WHO CARES

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msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: WHO CARES

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http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/10/06/why-am ... la-part-1/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


October 7, 2015 | Edward Curtin
Why Americans Should Closely Watch Unfolding Events in Guatemala, Part 2

This is the backstory to the recent arrest of Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina on corruption charges. It details the US involvement in the training of Molina and many others in the most effective techniques of torture and killing at the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: WHO CARES

Post by msfreeh »

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/10/10/h ... an-do-bad/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




How Do-Gooders Can Do Bad
October 10, 2015

“Human rights” organizations have become purveyors of bloody chaos as they advocate Western big-power military attacks on weak countries in the name of “responsibility to protect” – one of several purportedly well-intentioned strategies gone awry – as Coleen Rowley and Diana Johnstone describe.

By Coleen Rowley and Diana Johnstone

Organizers and participants in the “Creating a Workable World” conference (held this weekend at the University of Minnesota) are undoubtedly sincere. No one wants to live in an unworkable world. The sponsoring World Federalist Movement has historically exercised a strong attraction on progressives, appealing to their generous sentiments and wish for world peace.

However, such a grand, overarching ideal as world federalism or global democracy must be evaluated in light of current circumstances and its track record.
Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.

Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.

At the end of World War II, it was widely believed that nationalism was the main cause of the horrors that had just devastated much of the world. It was easy to imagine that abolishing nation states would be a step toward ending wars by removing their cause. This sentiment was particularly strong in Western Europe, forming the ideological foundation of the movement that led to European integration, now embodied in the European Union.

In that same period, there was a historic movement going in the opposite direction: the national liberation movements in various colonized countries of the Third World. The political drive for national liberation from European powers — Britain, France, the Netherlands — contributed to establishing national sovereignty as the foundation of world peace, by outlawing aggression. Newly liberated Third World countries felt protected by the principle of national sovereignty, seeing it as essential to independence and even to survival.

But today, 70 years after the end of World War II, experience has provided lessons in the practice of these two contrary ideals: supranational governance and national sovereignty. Not surprisingly, the official voices of the hegemonic world power and its allies tend to cite internal conflicts, especially in weaker Third World countries, as proof that national sovereignty must be violated in order to defend “human rights” and bring democracy. The danger from “genocide” has even become an official U.S.-NATO pretext for advocating and launching military intervention. With disastrous results.

It’s therefore not surprising that Workable World’s keynote speaker, W. Andy Knight, was a supporter of the infamous regime-change war that virtually destroyed Libya, under the guise, paradoxically, of the U.S. and NATO

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: WHO CARES

Post by msfreeh »

couple of stories from the whisper stream




link du jour


http://sunray22b.net/Police_Corruption.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Bonus read
http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2010/10/in ... recy_2010/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Secrecy News
Invention Secrecy Still Going Strong
Posted on Oct.21, 2010 in Secrecy by Steven Aftergood




There were 5,135 inventions that were under secrecy orders at the end
of Fiscal Year 2010, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told Secrecy
News last week. It’s a 1% rise over the year before, and the highest
total in more than a decade.

Under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, patent applications on new
inventions can be subject to secrecy orders restricting their
publication if government agencies believe that disclosure would be
“detrimental to the national security.”

The current list of technology areas that is used to screen patent
applications for possible restriction under the Invention Secrecy Act
is not publicly available and has been denied under the Freedom of
Information Act. (An appeal is pending.) But a previous list dated
1971 and obtained by researcher Michael Ravnitzky is available here
(pdf).

Most of the listed technology areas are closely related to military
applications. But some of them range more widely.

Thus, the 1971 list indicates that patents for solar photovoltaic
generators were subject to review and possible restriction if the
photovoltaics were more than 20% efficient. Energy conversion systems
were likewise subject to review and possible restriction if they
offered conversion efficiencies “in excess of 70-80%.”

One may fairly ask if disclosure of such technologies could really
have been “detrimental to the national security,” or whether the
opposite would be closer to the truth. One may further ask what
comparable advances in technology may be subject to restriction and
non-disclosure today. But no answers are forthcoming, and the
invention secrecy system persists with no discernible external review.

1.



http://www.madcowprod.com/2015/10/13/co ... -jfk-plot/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MadCowNews


Investigative Reporting into Drug Trafficking, 9/11 & Terrorism
2015-08-06

← David Ferrie, Lee Oswald, & Barry Seal: Patsies or Principals?


Ferrie, Oswald, Seal: ‘Committing Journalism’ in New Orleans


Posted on October 13, 2015 by Daniel Hopsicker



Leading up to this weekend’s Oswald Conference in New Orleans, over
the next few days I will be publishing interviews and video of
eyewitnesses who knew three men Americans were violently prevented
from hearing.

David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Barry Seal—each with intimate
knowledge of the plot to kill JFK—met at a two-week Louisiana Civil
Air patrol summer camp at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport
Louisiana.

It turns out a lot of people in New Orleans— pilots, aviation
professionals, and former members of the Louisiana Civil Air
Patrol—still remember them.
oswald-ferrie-seal



"Dude, you're harshing my mellow"

Fifteen years ago I left my home for more than a decade in Newport
Beach California to spend two years in and around New Orleans
Louisiana investigating the life and brutal assassination of a
life-long CIA pilot who Federal prosecutors called the “biggest drug
smuggler in American history.”

His name was Barry Seal.

At least initially, I was just looking for eyewitnesses who knew him
from his role in the explosive growth of cocaine trafficking during
the 1980’s.

I was driving a beat-up ’83 Audi and clutching a Sony camcorder that
had been dropped on its head, and now delivered images that seemed to
glow in the dark.

It hadn’t always been like that.

Before I became interested in Seal, I was producing a business TV show
airing internationally, documentaries and new product introductions
for major American companies whose names are household words, and, it
almost goes without saying, driving a BMW.


"Definitely second unit meat"
I even went to Cannes for a few years. Not the glamorous Festival de
Cannes; I went to MIPCON, the more-subdued and less classy TV version.
Still, I partied on a few yachts, and distinctly remember carousing at
an all-night MTV affair under a full moon in a 12th Century castle
perched high above the city overlooking the Mediterranean.

Those days are gone. No more helicopter shots. Hell, no more dolly
shots, even. No more 2-or-3-man crews, no editing sessions in
Hollywood with catered lunches. Its pretty much been what a huge
red-haired bear of a sound engineer once described to me with a
grimace as "definitely second unit meat."

Still, even with all that, today I wouldn’t change a thing. I was an
eyewitness to history, Well, maybe not exactly. Instead, I was able to
interview several dozen people who were eyewitnesses to our—to
America’s—secret history. Many had never before spoken—or even been
approached—to tell anyone about what they’d seen.

What happens in New Orleans

what_happens_in_new_orleansWhat's odd about that is that those in the
mainstream media who are only too eager to use labels to discredit
anyone with the temerity to question the official story, are never
keen—or even curious—about interviewing any eyewitness who possesses
what called "inconvenient knowledge."

Here’s what I learned: What happens in New Orleans doesn’t absolutely
have to stay in New Orleans. But good luck trying to get any of the
really juicy bits out.

And if you do, prepare to be called a “conspiracist,” a “conspiracy
theorist.”

Or worse.


"And I thought Hollywood was a 'Company' Town"

Something strange was going on in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol in
the mid-Fifties that leads like a trail of bread crumbs through the
signal events of America’s secret history during the second half of
the 20th Century.

In New Orleans, I found and interviewed eyewitnesses to America’s
secret history: pilots, aviation professionals, and former members of
the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol, who in those long-ago days in 1955
trained with David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, and/or Barry Seal.

For example, the story of how David Ferrie recruited Lee Harvey Oswald
and Barry Seal into America's “clandestine services” has long been a
well-kept secret, and for good reason.

BARRY-SEAL-No more. A picture of 16-year old Barry Seal preparing to
step onto a US Air Force plane bound for a two-week summer camp of the
Louisiana Civil Air Patrol at Barksdale Air Force Base in July of 1955
where he will meet fellow cadet Lee Harvey Oswald, and where both will
fall into the orbit of the freakish David Ferrie was published in
“Barry & ‘the boys.’”

A close perusal offers more than a glimpse into what really happened:
While still an impressionable teenager both Barry Seal and Lee Harvey
Oswald came under the tutelage of a man you wouldn't want your worst
enemies' kid to know, pedophile David Ferrie.

Had no one known? Of course they had. They've just been afraid to
talk.


High Concept: Interview eyewitnesses. Write down what they say.

Today Collin Hamer is an archivist and librarian at the New Orleans
Public Library who still retains attendance records from his time in
the CAP with Ferrie and Oswald, where he was one of Ferrie’s protégés.

Oswald attended more than a dozen CAP meetings led by David Ferrie in
an Eastern Airlines hangar at Moisant Airport, he testified to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations.
"Ferrie was a unit leader. He headed the Civil Air Patrol Unit during
the period that Oswald attended,” Hamer told the Committee. “They were
both there."

He recounted a story to me about how Ferrie came to move his CAP unit
from Lakefront Airport to New Orleans International (Moisant.)

"Our CAP unit was all-boy, which was just the way Ferrie liked it,"
said Hamer, “until a woman named Gladys Durr brought her girl scout
troop over, and we all paired off, boys and girls together. Dave
Ferrie didn't like that one little bit. He and Durr got into a hot
clash, and he moved to the Moisant unit."

One reason Ferrie used the CAP was for the procurement of young boys
for what Hamer wryly called "unauthorized physicals."


A 'special' CAP unit for military drills

Eddie Shearer was another cadet in Ferrie's Civil Air Patrol unit
before joining the Air Force. I read him a quote about the military
demeanor of Ferrie's outfit, and he quickly affirmed its truth.

"The entire reason for the existence of Ferrie’s New Orleans Squadron
was national drill competitions. We attended three years in a row,"
said Shearer.

"The accent in the New Orleans unit was totally on professionalism.
Almost all of Ferrie's cadets intended to go into the Air Force, and
if you had your CAP "Certificate of Proficiency" when you entered, you
automatically had a leg up, and began basic training with one stripe
already."

Shearer spent time hanging around the gas station that Carlos Marcello
gave Ferrie right after the Kennedy assassination.
“There's never been any doubt in my mind that Dave's gas station, a
Gulf station out on Airline Highway, was his CIA cover," said Shearer.

"Some people I knew pretty well hung out there, and it was the
funniest thing: if you drove in to fill up with gasoline—which is what
a gas station is supposed to be for, right?—you could sit in your car
for just about forever waiting for someone to come out and tell you
they were "closed."

“Whatever they were doing there, pumping gas wasn't it."


Barry Seal owned one, too

JGJim Garrison noticed the same thing.

In "Heritage of Stone," he wrote, "Although Ferrie to all intents and
purposes was unemployed at the time except for part-time investigative
work for a lawyer, an examination of his bank account at the Whitney
National Bank revealed that during the three week period prior to the
President's assassination he deposited $7,093.02."

"Then a few months after the assassination, Ferrie suddenly acquired a
large service station.”

“He ran it in much the same way he maintained his apartment. On one
occasion he had just filled the gas tank of an acquaintance and then
waved him away, turning down payment for the gas.”

"Forget it," said Ferrie. "The government's paying for it anyway."


Skeletons in the closet… and in the backyard

FERRIE2 (3)"Dave was a brilliant individual, interested in all kinds
of things," said Shearer. “He had a workshop in his backyard, out back
of the house. And I know this sounds weird, but he had a skull out
there, hooked up to a skeleton, and he had different colored
electrical wire—blue, red, green—to simulate the nervous system, and
better understand human physiology."

Shearer several times met Dave Ferrie’s mother, who was visiting him,
and she told Shearer that Dave's brother was a nuclear physicist.
Intrigued, I tracked Ferrie's only living relative, his brother the
nuclear physicist, who was living in California. He was unwilling to
talk.

"There were constant examples of Dave Ferrie's brilliance when I hung
around with him," said Shearer. "For example, he had a little
lawnmower that he couldn't get to start. One day I was out back and he
had me repeatedly pull on the little rope that should have started it,
while he watched."

"'What a waste of efficiency,' Dave mused out loud. 'If we could only
just get rotary motion from a motor at the start!'”

“This was, remember, years before the rotary engine was patented,
before anyone had ever even heard of a Wankel motor. But Dave had had
the same idea, just talking out loud."


Flies to D.C. Returns flashing big wad. Huh.

hqdefaultLike many in New Orleans at the time, Shearer was used to
seeing Ferrie at the airport with Sergio Arcacha Smith, the Cuban
Revolutionary Front leader for whom he (Ferrie) was training exile
pilots.

"There were a lot of things about Dave that just didn't fit, unless
you added them up another way," says Shearer. "Just his
appearance…good god. You have to wonder how Eastern was able to keep
him as long as they did.

“I remember him taxi-ing his Eastern Convair one time, on his weekday
Houston-New Orleans 'milkrun.' He would always pull in way faster than
any other airline pilots did, and he'd be leaning out of one side of
his cockpit window, looking like a damn railroad engineer."

waveTwo weekends a month Dave would fly a Constellation up to
Washington D.C., said Shearer. “If while he was up there he was
meeting with his CIA contacts, it would make sense. Because I was with
him on three or four occasions after he returned, and when he opened
his wallet, he had hundred dollar bills."

"You’ve gotta remember, this was in the Fifties," Shearer continued.
"Anyone who was working back then can tell you, everybody got paid in
twenties. Nobody got paid in hundred dollar bills. You hardly ever
even saw hundred dollar bills."


"Every time I think I'm out…"

Shearer received convincing proof of Dave Ferrie's career in
clandestine services five years after his death.

"In 1972 I was asked to join the senior CAP, which is an outfit with
no cadets. There I met Herb Wagner, a Navy flier in World War II who’d
been recruited by the OSS at the end of the war, and after we got
friendly, I'd go over to his house, and sometimes he’d reminisce about
things he'd done for the CIA during the mid-'50's."

al"Herb who told me, 'Once you're in the CIA, its hard to get out.'
He’d tried to get out when he got married and settled down. He and his
wife adopted a baby girl, and he wasn't the daredevil he’d once been.

“But still they pressured him to fly for them," he told me.

"One time I saw him just after he’d received a visit from the CIA
asking him to go do something he quite obviously no longer really
wanted to be doing. And he was really down, and later I thought that
was maybe why he loosened up a bit about Dave Ferrie."

"He said 'if the truth was ever known about him, he’ll be recognized
as one of the true unsung heroes of the United States.'"

“That's when I realized that Ferrie had been a regular CIA guy, not
just some 'asset,' or 'contract operative.'"


Forget the mice. Look into my eyes.

Hypnotic-SpiralOf the many fringe controversies swirling around Dave
Ferrie's life—like the one about whether he was attempting to induce
cancer in lab mice kept in cages in his apartment—none is "fringe-ier"
than his supposed talent for hypnotism.

But the evidence for this was not merely persuasive: it was
overwhelming. From numerous sources I heard unsolicited first-hand
testimony about his preoccupation with hypnotism, as well as his
ability to hypnotize people.

A report on David Ferrie by FBI agents Eugene P. Pittman and John C.
Oakes dated December 2, 1963 refers to remarks from Gene Barnes, an
NBC cameraman.

B.Mulholland
“Barnes said Bob Mulholland, NBC News, Chicago, talked in Dallas to
one Fairy, a narcotics addict now out on bail on a sodomy charge in
Dallas. Fairy said that Oswald had been under hypnosis from a man
doing a mind-reading act at Ruby's 'Carousel.' Fairy was said to be a
private detective and the owner of an airline who took young boys on
flights 'just for kicks.'"


Bob Mulholland will later become President of NBC News; "Fairy"
(Ferrie), who did own an airline, United Air Taxi Service, will three
short years later be dead.

Using it on the kids

plane
Eddie Shearer brought the subject (hypnosis) up himself.

"The hypnotism business was the thing about him that bothered me most.
I remember, one time, we were marching in formation—drilling—out at
Lakefront Airport, getting ready to go to the CAP nationals drill
competition. And this one kid was twirling a ‘guidon’—a metal thing,
a fleur de lis on the top of the pole with the units' colors—and it
got away from him and it cut his hand pretty deeply. I mean, a real
deep gash."


“The kid gets up holding his hand, and blood is running all down his
arm past his elbow. Dave walked over to him, and put his hand out in
front of the kid's face like he's giving him a stiff-arm. Then he
said, ‘Sleep. You will feel sensation but no pain.'"

DF-LAKE"And then we were all waiting for an ambulance to take the kid
to the hospital,” Shearer continued, “and the kid is bleeding all
over. But he's not in pain anymore. And Dave goes over to him again,
and says, 'You will stop bleeding.'"

"And he did. Later, when I was in the Air Force, I learned that this
is possible, that it can be done. But it can't be done with a subject
unless you've been working, hypnotically, with that subject for a
pretty long period of time. You can't just walk over to someone, in
other words, and tell them to stop bleeding.”

"So it was clear to me that Dave Ferrie had been working hypnosis with
that kid for a long time without anyone knowing it. At least I had
never heard of it before, and I spent a lot of time out there, hanging
around that airport."


"The FBI was always struggling to catch up"

suitable attireShearer remembered something else he thought was
strange.

"It was back in '58 and '59 that Dave became convinced the FBI was
tapping his phone. So he warned us not to say anything on the phone
that we didn't want to have overheard. And when he would pick it up
before dialing, sometimes we’d hear him swearing a blue streak into
the receiver, like he was talking to whoever was tapping his phone."

Barry Seal and Dave Ferrie were in the same business, and also shared
an unusual trait that’s a clear plus for any would-be secret agent.
Both had photographic memories. (So, too, for that matter, did Richard
Bissell, the CIA agent in charge of the Bay of Pigs disaster.)

So it comes as no surprise that they had similar experiences with
Federal law enforcement, and at about the same time. According to
Jerry Chidgey, Barry's roommate and friend, there was quite a bit of
federal interest in Barry Seal. The FBI was even following him.

amber-bottle"When I met Barry I owned 'The Amber Bottle,' a folk club
in Baton Rouge, and that was where Barry used to hang,” Chidgey
recalled. “We were capitalizing on the folk craze. We became good
friends and ended up living together. One day two FBI guys showed up
asking questions while he was gone on a trip.”

"Later that same year, I think 1960, I flew to Dallas. And two men in
black suits followed me, both there and back. And unless they were
making a practice of shriveling folk club owners, the only reason I
could figure out was it must have had something to do with Barry.”


“Cause it makes your hair ‘do-right.”

james-poche

James Poche is a pilot and the kind of colorful character Louisiana
seems to produce with some regularity, a living embodiment of the
laid-back Caribbean ‘Margarita-ville’ lifestyle popularized at some
now-dim moment in time in a previous century by singer Jimmy Buffet.

Poche wears sandals, his shirt hangs outside his jeans, and he’s got a
‘do-rite’ rag wrapped around his head. When I asked why it’s called
that, he grinned.

"My oldest sister hooked me up with Barry,” he explained. “They went
to school together, and I took a couple of flying lessons from him in
1958, and that was how it started. I used to make signs and banners
for him.”

“I was the son of a Louisiana state trooper who ran security at the
State House in Baton Rouge,” he told me. “So—in the Louisiana way of
things— I had some family connections.

el-blaze
James was (typically) being modest. His father, Pappy Poche, was
Governor Earl Long’s personal bodyguard, as well as something of a
local legend.

“Pappy would go partying on Bourbon Street with the Guv at
the Famous Door,” he recalls. “And the girls would come around passing
the cap, and Pappy would take his gun out and set it in the hat, and
they’d go nuts. One time he pulled a .38 and commandeered a horse
carriage in Jackson Square, just throwing some tourists out. You could
get away with that kind of thing back then.”


Poche became one of Barry Seal’s oldest and best friends, as well as
a smuggling buddy. He explained, “I was a young kid and wanted to
learn to fly, partly just to have some escape from a dysfunctional
family, with all that entails. So I just gravitated towards Barry. He
taught me a lot.”


"Find kids whose parents won't miss 'em much."

teenagerPoche had described a family situation remarkably similar to
Seal’s own, which was similarly troubled under the surface. His
Father, B.C. Seal, drank, and Seal moved in and out of the house
during adolescence.

Had David Ferrie, Seal’s recruitment officer, been looking to recruit
boys in just these circumstances?

“He would go off for two or three weeks at a time, and then be back
like nothing had happened. And he had a lot of secrets. He seemed
pretty mysterious. He was an enigma in Baton Rouge. No one there had
ever seen anything like him before, or could ever figure out just what
he was really up to.”

James first began working for—and later flying with—Barry Seal in the
early 1960’s. Then, in the mid-70’s, he went into ‘marijuana
importation’ with him.

"Baton Rouge is kind of a go-nowhere place," Poche explained. "And
Barry had a lot of ‘soldier of fortune-type’ ideas, which made him
seem glamorous to kids around the airport. Barry had the James Bond
Syndrome.”

James' sister, Nancy Poche, the childhood friend of Seal’s who'd
introduced them, agrees with her brother about the kind of dead-end
life available locally.

“Louisiana is the kind of place,” she told me, “where as soon as you
cross the Sabine River coming in from Texas, the road begins to go
galump, galump, galump. And this is on the Interstate, for god sakes,
and you’ve got to wonder: Where does all the money go?”


Even then, Elvis was fixin' to leave the building

BARRY-SEAL- (3)As Barry Seal began jumping in with both feet into the
cocaine smuggling business, Poche was mostly content to watch him from
the sidelines, especially when Barry began to building an
increasingly-paramilitary organization. For as long as he could ( for
a long long time) James Poche held on to a romantic ideal: the lone
bush pilot and occasional marijuana smuggler.

"Elvis," some of his buddies were calling Barry Seal. It seemed to
describe him. At least the Elvis who once said "Ambition is a dream
with a V8 engine."

"We would fly down to New Orleans from Baton Rouge for the evening,"
Poche said. "Drink at the Playboy Club, visit the sheriff's brothel in
Opelousas, that sort of thing. We were living in his airplane hanger,
and hanging out with Johnny Rivers, the musician, who's from Baton
Rouge. And that was how Barry met Elvis, through Johnny.”

By now, Barry was the subject of open gossip among his pilot friends
about what he was doing, and for whom. Taking mysterious trips that
were never explained, then coming back and hanging out at the Playboy
Club as if nothing had happened. Maybe it was Elvis wished he could be
more like Barry Seal. After all, he did always want to be a spy.


A "Secret Agent Man" State of Mind

johnny_rivers-secret_agent_man_sA curious sidelight: many believe, as
Poche does, that Johnny Rivers one big hit, “Secret Agent Man,” was
about Barry Seal. Today it looks as if this early 60's cultural focus
on "secret agent men" was a way that our national 'collective
unconscious' found to tell a deep truth about what was happening in
America.

It was a more serious truth than anyone realized at the time.

“Though Barry, I met a lot of the ‘players.’ I knew Dave Ferrie; and
flew around with him a couple of times. He was a friend of mine. Me
and another friend, Charlie Heck, bought a Cessna 170 and kept it out
at Lakefront, where Ferrie was based. In fact, I've even got copies of
David Ferrie's signature in my log books."

What is today known as "Lakefront Airport" was not—back in the early
Sixties—just the small public airport it appears to be today. It was,
instead, a Naval Reserve facility where Cubans trained as pilots
before the Bay of Pigs invasion.

“We used to live together in (Barry's mother) Mary Lou's spare
bedroom. Barry was involved in all sorts of things. One time I
remember helping him figure out how to drop 50,000 leaflets over Baton
Rouge with pictures of apples with a worm in them.” Poche grinned. “It
got a guy named "Apple" Sanders un-elected from the State Senate that
year, that's for sure."


"You gotta remember: Barry smuggled for the Democrats."

grady-hoffaWhat football is to Nebraska, state politics is to
Louisiana. It’s a contact sport, and Barry Seal was a player, at Grady
Partin's behest. James Poche told us, "Barry was hanging out at Grady
Partin's (a famous Teamster, and enemy of Jimmy Hoffa) during ‘62 and
’63.

An old Teamster official confirmed Barry's friendship with Partin,
which he said explained Seal’s frequent appearances with him at the
local Teamster hiring hall.

"Hell, back then we was kings in this state," says Butch McKeown,
today a bail bondsman. "We absolutely ruled this state back then."

Who was the "we" Butch was referring to? When I learned more about
Grady Partin, I was less puzzled. Later still, Butch told me, in one
sentence, more than I’d learned poking around the drug trade for a
year.

“You gotta remember,” Butch said to me, looking serious, “Barry
smuggled for the Democrats.”


Three cheers for drug abuse

After Jimmy Carter’s election, his White House Strategy Council on
Drug Abuse was worried about the influx of drugs from Afghanistan and
Pakistan. They were stonewalled by the CIA, and reportedly denied
access to all classified information on drug trafficking, even as the
CIA and the Army jointly set up a special aviation operation called
"Seaspray."

This was old news to local and state police in high trafficking areas,
where the cynical manipulation was used to flood America with a river
of drugs.Barry Seal was there during a period which saw the growing
clout and importance of Special Forces. In late 1961 the Air Force set
up—as part of this increased emphasis on Special Forces— a Special Ops
Air Base in the middle of Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida
panhandle, pulling in aircraft and crews from the world-wide "Air
America" system.

His pilot's logs reflect the change. He began flying regularly to a
destination which he coyly listed as "Pensacola," the town nearest the
base. At the age of only 22, Barry Seal was learning tradecraft.

“Barry would call me from the road every so often,” said James Poche.
“Once I got a call from him, and he was all excited. ‘I’m in Karachi,
Pakistan,’ he said. ‘You should come right over.’”

In 1987 New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that when the
Reagan Administration sought to expand covert paramilitary operations
in Central America, the CIA was "forced" to rebuild its capabilities
illegally,relying on outside assets like Barry Seal.


They called it Operation Seaspray.

The CIA and the Army jointly set up a special aviation operation
called "Seaspray." Every pilot was handpicked by a group of Army and
CIA officers, among whom were experienced pilots and special
operations personnel. However this was already old news to local and
state police in high trafficking areas, being flooded with a river of
drugs.

Over Colombia, Seal’s by-now small fleet of planes flew through
"windows" in Colombian airspace: precise periods, paid for with
$25,000 bribes, when the military would “look the other way,” although
they must have had to look straight down at the ground to avoid
seeing the dozens of flights which took off every night at dusk.

“You would be sitting in your plane overlooking the sea, on a runway
hacked out of a mountainside,” smuggler pilot James Poche told us.
“Then as if on cue, as soon as the sun went down you would see dozens
of tiny specks taking off and flying out over the water as soon as the
sun went down, heading north.”

Pilots returning to the US over the Gulf with a load of dope often
flew just 60 feet above the water, with waves from the Gulf splashing
up onto the windshield, in what was— except for the dim lights of the
instrument panel—total darkness.

When law enforcement authorities debriefed convicted "drug smuggler"
Seal in late 1985, one of the cops present spoke to Seal brusquely.

He said, "We already know about Seaspray."







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better than I can describe.

The investigative reporting on the impact of drug money on US
political life and our economy found here are taboo subjects in the
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Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist dubious about the
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... ry-process" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




Tamir Rice family attorney says expert reports have 'tainted grand
jury process'

Newly unearthed comments about deadly police shootings made by the two
experts who defended an Ohio officer’s killing of Tamir Rice have
intensified criticisms of prosecutors for selecting them to review the
12-year-old’s death.

One appeared to publicly cast doubt on whether the officer who killed
Rice was at fault even before he was commissioned to write a report on
the case, the Guardian has learned. The other had her interpretation
of a key US supreme court ruling on police shootings rejected by the
Justice Department as too generous to officers.

Attorneys for the family of Rice, who was killed by police officer
Timothy Loehmann while holding a pellet gun in a park in Cleveland in
November last year, said the pair of external reports had “tainted the
grand jury process” that is considering criminal charges against
Loehmann.
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“It’s clear to the Rice family that these so-called experts were
selected to present a point of view to defend the officer’s conduct,”
said Subodh Chandra, an attorney for the family.

Chandra said the unusual decision to request and publish the external
reports by Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, was “an
unprecedented thing for a prosecutor to do on behalf of someone
potentially facing a murder charge”.

McGinty, who is overseeing the grand jury process, released the two
reports on Saturday. They were written by S Lamar Sims, the senior
chief deputy district attorney for Denver, Colorado, and Kimberly
Crawford, a retired FBI agent who teaches criminal justice at Northern
Virginia Community College.
The Counted: people killed by police in the United States in 2015 –
interactive
The Guardian is counting the people killed by US law enforcement
agencies this year. Read their stories and contribute to our ongoing,
crowdsourced project
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Sims concluded in his report that Loehmann’s actions were “objectively
reasonable” due to his stated belief that Rice was holding a real
firearm and posed a threat. Crawford wrote that the shooting “falls
within the realm of reasonableness” defined under the US constitution.
McGinty said his office was “not reaching any conclusions” from the
reports and would present all evidence to a grand jury.

The reports were swiftly condemned by activists who have campaigned
for a criminal prosecution over the death of Rice, who was shot within
a second of Loehmann arriving at Cudell Commons and leaping out of his
patrol car.

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Watergate's lesson: History becomes 'bogus' with bad information
Posted: October 16, 2015
<

John W. Dean shadowed by an image of Richard Nixon
Crowd of students listening to John W. Dean
John W. Dean

https://asunews.asu.edu/20151016-waterg ... stleblower" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



John W. Dean shadowed by an image of Richard Nixon
John Dean, former counsel for President Richard Nixon, shows a video of Nixon at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on Oct. 15. Dean talked about Watergate and the impact Washington Post and other investigative journalists had on the Nixon administration. Dean has been appointed to ASU’s Barry Goldwater Chair of American Institutions for the fall and spring semesters.
John Dean, who served as President Richard Nixon’s legal counsel, and then as a witness for prosecutors during Watergate, one of the 20th century's most notorious scandals, told Arizona State University journalism students he wants future reporters not to forget the past.

“There’s a group of people out there who want to revise history and are making money off of the Watergate scandal,” Dean said. “History becomes bogus when you’re dealing with bad information.”

The historical context of Watergate came to life Thursday evening in Dean’s discussion, “Uncovering Watergate’s Legacy and Impact on Journalism,” which took place in the First Amendment Forum in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus.

Dean’s lecture explored his four decades of reflection on the scandal, the lessons he learned and how time has given him a much better perspective.

“I didn’t look at it (Watergate) in a historical context at the time,” Dean told an audience of about 125 people, comprised mostly of journalism students who were born a quarter-century after Watergate unfolded.

“I was in the fight of my life taking on the President of the United States. My colleagues wanted me to fall on the sword as per their orders, and I didn’t take well to that. I’m still living with that stigma, but it doesn’t trouble me because I told the truth.”

The scandal unfolded on June 17, 1972, with the arrest of five burglars dressed in business suits, sporting surgical gloves, their pockets stuffed with crisp $100 bills and carrying suitcases filled with wiretapping equipment. Their intent was to bug the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington D.C. The five men were arrested and Nixon hastily constructed a cover-up.

Dean depicted the operatives as fumbling idiots and gave an even harsher assessment to the man who hired them, G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent who served in several positions under Nixon.

“Liddy has often portrayed himself as a James Bond-type character,” Dean said. “He was not even in the Maxwell Smart category because he bungled so many operations.”

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Ahmed Mohamed accepts scholarship in Qatar after Texas clock incident

Teenager who shot to fame after he was handcuffed for bringing science project to school is leaving the US to study in the Middle East after receiving scholarship
Ahmed Mohamed
Ahmed Mohamed has been offered a scholarship to take him through high school and university by the Qatar Foundation, a public-private education partnership. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Joanna Walters in New York
@Joannawalters13

Wednesday 21 October 2015 13.25 EDT


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Obscure Human Rights Professor Thinks The CIA Probably Broke Into Her Office And Stole Hard Drive

11:36 AM 10/24/2015


http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/24/obscu ... ard-drive/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Police at the University of Washington have opened an investigation into an alleged burglary which occurred in the offices of the school’s Center for Human Rights last week.

Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, a University of Washington professor and the director of the center, claims that a computer and a hard drive were filched in a super-stealthy break-in, reports The Seattle Times.

The computer and the hard drive contain confidential information concerning a freedom-of-information lawsuit the human rights group filed earlier this month against the Central Intelligence Agency.

The break-in occurred at some undetermined time between Thursday and Sunday, Godoy said.


The now-disappeared hard drive held “about 90 percent” of a set of El Salvador-related research which is at the heart of the lawsuit, the professor also claimed.

Godoy admitted that the alleged burglary may have been nothing more than a “common crime.

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The FBI & Hillary’s e-mails: A Lois Lerner precedent?



October 26, 2015 | 2:11pm


http://nypost.com/2015/10/26/the-fbi-hi ... precedent/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



The FBI & Hillary’s e-mails: A Lois Lerner precedent?


The fix was in: Lois Lerner will walk away scot-free.

On Friday, the Justice Department closed its two-year investigation into the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and decided to charge . . . no one.

This, when Lerner admitted the IRS had singled out righty groups, but blamed the “absolutely inappropriate” actions on “front-line people” — that is, lower-level folks. And then refused to answer more questions by pleading the Fifth.

Questions about, say, her orders to hold up applications from any outfit with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in its name.

In a letter Friday, Justice told Congress: “We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.”

In other words, exactly what President Obama ordered up — er, predicted. Back when the “investigation” had barely started, Obama told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly there wasn’t “even a smidgen of corruption

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Chief Penny Harrington - Special Report - Driving While Female
Chief Penny Eileen Harrington. [email protected]. "DRIVING WHILE FEMALE": A NATIONAL PROBLEM IN POLICE MISCONDUCT. Samuel Walker and ...

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off duty N.J. cop prior to Staten Island fatal wrong-way crash, says lawyer



Thursday, October 29, 2015, 6:09 PM



Pedro Abad, the Linden New Jersey police officer, is charged in the wrong-way crash on the West Shore Expresway. He is seen in a wheelchair leaving the courtroom Thursday. ANTHONY DEPRIMO/Staten Island Advance /Landov
Pedro Abad, the Linden New Jersey police officer, is charged in the wrong-way crash on the West Shore Expresway. He is seen in a wheelchair leaving the courtroom Thursday.

An off-duty New Jersey cop facing vehicular homicide charges for a fatal wrong-way crash along a Staten Island road said a dancer at a strip club may have slipped him a date-rape drug that impaired him before he got behind the wheel..

Linden Officer Pedro Abad’s lawyer told a Staten Island judge Thursday that a stripper may have slipped him the date-rape drug GHB before the March crash.

The collision killed Abad’s pal Joseph Rodriguez, 28, who was in the front passenger seat of the Honda Civic and Frank Viggiano, 28, another Linden police officer, who was seated in the back.

OFF-DUTY NEW JERSEY COP SURRENDERS OVER FATAL STATEN ISLAND CRASH

Abad’s partner, Patrick Kudlac, 23, was seriously injured but survived.

Prosecutors said Abad, who pleaded not guilty last month, crashed head-on into a tractor-trailer after leaving the Curves strip club. Tests later showed the officer's blood alcohol content was 0.24% — three times the legal limit of 0.08%.

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Torture through a viewfinder: Photo exhibit at HLS shines light on Syrian government
By Christina Pazzanese/Harvard Staff Writer, October 26, 2015
Teaching & Learning

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/2015/1 ... MI_main_hp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



A dad wrote an open letter to a neighbor who complained about his Black Lives Matter sign
“I wish I could tell you why this sign means so much to my family,” he wrote. October 30, 2015 | 8:01 AM


“I wish I could talk to you face-to-face,” he wrote on his blog, Confessions of a Pseudo-Gaysian Suburban Dad, where he writes about gender, race, parenting, and theater. “I wish I could tell you why this sign means so much to my family.”

He posted the sign two weeks ago and last week discovered a letter on his door from the building commissioner, stating an anonymous complaint about the sign was made through an attorney.

After speaking with the town, he said he realized that his sign technically violated zoning bylaws. But, according to the dad, his sign isn’t the only one in violation. He wrote the following:

I can’t help but notice the other signs that are also clearly out of compliance: signs touting an open house at one of the expensive private schools in our town or the latest incentives to go solar. I wonder if those signs are prompting you to call your attorney and file another anonymous complaint.

The dad went on to say that in a few years his son, who has a “full head of kinky hair” and likes to wear baggy basketball clothes and hooded sweatshirts, will “look a lot like Trayvon Martin” when he walks down the street. And his daughter “might grow into the 14-year-old black girl that an overzealous police officer threw to the ground before drawing his gun last June in McKinney, Texas.”

The dad said he has no plans to take the sign down, though he will make sure he follows the zoning laws.

Wrote the dad:

[W]e wanted to prove to our children — and by extension our neighbors, including you — that equality is something that matters to us. It’s not enough to just expect equality, and sometimes it’s not even enough just to work for it. We need to demand it.

The dad writes, in the letter, that he lives up the street from Thoreau Elementary. He ended the letter by telling the neighbor he’s available to talk anytime.

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http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/nov ... ice-juries" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Supreme court case to examine alleged racial prejudice in US juries

Civil rights activists hope appeal in case of Timothy Foster, a black teenager sentenced to death by all-white jury, will lead to major changes in jury selection
US supreme court
Civil rights activists argue the case of Foster v Bruce Chatman is one of the most extreme examples of a practice that remains endemic in US courtrooms.

Monday 2 November 2015 08.44 EST
Last modified on Monday 2 November 2015 08.59 EST



Alleged racial prejudice at the heart of the US criminal justice system comes under scrutiny at the supreme court on Monday, as it considers the controversial case of a black teenager sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
Analysis Republicans 'cautious' about confronting Black Lives Matter on campaign trail
... and they’re not alone. Democrats agree criminal justice reform is needed but the movement is proving challenging to all candidates for the White House
Read more

Lawyers bringing the appeal on behalf of Timothy Foster – who admitted taking part in the murder of 79-year-old Queen Madge White in 1987 – argue he has been on death row ever since because when recommending capital punishment the jurors did not fairly consider evidence that he was intellectually disabled.

The prosecution claimed race played no factor in its decision to exclude five African Americans from the jury in the trial, which was held in Rome, Georgia, shortly after a landmark supreme court ruling that was meant to stamp out the practice of seeking to modify the racial profile of juries.
Timothy Tyrone Foster.
Timothy Tyrone Foster. Photograph: Police handout

But notes found nearly 20 years later reveal that all the black jurors were identified with a “B” against their name by the prosecutors, who also said the death penalty was necessary “to deter other people out there in the projects”, a reference to predominantly African American housing areas.

Civil rights activists argue the case of Foster v Bruce Chatman, a Georgia prison warden contesting the appeal, is one of the most extreme examples of a practice that remains endemic in US courtrooms. They hope it will lead to major changes in the way juries are selected.
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“This is a pervasive problem,” said Christina Swarms, litigation director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund. “It hasn’t gone away. This is not a problem that is limited to the deep south.”

Black jurors are up to three times more likely to be dismissed by prosecutors in many states, she claimed, pointing to studies from Louisiana to Philadelphia.

“The case is particularly important at this moment because the criminal justice system is rightly being criticised for its failures with respect to how it treats African Americans,” Swarms added.

“The focus for the last year and a half as been on the role of police, but the reality is that every African American that comes into a court room has experienced it.”

The nine supreme court justices reviewing whether Foster should face a retrial will have to consider whether the reasons given by prosecutors for dismissing all the black jurors pass a test established in the court’s 1986 Batson v Kentucky ruling, that required prosecutors to provide non-racial reasons for the so-called pre-emptory strikes.
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Of the six jurors struck off by prosecutors in the case, the first five on the list were African American.

One woman, Marilyn Garrett, then aged 34, was turned down because she was said to be close in age to the defendant, who was 19 at the time. Another was a member of the Church of Christ, which prosecutors claimed was anti-death penalty even though they had notes pointing out that the church left such decisions up to its parishioners.

If the supreme court upholds the claim that these reasons were not credible, the case could have important repercussions not just for whether the so-called “Batson test” is sufficient, but also whether the US system of allowing prosecutors to make pre-emptory strikes can continue.

“This is really undermining the legitimacy and the credibility of our courts,” said Stephen Bright, Foster’s lawyer in the case.

“The criminal justice system is the part of

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Democrat slams FBI for attempt to 'reach into America’s classrooms'

http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... sm-program" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



11/05/15 04:54 PM EST

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee is raising questions about a controversial FBI program aimed at preventing students from turning into extremists.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.) on Thursday wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch criticizing the delayed program, which civil rights advocates allege unfairly targeted Muslims.

Thompson questioned why the FBI, as a law enforcement agency, was involved in efforts to prevent extremism before it takes root, and “pursuing programs to expand its reach into America’s classrooms.”

Having teachers assist the federal program would “chill relationships with students,” warned Thompson, who is a former school teacher, and “undermine a supportive learning environment.”

“Put simply, turning teachers into intelligence gather[ers] and investigators has questionable value as a strategy for countering terrorism or violent extremism,” he wrote, and may cause students to turn “away from that one person, a teacher, who might be able to make a difference.”

The scrutiny from Capitol Hill comes after civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders raised alarm at the program, which originally appeared ready to be unveiled this week.

The “Don’t Be a Puppet” interactive program reportedly was intended to help teachers and students detect and prevent early signs of extremism, but came under fire this week when critics accused it of focusing largely on Muslims.

According to reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post, people who had used the program worried that it could lead to discrimination against followers of Islam and people of Arab descent.

According to the reports, the program indicated that someone with an Arabic name talking about going on “a mission” overseas would be considered suspicious, even though it could be an innocuous trip.

In his letter, Thompson did not make explicit reference to allegations that the “Don’t Be a Puppet” program is focused almost exclusively on Islamic extremism.

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The Intersect
What you need to know about Anonymous’s big anti-KKK operation
November 5 2015

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... operation/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A protester wearing an Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask. (Hrvoje Polan/AFP/Getty Images)

Today is the day that Anonymous plans to leak information on as many as 1,000 Ku Klux Klan members and supporters — a campaign that is being hyped as a mass unmasking of the hated white supremacist organization.

But as a few confusing developments related to the campaign this week have demonstrated, operations like this are rarely straightforward. So here’s a short guide to what we know about this particular release, and what to keep in mind as it rolls out Thursday.
What we know already:

Operation KKK says it has identifying data on as many as 1,000 KKK members and supporters. On Oct. 22, an Anonymous-associated Twitter account announced that the hacking collective had accessed a Klan-associated Twitter account. Through that, they promised, Anonymous would be able to out about 1,000 Klan members by name. A later news release promised that the operation would release “names and Web sites, new and old” of “more than 1000″ members of the hate group.

This isn’t the first time Anonymous has beefed with the KKK. Anonymous waged a campaign against a Missouri-based Klan organization last year after the group threatened to use “lethal force” in defense of themselves against protests in Ferguson,

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Culture
The Dos and Don’ts of Cultural Appropriation

Borrowing from other cultures isn’t just inevitable, it’s potentially positive.
Valentino’s collection at Paris Fashion Week

Oct 20, 2015

Sometime during the early 2000s, big, gold, “door-knocker” hoop earrings started to appeal to me, after I’d admired them on girls at school. It didn’t faze me that most of the girls who wore these earrings at my high school in St. Louis were black, unlike me. And while it certainly may have occurred to me that I—a semi-preppy dresser—couldn’t pull them off, it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t.
More From Quartz

What Do We Really Mean When We Talk About Cultural Appropriation
Blackness Isn’t Something That Can Be Acquired With a Little Bronzer
Junya Watanabe’s Africa-Themed Fashion Show Was Missing a Key Element: Black Models

This was before the term “cultural appropriation” jumped from academia into the realm of Internet outrage and oversensitivity. Self-appointed guardians of culture have proclaimed that Miley Cyrus shouldn’t twerk, white girls shouldn’t wear cornrows, and Selena Gomez should take off that bindi. Personally, I could happily live without ever seeing Cyrus twerk again, but I still find many of these accusations alarming.

At my house, getting dressed is a daily act of cultural appropriation, and I’m not the least bit sorry about it. I step out of the shower in the morning and pull on a vintage cotton kimono. After moisturizing my face, I smear Lucas Papaw ointment—a tip from an Australian makeup artist—onto my lips before I make coffee with a Bialetti stovetop espresso maker a girlfriend brought back from Italy. Depending on the weather, I may pull on an embroidered floral blouse I bought at a roadside shop in Mexico or a stripey marinière-style

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Renewable energy made up half of world's new power plants in 2014: IEA


http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... n-2014-iea" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



International Energy Agency says figures are a “clear sign” of a transition from coal to clean energy
Thermo-solar power plant in Beni Mathar, Morocco.
Thermo-solar power plant in Beni Mathar, Morocco. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian


Tuesday 10 November 2015 04.48 EST
Last modified on Tuesday 10 November 2015 11.28 EST



Renewable energy accounted for almost half of all new power plants in 2014, representing a “clear sign that an energy transition is underway”, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Green energy is now the second-largest generator of electricity in the world, after coal, and is set to overtake the dirtiest fossil fuel in the early 2030s, said the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2015 report, published on Tuesday.

“The biggest story is in the case of renewables,” said IEA executive director, Fatih Birol. “It is no longer a niche. Renewable energy has become a mainstream fuel, as of now.” He said 60% of all new investment was going into renewables but warned that the $49

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Brazil's slow-motion environmental catastrophe unfolds

Toxic mudslide from collapse of dams spreads as BHP Billington fined $66m
President Dilma Rousseff views the damage caused by the collapse of two dams that released toxic mud in Brazil’s state of Minas Gerais
President Dilma Rousseff views the damage caused by the collapse of two dams that released toxic mud in Brazil’s state of Minas Gerais. Photograph: Roberto Stuckert Filho/AFP/Getty Images

Bruce Douglas in Rio de Janeiro



http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... he-unfolds" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Friday 13 November 2015 14.03 EST
Last modified on Friday 13 November 2015 14.39 EST

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Mormonism
Caught between apostasy and heartbreak: a Mormon lesbian love story

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/n ... x-marriage" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




With their religion a key part of their lives, Celeste Carolin and Kathleen Majdali struggled with their decision to come out. Now they’re preparing for marriage – a celebration that could result in excommunication
Kseniya Sovenko
Kathleen Majdali (left) and Celeste Carolin share a kiss at Seattle’s Volunteer Park. ‘What is the probability that I would find a Mormon woman in the same city, in the same ward, at a time when she’s willing to come out?’ asked Celeste. Photograph: Kseniya Sovenko

Kseniya Sovenko in Seattle

Sunday 15 November 2015 08.00 ES

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Marc Morano's Climate Hustle Film Set For Paris Premiere With Same Old Denial Myths

Marc Morano is never short of a superlative or two, but when it has come to promoting his long-gestating documentary Climate Hustle, the climate science denialist extraordinaire has been outdoing himself.

“We are putting together what I think is the most comprehensive, unique, entertaining and humorous climate documentary that has ever been done or attempted,” Morano has said.

His documentary Climate Hustle will get its “big red carpet premiere,” as Morano has described it, on 7 December in the Cinéma du Panthéon in Paris at the beginning of the second week of major United Nations climate talks taking place in the French capital.

Bernie Sanders Is Right – Climate Change Is A Massive National Security Threat

During Saturday’s U.S. Presidential debate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders addressed the issue of terrorism by saying that climate change is the largest national security threat. This is the second time that Sanders has made this statement during the Democratic debates.

And he is spot on with his analysis.
Support Strengthens to Stop Oil and Gas Development to Keep Florida’s Everglades Wild
Julie Dermansky

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee tribe and Panther clan, has made it her mission to protect the Everglades. The 49-year-old grandmother, who operates an airboat tour company in the Everglades, plans to spend the rest of her life protecting the land of her ancestors for future generations.

Despite millions of dollars spent on conservation in recent years, the Everglades is still threatened by factors including, pollution, invasive species, salt water intrusion, and the ongoing development of South Florida that continues to encroach on indigenous lands.

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November 18, 2015
Clearcutting Our Carbon Accounts: How the Timber Industry Shields its Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Public Scrutiny



Imagine you are in the 6th grade, and your teacher has told you everyone must get a C average or above, or they will fail her class. Everyone in the class dutifully works hard to get an A, except one person, who ignores all the rules and consistently gets Ds and Fs. At the end of the year, this student passes. Flabbergasted, the other students who tried so hard to get high grades ask why. The teacher tells them that everyone’s grades were averaged together, and so the bad student benefited from everyone’s extra hard work and was allowed to pass, while the good students saw their grades go down. Sound fair? Of course not.

Yet that is exactly what is now happening in the forest sector globally. A flawed methodology developed by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the international level to calculate greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the forest sector and adopted by countries around the world allows the timber industry—the bad actor– to shield its global warming pollution from public scrutiny by taking credit for carbon sequestered on lands it did not protect. Practices such as clearcutting, conversion of native forests into tree plantations, construction of logging roads and application of carbon-intensive pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers release significant greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere. Yet the timber industry claims that the carbon dioxide absorbed by forests conserved at great cost by non-profits, by small landowners and held in trust by public lands exceeds what the timber industry emits and therefore the net emissions from what they call the “forestry sector” are zero.

Because of this accounting trick, greenhouse gas emissions from the timber industry in Oregon and elsewhere around the world have not been tracked and evaluated since 2002 and are ignored by climate policy makers. Instead, the State (in its Roadmap to 2020) merely assumes that “Oregon’s forests are a carbon sink, capturing more carbon than they release. As such, Oregon’s forests and its forest sector have and will continue to contribute to the goal of achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by remaining a robust and sustainable sector in Oregon.” Adding insult to injury, industrial forest practices are undermining goals for climate adaptation by keeping millions of acres of forestland in a high-risk condition for wildfire, landslides, disease and pest outbreaks while contributing to thermal pollution deadly to coldwater fisheries.

What does this mean for Oregon? It means that a state, which prides itself on being one of the greenest in the country, is actually responsible for uncounted greenhouse gas emissions of roughly 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. This is no small number. It is equivalent to the emissions of seven coal-fired power plants the size of the one operating in Boardman. This represents the second largest source of emissions for the State and 32% of the total emissions from all other sectors. The Oregon Global Warming Commission and other agencies are required to monitor and evaluate these emissions by law, but have failed to do so. By failing to reign in industrial forestland emissions Oregon won’t have a prayer of meeting its emissions reduction targets for 2020 and beyond.

There are several remedies the Commission and its counterparts in other states and across the world need to implement. First, emissions from industrial forest practices need to be tracked and evaluated just as they are from any other industrial activity. This means separating out industrial forestry emissions from others in the so-called forest sector – namely, small landowners, non-profits, and public agencies. This way timber industry emissions will have nowhere to hide.

Secondly, alternatives to clearcutting, short rotations, tree plantations and chemicals should be dramatically scaled up by direct regulation or economic incentives. These practices should be the rule not the exception. Third, commercial timber production should cease on public lands since these are the only lands ostensibly controlled by democratic processes and standards that require state and federal agencies to maximize public, not corporate benefits. Public forests should be managed for public resource values, carbon storage included.

And finally, tax loopholes that encourage carbon intensive forest practices should be closed. In Oregon and other states, the timber industry receives a 90% property tax break on its lands regardless of their condition. These tax breaks should not apply to logging roads and clearcuts

msfreeh
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The police recording you need to hear after a black woman 'broke into' her own home



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

msfreeh
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Climate Ark

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

msfreeh
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Black activist punched at Trump rally


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... irmingham/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

November 22 at 2:41 AM
Play Video1:23
Trump to black activist: 'Get him the hell out of here'
At a campaign event in Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday, Nov. 21, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump demands the removal of a well-known activist Mercutio Southall Jr. after he shouts, "Black lives matter!" (Reuters)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A white man punched and attempted to choke a black protester who was thrown on the ground at a Donald Trump rally here on Saturday morning, as an onlooker yelled, "Don't choke him! Don't choke him!"

The protester, identified by local media as well-known activist Mercutio Southall Jr., started shouting during Trump's speech and could be heard yelling, "Black lives matter!" A fight broke out around him, prompting Trump to briefly halt the rally and demand the removal of Southall.

"Get him the hell out of here, will you, please?" Trump said.

The crowd alternated between cheering and booing as security officers pushed their way through the crowd of several thousand. Southall fell to the ground and was surrounded by several white men who appeared to be kicking and punching him, according to video captured by CNN. A Washington Post reporter in the crowd watched as one of the men put his hands on Southall's neck and heard a female onlooker repeatedly shout: "Don't choke him!"

Southall has had many run-ins with police and has even been arrested as he fights against what he says is unfair treatment of blacks.

Several bystanders were alarmed that Southall would be severely hurt, and the security officers quickly got him off the ground and walked him out of the building. Meanwhile, Trump recounted how Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently responded to Black Lives Matter activists who came onstage during one of his events.

"You see, he was politically correct," Trump said. "Two young women came up to the podium. They took over his microphone. I promise you, that's not going to happen with me. I promise you. Never going to happen. Not going to happen. Can't let that stuff happen."
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Members of the Black Lives Matter Seattle chapter took the stage and forced Bernie Sanders to the side at an event in Seattle. One of the women, Marissa Janae Johnson, asked the crowd to “join us now in holding Bernie Sanders accountable” for not doing enough to address police brutality.
Members of the Seattle chapter of Black Lives Matter took over the microphone just after Sanders began to speak and refused to relinquish it. Sanders eventually left the stage without speaking further and instead waded into the crowd to greet supporters. Elaine Thompson/AP

In an interview on Sunday morning on "Fox and Friends," Trump said, "Maybe [the man] should have been roughed up."

Southall "was so obnoxious and so loud, he was screaming. I had 10,000 people in the room yesterday, 10,000 people, and this guy started screaming by himself and they — I don't know, rough up, he should have been — maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing," Trump said, according to a transcript of the interview.

The racially charged altercation occurred in Birmingham, famous in the 1960s as a center of the civil rights struggle, and led some to note that Trump’s supporters at the rally were nearly all white — in a city with a black majority. Critics and rivals have said that Trump is stoking racial tension. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said so

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