George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/ ... 992426.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Controversial DNA startup wants to let customers create creatures
By Stephanie M. Lee Updated 7:03 pm, Saturday, January 3, 2015

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

Veritas

http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/cooper/cooper.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

two reads let god sort out the truth

1.


http://www.delawareonline.com/story/new ... /21472823/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




NCCo drug area designation will draw more collaboration

January 9 2015


Delaware U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly III (center) talks about New Castle more
A collaboration between local, state and federal law enforcement credited with helping reduce violent crime in Philadelphia and Camden is seeking to do the same in Wilmington.

To do so, New Castle County was designated a federal high-intensity drug trafficking area earlier this week and law enforcement Thursday vowed to work together



2.

CIA and COPS Deal Drugs - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... CE6526E482" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
News reports, Eyewitness testimony and Documentaries exposing cases of the CIA and police corruption including involvement in dealing drugs in America.
RIP Michael C Ruppert, the Cop that busted the CIA - Whiteout Press
google title if link fails

http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/2 ... d-the-cia/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Apr 17, 2014 - Michael C Ruppert was a former Los Angeles Police Detective who was ... Showing just how long the CIA's drug trafficking operation within the ...
Allegations of CIA drug trafficking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking
[t]he CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug lord allies with ... confronted by former Los Angeles Police Department officer Michael Ruppert, who ...
Cop Confronts CIA on Drug Trafficking | Military.com
http://www.military.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; › Video Center › Law Enforcement › CIA
Jan 31, 2014 - On November 15, 1996, there was a town meeting in Los Angeles on allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking. Former Los Angeles ...
AFP Interviews 'Top Undercover Cop' on CIA Control of Drug Trade ...
americanfreepress.net/?p=5437
Aug 7, 2012 - In late July a top Mexican government official made headlines around the world by accusing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of playing a ...
Secret ties between CIA, drugs revealed - The Final Call
http://www.finalcall.com/features/cia-dope.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This CIA-backed drug network opened the first pipeline between Columbia's ... " While the FDN's war is barely a memory today, Black America is still dealing with its ... in exchange for his testimony against corrupt Los Angeles police detectives.
WALL ST, CIA & THE GLOBAL DRUG TRADE - by Mike Ruppert
http://www.whale.to/b/ruppert1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I graduated from the LA Police Academy class of 11/73, hit the streets in January ... The point about the drug trade is not that the CIA dealt a few drugs during the ...
Cops & Customs Agents Caught Drug Smuggling Alex Jones ...
http://www.infowars.com/cops-customs-ag ... smuggling/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Following last September's crash of a Gulfstream jet used by the CIA for torture flights that contained 4 tonnes of cocaine, more customs officials and cops have ...
Key Figures In CIA-Crack Cocaine Scandal Begin To Come Forward
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/.../ ... 5961748.ht.." onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
Oct 10, 2014 - In other cases, “CIA did not act to verify drug trafficking allegations or .... we were more tax collectors than we were dope cops,” Juarez recalled.
Former LA Police Officer Mike Ruppert Confronts CIA Director John ...
12160.info/.../former-la-police-officer-mike-ruppert-confronts-cia-director...
Apr 15, 2014 - On November 15, 1996, there was a town meeting in Los Angeles on allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking. Former Los Angeles

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

nothing but the best FBI Voter Fraud
Elected Politicians hand picked for the dumb criminal justice consumer, eh?

2 reads

1.

8 Dumb Quotes About Science From New NASA Overseer Ted Cruz


8 Dumb Quotes About Science From New NASA Overseer Ted Cruz

The new Republican-led Congress is currently busy picking people to chair its many committees and subcommittees. Guess what! Tea Party hero Senator Ted Cruz is the new chair of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. That means he will oversee NASA. Yep—the climate-denying Tea Party hero who tried to defund NASA is now in charge of NASA.

It's may be a bit extreme to say that Cruz hates NASA. But it doesn't really seem like he loves the world's greatest space agency, since he tried to slash its funding a couple years ago. Cruz is also the lawmaker who helped orchestrate the government shutdown, a 16-day-long disaster that did irreparable damage to scientific research, including work being done at NASA. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio—who also wants NASA to get less funding—will oversee the NOAA as chair of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard.

Even though Cruz is from Houston, home of Johnson Space Center, there's reason to believe that he'll continue his pursuit of trying to deflate the space agency. Heck, just look at all the dumb things he's said about science in recent years.

"'Net Neutrality' is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government." - Ted Cruz on net neutrality
"The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened."- Ted Cruz on climate change
"You know, back in the '70s — I remember the '70s, we were told there was global cooling. And everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem. And then that faded." - Ted Cruz on climate change
"You always have to be worried about something that is considered a so-called scientific theory that fits every scenario. Climate change, as they have defined it, can never be disproved, because whether it gets hotter or whether it gets colder, whatever happens, they'll say, well, it's changing, so it proves our theory." - Ted Cruz on climate change
"I was disappointed that Bruce Willis was not available to be a fifth witness on the panel. There probably is no doubt that actually Hollywood has done more to focus attention on this issue than perhaps a thousand congressional hearings could do." - Ted Cruz on space threats
"I wondered if at some point we were going to see a tall gentleman in a mechanical breathing apparatus come forward and say in a deep voice say, "Mike Lee, I am your father" … and just like in "Star Wars" movies the empire will strike back." - Ted Cruz during his 21-hour Obamacare speech
"The authorizing committees are free to set their agency budgets, and that includes NASA." - Ted Cruz when he tried to cut NASA funding in 2013 (This one is more scary than stupid, since Cruz is now in charge of agency budgets.)
"Each day I learn what a scoundrel I am." - Ted Cruz on his attempts to defund Obamacare


2.

Cincinnati Is Set on Edge by Report It Was Blanketed by Illegal Wiretaps

Published: July 27, 1989


http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/27/us/ci ... etaps.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CINCINNATI, July 25— For more than a decade, Robert Draise and Leonard Gates say, the police and the telephone company paid them to blanket this city with a web of illegal wiretaps. They tapped judges and politicians, Black Muslims and mayors, lawyers and journalists, even a President of the United States.
Their former employer, the Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company, denies the allegations. So does the Police Department, for the most part. A private investigator hired by the city says he has found no evidence of the widespread espionage scheme the men describe.
But in the 10 months since their story was first reported in a small weekly newspaper here, there has been enough corroboration of their accusations to set this normally placid city on edge.
Mr. Draise and Mr. Gates, who were both dismissed by Cincinnati Bell well before their story became public, say that what started in the early 1970's as a crackdown on organized crime and student radicals broadened into a vast, shadowy scheme of political and corporate espionage. They say that from 1972 to 1984, at the request of undercover police officers and phone company security officers, they installed at least 1,200 illegal wiretaps, including one in a Cincinnati hotel while President Gerald R. Ford stayed there in 1975 and 1976. Motives Are Unclear
Mr. Draise, an installer and repairman who was dismissed in 1979, and Mr. Gates, a supervisor who was dismissed in 1986, say they were not given reasons for the taps. They tapped some police officers, they say, because fellow officers suspected them of criminal activity. Some of the politicians tapped opposed increases in telephone rates. Mr. Draise has testified that one target was a competitor to Cincinnati Bell in business equipment.
No one has explained why anyone in this Republican stronghold would have wanted to listen in on Mr. Ford.
Although the phone company says the men are liars pursuing personal vendettas against their former employer, their allegations have set off investigations by a Federal grand jury and the City of Cincinnati. A former county commissioner and three former police officers who believe their phones were tapped have sued the city and the phone company for $112 million in damages.
Last fall, in pretrial depositions in the civil suit, a number of former police officers pleaded their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination when asked if they had taken part in illegal wiretaps. In March, four of them, including former Police Chief Myron Leistler, issued a press release acknowledging that they had installed 12 such taps from 1968 to 1974, primarily against organized crime figures, drug dealers and political radicals.
The day after that disclosure, an editorial in The Cincinnati Post, quoting City Manager Scott Johnson, wondered, ''Who else, what else and when else?'' $30 to $40 a Tap In court proceedings and interviews, the 47-year-old Mr. Draise, who now sells insurance, and Mr. Gates, 44, who is unemployed, have given this account:
It all began in 1972, when Mr. Draise says he met Sgt. Jerry Berry, a fellow Mason who was a plainclothes officer in the Police Department's special intelligence unit.
Sergeant Berry wanted the offices of the Black Muslims wiretapped. He promised Mr. Draise that the request had been cleared by department superiors. As a sign of good faith, he showed Mr. Draise his Masonic ring.
Shortly after Mr. Draise wiretapped the Black Muslims, Sergeant Berry also enlisted Mr. Gates. At first, the two men were paid $30 to $40 per tap from a fund in the special intelligence unit, Mr. Draise said. In 1975 or 1976, they stopped hearing from Sergeant Berry and began getting orders from Cincinnati Bell security officers - first James West and later Peter Gabor. In these years, they said, Cincinnati Bell paid them overtime for the wiretapping work. Invoking the F.B.I. When Mr. Draise and Mr. Gates pressed Mr. West and Mr. Gabor for proof of authority, the Cincinnati Bell security officers said the wiretaps had been cleared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the local Police Department, but they did not produce any documentation.
None of the retired officers named in the civil lawsuit, including Mr. Berry. are talking with reporters. Stephen E. Kurlansky, who is representing Mr. Berry, said the former officer was aware of only the 12 instances of wiretapping Chief Leistler and the officers acknowledged in the March press release. Mr. Draise and Mr. Gates were involved with Mr. Berry in only four of these, he said.
Only bits and pieces of the former employees' account have been corroborated by others. For example, Carl Goodin, the Police Chief from February 1971 to July 1976, said he had no knowledge of illegal wiretapping, but in a deposition in the civil suit he said George McNair, his subordinate in intelligence, often met with Mr. West of Cincinnati Bell. Mr. Goodin said that until recently he had assumed that Mr. West was in the F.B.I.
''I thought he was an F.B.I. agent,'' Mr. Goodin said in the deposition. ''When I saw him and his name in the paper working for the phone company, I wa

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

msfreeh wrote:nothing but the best FBI Voter Fraud
Elected Politicians hand picked for the dumb criminal justice consumer, eh?

2 reads

1.

8 Dumb Quotes About Science From New NASA Overseer Ted Cruz


8 Dumb Quotes About Science From New NASA Overseer Ted Cruz

The new Republican-led Congress is currently busy picking people to chair its many committees and subcommittees. Guess what! Tea Party hero Senator Ted Cruz is the new chair of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. That means he will oversee NASA. Yep—the climate-denying Tea Party hero who tried to defund NASA is now in charge of NASA.

It's may be a bit extreme to say that Cruz hates NASA. But it doesn't really seem like he loves the world's greatest space agency, since he tried to slash its funding a couple years ago. Cruz is also the lawmaker who helped orchestrate the government shutdown, a 16-day-long disaster that did irreparable damage to scientific research, including work being done at NASA. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio—who also wants NASA to get less funding—will oversee the NOAA as chair of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard.

Even though Cruz is from Houston, home of Johnson Space Center, there's reason to believe that he'll continue his pursuit of trying to deflate the space agency. Heck, just look at all the dumb things he's said about science in recent years.

"'Net Neutrality' is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government." - Ted Cruz on net neutrality
"The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened."- Ted Cruz on climate change
"You know, back in the '70s — I remember the '70s, we were told there was global cooling. And everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem. And then that faded." - Ted Cruz on climate change
"You always have to be worried about something that is considered a so-called scientific theory that fits every scenario. Climate change, as they have defined it, can never be disproved, because whether it gets hotter or whether it gets colder, whatever happens, they'll say, well, it's changing, so it proves our theory." - Ted Cruz on climate change
"I was disappointed that Bruce Willis was not available to be a fifth witness on the panel. There probably is no doubt that actually Hollywood has done more to focus attention on this issue than perhaps a thousand congressional hearings could do." - Ted Cruz on space threats
"I wondered if at some point we were going to see a tall gentleman in a mechanical breathing apparatus come forward and say in a deep voice say, "Mike Lee, I am your father" … and just like in "Star Wars" movies the empire will strike back." - Ted Cruz during his 21-hour Obamacare speech
"The authorizing committees are free to set their agency budgets, and that includes NASA." - Ted Cruz when he tried to cut NASA funding in 2013 (This one is more scary than stupid, since Cruz is now in charge of agency budgets.)
"Each day I learn what a scoundrel I am." - Ted Cruz on his attempts to defund Obamacare


2.

Cincinnati Is Set on Edge by Report It Was Blanketed by Illegal Wiretaps

Published: July 27, 1989


http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/27/us/ci ... etaps.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CINCINNATI, July 25— For more than a decade, Robert Draise and Leonard Gates say, the police and the telephone company paid them to blanket this city with a web of illegal wiretaps. They tapped judges and politicians, Black Muslims and mayors, lawyers and journalists, even a President of the United States.
Their former employer, the Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company, denies the allegations. So does the Police Department, for the most part. A private investigator hired by the city says he has found no evidence of the widespread espionage scheme the men describe.
But in the 10 months since their story was first reported in a small weekly newspaper here, there has been enough corroboration of their accusations to set this normally placid city on edge.
Mr. Draise and Mr. Gates, who were both dismissed by Cincinnati Bell well before their story became public, say that what started in the early 1970's as a crackdown on organized crime and student radicals broadened into a vast, shadowy scheme of political and corporate espionage. They say that from 1972 to 1984, at the request of undercover police officers and phone company security officers, they installed at least 1,200 illegal wiretaps, including one in a Cincinnati hotel while President Gerald R. Ford stayed there in 1975 and 1976. Motives Are Unclear
Mr. Draise, an installer and repairman who was dismissed in 1979, and Mr. Gates, a supervisor who was dismissed in 1986, say they were not given reasons for the taps. They tapped some police officers, they say, because fellow officers suspected them of criminal activity. Some of the politicians tapped opposed increases in telephone rates. Mr. Draise has testified that one target was a competitor to Cincinnati Bell in business equipment.
No one has explained why anyone in this Republican stronghold would have wanted to listen in on Mr. Ford.
Although the phone company says the men are liars pursuing personal vendettas against their former employer, their allegations have set off investigations by a Federal grand jury and the City of Cincinnati. A former county commissioner and three former police officers who believe their phones were tapped have sued the city and the phone company for $112 million in damages.
Last fall, in pretrial depositions in the civil suit, a number of former police officers pleaded their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination when asked if they had taken part in illegal wiretaps. In March, four of them, including former Police Chief Myron Leistler, issued a press release acknowledging that they had installed 12 such taps from 1968 to 1974, primarily against organized crime figures, drug dealers and political radicals.
The day after that disclosure, an editorial in The Cincinnati Post, quoting City Manager Scott Johnson, wondered, ''Who else, what else and when else?'' $30 to $40 a Tap In court proceedings and interviews, the 47-year-old Mr. Draise, who now sells insurance, and Mr. Gates, 44, who is unemployed, have given this account:
It all began in 1972, when Mr. Draise says he met Sgt. Jerry Berry, a fellow Mason who was a plainclothes officer in the Police Department's special intelligence unit.
Sergeant Berry wanted the offices of the Black Muslims wiretapped. He promised Mr. Draise that the request had been cleared by department superiors. As a sign of good faith, he showed Mr. Draise his Masonic ring.
Shortly after Mr. Draise wiretapped the Black Muslims, Sergeant Berry also enlisted Mr. Gates. At first, the two men were paid $30 to $40 per tap from a fund in the special intelligence unit, Mr. Draise said. In 1975 or 1976, they stopped hearing from Sergeant Berry and began getting orders from Cincinnati Bell security officers - first James West and later Peter Gabor. In these years, they said, Cincinnati Bell paid them overtime for the wiretapping work. Invoking the F.B.I. When Mr. Draise and Mr. Gates pressed Mr. West and Mr. Gabor for proof of authority, the Cincinnati Bell security officers said the wiretaps had been cleared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the local Police Department, but they did not produce any documentation.
None of the retired officers named in the civil lawsuit, including Mr. Berry. are talking with reporters. Stephen E. Kurlansky, who is representing Mr. Berry, said the former officer was aware of only the 12 instances of wiretapping Chief Leistler and the officers acknowledged in the March press release. Mr. Draise and Mr. Gates were involved with Mr. Berry in only four of these, he said.
Only bits and pieces of the former employees' account have been corroborated by others. For example, Carl Goodin, the Police Chief from February 1971 to July 1976, said he had no knowledge of illegal wiretapping, but in a deposition in the civil suit he said George McNair, his subordinate in intelligence, often met with Mr. West of Cincinnati Bell. Mr. Goodin said that until recently he had assumed that Mr. West was in the F.B.I.
''I thought he was an F.B.I. agent,'' Mr. Goodin said in the deposition. ''When I saw him and his name in the paper working for the phone company, I wa

ARTICLE 25
article25news

Privacy Died Long Ago


06/03/2013

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.



Article 25 is a street newspaper based in Cincinnati; street papers are non-profit, grassroots newspapers with a distribution model specifically designed to offer a creative solution to those suffering from unemployment, homelessness, or poverty. Distributors, who are financially struggling, homeless, or formerly homeless individuals or families, go through training and ... Continue reading


ETC

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/agen ... m-32644193" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Judge: Ex-Agent May Testify About FBI Search of Durst's Room

NEW ORLEANS —
Jul 23, 2015, 3:28

Lawyers for real estate heir Robert Durst may call a former FBI agent
as an expert witness to testify about whether agents illegally
searched his New Orleans hotel room before arresting him on a charge
of illegally possessing a gun, a federal judge ruled Thur

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/08/06/t ... gae-bloom/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The Hothouse Breeds More Toxic Waters — Lake Erie ‘Painted Green’ By Enormous Algae Bloom

Enormous blooms of algae painting the waters green, sickly blue, or blood-red. Algae producing toxins making water unsafe to drink or swim in. Making fish, shellfish and crabs unsafe to eat. Generating life-snuffing dead zones of low oxygen and, potentially, producing deadly hydrogen sulfide gas ranging our lakes, seas, and oceans.

This is what happens when the world is forced to warm, when run-off due to climate change induced extreme rainfall events increases, when the land that run-off comes from is loaded with fossil fuel based fertilizers, and when fossil fuel burning itself generates a constant fall-out of nitrogen from the skies. In ancient hothouse events, similar forces generated mass extinctions in the world’s waters. And through fossil fuel burning we’re setting off a related hothouse type stress to the life-giving liquid we all rely upon. A stress that is yet worsened due to the efficiency with which we are able to load the air, land, and seas with environmental toxins that aid in the generation of algae blooms of an intensity nature alone would have never kicked off.

Toxic algae blooms become common for western Lake Eerie

(In a human-warmed world, toxic algae blooms that threaten Toledo, Cleveland and Akron water supplies are becoming all too common. Algae biomass graphic for the 2013 and 2014 Lake Erie algae blooms provided by NOAA.)

Lake Erie in the Firing Line

In the US, one of the most vulnerable bodies of fresh water to this kind of toxic algae growth is Lake Erie. Over recent decades as the local climate changed, the water warmed. Weather patterns resulted in increased heavy rainfall events. Increased farm industry and fertilizer use meant that much of the run-off was heavily laden with algae

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see link for full story

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/feds ... d-33038346" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Feds: Man Retaliated Against FBI Agent Via Craigslist
Aug 12, 2015,
A man has been charged with stalking and harassing an FBI agent who had investigated him by posting a fake Craigslist sex ad that included the agent's phone number and address.

The interstate stalking charge against 47-year-old Frederick Banks, of Pittsburgh, was unsealed this week. A federal magistrate on Tuesday ordered Banks jailed until trial.

The agent isn't named in the indictment and is identified only by his initials, T.P. He has since transferred to the Tampa, Florida area, where the Craigslist ad was posted June 25, according to a printout of it filed with the court.

The ad identifies the poster as a "married white boy" who is seeking a male sexual partner for himself and his wife, described as a "blond

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


Dangerous Heat Sets Sights on Southern United States
High wet bulb temperatures and related heatwave mass casualty events have spanned the globe during the record hot summer of 2015. Now, it appears the Southern United States is also falling under the gun of life-threatening heat and humidity.

Gulfs of Mexico, California Host Screaming Sea Surface Temperatures

As with so many recent heatwaves with the potential to produce mass casualty events, the story starts with sea surface temperatures in excess of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). And across a broad region of the Gulf of Mexico and all throughout the Gulf of California ocean surface waters now feature temperatures in the range of 30 to 33 degrees C (86 to 91 F).

image

(A tell-tale pool of 30 C+ water is gathering in the Gulfs of Mexico and California. Such hot water is a support for deadly wet-bulb readings in the range of 30-33 C. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

These are waters warmed by increasingly vicious human hothouse conditions. A world ocean facing a global fever that is 1 degree C (1.8 F) hotter than the more placid, less dangerous temperatures of 135 years ago.

In the Gulfs of Mexico and California, this heat has concentrated — pushing the waters there into 1-4 C above average ranges. Generating a dangerous reservoir of latent heat. One featuring ocean temperatures similar to those that kicked off heatwave mass casualty events in India, Pakistan, Japan and Egypt this summer. But this feature of the human hothouse is now focusing in on the Southern US — creating conditions that are increasing the risk of heat stress, heat injury and possibly loss of life.

The steaming waters of our southern gulfs will feed dangerously high wet bulb temperatures throughout a large region from the Carolinas to Florida through the Gulf States and on into the Southwest over the coming days and weeks. Ocean temperatures hot enough to support wet bulb readings in the range of 30 to 33 degrees Celsius. Dangerous levels very close to the maximum human threshold of 35 C.

NOAA Predicts Heat Indexes to Skyrocket

Concordantly, a similar measure used to determine how hot it feels outside is set to skyrocket throughout the southern US over coming days. In many regions heat indexes are predi

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http://www.sanduskyregister.com/news/local/9439761" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Local student trains with FBI
Danbury student, 17, hopes to become an FBI agent


SEP 6, 2015
Provided photo/ John Rhodes, 17, receiving a certificate from Andrew McCabe, assistant director in charge, at the FBI Washington Field Office.
Provided photo/ John Rhodes, 17, pictured next to an FBI bus in Washington, D.C.

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Hothouse Monsters Clash: Godzilla El Nino Pummels Pacific’s Hot Blob
Two climate change spawned monsters are duking it out over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean waters. And in a human heated world its an epic battle between these two warming fueled atmospheric and oceanic goliaths — the Godzilla El Nino versus the Pacific Ocean’s Hot Blob.

* * * * *

Ridiculously Resilient Ridge. RRR. Blocking high pressure system. All names given to a sprawling heat dome that has plagued the U.S. West Coast for the better part of two years running. It’s a weather system largely responsible for the California drought — the worst in at least 1200 years. A weather system implicated in an extraordinarily intense outbreak of wildfires across the North American West from Alaska through British Columbia and all along the US West Coast — including within the usually moist rain forests of Washington and Oregon.

image

(The RRR is shrinking and increasingly besieged by storms. A sign that the El Nino related Pacific Storm track intensification is beginning to assert. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

It’s a system connected to a climate change-enforced melting of Arctic sea ice and a similarly forced warming of the Northeastern Pacific Sea surface far above typical temperatures (see here, here, and here). An unprecedented and extreme heating of waters into a ‘Hot Blob’ stretching for thousands of miles. A related drying of airs. Oceanic and atmospheric heat energy generating an implacable atmospheric bully. A high pressure system so powerful it typically flung Pacific Ocean storms far off course — as far north as the High Arctic.

But now the RRR is starting to weaken. Its great northward extending ridge has retreated from Alaska. Intense storms exploding out from a system that is likely to rival the strongest El Nino on record (1997-1998) are now surrounding the ridge, nibbling away at its edges, cooling the waters of the hot blob through Ekman pumping, and raging on through Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

image

(Storm-based upwelling is starting to cool Northeastern Pacific Ocean waters in a region that has been dominated by the Hot Blob during recent years. A condition that is undermining some of the RRR’s support. El Nino based storm generation to the south will likely continue to aim blows at this oceanic heat base. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

It’s early sign of RRR collapse. That the Hot Blob is starting to fail. With some of the precursors to likely far more intense Fall and Winter storms starting to get caught up into its spiraling decline. And as sea surface temperature anomalies are likely to hit 2.0 to 2.3 C above average in the Niño 3.4 zone in this week’s NOAA El Niño report, more RRR-challenging storms are likely on the way.

As Ricky Rood over at Weather Underground said this week it’s Godzilla vs the Blob. And Godzilla, at this point, appears to have the upper hand. And once the Blob goes down there’s nothing to keep what are likely to be some seriously epic storms slamming into the west coast of North America this Fall and Winter. But according to recent science, there’s a high risk that the Blob will creep on back as the Godzilla El Nino retreats during mid to late 2016. And for the West Coast that means high risk of a pretty vicious cycle of drought to flood to drought. A dangerous weather pattern intrinsically related to human-forced climate change.

Links:

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

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2 stories


1.


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... rnia-towns" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Explosive wildfire threatens California mountain towns as blaze intensifies
Governor declares state of emergency as thousands prepare to evacuate
Firefighters amdstruggle to contain worsening conditions


2.


http://www.wunderground.com/news/tropic ... landslides" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Japan Floods, Landslides Leave At Least 3 Dead, 16 Missing; Officials Confirm 13,000 Homes Flooded
Nick Wiltgen
Published: September 12, 2015
Government officials confirmed that more than 13,000 homes have been flooded in Japan after torrential rains associated with former Tropical Storm Etau dumped unprecedented rainfall on parts of eastern and northern Japan Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Three people are confirmed dead, 16 remain missing, and 30 others have been injured due to the storm, which also caused at least 99 landslides and left thousands of people temporarily stranded, some for more than two days.
Search and rescue efforts continued Saturday while crews made repairs to the broken levee that sent raging floodwaters from the Kinugawa River into the city of Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Thursday. Joso is about 30 miles northeast of downtown Tokyo. An earthquake struck the Greater Tokyo area at dawn Saturday as rescue efforts were poised to resume, injuring at least six people and rattling areas where people were still trapped in flooded houses.
Dramatic helicopter rescues unfolded on live television in Japan on Thursday as water breached that levee, leaving scores of residents trapped on the roofs or upper floors of their homes.
Water from the Kinugawa River (left) rushes through a levee break into the city of Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2015. (Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)
Here's the latest from Japan:
The number of missing dropped to 16 on Saturday. Japanese media said a pair of eight-year-old boys were among those found alive and removed from the list of missing.
The Japanese government's Fire and Disaster Management Agency raised the confirmed count of flooded homes to 13,384 in a report released Saturday.
In addition to the flooded homes, seven dwellings have been destroyed and 23 partially damaged according to the FDMA.
More than 11,000 of the flooded homes are in Ibaraki Prefecture.
A magnitude-5.2 earthquake struck Tokyo Bay at 5:49 a.m. local time Saturday, rattling the entire Tokyo region and prompting fears of quake-triggered landslides in rain-soaked hilly terrain.
The earthquake injured seven people in Tokyo and its suburbs, according to the FDMA.
Another earthquake, rated magnitude 4.6 and centered off the east coast of Ibaraki Prefecture, rattled the Joso flood zone nearly six hours later but with weaker ground shaking.
A 62-year-old man remains missing after the vehicle he was in was swept into a flooded river in the city of Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture. A 48-year-old woman died in that incident.
Other key developments in the storm:
A 63-year-old woman was confirmed dead after a landslide struck Kanuma city, Tochigi Prefecture, early Thursday. The woman was missing for hours before being found dead Thursday evening.
A man in his 20s was confirmed dead Friday after falling into a flooded drainage pipe Thursday in Nikkō city, Tochigi Prefecture.
The FDMA says at least 28 people have been injured in landslides, flooding and strong winds associated with Etau.
Up to 26 inches of rain fell in eastern Japan Sunday through Friday due to Tropical Storm Etau and its remnant low.
Emergency weather warnings issued for Tochigi, Ibaraki and Miyagi prefectures have all been lowered.
The Shibui River broke through a levee in Ōsaki city, Miyagi Prefecture, on Friday morning. At least 1,000 people were stranded in floodwaters, according to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
The Japan Meteorological Agency issued the maximum "Level 5" flood warning Friday for the Yoshida River in Miyagi Prefecture and for the Mogamiogumi River in Yamagata Prefecture.
More than 800 people in the mountainous town of Minamiaizu, Fukushima Prefecture, were cut off from the outside world due to flooding and landslides on the lone highway through town Friday.

Right Now: Clouds and Rainfall Intensity
The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a rare emergency heavy rainfall warning for Miyagi Prefecture and its 2.3 million residents early Friday as torrential rains continued to drench the prefecture, which includes the city of Sendai, raising concerns of landslides and river flooding. The JMA observation site near Sendai's central business district reported 269 millimeters (10.59 inches) of rain in the 24-hour period between 7:40 a.m. Thursday and 7:40 a.m. Friday local time. (Japan is 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Daylight Time.) JMA lowered the warning for Miyagi Friday evening.

"We can say this is an abnormal situation and there is imminent serious danger," said Takuya Deshimaru, chief forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency, according to the BBC.

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http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencen ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




Sierra Nevada snowpack hit a 500-year low in 2015

when California Gov. Jerry Brown stood in a snowless Sierra Nevada meadow on April 1 and ordered unprecedented water restrictions because of the drought, it was the first spring in 75 years of observation that the area lacked snow.

Now, six months later, researchers say this year’s record-low snowpack may be far more historic -- and ominous -- than previously realized.

In a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists estimate that the recent Sierra Nevada snowpack was the lowest

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http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/FBI ... 18451.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI STEPPING FORWARD WITH A NEW PROGRAM TO KEEP KIDS SAFE ON THE INTERNET


Story Published: Sep 15, 2015 at 10:40 PM PDT
Story Updated: Sep 15, 2015 at 10:40 PM PDT
SAN DIEGO - It’s that time of year again. Students have returned to class. But along with books and pens, many will be utilizing tablets, laptops, and computers.
Students today are more computer savvy than ever—and the 2015-2016 FBI Safe Online Surfing (FBI-SOS) Internet Challenge aims to keep their cyber safety skills just as cutting edge as they are.
According to a survey of teens and tweens conducted in 2014 by Cox Communications and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC): on average, teens spend 5 hours and 38 minutes



Also see
FBI agent doesn't have to register as sex offender for peeping Tom incidents in Hershey, elsewhere, court says


http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index. ... to_re.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

on July 11, 2014 at 1:55 PM, updated July 11, 2014 at 2:06 PM



Reddit
A former FBI agent who admitted sneaking into bathrooms to watch girls and women use toilets doesn't have to register as a sex offender, the state Superior Court has ruled.

The decision, issued this week in response to a plea by Ryan Seese, comes nearly four years after the Derry Township man was sentenced to 1 to 23 months in Dauphin County Prison, plus 3 years of probation, for committing the crimes at the Hershey Middle School and a private gym.

In its ruling, the Superior Court concluded that Seese isn't subject to sex offender registration because of amendments the state Legislature made to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which took effect two years after his sentencing.

Seese pleaded guilty and no contest in 2010 to three charges of invasion of privacy and pleaded guilty to additional counts of criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. Police said two adult women were the victims in the incident in the women's locker room at the private gym and that Seese spied on two teens in a girl's bathroom during a concert at the middle school.

Seese left

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Sweden
Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six-hour working day
A trial of shorter days for nurses at a Gothenburg care home is inspiring others across Scandinavia to cut back, but the cost of improving staff wellbeing is high


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/s ... orking-day" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thursday 17 September 2015 05.44 EDT

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2015
Under Toxic Fire: How the Clintons Helped Cover-Up Gulf War Syndrome



http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/18/ ... -syndrome/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There would be no stone left unturned, President Bill Clinton assured Americans on Veterans Day six days after his re-election in November 1996, in efforts to get to the bottom of the array of illnesses colloquially known as Gulf War Syndrome. With his next breath Clinton heaped praise on the presidential advisory committee on Gulf War illnesses, whose prime finding, leaked three days earlier, had been that there is no Gulf War syndrome and that any adverse symptoms associated with the name could be attributed to psychological stress experienced by the vets.

George H.W. Bush’s determination to punish Iraq led to the Gulf War illnesses, but Clinton was responsible for the cover-up of how those illnesses developed. Shortly after Veterans Day, Hillary Clinton told an audience at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas that one of her priorities in the second term would be to work on issues related to these Gulf War illnesses. Indeed it was Hillary who pushed in the spring of 1995 for the creation of this same presidential panel that eventually laid the blame on stress, the relief of which became the First Lady’s therapeutic project, though as the years unscrolled less-and-less was heard from her on this thorny eruption of mass “psycho-somatic” illnesses.

The report of the presidential commission could hardly be called scientific, since the results of a hundred epidemiological studies, which the panel commissioned, have not yet been processed. In other words, the only stones not left unturned by Clinton were those used to conceal what happened in 1991.

Another finding of the presidential commission proved highly pertinent. The nine-person panel said emphatically that the Pentagon ca not be trusted to investigate itself. The panel called for an independent probe of whether Allied forces in the gulf in 1991 had been exposed to chemical and biological weapons. Previous Pentagon investigations, they wrote, “have lacked vigor, fallen short on investigative grounds, and stretched credibility.” Clinton gave this recommendation short shrift, saying that he believed Defense Secretary Bill Perry “has moved in an expeditious fashion.” Clinton endorsed the Pentagon’s position that it alone had the technical expertise to exhume the truth in this affair.

From the very first moment, back in 1991, when the possibility of chemical and biological weapon (CBW) deployment was raised, the Pentagon denied that such weapons were ever used, that troops were ever exposed, that there are illnesses associated with Iraq’s chemical/biological arsenal of weaponry. In marked contrast, Czech CBW experts who were part of the Allied force notified Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s HQ on January 19, 1991, two days after the initial bombing of Baghdad, that they had detected two chemical “events” near Jubayl. Schwarzkopf’s office promptly issued an order to all U.S. commanders to “disregard any reports coming from the Czechs.” On November 10, 1993, the Pentagon admitted in a congressional hearing that it believed the Czech report to be valid. When asked why the army had not investigated the “events” reported by the Czechs as a possible source of the syndrome, Maj. Gen. Ronald Blanck, commander of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said they did not explore this because “it was the position of military inte

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http://m.bedford.wickedlocal.com/articl ... /150917424" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Kevin Weeks talks Bulger, books, "Black Mass"


Posted Sep 19, 2015 at 2:00 AM

Kevin Weeks spent more than two decades following the path of violence that was James “Whitey” Bulger. Facing a lengthy sentence in federal prison, he cooperated with authorities, testifying against a number of mobsters, including Bulger.
In 1999, he pleaded guilty for aiding Bulger in the murder of five victims and served a little more than five years before he was released from prison in 2005.
During a recent conversation with Weeks, he was genial and displayed a sense of humor -- not what one might expect from a man with his history.
While in prison, Weeks faced a number of wrongful death suits by families of his victims. He and co-author Phyllis Karas worked together on a book while Weeks served his time.
“Lawyers came up with the idea that I write a story and the families would get part of the proceeds,” he said.
Karas said she had no reservations about working with Weeks.
“I knew he was a kingpin in Whitey Bulger’s world. He’s done some bad deeds, which he’s acknowledged. Underneath all this, as strange as it sounds, he’s a very decent man. And a very smart man,” she said.
Karas said she was asked to co-author Weeks' memoir as a result of another book she wrote, published in 2004 -- “Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob” -- with another Bulger crony, Eddie McKenzie. Karas said while Weeks hoped to largely fade away from the public eye after serving his sentence, McKenzie was anxious to have his story told.
The pair have since collaborated on two other books. The first was “Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob.” It was published 2007 and was a New York Times bestseller. Karas said Weeks initially wanted nothing to do with the book.
“The last thing Kevin wanted to do was to expose his life, but his lawyers convinced him it was the only way he was going to have a life after his release from prison,” said Karas.
Asked if he planned to attend a screening of “Black Mass,” a movie about Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang, Weeks said he wasn’t thrilled about it.
“It’s going to be a Hollywood movie and with a lot of embellishments and mis-characterizations. It won’t be accurate,” he said.
Nor does he think the victims’ families will be happy with it.
“If you’re going to make a movie, the victims’ families deserve the whole truth,” he said, adding a number of people have contacted him about the script and that he has seen the trailers. “I don’t think it’s going to be very accurate.”
Weeks said he was amused that the FBI was a consultant on the movie and expects they will attempt to whitewash the facts, particularly regarding convicted FBI agent John “Zip” Connolly.
“They’ll try to distance themselves as far as their involvement,” he said.
Books

While “Brutal” may have served a purpose in satisfying the victims' families, Weeks would have preferred it never be written.
“It brings up a lot of things that happened. I don’t want my family and boys to read about it. It’s probably hurtful

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IRS And FBI Track Americans Who Renounce Citizenship. Why Is ...
Forbes-Sep 21, 2015
The FBI and the IRS don't agree, yet both are ostensibly tracking the same data: how Americans are giving up their citizenship. For several ...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/ ... st-longer/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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When Government Makes Lying a Crime



http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-th ... ng-a-crime" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


September 25, 2015 // 08:30 AM EST



In the United States, it is not a crime to lie. It is not a crime to cheat. And it's certainly not a crime to teach someone how to lie. So, to silence a man who has spent much of his adult life teaching people to lie, the Department of Homeland Security had to get creative.

Douglas Williams, a 67-year-old former FBI agent is going to federal prison for two years at the end of October. Williams's is the biggest arrest to come out of "Operation Lie Busters," a Department of Homeland Security initiative to entrap and arrest those who teach others to "pass" polygraph lie-detection examinations.

Williams isn't sure he's committed a crime. Neither are a lot of people. But taking a plea deal was better than the 100 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines he was facing.

The specifics of Williams's case have been well reported elsewhere, but here's the short version: For years, Williams charged about $1,000 per day to coach people to pass polygraph lie-detection tests through his website, polygraph.com. That business, in and of itself, is not a crime and is protected by the First Amendment. Fraud, however, is not, and so the Department of Homeland Security sought to make Williams commit fraud.

"The criminalization of speech advocating for unlawful behavior has been a pretext for suppressing unpopular ideas"

According to Williams's indictment, two undercover agents asked Williams to teach them how to pass a polygraph test in order to pass a federal background check.

During the lead up to the classes (and during the classes themselves), both undercover agents repeatedly confessed specifics of imaginary past crimes that they wished to lie about. Because Williams was told about one of the would-be employee's (imaginary) drug smuggling, he was technically assisting a person to defraud the government, according to the indictment.

In 2013, Williams was charged with two counts of mail fraud (he received the undercover agents' payments in the mail) and three counts of witness tampering. Each carried a sentence of 20 years. Chad Dixon, another person who taught polygraphy countermeasures, served eight months in prison after a similar government sting operation.

"I had no idea what I was doing was illegal and I still don't think it was," Williams told me shortly after his sentencing earlier this week. "They piled so many charges on that you're crushed under the weight of their overreach—my attorney told me to just cut my losses and take the plea."

So how does the government make lying illegal? And why bother?

"It is lawful and constitutionally protected to engage in speech and it's legal to even offer tools that others may use to break the law. It's legal to advocate lying and even advocate cheating," Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in First Amendment issues, told me. "That is all speech fully protected by the First Amendment, and it's why you're allowed to sell devices for flushing illegal drugs

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Federal judge sanctions Border Patrol over destruction of evidence


http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A federal judge in Arizona has issued sanctions against the U.S. Border Patrol over destruction of evidence the agency was required to keep during an ongoing civil lawsuit.



Judge David C. Bury issued the sanctions Monday in a months-long lawsuit filed by a coalition of advocacy groups on behalf of three immigrants who say the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector routinely holds immigrants in inhumane, dirty and extremely cold cells for extended periods of time.

More migrants will avoid deportation under Obama's new policy, report says
More migrants will avoid deportation under Obama's new policy, report says
“The court concludes the destruction of the videotape recordings made prior to this court's Aug. 14, 2015, order was, at best, negligent and was certainly willful. Defendants provide no explanation why, in response to plaintiffs' notifications regarding litigation, the defendants did not undertake the efforts initiated in response to the court's Aug. 14 order,” Bury wrote.

The Border Patrol will now have to produce all existing video recordings from all Tucson Sector stations back to June 10, according to the sanctions

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Jeb Bush Photo credit: Michael Vadon / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Categories: Presidential Election
September 29, 2015 | Russ Baker
Jeb Bush Family Values: Meth and Dirty Tricks

Jeb Bush may be down, but he is not yet out. His current low poll ratings mean that some nasty past work by his current campaign manager could escape broad scrutiny.

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/09/29/jeb-bu ... ty-tricks/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Shooter graduated in 2009


The Switzer Learning Center, also in Torrance, teaches students with special needs, emotional disturbances, autism, Asperger’s syndrome and other issues. According to its website, the school “has a long history of working with children who have been unsuccessful in traditional classrooms because they need the special attention and encouragement that only a school like Switzer can provide.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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October 2, 2015
The U.S. Elections and Verbal Vomit


http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ ... bal-vomit/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Despite having fled the United States in 2005, shortly after, and as a direct result of, the election of George W. Bush to the presidency, this writer remains fascinated by U.S. elections. Like the passerby, morbidly gawking at a bloody auto accident, he is unable to stop listening to the bizarre pronouncements of the people who would be president. He is continually astonished at the egos of petty little men and women, of no real consequence in the world, somehow actually convincing themselves that an even moderately informed electorate would vote them into the most powerful office on the planet. Let us look at a few:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, on September 29, made this amazing statement, regarding the recent Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage throughout the country: “It is not the law of the land because it has not been affirmed by the people’s representatives”. He further said that this ruling on the Constitution by the Supreme Court, the body that has the final say on the Constitution, is, in his word, “unconstitutional”. One must ask what he thinks of past Supreme Court decisions on such things as civil rights, which were also not ‘affirmed by the people’s representatives’. Or perhaps a more simple case might be instructive to him. In 2000, the people spoke, and elected Vice President Al Gore as president, but the Supreme Court ruled that George Bush would be inaugurated. The Court made a ruling against which the people themselves voted. What does Mr. Huckabee have to say about this?

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard who was unsuccessful in purchasing a California senate seat and is now bidding on the White House, also weighed in on marriage equality. On May 9, 2015, prior to the Supreme Court ruling on Obergerfell vs. Hodges, she said this. “The Supreme Court ruling will become the law of the land.” Interviewed by conservative radio host Jan Mickelson on Friday, September 25, she was asked about that statement. Ms. Fiorina made this remarkable response: “I actually—with all due respect Jan—I think that is a quote from someone else, not from me.” Unfortunately, this is difficult for Ms. Fiorina to deny, since her original statement is available on Youtube. But she did leave herself a caveat: she said later in the interview, when

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“This one is extraordinary in that it’s such a prolonged event,” he said.


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... quin-rains" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Thought the scorching heat in Southern California was over? Think again

Temperatures soar to 100 degrees over the last three days, making it the longest stretch of scorching triple-digit heat in downtown L.A. in more than 25 years, forecasters say.

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