virginia; Boston; and Long Island, New York.
Testimony from a RICO case opened in Boston in 2015 against various MS13 “clicas,” or cells, indicates that orders from the gang’s jailed leadership in El Salvador may have been behind some of these homicides. The court documents also mention a meeting between clica leaders in Richmond, Virginia, in which a spokesperson known as “Ricky” relayed the order to expand the MS13‘s East Coast program.
Federal investigations revealed that some of the Boston homicides could be linked to this order. It is also true that the recent homicides were brutally executed, which is characteristic of the MS13 in Central America.
But Sessions’ statement also distorts the truth. Once again, there is no information that allows the attorney general or Trump’s administration to affirm that these murders are attributable to the arrival of undocumented minors, who began coming to the United States in larger numbers in 2014. In fact, there is no study by federal agencies or academic institutions that proves that there is a significant number of gang members among these minors. On the contrary, a large portion of these undocumented youths who come seeking asylum claim that they are fleeing gangs in the Northern Triangle.
Moreover, there is no evidence that the migratory patterns of gang members are different than those of any other group of migrants, or that they are moving in accordance with a grand plan forged by the MS13‘s Salvadoran leadership to revitalize the organization.
It is nonetheless true that in 2007 the MS13 started to resume recruitment activities and indiscriminate use of violence in some US cities, according to FBI officials who have studied the gang for at least two decades. But these efforts are not directly related to Obama’s migration policies. David LeValley, who until last November was chief of the FBI’s criminal investigations unit in Washington, explains that there have been attempts by the MS13 to regain strength following the RICO prosecutions between 2006 and 2010. This has been occurring “since 2007, after real successes and after the leadership had been decimated,” the FBI agent told InSight Crime in an interview last year.
In more recent years, the MS13 has largely been following the organization’s dynamics in Central America. This includes the gang truce between the MS13, Barrio 18 and the Salvadoran government during the presidency of Mauricio Funes (2009-2014), and the subsequent declaration of war by current President Salvador Sánchez Cerén.
5. Sanctuary cities are more hospitable to the MS13, and the gang can operate freely in them
Sessions told OCDETF that sanctuary cities “dangerously undermine [the process of fighting gangs]. Harboring criminal aliens only helps violent gangs like MS13. Sanctuary cities are aiding these cartels to refill their ranks and putting innocent life — including the lives of countless law-abiding immigrants — in danger.”
This is false. There is no evidence that the “sanctuary” status of certain cities — those that refuse to allow local police to assist ICE in locating and deporting undocumented migrants — has any effect on their crime rates. Evidence indicates that, as in much of the United States, crime rates in sanctuary cities have been decreasing for years. In fact, some studies suggest that crime indicators are actually lower in migrant communities.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
LINK DU JOUR
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... onary-aid/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... trike.html
The Citizen's Guide to the Future
May 9 2017 3:25 PM
The FBI Relied on a Private Firm’s Investigation of the DNC Hack—Which Makes the Agency Harder to Trust
The FBI Relied on a Private Firm's Investigation of the DNC Hack ...
Slate Magazine (blog)- “When will the Fake Media ask about the Dems dealings with Russia & why the DNC wouldn't allow the FBI to check their server or investigate?” President ...
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/he ... tacks.html
Comey urges health systems to work closely with FBI to combat cyberattacks
May 09, 2017 |
FBI Director James Comey on May 8 encouraged hospital and health system leaders to form connections with law enforcement.
"We will be open and honest with you and treat you as what you are: victims," Mr. Comey said at the American Hospital Association's Annual Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C.
He emphasized hospitals and health systems should not only promptly report security incidents to the FBI, but also proactively reach out and build a relationship with their local FBI field office. This familiarity will help law enforcement officials respond more quickly in the event of a security incident, according to Mr. Comey.
http://www.ozy.com/true-story/whitey-bu ... ents/76409
Whitey Bulger: I Was a Guinea Pig for CIA Drug Experiments
By James "Whitey" Bulger
•
In 1957, while a prisoner at the Atlanta penitentiary, I was recruited by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University to join a medical project that was researching a cure for schizophrenia. For our participation we would receive three days of good time for each month on the project. Each week we would be locked in a secure room in the basement of the prison hospital, in an area where mental patients were housed. We went in from 9 a.m. Tuesday to 9 a.m. Wednesday. We were injected with massive doses of LSD-25.
In minutes the drug would take over, and about eight or nine men — Dr. Pfeiffer and several men in suits who were not doctors — would give us tests to see how we reacted. Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state. Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.
The men in suits would be in a room and hook me up to machines, asking questions like: Did you ever kill anyone? Would you kill someone? Two men went psychotic. They had all the symptoms of schizophrenia. They had to be pried loose from under their beds, growling, barking and frothing at the mouth. They put them in a strip cell down the hall. I never saw or heard of them again. They failed the Babinski test.
Lots of tests that have caused me sleeping problems and nightmares to the present. They told us we were helping find a cure for schizophrenia. When it was all over, everyone would feel suicidal and depressed, wrung out emotionally. Time would stand still. I tried to quit, but Dr. Pfeiffer would appeal to me: “Please, you’re my best subject, and we are close to finding the cure.”
Years later, when I read the book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, which came out in 1979 and was written by State Department whistle-blower John Marks, I found out there was a CIA project code-named MK Ultra. The project was a violation of my rights, using prisoners for dangerous tests. I was angry reading that because I’d never mentioned how I felt hallucinating. I kept silent because I thought they might commit me to a mental institution.
I never slept more than two or three hours a night, waking up in cold sweats with side effects. The tests damaged my sleep and gave me nightmares. I had to sleep with the lights on and only for a few hours at a time. The government used us and never tried to help us out after injecting us with government LSD. I’ve had brain scans that told me I was damaged by the tests. The government did a number on us and walked. If anybody opened a shop selling LSD in my neighborhood he would have lost his life.
Prison has changed for the worse. Longer sentences, no mandatory release, no parole after one-third of your time. More laws covering weirdos. They are everywhere you look. In this place they banded together and s
Concord Prison Experiment - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Prison_Experiment
The Concord Prison Experiment was designed to evaluate whether the experiences produced ... Experiment: A 34 Year Follow-Up Study Rick Doblin, MAPS - Volume 9 Number 4 Winter 1999/2000; Jump up ^ Take LSD, stay out of prison?
Dr. Leary's Concord Prison Experiment: A 34 Year Follow-Up Study
https://www.maps.org/news-letters/v09n4 ... on.bk.html
by R Doblin - Cited by 34 - Related articles
Reflections on the Concord Prison Experiment and the Follow-Up Study. pp. ... Previous MAPS Bulletins have reported on the Bastiaans LSD Research in the ...
Erowid Tim Leary Vault : Concord Prison Psilocybin Rehabilitation ...
https://erowid.org/culture/characters/l ... son1.shtml
1993 Usenet post about Concord Prison Psilocybin Rehabilitation Project.
Strong Medicine for Prisoner Reform: The Concord Prison Experiment ...
www.awaken.com/.../strong-medicine-for- ... son-experi...
Feb 12, 2013 - This compares with only 119 in 1960 when the Concord prison study was ... finished before Leary became controversial for his work with LSD.
Full text of "Dr. Leary's Concord Prison Experiment: a 34-Year follow ...
https://archive.org/...LearysConcordPri ... n_ConcordP...
Doblin Leary's Concord Prison Experiment administered LSD to criminal sex offenders while they were incarcerated in Atascadero State Hospital in California ...
A New Behavior Change Program Using Psilocybin - DrugLibrary.Org
druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/leary2.htm
by T LEARY - 1965 - Cited by 25 - Related articles
It is well known that our contemporary prison systems do not perform this ... (1961) also reports the use of LSD with criminal offenders in a prison setting. ... out in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Concord, a maximum security prison ...
http://www.stltoday.com/news/fbi-boss-c ... 6f103.html
FBI boss compares Twitter to 'every dive bar in America'
Social media reminds the FBI director of a dive bar filled with yelling and opinions - and it must be protected as free speech, he said.
During a speech Monday, FBI Director James Comey told the Anti-Defamation League that he does not tweet but uses the social media platform to read what is being said about the FBI.
"It feels like I'm all of a sudden immediately in every dive bar in America, where I can hear everybody screaming at the television set," Comey said. "But it is free speech, you don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it, but we will protect it."
FBI OCTOPUS
http://bristolobserver.com/2017/05/09/h ... e-saluted/
High school seniors entering service to be saluted
May 9, 2017 •
With graduation just around the corner, the Greater Bristol Veterans Council at its annual salute dinner will honor local seniors who have decided to serve their country.
The dinner, which honors graduates who are making the transition into the military or military academies, will take place on Friday, May 19, 4:30 p.m. at Nuchie’s Restaurant.
At least 30 graduating men and women from Bristol and other surrounding communities are expected to attend the dinner, where they will receive special recognition from the Veterans Council as well as a red, white, and blue tassel.
“When you put the uniform on, you don’t know if you’re putting it on at peacetime or wartime. You don’t know where you’re going to be sent, and the families don’t know where their children are going to be sent, so it’s stressful,” said Greater Bristol Veterans Council Chairman Russ Trudel. “This is the first step into their adult lives.”
During the dinner, Al Terzi, an Air Force Intelligence veteran, will serve as the MC, while Army veteran Michael Heimbach will serve as the guest speaker.
Currently the vice president of Global Security and Facilities Operations at ESPN, Heimbach set the foundation for his 20-year career in the FBI while serving in the Army.
The veteran also is the father of a Marine Corps officer who is currently serving overseas.
Trudel said a guest speaker like Heimbach could provide extra comfort to not only the graduates, but also the parents.
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/cri ... onfirmed-/
New chief of Staffordshire Police officially confirmed
expressandstar.com-
Mr Morgan, whose career started with West Midlands Police in 1990 and has featured a spell with the FBI, will officially start on Monday June 19. He said: "I am .
http://www.capegazette.com/article/suss ... ngs/132664
Sussex Republican Women learn about mass shootings
http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/articl ... exhumation
American agents train Gambian officers on exhumation
The Point-
Agents of America's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have trained officers of the Forensic and Scientific Support Unit, Crime Management Unit, and Public ...
http://chippewa.com/news/local/crime-an ... ac3f0.html
The FBI has acknowledged its analysis of hair in a 1994 bank robbery case in La Crosse County was flawed. Patrick W. Greer, who had denied involvement in the robbery, was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Wisconsin Department of Corrections
FBI whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst is credited with exposing fraud and misconduct at the FBI laboratory, including unscientific hair analysis. Thousands of cases are now under review nationwide in large part because of Whitehurst, including at least 19 in Wisconsin. He called the FBI’s use of false and misleading hair analysis a “national tragedy.”
National Whistleblower Center
Here’s how the FBI got it wrong
The FBI, the New York-based Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers are examining nearly 3,000 cases nationwide in which the FBI may have misused microscopic hair comparison.
The review so far found statements and findings that “exceeded the limits of the science” in more than 90 percent of the cases. The errors fall into three broad categories:
Claiming a ‘match’
What they did: Examiners stated or implied that the evidentiary hair could be associated with a specific individual to the exclusion of all others.
Why it was wrong: Absent DNA testing, hairs are not unique enough to be associated with one person, even by looking at them under a high-powered microscope.
Claiming a statistical weight
What they did: Examiners assigned a statistical weight, probability or likelihood that the questioned hair originated from a particular source.
Why it was wrong: No such weight can be assigned because no one knows how many people have microscopically identical hair.
Citing experience to bolster findings
What they did: Examiners cited statistics such as the number of hair cases they or the FBI lab had handled to bolster the findings.
Why it was wrong: Unlike DNA, there is no database of hair profiles. Analysts cannot memorize every hair they have ever examined. And comparing vast numbers of hairs — even billions — does not change the fact that an unknown number of people have hair that looks identical.
Sources: National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; FBI; Skip Palenik, Microtrace LLC.
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/crim ... 1.13583616
Sources: Drugs found in ex-Suffolk police chief James Burke’s prison cell
Updated May 9, 2017 8:50 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... 160342c7bd
Seattle officer helped run marijuana to Baltimore
May 8 at 7:29 PM
SEATTLE — A Seattle police officer has been charged with helping smuggle hundreds of pounds of marijuana to Baltimore.
Alex Chapackdee, a 44-year-old patrol officer who’s been with the department since 2000, was arrested Saturday. According to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Monday, he is one of four men charged with conspiring to distribute marijuana. Authorities say h
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/05/09/top ... contracts/
Top ICE Official to Leave for Job at Private Prison That Got Lucrative Government Contracts
The second-in-command at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is leaving his job of overseeing detention and deportations to take a position with a private prison.
Daniel Ragsdale temporarily served as the head of ICE until President Trump replaced him in January. He then became the deputy director.
Ragsdale will be working for GEO Group, a Boca-Raton-based private prison company, the Daily Beast reports. His position is unclear.
“While you may be losing me as a colleague, please know that I will continue to be a strong advocate for you and your mission,” Ragsdale wrote in an email to his ICE colleagues on April 28.
Ragsdale plans to step down on May 27.
“Dan is a person of great honor and a strong ethical code,” said a source close to Ragsdale. “I have no doubt he will bring great deal of integrity to the process to make sure organizations like GEO are complying with the rules and regulations regarding folks who are in detention because of their immigration status.”
Neither Ragdale nor the GEO Group responded to requests for interviews.
ICE is no stranger to GEO, which has lucrative contracts with the federal agency. The timing coincides with President Trump pledging to increase the use of private prisons,
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/F ... 133645.php
FBI sends letter to Congress correcting recent testimony from ...
seattlepi.com-
WASHINGTON — FBI sends letter to Congress correcting recent testimony from Director James Comey on Huma Abedin and her emails.
https://sputniknews.com/us/201705091053 ... on-emails/
FBI Chief Accused of Lying to Congress on Details of Clinton Email ...
Sputnik International-
People close to the investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal are accusing FBI Director James Comey of misrepresenting the number of emails ...
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9 ... tors-visit
Online bomb threats prompted US Embassy evacuation during FBI ...
The Press-
FBI director James Comey's life was threatened during a recent visit to New Zealand with the man behind it claiming Comey wouldn't leave New Zealand alive.
FBI Director James Comey delivers keynote address at LA recruiting ...
MyNewsLA.com-http://mynewsla.com/government/2017/05/ ... ing-event/
FBI Director James Comey will be the keynote speaker Tuesday evening at a Los Angeles recruitment event for people interested in becoming federal agents.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/jerk- ... t-heckler/
Secret Service Forced to Hold Back Kelly Conway After Heated Exchange with Heckler
Secret Service agents were forced to hold back Kellyanne Conway, a key aide to President Trump, when someone began heckling her.
Conway had flown into Washington Reagan Airport at 6 p.m. Monday, when she was confronted with a heckler, The Daily Caller reports.
Conway, who has a habit of embellishing or exaggerating claims against Trump’s foes, was talking out of an airport terminal when the white male began mouthing off.
“Keep trashing America,” the man yelled at Conway, who responded angrily.
Conway fired back: “I like the way you talk $#!% whole I’m walking away.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics/ ... er-emails/
FBI Director Comey's claim to Congress about Clinton aide's emails wasn't true
CNN-
Ted Cruz how Comey would handle an FBI agent who forwarded "thousands of classified emails to his or her spouse," Comey replied, "Well, there would be
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017 ... rosecution
The Constitutional Rubicon of an Assange Prosecution
Common Dreams-
If you were tuning in and out of FBI Director James Comey's hearing before the House ... portrayed as—“intent to harm the United States” by an FBI agent.
http://buffalonews.com/2017/05/09/buffa ... bery-case/
Tow truck operator admits bribing Buffalo police officers
James Mazzariello used an unusual strategy to grow his tow truck business – bribing Buffalo police officers.
Mazzariello, a prominent figure in the Buffalo tow truck industry for three decades, admitted operating a pay-to-play scheme Tuesday as part of a federal plea deal that could send him to prison for two years.
The 62-year-old owner of Jim Mazz Auto appeared in Buffalo federal court and admitte
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... sting.html
Seattle cop is charged after ‘taking $10,000 a month to guard marijuana grow houses for his brother-in-law’s cartel which drove drugs 3,000 MILES from Washington to the East Coast’
• Local boy Alex Chapackdee is a serving officer at Seattle Police's South Precinct
• He's been charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine in sting
• His brother-in-law is said to have paid him to drive and oversee security for him
• Officers in multi-agency investigation seized nearly 200 pounds of marijuana
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4gcP0GT8M
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/social ... ost_viewed
UC Santa Cruz agrees to demands of students who occupied Kerr Hall
An Afrikan/Black Student Association leader screams expletives at Sentinel reporter Ryan Masters as more than a hundred students occupying Kerr Hall join the chant Thursday on the UC Santa Cruz campus. The students are unhappy with the news stories of the occupation written by Masters. (Dan Coyro -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)
‹
Posted: 05/04/17, 6:57 PM PDT
SANTA CRUZ >> UC Santa Cruz has agreed to the demands of the Afrikan Black Student Alliance after a three-day occupation of Kerr Hall, the primary administration building on campus.
To loud cheers of victory, UCSC director of News and Media Relations Scott Hernandez-Jason stood before hundreds of students at Kerr Hall about 5:30 p.m. Thursday and announced that the university was committed to better serving its African, black and Caribbean-identified students.
To illustrate this, UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal agreed to the Alliance’s demands and made the following commitments:
ADVERTISING
• UCSC committed to extending up to a four-year housing guarantee to all students from underrepresented communities who applied to and live in the Rosa Parks African American Theme House.
• UCSC committed to converting the first floor lounge area of the Rosa Parks African American Theme House from housing back to a community lounge space.
• USCS committed to painting the exterior of the Rosa Parks African American Theme House in the Pan-Afrikan colors red, gold and green.
• USCS committed to delivering a mandatory “educational diversity” orientation to all incoming freshmen and transfer students.
Two hours earlier, an agreement t
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... onary-aid/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... trike.html
The Citizen's Guide to the Future
May 9 2017 3:25 PM
The FBI Relied on a Private Firm’s Investigation of the DNC Hack—Which Makes the Agency Harder to Trust
The FBI Relied on a Private Firm's Investigation of the DNC Hack ...
Slate Magazine (blog)- “When will the Fake Media ask about the Dems dealings with Russia & why the DNC wouldn't allow the FBI to check their server or investigate?” President ...
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/he ... tacks.html
Comey urges health systems to work closely with FBI to combat cyberattacks
May 09, 2017 |
FBI Director James Comey on May 8 encouraged hospital and health system leaders to form connections with law enforcement.
"We will be open and honest with you and treat you as what you are: victims," Mr. Comey said at the American Hospital Association's Annual Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C.
He emphasized hospitals and health systems should not only promptly report security incidents to the FBI, but also proactively reach out and build a relationship with their local FBI field office. This familiarity will help law enforcement officials respond more quickly in the event of a security incident, according to Mr. Comey.
http://www.ozy.com/true-story/whitey-bu ... ents/76409
Whitey Bulger: I Was a Guinea Pig for CIA Drug Experiments
By James "Whitey" Bulger
•
In 1957, while a prisoner at the Atlanta penitentiary, I was recruited by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University to join a medical project that was researching a cure for schizophrenia. For our participation we would receive three days of good time for each month on the project. Each week we would be locked in a secure room in the basement of the prison hospital, in an area where mental patients were housed. We went in from 9 a.m. Tuesday to 9 a.m. Wednesday. We were injected with massive doses of LSD-25.
In minutes the drug would take over, and about eight or nine men — Dr. Pfeiffer and several men in suits who were not doctors — would give us tests to see how we reacted. Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state. Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.
The men in suits would be in a room and hook me up to machines, asking questions like: Did you ever kill anyone? Would you kill someone? Two men went psychotic. They had all the symptoms of schizophrenia. They had to be pried loose from under their beds, growling, barking and frothing at the mouth. They put them in a strip cell down the hall. I never saw or heard of them again. They failed the Babinski test.
Lots of tests that have caused me sleeping problems and nightmares to the present. They told us we were helping find a cure for schizophrenia. When it was all over, everyone would feel suicidal and depressed, wrung out emotionally. Time would stand still. I tried to quit, but Dr. Pfeiffer would appeal to me: “Please, you’re my best subject, and we are close to finding the cure.”
Years later, when I read the book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, which came out in 1979 and was written by State Department whistle-blower John Marks, I found out there was a CIA project code-named MK Ultra. The project was a violation of my rights, using prisoners for dangerous tests. I was angry reading that because I’d never mentioned how I felt hallucinating. I kept silent because I thought they might commit me to a mental institution.
I never slept more than two or three hours a night, waking up in cold sweats with side effects. The tests damaged my sleep and gave me nightmares. I had to sleep with the lights on and only for a few hours at a time. The government used us and never tried to help us out after injecting us with government LSD. I’ve had brain scans that told me I was damaged by the tests. The government did a number on us and walked. If anybody opened a shop selling LSD in my neighborhood he would have lost his life.
Prison has changed for the worse. Longer sentences, no mandatory release, no parole after one-third of your time. More laws covering weirdos. They are everywhere you look. In this place they banded together and s
Concord Prison Experiment - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Prison_Experiment
The Concord Prison Experiment was designed to evaluate whether the experiences produced ... Experiment: A 34 Year Follow-Up Study Rick Doblin, MAPS - Volume 9 Number 4 Winter 1999/2000; Jump up ^ Take LSD, stay out of prison?
Dr. Leary's Concord Prison Experiment: A 34 Year Follow-Up Study
https://www.maps.org/news-letters/v09n4 ... on.bk.html
by R Doblin - Cited by 34 - Related articles
Reflections on the Concord Prison Experiment and the Follow-Up Study. pp. ... Previous MAPS Bulletins have reported on the Bastiaans LSD Research in the ...
Erowid Tim Leary Vault : Concord Prison Psilocybin Rehabilitation ...
https://erowid.org/culture/characters/l ... son1.shtml
1993 Usenet post about Concord Prison Psilocybin Rehabilitation Project.
Strong Medicine for Prisoner Reform: The Concord Prison Experiment ...
www.awaken.com/.../strong-medicine-for- ... son-experi...
Feb 12, 2013 - This compares with only 119 in 1960 when the Concord prison study was ... finished before Leary became controversial for his work with LSD.
Full text of "Dr. Leary's Concord Prison Experiment: a 34-Year follow ...
https://archive.org/...LearysConcordPri ... n_ConcordP...
Doblin Leary's Concord Prison Experiment administered LSD to criminal sex offenders while they were incarcerated in Atascadero State Hospital in California ...
A New Behavior Change Program Using Psilocybin - DrugLibrary.Org
druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/leary2.htm
by T LEARY - 1965 - Cited by 25 - Related articles
It is well known that our contemporary prison systems do not perform this ... (1961) also reports the use of LSD with criminal offenders in a prison setting. ... out in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Concord, a maximum security prison ...
http://www.stltoday.com/news/fbi-boss-c ... 6f103.html
FBI boss compares Twitter to 'every dive bar in America'
Social media reminds the FBI director of a dive bar filled with yelling and opinions - and it must be protected as free speech, he said.
During a speech Monday, FBI Director James Comey told the Anti-Defamation League that he does not tweet but uses the social media platform to read what is being said about the FBI.
"It feels like I'm all of a sudden immediately in every dive bar in America, where I can hear everybody screaming at the television set," Comey said. "But it is free speech, you don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it, but we will protect it."
FBI OCTOPUS
http://bristolobserver.com/2017/05/09/h ... e-saluted/
High school seniors entering service to be saluted
May 9, 2017 •
With graduation just around the corner, the Greater Bristol Veterans Council at its annual salute dinner will honor local seniors who have decided to serve their country.
The dinner, which honors graduates who are making the transition into the military or military academies, will take place on Friday, May 19, 4:30 p.m. at Nuchie’s Restaurant.
At least 30 graduating men and women from Bristol and other surrounding communities are expected to attend the dinner, where they will receive special recognition from the Veterans Council as well as a red, white, and blue tassel.
“When you put the uniform on, you don’t know if you’re putting it on at peacetime or wartime. You don’t know where you’re going to be sent, and the families don’t know where their children are going to be sent, so it’s stressful,” said Greater Bristol Veterans Council Chairman Russ Trudel. “This is the first step into their adult lives.”
During the dinner, Al Terzi, an Air Force Intelligence veteran, will serve as the MC, while Army veteran Michael Heimbach will serve as the guest speaker.
Currently the vice president of Global Security and Facilities Operations at ESPN, Heimbach set the foundation for his 20-year career in the FBI while serving in the Army.
The veteran also is the father of a Marine Corps officer who is currently serving overseas.
Trudel said a guest speaker like Heimbach could provide extra comfort to not only the graduates, but also the parents.
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/cri ... onfirmed-/
New chief of Staffordshire Police officially confirmed
expressandstar.com-
Mr Morgan, whose career started with West Midlands Police in 1990 and has featured a spell with the FBI, will officially start on Monday June 19. He said: "I am .
http://www.capegazette.com/article/suss ... ngs/132664
Sussex Republican Women learn about mass shootings
http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/articl ... exhumation
American agents train Gambian officers on exhumation
The Point-
Agents of America's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have trained officers of the Forensic and Scientific Support Unit, Crime Management Unit, and Public ...
http://chippewa.com/news/local/crime-an ... ac3f0.html
The FBI has acknowledged its analysis of hair in a 1994 bank robbery case in La Crosse County was flawed. Patrick W. Greer, who had denied involvement in the robbery, was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Wisconsin Department of Corrections
FBI whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst is credited with exposing fraud and misconduct at the FBI laboratory, including unscientific hair analysis. Thousands of cases are now under review nationwide in large part because of Whitehurst, including at least 19 in Wisconsin. He called the FBI’s use of false and misleading hair analysis a “national tragedy.”
National Whistleblower Center
Here’s how the FBI got it wrong
The FBI, the New York-based Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers are examining nearly 3,000 cases nationwide in which the FBI may have misused microscopic hair comparison.
The review so far found statements and findings that “exceeded the limits of the science” in more than 90 percent of the cases. The errors fall into three broad categories:
Claiming a ‘match’
What they did: Examiners stated or implied that the evidentiary hair could be associated with a specific individual to the exclusion of all others.
Why it was wrong: Absent DNA testing, hairs are not unique enough to be associated with one person, even by looking at them under a high-powered microscope.
Claiming a statistical weight
What they did: Examiners assigned a statistical weight, probability or likelihood that the questioned hair originated from a particular source.
Why it was wrong: No such weight can be assigned because no one knows how many people have microscopically identical hair.
Citing experience to bolster findings
What they did: Examiners cited statistics such as the number of hair cases they or the FBI lab had handled to bolster the findings.
Why it was wrong: Unlike DNA, there is no database of hair profiles. Analysts cannot memorize every hair they have ever examined. And comparing vast numbers of hairs — even billions — does not change the fact that an unknown number of people have hair that looks identical.
Sources: National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; FBI; Skip Palenik, Microtrace LLC.
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/crim ... 1.13583616
Sources: Drugs found in ex-Suffolk police chief James Burke’s prison cell
Updated May 9, 2017 8:50 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... 160342c7bd
Seattle officer helped run marijuana to Baltimore
May 8 at 7:29 PM
SEATTLE — A Seattle police officer has been charged with helping smuggle hundreds of pounds of marijuana to Baltimore.
Alex Chapackdee, a 44-year-old patrol officer who’s been with the department since 2000, was arrested Saturday. According to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Monday, he is one of four men charged with conspiring to distribute marijuana. Authorities say h
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/05/09/top ... contracts/
Top ICE Official to Leave for Job at Private Prison That Got Lucrative Government Contracts
The second-in-command at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is leaving his job of overseeing detention and deportations to take a position with a private prison.
Daniel Ragsdale temporarily served as the head of ICE until President Trump replaced him in January. He then became the deputy director.
Ragsdale will be working for GEO Group, a Boca-Raton-based private prison company, the Daily Beast reports. His position is unclear.
“While you may be losing me as a colleague, please know that I will continue to be a strong advocate for you and your mission,” Ragsdale wrote in an email to his ICE colleagues on April 28.
Ragsdale plans to step down on May 27.
“Dan is a person of great honor and a strong ethical code,” said a source close to Ragsdale. “I have no doubt he will bring great deal of integrity to the process to make sure organizations like GEO are complying with the rules and regulations regarding folks who are in detention because of their immigration status.”
Neither Ragdale nor the GEO Group responded to requests for interviews.
ICE is no stranger to GEO, which has lucrative contracts with the federal agency. The timing coincides with President Trump pledging to increase the use of private prisons,
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/F ... 133645.php
FBI sends letter to Congress correcting recent testimony from ...
seattlepi.com-
WASHINGTON — FBI sends letter to Congress correcting recent testimony from Director James Comey on Huma Abedin and her emails.
https://sputniknews.com/us/201705091053 ... on-emails/
FBI Chief Accused of Lying to Congress on Details of Clinton Email ...
Sputnik International-
People close to the investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal are accusing FBI Director James Comey of misrepresenting the number of emails ...
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9 ... tors-visit
Online bomb threats prompted US Embassy evacuation during FBI ...
The Press-
FBI director James Comey's life was threatened during a recent visit to New Zealand with the man behind it claiming Comey wouldn't leave New Zealand alive.
FBI Director James Comey delivers keynote address at LA recruiting ...
MyNewsLA.com-http://mynewsla.com/government/2017/05/ ... ing-event/
FBI Director James Comey will be the keynote speaker Tuesday evening at a Los Angeles recruitment event for people interested in becoming federal agents.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/jerk- ... t-heckler/
Secret Service Forced to Hold Back Kelly Conway After Heated Exchange with Heckler
Secret Service agents were forced to hold back Kellyanne Conway, a key aide to President Trump, when someone began heckling her.
Conway had flown into Washington Reagan Airport at 6 p.m. Monday, when she was confronted with a heckler, The Daily Caller reports.
Conway, who has a habit of embellishing or exaggerating claims against Trump’s foes, was talking out of an airport terminal when the white male began mouthing off.
“Keep trashing America,” the man yelled at Conway, who responded angrily.
Conway fired back: “I like the way you talk $#!% whole I’m walking away.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics/ ... er-emails/
FBI Director Comey's claim to Congress about Clinton aide's emails wasn't true
CNN-
Ted Cruz how Comey would handle an FBI agent who forwarded "thousands of classified emails to his or her spouse," Comey replied, "Well, there would be
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017 ... rosecution
The Constitutional Rubicon of an Assange Prosecution
Common Dreams-
If you were tuning in and out of FBI Director James Comey's hearing before the House ... portrayed as—“intent to harm the United States” by an FBI agent.
http://buffalonews.com/2017/05/09/buffa ... bery-case/
Tow truck operator admits bribing Buffalo police officers
James Mazzariello used an unusual strategy to grow his tow truck business – bribing Buffalo police officers.
Mazzariello, a prominent figure in the Buffalo tow truck industry for three decades, admitted operating a pay-to-play scheme Tuesday as part of a federal plea deal that could send him to prison for two years.
The 62-year-old owner of Jim Mazz Auto appeared in Buffalo federal court and admitte
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... sting.html
Seattle cop is charged after ‘taking $10,000 a month to guard marijuana grow houses for his brother-in-law’s cartel which drove drugs 3,000 MILES from Washington to the East Coast’
• Local boy Alex Chapackdee is a serving officer at Seattle Police's South Precinct
• He's been charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine in sting
• His brother-in-law is said to have paid him to drive and oversee security for him
• Officers in multi-agency investigation seized nearly 200 pounds of marijuana
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4gcP0GT8M
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/social ... ost_viewed
UC Santa Cruz agrees to demands of students who occupied Kerr Hall
An Afrikan/Black Student Association leader screams expletives at Sentinel reporter Ryan Masters as more than a hundred students occupying Kerr Hall join the chant Thursday on the UC Santa Cruz campus. The students are unhappy with the news stories of the occupation written by Masters. (Dan Coyro -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)
‹
Posted: 05/04/17, 6:57 PM PDT
SANTA CRUZ >> UC Santa Cruz has agreed to the demands of the Afrikan Black Student Alliance after a three-day occupation of Kerr Hall, the primary administration building on campus.
To loud cheers of victory, UCSC director of News and Media Relations Scott Hernandez-Jason stood before hundreds of students at Kerr Hall about 5:30 p.m. Thursday and announced that the university was committed to better serving its African, black and Caribbean-identified students.
To illustrate this, UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal agreed to the Alliance’s demands and made the following commitments:
ADVERTISING
• UCSC committed to extending up to a four-year housing guarantee to all students from underrepresented communities who applied to and live in the Rosa Parks African American Theme House.
• UCSC committed to converting the first floor lounge area of the Rosa Parks African American Theme House from housing back to a community lounge space.
• USCS committed to painting the exterior of the Rosa Parks African American Theme House in the Pan-Afrikan colors red, gold and green.
• USCS committed to delivering a mandatory “educational diversity” orientation to all incoming freshmen and transfer students.
Two hours earlier, an agreement t
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msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
Students Are the Newest U.S. Weapon Against Terrorist Recruitment
By RON NIXONJULY 18, 2017
Homeland Security’s battle to stop the radicalization and recruitment of young people has tapped American college students for help.
The program, called Peer to Peer: Challenging Extremism, gives students at 50 to 75 universities up to $2,000 each to counter online recruiting efforts by developing social media campaigns, the New York Times reports.
Homeland Security and other national security officials judge a competition by students to develop online tools to counter recruiting efforts of terrorist groups like ISIS.
The University of Maryland placed first in the competition with a project, which was built around a video game and social media campaign, that teaches friends and neighbors to identify signs of radicalization.
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/07/18/ ... for-globe/
June of 2017 Was Third Hottest on Record for Globe
According to NOAA, June of 2017 was the third hottest such month in the global climate record since temperature tracking began in 1880. For NASA, June was also the third hottest on record with June of 2016 settling in at 1st hottest, and 2015 and 1998 tied as second hottest. Overall, global temperatures were about 0.91 degrees Celsius warmer than late 19th Century averages in the NASA record and about 1.02 degrees Celsius warmer than the same time period in the NOAA record.
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/califor ... -1.3338757
http://www.taosnews.com/stories/lama-at-50,41339
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ppjvu ... ab&f=false
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/f ... -1.3338079
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3339339
http://planetark.org
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/mu ... s_20170714
http://www.metro.us/president-trump/tru ... -coal-jobs
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/uruguay ... -1.3339008
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3338858
SEE IT: Baltimore cop accused of planting drugs after body cam footage surfaces
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 1:58 PM
https://skepticalscience.com/fear-broug ... trump.html
Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Posted on 17 July 2017 by John Abraham
This story picks up where an earlier post left off a few weeks ago. Then, I discussed some of the political realities associated with inaction on climate change. In that post, I said I would revisit the question of why so many people deny the evidence of a changing climate. Now is the time for that discussion.
What continually befuddles people who work on climate change is the vehement and indefensible denial of evidence by a small segment of the population. I give many public talks on climate change, including radio and television interviews and public lectures. Nearly every event has a few people who, no matter what the evidence, stay in a state of denial. By listening to denialist arguments, I find they fall into a few broad categories. Some of them are just plain false. Examples in this category are ones like:
There was a halt to global warming starting 1998.
Humans are only responsible for a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Scientists are colluding to create this fraud.
Others are not false but are completely irrelevant. For example:
Climate is always changing.
We didn’t have thermometers a million years ago to measure global temperatures.
Cities are hotter than their surroundings.
Why would people think things or repeat statements that are known to be false or irrelevant? I am convinced that for the vast majority of people, they are not intentionally being incorrect. Something must be forcing them to be wrong. What could that be? Why are people so willing to believe and repeat lies?
That brings me to the connection with President Trump. His sheer number of falsehoods and flip-flops is so great, you lose track of them all. For instance, let us take the so-called wall to stop illegal immigration. First he said Mexico will pay for it and it will be “so tall;” now, he wants it to be paid by the US taxpayer. He falsely exaggerated the number of jobs that have been created since he came into office. He made false statements about the size of his electoral win. He made false statements about President Obama’s birthplace. He has made false and unsupported claims about voter fraud. He has made false claims about climate scientists.
Finally, there is the current investigation into his and his administration’s potential collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. I could go on and on and likely will get complaints from readers that I forgot this or that falsehood, but I have to limit the length of this post.
In a sane world, everyone would understand the threat of climate change and our ability to take meaningful action to handle it. In a sane world, no one would believe a president who has misled them time and time again.
So that raises the question - what is the reason people still discount the incontrovertible climate change evidence? What is the reason a persistent minority still support this dishonest president? I think I have figured it out, and if I’m right, it makes it much easier to reconcile the generally logical people I know with their seeming indefensible belief systems.
In a certain respect, this reason is something we as humans are nearly powerless to counteract. Before I give the reason, I want to be clear that I am sure others have noticed this too. I am sure others have written learned papers articulating this much more clearly than I can. My discovery is just a personal observation; something I should have recognized long ago. I am also not a psychologist so this is just my observations as a physical scientist.
The reason isn’t religion, it isn’t political ideology, it isn’t lack of scientific knowledge, it isn’t politics, it isn’t tribal identification. It’s none of those things.
The reason is fear.
Whether people are reciting a litany of falsehoods about climate change or whether they are contorting themselves to justify support for this president, they are doing so because they have to. They have to, because they are afraid of what happens if they accept reality.
With climate change, people are afraid for two reasons. First, they are afraid there is nothing they can do about it. Humans hate to have threats that are beyond our control. We are more afraid of Ebola than heart disease. We are more afraid of flying than driving, we are more afraid of sharks than toasters. We afraid of things we feel we cannot directly control.
Secondly, we are also afraid of bad news. How often have you not checked your bank account because you don’t want the bad news? Have you ever known someone who didn’t go to a doctor because they just didn’t want to know what their ailment was? It is so much easier to pretend a problem doesn’t exist. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that people like to be lied to when it quiets their fear.
So with respect to climate change, that puts the population into two groups. The first group (which I am part of) knows that there is a problem, wants to face it head on, and solve it together. The second group cannot bear to look the problem honestly in the face and finds it easier to deny its existence.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3339307
SEE IT: Police pursue drunken off-duty cop who led them on car chase
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 4:48 PM
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ544189
A Quantitative Description of FBI Public Relations.
Gibson, Dirk C.
Public Relations Review, v23 n1 p11-30 Spr 1997
States that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had the most successful media relations program of all government agencies from the 1930s to the 1980s. Uses quantitative analysis to show why those media efforts were successful. Identifies themes that typified the verbal component of FBI publicity and the broad spectrum of mass communication channels that were tapped. (PA)
Descriptors: Federal Government, Mass Media Use, Media Research, Public Relations, Statistical Analysis, United States History
http://www.smartbrief.com/original/2017 ... career-fbi
July 19, 2017 Leadership Careers
I loved being an FBI agent because there was a sense of meaning and purpose every time I walked into the office. The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. There was a sense of meaning and purpose every time I walked into the office.
I worked hard to solve complex problems. You might be imaging movies, gunbattles, and running down bad guys. In truth, a lot of what I did as an agent wasn’t all that different from many of the challenges you face as entrepreneurs, leaders, and business owners.
I was good with a gun, I admit, but most of my time was spent working with people who had different opinions and a conflict of interest. This created problems I couldn’t just shoot. Instead, they required people skills; I suspect many of you can relate.
Today's business world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. If you want to move your career or company forward, you have to know how to lead yourself and those around you.
The FBI does not hire new agents based on their skills. Instead, they hire by the traits and values exhibited by applicants and then train new agents with the skill sets they will need. If an agent has the right values, traits, and abilities, they can learn anything.
This is where most businesses have it backward. Instead of hiring people because of their traits and values, they hire skill sets and then try to backload the company’s culture and values.
If the goal of leadership is to empower people to make their own decisions, then here are seven FBI traits that will make you a better leader:
1. Confidence
Boosting confidence is the primary goal of the FBI Academy -- before they send agents out with a gun and badge.
As a new agent, there were days when my heart raced and my palms sweat just thinking about the new challenges that faced me. But I learned that success would not make me confident; rather, confidence in myself and my abilities would make me successful.
If you don’t believe in yourself, how can others believe in you? It took a bit of acting on my part in the beginning, but the more I acted confident, the more confident I became. Feedback from others was positive, which in turn, gave me more confidence!
Tip: Cultivate ways you can signal your confidence to others, especially using body language. When our brain receives a clear image of confidence and competence, it takes that good impression and makes a snap judgment. This allows the brain to move on to other issues.
2. Humility
A few years back, my squad was set to arrest a fugitive known to be armed and dangerous. Since I was the case agent, everyone assumed I would be the one to make the arrest. The fugitive was a big guy with broad shoulders and sure to resist arrest, but defensive tactics had never been my strong point.
It is humbling to admit to yourself, or others, that you are not the best person for the job. It’s OK to admit it and turn to another person more experienced or better prepared and ask for their help.
You may not need help in arresting a fugitive, but you may need to surround yourself with people who are more experienced or better prepared and ask for their help. The best leaders are confident enough to surround themselves with people who are smarter and more talented.
They are also humble enough to learn from these people because they understand they will get a better outcome as a result of their involvement. Such leaders are willing to listen to, but not be dominated by, the talent around them.
Tip: If you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
3. Good values
For insiders, FBI also stands for "Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity." These are the values that drive the organization.
Leadership is not a skill set; it is rooted in who we are and what matters to us. Our values are defined by what we are willing to struggle for when the chips are down. It’s doing the right thing and doing the best we can because that is who we are.
Ultimately, our values define our struggles. When we choose better values, we get better problems to solve. We need to be motivated by something more important and greater than our own happiness. If we are not driven to take our life to the next level by something more than our own selfish desires, we are the definition of a narcissist.
Tip: When you prioritize good values, it produces true confidence and genuine humility. Decisions are easier because the answer is always “do the right thing.”
4. Kindness
Not all FBI negotiations involve the barrel of a gun. The most successful agents find ways to get along with people, pure and simple. It is rare that an agent can dictate how a relationship is going to unfold.
In the movies, we hear lines like, “OK, this is what you’re going to do for me.” In reality, we need to look for what’s mutually beneficial if we’re looking to cut a deal or negotiate.
The best way to accomplish this is to find common ground, and this is accomplished by being sensitive to the needs of the other person. Bullying, extortion or browbeating rarely gets constructive results.
Tip: Mentally tough leaders who are kind know how to inspire their people in a way that, in turn, creates a commitment for their mission.
5. Tough
It may seem that kindness and toughness are contradictions, but they are actually very compatible. There are times when a leader needs to hold people accountable and draw a clear line that differentiates between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
Great leaders don’t worry about being unpopular or making everyone happy. They’re always reminding themselves that their job is to improve the organization.
While rules and standards provide structure for people, tough leaders are not afraid to buck the system to get what they want. They know how to interpret the cultural norms of the office or company and are respectful, yet persistent, in presenting new ideas for projects.
It is the mixture of toughness and kindness that opens doors without alienating the standard-bearers who have calcified in their corner offices.
Tip: Successful leaders stumble and make mistakes as much as anyone, but they are tough enough to take control of their reputations and manage the ways they are perceived.
6. Listening skills
I didn’t know what to expect when the FBI sent me to a training course on hostage negotiation. As an unassuming man stood in front of the class and welcomed everyone in dulcet tones, I was looking around for the hardass who had talked down a terrorist in New York the week before. The man spoke politely, but I didn’t listen because I wanted to hear from the hostage negotiator!
Guess what? He was the hardass hostage negotiator. That week I learned the key to agreements, whether you are negotiating with a kidnapper or a client, is that they happen only when both sides are willing to listen.
When we listen, we get insight into how other people think, feel, and behave. It is counterproductive to be aggressive, pushy, and demanding. Instead, good listeners are likable and create an environment that feels both safe and comfortable. They are secure enough that they are not threatened by listening to someone who may have more talent or experience.
Tip:: It’s a good idea to repeat what you think you heard the other person say. It lets them know you really are listening and gives you an opportunity to let their words soak in.
7. Emotional intelligence
The FBI is not a touchy-feely organization; agents prefer terms like competence and persistence to explain their success. The words emotional intelligence rarely escape their lips. Yet face-to-face interviews remain the FBI’s top investigative technique.
Emotional intelligence is an ability to walk into a room and understand what others might be feeling, and through that insight, communicate to them in effective ways. Awareness and curiosity about their own emotions, as well as those of others, place leaders in a stronger position to not only recognize the negative ones but to anticipate how they could spin out of control.
Tip: Emotional intelligence allows us to build on relationships with others and then use those relationships to accomplish our goals.
“I actually have come to learn that the way to evaluate leaders is not from skills through abilities to values but to actually start the other way. If a leader has the right values and the right abilities, they can learn anything. If you hire and promote backwards and start with, ‘so what are their skills? What jobs have they had?’ you may miss the fact that they don't have the abilities you need and the values you need.” ~ James Comey, former FBI director, in 2016
LaRae Quy was an FBI undercover and counterintelligence agent for 24 years. She exposed foreign spies and recruited them to work for the U.S. government. As an FBI agent, she developed the mental toughness to survive in environments of risk,
http://www.post-gazette.com/frontpage/2 ... 0707110253
Wecht investigator's discipline file opened
U.S. judge orders FBI records unsealed
11:00 PM JUL 11, 2007
A federal judge yesterday unsealed records revealing that the lead FBI agent in the criminal case against Dr. Cyril H. Wecht was disciplined elsewhere for forging other agents' names and initials on chain-of-custody forms, evidence labels and interview forms.
Related documents
See more information about the disciplinary reports of FBI agent Bradley W. Orsini.
Further, in September 2001 Special Agent Bradley W. Orsini was demoted and received a 30-day suspension without pay for a series of policy violations that occurred from 1993 through 2000, which included having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate; making improper vulgar and sexual comments; threatening a subordinate with violence; and improperly documenting the seizure of a weapon and ammunition from a search.
"We're pleased this information is now available to the public for its own analysis and understanding of its impact on the case," said Dr. Wecht's defense attorney, Jerry McDevitt. "The report speaks for itself."
The U.S. attorney's office filed Agent Orsini's records under seal on April 7, 2006, asking U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab to determine if it was required to turn them over to Dr. Wecht's defense attorneys.
What followed was a 15-month legal battle that ended this week when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a final order in the case, making the disciplinary reports public.
Judge Schwab unsealed the records late yesterday afternoon. He also vacated a previous decision in which he'd ordered a contempt hearing for the defense attorneys for their failure to follow his orders.
He wrote "this Court considers the 'time-out' caused by the interlocutory appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit as providing an opportunity for a 'fresh start.'"
He also ordered a hearing in Dr. Wecht's case on Sept. 18 that will allow the defense to use the Orsini reports in their examination of him.
Agent Orsini has been an agent for more than 18 years, and he has spent much of that time, including in Pittsburgh, working public corruption cases. All of the allegations included in the two disciplinary reports occurred while he was working in the FBI's Newark, N.J., office.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan would not comment on the reports' release. It was unclear if she was aware of Mr. Orsini's background before he became the lead agent in the case against Dr. Wecht, who is charged with 84 counts of misusing his public office for private gain.
( Dr Cyril Wecht has been a prominent researcher into the JFK assassination and has now become a target
of the FBI )
The first time Agent Orsini was disciplined was Nov. 2, 1998. He received a five-day suspension without pay for signing other agents' names to evidence labels and custody forms from May 1995 to January 1997.
He explained that he and another agent, on limited occasions, signed each other's names on evidence "to save time."
Though the investigator from the Office of Professional Responsibility found that Agent Orsini did not intend to jeopardize the evidence or cases involved, his actions could have called the integrity of the bureau into question, he wrote in his report.
A 28-page report issued Sept. 24, 2001, by the assistant director of the Office of Professional Responsibility described additional transgressions.
The first violation listed dated to Nov. 2, 1993. Agent Orsini failed to obtain the proper consent form while searching a man's home for illegal firearms and failed to properly document the ammunition seized.
Agent Orsini was found to have falsified at least six FBI interview forms in 1993 and 1994 by writing other agents' initials on them.
He said in a statement that he didn't believe there would be a problem with that provided the information in the body of the interview form was accurate.
"I have no idea how many times I may have done so," he said. He said he did so for "convenience and a shortcut."
Throughout the Wecht case, defense attorneys have argued that the government based part of the charges against their client -- that he exchanged unclaimed bodies from the county morgue for lab space from Carlow University -- on a single interview form filled out by Agent Orsini.
The disciplinary report next goes into great detail about a relationship Agent Orsini had with a subordinate agent, from April 1998 through early 2000.
The document indicates that other agents in his squad believed Agent Orsini was favoring the woman and gave her premium assignments. It also details gag gifts exchanged at the squad's Christmas parties in 1998 and 1999. One, given to the woman, was a pet collar, with a note that said, "If found, return to Brad Orsini."
"By their very nature, the public notoriety attached to the gag gifts would have put even the most insensitive person on notice of this perception of favoritism," the assistant director wrote.
By January 2000, when supervisors in the Newark office learned of the relationship, Agent Orsini was reassigned.
But before that, he approached one of the agents in his squad and accused him of revealing the relationship. During the meeting, Agent Orsini threatened to hit his subordinate but quickly added that he was kidding.
Newark's assistant agent in charge reported that Agent Orsini "has an aggressive personality, and I would characterize him as a bully."
Other substantiated allegations in the report included that Agent Orsini punched at least one hole in the wall in the Newark office, and threw and broke chairs. He also jokingly called fellow supervisors "homosexuals," and even used a bullhorn to make his comments.
For those actions, the Office of Professional Responsibility said he failed to prevent the development of a "locker room atmosphere" in his squad that repressed professional conduct.
In addition to the suspension and demotion, Agent Orsini was ordered to serve 12 months' probation and to attend mandatory sensitivity training.
Ray Morrow,
https://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=45090 ... signed-too
FBI looking into Ephraim police situation; ex-officer says he would have resigned, too
| Posted Jul 19th, 2017 @ 7:31pm
EPHRAIM — The attorney representing three Ephraim police officers who resigned after calling out their longtime chief for failing to properly complete hundreds of incident report said Wednesday that the FBI is now involved.
"I am pleased to learn that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into this matter," said Bret Rawson, legal counsel for former officers Larry Golding, Jared Hansen and Darren S. Pead.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/unseal ... wood-four/
Unsealed FBI report alleges police fed statements to ‘Englewood Four’
CHICAGO NEWS 07/19/2017, 08:09pm
CHICAGO NEWS 07/19/2017, 08:09pm
Terrill Swift sits next to his mother, Carleane Swift, on Nov. 16, 2012, in Woodridge. He was a member of the so-called Englewood 4, who were exonerated two years ago, and has sued the city of Chicago for wrongful conviction. | Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times
https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/18/isp ... stigation/
Story image for fbi from Engadget
ISPs barred from telling users they're under FBI investigation
Engadget-Jul 18, 2017
Back in 2013, a federal judge ruled that the FBI couldn't force ISPs to hand over a users' private data without the suspect being informed first.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi&prm ... 24&bih=672
Trump: Jeff Sessions Should Have Muzzled the FBI
Mother Jones-
I can only assume that Donald Trump barely even knows what he's saying anymore. Here he is during an interview with the New York Times, ...
http://www.afro.com/feds-reviewing-ohio ... am-dubose/
FBI Reviewing Ohio Police Shooting of Unarmed black Sam DuBose
Afro American
The Justice Department said investigators analyzed store surveillance video using resources at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia; interviewed witnesses ...
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/may/01/news/mn-57894
FBI Settles Black Agents' Discrimination Lawsuit
Law: Bureau must overhaul procedures and permit an outside mediator to review individual cases. But the director could overrule damage awards.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday approved a sweeping settlement in a 10-year-old lawsuit between the FBI and some 500 current and former agents who contend they were systematically discriminated against because they are black.
The agreement requires the FBI to overhaul its promotion, evaluation and disciplinary procedures by 2004 to address the concerns of African American agents. It could also result in the awarding of monetary damages to individual agents who prove their claims of discrimination to an outside mediator.
Black FBI agents, who supported their claims with statistical models, argued that white agents were much more likely to gain promotions, win high-profile assignments with units such as the SWAT team, earn positive evaluations and avoid disciplinary action for misconduct.
The FBI has condoned a dual-track system that "allowed people to be promoted based on who they knew and not how they did their job," David J. Shaffer, a Washington attorney who is representing the black agents, said in an interview.
"This goes all the way back to J. Edgar Hoover," who headed the FBI for nearly half a century until 1972, Shaffer said. "White people promoted people who were white, who promoted people who were white, and so on. . . . Hopefully, this type of behavior will now be put behind us."
FBI officials declined to discuss the discrimination claims. But the agency said the settlement "reaffirms the FBI's commitment to reform of key aspects of its personnel system." It agreed to the settlement mainly to avoid the cost and time of trying a case that has already proved a major distraction, FBI officials and Justice Department lawyers said.
The black agents first sued the FBI in 1991. They reached a settlement three years later after a federal judge found that there was "statistical evidence of discrimination."
The FBI was supposed to institute a new personnel system by 1998, but the agents said it failed to do so. They went back to court that year and began a new round of negotiations.
The most significant difference between the pact--approved Monday by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan--and the initial agreement is that it requires the FBI for the first time to bring in an outside mediator to assess discrimination complaints.
That provision could open up the FBI to millions of dollars in liability. Black agents who can persuade a mediator that they were denied promotions or discriminated against because of their race are eligible for up to $300,000 apiece under federal law, plus any lost wages, the attorneys said.
"It is really unprecedented for the FBI to allow an outsider to decide a personnel issue within the agency," said Ron Schmidt, another attorney for the agents.
The agreement gives the FBI director the authority to overrule a mediator's decision.
The agreement also requires the FBI to change the way it selects bureau supervisors within the next three years and to pay the agents' legal fees to date, $230,000.
About 12% of the more than 10,000 current FBI agents are African American, the agents' attorneys said. A handful of black agents have pressed individual claims against the FBI in recent years.
In the most notorious case, former FBI agent Donald Rochon won a $1-million settlement from the government in the early 1990s. He said that when he worked in FBI offices in Chicago and Omaha, white agents pasted photographs of apes over the family pictures at his desk and subjected him to other racist treatment. Eight FBI employees were disciplined.
The discrimination alleged by the 500 black agents--most of whom are still working at the bureau--is more subtle, their lawyers said.
"There weren't any claims of a racially hostile environment," Schmidt said. "You have a situation here where it's not overt, but from the numbers we saw, we were convinced that there was a [racial] disparity in treatment. There was a substantial shortfall in the number of black promotions, for instance, and the government had no explanation for that."
Federal law-enforcement agencies have been hit with repeated claims of racial discrimination in recent years. In 1988, hundreds of Latino FBI agents won a discrimination suit against the bureau after alleging that they were routinely given demeaning assignments on the "Taco Circuit."
http://www.workers.org/2017/05/18/the-f ... XAY8bEpChA
The FBI is a racist sewer
By Stephen Millies posted on May 18, 2017
Longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover hated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wanted him dead. Hoover called Dr. King “the most notorious liar in the country” at a Nov. 18, 1964, news conference. Hoover was furious the Black leader had just won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The FBI boss organized a slander campaign and had his No. 3 man, William Sullivan, write a letter to King urging him to commit suicide. (New York Times, Nov. 11, 2014)
“There is abundant evidence of a major high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said Coretta Scott King in 1999. She spoke after a Memphis jury found the U.S. government guilty of conspiring to assassinate Dr. King. (newsone.com, 2014)
The campaign against Dr. King was part of Cointelpro, the FBI’s terror program against the Black liberation movement and communists. Anti-war activists were also targeted by the FBI.
Cointelpro coordinated the deadly campaign against the Black Panther Party in which at least 28 Panthers were killed. Among them were Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were murdered in Chicago on Dec. 4, 1969. Decades later, Dr. Mutulu Shakur and other Black Panther Party members are still imprisoned.
Hoover died in 1972, and the FBI claims Cointelpro was terminated in 1971. But the agency’s railroading of dissidents to prison never ended.
American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier was framed by the FBI in 1976, and is still in jail. The FBI helped jail Puerto Rican liberation fighter Oscar López Rivera, who has just been released after 35 years in prison.
On May 13, 1985, the FBI worked with Philadelphia police to drop a bomb on the MOVE house. Six adults and five children were killed.
The FBI was no different under Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump on May 9. Comey continued the racist entrapment of Muslims and Palestinians.
Comey even claimed that police were hindered by a “viral video effect” because they were being filmed while brutalizing people. Comey was endorsing the bogus “Ferguson Effect,” which blames the Black Lives Matter movement for a supposed increase in street crime since 2014. (New York Times, May 11, 2016)
Frame-up agency
From its inception the FBI was used to crush any resistance to capitalism. William J. Burns — head of the strikebreaking Burns Detective Agency — was FBI director from 1921 to 1924.
At the time, judges were issuing union-busting injunctions. A 1922 strike of workers in railroad shops was crushed. But Burns had to be dropped because he was tied to the corrupt Warren G. Harding administration’s Teapot Dome scandal.
Burns’ No. 2 man, J. Edgar Hoover, took over. Hoover had helped carry out the roundups and deportations of communists in the 1919-1920 “Palmer raids,” named after President Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, Alexander Palmer.
Just like today, immigrant workers were under attack. Among them were the Italian-born anarchist labor organizers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. They were framed for a payroll robbery in which a guard was killed in Massachusetts.
Despite affidavits by ex-FBI agents Lawrence Letherman and Fred J. Weyand stating that the bureau knew that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, the two were executed on Aug. 23, 1927.
The first struggle that Sam Marcy, founding chairperson of Workers World Party, participated in was to stop these Italian-American heroes from being murdered. Although the worldwide movement wasn’t able to stop their execution, it was an inspiration for the successful effort to save the lives of the African-American Scottsboro defendants in the 1930s.
Hoover helped instigate the anti-communist witch-hunt that dominated U.S. political life in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Thousands of activists lost their jobs and dozens were jailed, including Ben Davis, the communist New York City councilperson from Harlem.
The height of the “red scare” was the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on June 19, 1953. Framed on phony charges of giving “atomic secrets” to the Soviet Union, the FBI used perjured testimony to convict them. In his eulogy at the Rosenbergs’ funeral, W.E.B. Du Bois declared these martyrs died because “they would not lie.”
The FBI has been
http://www.idsnews.com/article/2017/07/ ... s-2020-bid
EDITORIAL: Candice Jackson should resign from the Department of Education
https://ktar.com/story/1662421/charges- ... city-jail/
Charges mount in corruption probe at Kansas City jail
JULY 19, 2017 AT 2:10 PM
UPDATED: JULY 19, 2017 AT 2:38 PM
KANSAS CITY, Mo
A federal crackdown on alleged bribery-related smuggling of such contraband as cigarettes, cell phones and prescription drugs into the county jail in Kansas City, Missouri, has expanded with indictments accusing a fifth person and adding more charges against the previous four suspects.
A criminal complaint last month had accused Jackson County Detention Center corrections officers Andrew Dickerson and Jalee Fuller, inmate Carlos Hughley, and Fuller and Hughley’s friend Janikkia Carter of one count of telephone use to further unlawful activity, in this case corruption.
But a federal indictment Tuesday accuses those four of conspiracy and charges Carter and Hughley with three counts each of the unlawful telephone use charges. The indictment added Marion Byers — another Fuller and Hughley acquaintance — and charges him with two telephone-related counts.
A separate indictment accuses Dickerson of conspiracy and three more counts involving telephone use to further criminal activity.
Hughley, who prosecutors have said is the father of Fuller’s recently born child, had been awaiting trial on charges of domestic assault, armed criminal action, resisting arrest and multiple counts of distributing controlled substances. Dickerson no longer is employed with the county, and Fuller is on unpaid administrative leave.
Messages left Wednesday by The Associated Press with the defendants’ attorneys were not immediately returned.
Last month’s original charges related to a raid of the jail by roughly 200 law enforcers, including the FBI. An FBI investigation that began two years ago focused on excessive use of force by guards on prisoners before expanding to other areas, with previous searches having uncovered drugs, weapons and other contraband.
Authorities have said in court filings that an inmate’s relative who was acting as an informant paid bribes and provided cellphones and cigarettes that Dickerson and Fuller smuggled into the facility in May and June. The contraband then was delivered to an inmate who also was acting as an informant, the affidavit said.
Tuesday’s indictment alleges that Dickerson took part in a bribery and contraband-smuggling plot from May 2 to June 26, promoting the scheme through telephone calls and texts. Authorities allege Dickerson smuggled cell phones and other contraband to the lockup’s inmates, telling one of them that he would ensure that inmate was the only one on the floor to get bootleg cigarettes, narcotics, drugs and telephones if the inmate paid him $2,500 a month.
During that same time, the indictment alleges, Fuller, Carter, Hughley and Byers engaged in a separate, similar bribery and smuggling scheme. At one time, according to the indictment, Fuller — with help from Carter and Byers — smuggled a cell phone, charger and 15 anti-anxiety medications to an inmate for $300.
By RON NIXONJULY 18, 2017
Homeland Security’s battle to stop the radicalization and recruitment of young people has tapped American college students for help.
The program, called Peer to Peer: Challenging Extremism, gives students at 50 to 75 universities up to $2,000 each to counter online recruiting efforts by developing social media campaigns, the New York Times reports.
Homeland Security and other national security officials judge a competition by students to develop online tools to counter recruiting efforts of terrorist groups like ISIS.
The University of Maryland placed first in the competition with a project, which was built around a video game and social media campaign, that teaches friends and neighbors to identify signs of radicalization.
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/07/18/ ... for-globe/
June of 2017 Was Third Hottest on Record for Globe
According to NOAA, June of 2017 was the third hottest such month in the global climate record since temperature tracking began in 1880. For NASA, June was also the third hottest on record with June of 2016 settling in at 1st hottest, and 2015 and 1998 tied as second hottest. Overall, global temperatures were about 0.91 degrees Celsius warmer than late 19th Century averages in the NASA record and about 1.02 degrees Celsius warmer than the same time period in the NOAA record.
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/califor ... -1.3338757
http://www.taosnews.com/stories/lama-at-50,41339
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ppjvu ... ab&f=false
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/f ... -1.3338079
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3339339
http://planetark.org
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/mu ... s_20170714
http://www.metro.us/president-trump/tru ... -coal-jobs
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/uruguay ... -1.3339008
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3338858
SEE IT: Baltimore cop accused of planting drugs after body cam footage surfaces
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 1:58 PM
https://skepticalscience.com/fear-broug ... trump.html
Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Posted on 17 July 2017 by John Abraham
This story picks up where an earlier post left off a few weeks ago. Then, I discussed some of the political realities associated with inaction on climate change. In that post, I said I would revisit the question of why so many people deny the evidence of a changing climate. Now is the time for that discussion.
What continually befuddles people who work on climate change is the vehement and indefensible denial of evidence by a small segment of the population. I give many public talks on climate change, including radio and television interviews and public lectures. Nearly every event has a few people who, no matter what the evidence, stay in a state of denial. By listening to denialist arguments, I find they fall into a few broad categories. Some of them are just plain false. Examples in this category are ones like:
There was a halt to global warming starting 1998.
Humans are only responsible for a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Scientists are colluding to create this fraud.
Others are not false but are completely irrelevant. For example:
Climate is always changing.
We didn’t have thermometers a million years ago to measure global temperatures.
Cities are hotter than their surroundings.
Why would people think things or repeat statements that are known to be false or irrelevant? I am convinced that for the vast majority of people, they are not intentionally being incorrect. Something must be forcing them to be wrong. What could that be? Why are people so willing to believe and repeat lies?
That brings me to the connection with President Trump. His sheer number of falsehoods and flip-flops is so great, you lose track of them all. For instance, let us take the so-called wall to stop illegal immigration. First he said Mexico will pay for it and it will be “so tall;” now, he wants it to be paid by the US taxpayer. He falsely exaggerated the number of jobs that have been created since he came into office. He made false statements about the size of his electoral win. He made false statements about President Obama’s birthplace. He has made false and unsupported claims about voter fraud. He has made false claims about climate scientists.
Finally, there is the current investigation into his and his administration’s potential collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. I could go on and on and likely will get complaints from readers that I forgot this or that falsehood, but I have to limit the length of this post.
In a sane world, everyone would understand the threat of climate change and our ability to take meaningful action to handle it. In a sane world, no one would believe a president who has misled them time and time again.
So that raises the question - what is the reason people still discount the incontrovertible climate change evidence? What is the reason a persistent minority still support this dishonest president? I think I have figured it out, and if I’m right, it makes it much easier to reconcile the generally logical people I know with their seeming indefensible belief systems.
In a certain respect, this reason is something we as humans are nearly powerless to counteract. Before I give the reason, I want to be clear that I am sure others have noticed this too. I am sure others have written learned papers articulating this much more clearly than I can. My discovery is just a personal observation; something I should have recognized long ago. I am also not a psychologist so this is just my observations as a physical scientist.
The reason isn’t religion, it isn’t political ideology, it isn’t lack of scientific knowledge, it isn’t politics, it isn’t tribal identification. It’s none of those things.
The reason is fear.
Whether people are reciting a litany of falsehoods about climate change or whether they are contorting themselves to justify support for this president, they are doing so because they have to. They have to, because they are afraid of what happens if they accept reality.
With climate change, people are afraid for two reasons. First, they are afraid there is nothing they can do about it. Humans hate to have threats that are beyond our control. We are more afraid of Ebola than heart disease. We are more afraid of flying than driving, we are more afraid of sharks than toasters. We afraid of things we feel we cannot directly control.
Secondly, we are also afraid of bad news. How often have you not checked your bank account because you don’t want the bad news? Have you ever known someone who didn’t go to a doctor because they just didn’t want to know what their ailment was? It is so much easier to pretend a problem doesn’t exist. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that people like to be lied to when it quiets their fear.
So with respect to climate change, that puts the population into two groups. The first group (which I am part of) knows that there is a problem, wants to face it head on, and solve it together. The second group cannot bear to look the problem honestly in the face and finds it easier to deny its existence.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3339307
SEE IT: Police pursue drunken off-duty cop who led them on car chase
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 4:48 PM
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ544189
A Quantitative Description of FBI Public Relations.
Gibson, Dirk C.
Public Relations Review, v23 n1 p11-30 Spr 1997
States that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had the most successful media relations program of all government agencies from the 1930s to the 1980s. Uses quantitative analysis to show why those media efforts were successful. Identifies themes that typified the verbal component of FBI publicity and the broad spectrum of mass communication channels that were tapped. (PA)
Descriptors: Federal Government, Mass Media Use, Media Research, Public Relations, Statistical Analysis, United States History
http://www.smartbrief.com/original/2017 ... career-fbi
July 19, 2017 Leadership Careers
I loved being an FBI agent because there was a sense of meaning and purpose every time I walked into the office. The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. There was a sense of meaning and purpose every time I walked into the office.
I worked hard to solve complex problems. You might be imaging movies, gunbattles, and running down bad guys. In truth, a lot of what I did as an agent wasn’t all that different from many of the challenges you face as entrepreneurs, leaders, and business owners.
I was good with a gun, I admit, but most of my time was spent working with people who had different opinions and a conflict of interest. This created problems I couldn’t just shoot. Instead, they required people skills; I suspect many of you can relate.
Today's business world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. If you want to move your career or company forward, you have to know how to lead yourself and those around you.
The FBI does not hire new agents based on their skills. Instead, they hire by the traits and values exhibited by applicants and then train new agents with the skill sets they will need. If an agent has the right values, traits, and abilities, they can learn anything.
This is where most businesses have it backward. Instead of hiring people because of their traits and values, they hire skill sets and then try to backload the company’s culture and values.
If the goal of leadership is to empower people to make their own decisions, then here are seven FBI traits that will make you a better leader:
1. Confidence
Boosting confidence is the primary goal of the FBI Academy -- before they send agents out with a gun and badge.
As a new agent, there were days when my heart raced and my palms sweat just thinking about the new challenges that faced me. But I learned that success would not make me confident; rather, confidence in myself and my abilities would make me successful.
If you don’t believe in yourself, how can others believe in you? It took a bit of acting on my part in the beginning, but the more I acted confident, the more confident I became. Feedback from others was positive, which in turn, gave me more confidence!
Tip: Cultivate ways you can signal your confidence to others, especially using body language. When our brain receives a clear image of confidence and competence, it takes that good impression and makes a snap judgment. This allows the brain to move on to other issues.
2. Humility
A few years back, my squad was set to arrest a fugitive known to be armed and dangerous. Since I was the case agent, everyone assumed I would be the one to make the arrest. The fugitive was a big guy with broad shoulders and sure to resist arrest, but defensive tactics had never been my strong point.
It is humbling to admit to yourself, or others, that you are not the best person for the job. It’s OK to admit it and turn to another person more experienced or better prepared and ask for their help.
You may not need help in arresting a fugitive, but you may need to surround yourself with people who are more experienced or better prepared and ask for their help. The best leaders are confident enough to surround themselves with people who are smarter and more talented.
They are also humble enough to learn from these people because they understand they will get a better outcome as a result of their involvement. Such leaders are willing to listen to, but not be dominated by, the talent around them.
Tip: If you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
3. Good values
For insiders, FBI also stands for "Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity." These are the values that drive the organization.
Leadership is not a skill set; it is rooted in who we are and what matters to us. Our values are defined by what we are willing to struggle for when the chips are down. It’s doing the right thing and doing the best we can because that is who we are.
Ultimately, our values define our struggles. When we choose better values, we get better problems to solve. We need to be motivated by something more important and greater than our own happiness. If we are not driven to take our life to the next level by something more than our own selfish desires, we are the definition of a narcissist.
Tip: When you prioritize good values, it produces true confidence and genuine humility. Decisions are easier because the answer is always “do the right thing.”
4. Kindness
Not all FBI negotiations involve the barrel of a gun. The most successful agents find ways to get along with people, pure and simple. It is rare that an agent can dictate how a relationship is going to unfold.
In the movies, we hear lines like, “OK, this is what you’re going to do for me.” In reality, we need to look for what’s mutually beneficial if we’re looking to cut a deal or negotiate.
The best way to accomplish this is to find common ground, and this is accomplished by being sensitive to the needs of the other person. Bullying, extortion or browbeating rarely gets constructive results.
Tip: Mentally tough leaders who are kind know how to inspire their people in a way that, in turn, creates a commitment for their mission.
5. Tough
It may seem that kindness and toughness are contradictions, but they are actually very compatible. There are times when a leader needs to hold people accountable and draw a clear line that differentiates between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
Great leaders don’t worry about being unpopular or making everyone happy. They’re always reminding themselves that their job is to improve the organization.
While rules and standards provide structure for people, tough leaders are not afraid to buck the system to get what they want. They know how to interpret the cultural norms of the office or company and are respectful, yet persistent, in presenting new ideas for projects.
It is the mixture of toughness and kindness that opens doors without alienating the standard-bearers who have calcified in their corner offices.
Tip: Successful leaders stumble and make mistakes as much as anyone, but they are tough enough to take control of their reputations and manage the ways they are perceived.
6. Listening skills
I didn’t know what to expect when the FBI sent me to a training course on hostage negotiation. As an unassuming man stood in front of the class and welcomed everyone in dulcet tones, I was looking around for the hardass who had talked down a terrorist in New York the week before. The man spoke politely, but I didn’t listen because I wanted to hear from the hostage negotiator!
Guess what? He was the hardass hostage negotiator. That week I learned the key to agreements, whether you are negotiating with a kidnapper or a client, is that they happen only when both sides are willing to listen.
When we listen, we get insight into how other people think, feel, and behave. It is counterproductive to be aggressive, pushy, and demanding. Instead, good listeners are likable and create an environment that feels both safe and comfortable. They are secure enough that they are not threatened by listening to someone who may have more talent or experience.
Tip:: It’s a good idea to repeat what you think you heard the other person say. It lets them know you really are listening and gives you an opportunity to let their words soak in.
7. Emotional intelligence
The FBI is not a touchy-feely organization; agents prefer terms like competence and persistence to explain their success. The words emotional intelligence rarely escape their lips. Yet face-to-face interviews remain the FBI’s top investigative technique.
Emotional intelligence is an ability to walk into a room and understand what others might be feeling, and through that insight, communicate to them in effective ways. Awareness and curiosity about their own emotions, as well as those of others, place leaders in a stronger position to not only recognize the negative ones but to anticipate how they could spin out of control.
Tip: Emotional intelligence allows us to build on relationships with others and then use those relationships to accomplish our goals.
“I actually have come to learn that the way to evaluate leaders is not from skills through abilities to values but to actually start the other way. If a leader has the right values and the right abilities, they can learn anything. If you hire and promote backwards and start with, ‘so what are their skills? What jobs have they had?’ you may miss the fact that they don't have the abilities you need and the values you need.” ~ James Comey, former FBI director, in 2016
LaRae Quy was an FBI undercover and counterintelligence agent for 24 years. She exposed foreign spies and recruited them to work for the U.S. government. As an FBI agent, she developed the mental toughness to survive in environments of risk,
http://www.post-gazette.com/frontpage/2 ... 0707110253
Wecht investigator's discipline file opened
U.S. judge orders FBI records unsealed
11:00 PM JUL 11, 2007
A federal judge yesterday unsealed records revealing that the lead FBI agent in the criminal case against Dr. Cyril H. Wecht was disciplined elsewhere for forging other agents' names and initials on chain-of-custody forms, evidence labels and interview forms.
Related documents
See more information about the disciplinary reports of FBI agent Bradley W. Orsini.
Further, in September 2001 Special Agent Bradley W. Orsini was demoted and received a 30-day suspension without pay for a series of policy violations that occurred from 1993 through 2000, which included having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate; making improper vulgar and sexual comments; threatening a subordinate with violence; and improperly documenting the seizure of a weapon and ammunition from a search.
"We're pleased this information is now available to the public for its own analysis and understanding of its impact on the case," said Dr. Wecht's defense attorney, Jerry McDevitt. "The report speaks for itself."
The U.S. attorney's office filed Agent Orsini's records under seal on April 7, 2006, asking U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab to determine if it was required to turn them over to Dr. Wecht's defense attorneys.
What followed was a 15-month legal battle that ended this week when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a final order in the case, making the disciplinary reports public.
Judge Schwab unsealed the records late yesterday afternoon. He also vacated a previous decision in which he'd ordered a contempt hearing for the defense attorneys for their failure to follow his orders.
He wrote "this Court considers the 'time-out' caused by the interlocutory appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit as providing an opportunity for a 'fresh start.'"
He also ordered a hearing in Dr. Wecht's case on Sept. 18 that will allow the defense to use the Orsini reports in their examination of him.
Agent Orsini has been an agent for more than 18 years, and he has spent much of that time, including in Pittsburgh, working public corruption cases. All of the allegations included in the two disciplinary reports occurred while he was working in the FBI's Newark, N.J., office.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan would not comment on the reports' release. It was unclear if she was aware of Mr. Orsini's background before he became the lead agent in the case against Dr. Wecht, who is charged with 84 counts of misusing his public office for private gain.
( Dr Cyril Wecht has been a prominent researcher into the JFK assassination and has now become a target
of the FBI )
The first time Agent Orsini was disciplined was Nov. 2, 1998. He received a five-day suspension without pay for signing other agents' names to evidence labels and custody forms from May 1995 to January 1997.
He explained that he and another agent, on limited occasions, signed each other's names on evidence "to save time."
Though the investigator from the Office of Professional Responsibility found that Agent Orsini did not intend to jeopardize the evidence or cases involved, his actions could have called the integrity of the bureau into question, he wrote in his report.
A 28-page report issued Sept. 24, 2001, by the assistant director of the Office of Professional Responsibility described additional transgressions.
The first violation listed dated to Nov. 2, 1993. Agent Orsini failed to obtain the proper consent form while searching a man's home for illegal firearms and failed to properly document the ammunition seized.
Agent Orsini was found to have falsified at least six FBI interview forms in 1993 and 1994 by writing other agents' initials on them.
He said in a statement that he didn't believe there would be a problem with that provided the information in the body of the interview form was accurate.
"I have no idea how many times I may have done so," he said. He said he did so for "convenience and a shortcut."
Throughout the Wecht case, defense attorneys have argued that the government based part of the charges against their client -- that he exchanged unclaimed bodies from the county morgue for lab space from Carlow University -- on a single interview form filled out by Agent Orsini.
The disciplinary report next goes into great detail about a relationship Agent Orsini had with a subordinate agent, from April 1998 through early 2000.
The document indicates that other agents in his squad believed Agent Orsini was favoring the woman and gave her premium assignments. It also details gag gifts exchanged at the squad's Christmas parties in 1998 and 1999. One, given to the woman, was a pet collar, with a note that said, "If found, return to Brad Orsini."
"By their very nature, the public notoriety attached to the gag gifts would have put even the most insensitive person on notice of this perception of favoritism," the assistant director wrote.
By January 2000, when supervisors in the Newark office learned of the relationship, Agent Orsini was reassigned.
But before that, he approached one of the agents in his squad and accused him of revealing the relationship. During the meeting, Agent Orsini threatened to hit his subordinate but quickly added that he was kidding.
Newark's assistant agent in charge reported that Agent Orsini "has an aggressive personality, and I would characterize him as a bully."
Other substantiated allegations in the report included that Agent Orsini punched at least one hole in the wall in the Newark office, and threw and broke chairs. He also jokingly called fellow supervisors "homosexuals," and even used a bullhorn to make his comments.
For those actions, the Office of Professional Responsibility said he failed to prevent the development of a "locker room atmosphere" in his squad that repressed professional conduct.
In addition to the suspension and demotion, Agent Orsini was ordered to serve 12 months' probation and to attend mandatory sensitivity training.
Ray Morrow,
https://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=45090 ... signed-too
FBI looking into Ephraim police situation; ex-officer says he would have resigned, too
| Posted Jul 19th, 2017 @ 7:31pm
EPHRAIM — The attorney representing three Ephraim police officers who resigned after calling out their longtime chief for failing to properly complete hundreds of incident report said Wednesday that the FBI is now involved.
"I am pleased to learn that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into this matter," said Bret Rawson, legal counsel for former officers Larry Golding, Jared Hansen and Darren S. Pead.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/unseal ... wood-four/
Unsealed FBI report alleges police fed statements to ‘Englewood Four’
CHICAGO NEWS 07/19/2017, 08:09pm
CHICAGO NEWS 07/19/2017, 08:09pm
Terrill Swift sits next to his mother, Carleane Swift, on Nov. 16, 2012, in Woodridge. He was a member of the so-called Englewood 4, who were exonerated two years ago, and has sued the city of Chicago for wrongful conviction. | Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times
https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/18/isp ... stigation/
Story image for fbi from Engadget
ISPs barred from telling users they're under FBI investigation
Engadget-Jul 18, 2017
Back in 2013, a federal judge ruled that the FBI couldn't force ISPs to hand over a users' private data without the suspect being informed first.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi&prm ... 24&bih=672
Trump: Jeff Sessions Should Have Muzzled the FBI
Mother Jones-
I can only assume that Donald Trump barely even knows what he's saying anymore. Here he is during an interview with the New York Times, ...
http://www.afro.com/feds-reviewing-ohio ... am-dubose/
FBI Reviewing Ohio Police Shooting of Unarmed black Sam DuBose
Afro American
The Justice Department said investigators analyzed store surveillance video using resources at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia; interviewed witnesses ...
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/may/01/news/mn-57894
FBI Settles Black Agents' Discrimination Lawsuit
Law: Bureau must overhaul procedures and permit an outside mediator to review individual cases. But the director could overrule damage awards.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday approved a sweeping settlement in a 10-year-old lawsuit between the FBI and some 500 current and former agents who contend they were systematically discriminated against because they are black.
The agreement requires the FBI to overhaul its promotion, evaluation and disciplinary procedures by 2004 to address the concerns of African American agents. It could also result in the awarding of monetary damages to individual agents who prove their claims of discrimination to an outside mediator.
Black FBI agents, who supported their claims with statistical models, argued that white agents were much more likely to gain promotions, win high-profile assignments with units such as the SWAT team, earn positive evaluations and avoid disciplinary action for misconduct.
The FBI has condoned a dual-track system that "allowed people to be promoted based on who they knew and not how they did their job," David J. Shaffer, a Washington attorney who is representing the black agents, said in an interview.
"This goes all the way back to J. Edgar Hoover," who headed the FBI for nearly half a century until 1972, Shaffer said. "White people promoted people who were white, who promoted people who were white, and so on. . . . Hopefully, this type of behavior will now be put behind us."
FBI officials declined to discuss the discrimination claims. But the agency said the settlement "reaffirms the FBI's commitment to reform of key aspects of its personnel system." It agreed to the settlement mainly to avoid the cost and time of trying a case that has already proved a major distraction, FBI officials and Justice Department lawyers said.
The black agents first sued the FBI in 1991. They reached a settlement three years later after a federal judge found that there was "statistical evidence of discrimination."
The FBI was supposed to institute a new personnel system by 1998, but the agents said it failed to do so. They went back to court that year and began a new round of negotiations.
The most significant difference between the pact--approved Monday by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan--and the initial agreement is that it requires the FBI for the first time to bring in an outside mediator to assess discrimination complaints.
That provision could open up the FBI to millions of dollars in liability. Black agents who can persuade a mediator that they were denied promotions or discriminated against because of their race are eligible for up to $300,000 apiece under federal law, plus any lost wages, the attorneys said.
"It is really unprecedented for the FBI to allow an outsider to decide a personnel issue within the agency," said Ron Schmidt, another attorney for the agents.
The agreement gives the FBI director the authority to overrule a mediator's decision.
The agreement also requires the FBI to change the way it selects bureau supervisors within the next three years and to pay the agents' legal fees to date, $230,000.
About 12% of the more than 10,000 current FBI agents are African American, the agents' attorneys said. A handful of black agents have pressed individual claims against the FBI in recent years.
In the most notorious case, former FBI agent Donald Rochon won a $1-million settlement from the government in the early 1990s. He said that when he worked in FBI offices in Chicago and Omaha, white agents pasted photographs of apes over the family pictures at his desk and subjected him to other racist treatment. Eight FBI employees were disciplined.
The discrimination alleged by the 500 black agents--most of whom are still working at the bureau--is more subtle, their lawyers said.
"There weren't any claims of a racially hostile environment," Schmidt said. "You have a situation here where it's not overt, but from the numbers we saw, we were convinced that there was a [racial] disparity in treatment. There was a substantial shortfall in the number of black promotions, for instance, and the government had no explanation for that."
Federal law-enforcement agencies have been hit with repeated claims of racial discrimination in recent years. In 1988, hundreds of Latino FBI agents won a discrimination suit against the bureau after alleging that they were routinely given demeaning assignments on the "Taco Circuit."
http://www.workers.org/2017/05/18/the-f ... XAY8bEpChA
The FBI is a racist sewer
By Stephen Millies posted on May 18, 2017
Longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover hated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wanted him dead. Hoover called Dr. King “the most notorious liar in the country” at a Nov. 18, 1964, news conference. Hoover was furious the Black leader had just won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The FBI boss organized a slander campaign and had his No. 3 man, William Sullivan, write a letter to King urging him to commit suicide. (New York Times, Nov. 11, 2014)
“There is abundant evidence of a major high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said Coretta Scott King in 1999. She spoke after a Memphis jury found the U.S. government guilty of conspiring to assassinate Dr. King. (newsone.com, 2014)
The campaign against Dr. King was part of Cointelpro, the FBI’s terror program against the Black liberation movement and communists. Anti-war activists were also targeted by the FBI.
Cointelpro coordinated the deadly campaign against the Black Panther Party in which at least 28 Panthers were killed. Among them were Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were murdered in Chicago on Dec. 4, 1969. Decades later, Dr. Mutulu Shakur and other Black Panther Party members are still imprisoned.
Hoover died in 1972, and the FBI claims Cointelpro was terminated in 1971. But the agency’s railroading of dissidents to prison never ended.
American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier was framed by the FBI in 1976, and is still in jail. The FBI helped jail Puerto Rican liberation fighter Oscar López Rivera, who has just been released after 35 years in prison.
On May 13, 1985, the FBI worked with Philadelphia police to drop a bomb on the MOVE house. Six adults and five children were killed.
The FBI was no different under Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump on May 9. Comey continued the racist entrapment of Muslims and Palestinians.
Comey even claimed that police were hindered by a “viral video effect” because they were being filmed while brutalizing people. Comey was endorsing the bogus “Ferguson Effect,” which blames the Black Lives Matter movement for a supposed increase in street crime since 2014. (New York Times, May 11, 2016)
Frame-up agency
From its inception the FBI was used to crush any resistance to capitalism. William J. Burns — head of the strikebreaking Burns Detective Agency — was FBI director from 1921 to 1924.
At the time, judges were issuing union-busting injunctions. A 1922 strike of workers in railroad shops was crushed. But Burns had to be dropped because he was tied to the corrupt Warren G. Harding administration’s Teapot Dome scandal.
Burns’ No. 2 man, J. Edgar Hoover, took over. Hoover had helped carry out the roundups and deportations of communists in the 1919-1920 “Palmer raids,” named after President Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, Alexander Palmer.
Just like today, immigrant workers were under attack. Among them were the Italian-born anarchist labor organizers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. They were framed for a payroll robbery in which a guard was killed in Massachusetts.
Despite affidavits by ex-FBI agents Lawrence Letherman and Fred J. Weyand stating that the bureau knew that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, the two were executed on Aug. 23, 1927.
The first struggle that Sam Marcy, founding chairperson of Workers World Party, participated in was to stop these Italian-American heroes from being murdered. Although the worldwide movement wasn’t able to stop their execution, it was an inspiration for the successful effort to save the lives of the African-American Scottsboro defendants in the 1930s.
Hoover helped instigate the anti-communist witch-hunt that dominated U.S. political life in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Thousands of activists lost their jobs and dozens were jailed, including Ben Davis, the communist New York City councilperson from Harlem.
The height of the “red scare” was the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on June 19, 1953. Framed on phony charges of giving “atomic secrets” to the Soviet Union, the FBI used perjured testimony to convict them. In his eulogy at the Rosenbergs’ funeral, W.E.B. Du Bois declared these martyrs died because “they would not lie.”
The FBI has been
http://www.idsnews.com/article/2017/07/ ... s-2020-bid
EDITORIAL: Candice Jackson should resign from the Department of Education
https://ktar.com/story/1662421/charges- ... city-jail/
Charges mount in corruption probe at Kansas City jail
JULY 19, 2017 AT 2:10 PM
UPDATED: JULY 19, 2017 AT 2:38 PM
KANSAS CITY, Mo
A federal crackdown on alleged bribery-related smuggling of such contraband as cigarettes, cell phones and prescription drugs into the county jail in Kansas City, Missouri, has expanded with indictments accusing a fifth person and adding more charges against the previous four suspects.
A criminal complaint last month had accused Jackson County Detention Center corrections officers Andrew Dickerson and Jalee Fuller, inmate Carlos Hughley, and Fuller and Hughley’s friend Janikkia Carter of one count of telephone use to further unlawful activity, in this case corruption.
But a federal indictment Tuesday accuses those four of conspiracy and charges Carter and Hughley with three counts each of the unlawful telephone use charges. The indictment added Marion Byers — another Fuller and Hughley acquaintance — and charges him with two telephone-related counts.
A separate indictment accuses Dickerson of conspiracy and three more counts involving telephone use to further criminal activity.
Hughley, who prosecutors have said is the father of Fuller’s recently born child, had been awaiting trial on charges of domestic assault, armed criminal action, resisting arrest and multiple counts of distributing controlled substances. Dickerson no longer is employed with the county, and Fuller is on unpaid administrative leave.
Messages left Wednesday by The Associated Press with the defendants’ attorneys were not immediately returned.
Last month’s original charges related to a raid of the jail by roughly 200 law enforcers, including the FBI. An FBI investigation that began two years ago focused on excessive use of force by guards on prisoners before expanding to other areas, with previous searches having uncovered drugs, weapons and other contraband.
Authorities have said in court filings that an inmate’s relative who was acting as an informant paid bribes and provided cellphones and cigarettes that Dickerson and Fuller smuggled into the facility in May and June. The contraband then was delivered to an inmate who also was acting as an informant, the affidavit said.
Tuesday’s indictment alleges that Dickerson took part in a bribery and contraband-smuggling plot from May 2 to June 26, promoting the scheme through telephone calls and texts. Authorities allege Dickerson smuggled cell phones and other contraband to the lockup’s inmates, telling one of them that he would ensure that inmate was the only one on the floor to get bootleg cigarettes, narcotics, drugs and telephones if the inmate paid him $2,500 a month.
During that same time, the indictment alleges, Fuller, Carter, Hughley and Byers engaged in a separate, similar bribery and smuggling scheme. At one time, according to the indictment, Fuller — with help from Carter and Byers — smuggled a cell phone, charger and 15 anti-anxiety medications to an inmate for $300.
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msfreeh
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Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/07/24/ex ... more-14606
EXCLUSIVE: “8th Man was part Putin-Bush ‘Oligarch’s Ball’
Posted on July 24, 2017
When Russian Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze became the eighth and last participant identified last week attending Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Russians in Trump Tower, many wondered if there might be a reason he’d been fingered last.
Turns out, there is. His “legend,” or cover story, cannot withstand close scrutiny. Kaveladze’s lawyer Scott Balber said last week his client attended the Trump Junior meeting with the Russians “just to make sure it happened.”
That would have been an odd mis-use of his talents. Because when Ike Kaveladze attended Donald Trump’s Jr’s meeting with the Russians last year, he brought to the table with him abundant experience with putting together oligarch-to-oligarch deals.
Was that why he was at Trump Towers?
Fake news is not just what gets reported, but what gets left out
In dozens of media profiles of Kaveladze which have appeared since he was identified last Tuesday, a big chunk of his known activity while in the U.S. has somehow been redacted.
Stories profiling Kaverladze begin with the extraordinary tale of congressional investigators discovering his money laundering in 2000.
“Seventeen years ago congressional investigators looking into money laundering stumbled upon an obscure Soviet-born financier who offered ‘special services’ to his Russian clients.”
That’s Ike. Citing a November 2000 Government Accountability Office report, the reports indicated that Kaveladze laundered $1.4 billion through more than 2,000 bank accounts he opened at two U.S. banks for Russian oligarchs.
Back in 2000, Kaveladze had blasted away at investigators using the same “Russian witch hunt” characterization President Trump uses 17 years later.
Now here’s the ‘tricky part. The timeline of Kaveladze’s history in the U.S leaps directly and inexplicably ahead from 2000 to the present. But there is something wrong here.
Kaveladze’s timeline doesn’t match his tick-tock.
“On Tuesday that man, Irakly Kaveladze, resurfaced as the latest foreign ‘guest’ on the ever-expanding list of participants to last year’s June 2016 meeting where Donald Trump Jr was hoping to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton.”
We don’t pretend to know why, but news report to date about the last man identified as being in the room with Donald Trump Jr and Russians and folders with TOP SECRET stickers on them, have all left out Kaveladze’s attendance at The Oligarch’s Ball.
The part they left out
Three years after successfully laundering $1.4 billion for the Russian Mob, Ike Kaveladze surfaced again in 2003. This time he was playing an important role in the sale of a U.S. company, Stillwater Mining, to Russia’s huge Norilsk Mining, which produces nickel, palladium, platinum, copper and cobalt.
In November 2002, Norilsk of Siberia, which is apparently located at the back-end of nowhere, even though its listed as one of the world’s most polluted places, announced its intention to buy Stillwater Mining of Montana—the U.S.’s only producer of palladium, used in catalytic converters, and found in only three places on the planet: the U.S. Russia, and South Africa— for $341 million.
Surprisingly, they were very quickly successful in purchasing controlling interest in the company.
The Norilsk-Stillwater deal was unprecedented in its scope and significance. It required strong lobbying in the U.S. with the Federal Trade Commission, and with an inter-agency body called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews foreign transactions which may have an effect on U.S. national security.
To help make it happen, President Bush flew to St Petersburg Russia on June 3, 2003 to help his friend Vladimir Putin celebrate his hometown’s 300th birthday. In a lunch in the Konstantin Palace the two men huddled over the terms of the deal.
Along with former Bush officials in the Carlyle Group, the sweetheart deal Kaveladze helped put together nearly passed unnoticed, because of the Iraq War.
But it outraged many industry observers. One of them, Andrew Meier, writing in Harpers magazine in April 2004, called what transpired “The Oligarch’s Ball.”
The subhead: “Washington’s plutocrats court their Russian counterparts.”
Thirst for oil, etc etc.
Washington-based private equity fund Carlyle Group, which boasted former Bush alumni like James Baker, as well as the former President himself, lost Arab investors after the 9/11 attack, who either withdrew their money or saw it returned when it became impolitic to hang on to.
Among them, Meier explained, was Shafiq Bin Laden, one of Osama’s numerous brothers.
America’s thirst for non-Arab oil was increasing exponentially at the same time. It prompted a fundamental shift in U.S. policy towards Russia. The oligarchs came alive, and quickly learned to thrive.
“They need the oligarchs now more than ever,” said a Moscow financier who has had longtime dealings with Carlyle. “They’re replacing the Bin Laden’s with the Potanin’s and the Khodorkovsky’s.”
The “Potanin’s” refers to the Kremlin’s favorite oligarch at the time, Vladimir Potanin, a 42-year old banker who, with a second Russian billionaire, Mikhail Prokhorov, jointly controlled the Norilsk metals empire.
Speaking as one oligarch to another
Mikhail Prokhorov has gone on to become the most famous Russian in Brooklyn, no mean feat. He currently owns the NBA’s also-ran Nets.
Donald Trump’s oligarch-to-oligarch deals may be more brazen, but oligarch-to-oligarch collusion under cover of government diplomacy has apparently been going on longer than many suspected.
“On the subject of oligarchs—the clutch of Russian ‘entrepreneurs’ who had seized the spoils of the Soviet state and become preposterously rich overnight—the governor of Texas railed against their contributions to Russia’s twin epidemics of crime and corruption,” Meier writes in the Oligarch Ball.
“The real fundamental question for Russia,” Bush told Jim Lehrer in 2000, “is what will Russian look like? A market economy? Or one of those economies where a favored few elite are able to put money in their own pockets? And it’s something that we need to be concerned about; something we need to watch very carefully.”
“That approach to the Bush Administration’s dealings with the oligarchs seems not to have lasted long. The administration, its corporate proxies, and even the president’s own father have been waging a campaign to charm the oligarchs, the same “favored few elite” candidates Bush had earlier discerned were the clear and present danger in the Russian morass.”
“Out of an abundance of caution.”
To ensure the historic union, Norilsk hired Baker Botts, the Houston-based law firm run by James A. Baker III. Andrew Meier called it “an instructive example of the oligarch’s new clout in Washington.”
Norilsk engaged two U.S. lobbyists to smooth the way for federal approval of the deal in the U.S. The men became two of the five nominees to the new Stillwater board of directors.
Atop the list was Craig Fuller, former chief of staff to George H.W. Bush, co-chair of the presidential transition team, and chairman of the 1992 Republican convention.
Largely unknown outside Washington, D.C. Fuller has been called one of the “most important Republicans alive.”
In addition to Fuller, the others were former Democratic Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., Jack E. Thompson, Vice Chairman of Barrick Gold Corporation; and two experienced lawyers, Steven S. Lucas and Todd D. Schafer.
But not Ike Kaveladze. A Russian language press release headlined “Norilsk offers Steve Lucas to replace Ike Kaveladze on Stillwater Board” explained why.
“US citizen Irakly Kaveladze, a former classmate of the general director of Norilsk, Mikhail Prokhorov, was mentioned in 2000 in connection with money laundering through the Bank of New York. Therefore the Company decided not to take risks.”
“It’s a theater of financiers.”
Norilsk and Stillwater controlled over 50% of the palladium in the world. Yet U.S. Federal agencies rolled over and immediately signed off on the deal. The FTC even granted early termination of the waiting period for the transaction, and it closed on June 23, 2003.
About the only disgruntled parties were locals in Montana, where the Stillwater mines were located, along with many mining industry analysts. “Just ten years after the Cold War ended, our once-mortal enemy now stands to control half of the world’s supply of palladium with its foot right in America’s heartland,” wrote one.
In The Oligarch’s Ball” Meier wrote, “Since the days of the Romanov’s trade and commerce, Russia has followed a patriarchal model, in which courtiers who wish to succeed must “kiss the ring,” as Russians like to say.”
“The success of the Russian oligarchs abroad delivers a bitter and familiar lesson. Business and politics have always been inseparable in Russia…
“In America these days, things are not so very different.”
“Ecoutez and repetez!”
Since Kaveladze is a name we’ll be hearing often, getting it’s pronunciation right— it’s Kah-veh-LAHD’-zeh—may well separate the cognoscenti from those occupying cheaper seats in the coming circus.
Kaveladze’s lawyer Scott Balber said last week that his client attended the Trump Junior meeting with Russians “just to make sure it happened.”
Attorney Balber also said his client was “cooperating fully with investigators.”
But there is reason to doubt both statements. Ike himself was incommunicado. Or maybe he’d already fled the country. And attorney Balber often works for Donald Trump. He threatened to sue, on Donald’s behalf, HBO host Bill Maher for likening Trump to an orangutan. Cooler head prevailed.
As to the wheraqbouts of Ike, it certainly sounds as if he left town in a hurry.
“No one answered the door or the phone at Kaveladze’s three-story home in Huntington Beach,” reported the L.A. Times. “A dresser and other small pieces of furniture sat on the front lawn.”
Link du jour
http://www.davidyoungpoet.com/page8.html
http://www.latimes.com/business/technol ... story.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3354224
http://www.centralmaine.com/2017/07/19/ ... s-at-miff/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3354740
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ntering-us
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/07/25/ ... f-warming/
More Fire and Anthrax for the Arctic: Study Finds 21 to 25 Percent of Northern Permafrost Will Thaw at Just 1.5 C of Warming
In the far north, the land is rippling, trembling, subsiding, and blowing up as greenhouse gasses are released from thawing frozen soil. Meanwhile, old diseases are being released from thawing carcasses and presenting a health hazard to locals. Strange processes that are likely to accelerate soon as global warming approaches 1.5 degrees Celsius and between 21 and 25.5 percent of all the vast region of Northern Permafrost thaws out.
(More methane blowholes like this one in Yamal are likely as permafrost thaw accelerates in the coming years and pockets of methane explosively remove the land above. How extensive permafrost thaw becomes is directly dependent on how much fossil fuel human societies decide to burn. Image source: The Siberian Times.)
Arctic Carbon Feedbacks Accelerating
Carbon feedbacks from the thawing permafrost are a serious concern. And they should be. There’s about 1,400 billion tons of carbon locked away in that massive region of frozen ground. More than twice the amount humans have already emitted into the atmosphere. And though frozen permafrost carbon stays locked away, thawed permafrost carbon tends to become biologically active — releasing into soils, the water and the air.
Already, this thawing has generated a worrying effect. During the 20th Century, it was estimated that about 500,000 tons of methane were released from the Siberian land-based permafrost region. By 2003, as this permafrost zone warmed, the annual rate of release was estimated to be 3.8 million tons per year. And by 2013, with still greater warming, the rate of release had grown to 17 million tons per year. This compares to a global emission of methane from all sources — both human and Earth System-based — of about 500 million tons per year.
(Megaslump craters like the one at Batagaika, formed by subsidence, are also a result of permafrost thaw. Such features are likely to grow and proliferate as the Earth warms and permafrost thaw expands.)
That’s a thirty-fold acceleration in the rate of Siberian permafrost methane emission over a little more than one generation. One that occurred as temperatures rose to about 1 C above 1880s averages and into a range not seen for about 150,000 years. It’s a warming that has produced visible and concerning geophysical changes throughout the Arctic permafrost environment. In Siberia, lands are subsiding even as more and more methane and carbon dioxide are leeching out. And in the Yamal region of Arctic Russia, temperatures warming into the upper 80s (30 C+) during summer appear to have set off a rash of methane eruptions from the soil even as ancient reindeer carcasses release anthrax spores into the environment as they thaw. From a report this week in The Guardian:
Long dormant spores of the highly infectious anthrax bacteria frozen in the carcass of an infected reindeer rejuvenated themselves and infected herds of reindeer and eventually local people. More recently, a huge explosion was heard in June in the Yamal Peninsula. Reindeer herders camped nearby saw flames shooting up with pillars of smoke and found a large crater left in the ground. Melting permafrost was again suspected, thawing out dead vegetation and erupting in a blowout of highly flammable methane gas.
21 to 25.5 Percent of Northern Permafrost Set to Thaw over Next Two Decades
In total, 14 methane blow out craters are now identified throughout the Yamal region. A testament to the growing carbon feedback coming from previously frozen and inactive stores.
(Permafrost losses are likely to be quite considerable over the coming decades — which is likely to produce serious knock-on effects for local and global environments. But continued fossil fuel burning through end Century produces more catastrophic results. Image source: Responses and changes in the permafrost and snow water equivalent in the Northern Hemisphere under a scenario of 1.5 C warming.)
But, unfortunately, these kinds of weird, disturbing, and often dangerous changes to northern environments are just a foreshadowing of more to come. For a recent scientific study has found that just 1.5 degrees Celsius worth of warming will force between 21 and 25.5 percent of the northern permafrost to thaw. A process that is already underway, but that will continue to accelerate with each 0.1 degree Celsius of additional warming. The study found that the faster human atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions build up, the more rapidly permafrost would thaw once the 1.5 C threshold was reached. Under a rapid human reduction of greenhouse gasses (RCP 2.6 scenario), permafrost thaw was reduced to 21 percent in the study. But under worst case human fossil fuel emissions (RCP 8.5 scenario), the accelerated rate of warming resulted in 25.5 percent permafrost thaw.
Perhaps more concerning was the fact that the study found that this 1.5 C temperature threshold was reached by as early as 2023 under the worst case fossil fuel burning scenario even as it was held off only to 2027 if rapid fossil fuel burning reductions were achieved. A broader sampling of studies and natural variability hold out some hope that 1.5 C might be pushed back to the early to mid 2030s in the absolute best case. However, considering the amount of human emissions already released and in the pipeline even under the best cases, it appears that crossing the 1.5 C threshold sometime in the near future is unavoidable at this time (barring some unforeseen massive global response and mobilization).
(Permafrost losses under different human emissions scenarios through 2100 show that continued fossil fuel burning results in between 47 and 87 percent loss of permafrost area by 2100 [RCP 4.5 and 8.5]. Image source: Responses and changes in the permafrost and snow water equivalent in the Northern Hemisphere under a scenario of 1.5 C warming.)
Overall, the study found that surface permafrost losses lagged the crossing of the 1.5 C threshold by only about 10 years. And that the lowest emissions scenarios (RCP 2.6) resulted in a leveling off of permafrost losses to 24 percent by 2100. Meanwhile, the worst case human greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (RCP 8.5) resulted in 87 percent permafrost area reductions by 2100.
Risk of Serious Carbon Feedback Far Worse With Fossil Fuel Burning
With so much carbon locked away in permafrost, heightened rates of thaw present a risk that longer term warming might eventually run away as millions and billions of tons of carbon are ultimately liberated. Under moderate to worst case human fossil fuel burning scenarios, it is estimated that permafrost carbon emissions could approach 1 billion tons per year or more. At about 10 percent or more of the present human emission, such a rate of release to the atmosphere is about equivalent to that achieved during the last hyper-thermal event of 55 million years ago (the PETM). Moreover, a heightened response by large methane stores could result in a more immediate warming effect as methane is 28 to 36 times more potent a heat trapping gas than carbon dioxide over Century time scales.
A risk of serious carbon feedbacks that accelerate rates of warming this Century and over the longer term is not inconsiderable even with a 24 percent loss of Permafrost under the best case scenario identified by this study. However, the likelihood of a much more serious feedback under continued fossil fuel burning is far more apparent.
(UPDATED)
Links:
Responses and changes in the permafrost and snow water equivalent in the Northern Hemisphere under a scenario of 1.5 C warming
All Hell Breaks Loose as Tundra Thaws
Permafrost Thaw to Blow Carbon Budget Faster Than We Would Expect
PETM Hyperthermal
Arctic Methane Emissions
RCP Scenarios
Hat tip to Spike
see link for full story
http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/07/21/ex ... mining-co/
EXCLUSIVE: ‘8th Man’ in mystery purchase of U.S. Mining Co.
Posted on July 21, 2017
It’s been widely reported that Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, the “8th man” who attended the June 2016 meeting where Donald Trump Jr. was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, had years earlier laundered $800 million through Citibank.
What’s remained unknown until now is that Citibank ALSO loaned the exact same amount, $800 million, to Kaveladze’s Russian oligarch boss at the time.
An itinerary that refuses to come into the light
At the now-famous confab in Trump Towers, Kaveladze was representing Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov, who was paid $20 million to bring Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant to his family’s Moscow concert hall in 2013.
Reports stated Kaveladze began working for Agalarov in the early 1990s. Federal investigators were said to believe he began laundering money shortly thereafter.
However Ike Kaveladze’s U.S. itinerary is far more mysterious than what’s been so far reported. Here’s what’s already known:
In 2000, Kaveladze incorporated 2000 shell companies in Delaware, then ran their deposits through either Citibank, which investigators concluded had laundered $800 million for unknown Eastern European and Russian “clients,” or Commercial Bank of San Francisco, which laundered an additional $600 million.
Kaveladze’s actions— caught laundering hundreds of million of dollars for the Russian Mob— became the subject of a Congressional investigation into how Russians were able to so easily launder billions through U.S. banks.
Overnight a bank disappears
According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, Kaveladze was a central figure in a near decade-long effort to launder $1.4 billion of Russian and Eastern European money through U.S. banks.
A Government Accountability Office report—requested by then-Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.)— concluded it was “relatively easy” for foreigners to use shell companies to open U.S. bank accounts and route hidden money through the American financial system.
When U.S. authorities discovered the scam, Commercial Bank immediately disappeared from existence.
Citibank, being somewhat larger (assets of S1.7 trillion), did not have that option. The bank was forced to scrape their feet in the dust, admitting a few “lapses” in deliberately vague press releases.
Sen. Levin, who retired in 2014, issued a statement on Tuesday calling Kaveladze a “poster child” for the practice of using shell companies to launder dirty money.
Disquieting news: Neither Kaveladze nor either of the two U.S. bank were ever charged with any crime. “Lapses” allowing the laundering of $800 million of unknown money apparently don’t even rise to the level of nuisance crime.
Citibank “dances with bears”
Kaveladze surfaced again several years later. The Mining Journal, a trade publication, reported on April 11, 2003:
“Metals producer MMC Norilsk Nickel of Russia has named five nominees to the board of Stillwater Mining Co. in respect of its proposed acquisition of a 51% interest in the US-based company.”
Kaveladze was working in the U.S. for another Russian oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, when he engaged two U.S. lobbyists, one a prominent Republican, the other a former Democratic Senator, to smooth the way for federal approval of the purchase of U.S. mining company Stillwater by Potanin’s Norilsk Mining, Russia’s largest, producing nickel, palladium, platinum, copper and cobalt.
One month before that purchase, in February 2003, Citibank loaned Norilsk Nickel $50 million, tightly secured by the export sale of nickel, and already the object of due diligence over many months by no less than ten other banks.
Eyebrows were raised a year later Citibank loaned Potanin’s Norilsk $800 million. Several years earlier, while head of Russian bank Uneximbank, Potanin had “defaulted” on billions of dollars of obligations, which is not a usual resume item for someone finding himself at the center of one of the largest Russian offshore transactions to date, and the largest-ever Russian borrowing from Citibank at that time.
Collateral is out. Kompromat is in
“Citibank’s credit committee and legal department wouldn’t readily approve lending $800 million to Potanin without trusting him,” said Moscow business journalist John Helmer, whose “Dances with Bears” website covers the Russian mining industry.
“Citibank had never loaned Norilsk more than $50 million before. That loan, in February 2003, was tightly secured by the export sale of nickel. Also, it had been the object of a due diligence effort over many months by no less than ten other banks.”
Citibank executives privately admitted to Helmer that they secured the $800 million loan from Citibank only with Norilsk’s guarantee to repay out of metal sales.
“Potanin’s intentions were plain,” Helmer reported. “He was trying to move the mining assets he secured by rigged privatization in the 1990’s beyond the reach of the Russian government.”
“The Perestroika 5K”
Ike Kaveladze first surfaced in American life during the summer of 1989, when he ran in a race in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania named “The Perestroika 5k” in his honor. Judith Ann Flinchbaugh from Gettysburg’s second husband was the director of the Gettysburg 5k race program.
When she died four years later, she named her two sons as her survivors, as well as Irakly Kaveladze, listed as her adopted son.
A few years later, on July 6, 1993, Kaveladze made news again. This time it was because it was hot in New York City. “As the city plunges into another heat wave this week, New Yorkers are seeking refuge from the sauna-like weather wherever they can find it,” reported Newsday.
“Nearby, in Central Park yesterday, some park-goers found shaded spots, under trees and on the grass. Others escaped the heat on the deck of the Boathouse Café, sipping a cool drink.
“But yesterday’s heat didn’t seem to deter the cyclists, joggers and roller-bladers roller-blading in Central Park. “For me, it’s a better workout,” said a breathless Ike Kaveladze, 28, who was roller-blading past the Great Lawn. “The hotter the day, the more weight I lose.”
Early on Kaveladze was involved with classic nested Russian dolls, called Matryoshkas, that reflect something of the nature of the Trump-Russia scandal itself. Billionaire Aras Agalarov set up a company to manufacture the dolls in Moscow and export them to the U.S.
Today it seems an odd coincidence—or something worse—that Citibank in 2004 loaned Ike Kaveladze’s Russian oligarch boss the exact same amount that Kaveladze had years earlier laundered through the bank.
Kaveladze has been under a harsh public spotlight before, but never one this incandescent. Is there something in Ike Kaveladze’s background that made Citibank’s $800 million loan in 2004 less risky?
It’s time to take a closer look at the two American political operatives who worked with the money laundering team to win quick federal approval of the Russian purchase of Stillwater Mining, a strategic U.S. mining company.
NEXT: MEET THE BOYS BEHIND THE BORSCHT BOYS
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3352488
'Police Easily Startled' warning signs pop up around Minneapolis after Justine Damond shooting
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
Monday, July 24, 2017, 8:43 PM
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
Bill Cosby accuser arrested on heroin charge at San Diego County jail
http://www.guns.com/2017/07/25/former-p ... -vehicles/
police chief gets 2 months for stealing impounded guns ...
Guns.com-
He also admitted to lying to an FBI special agent conducting an investigation into the missing property, claiming he had bought one of the impounded vehicles ...
FBI Octopus
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/clo ... qvhnhqLSK/
'A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline' tops Lake Travis area events
Austin American-Statesman-
Aug. 16. Lakeway Men's Breakfast Club meeting: 7 a.m. at the Lakeway Activity Center, 105 Cross Creek. Robert Baker, FBI agent, will be the featured speaker.
http://www.whec.com/news/retired-fbi-sp ... n/4552844/
Retired FBI Special Agent named Grand Marshal Watkins Glen race
News 10NBC-2
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (July 25, 2017) – Zippo Manufacturing Company has named retired FBI Special Agent Wesley Wong grand marshal of the NASCAR ...
During a 30-year career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wong was involved in the investigations of John Gotti, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, TWA 800, the 2000 Millennium bomb plot, and 9/11, where he was the senior FBI on-scene commander at Ground Zero and subsequently set-up the largest fusion center in the Bureau’s history.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... l-obituary
Clancy Sigal obituary
US journalist, novelist and political activist blacklisted in Hollywood during the 1950s who fled to London, where he became a darling of the left
Tuesday 25 July 2017 08.06 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 25 July 2017 12.19 EDT
The work of the American novelist, journalist and essayist Clancy Sigal, who has died aged 90, was much admired and discussed – particularly in leftwing circles – over the course of six decades. His best known book, the novel Going Away (1961), featured a politically blacklisted Hollywood agent on a cross-country journey from Los Angeles to New York, observing with sagacity the experiences both of ordinary people and of the protagonist himself.
The novel was largely autobiographical: Clancy himself had been blacklisted in Hollywood, where he worked as a talent agent, and, in the 1950s, had spent a period on the run from J Edgar Hoover’s FBI agents. At the end of that decade he fled to London, where he began a relationship with the novelist Doris Lessing and became a darling of the London left.
Thereafter, with periods spent between the UK and the US, he wrote novels, aligned himself with political causes, became involved with the radical psychiatrist RD Laing, contributed comment pieces, columns and book reviews to various newspapers, including the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and wrote screenplays, notably for the 2002 film Frida.
Clancy acquired his chutzpah and resilience in 30s Chicago, where he was born as the result of an illicit affair between Leo Sigal and Jennie Persily, both labour organisers. Leo was almost entirely absent from Clancy’s upbringing and he was raised by his tough Jewish mother, who managed to earn a precarious living from union activities in a neighbourhood blighted by gangsters, poverty and violence.
After school he was drafted into the US Infantry, where he trained to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and retrained after VE Day for the expected invasion of Japan that never happened. He was then posted as a sergeant to occupied Germany, attending the Nuremburg war trials and determined (he insisted later) to shoot Hermann Göring.
After being demobbed Clancy returned home to become an organiser for the Detroit auto workers’ union, only to find himself expelled during one of the early cold war purges of communists and fellow travellers. He hitchhiked to Los Angeles, attracted by the promise of golden age Hollywood, where he attended UCLA and found success working as a talent agent, hustling in the day and, in his own words, playing the radical Scarlet Pimpernel by night. However, he was fired when Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures, discovered him using the studio mimeograph to run off subversive leaflets.
Now blacklisted and under the shadow of FBI surveillance, he travelled to Britain via Paris, where he had dug his sharp elbows into the set around Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and dived headlong into the violent street politics whipped up by the Algerian war of independence.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/co ... 64501.html
Judge to rule on 'calm' 911 call made by Martens to report death
Independent.ie-Jul 24, 2017
Molly Martens-Corbett (33) and her father, retired FBI agent Thomas Michael Martens (67), both deny the killing of Irish businessman Jason Corbett (39) two ...
http://www.wnyc.org/story/nj-assemblyma ... us-breach/
A New Jersey Democrat is drafting a bill in response to a WNYC report about the unusual arrangement between Governor Chris Christie and his Bridgegate attorney, Christopher Wray, who President Trump has nominated to lead the FBI.
Documents obtained by WNYC show that Wray secretly started representing Christie, at a $2 million cost to taxpayers, in September 2014. But it wasn't until 11 months later, in August 2015, that Wray and Christie signed a legally-required retainer agreement.
Legal experts said that lag time is unusual and unethical.
New Jersey Assemblyman John Wisniewski questions why Christie, who was preparing to run for president at the time, hid Wray's public job as the governor's criminal attorney.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/25/wasse ... e-country/
Wasserman Schultz’s IT Aide Arrested At Airport After Transferring $300k To Pakistan From House Office
5:41 PM 07/25/2017
Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s top information technology (IT) aide was arrested attempting to leave the country just a few hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group revealed that he is the target of an FBI investigation.
The employee, Imran Awan, had wired $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union in a House office building to two individuals in Pakistan. Credit union officials permitted the wire to go through, and his wife has already fled the country to Pakistan, after police confronted her at the airport and found $12,000 in cash hidden in her suitcase but did not stop her from boarding.
“On January 18, 2017 at 12:09 pm, an international wire transfer request form was submitted [at the Congressional Federal Credit Union] at the Longworth House Office Building in the District of Columbia, in the amount of $283,000.00, to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan,” according to an affidavit obtained by TheDCNF.
Imran Awan, a Pakistani-born IT aide, had access to all emails and files of dozens of members of Congress, as well as the password to the iPad that Wasserman Schultz used for Democratic National Committee business before she resigned as its head in July 2016.
–– –
In March, his wife Hina Alvi, who also was on the House payroll, withdrew her children from school and left the country, the affidavit says. The Capitol Police confronted her at the airport but could not stop her. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducted a search of Alvi’s bags immediately prior to her boarding the plane and located a total of $12,400.00 in U.S. cash inside. Alvi was permitted to board the flight to Qatar and she and her daughters have not returned to the United States,” the affidavit says. “Alvi had numerous pieces of luggage with her, including cardboard boxes… Your affiant does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.”
EXCLUSIVE: “8th Man was part Putin-Bush ‘Oligarch’s Ball’
Posted on July 24, 2017
When Russian Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze became the eighth and last participant identified last week attending Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Russians in Trump Tower, many wondered if there might be a reason he’d been fingered last.
Turns out, there is. His “legend,” or cover story, cannot withstand close scrutiny. Kaveladze’s lawyer Scott Balber said last week his client attended the Trump Junior meeting with the Russians “just to make sure it happened.”
That would have been an odd mis-use of his talents. Because when Ike Kaveladze attended Donald Trump’s Jr’s meeting with the Russians last year, he brought to the table with him abundant experience with putting together oligarch-to-oligarch deals.
Was that why he was at Trump Towers?
Fake news is not just what gets reported, but what gets left out
In dozens of media profiles of Kaveladze which have appeared since he was identified last Tuesday, a big chunk of his known activity while in the U.S. has somehow been redacted.
Stories profiling Kaverladze begin with the extraordinary tale of congressional investigators discovering his money laundering in 2000.
“Seventeen years ago congressional investigators looking into money laundering stumbled upon an obscure Soviet-born financier who offered ‘special services’ to his Russian clients.”
That’s Ike. Citing a November 2000 Government Accountability Office report, the reports indicated that Kaveladze laundered $1.4 billion through more than 2,000 bank accounts he opened at two U.S. banks for Russian oligarchs.
Back in 2000, Kaveladze had blasted away at investigators using the same “Russian witch hunt” characterization President Trump uses 17 years later.
Now here’s the ‘tricky part. The timeline of Kaveladze’s history in the U.S leaps directly and inexplicably ahead from 2000 to the present. But there is something wrong here.
Kaveladze’s timeline doesn’t match his tick-tock.
“On Tuesday that man, Irakly Kaveladze, resurfaced as the latest foreign ‘guest’ on the ever-expanding list of participants to last year’s June 2016 meeting where Donald Trump Jr was hoping to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton.”
We don’t pretend to know why, but news report to date about the last man identified as being in the room with Donald Trump Jr and Russians and folders with TOP SECRET stickers on them, have all left out Kaveladze’s attendance at The Oligarch’s Ball.
The part they left out
Three years after successfully laundering $1.4 billion for the Russian Mob, Ike Kaveladze surfaced again in 2003. This time he was playing an important role in the sale of a U.S. company, Stillwater Mining, to Russia’s huge Norilsk Mining, which produces nickel, palladium, platinum, copper and cobalt.
In November 2002, Norilsk of Siberia, which is apparently located at the back-end of nowhere, even though its listed as one of the world’s most polluted places, announced its intention to buy Stillwater Mining of Montana—the U.S.’s only producer of palladium, used in catalytic converters, and found in only three places on the planet: the U.S. Russia, and South Africa— for $341 million.
Surprisingly, they were very quickly successful in purchasing controlling interest in the company.
The Norilsk-Stillwater deal was unprecedented in its scope and significance. It required strong lobbying in the U.S. with the Federal Trade Commission, and with an inter-agency body called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews foreign transactions which may have an effect on U.S. national security.
To help make it happen, President Bush flew to St Petersburg Russia on June 3, 2003 to help his friend Vladimir Putin celebrate his hometown’s 300th birthday. In a lunch in the Konstantin Palace the two men huddled over the terms of the deal.
Along with former Bush officials in the Carlyle Group, the sweetheart deal Kaveladze helped put together nearly passed unnoticed, because of the Iraq War.
But it outraged many industry observers. One of them, Andrew Meier, writing in Harpers magazine in April 2004, called what transpired “The Oligarch’s Ball.”
The subhead: “Washington’s plutocrats court their Russian counterparts.”
Thirst for oil, etc etc.
Washington-based private equity fund Carlyle Group, which boasted former Bush alumni like James Baker, as well as the former President himself, lost Arab investors after the 9/11 attack, who either withdrew their money or saw it returned when it became impolitic to hang on to.
Among them, Meier explained, was Shafiq Bin Laden, one of Osama’s numerous brothers.
America’s thirst for non-Arab oil was increasing exponentially at the same time. It prompted a fundamental shift in U.S. policy towards Russia. The oligarchs came alive, and quickly learned to thrive.
“They need the oligarchs now more than ever,” said a Moscow financier who has had longtime dealings with Carlyle. “They’re replacing the Bin Laden’s with the Potanin’s and the Khodorkovsky’s.”
The “Potanin’s” refers to the Kremlin’s favorite oligarch at the time, Vladimir Potanin, a 42-year old banker who, with a second Russian billionaire, Mikhail Prokhorov, jointly controlled the Norilsk metals empire.
Speaking as one oligarch to another
Mikhail Prokhorov has gone on to become the most famous Russian in Brooklyn, no mean feat. He currently owns the NBA’s also-ran Nets.
Donald Trump’s oligarch-to-oligarch deals may be more brazen, but oligarch-to-oligarch collusion under cover of government diplomacy has apparently been going on longer than many suspected.
“On the subject of oligarchs—the clutch of Russian ‘entrepreneurs’ who had seized the spoils of the Soviet state and become preposterously rich overnight—the governor of Texas railed against their contributions to Russia’s twin epidemics of crime and corruption,” Meier writes in the Oligarch Ball.
“The real fundamental question for Russia,” Bush told Jim Lehrer in 2000, “is what will Russian look like? A market economy? Or one of those economies where a favored few elite are able to put money in their own pockets? And it’s something that we need to be concerned about; something we need to watch very carefully.”
“That approach to the Bush Administration’s dealings with the oligarchs seems not to have lasted long. The administration, its corporate proxies, and even the president’s own father have been waging a campaign to charm the oligarchs, the same “favored few elite” candidates Bush had earlier discerned were the clear and present danger in the Russian morass.”
“Out of an abundance of caution.”
To ensure the historic union, Norilsk hired Baker Botts, the Houston-based law firm run by James A. Baker III. Andrew Meier called it “an instructive example of the oligarch’s new clout in Washington.”
Norilsk engaged two U.S. lobbyists to smooth the way for federal approval of the deal in the U.S. The men became two of the five nominees to the new Stillwater board of directors.
Atop the list was Craig Fuller, former chief of staff to George H.W. Bush, co-chair of the presidential transition team, and chairman of the 1992 Republican convention.
Largely unknown outside Washington, D.C. Fuller has been called one of the “most important Republicans alive.”
In addition to Fuller, the others were former Democratic Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., Jack E. Thompson, Vice Chairman of Barrick Gold Corporation; and two experienced lawyers, Steven S. Lucas and Todd D. Schafer.
But not Ike Kaveladze. A Russian language press release headlined “Norilsk offers Steve Lucas to replace Ike Kaveladze on Stillwater Board” explained why.
“US citizen Irakly Kaveladze, a former classmate of the general director of Norilsk, Mikhail Prokhorov, was mentioned in 2000 in connection with money laundering through the Bank of New York. Therefore the Company decided not to take risks.”
“It’s a theater of financiers.”
Norilsk and Stillwater controlled over 50% of the palladium in the world. Yet U.S. Federal agencies rolled over and immediately signed off on the deal. The FTC even granted early termination of the waiting period for the transaction, and it closed on June 23, 2003.
About the only disgruntled parties were locals in Montana, where the Stillwater mines were located, along with many mining industry analysts. “Just ten years after the Cold War ended, our once-mortal enemy now stands to control half of the world’s supply of palladium with its foot right in America’s heartland,” wrote one.
In The Oligarch’s Ball” Meier wrote, “Since the days of the Romanov’s trade and commerce, Russia has followed a patriarchal model, in which courtiers who wish to succeed must “kiss the ring,” as Russians like to say.”
“The success of the Russian oligarchs abroad delivers a bitter and familiar lesson. Business and politics have always been inseparable in Russia…
“In America these days, things are not so very different.”
“Ecoutez and repetez!”
Since Kaveladze is a name we’ll be hearing often, getting it’s pronunciation right— it’s Kah-veh-LAHD’-zeh—may well separate the cognoscenti from those occupying cheaper seats in the coming circus.
Kaveladze’s lawyer Scott Balber said last week that his client attended the Trump Junior meeting with Russians “just to make sure it happened.”
Attorney Balber also said his client was “cooperating fully with investigators.”
But there is reason to doubt both statements. Ike himself was incommunicado. Or maybe he’d already fled the country. And attorney Balber often works for Donald Trump. He threatened to sue, on Donald’s behalf, HBO host Bill Maher for likening Trump to an orangutan. Cooler head prevailed.
As to the wheraqbouts of Ike, it certainly sounds as if he left town in a hurry.
“No one answered the door or the phone at Kaveladze’s three-story home in Huntington Beach,” reported the L.A. Times. “A dresser and other small pieces of furniture sat on the front lawn.”
Link du jour
http://www.davidyoungpoet.com/page8.html
http://www.latimes.com/business/technol ... story.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3354224
http://www.centralmaine.com/2017/07/19/ ... s-at-miff/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3354740
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ntering-us
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/07/25/ ... f-warming/
More Fire and Anthrax for the Arctic: Study Finds 21 to 25 Percent of Northern Permafrost Will Thaw at Just 1.5 C of Warming
In the far north, the land is rippling, trembling, subsiding, and blowing up as greenhouse gasses are released from thawing frozen soil. Meanwhile, old diseases are being released from thawing carcasses and presenting a health hazard to locals. Strange processes that are likely to accelerate soon as global warming approaches 1.5 degrees Celsius and between 21 and 25.5 percent of all the vast region of Northern Permafrost thaws out.
(More methane blowholes like this one in Yamal are likely as permafrost thaw accelerates in the coming years and pockets of methane explosively remove the land above. How extensive permafrost thaw becomes is directly dependent on how much fossil fuel human societies decide to burn. Image source: The Siberian Times.)
Arctic Carbon Feedbacks Accelerating
Carbon feedbacks from the thawing permafrost are a serious concern. And they should be. There’s about 1,400 billion tons of carbon locked away in that massive region of frozen ground. More than twice the amount humans have already emitted into the atmosphere. And though frozen permafrost carbon stays locked away, thawed permafrost carbon tends to become biologically active — releasing into soils, the water and the air.
Already, this thawing has generated a worrying effect. During the 20th Century, it was estimated that about 500,000 tons of methane were released from the Siberian land-based permafrost region. By 2003, as this permafrost zone warmed, the annual rate of release was estimated to be 3.8 million tons per year. And by 2013, with still greater warming, the rate of release had grown to 17 million tons per year. This compares to a global emission of methane from all sources — both human and Earth System-based — of about 500 million tons per year.
(Megaslump craters like the one at Batagaika, formed by subsidence, are also a result of permafrost thaw. Such features are likely to grow and proliferate as the Earth warms and permafrost thaw expands.)
That’s a thirty-fold acceleration in the rate of Siberian permafrost methane emission over a little more than one generation. One that occurred as temperatures rose to about 1 C above 1880s averages and into a range not seen for about 150,000 years. It’s a warming that has produced visible and concerning geophysical changes throughout the Arctic permafrost environment. In Siberia, lands are subsiding even as more and more methane and carbon dioxide are leeching out. And in the Yamal region of Arctic Russia, temperatures warming into the upper 80s (30 C+) during summer appear to have set off a rash of methane eruptions from the soil even as ancient reindeer carcasses release anthrax spores into the environment as they thaw. From a report this week in The Guardian:
Long dormant spores of the highly infectious anthrax bacteria frozen in the carcass of an infected reindeer rejuvenated themselves and infected herds of reindeer and eventually local people. More recently, a huge explosion was heard in June in the Yamal Peninsula. Reindeer herders camped nearby saw flames shooting up with pillars of smoke and found a large crater left in the ground. Melting permafrost was again suspected, thawing out dead vegetation and erupting in a blowout of highly flammable methane gas.
21 to 25.5 Percent of Northern Permafrost Set to Thaw over Next Two Decades
In total, 14 methane blow out craters are now identified throughout the Yamal region. A testament to the growing carbon feedback coming from previously frozen and inactive stores.
(Permafrost losses are likely to be quite considerable over the coming decades — which is likely to produce serious knock-on effects for local and global environments. But continued fossil fuel burning through end Century produces more catastrophic results. Image source: Responses and changes in the permafrost and snow water equivalent in the Northern Hemisphere under a scenario of 1.5 C warming.)
But, unfortunately, these kinds of weird, disturbing, and often dangerous changes to northern environments are just a foreshadowing of more to come. For a recent scientific study has found that just 1.5 degrees Celsius worth of warming will force between 21 and 25.5 percent of the northern permafrost to thaw. A process that is already underway, but that will continue to accelerate with each 0.1 degree Celsius of additional warming. The study found that the faster human atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions build up, the more rapidly permafrost would thaw once the 1.5 C threshold was reached. Under a rapid human reduction of greenhouse gasses (RCP 2.6 scenario), permafrost thaw was reduced to 21 percent in the study. But under worst case human fossil fuel emissions (RCP 8.5 scenario), the accelerated rate of warming resulted in 25.5 percent permafrost thaw.
Perhaps more concerning was the fact that the study found that this 1.5 C temperature threshold was reached by as early as 2023 under the worst case fossil fuel burning scenario even as it was held off only to 2027 if rapid fossil fuel burning reductions were achieved. A broader sampling of studies and natural variability hold out some hope that 1.5 C might be pushed back to the early to mid 2030s in the absolute best case. However, considering the amount of human emissions already released and in the pipeline even under the best cases, it appears that crossing the 1.5 C threshold sometime in the near future is unavoidable at this time (barring some unforeseen massive global response and mobilization).
(Permafrost losses under different human emissions scenarios through 2100 show that continued fossil fuel burning results in between 47 and 87 percent loss of permafrost area by 2100 [RCP 4.5 and 8.5]. Image source: Responses and changes in the permafrost and snow water equivalent in the Northern Hemisphere under a scenario of 1.5 C warming.)
Overall, the study found that surface permafrost losses lagged the crossing of the 1.5 C threshold by only about 10 years. And that the lowest emissions scenarios (RCP 2.6) resulted in a leveling off of permafrost losses to 24 percent by 2100. Meanwhile, the worst case human greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (RCP 8.5) resulted in 87 percent permafrost area reductions by 2100.
Risk of Serious Carbon Feedback Far Worse With Fossil Fuel Burning
With so much carbon locked away in permafrost, heightened rates of thaw present a risk that longer term warming might eventually run away as millions and billions of tons of carbon are ultimately liberated. Under moderate to worst case human fossil fuel burning scenarios, it is estimated that permafrost carbon emissions could approach 1 billion tons per year or more. At about 10 percent or more of the present human emission, such a rate of release to the atmosphere is about equivalent to that achieved during the last hyper-thermal event of 55 million years ago (the PETM). Moreover, a heightened response by large methane stores could result in a more immediate warming effect as methane is 28 to 36 times more potent a heat trapping gas than carbon dioxide over Century time scales.
A risk of serious carbon feedbacks that accelerate rates of warming this Century and over the longer term is not inconsiderable even with a 24 percent loss of Permafrost under the best case scenario identified by this study. However, the likelihood of a much more serious feedback under continued fossil fuel burning is far more apparent.
(UPDATED)
Links:
Responses and changes in the permafrost and snow water equivalent in the Northern Hemisphere under a scenario of 1.5 C warming
All Hell Breaks Loose as Tundra Thaws
Permafrost Thaw to Blow Carbon Budget Faster Than We Would Expect
PETM Hyperthermal
Arctic Methane Emissions
RCP Scenarios
Hat tip to Spike
see link for full story
http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/07/21/ex ... mining-co/
EXCLUSIVE: ‘8th Man’ in mystery purchase of U.S. Mining Co.
Posted on July 21, 2017
It’s been widely reported that Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, the “8th man” who attended the June 2016 meeting where Donald Trump Jr. was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, had years earlier laundered $800 million through Citibank.
What’s remained unknown until now is that Citibank ALSO loaned the exact same amount, $800 million, to Kaveladze’s Russian oligarch boss at the time.
An itinerary that refuses to come into the light
At the now-famous confab in Trump Towers, Kaveladze was representing Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov, who was paid $20 million to bring Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant to his family’s Moscow concert hall in 2013.
Reports stated Kaveladze began working for Agalarov in the early 1990s. Federal investigators were said to believe he began laundering money shortly thereafter.
However Ike Kaveladze’s U.S. itinerary is far more mysterious than what’s been so far reported. Here’s what’s already known:
In 2000, Kaveladze incorporated 2000 shell companies in Delaware, then ran their deposits through either Citibank, which investigators concluded had laundered $800 million for unknown Eastern European and Russian “clients,” or Commercial Bank of San Francisco, which laundered an additional $600 million.
Kaveladze’s actions— caught laundering hundreds of million of dollars for the Russian Mob— became the subject of a Congressional investigation into how Russians were able to so easily launder billions through U.S. banks.
Overnight a bank disappears
According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, Kaveladze was a central figure in a near decade-long effort to launder $1.4 billion of Russian and Eastern European money through U.S. banks.
A Government Accountability Office report—requested by then-Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.)— concluded it was “relatively easy” for foreigners to use shell companies to open U.S. bank accounts and route hidden money through the American financial system.
When U.S. authorities discovered the scam, Commercial Bank immediately disappeared from existence.
Citibank, being somewhat larger (assets of S1.7 trillion), did not have that option. The bank was forced to scrape their feet in the dust, admitting a few “lapses” in deliberately vague press releases.
Sen. Levin, who retired in 2014, issued a statement on Tuesday calling Kaveladze a “poster child” for the practice of using shell companies to launder dirty money.
Disquieting news: Neither Kaveladze nor either of the two U.S. bank were ever charged with any crime. “Lapses” allowing the laundering of $800 million of unknown money apparently don’t even rise to the level of nuisance crime.
Citibank “dances with bears”
Kaveladze surfaced again several years later. The Mining Journal, a trade publication, reported on April 11, 2003:
“Metals producer MMC Norilsk Nickel of Russia has named five nominees to the board of Stillwater Mining Co. in respect of its proposed acquisition of a 51% interest in the US-based company.”
Kaveladze was working in the U.S. for another Russian oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, when he engaged two U.S. lobbyists, one a prominent Republican, the other a former Democratic Senator, to smooth the way for federal approval of the purchase of U.S. mining company Stillwater by Potanin’s Norilsk Mining, Russia’s largest, producing nickel, palladium, platinum, copper and cobalt.
One month before that purchase, in February 2003, Citibank loaned Norilsk Nickel $50 million, tightly secured by the export sale of nickel, and already the object of due diligence over many months by no less than ten other banks.
Eyebrows were raised a year later Citibank loaned Potanin’s Norilsk $800 million. Several years earlier, while head of Russian bank Uneximbank, Potanin had “defaulted” on billions of dollars of obligations, which is not a usual resume item for someone finding himself at the center of one of the largest Russian offshore transactions to date, and the largest-ever Russian borrowing from Citibank at that time.
Collateral is out. Kompromat is in
“Citibank’s credit committee and legal department wouldn’t readily approve lending $800 million to Potanin without trusting him,” said Moscow business journalist John Helmer, whose “Dances with Bears” website covers the Russian mining industry.
“Citibank had never loaned Norilsk more than $50 million before. That loan, in February 2003, was tightly secured by the export sale of nickel. Also, it had been the object of a due diligence effort over many months by no less than ten other banks.”
Citibank executives privately admitted to Helmer that they secured the $800 million loan from Citibank only with Norilsk’s guarantee to repay out of metal sales.
“Potanin’s intentions were plain,” Helmer reported. “He was trying to move the mining assets he secured by rigged privatization in the 1990’s beyond the reach of the Russian government.”
“The Perestroika 5K”
Ike Kaveladze first surfaced in American life during the summer of 1989, when he ran in a race in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania named “The Perestroika 5k” in his honor. Judith Ann Flinchbaugh from Gettysburg’s second husband was the director of the Gettysburg 5k race program.
When she died four years later, she named her two sons as her survivors, as well as Irakly Kaveladze, listed as her adopted son.
A few years later, on July 6, 1993, Kaveladze made news again. This time it was because it was hot in New York City. “As the city plunges into another heat wave this week, New Yorkers are seeking refuge from the sauna-like weather wherever they can find it,” reported Newsday.
“Nearby, in Central Park yesterday, some park-goers found shaded spots, under trees and on the grass. Others escaped the heat on the deck of the Boathouse Café, sipping a cool drink.
“But yesterday’s heat didn’t seem to deter the cyclists, joggers and roller-bladers roller-blading in Central Park. “For me, it’s a better workout,” said a breathless Ike Kaveladze, 28, who was roller-blading past the Great Lawn. “The hotter the day, the more weight I lose.”
Early on Kaveladze was involved with classic nested Russian dolls, called Matryoshkas, that reflect something of the nature of the Trump-Russia scandal itself. Billionaire Aras Agalarov set up a company to manufacture the dolls in Moscow and export them to the U.S.
Today it seems an odd coincidence—or something worse—that Citibank in 2004 loaned Ike Kaveladze’s Russian oligarch boss the exact same amount that Kaveladze had years earlier laundered through the bank.
Kaveladze has been under a harsh public spotlight before, but never one this incandescent. Is there something in Ike Kaveladze’s background that made Citibank’s $800 million loan in 2004 less risky?
It’s time to take a closer look at the two American political operatives who worked with the money laundering team to win quick federal approval of the Russian purchase of Stillwater Mining, a strategic U.S. mining company.
NEXT: MEET THE BOYS BEHIND THE BORSCHT BOYS
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3352488
'Police Easily Startled' warning signs pop up around Minneapolis after Justine Damond shooting
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
Monday, July 24, 2017, 8:43 PM
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
Bill Cosby accuser arrested on heroin charge at San Diego County jail
http://www.guns.com/2017/07/25/former-p ... -vehicles/
police chief gets 2 months for stealing impounded guns ...
Guns.com-
He also admitted to lying to an FBI special agent conducting an investigation into the missing property, claiming he had bought one of the impounded vehicles ...
FBI Octopus
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/clo ... qvhnhqLSK/
'A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline' tops Lake Travis area events
Austin American-Statesman-
Aug. 16. Lakeway Men's Breakfast Club meeting: 7 a.m. at the Lakeway Activity Center, 105 Cross Creek. Robert Baker, FBI agent, will be the featured speaker.
http://www.whec.com/news/retired-fbi-sp ... n/4552844/
Retired FBI Special Agent named Grand Marshal Watkins Glen race
News 10NBC-2
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (July 25, 2017) – Zippo Manufacturing Company has named retired FBI Special Agent Wesley Wong grand marshal of the NASCAR ...
During a 30-year career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wong was involved in the investigations of John Gotti, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, TWA 800, the 2000 Millennium bomb plot, and 9/11, where he was the senior FBI on-scene commander at Ground Zero and subsequently set-up the largest fusion center in the Bureau’s history.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... l-obituary
Clancy Sigal obituary
US journalist, novelist and political activist blacklisted in Hollywood during the 1950s who fled to London, where he became a darling of the left
Tuesday 25 July 2017 08.06 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 25 July 2017 12.19 EDT
The work of the American novelist, journalist and essayist Clancy Sigal, who has died aged 90, was much admired and discussed – particularly in leftwing circles – over the course of six decades. His best known book, the novel Going Away (1961), featured a politically blacklisted Hollywood agent on a cross-country journey from Los Angeles to New York, observing with sagacity the experiences both of ordinary people and of the protagonist himself.
The novel was largely autobiographical: Clancy himself had been blacklisted in Hollywood, where he worked as a talent agent, and, in the 1950s, had spent a period on the run from J Edgar Hoover’s FBI agents. At the end of that decade he fled to London, where he began a relationship with the novelist Doris Lessing and became a darling of the London left.
Thereafter, with periods spent between the UK and the US, he wrote novels, aligned himself with political causes, became involved with the radical psychiatrist RD Laing, contributed comment pieces, columns and book reviews to various newspapers, including the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and wrote screenplays, notably for the 2002 film Frida.
Clancy acquired his chutzpah and resilience in 30s Chicago, where he was born as the result of an illicit affair between Leo Sigal and Jennie Persily, both labour organisers. Leo was almost entirely absent from Clancy’s upbringing and he was raised by his tough Jewish mother, who managed to earn a precarious living from union activities in a neighbourhood blighted by gangsters, poverty and violence.
After school he was drafted into the US Infantry, where he trained to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and retrained after VE Day for the expected invasion of Japan that never happened. He was then posted as a sergeant to occupied Germany, attending the Nuremburg war trials and determined (he insisted later) to shoot Hermann Göring.
After being demobbed Clancy returned home to become an organiser for the Detroit auto workers’ union, only to find himself expelled during one of the early cold war purges of communists and fellow travellers. He hitchhiked to Los Angeles, attracted by the promise of golden age Hollywood, where he attended UCLA and found success working as a talent agent, hustling in the day and, in his own words, playing the radical Scarlet Pimpernel by night. However, he was fired when Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures, discovered him using the studio mimeograph to run off subversive leaflets.
Now blacklisted and under the shadow of FBI surveillance, he travelled to Britain via Paris, where he had dug his sharp elbows into the set around Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and dived headlong into the violent street politics whipped up by the Algerian war of independence.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/co ... 64501.html
Judge to rule on 'calm' 911 call made by Martens to report death
Independent.ie-Jul 24, 2017
Molly Martens-Corbett (33) and her father, retired FBI agent Thomas Michael Martens (67), both deny the killing of Irish businessman Jason Corbett (39) two ...
http://www.wnyc.org/story/nj-assemblyma ... us-breach/
A New Jersey Democrat is drafting a bill in response to a WNYC report about the unusual arrangement between Governor Chris Christie and his Bridgegate attorney, Christopher Wray, who President Trump has nominated to lead the FBI.
Documents obtained by WNYC show that Wray secretly started representing Christie, at a $2 million cost to taxpayers, in September 2014. But it wasn't until 11 months later, in August 2015, that Wray and Christie signed a legally-required retainer agreement.
Legal experts said that lag time is unusual and unethical.
New Jersey Assemblyman John Wisniewski questions why Christie, who was preparing to run for president at the time, hid Wray's public job as the governor's criminal attorney.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/25/wasse ... e-country/
Wasserman Schultz’s IT Aide Arrested At Airport After Transferring $300k To Pakistan From House Office
5:41 PM 07/25/2017
Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s top information technology (IT) aide was arrested attempting to leave the country just a few hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group revealed that he is the target of an FBI investigation.
The employee, Imran Awan, had wired $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union in a House office building to two individuals in Pakistan. Credit union officials permitted the wire to go through, and his wife has already fled the country to Pakistan, after police confronted her at the airport and found $12,000 in cash hidden in her suitcase but did not stop her from boarding.
“On January 18, 2017 at 12:09 pm, an international wire transfer request form was submitted [at the Congressional Federal Credit Union] at the Longworth House Office Building in the District of Columbia, in the amount of $283,000.00, to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan,” according to an affidavit obtained by TheDCNF.
Imran Awan, a Pakistani-born IT aide, had access to all emails and files of dozens of members of Congress, as well as the password to the iPad that Wasserman Schultz used for Democratic National Committee business before she resigned as its head in July 2016.
–– –
In March, his wife Hina Alvi, who also was on the House payroll, withdrew her children from school and left the country, the affidavit says. The Capitol Police confronted her at the airport but could not stop her. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducted a search of Alvi’s bags immediately prior to her boarding the plane and located a total of $12,400.00 in U.S. cash inside. Alvi was permitted to board the flight to Qatar and she and her daughters have not returned to the United States,” the affidavit says. “Alvi had numerous pieces of luggage with her, including cardboard boxes… Your affiant does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.”
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Re: FBI hand seen on the Lie bomb joystick controller
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/20 ... 44770.html
The Oklahoma City Bombing–Secrets Worth Dying For?
David Paul Hammer is on Death Row. He is was also on Death Row with the Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Hammer claims that McVeigh told him that he worked for US Black OPs and worked for a person called the Major. The Major was supposedly McVeigh’s handler up until the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Obviously the word of a person on Death Row may not be the best source. But the story is also backed up to an extent by the other co-conspirator in the bombing. Terry Nichols says that there was some sort of government and FBI involvement in the bombing.
.…Those familiar with the details of the case say Nichols has evidently come to conclude-as have many independent investigators-that he (Nichols) and McVeigh were being manipulated prior to the bombing by federal authorities in what was intended to be a “sting” the feds would use as “proof” of their skill in tackling domestic “terrorist threats” from “radical right wing extremists.”
However, it is believed, the sting went awry, possibly manipulated by others outside the loop, and the bombing occurred….(source: rense.com)
The US government likely had and has sources deep inside the militia movements. Also, there is such a thing as government intelligence agencies acting in concert with terrorist groups.
For example, one of the IRAs top torturers actually worked for British Intelligence.
.…He is the British spy who operated at the heart of the IRA’s most brutal enforcement team. Yet Stakeknife was only one of five highly- placed agents working inside the republican terror group, The Observer has discovered.
In the wake of the controversy that has rocked the IRA and the British security services, it has emerged that four more senior Provisionals, including Stakeknife’s deputy, were double agents….(source: guardian.co.uk)
Hammer, an inmate lawyer, claims that McVeigh believed that he would not be executed. That, according to Hammer, McVeigh figured he would be given a drug and that the execution would be staged.
Still there are some big fat holes in the Hammer story.
If McVeigh thought he was working for the government, why wouldn’t he be a bit upset about sitting on death row for years?
If McVeigh was actually working for the government, why wasn’t he killed or even allowed to escape so the story wouldn’t get out?
It is true that the militia movement was growing and dangerous when the Oklahoma City Bombing occurred. The bombing did in fact completely blacken the militia movement’s image with the American public. So as Hammer tells Alex Jones in an interview (see below), McVeigh relates the bombing was used to destroy the militia movement.
The Hammer/Nichols story also has some additional support.
According to a Democracy Now interview:
….A Salt Lake City lawyer searching for the truth behind his brother’s death has uncovered a wealth of new information that could implicate the FBI in the Oklahoma City bombings. The documents he dug up suggest the FBI knew about the plot to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in advance but did little to prevent it. Jesse Trentadue’s brother Kenney Trentadue was found dead in his prison cell in Oklahoma City in August 1995. The FBI calls it a suicide, but Jesse maintains Kenney was beaten to death during an interrogation. Jesse believes the FBI mistook his brother for the missing second suspect in the Oklahoma City bombings – the so-called “John Doe #2.” His research also suggests that the bombing was not the work of one or two men, but involved a wider network connected to the far-right white supremacist movement….(source)
It is likely the true players and the actual events involving the Oklahoma City Bombing will never be known. For now, we only have the story of killers and a US government that few trust.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2128921/posts
FBI fights order for deposition of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator, death-row inmate
The FBI is appealing an order that allows a Utah attorney to conduct taped depositions of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and a death-row inmate.
Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes that the two inmates have valuable information about his brother's death in a federal prison - and about the FBI's alleged withholding of many of the relevant documents requested in his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit.
Authorities say the August 1995 death of Kenneth Trentadue in a cell at an Oklahoma City federal prison was a suicide, but the inmate's family believes he was mistaken for a bombing conspirator and that guards strangled him with a set of plastic handcuffs in an interrogation that got out of hand.
To support that theory, Jesse Trentadue has filed three FOIA lawsuits. As part of one of those suits, he requested an order allowing the depositions from Nichols and David Paul Hammer, who now is on death row at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind.
Lawyers for the FBI objected, saying the agency has made appropriate searches for documents.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball granted Trentadue's request last year. He reaffirmed that order in September after the FBI asked him to reconsider.
On Tuesday, nov. 4 the FBI filed a notice that it is asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to reverse the order.
The body of Kenneth Trentadue, who had served time for bank robbery and was being held on an alleged parole violation, was found hanging in his cell on Aug. 21, 1995.
Nichols and Hammer already have supplied Jesse Trentadue with written affidavits concerning Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the bombing and was executed in 2001.
Nichols - who is serving a life sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo. - claims a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing McVeigh in the plot. Both Nichols and Hammer, who says he had lengthy conversations with McVeigh while the two were both housed at the Terre Haute facility, say McVeigh claimed to be an undercover operative for the military.
The FBI has denied any role in the bombing.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdu ... story.html
FBI denies witness tampering accusation
The FBI did not pressure a former government operative into backing out of testifying in a lawsuit claiming the agency failed to search its files for additional videos of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, a new FBI report shows.
The bureau's office of inspections disclosed the report on Friday, a day after U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups threatened the FBI with contempt of court for not completing the tampering investigation as he had ordered.
The lawsuit was filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes there is video showing Timothy McVeigh was not alone in detonating the bomb in Oklahoma.
Trentadue believes the presence of a second suspect would explain why his brother was flown to Oklahoma months after the bombing. His brother died in a federal holding cell.
The case reached trial because the judge was not satisfied by the FBI's previous explanations after the lawsuit was filed in 2008. The judge also cited the public importance of the possible tapes.
Trentadue leveled the witness tampering allegation during trial in July. Department of Justice attorneys said they were false, but Waddoups ordered the FBI to look into the claim.
Former operative John Matthews had been set to testify about his involvement in a stealth government operation that tracked militia movements and included McVeigh, Trentadue said.
The agency's report said Matthews called the FBI in Utah to tell them he didn't want to testify during the lawsuit and asked how he could get out of it.
FBI inspectors said they listened to five recorded phone conversations between Matthews and agent Adam Quirk and determined Matthews was never intimidated or discouraged from testifying.
The report found Quirk should have notified the Justice Department about the calls and been clearer about the FBI not being able to give advice about testifying. Still, the agency said there was no tampering.
The report includes partially redacted transcripts of several recorded phone conversations. One call from Quirk's cellphone was not recorded, and there is no transcript.
Matthews also sent an email saying he made the decision to back out of testifying on his own, the report says.
A transcript of one phone call shows Matthews telling Quirk that he wasn't going to testify unless a judge issued a subpoena. If he was forced to testify, he said, "I'm going to sit there on the stand and say I don't recall anything."
Matthews later added, "This is old stuff and it don't need to be brought up again."
In a different call, Matthews said he met Timothy McVeigh before the bombing but "just because I crossed someone's path don't mean I have anything to share."
Quirk told investigators the nature of the unrecorded, four-minute call from his cellphone was similar to the recorded ones.
"This report does not put my mind at ease," Trentadue said. "It just raises more
https://www.courthousenews.com/horrible ... -agencies/
Horrible Child Abuse Blamed on Arizona Agencies
June 27, 2017
After Arizona’s Department of Child Safety placed a toddler with a man who ran a “pornographic pedophile ring” out of his home, it moved her to a home where the foster mother burned her with scalding water over 80 percent of her body, the little girl’s guardian claims in court.
Fleming and Curti PLC, court-appointed guardian of Jane Doe, sued Arizona, its Department of Child Safety, other state agencies, the Christian Family Care Agency and a host of other institutions and people, in Pima County Court.
The Department of Child Safety, formerly Child Protective Services, removed Jane Doe from her biological mother’s home in 2013, when she was 2, and placed her with David and Barbara Frodsham, a state-licensed foster home, according to the June 16 lawsuit.
The state allowed Jane to stay with the Frodshams for 18 months, despite her biological mother’s complaints of “Jane Doe’s repeated documented urinary tract infections,” the complaint states.
“Instead of investigating Jane Doe’s biological mother’s concerns of abuse, [DCS] and the defendant caseworkers accused her of making false and exaggerated reports to DCS,” according to the complaint.
The state did not act until David Frodsham, driving drunk, left 3-year-old Jane and another child in his parked car while he was collecting his foster parent check in a state office, while “visibly drunk and acting belligerent.” Police were called and found Frodsham had a .28 blood alcohol concentration. They removed Jane from his care but did not investigate his home, the complaint states.
It continues: “Later, David Frodsham was arrested and accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, procuring minors for sex, and possessing and/or manufacturing child pornography. Law enforcement’s investigation revealed a video made by David Frodsham of a 3- or 4-year-old girl being penetrated by an adult male and screaming for her mommy. David Frodsham pled guilty rather than face a trial and has been sentenced to 17 years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. David Frodsham was part of a pornography ring involving numerous children in his pornography and the procurement of sex for the ring.” (Citation to sentencing document omitted.)
Four more state and federal cases involving a child placed in Frodsham’s home are pending against him, and more are expected to be filed, according to the complaint.
Unfortunately, things did not improve much when the state moved Jane into the care of Justin and Samantha Osteraas, her guardian says. According to the complaint, “Defendant Samantha Osteraas submerged and held down Jane Doe, a 5-year-old, in a bath of scalding hot water. Jane Doe suffered severe burns over 80 percent of her body. When police arrived, there was blood on the floor and piece of Jane Doe’s skin were falling off her body. There were bruises to her neck and arms along with other signs of trauma.”
Jane had to be placed in a medically induced coma, suffering from organ failure. She lost her toes to amputation “and will undergo lifelong operations to replace 80 percent of the skin on her body and will need incredible amounts of care for the duration of her life as a result of the abuse she suffered in the Osteraases’ home.”
Samantha Osteraas, 28, was arrested in January this year and charged with child abuse. The state then removed her three biological children from her home, according to the Arizona Daily Star. She is awaiting trial.
Jane’s guardian seeks punitive damages for negligence, respondeat superior, breach of duty, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and battery, and constitutional violations.
Here are the defendants: State of Arizona; Arizona Department of Child Safety; Arizona Department of Economic Security; Child Protective Services; Division of Children, Youth and Families; Christian Family Care; Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona Inc.; St. Nicholas of Myra; Mark Brnovich; Gregory McKay; Charles Flanagan; Clarence Carter; Jeannette Sheldon; Eva Pena; Katherine Mayer; Cassie Dixon; Monica Reyes; Norel Alviti; Rosette Codner; Jack Roddy; David Frodsham; Barbara Frodsham; Samantha Osteraas; and Justin Osteraas.
Jane is represented by the Cadigan Law Firm and Carillo Law Firms of Tucson, and by Manly, Stewart & Finaldi in Irvine, Calif.
A DCS spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... doc-fanon/
Banning Black Liberation: Michigan prisoners are barred from reading Frantz Fanon
Fanon’s anti-colonial text “Black Skin, White Masks” listed alongside “Mein Kampf” as material banned for “advocating racial supremacy”
Written by Alec Shea
Edited by JPat Brown
Michigan Department of Correction’s (MDOC) 60-page long list of books banned in state prisons, acquired by MuckRock through a public records request, includes 43 that are prohibited for “advocating racial supremacy.” These titles include Mein Kampf, The Turner Diaries, and, alarmingly, Black Skin, White Masks, by post-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon. MDOC’s ban on an important anti-colonial text is one reminder of the inconsistent, and potentially biased, book banning practices that exist in prisons across the United States.
Fanon was born in Martinique when it was still a French colony and much of his writing was devoted to studying the psychic and social impacts of colonialism on the colonized. In the introduction to Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon wrote that, “This book is a clinical study. Those who recognize themselves in it, I think, will have made a step forward. I seriously hope to persuade my brother, whether black or white, to tear off with all his strength the shameful livery put together by centuries of incomprehension.” Fanon wrote the book, which would be the first and one of the most well-known texts he would publish, in 1951. MDOC made the decision to ban it in 2000, meaning that prisoners have been barred from reading it for the past 17 years.
When contacted for comment, Maurice Wade, a professor of philosophy at Trinity College, said that “Black Skin, White Masks, is by no means advocating racial supremacy. Even in the introductory sections of the text, Fanon clearly states that his purpose is to overcome black alienation, the alienation that black people in general suffer in societies in which black skin is taken by the white-skinned majority to be an indelible sign of permanent inferiority.” Nigel Gibson, a professor at Emerson college and author of four books about Fanon, said that the MDOC’s decision to classify the book as advocating racial supremacy shows that “the person who made that claim hasn’t read the book, quite simply.”
The MDOC, speaking to MuckRock, did not have any specific comment on the decision to ban Black Skin, White Masks. Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the department described the process through which books are determined to be out of line with prison guidelines. Decisions taken at the level of individual facilities are reviewed by the MDOC centrally, which produces the list of publications that MuckRock acquired. The texts on the list are only those that have been subject to review centrally by the MDOC, so prisoners could be prohibited texts that are off the list. Gautz also said that, although the decision had been made 17 years ago, books do not tend to be removed from the list of prohibited publications unless the MDOC policy prohibiting them changes.
Fanon’s work is not the only text related to black liberation and anti-colonialism that is prohibited in prisons across the US, though it might be the most academic. Practices on prohibiting books vary dramatically between states, and the process through which books are prohibited are often far from transparent. For now, though, experts who argue that there is no basis for Fanon’s work to be classified as “advocating racial supremacy,” not to mention the prisoners barred from possessing it, have no further available process for appealing the judgement made by the MDOC.
Read the full list of MDOC’s banned books embedded below, or on the request page:
Link du jour
http://www.mofga.org/thefair
http://www.shelterinstitute.com
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/vid ... rael-video
http://nypost.com/2017/08/04/portraits- ... archive/#1
http://m.jpost.com/israel-news/police-d ... ove-501642
http://nypost.com/2017/08/04/brace-for- ... ne-season/
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/massachuse ... ing-19598/
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... etive-det/
http://www.martycain.com
Deputies fatally shoot man they were trying to evict from apartment in San Diego
http://nypost.com/2017/08/05/5-year-old ... riffs-car/
5-year-old girl injured after being hit by sheriff’s car
August 5, 2017 | 2:47am
CARPINTERIA, Calif. — Authorities say a 5-year-old has been injured after being hit by a Santa Barbara County sheriff’s patrol car.
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Sheriff’s officials
https://www.courthousenews.com/ex-detec ... -election/
Ex-Detective Claims He Was Fired For Refusing to Support Sheriff’s Re-Election
August 4, 2017
https://www.courthousenews.com/san-dieg ... ntractors/
San Diego Advances Plan to Divest From Border Wall Contractors
August 2, 2017
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/08/04/ ... hange-why/
Scribbling for environmental, social and economic justice
George Monbiot Just Attacked a Key Solution to Climate Change — Why?
In 2015, the Electric Power Research Institute partnered with NRDC in producing a report assessing the ability of electrical vehicles to reduce global carbon emissions. Their findings were as profound as they were simple:
Electric vehicles and a clean grid are essential to arresting climate change
(Adding electrical vehicles to the energy and transportation mix considerably reduced global carbon emissions. In addition, the batteries on which the vehicles are based provide essential, low-cost means to store renewable based electricity coming from wind and solar power. Image source: NRDC.)
The findings also represented basic common sense.
The start of major atmospheric increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gasses began with the burning of fossil fuels. Rapid global warming subsequently followed. Human burning of wood, cow-based agriculture, and destruction of forests prior to that time may or may not have marginally increased atmospheric greenhouse gasses and tweaked global temperatures. But the simple truth is that from the end ice age interval about ten thousand years ago until fossil fuel burning began in the 18th Century, the primary gas contributing to global warming — Carbon Dioxide — had remained in a tight range between 265 to 275 parts per million (methane concentrations increased by less than 100 parts per billion, and nitrous oxide levels only increased by about 10 parts per billion).
The big hit obviously came when humans began digging up coal, oil and gas, putting them into machines, and burning these materials en-masse. And today we are adding 10 parts per million of heat trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every 3-5 years. An increase that possibly took all the plowing, burning, domesticating, and breaking of the Earth by humans ten thousand years to achieve by harmful land use activity alone. Meanwhile, methane and nitrous oxide levels since the commencement of fossil fuel burning around 1750 have rapidly risen by 1,200 and 60 parts per billion respectively.
(Levels of heat trapping carbon dioxide remained relatively stable for thousands of years until the commencement of fossil fuel burning by humans. Image source: The Keeling Curve.)
And these dangerous carbon emissions in today’s energy, agriculture and manufacturing systems all ultimately come down to one chief source — fossil fuel burning. If there’s a carbon emission from the making of steel, for example, it mostly comes from burning fossil fuels. If there’s a long lasting and harmful carbon emission coming from industrial agriculture, it’s in large part coming from the burning of fossil fuels. And if there’s a carbon emission coming from our use of machines, it’s due entirely to the internal combustion engines within them that burn fossil fuels.
In all of the human system, the vast majority of carbon emissions come from oil, gas, and coal. And all of the most dangerous, old carbon emissions come from this source. In other words, if you want to stop climate change, you have to deal with the real elephant in the room. There is no bargaining. No dissembling. ERPI and NRDC are right. You’ve got to switch your energy sources and your engines if you’re to have any hope of dealing with human-caused climate change. Electric vehicles and a renewable grid are, therefore, essential. They’re our escape hatch. They’re our main path out of future climate change hell.
(It’s clear where the additional heat trapping gases are coming from — old fossil carbon sources. Video source: NASA.)
The big, heavy lift all just boils down to halting fossil fuel burning as soon as possible. This is our best hope, our best means, of removing future carbon from the atmosphere — never burning the fossil fuels at all. Leaving it all in the ground.
New Solutions vs the Old Gridlocked Dialectic
Notably, there are many conceptual, if difficult to enact, ways that we as human beings could achieve this end. Over the past half century at least, wise environmentalists have been calling for a renewed focus on living simply. On public transport. On re-building close-knit communities fractured by rampant consumerism and marketeering. On using less to do more.
This goal was admirable, helpful. But, for various reasons, it has, so far, largely failed to address the larger climate crisis. This is not to downplay the helpful successes of a number of cities and communities around the world who have provided walkable communities, added bike lanes, advanced public transport, and helpfully re-strengthened local ties. Yet despite these helpful advances, about 80 million fossil fuel powered vehicles are produced each year. So we obviously have to address that larger issue as well.
One reason that this helpful environmental movement has not grown its influence more is due to the noted and powerful strength of the fossil fuel industry in manipulating governments and the public interest. If calls by greens for restraint were loud and compelling, they were often drowned out by fossil fuel advertising dollars and legislation that increasingly leaned toward protecting harmful economic interests. Another reason was that these goals, though noble, did not speak to the present economic reality in which many people lived their daily lives. Technology based on fossil fuels enabled many to do more, make more, raise their families up from poverty — but at a terrible long term external cost that was often invisible to the users.
The resource curse thus became ingrained in many regions outside the political reach of environmentalists as these consumers were captured in a new, generational, economic reality dominated by fossil fuel use. And there was much reason to lament and resist this ultimately harmful reality — even if the message of blaming a consumer that was essentially shackled to fossil fuel use and sometimes ineffectively pushing toward a less and less clear vision of efficiency and simplicity without also providing broader access to alternatives was a proposition destined for failure.
(The price of a solar panel from 1977 to 2013 had dropped from 77 dollars per watt to 74 cents per watt. In 2017, solar panels now regularly sell for between 25 and 35 cents per watt. This provides a significant escape hatch to present fossil fuel burning. Low cost wind and emerging electrical vehicles add to this escape route. Image source: Clean Technica.)
This dialectic itself described a systemic downward spiral from which there appeared to be no escape. But recently, the very technological and economic advantages represented by fossil fuels have begun to seriously erode. The cost of non-fossil-fuel based energy systems — wind and solar primarily — plunged to less than that of traditional coal, oil, and gas. Meanwhile, the desirable machines that burned the devil’s juice of oil, began to trade in their black internal combustion engine hearts for far cleaner electrical engines and batteries. Drive systems that could easily be mated to clean energy and remove fossil fuels from the energy picture entirely.
This new opportunity for clean energy to leverage the same strengths that led fossil fuels to prominence not only threatened fossil fuels. It threatened that old dialectic. And some purists were unable to reconcile the reality of far more benevolent new technologies able to replace fossil fuels with the older ideals and conflicts.
Public Transport and Bikes are Great. But why Attack Electrical Vehicles if They are also Helpful?
And it is for this reason that we can understand, a bit, where George Monbiot is coming from when he appears to falsely equate electrical vehicles with fossil fuel based vehicles. A car-less society has long been a big ideological push for George and other environmentalists. The car itself, his reviled icon of harmful consumerism. And, yes, removing cars would achieve a significant reduction in UK carbon emissions if such a thing were even remotely politically possible. Those driving on grid-locked Great Britain highways can certainly have sympathy for a generally helpful reduction in car use. In adding more widely available electrified, renewable-based public transportation. In making bike transport more widely available.
But ultimately, it appears to this observer that George is counter-productively attacking the wrong object. That George is unintentionally committing more harm than good. In other words, as a practical matter, Great Britain is highly unlikely to be able to achieve the goal of a car-less society any time soon. But if it does, eventually, reduce the number of its ‘iron chariots’ as Monbiot suggests, the electrical vehicle will probably have played its part in helping speed that transition.
(Increased adoption rates of electrical vehicles will reduce oil consumption and at the same time erode the power of industries that have for so long blocked green initiatives like public transportation, ride sharing, and walkable and bikeable cities. Why throw water on a much-needed energy revolution that would be very helpful by providing air in the room for green causes? Image source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance.)
Going back to the old dialectic, we find that the primary political opponents to societies with greatly reduced automobile use per person are both traditional automobile manufacturers and fossil fuel companies that rely on ICE based vehicle transportation to support oil demand. Add electrical vehicles to the mix and you reduce fossil fuel demand, thus eroding one pillar of that political power base.
This, by itself, might not be enough to break the larger environmental log jam. But consider the fact that the primary leaders of the electrical vehicle movement are companies like Telsa and countries like China. Tesla itself is more an energy company than a vehicle company. The company produces energy platforms and renewable energy applications. Batteries, solar, and electrical vehicles are its stock and trade. High quality vehicles that primarily do not rely on the same levels of mass production that traditional, single stream automakers have relied on. China, meanwhile, is mass-producing electrical vehicles in an effort to clean its air. Neither are as shackled to the notion of everyone owning a vehicle as traditional automakers now are. And to this point, Tesla itself has identified ride sharing as a strategic goal to enable people to access road transport without owning a vehicle — thus considerably reducing the number of cars per person and helping to enable Monbiot’s ultimate goals.
The net result in bringing EVs in to compete with ICEs will be not only reduced carbon emissions, but a change in the economic based power dynamic within the UK and in other countries. And the economic interests of disruptive new companies like Tesla will be divergent enough from those of traditional automakers to allow the breaking of the old grid-lock at the political level. In such a new dialectic, the voices of those like Monbiot could be even more poignant and helpful as we pursue a path to greater sustainability — so long as they do not shrilly attack the various forces that are enabling their empowerment to achieve those very ends.
Links:
NRDC
The Keeling Curve
NASA
Clean Technica
Bloomberg New Energy Finance
https://www.courthousenews.com/monsanto ... pollution/
Monsanto, Cities Square Off Over Bay Area Pollution
August 3, 2017
SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) – After a spirited hearing on Thursday, a federal judge will decide whether agrochemical giant Monsanto will face claims it’s responsible for pollution in the San Francisco Bay and city stormwater systems.
U.S. District Court Edward Davila, as is his wont, gave no indication of how he will rule on Monsanto’s attempt to dismiss the claims of three Bay Area cities – Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose.
The three cities say Monsanto developed, marketed and distributed polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, beginning in the 1950s, despite knowing the widespread use of the chemical as a coolant in electrical apparatuses represented a major environmental hazard.
https://www.courthousenews.com/extincti ... cord-lows/
Extinction Possible as Salmon Runs Hit Near-Record Lows
August 2, 2017
(CN) – The population of spring-run Chinook salmon has ebbed to the point where fish advocates, Native Americans and environmentalists are warning near-term extinction is a real possibility.
Last week, divers conducted the annual fish population survey on an 80-mile stretch of the Salmon River that winds its way near the California-Oregon border, and found the number of spring-run Chinook salmon was just 110. That figure represents the second lowest number in the 20 years of data collection.
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... tta-25737/
Del Latta
Emma Best filed this request with the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States of America.
Tracking # 1350694-000
Submitted May 14, 2016
STATUS
Completed
MuckRock users can file, duplicate, track, and share public records requests like this one. Learn more.
File a Request
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From: Michael Best
05/14/2016
Subject: Freedom of Information Request: Del Latta
To Whom It May Concern:
This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:
Files relating to Delbert Leroy Latta, known as Del Latta (March 5, 1920 – May 12, 2016), who was an American politician who served as member of the United States House of Representatives. His death has been widely reported. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/obitu ... at-96.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.
I am a member of the news media and request classification as such as I have written widely read articles about the intelligence community, such as andmagazine.com/us/1431865273.html
The requested
The Oklahoma City Bombing–Secrets Worth Dying For?
David Paul Hammer is on Death Row. He is was also on Death Row with the Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Hammer claims that McVeigh told him that he worked for US Black OPs and worked for a person called the Major. The Major was supposedly McVeigh’s handler up until the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Obviously the word of a person on Death Row may not be the best source. But the story is also backed up to an extent by the other co-conspirator in the bombing. Terry Nichols says that there was some sort of government and FBI involvement in the bombing.
.…Those familiar with the details of the case say Nichols has evidently come to conclude-as have many independent investigators-that he (Nichols) and McVeigh were being manipulated prior to the bombing by federal authorities in what was intended to be a “sting” the feds would use as “proof” of their skill in tackling domestic “terrorist threats” from “radical right wing extremists.”
However, it is believed, the sting went awry, possibly manipulated by others outside the loop, and the bombing occurred….(source: rense.com)
The US government likely had and has sources deep inside the militia movements. Also, there is such a thing as government intelligence agencies acting in concert with terrorist groups.
For example, one of the IRAs top torturers actually worked for British Intelligence.
.…He is the British spy who operated at the heart of the IRA’s most brutal enforcement team. Yet Stakeknife was only one of five highly- placed agents working inside the republican terror group, The Observer has discovered.
In the wake of the controversy that has rocked the IRA and the British security services, it has emerged that four more senior Provisionals, including Stakeknife’s deputy, were double agents….(source: guardian.co.uk)
Hammer, an inmate lawyer, claims that McVeigh believed that he would not be executed. That, according to Hammer, McVeigh figured he would be given a drug and that the execution would be staged.
Still there are some big fat holes in the Hammer story.
If McVeigh thought he was working for the government, why wouldn’t he be a bit upset about sitting on death row for years?
If McVeigh was actually working for the government, why wasn’t he killed or even allowed to escape so the story wouldn’t get out?
It is true that the militia movement was growing and dangerous when the Oklahoma City Bombing occurred. The bombing did in fact completely blacken the militia movement’s image with the American public. So as Hammer tells Alex Jones in an interview (see below), McVeigh relates the bombing was used to destroy the militia movement.
The Hammer/Nichols story also has some additional support.
According to a Democracy Now interview:
….A Salt Lake City lawyer searching for the truth behind his brother’s death has uncovered a wealth of new information that could implicate the FBI in the Oklahoma City bombings. The documents he dug up suggest the FBI knew about the plot to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in advance but did little to prevent it. Jesse Trentadue’s brother Kenney Trentadue was found dead in his prison cell in Oklahoma City in August 1995. The FBI calls it a suicide, but Jesse maintains Kenney was beaten to death during an interrogation. Jesse believes the FBI mistook his brother for the missing second suspect in the Oklahoma City bombings – the so-called “John Doe #2.” His research also suggests that the bombing was not the work of one or two men, but involved a wider network connected to the far-right white supremacist movement….(source)
It is likely the true players and the actual events involving the Oklahoma City Bombing will never be known. For now, we only have the story of killers and a US government that few trust.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2128921/posts
FBI fights order for deposition of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator, death-row inmate
The FBI is appealing an order that allows a Utah attorney to conduct taped depositions of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and a death-row inmate.
Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes that the two inmates have valuable information about his brother's death in a federal prison - and about the FBI's alleged withholding of many of the relevant documents requested in his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit.
Authorities say the August 1995 death of Kenneth Trentadue in a cell at an Oklahoma City federal prison was a suicide, but the inmate's family believes he was mistaken for a bombing conspirator and that guards strangled him with a set of plastic handcuffs in an interrogation that got out of hand.
To support that theory, Jesse Trentadue has filed three FOIA lawsuits. As part of one of those suits, he requested an order allowing the depositions from Nichols and David Paul Hammer, who now is on death row at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind.
Lawyers for the FBI objected, saying the agency has made appropriate searches for documents.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball granted Trentadue's request last year. He reaffirmed that order in September after the FBI asked him to reconsider.
On Tuesday, nov. 4 the FBI filed a notice that it is asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to reverse the order.
The body of Kenneth Trentadue, who had served time for bank robbery and was being held on an alleged parole violation, was found hanging in his cell on Aug. 21, 1995.
Nichols and Hammer already have supplied Jesse Trentadue with written affidavits concerning Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the bombing and was executed in 2001.
Nichols - who is serving a life sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo. - claims a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing McVeigh in the plot. Both Nichols and Hammer, who says he had lengthy conversations with McVeigh while the two were both housed at the Terre Haute facility, say McVeigh claimed to be an undercover operative for the military.
The FBI has denied any role in the bombing.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdu ... story.html
FBI denies witness tampering accusation
The FBI did not pressure a former government operative into backing out of testifying in a lawsuit claiming the agency failed to search its files for additional videos of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, a new FBI report shows.
The bureau's office of inspections disclosed the report on Friday, a day after U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups threatened the FBI with contempt of court for not completing the tampering investigation as he had ordered.
The lawsuit was filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes there is video showing Timothy McVeigh was not alone in detonating the bomb in Oklahoma.
Trentadue believes the presence of a second suspect would explain why his brother was flown to Oklahoma months after the bombing. His brother died in a federal holding cell.
The case reached trial because the judge was not satisfied by the FBI's previous explanations after the lawsuit was filed in 2008. The judge also cited the public importance of the possible tapes.
Trentadue leveled the witness tampering allegation during trial in July. Department of Justice attorneys said they were false, but Waddoups ordered the FBI to look into the claim.
Former operative John Matthews had been set to testify about his involvement in a stealth government operation that tracked militia movements and included McVeigh, Trentadue said.
The agency's report said Matthews called the FBI in Utah to tell them he didn't want to testify during the lawsuit and asked how he could get out of it.
FBI inspectors said they listened to five recorded phone conversations between Matthews and agent Adam Quirk and determined Matthews was never intimidated or discouraged from testifying.
The report found Quirk should have notified the Justice Department about the calls and been clearer about the FBI not being able to give advice about testifying. Still, the agency said there was no tampering.
The report includes partially redacted transcripts of several recorded phone conversations. One call from Quirk's cellphone was not recorded, and there is no transcript.
Matthews also sent an email saying he made the decision to back out of testifying on his own, the report says.
A transcript of one phone call shows Matthews telling Quirk that he wasn't going to testify unless a judge issued a subpoena. If he was forced to testify, he said, "I'm going to sit there on the stand and say I don't recall anything."
Matthews later added, "This is old stuff and it don't need to be brought up again."
In a different call, Matthews said he met Timothy McVeigh before the bombing but "just because I crossed someone's path don't mean I have anything to share."
Quirk told investigators the nature of the unrecorded, four-minute call from his cellphone was similar to the recorded ones.
"This report does not put my mind at ease," Trentadue said. "It just raises more
https://www.courthousenews.com/horrible ... -agencies/
Horrible Child Abuse Blamed on Arizona Agencies
June 27, 2017
After Arizona’s Department of Child Safety placed a toddler with a man who ran a “pornographic pedophile ring” out of his home, it moved her to a home where the foster mother burned her with scalding water over 80 percent of her body, the little girl’s guardian claims in court.
Fleming and Curti PLC, court-appointed guardian of Jane Doe, sued Arizona, its Department of Child Safety, other state agencies, the Christian Family Care Agency and a host of other institutions and people, in Pima County Court.
The Department of Child Safety, formerly Child Protective Services, removed Jane Doe from her biological mother’s home in 2013, when she was 2, and placed her with David and Barbara Frodsham, a state-licensed foster home, according to the June 16 lawsuit.
The state allowed Jane to stay with the Frodshams for 18 months, despite her biological mother’s complaints of “Jane Doe’s repeated documented urinary tract infections,” the complaint states.
“Instead of investigating Jane Doe’s biological mother’s concerns of abuse, [DCS] and the defendant caseworkers accused her of making false and exaggerated reports to DCS,” according to the complaint.
The state did not act until David Frodsham, driving drunk, left 3-year-old Jane and another child in his parked car while he was collecting his foster parent check in a state office, while “visibly drunk and acting belligerent.” Police were called and found Frodsham had a .28 blood alcohol concentration. They removed Jane from his care but did not investigate his home, the complaint states.
It continues: “Later, David Frodsham was arrested and accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, procuring minors for sex, and possessing and/or manufacturing child pornography. Law enforcement’s investigation revealed a video made by David Frodsham of a 3- or 4-year-old girl being penetrated by an adult male and screaming for her mommy. David Frodsham pled guilty rather than face a trial and has been sentenced to 17 years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. David Frodsham was part of a pornography ring involving numerous children in his pornography and the procurement of sex for the ring.” (Citation to sentencing document omitted.)
Four more state and federal cases involving a child placed in Frodsham’s home are pending against him, and more are expected to be filed, according to the complaint.
Unfortunately, things did not improve much when the state moved Jane into the care of Justin and Samantha Osteraas, her guardian says. According to the complaint, “Defendant Samantha Osteraas submerged and held down Jane Doe, a 5-year-old, in a bath of scalding hot water. Jane Doe suffered severe burns over 80 percent of her body. When police arrived, there was blood on the floor and piece of Jane Doe’s skin were falling off her body. There were bruises to her neck and arms along with other signs of trauma.”
Jane had to be placed in a medically induced coma, suffering from organ failure. She lost her toes to amputation “and will undergo lifelong operations to replace 80 percent of the skin on her body and will need incredible amounts of care for the duration of her life as a result of the abuse she suffered in the Osteraases’ home.”
Samantha Osteraas, 28, was arrested in January this year and charged with child abuse. The state then removed her three biological children from her home, according to the Arizona Daily Star. She is awaiting trial.
Jane’s guardian seeks punitive damages for negligence, respondeat superior, breach of duty, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and battery, and constitutional violations.
Here are the defendants: State of Arizona; Arizona Department of Child Safety; Arizona Department of Economic Security; Child Protective Services; Division of Children, Youth and Families; Christian Family Care; Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona Inc.; St. Nicholas of Myra; Mark Brnovich; Gregory McKay; Charles Flanagan; Clarence Carter; Jeannette Sheldon; Eva Pena; Katherine Mayer; Cassie Dixon; Monica Reyes; Norel Alviti; Rosette Codner; Jack Roddy; David Frodsham; Barbara Frodsham; Samantha Osteraas; and Justin Osteraas.
Jane is represented by the Cadigan Law Firm and Carillo Law Firms of Tucson, and by Manly, Stewart & Finaldi in Irvine, Calif.
A DCS spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... doc-fanon/
Banning Black Liberation: Michigan prisoners are barred from reading Frantz Fanon
Fanon’s anti-colonial text “Black Skin, White Masks” listed alongside “Mein Kampf” as material banned for “advocating racial supremacy”
Written by Alec Shea
Edited by JPat Brown
Michigan Department of Correction’s (MDOC) 60-page long list of books banned in state prisons, acquired by MuckRock through a public records request, includes 43 that are prohibited for “advocating racial supremacy.” These titles include Mein Kampf, The Turner Diaries, and, alarmingly, Black Skin, White Masks, by post-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon. MDOC’s ban on an important anti-colonial text is one reminder of the inconsistent, and potentially biased, book banning practices that exist in prisons across the United States.
Fanon was born in Martinique when it was still a French colony and much of his writing was devoted to studying the psychic and social impacts of colonialism on the colonized. In the introduction to Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon wrote that, “This book is a clinical study. Those who recognize themselves in it, I think, will have made a step forward. I seriously hope to persuade my brother, whether black or white, to tear off with all his strength the shameful livery put together by centuries of incomprehension.” Fanon wrote the book, which would be the first and one of the most well-known texts he would publish, in 1951. MDOC made the decision to ban it in 2000, meaning that prisoners have been barred from reading it for the past 17 years.
When contacted for comment, Maurice Wade, a professor of philosophy at Trinity College, said that “Black Skin, White Masks, is by no means advocating racial supremacy. Even in the introductory sections of the text, Fanon clearly states that his purpose is to overcome black alienation, the alienation that black people in general suffer in societies in which black skin is taken by the white-skinned majority to be an indelible sign of permanent inferiority.” Nigel Gibson, a professor at Emerson college and author of four books about Fanon, said that the MDOC’s decision to classify the book as advocating racial supremacy shows that “the person who made that claim hasn’t read the book, quite simply.”
The MDOC, speaking to MuckRock, did not have any specific comment on the decision to ban Black Skin, White Masks. Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the department described the process through which books are determined to be out of line with prison guidelines. Decisions taken at the level of individual facilities are reviewed by the MDOC centrally, which produces the list of publications that MuckRock acquired. The texts on the list are only those that have been subject to review centrally by the MDOC, so prisoners could be prohibited texts that are off the list. Gautz also said that, although the decision had been made 17 years ago, books do not tend to be removed from the list of prohibited publications unless the MDOC policy prohibiting them changes.
Fanon’s work is not the only text related to black liberation and anti-colonialism that is prohibited in prisons across the US, though it might be the most academic. Practices on prohibiting books vary dramatically between states, and the process through which books are prohibited are often far from transparent. For now, though, experts who argue that there is no basis for Fanon’s work to be classified as “advocating racial supremacy,” not to mention the prisoners barred from possessing it, have no further available process for appealing the judgement made by the MDOC.
Read the full list of MDOC’s banned books embedded below, or on the request page:
Link du jour
http://www.mofga.org/thefair
http://www.shelterinstitute.com
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/vid ... rael-video
http://nypost.com/2017/08/04/portraits- ... archive/#1
http://m.jpost.com/israel-news/police-d ... ove-501642
http://nypost.com/2017/08/04/brace-for- ... ne-season/
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/massachuse ... ing-19598/
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... etive-det/
http://www.martycain.com
Deputies fatally shoot man they were trying to evict from apartment in San Diego
http://nypost.com/2017/08/05/5-year-old ... riffs-car/
5-year-old girl injured after being hit by sheriff’s car
August 5, 2017 | 2:47am
CARPINTERIA, Calif. — Authorities say a 5-year-old has been injured after being hit by a Santa Barbara County sheriff’s patrol car.
.
Sheriff’s officials
https://www.courthousenews.com/ex-detec ... -election/
Ex-Detective Claims He Was Fired For Refusing to Support Sheriff’s Re-Election
August 4, 2017
https://www.courthousenews.com/san-dieg ... ntractors/
San Diego Advances Plan to Divest From Border Wall Contractors
August 2, 2017
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/08/04/ ... hange-why/
Scribbling for environmental, social and economic justice
George Monbiot Just Attacked a Key Solution to Climate Change — Why?
In 2015, the Electric Power Research Institute partnered with NRDC in producing a report assessing the ability of electrical vehicles to reduce global carbon emissions. Their findings were as profound as they were simple:
Electric vehicles and a clean grid are essential to arresting climate change
(Adding electrical vehicles to the energy and transportation mix considerably reduced global carbon emissions. In addition, the batteries on which the vehicles are based provide essential, low-cost means to store renewable based electricity coming from wind and solar power. Image source: NRDC.)
The findings also represented basic common sense.
The start of major atmospheric increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gasses began with the burning of fossil fuels. Rapid global warming subsequently followed. Human burning of wood, cow-based agriculture, and destruction of forests prior to that time may or may not have marginally increased atmospheric greenhouse gasses and tweaked global temperatures. But the simple truth is that from the end ice age interval about ten thousand years ago until fossil fuel burning began in the 18th Century, the primary gas contributing to global warming — Carbon Dioxide — had remained in a tight range between 265 to 275 parts per million (methane concentrations increased by less than 100 parts per billion, and nitrous oxide levels only increased by about 10 parts per billion).
The big hit obviously came when humans began digging up coal, oil and gas, putting them into machines, and burning these materials en-masse. And today we are adding 10 parts per million of heat trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every 3-5 years. An increase that possibly took all the plowing, burning, domesticating, and breaking of the Earth by humans ten thousand years to achieve by harmful land use activity alone. Meanwhile, methane and nitrous oxide levels since the commencement of fossil fuel burning around 1750 have rapidly risen by 1,200 and 60 parts per billion respectively.
(Levels of heat trapping carbon dioxide remained relatively stable for thousands of years until the commencement of fossil fuel burning by humans. Image source: The Keeling Curve.)
And these dangerous carbon emissions in today’s energy, agriculture and manufacturing systems all ultimately come down to one chief source — fossil fuel burning. If there’s a carbon emission from the making of steel, for example, it mostly comes from burning fossil fuels. If there’s a long lasting and harmful carbon emission coming from industrial agriculture, it’s in large part coming from the burning of fossil fuels. And if there’s a carbon emission coming from our use of machines, it’s due entirely to the internal combustion engines within them that burn fossil fuels.
In all of the human system, the vast majority of carbon emissions come from oil, gas, and coal. And all of the most dangerous, old carbon emissions come from this source. In other words, if you want to stop climate change, you have to deal with the real elephant in the room. There is no bargaining. No dissembling. ERPI and NRDC are right. You’ve got to switch your energy sources and your engines if you’re to have any hope of dealing with human-caused climate change. Electric vehicles and a renewable grid are, therefore, essential. They’re our escape hatch. They’re our main path out of future climate change hell.
(It’s clear where the additional heat trapping gases are coming from — old fossil carbon sources. Video source: NASA.)
The big, heavy lift all just boils down to halting fossil fuel burning as soon as possible. This is our best hope, our best means, of removing future carbon from the atmosphere — never burning the fossil fuels at all. Leaving it all in the ground.
New Solutions vs the Old Gridlocked Dialectic
Notably, there are many conceptual, if difficult to enact, ways that we as human beings could achieve this end. Over the past half century at least, wise environmentalists have been calling for a renewed focus on living simply. On public transport. On re-building close-knit communities fractured by rampant consumerism and marketeering. On using less to do more.
This goal was admirable, helpful. But, for various reasons, it has, so far, largely failed to address the larger climate crisis. This is not to downplay the helpful successes of a number of cities and communities around the world who have provided walkable communities, added bike lanes, advanced public transport, and helpfully re-strengthened local ties. Yet despite these helpful advances, about 80 million fossil fuel powered vehicles are produced each year. So we obviously have to address that larger issue as well.
One reason that this helpful environmental movement has not grown its influence more is due to the noted and powerful strength of the fossil fuel industry in manipulating governments and the public interest. If calls by greens for restraint were loud and compelling, they were often drowned out by fossil fuel advertising dollars and legislation that increasingly leaned toward protecting harmful economic interests. Another reason was that these goals, though noble, did not speak to the present economic reality in which many people lived their daily lives. Technology based on fossil fuels enabled many to do more, make more, raise their families up from poverty — but at a terrible long term external cost that was often invisible to the users.
The resource curse thus became ingrained in many regions outside the political reach of environmentalists as these consumers were captured in a new, generational, economic reality dominated by fossil fuel use. And there was much reason to lament and resist this ultimately harmful reality — even if the message of blaming a consumer that was essentially shackled to fossil fuel use and sometimes ineffectively pushing toward a less and less clear vision of efficiency and simplicity without also providing broader access to alternatives was a proposition destined for failure.
(The price of a solar panel from 1977 to 2013 had dropped from 77 dollars per watt to 74 cents per watt. In 2017, solar panels now regularly sell for between 25 and 35 cents per watt. This provides a significant escape hatch to present fossil fuel burning. Low cost wind and emerging electrical vehicles add to this escape route. Image source: Clean Technica.)
This dialectic itself described a systemic downward spiral from which there appeared to be no escape. But recently, the very technological and economic advantages represented by fossil fuels have begun to seriously erode. The cost of non-fossil-fuel based energy systems — wind and solar primarily — plunged to less than that of traditional coal, oil, and gas. Meanwhile, the desirable machines that burned the devil’s juice of oil, began to trade in their black internal combustion engine hearts for far cleaner electrical engines and batteries. Drive systems that could easily be mated to clean energy and remove fossil fuels from the energy picture entirely.
This new opportunity for clean energy to leverage the same strengths that led fossil fuels to prominence not only threatened fossil fuels. It threatened that old dialectic. And some purists were unable to reconcile the reality of far more benevolent new technologies able to replace fossil fuels with the older ideals and conflicts.
Public Transport and Bikes are Great. But why Attack Electrical Vehicles if They are also Helpful?
And it is for this reason that we can understand, a bit, where George Monbiot is coming from when he appears to falsely equate electrical vehicles with fossil fuel based vehicles. A car-less society has long been a big ideological push for George and other environmentalists. The car itself, his reviled icon of harmful consumerism. And, yes, removing cars would achieve a significant reduction in UK carbon emissions if such a thing were even remotely politically possible. Those driving on grid-locked Great Britain highways can certainly have sympathy for a generally helpful reduction in car use. In adding more widely available electrified, renewable-based public transportation. In making bike transport more widely available.
But ultimately, it appears to this observer that George is counter-productively attacking the wrong object. That George is unintentionally committing more harm than good. In other words, as a practical matter, Great Britain is highly unlikely to be able to achieve the goal of a car-less society any time soon. But if it does, eventually, reduce the number of its ‘iron chariots’ as Monbiot suggests, the electrical vehicle will probably have played its part in helping speed that transition.
(Increased adoption rates of electrical vehicles will reduce oil consumption and at the same time erode the power of industries that have for so long blocked green initiatives like public transportation, ride sharing, and walkable and bikeable cities. Why throw water on a much-needed energy revolution that would be very helpful by providing air in the room for green causes? Image source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance.)
Going back to the old dialectic, we find that the primary political opponents to societies with greatly reduced automobile use per person are both traditional automobile manufacturers and fossil fuel companies that rely on ICE based vehicle transportation to support oil demand. Add electrical vehicles to the mix and you reduce fossil fuel demand, thus eroding one pillar of that political power base.
This, by itself, might not be enough to break the larger environmental log jam. But consider the fact that the primary leaders of the electrical vehicle movement are companies like Telsa and countries like China. Tesla itself is more an energy company than a vehicle company. The company produces energy platforms and renewable energy applications. Batteries, solar, and electrical vehicles are its stock and trade. High quality vehicles that primarily do not rely on the same levels of mass production that traditional, single stream automakers have relied on. China, meanwhile, is mass-producing electrical vehicles in an effort to clean its air. Neither are as shackled to the notion of everyone owning a vehicle as traditional automakers now are. And to this point, Tesla itself has identified ride sharing as a strategic goal to enable people to access road transport without owning a vehicle — thus considerably reducing the number of cars per person and helping to enable Monbiot’s ultimate goals.
The net result in bringing EVs in to compete with ICEs will be not only reduced carbon emissions, but a change in the economic based power dynamic within the UK and in other countries. And the economic interests of disruptive new companies like Tesla will be divergent enough from those of traditional automakers to allow the breaking of the old grid-lock at the political level. In such a new dialectic, the voices of those like Monbiot could be even more poignant and helpful as we pursue a path to greater sustainability — so long as they do not shrilly attack the various forces that are enabling their empowerment to achieve those very ends.
Links:
NRDC
The Keeling Curve
NASA
Clean Technica
Bloomberg New Energy Finance
https://www.courthousenews.com/monsanto ... pollution/
Monsanto, Cities Square Off Over Bay Area Pollution
August 3, 2017
SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) – After a spirited hearing on Thursday, a federal judge will decide whether agrochemical giant Monsanto will face claims it’s responsible for pollution in the San Francisco Bay and city stormwater systems.
U.S. District Court Edward Davila, as is his wont, gave no indication of how he will rule on Monsanto’s attempt to dismiss the claims of three Bay Area cities – Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose.
The three cities say Monsanto developed, marketed and distributed polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, beginning in the 1950s, despite knowing the widespread use of the chemical as a coolant in electrical apparatuses represented a major environmental hazard.
https://www.courthousenews.com/extincti ... cord-lows/
Extinction Possible as Salmon Runs Hit Near-Record Lows
August 2, 2017
(CN) – The population of spring-run Chinook salmon has ebbed to the point where fish advocates, Native Americans and environmentalists are warning near-term extinction is a real possibility.
Last week, divers conducted the annual fish population survey on an 80-mile stretch of the Salmon River that winds its way near the California-Oregon border, and found the number of spring-run Chinook salmon was just 110. That figure represents the second lowest number in the 20 years of data collection.
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... tta-25737/
Del Latta
Emma Best filed this request with the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States of America.
Tracking # 1350694-000
Submitted May 14, 2016
STATUS
Completed
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From: Michael Best
05/14/2016
Subject: Freedom of Information Request: Del Latta
To Whom It May Concern:
This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:
Files relating to Delbert Leroy Latta, known as Del Latta (March 5, 1920 – May 12, 2016), who was an American politician who served as member of the United States House of Representatives. His death has been widely reported. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/obitu ... at-96.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.
I am a member of the news media and request classification as such as I have written widely read articles about the intelligence community, such as andmagazine.com/us/1431865273.html
The requested
