LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Discuss political news items / current events.
msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

couple of reads for the uneducated and uneducable


1.


http://youthindependent.com/fbi-investi ... achusetts/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI investigating weapons stolen from U.S. Army Reserve in Massachusetts

FBI investigating weapons stolen from U.S. Army Reserve in Massachusetts



More than one dozen military-grade weapons were stolen from Lincoln Army Reserve Center in Worcester, Mass. during a break-in late Saturday night, officials said.

A local CBS News affiliate reported that the number or types of weapons stolen were not disclosed; however, the Daily Beast




2.


FBI Missing Firearms, Computers - ABC News
abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92863
The FBI has approximately 50,000 weapons and 13,000 laptops total. With the missing guns, 184 were stolen and 265 were reported lost or missing, according ...



3.

FBI Reports On Missing Laptops and Weapons - Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; › Technology › Tech Policy
Feb 13, 2007 - The FBI said that 160 laptop computers were lost or stolen in less than four years, including at least 10 that contained sensitive or classified ...



FBI sniper rifle stolen from hotel parking lot days before Obama's ...
fox13now.com/.../fbi-sniper-rifle-stolen-from-hotel-parking-lot-days-befor...
Apr 24, 2015 - "(The agent) stated his FBI issued sniper rifle was missing which was in a ... has been entered into the National Crime Information Computer.
Feds Missing 775 Guns & 400 Laptops - The Firing Line Forums
thefiringline.com › ... › Law and Civil Rights › Legal and Political
Aug 5, 2002 - 3 posts - ‎3 authors
Feds Missing 775 Guns & 400 Laptops Those who oppose arming airline pilots in cockpits because they think it's unsafe should add the FBI ...
Hundreds of FBI Laptop Computers and Weapons Missing, IG Audit ...
blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/02/hundreds_of_fbi.html
Feb 13, 2007 - More than 300 laptop computers and guns were lost by the FBI over nearly four years, according to a new Department of Justice Inspector ...

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... &start=270" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Films of a certain quality

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

January 7 2016

another story about the Bundy Welfare Queens

Cliven Bundy still owes the U.S. $1 million. What are the feds doing to collect it?






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


Cliven Bundy at his Nevada ranch in 2013. He says he doesn't have to pay fees to graze his cattle on federal land because the land belongs to the state, not the federal government.

The law was clear: Cliven Bundy's cattle had been grazing on public land — illegally — for years. The Bureau of Land Management said so, and so did the U.S. Department of Justice. The federal courts agreed.

But when the BLM tried to enforce the law, by seizing the Nevada rancher's livestock in 2014, a ragtag band of armed men rode to Bundy's defense. After a standoff in the desert, federal officials released Bundy's cattle and retreated, soundly defeated.

Almost two years later, as Bundy's sons Ammon and Ryan and another small group of men with guns threatens a similar showdown by refusing to leave an Oregon wildland refuge, Cliven Bundy still owes the government more than $1 million in grazing fees.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Both cases have raised uncomfortable questions about whether the Bundys are getting off easy and about what happens when demonstrators prevent the government from enforcing its own laws.

The standoff in Oregon has drawn the attention of Black Lives Matter activists who have protested law enforcement's regular use of deadly force across the nation, with seemingly little effect on the number of police shootings. The government, meanwhile, isn’t saying much about what it’s doing to get the money Bundy owes.

Federal officials seem to have shied away from confrontation to avoid recreating the bloody standof

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016 ... unny-ranch" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Hookers for Hillary: meet the sex workers caucusing for Clinton in Nevada

The working girls at a Nevada brothel launched a campaign to elect the first female president. ‘We’re helping Hillary and we’re helping ourselves. Women should help other women, right?’
Dennis Hof, center, owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada, is surrounded by Caressa Kisses, right, Mulan V, center left, Alice Little, left, and Hollywood, far left, on Wednesday, February 10, 2016. They have launched a campaign called Hookers for Hillary. (Adithya Sambamurthy/The Guardian)

Maria L La Ganga in Mound House, Nevada
@marialaganga

Monday 15 February 2016 01.00 EST

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

Link du jour

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

http://www.examiner.com/article/cbs-48- ... ng-defense" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... -politics/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Trooper claims lack of promotion based on gender discrimination


http://www.citizen.com/news/2016-03-21/ ... der_d.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quo ... 1458504352" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bonus read


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_s ... y_20160320" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


A Startling Tale of U.S. Complicity
Posted on Mar 20, 2016

By Robert Scheer

After many years of strained relations, the U.S. and Cuba in 2014
came to a new agreement in what President Obama called the “most
significant changes in U.S. policy towards Cuba in 50
years.”Shutterstock

Editor’s note: As President Obama begins his historic visit to Cuba,
we are posting some of Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer’s past
writings about the U.S.’ relations with an actions toward Cuba. This
article was originally published in the Los Angeles Times on July 14,
1998.

When is it all right to blow up restaurants and kill tourists?
Anytime, according to Luis Posada Carriles, who masterminded last
year’s attacks on Cuba’s booming tourist industry, terrorizing disco
dancers and diners alike.

In a startling revelation this week, the 70-year-old Posada revealed
that key Cuban American


Police who beat their wives and get promoted

1.

https://www.policeone.com/health-fitnes ... trategies/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/P ... 536928.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... ds/380329/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-b ... romotions/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/virtual ... PO/POV.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


2.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160 ... _prof.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Camera icon MARY F. CALVERT /For The Inquirer
Temple professor Xiaoxing Xi
by Susan Snyder and Mark Fazlollah, STAFF WRITERS

The Temple physics professor whose life was turned upside down when
the U.S. government filed and later withdrew espionage charges against
him has been notified that the government will not refile the charges.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office has notified Professor [Xiaoxing] Xi's
defense team that there will be no new charges and that the government
will return his seized property," said Michael A. Schwartz, one of
Xi's lawyers.

Whether the government might recharge Xi had been an open question
since September, when prosecutors withdrew the existing charges
"without prejudice," meaning that they could be revived.

Federal prosecutors had declined comment on their intentions when they
withdrew the charges.

Xi, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chinese descent, is an expert in
superconductor research. He was charged last May with wire fraud,
allegedly involving the transfer of sensitive U.S. defense technology
to entities in China, a charge he vigorously denied.

Xi had contended that the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI
misunderstood the science that the case was based on. Prosecutors
backed down when shown their mistakes.

Xi, who is back at Temple, has talked publicly about the devastating
impact on his life and family. Another Temple professor established a
legal defense fund in his name. The site - http://www.xiaoxingxi.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; -
says that Xi's legal fees exceeded $220,500 by August and that $29,100
had been raised.

Reached via email,


3.

The Shire group in New Hampshire
are similar to Bundy and Finicum.
FBI agents raided their house today.


3 stories

1.
see

Shire Society | Free Keene
freekeene.com/category/shire-society/
Nov 22, 2015 - Keene Shire Sharing Volunteers Pre-Delivery, 2015 ...
people who are not on Facebook or don't know where to find NH
activists on Facebook.

also see


2.

http://www.copblock.org/12761/copblocki ... ire-grows/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



CopBlocking Grows in the “Shire”

January 30, 2012 by Ademo Freeman

One of the most common statements I hear about CopBlocking (monitoring
the police) is, “we don’t have enough people.” If that is the case
where you live, considering moving to the Shire (aka New Hampshire).
Liberty minded folks are moving here daily to live better lives, one
where the government isn’t always sticking its nose in thier business,
and CopBlocking is a major part of that. Check out these two
CopBlocking videos from local Shire residents Ian and Derrick.

By Ian Freeman, via FreeKeene.com

Nemi is pulled over on the way back from Concord by a statie for
her outdated inspection sticker. The statie attempts what is becoming
a common intimidation tactic: claiming to a cameraman he’ll be
arrested if recording continues. I continue anyway and he backs down
from the threat, just like happened to Ademo and Luthor & Derrickr
ecently in other incidents.



By Derrick Freeman, via LiveFreeorDance.com

I was pulled over while driving 50 mph in a 55 mph zone. The
officer alleges I was going 72. That is impossible because I was stuck
behind a slow-moving pickup truck for about 20 miles, and that truck
was keeping me slowed at a pace of 50 mph.

I was driving from Keene to Manchester with Luthor Kingsley of the
Shire. We were about halfway there when I passed a cop. Luthor pointed
him out; he was hiding on the side of the highway with his lights off.
I checked my speed and was relieved to notice that I was going 50mph.
I almost certainly would have been going faster if not for the truck
in front of me holding me up in the single lane of traffic. Then I saw
the blue lights behind me. I fired up my camera and asked Luthor to
record.

The cop told me I couldn’t see the radar, that Luthor had to turn
off the audio on the camera, that Luthor had to give the cop his ID,
and that it was illegal wiretapping to record audio of him without his
permission. We gave him a bit of a schooling in the law with polite
refusal to comply with his demands. He returned with a ticket for
$103.33.

I’ll be seeing him in court. I would rather be left alone. I don’t
enjoy giving up my valuable time and energy and resources to defend
myself against being extorted by agents of the state. I’ve already
spent about 24 hours in filming, editing, researching law, and posting
about this event. Now I’ll have a day in court, travel expenses, plus
the opportunity costs of a day’s work in order to attend court, or I
will have a warrant out for my arrest. Then, in court, if I am found
guilty, I will likely face 2 days in jail to pay off the fine at $50 a
day.

Some stranger with a badge is incentivized by a quota system to
spend his time pulling over people like me who haven’t victimized
anyone. For him, it’s 15 minutes and he can wash his hands of the
situation and collect his paycheck–unless someone takes the issue to
court rather than paying the fine. In that case, he is rewarded for
his victimization by being paid time and a half for his appearance in
court. The taxpayers of his town will be forced to foot the bill for
that expense. As a result of his actions, I could be put in a cage
(again at the expense of the taxpayer) for what was a non-situation.

The absurdity makes my head spin. If you’d like to help me meet
expenses to handle this case successfully and document the process
with video, please



3.

http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/loca ... 14232.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



FBI executes warrant on 'Shire Free' house



Posted: Sunday, March 20, 2016

Federal Bureau of Investigation officials took items from a house on
Leverett Street in Keene Sunday that is home to some individuals
associated with the group often referred to locally as Free Keene.

A video posted on the libertarian-leaning group's blog shows law
enforcement officers taking mostly electronics from the 73 Leverett
St. home. The property, which includes 75 Leverett St., is owned by
the Shire Free Church Monadnock, according to city property records.
Cheshire Medical Center: 2016 Walk-In Care - ROS - MB - instory

T.J. Park, who lives at the residence, showed The Sentinel a copy o



5.
http://cbs12.com/news/local/report-chan ... blic-trust" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Report: Changes needed at PBSO to restore public trust
By J. Israel Balderas Sunday, March 20th 2016
http://cbs12.com/news/local/report-chan ... blic-trust" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;<iframe
width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" marginheight="0"
marginwidth="0"
src="http://cbs12.com/embed/news/local/repor ... blic-trust"
></iframe>
PBSOREVIEW.JPG
3 shares
tweet now!

WEST PALM BEACH, Fl. (CBS12) — CBS12 investigates how the Palm Beach
County Sheriff's Office handles it's internal investigations when it
comes to use of force.

A new report just released by the Police Executive Research Forum
based in Washington, D.C. just concluded the department needs to make
changes in order to restore trust.

This review comes at a critical time as law enforcement agencies
across the country are questioning their policies on use of force.

The 100 page report finds the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office use
of force and internal investigation policies raise concerns.

"We find most often times the deputies do violate department issued
policies," said attorney and former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

TSA Whistleblower Says He Was Ordered to Racially Profile Somali-Americans


A TSA employee testified before Congress Wednesday that his superiors instructed him to racially profile Somali-


http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/27/politics/ ... profiling/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

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

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

Bonus Read
http://www.local10.com/news/local/miami ... eld-office" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



MIAMI
Wooden sculpture causes costly mess at FBI's Miami field office
'Cedrus' sculpture cost tax payers about $1.2M, Politico reports


Posted: 9:05 PM, December 02, 2016

Photo of FBI Miami Building by Herich Blessing Photographers
MIAMI - German artist Ursula von Rydingsvard has been working with red cedar flagrant wood for decades. Her monumental sculptures are for the most part placed outdoors.

At 17-feet tall, her "Cedrus" sculpture defied gravity in the shape of a tornado. It made it to the FBI's new modern Miami field building, where the high ceilings offered plenty of space. And now it's in the middle of a scandal. 

Politico reviewed hundreds of documents revealing details of the "Cedrus" case. The government reportedly paid the artist $750,000 for the sculpture, but Politico reported that after it got FBI employees sick it actually cost tax payers about $1.2 million. 

More than a dozen employees reportedly got sick, beca





https://globalelite.tv/2016/11/19/induc ... tion-wave/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Gerard Morin

Induction is
the Amplification of a Communication Wave

/ NOV 19, 2016 /
A self explanatory video. Gerard has been dismantling the box of lies that has been fed to us for years and years. The out of the box thinking, results, and clear evidence has been demonstrated over and over. This research is in need of the next level development. To take this energy to the people, with a full understanding of all it’s potential.




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.2896294" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NYPD employee rubs crotch on 4 women, promptly gets arrested
BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, December 2, 2016, 1:58 PM





http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi ... caa4d619fc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



The FBI Is About To Get The Power To Hack Millions Of Computers
And Congress refuses to even talk about what that means.
11/30/2016 02:40 pm
Senior Congressional Reporter, The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — Congress had six months to debate granting President-elect Donald Trump’s FBI new legal powers to hack millions of computers, and Republican leaders objected to doing so on Wednesday.

That means that starting Thursday, a Department of Justice official will be able to go to a single judge, assert that a computer crime may involve millions of networked devices, and get a warrant that lets the FBI hack all of those devices.

According to three senators who tried to put the brakes on that new authority Wednesday so Congress could at least discuss it, there are no concrete assurances from law enforcement officials that privacy won’t be violated or that devices won’t be damaged. Nor was there any explanation of how authorities will hack Americans’ wired equipment.

“At midnight tonight, this Senate will make one of the biggest mistakes in surveillance









http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2896194" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Juror 'cannot convict' ex-cop Slager in death of Walter Scott

Friday, December 2, 2016, 8:28 PM



A lone juror nearly caused a mistrial Friday in the South Carolina murder trial of Michael Slager, a white ex-cop caught on video gunning down an unarmed black man in 2015.

The jury of 11 whites and one black man went through three days of deliberations before twice declaring on Friday that they were at an impasse.

“Yes, we are at a deadlock,” the jury wrote in a final note to state Judge Clifton Newman just before 5 p.m.


But the jury also made it clear the majority was prepared to convict Slager, a former North Charleston cop. He’s charged with shooting Walter Scott five times after a traffic stop on April 4, 2015.

KING: The justice system is broken if jury can't convict Slager
“It is just one juror,” the foreman wrote in a separate note to the judge. “That juror needs to leave, he is having issues.”

A mistrial declaration appeared imminent — but at the last minute the foreman requested more clarification on the law. That led to another ho


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

Opinion I’m a Hillary-supporting black woman who became friends with a white, Trump-voting cop. Maybe there’s hope after all



http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/ ... b14ed.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Senate Judiciary Committee opens inquiry into Harry Morel case, suspension of local FBI agent

DEC 1, 2016 - 11:50 AM (3)

The suspension of an FBI agent who investigated former St. Charles Parish District Attorney Harry Morel has drawn the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee, an influential panel of lawmakers that has opened an inquiry into the case. 

The committee's chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a list of questions to FBI Director James Comey, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other officials regarding the bureau's treatment of agent Michael Zummer, who was stripped of his security clearance after sending a lengthy letter to the federal judge presiding over Morel's criminal proceedings.

The FBI suspended Zummer without pay during the summer and escorted him out of the bureau's New Orleans field office pending the results of an internal inquiry to determine whether he mishandled "sensitive material."  


The suspension, Grassley wrote, "looks like it could be a misuse of the security clearance process to mask retaliation for protected whistleblowing."  

The agent had been pushing for prosecutors to pursue more serious charges against Morel, according to FBI records.

Morel was sentenced this year to three years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of obstruction of justice, a charge that stemmed from his efforts to derail a multi-year FBI probe into his sexual misconduct.

Though he was never charged with a sexual crime, Morel acknowledged, in pleading guilty, that he used his office to prey upon women who sought leniency in their criminal cases. He demanded sexual favors in exchange for his assistance. 

U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt has declined to make public Zummer's 31-page letter, but he said he shares the agent's "legitimate concerns" about whether the U.S. Justice Department "is either unable or unwilling to self-police lapses of ethics, professionalism and truthfulness in its ranks."

Zummer's letter included the names of more than two dozen people involved in the Morel case and apparently outlined allegations of misconduct involving government officials.  

After his suspension, Zummer took his concerns to Congress, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Morel case was tainted by a conflict of interest in the U.S. Attorney's Office. He alleged that Morel received favorable treatment from the U.S. Attorney's Office


http://www.click2houston.com/news/fbi-t ... ting-crime" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI teaches students the science behind...
KPRC Houston-
Catching criminals doesn't happen by pure luck and Perry Turner, special agent in charge of the Houston FBI Field Office, said it takes a keen ...



http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/bundy ... nce-secret" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Judge opts to keep Bundy evidence secret
Las Vegas Review-Journal-
Leen's four-page order prohibits defense teams for all 17 defendants from publicly disclosing grand jury transcripts, FBI and police reports, witness statements ...



http://www.mo4ch.com/virginia-state-pol ... ions-docs/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Virginia State Police’s Stingray-like device captures voice communications – docs




Documents acquired from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show the Virginia State Police have a powerful cell-site simulator that can capture not only GPS location and metadata but voice communication.
In 2014, Virginia State Police upgraded their Digital Receiver Technology box, a cell site simulator, for a smaller more powerful model at a cost of over $500,000, according to documents acquired by Muckrock as part of a nationwide FOIA request and published Friday.
The DRT boxes, made by a Maryland company, are similar to other cell site simulators like Stingrays in that they can also intercept voice communication along with GPS location and other metadata, such as phone numbers and duration of call.
The device came with accessories and was installed in a Chevrolet Suburban outfitted specifically to run the device.
Cell-site simulators, or IMSI catchers, are devices that masquerade as a legitimate cell phone tower, tricking phones nearby into connecting to the device in order to log the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) numbers of mobile phones in the area or capture the content of communications.
The increased use of the devices by law enforcement had been kept from the courts and the public. In 2014, police in Florida revealed they had used such devices at least 200 additional times since 2010 without disclosing it to the court or obtaining a warrant.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed multiple requests for the public records of Florida law enforcement agencies about their use of the cell phone tracking devices.
In some cases, police have refused to disclose information to the courts, citing nondisclosure agreements signed with the Harris Corporation, which manufactures Stingrays.
The FBI defended these agreements, saying that information about the technology could allow adversaries to circumvent it.
The ACLU said in 2014 that “potentially unconstitutional government surveillance on this scale should not remain hidden from the public just because a private corporation desires secrecy. And it certainly should not be concealed from judges.”
Among the documents acquired in the FOIA request is a utilization log from May 2015 that shows the unit was used 12 times. In five of the 12 instances, it was ineffective





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eri ... -1.2896559" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Eric Garner mom says de Blasio can earn her vote via NYPD reforms
New York Daily News-
The city has said they won't decide on the fate of Pantaleo's job until the FBI officially ends its investigation into Garner's death. The News reported earlier this ...




http://www2.courthousenews.com/feds-bac ... as-plants/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Feds Back Off Pollution Rule for Texas Plants
By CAMERON LANGFORD

The Environmental Protection Agency said it plans to withdraw a mandate that Texas coal-fired power plants reduce their pollution, but also found five counties have dangerous levels of toxic gas linked to coal plants.






http://www2.courthousenews.com/feds-sla ... ial-opens/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Pushing for a conviction on a death that shocked Rikers Island, a federal prosecutor told jurors Friday that the guard abused his position to carry out a savage and fatal beating.




http://www2.courthousenews.com/eu-hotspots/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
EU Hotspots
The EU Council on Friday approved a plan to bring Wi-Fi hotspots to public areas throughout Europe, with the goal of connecting the elderly, economically disadvantaged and unemployed people to the internet for free.





http://www.wcnc.com/news/charlotte-man- ... /362153317" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Charlotte man who spent 24 years in prison pardoned
 
A Charlotte man was pardoned after serving nearly 25 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.

:54 PM. EST December 02, 2016



CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A Charlotte man who spent over 24 years behind bars for a brutal rape and attempted murder has been pardoned.

Timothy Scott Bridges had been sentenced to life in prison but was pardoned by Governor Pat McCrory after it was shown that he was convicted at trial based on evidence that was erroneous.

Bridges had been convicted of raping an 83-year-old woman in her home off the Plaza in 1989, and attempting to kill her.

In court, prosecutors used hair sample and the testimony of an FBI-trained analyst to convict him, despite the fact that a palm print found on a door was not a match to Bridges.

An FBI review later found Bureau-trained analysts had overstated, or were simply wrong about hair samples in thousands of cases across the country including  the case of Bridges.

Bridges himself was not ready to talk about the end of his long ordeal, but his uncle, Larry Swann said in a telephone interview, “I’m excited because




http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/jeffers ... /362142974" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Members of the Westbank chapter of the NAACP held signs saying “A Man was Lynched Yesterday” while calling for answers as to why the man who shot and killed Joe McKnight was released.

The NAACP called the press conference on Friday afternoon after finding out that Ronald Gasser, the man who shot former NFL player Joe McKnight, was not held by police and may not be charged in McKnight’s death. They believe he is getting special treatment because he is a white man.

“This man apparently believes that he had the right to settle the score with a young black man by using a weapon,” the westbank chapter of the NAACP’s president said. “We cannot continue to have that situation in our country. We have





https://www.stripes.com/news/retired-gr ... n-1.442367" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Home News
Retired Green Beret says Mattis left 'my men to die' in Afghanistan

             
By TRAVIS J. TRITTEN | STARS AND STRIPES
Published: December 2, 2016

WASHINGTON – A retired Green Beret officer alleged Friday that Gen. James Mattis, who has been nominated to be the next defense secretary, hesitated to send medical evacuation flights and left soldiers to die during a 2001 friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.

 

Retired Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, in a Facebook post, said a delay by Mattis in sending rescue aircraft from a nearby base might have led to the deaths of Staff Sgt. Brian Cody Prosser and at least two Afghans after they were hit by a U.S. bomb outside of Kandahar.

 

“He was indecisive and betrayed his duty to us, leaving my men to die during the golden hour when he could have reached us,” wrote Amerine, who is a future of war fellow at the New America think





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

More National Security Letters Made Public After Government Drops Its Attempt To Keep Its Gag Orders In Place



FabI issue NSLs when its warrant requests are turned down by federal courts. Throw an indefinite gag order on it, and the FBI can pretty much ensure complete compliance from recipients, whose only option is to fight an often-futile legal battle against the government.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

Bonus Read

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spe ... e385171eae" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Doomsday Clock just advanced, 'thanks to Trump': It's now just 2 1/2 minutes to midnight
Washington Post-
The group behind the famed Doomsday Clock announced at a news conference that it was adjusting the countdown to the End of it All by ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spe ... 7d12debe16" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3923 ... ing-powers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Move to Give FBI More Warrantless Spying Powers
Thursday, January 26, 2017


Congress is backing off from a push to grant the Federal Bureau of Investigations more warrantless surveillance powers.
Lawmakers had been attempting to use the annual intelligence policy bill to allow the FBI to obtain more sensitive digital information from Americans, using only a subpoena.
That effort, however, has been abandoned, this year, according to a recently published Senate Intelligence Committee report on the legislation.
"This expansion of government surveillance authorities was both far-reaching and intrusive, potentially covering records related to Americans' email exchanges as well as their login history, IP addresses, and internet browsing history," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore).
Wyden said the proposal would have given the FBI such spying authorities "with no court oversight."
In the report, published late last week, on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration, Wyden noted that he would back the legislation, the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2017, with the additional surveillance powers stripped from the bill. He had held up the proposal on the Senate floor, in June 2016, after its authors sought to expand FBI's spying authorities.
Hawkish senators had attempted to grant the FBI such powers, in the wake of the June 12, 2016 shooting at Pulse, a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. The massacre left 53 people wounded and 49 others dead, including












Link du jour
http://www.peacefmonline.com/pages/loca ... 304116.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zh8gYshmWpk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/p ... sions.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2955185" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



KING: Louisiana makes resisting arrest a hate crime against cops

Wednesday, January 25, 2017, 11:04 AM




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


Minnesota bill would make convicted protesters liable for policing costs





https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... annopoulos" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Roxane Gay pulls book from Simon & Schuster over Milo Yiannopoulos deal
Feminist author pulls publication of forthcoming How to Be Heard after ‘alt-right’ figure receives $250,000 advance from imprint of publisher




http://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime/ar ... 881070.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


-Border Patrol agent caught with gun silencers, meth
Snohomish County man arrested after 100 mph police chase accused of possessing silencers, machine gun parts
By LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF Updated 3:19 pm, Tuesday, January 24, 2017


http://therealnews.com/t2/id/18203/2017 ... l-Security" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Trump and the Militarization of National Security
The Real News Network
SHARMINI PERIES: And Coleen Rowley is a former FBI Agent, and legal counsel for the FBI. She's renowned for being a whistleblower for her testimony


http://www.monroviaweekly.com/current-n ... emembered/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Respected Monrovia Japanese-American Civil and Gay Rights ...
monroviaweekl
I gave my story to an FBI agent in the hospital. He took seven pages of ... Records show that FBI monitored Kiyoshi Kuromiya from 1960 to 1972. Kuromiya would ...




http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/sawan ... n-seattle/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Seattle Debates Removing FBI Cameras Under President Trump’s Administration


Seattle surveillance cameras, via Seattle City Council.



Seattle is considering removing federal surveillance cameras around the city to avoid potential misuse under President Trump’s administration.

The Seattle City Council plans to call for the removal of the cameras, which have been operating since at least 2015, Seattle Weekly reports.

Leading the move is Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant.

“It is totally unacceptable for the City of Seattle to be complicit in federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies surveilling Seattle’s public spaces,” Sawant said in a press release. “As a sanctuary city we should not be filming our general population, and we certainly should



Heat is Online




https://robertscribbler.com/2017/01/25/ ... e-country/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Chilean Wildfires are Worst to Ever Strike the Country
Drought in Chile has now lasted for more than a ten years.

Yearly precipitation deficits have ranged from 30-70% for most of central Chile for the last decade. But the ongoing drought’s intensity has increased since 2011. The result has been “an unprecedented drought in terms of intensity, spatial and temporal extent.”


Over recent days, the forests of Central Chile appear to have finally succumbed to the unprecedented and unrelenting punishment. One by one, massive wildfires ignited through Chile’s bone-dry woods — scorching hillsides, decimating more than 100 vineyards, and resulting in the tragic loss of four firefighters. As of today, more than 85 wildfires have burned approximately 190,000 hectares of land — or about 733 square miles.

This charred chunk of Chile more than half the size of Rhode Island represents the worst fire disaster in the state’s history. Now, nations are scrambling to help Chile respond to the crippling disaster as more than 35 large fires continue to rage out of control.

President Michelle Bachelet, visiting the hard-hit Maule region, stated to Reuters:

“We have never seen something of this size, never in Chile’s history. And the truth is the (firefighting) forces are doing everything that is humanly possible and will continue to do so until the fires are contained and controlled.”



(NASA satellite shot of massive wildfires burning in Central Chile on January 21 of 2017. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)

These massive fires serve as the most recent book-end to a crippling climate change related situation that has been impacting Chile and larger South America for years. The fire situation has obviously been set in place by current ‘Mega Drought’ conditions. A drought period that “stands out not only in the historical record but also in precipitation and stream flow reconstructions for the last 1000 years.”

It’s a drought situation that’s replete with climate change related signals. Negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) values helped to push Chile into a dry phase through 2012 even as drying was considerably stronger than during past negative PDO periods. As PDO flipped to positive from 2013 onward, related El Nino conditions failed to bring expected rainfall to the state and drought conditions worsened. Due to these factors, climate researchers note: “there is an strong suggestion that anthropogenic climate change is [at least in part] responsible for the present Mega Drought.”



(It’s not just wildfire-ravaged Chile. Large regions of South America are also experiencing severe drying which is helping to increase wildfire risk. Such drying is a feature of human-caused climate change in that human-forced warming due to fossil fuel burning increases evaporation rates and related stress to forests even as it drives fundamental alterations to precipitation patterns that can substantially worsen drought and wildfire intensity. Image source: NOAA.)

Climate change also appears to be driving drying in neighboring South American states like Brazil and Bolivia — where severe droughts and related warming are drying up massive lakes and helping to worsen the wildfire situation in the Amazon Rainforest. In Bolivia, drought has combined with a climate change driven removal of key mountain glaciers that has produced an endemic state of water scarcity. In Brazil, warming and deforestation are combining to remove a large portion of the atmospheric moisture plume that the great Amazon Rainforest provides. So the historic Chilean wildfires should also be considered in the larger context of ongoing South American droughts related to climate change.

Links:

The Current Mega-Drought in Chile — Is the Future Now?

NOAA

LANCE MODIS

Chile Battles Devastating Wildfires as International Help Pours In

More Than 100 Vineyards Decimated in Worst Wildfire Disaster in Chilean History

Four Firefighters Die in Chilean Wildfires




https://www.myss.com/election-encounter-force-destiny/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



This Election is an Encounter with the Force of Destiny
Hi Everyone,

Well, Election Day has finally arrived. Whew. Today in deciding who will be our next President, we are truly casting a vote for which path of destiny this nation will follow, because symbolically that is the significance of this extremely chaotic, ground-shifting, mind-boggling political campaign. Clinton and Trump are symbols – at least from my perspective – of our collective energies, of all we have done wrong as a nation, of all we are losing within a once high functioning society, of hidden desires to return to eras long past, and of fears associated with going into the unknown. This election also represents what we imagine as our potential for a positive future – but the underlying rage and anger that we witness in so many people tells me that few actually trust that anything will change. They know it in their collective gut and their rage gives voice to their hopelessness and their feelings of helplessness. We all know those feelings these days to some extent.

Like all leaders that have arisen in times of great change – from Mahatma Gandhi to Nelson Mandala to Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt to the nightmares of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin – such leaders rise on the wild spinning energies of the collective grace and psychic free radicals in the atmosphere that the societies-at-large generate. We are the engines that give life to those that emerge from the crowds. We are the residents of the societies-at-large. Leaders and candidates – whether from the past or Clinton and Trump – are not apples that randomly fall from trees. They are grand reflections of who we are and our responses to this moment in evolution and how we are handling it. They embody our collective values and morals – or lack thereof. Consider that Gandhi lifted the people of India into a conscious awareness of what their anger represented: They wanted radical change and freedom from British rule. Rather than hate each other and the British, he offered a positive means of channeling that collective energy into a positive transition. But like all transitions, it came at a price in the beginning stages because those who were comfortable in the old way, those who liked being superior to the Indian people (aka the British), did not want the system to change. Rulers never want a system to change and they will fight to the death to hold the high ground. But they always – and I do mean always – end up losing. Evolution itself inevitably defeats them.

We have approached that moment in history at which believing in any expression of superiority flows against the course of evolution. We are in the holistic age now. Your own body pulsates with that truth – and your body is the micro reflection of the macro collective Earth. You body will not heal if you do not approach your health – indeed your entire life – from a holistic template. All life systems are directing us to merge into a conscious community of human beings. Our religions are breaking down, our national boundaries are evaporating, and our technology is serving the creation of an intimate humanity. We have to move forward toward wholeness if for no other reason than all the problems we now face – from having the capacity to destroy ourselves through our own foolish nuclear weaponry – to refugees to food and water distribution to climate change and so many more – require every nation’s participation in creating solutions. This shift is epoch is size and scope. I believe it is greatest challenge in the history of civilization itself – the evolutionary leap to become a global humanity. We do not even have a thought in our head capable of seriously considering that. And we ourselves won’t make it to that Promised Land. But that is the path every molecule in us is on, magnetically, psychically and spiritually. All choices that we make that oppose that holistic map run counter to that archetypal map that now governs our psyche and soul.

No wonder this election has driven people to near madness. Deep in the blood and bones of people, they know that this election is not an ordinary one. It is a choice between paths of destiny – one going backwards and one going forwards. Neither person is popular because no one – absolutely no one – wants to be on this path. No one wants to vote for either because no one wants this election to be an encounter with the force of Destiny. But it is. So we can scream about emails or women’s issues or whatever – but that’s all nonsense. Utter blather. The real power is unfolding in the unseen world. Indeed, the power is unfolding in your very biology.

Choose wisely.

Love,

Caroline





http://connecticut.news12.com/news/norw ... 1.13017327" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Norwalk high schools take part in Choose2Live program
News 12 Connecticut-
A former FBI agent and federal prosecutor will visit the schools today to teach students how to respond when confronted by police. (7:54 AM). Norwalk high ...


http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/05/us/fb ... wanted=all" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


F.B.I. AGENT ADMITS HARASSING BLACK

WASHINGTON, July 4— A Chicago-based agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged that he and other white colleagues planned a campaign of ''retribution'' against a black agent, Donald Rochon, whose case has prompted a national debate over racism in the bureau.

Newly released F.B.I. documents also show that the white agent, Gary W. Miller, has conceded that in 1985 he forged Mr. Rochon's signature on an application for death and dismemberment insurance for the Rochon family.

Mr. Rochon has described the unsolicited insurance policy as a death threat. Mr. Miller, who was suspended without pay for two weeks as a result of that incident and others aimed at Mr. Rochon, has denied that he was trying to harass the black agent. Agents Admit Harassment

The disclosures, contained in court papers filed here Friday, amount to the first public acknowledgment by the bureau that white agents may have participated in harassment of Mr. Rochon in Chicago, where he was assigned from 1984 to 1986.

The newly released documents are bound to cause further embarrassment for the bureau, which has been criticized by Congress over the Rochon case and over other discrimination claims involving black and Hispanic employees. More than half of the F.B.I.'s Hispanic agents have joined in a separate lawsuit against the bureau, charging that they faced discrimination in hiring and promotion.

Mr. Rochon has said that while he and his family were living in Chicago, their safety was repeatedly threatened in anonymous telephone calls and obscene, racist letters from white F.B.I. agents.

The Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have found that Mr. Rochon was the victim of ''blatant racial harassment'' in the F.B.I.'s Omaha office in 1983 and 1984. In one incident, someone in the Omaha office taped a picture of an ape's head over a photograph of Mr. Rochon's son.

Mr. Rochon has long contended that the later incidents in Chicago, which are the subject of an investigation by a Federal grand jury, were more serious than the harassment in Omaha. Charges Rights Violations

The newly released documents were made available to Mr. Rochon's lawyer, David Kairys of Philadelphia, in preparation for trial on a civil lawsuit filed by Mr. Rochon in Federal District Court in Washington. The suit charges the bureau and several white F.B.I. officials in Chicago and Omaha with violations of Federal civil rights laws.

''It's quite significant,'' Mr. Kairys said of the F.B.I. documents. ''This corroborates what Don Rochon has been saying all along. It corroborates that there was a conspiracy among F.B.I. agents to racially harass Donald and his family.''

The documents, which include the records of an internal investigation of Mr. Rochon's charges, make it clear that Mr. Rochon became the foc






FBI Octopus

Exposing FBI Tentacles



http://www.ocregister.com/articles/immi ... ented.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


OCRegister-
Banning Muslim refugees from entering the country does not help counter violent extremism, said Erroll Southers, former FBI special agent and director of USC's ...


http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017 ... -palo-alto" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Cyberterrorism is focus of Citizen Corps ceremony in Palo Alto
Palo Alto Online
Elvis Chan, FBI supervisory agent, will speak on the topic during the seventh annual Palo Alto Office of Emergency Services Community Partnership Awards ...



http://ijpr.org/post/oregon-fbi-leader- ... nder-trump" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oregon FBI Leader: Agency Will Remain Apolitical Under Trump
Jefferson Public Radio-Jan 25, 2017
The former top FBI agent in Oregon said police need to do more to engage with their communities. That's especially the case with the strong anti-government ...


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jug ... cf898d003d" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So Now A Bunch Of Juggalos Are Going To March On Washington ...
Huffington Post
So Now A Bunch Of Juggalos Are Going To March On Washington, Too. Fans of ICP want the FBI to stop classifying them as a “loosely organized hybrid gang.”.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

a liberal is someone who walks out of the room
when a argument turns into a fight

a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

Link du jour
https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -mortality

https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/In ... tation.pdf

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3284868


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gay ... -1.1100781


http://www.conservativehq.com/article/2 ... stigations


Breaking: Democratic Activist FBI Director Under Three Investigations




CHQ Staff | 6/28/17


Our friends at Circa, Jay Soloman and Sara A. Carter, report that acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a central player in the Russia election case, is now the focus of three separate federal administrative inquiries into allegations about his behavior as a senior bureau executive, according to documents and interviews.

The allegations being reviewed range from sexual discrimination to improper political activity, the documents show say Soloman and Carter.

Andrew McCabeCirca reported Monday that former supervisory special agent Robyn Gritz, a decorated counterterrorism agent, has filed a sexual discrimination and retaliation complaint that names McCabe and other top FBI officials.

Gritz also filed a complaint against McCabe with the main federal whistleblower agency in April, alleging social media photos she found show he campaigned for his wife’s Virginia state senate race in violation of the Hatch Act.

And it is that Hatch Act complaint that has landed like a grenade in McCabe’s shorts.

The Office of U.S. Special Counsel, the government’s main whistleblower agency, is investigating whether McCabe’s activities supporting his wife Jill’s Democratic campaign for Virginia state senate in 2015 violated the Hatch Act’s prohibition against FBI agents campaigning in partisan races.

The agency’s probe was prompted by a complaint in April from a former FBI agent who forwarded social media photos showing McCabe wearing a T-shirt supporting his wife’s campaign during a public event and then posting a photo on social media urging voters to join him in voting for his wife.

“I am voting for Jill because she is the best wife ever,” McCabe put on a sign that he photographed himself holding. The photo was posted on her social media page a few days before the election, in response to Dr. Jill McCabe's plea to “help me win” by posting photos expressing reasons why voters should vote for her, according to the complaint.

Other social media photos in the complaint showed McCabe's minor daughter campaigning with her mother, wearing an FBI shirt, and McCabe voting with his wife at a polling station.

The Hatch Act prohibits FBI employees from engaging "in political activity in concert with a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or a partisan political group."

It defines prohibited political activity as "any activity directed at the success or failure of a partisan group or candidate in a partisan election."

An ethics expert told Circa the photos raised legitimate questions about McCabe's compliance with the law.

However, the most damning evidence of a Hatch Act violation came from an open records request filed with Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s office.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s office released to Circa under the Freedom of Information Act documents showing McCabe attended a meeting with his wife and the governor on a Saturday in March 2015 specifically to discuss having Jill McCabe run for state Senate in Virginia as a Democrat.

"This is a candidate recruitment meeting. McCabe is seriously considering running against State Senator Dick Black. You have been asked to close the deal," the briefing memo for McAuliffe read.

Included in the governor's briefing package was a copy of McCabe's FBI biography. The biography made clear that Andrew McCabe was a senior executive who at the time oversaw the FBI’s Washington field office that among many tasks supervised investigations in northern Virginia.

At the time of the meeting, write Soloman and Carter, published reports indicate agents in the Washington field office were involved in both a probe of McAuliffe and of the governor’s close friend, Hillary Clinton’s and her private email account.

The Hatch Act poster hanging inside FBI offices to urge compliance clearly states that an FBI employee "may not knowingly solicit or discourage the political activity of any person with business before the agency."

FBI sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said agents were specifically concerned that McCabe's meeting with McAuliffe about supporting Jill McCabe's campaign constituted a solicitation of a person with business before the bureau.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) has now weighed in asking the Justice Department to investigate McCabe:

“While Mr. McCabe recused himself from public corruption cases in Virginia -- presumably including the reportedly ongoing investigation of Mr. McAuliffe regarding illegal campaign contributions -- he failed to recuse himself from the Clinton email investigation, despite the appearance of conflict created by his wife’s campaign accepting $700,000 from a close Clinton associate during the investigation,” Grassley wrote in seeking the IG probe.

When questions first arose about the money Jill McCabe's campaign got from McAuliffe, the FBI insisted that Andrew McCabe never used his FBI role to aid her campaign and “did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind” for his wife’s political run. The documents from McAuliffe’s office and the $700,000 given to his wife’s campaign make that appear to be a lie.

With three investigations hanging over his head and an obvious lie




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3284006

FBI agent indicted, accused of lying about shooting at slain Oregon militia member LaVoy Finicum



BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, June 28, 2017, 2:07 AM



Oregon state troopers noted multiple rifle casings where the FBI agents had been standing during the Jan. 26, 2016, shooting. During a later probe, the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office determined one agent fired two shots at Finicum’s pickup truck after it crashed into a snowbank. The team of federal agents then covered up the shooting by removing the casings, the sheriff alleged.







http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/browa ... story.html

FBI informant accused of running fraud while undercover for FBI
It was OK for the FBI.
After all he was only hurting Muslims.


The last time Mohammed Agbareia was accused of fraud, he pleaded guilty, got a break on his punishment, moved to Palm Beach County and worked as an informant for the FBI providing information on “national security investigations.”

But federal prosecutors believe Agbareia went right back to committing fraud almost immediately after he got out of prison — and while he was providing undercover help to the FBI, according to criminal charges filed.


Agbareia used multiple aliases and forged identification documents to prey on and defraud Muslim people, mosques and Islamic groups on at least 200 occasions — to the tune of about $300,000 since 2011, investigators said.

Using different accents and disguising his voice, he repeatedly posed as a stranded traveler who needed financial help, taking advantage of a principle of Islam that requires believers to help in those circumstances, according to court records.

At times, he pretended to be a representative of the Chamber of Commerce for a Saudi Arabian city or an organization called the Islamic Science and Cultural Organization, they said. At other times, he claimed he was a patient from Saudi Arabia who needed medical treatment or posed as a doctor trying to arrange medical treatment in the U.S. for other people, they said.

The fraud involved Agbareia contacting potential victims by phone and making plans to visit and meet them, according to the charges.






http://www.ibtimes.com/will-christopher ... te-2558432

Will Christopher Wray Be FBI Director? Trump Nominee To Face Senate
BY CHANDAN PRASAD ON 06/28/17 AT 3:00 AM


In 2006, Wray represented an unnamed American energy executive, who was being criminally investigated by the Russian government, according to a CNN report. This detail was present on Wray’s biographical page for his law firm, King & Spalding, since 2009 but it was removed in January.

“At the time he made the adjustments — January 12, 2017 — he was not being considered for, and did not anticipate being nominated for, FBI Director, or any position in government,” King & Spalding spokeswoman Micheline Tang was quoted as saying.

Wray's firm also counts among its clients the Russian energy firm Rosneft — which has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Any work Wray did related to Russia is likely to figure in the Senate confirmation proceedings.




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3284603


Missouri trooper charged with drowning death of handcuffed suspect pleads guilty to minor boating offense


BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, June 28, 2017, 8:55 AM




http://www.fox9.com/news/264242932-story

SCOTUS won't hear appeal of Bloomington man reportedly mistreated by FBI agents
photo
By: Tom Lyden
POSTED: JUN 27 2017 08:26PM CDT






http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/20 ... month.html


Used a Penny Arcade to count coins? You could get class-action money, report says


Updated on June 27, 2017 at 6:42 PMPosted on June 27, 2017 at 6:42 PM

The suit, which includes 13 named plaintiffs, was filed after an April 6, 2016 NBC report that found that five Penny Arcades at TD Banks failed to correctly count coins, and was sometimes off by as much as $50.






FBI Octopus


Take Five: Brian Fitzpatrick
Roll Call-
Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick says his work as an FBI agent has given him a “pretty neat” perspective in his new job as a Congressman


http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/0 ... ty-bribes/

Bay Area TSA Screeners Plead Guilty To Taking Bribes
CBS San Francisco Bay Area-
The big worry, says KPIX 5 security analyst and former FBI agent Jeff Harp, is that if a screener is willing to watch drugs go by, what else are they willing to watch ...







http://www.whokilledjfk.net/dallas_fbi_ ... ested1.htm


Former Dallas FBI agent arrested in death threats was 'erratic and dangerous for years,' bureau says





The FBI deemed former special agent Carlos Ortiz "erratic and dangerous for years," an assessment that culminated Wednesday in his firing and arrest. Ortiz, 48, is accused of threatening to kill his estranged wife, who is a bureau analyst, and the head of the Dallas FBI field office.

The negative assessment of Ortiz is in the dismissal letter that he received Wednesday from the bureau. The letter chronicles allegations of spousal abuse and describes a 1992 encounter in which Dallas SWAT officers had to be called when Ortiz barricaded himself in his home over "job stress and personal issues."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/years-of-fb ... -detailed/

An internal FBI report kept under wraps for three years details dozens of cases of agents fired for egregious misconduct and crimes, including drug trafficking, attempted murder, theft, misuse of informants and consorting with prostitutes.
The report, released Wednesday by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, found that about one in 1,000 agents was dismissed for serious misconduct or criminal offenses by the FBI during the period examined, from 1986 to 1999. The average was between eight and nine per year.

Although the numbers were small, the FBI's attempts to prevent the report's disclosure from the public and Congress since its completion in June 2000 are raising questions among FBI critics about an attempt to avoid embarrassment.

Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter Wednesday to FBI Director Robert Mueller that he was concerned about "a lack of response to the findings and recommendations, a general lack of support for the project and even efforts to prevent its completion."

Grassley said the report "almost never saw the light of day." It was only provided to lawmakers in July 2003, months after it was requested, and was accompanied by a Justice Department letter urging that it be kept confidential.

FBI Assistant Director Cassandra Chandler responded Wednesday, "Director Mueller is committed to undertaking the reforms necessary to strengthen the disciplinary process within the FBI and ensure that it is fair, efficient and credible."

The report was prepared by the FBI's Behavioral Sciences and Law Enforcement Ethics unit in an effort to identify trends among agents dismissed for serious offenses and determine if there were warning signs prior to the misconduct that led to their firings.

The report lists the circumstances — minus names, dates and locations — of more than 70 dismissals, including:

An agent who was abusive to his family and used his FBI weapon to shoot his wife, resulting in attempted murder charges.
One agent who was calling sex hot lines on FBI phones while on duty.
Several agents who had improper sexual relationships with confidential informants or prostitutes, sometimes in FBI vehicles. One agent pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the killing of a female informant with whom he had "an inappropriate emotional and sexual relationship."
Agents who disclosed sensitive or classified material to outsiders, including representatives of foreign governments and criminal enterprises.
Firings stemming from drug, alcohol or gambling problems. One agent stole more than $400,000 in informant funds to feed his gambling and drinking problems; another used crack cocaine regularly and was arrested for possession of crack pipes.
An agent who attempted to sell cocaine to someone who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.
The report concluded that some of these agents were hired even though a background check had revealed negative information about them. Sometimes the check itself was not thorough enough. Before their firings, some agents exhibited "markers" for potential misconduct, such as a history of emotional or psychological problems or evidence of substance abuse.

Release of the report comes amid a separate review of the way the FBI investigates employee wrongdoing and imposes discipline. That review, by former Attorney General Griffin Bell and ex-FBI executive Lee Colwell, has been completed in draft form but is not yet ready for public release, FBI officials said.

Mueller said in announcing that review that he wanted to stop "an erosion of trust" by the public in the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, which has been accused of having dual disciplinary systems for supervisors and field agents and of minimizing allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers.

The report follows several high-profile embarrassments to the bureau.

Last year, former FBI agent John Connolly Jr. was convicted of protecting New England gangsters, including Whitey Bulger. A House committee concluded last year that the FBI shielded from prosecution known killers and other criminals whom it used as informants to investigate organized crime in New England.

Last April, an FBI informer, Katrina Leung, and retired FBI agent James J. Smith were arrested over charges Leung revealed important and damaging information about American counterintelligence techniques to the Chinese government. Prosecutors say Smith and a second FBI agent had long-term sexual affairs with Leung, a prominent Republican activist and successful businesswoman in Los Angeles.

In August, a Justice Department report blamed much of the damage caused by rogue FBI agent Robert Hanssen on poor oversight at the FBI.



http://katu.com/news/investigators/you- ... -in-oregon

'You just never unsee it': FBI says child pornography cases on the rise in Oregon



"When you see it, you just never unsee it," said Biehn, the supervisory special agent of the Violent Crimes Against Children program for the FBI in Portland. "You just never forget about those kids and what they must've gone through in that moment. And that they are abused over and over again. For what, you know, for somebody's sexual gratification? It's just, it's gut-wrenching."








http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/t ... -1.3286296

Australian police charge high-ranking Vatican cardinal with sex offenses


Wednesday, June 28, 2017, 9:19 PM



Is FBI agent James Doyle still working as a FBI agent?

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/03/23/h ... mes-doyle/

FBI Employee Charged With Pointing Gun At Woman Inside Hingham Restaurant
March 23, 2016 6:45 PM








http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ex- ... -1.3285761

John Avvento, 45, was found Tuesday afternoon in his Bath Beach home on Harway Ave. Nearby was a crack pipe, Percocet and Vicodin, police sources said.

An autopsy will determine the cause of death, though police believe he overdosed, sources said.

Avvento was sentenced to federal probation and home confinement in 2012 — 12 years after he left the NYPD. He avoided prison time after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute and possession with the intent to distribute cocaine.

A year earlier, he’d been busted and accused of riding shotgun with a drug crew to help them avoid getting arrested — and of giving raid jackets and a handgun holster to a drug crew planning a home-invasion robbery.



Avvento joined the Housing Police Department in July 1992, less than two years before it and the Transit Police Department merged with the NYPD.


Nearby Avvento's body was a crack pipe

In 2000, Avvento, then assigned to the 62nd Precinct, retired on a tax-free disability pension, getting more than $3,600 a month.






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

A million bottles a minute: world's plastic binge 'as dangerous as climate change'
Exclusive: Annual consumption of plastic bottles is set to top half a trillion by 2021, far outstripping recycling efforts and jeopardising oceans, coastlines and other environments



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3285672

Officer Jason Van Dyke unexpectedly testifies about black Laquan McDonald shooting
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, June 28, 2017, 3:30 PM





https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... tive-lands



Surveillance at Standing Rock exposes heavy-handed policing of Native lands
Julian Brave NoiseCat



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3286238

Perjury charge dropped against officer who arrested black woman Sandra Bland



BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, June 28, 2017, 8:16 PM






https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... unch-video

Atlanta police officer placed on leave after head-punching video emerges
Clip shows officer punching back of man’s head at least three times as two officers hold man down and another looks on


Video shows one officer punching the back of the man’s head at least three times while two other officers hold him down as the man screams “Stop! Stop!” A fourth officer stands nearby. Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta posted the video on its Facebook page 23 June.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

Las Vegas odds say FBI will succeed in electing Pence to POTUS


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/top-c ... le/2630474

Longtime Clinton ally Lanny Davis is due to release a book in October that excoriates former FBI Director James Comey for his role in the 2016 election.

Davis' work aims to trace Hillary Clinton's email controversy and the timeline from Comey's July 2016 congressional testimony in which he declared the end of an investigation into her emails to his bombshell announcement just before the November election that the investigation had been reopened.




"In 'The Unmaking of the President 2016,' attorney Lanny J. Davis shows how Comey's misguided announcement — just eleven days before the election — swung a significant number of voters toward Trump, winning him an Electoral College victory — and the presidency," the book's publisher, Simon and Schuster, said.

Davis argues that state-by-state polling data shows that had the election been held on Oct. 27, Hillary Clinton would not only have won the popular vote but also the Electoral College by a substantial margin.

He further contends that despite Trump's behavior, Russian interference, and reports of Clinton's gaining traction in states like Georgia, Arizona, and even Texas, it was Comey's Oct. 28 letter about the Clinton investigation that completely reshaped the landscape of the election in favor of Trump.

"Davis proves with raw, indisputable data how Comey's October surprise changed American history in the blink of an eye and cost Hillary Clinton the presidency," Simon and Schuster said.

The book is scheduled to be released Oct. 24.




https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uqT2aCbT4ks

Hacking Voting Machines, BroadPwn in Vegas, and #LeakTheAnalyst - DEF CON 25 - Threat Wire
Hak5 14,185 views





http://www.koat.com/article/woman-says- ... d/11642980


Woman says FBI agents shot her friend

The FBI still isn't saying who was taken to the hospital nor will say if someone was killed.


Aug 5, 2017



Link du jour


http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/a ... -1.3389007

http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... tegration/


http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/calif ... 03403.html

http://www.pravdareport.com


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NDVMtnaB28E

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... order-rift


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OzOhM4HsIeg



https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertai ... e2b0b549e4

Music Perspective
The top 35 female composers in classical music

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/ ... e-speeches





https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/08 ... civil-war/

Is America on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or Civil War?
BY ROGER L SIMON AUGUST 5, 2017


http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/crim ... 98d4b.html

Black Gary teen shot by police earlier this week dies from his wounds




Aug 5, 2017 Updated





https://www.abqjournal.com/1043946/pair ... found.html


FBI says Goldman Sachs not involved in pot bust

Story image for fbi from KOB 4
KOB 4
Pair arrested after pot plants found
Albuquerque Journal-
FBI agents and Bernalillo County sheriff's detectives were at the home on the 5700 block of Evans Road SW to search for evidence and a suspect in a July 27 ...




http://www.news18.com/news/world/ied-ca ... 83847.html

FBI says not their informant who caused blast

IED Caused Blast at Minnesota Mosque, Says FBI
News18-

According to authorities, no one was hurt in the explosion at the Bloomington Islamic Center, but heavily damaged an imam's office and sent smoke wafting ...


http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/08/ac ... a-coverup/

ACLJ: DOJ Document Dump Shows Lynch-Clinton Tarmac Summit ...
legal Insurrection (blog)-
Not only was Comey's FBI less than forthcoming, but the emails reveal that Clinton's and Lynch's security details coordinated prior to the tarmac summit.


https://www.wunderground.com



https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/new-g ... ath-valley



Death Valley Sets New Global Record for Hottest Single Month
Death Valley, California, has just experienced the hottest month reliably measured anywhere on Earth, with a scorching average temperature in July of 107.4°F.






https://www.desmogblog.com/marc-morano


Marc Morano

Credentials

B.A., Political Science, George Mason University. [1]
Background

Marc Morano is the executive director and chief correspondent of ClimateDepot.com, a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Morano is also the Communications Director at CFACT, a conservative think-tank in Washington D.C. that has received funding from ExxonMobil, Chevron, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations associated with Richard Mellon Scaife. According to 2011 IRS Forms (PDF), Morano was the highest paid staff member with a salary of $150,000 per year. Morano's blog Climate Depot regularly publishes articles questioning man-made global warming. [12], [13], [6], [37]

Although he has no scientific expertise in the area, Morano has become a prominent climate change denier. He has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “King of the skeptics,” and a “central cell of the climate-denial machine.” He was also listed as one of 17 top “climate killers” by Rolling Stone Magazine. He has accused climate scientists of “fear mongering,” and has claimed that proponents of man-made global warming are “funded to the tune of $50 billion.” [15], [16]

From 2006 to 2009, Morano was the communications director for Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the minority chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Prior to the last election, Inhofe was the majority chair of the EPW committee. In the 2002 election cycle, Senator Inhofe received more in donations from the oil and gas sector than any other Senator. Sen. Inhofe is known for his infamous quote that the threat of catastrophic global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and as his communications director, Mornano has spent his recent years propagating this message. [3]

According to Marc Morano's archived profile at the Heartland Institute, “Morano joined the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as the majority Communications Director in June 2006 after a decade and a half as a working journalist, documentary maker, radio talk show host, and national television correspondent.” Apart from being a regular speaker at the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change, Morano is also listed on their website as a “global warming expert.” [2], [17]

Prior to working for Senator Inhofe, Morano was a journalist with Cybercast News Service, which is owned and operated by the Media Research Center (MRC). The MRC is supported in part by right-wing foundations and funding from industry, including over $200,000 from ExxonMobil. From 1992 to 1996, Morano also worked as a producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show and was known as “Limbaugh's man in Washington.” Morano often appears on Fox news to promote his ideas regarding climate change. [4]

Stance on Climate Change

“The bottom line is, not only do we not face a climate crisis, but if we face a climate crisis what Congress is proposing, what the United Nations is proposing, is scientifically meaningless. It would have no detectable impact. So we'd all be doomed if we had to rely on them for a solution. [5]

Key Quotes

June, 2016

Marc Morano has claimed that today's youth are being indoctrinated by the environmental movement:

“Accurate climate science is being suppressed, meaning the kids don’t get to hear opposing views,” said Morano. “It’s narrative-crafting, the same kind of thing you would expect from any partisan campaign group.

“And then you add in the media, with people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Laurie David telling kids if you’re a global warming skeptic, you are not cool. I guess they’re afraid the kids will instantly become skeptics if they hear any opposing ideas.” [58]

June, 2015

Morano on Pope Francis and climate change: “The Pope has picked a contentious scientific issue which – now going on almost two decades of no global warming, sea ice recovering, sea level rise actually decelerating, On every metric from polar bears on down, the global warming narrative has weakened. And to now have the Pope jump on that bandwagon would sow confusion among Catholics.” [50]
August, 2014
“I'm not a scientist, but I do play one on TV occasionally. Ok, hell, more than occasionally. […] You go up against scientists, most of them are going to be in their own little sort of policy wonk world or area of expertise. Very arcane, very hard to understand, hard to explain, and very boring.” [49][49:22 - Merchants of Doubt]
“Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has because that's all you really want. There's no legislation we're championing. We're the negative force. We're just trying to stop stuff.” [49] [53:33 - Merchants of Doubt]
“I don't know what [Ben Santer's] complaint is. But I'll give you the philosophy behind it […] I think people should be thanking me. I was doing a service. And people go like 'oh, they're death threats.' Well, I get death threats. I enjoy them. I usually email back. So I think it was one of the healthiest things that could have happened in the climate debate. I make no apologies for it. I still do it and I enjoy doing it.” [49] [51:24 - Merchants of Doubt]
June, 2014
“I am jealous of the leadership of Canada & Australia. It is so sad being in America – The rest of the world is abandoning carbon pricing as the U.S. is jumping right in.” [39]

November, 2013

Marc Morano appeared at the COP19 United Nations climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, alongside the executive director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Craig Rucker:

“Coal is the moral choice, particularly for the developing world… The model for the world right now should be Australia. Australia gets it. Scientifically they get it, politically they get it and particularly when it comes to the United Nations, they get it. They are pulling out of this, they are repealing their carbon tax and Canada seems to be intrigued by what Australia is doing.” [36]

August 21, 2013

“The IPCC summary for policymakers is used to scare politicians and goad the public into action. The UN is all about politics.” [33]
August 20, 2013

In reference to the IPCC's AR5 leaked climate report, on August 20, 2013, just three months before the UNIPCC's COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, Morano says on FoxNews.com:

“All of these fatuous figures are pulled out of the air to support the IPCC ideologies and not based upon any statistical analysis or science.” [34]

June, 2012

Watch Peter Sinclair interview Marc Morano at the Heartland Institute ICCC7 conference in 2012:


May, 2012

In response to a quote by New York Times Journalist Andrew Revkin, which describes Climate Depot as “divisive and toxic,” Morano responded:

“'Toxic'? If by 'divisive and toxic' you mean Climate Depot is serving to derail the man-made global warming agenda and its sub-prime science and politics, I happily plead guilty!” [19]

March, 2010

With reference to scientists involved in the “climategate” controversy (all of which were since publicly exonerated), Morano has said:

“I seriously believe we should kick them while they're down. They deserve to be publicly flogged.” [20]

April, 2009

“The goal [of Climate Depot] is to expand on key elements from the award-winning Senate EPW website and quite simply revolutionize climate and environmental news dissemination. Unlike much of the establishment media, CFACT's news outlet will provide the public with links to all sides of the climate and environmental debate, with links to Gore's blog, environmental groups, the United Nations, as well as skeptical voices. It is very hard to get accurate information on global warming and environmental issues. Much of what the media reports is simply a regurgitation of the rhetoric from partisan and ideologically driven environmental groups, foundations, and the United Nations, which are spinning data to promote a cause.” [1] (Note, the EPW website is also Senator James Inhofe's Press Blog).'

April 9, 2009

“Even in the Senate, I’d put up any of the stories we did against any pablum Time or Newsweek has put out on global warming. We’d link to the other side; we’d present their arguments. They do one-sided screeds.” [6]

July, 2008

Addressing the 9th Annual National Freedom21 Conference in 2008, Morano said:

“I like to joke that Inhofe is as far left as I'll go for an employer.” [35]

Key Deeds

July, 2017

As promoted by CFACT mailer, Morano is scheduled to appear at the Australian premier of Climate Hustle, accompanied in Australia by CFACT's Executive Director Craig Rucker, as well as CFACT president and founder David Rothbard. Event dates were also listed on Joanne Nova's blog: [83], [84], [85]

July 12- Melbourne, Australia
Village Roadshow Theatrette- State Library of Victoria
Doors open at 5:30 PM, film to start at 6:00 PM
Reception and Q/A session to follow

July 15- Brisbane, Australia
Sponsored by the Australian Institute for Progress
New Farm Cinema
Doors open at 4:30 PM

July 18- Sydney, Australia
Club Five Dock
Doors open at 7:00 PM

Before the film's Australian debut, Climate scientist Professor Will Steffen reviewed portions of the film for DeSmog. [85]

Steffen is an emeritus professor at Australian National University and a member of the not-for-profit Climate Council. He said: “This is just the usual rubbish from the usual suspects - a re-hash of misleading and downright incorrect arguments that denialists have trotted out for a long time.” [85]

Reviewing a section that downplays the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, Steffen noted it “misrepresents how the carbon cycle works” by ignoring how oceans and land absorb CO2 – a very basic and well-known mechanism in the carbon cycle. [85]

Steffen added, “What the film didn't say is that both oxygen and nitrogen, which comprise about 99 per cent of the atmospheric gases, are transparent to UV, visible and heat radiation. They don't play a role in the energy balance at the Earth's surface.” [85]

Dr. Andrew King, a climate scientist at Monash University in Melbourne, also had an opportunity to look at the film. He described the section on carbon dioxide's role as “muddled.” [85]

“Whilst there are certainly other potential drivers of changes in the climate we know that over the last century we have greatly increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and, through detection and attribution analyses, we know that the rising levels of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases have driven the rise in global temperature,” King said. “Changes in other potential drivers, like solar activity, simply can't explain the 1C rise in global temperature we have observed.” [85]

Craig Rucker said: “CFACT has a lot of fans and followers in Australia who have long wanted us to make a trip. We were beckoned to come and are excited to premiere our film Climate Hustle.” [85]

Nova also listed some groups involved in organising the trip included the Galileo Movement (once managed by current One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts), the Australian Environment Foundation, the Australian Tax Payers Alliance, and the Australian Institute for Progress. [84]

December 12, 2016

Marc Morano was an attendee at a private meeting also attended by Trump's EPA Transition team lead Myron Ebell on Capitol Hill. E&E News reported that the event was not open to the public or to the press and Ebell refused to give any details. The event was hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and held in the hearing room of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. The EPW committee is chaired by Senator James Inhofe who, like Trump, has described human-caused climate change as a hoax. [78]

DeSmog reported that the event featured the “Who's Who of Climate Science Deniers.” Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts, who spoke at the event, also wrote that the meeting was a gathering of the Cooler Heads Coalition and listed some of the participants on Facebook: [79], [80]

Malcolm Roberts Facebook Post

Names mentioned above included:

Tony Heller
Tim Ball
Fred Singer
Ken Haapala
Craig Rucker
Randy Randall
Steve Milloy
Marc Morano
James Delingpole
Chris Horner
Myron Ebell
Tom de Weise
James Taylor
Pat Michaels
Austin Smithson
Brandon Middleton
Marlo Lewis
DeSmog also noted that three of the attendees—Myron Ebell, Randy Randol, and Steve Milloy—had all been part of the Global Climate Science Communications Team in the late 1990s, a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute. According to an early memo, the group said “victory will be achieved when […] Average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the 'conventional wisdom'.” [81]

September 1, 2016

Marc Morano spoke at the Uintah Basin Energy Summit, which has prompted some controversy from environmental groups: [75]

“I could see it if an oil and gas association brought him in to speak to their skepticsim about the climate change argument,” Sat Matt Pacenza, executive director of HEAL Utah. “But this is a government-sponsored event, and he is being paid with taxpayer money.” [75]

The state Office of Energy Development, which is also sponsoring the conference, noted in a statement: “our views on climate change do not align with those of Mr. Morano” reports KUER News.

Others, including Utah State University physicist, Rob Davies, have doubted Marno's message. Davies described Morano as a “paid confusionist.” Davis describes it as a missed opportunity for eastern Utah and the energy industry: [76]

“They deserve really good information as to what the potential changes are and why,” says Davies. “And I just can’t see someone like Marc Morano bringing constructive, good information to those communities on this topic.” [76]

Barry Bickmore, a Brigham Young University geologist, shares Davis's view:

“They’re just bringing in somebody who can give them a really good sales pitch for what they want to hear,” says Bickmore. “In a way, though, it’s sad because they could be preparing for the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels.” [76]

Joshua Murdock provides coverage of the Energy Summit in an article at UB Media where he notes that a number of climate experts dispute claims made by Morano. He comments on Morano's presentation: “Morano said that extreme weather is declining around the globe and that the link between climate change, which he says is a myth, and extreme weather is fabricated. Morano then said that the oft-touted 97 percent consensus on climate change being real and anthropogenic (meaning human-caused) was illegitimate because less than 100 scientists were polled to arrive at the 97 percent value.” [77]

He notes that Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science, offers evidence contrary to Morano's claims:”There’s different kinds of extreme weather, some of which is increasing because of climate change, some of which is decreasing, some of which we’re not quite sure what the impacts are,” Schmidt said. Pennsylvania State University Evan Pugh Geoscience Professor Richard Alley, Ph.D. also counters a number of Morano's statements. While Morano made claims that increasing polar bear populations and a growth of Arctic sea ice rebut evidence of climate change, Alley and Schmidt note that polar bear populations have increased largely due to new restrictions on hunting, and that sea ice continues to decrease: [77]

“We’re looking at unprecedented levels of low sea ice,” said Schmidt, adding that 2016 would likely feature the second-lowest amount of ice in recorded history and that ice amounts are trending sharply downward. “The statistically significant long-term trend shows Arctic sea ice is shrinking, especially in late summer, with high confidence,” said Alley. “There are year-to-year variations, but the climate is for shrinkage.” Schmidt added that polar bear populations are not evidence of climate change, but rather something that could be impacted by climate change.

“The data are very strong that the planet is warming, as shown by analyses by NASA, NOAA, the Berkeley Earth group and others, by data from thermometers in the air including those well away from cities, thermometers in the ocean and in the ground, taken up by balloons and looking down from space, and changes in temperature-sensitive snow and ice and plants and animals,” said Alley. “There is year-to-year variability, but averaging across that 'weather,' the signal of climatic warming is very clear.” [77]

August, 2016

Marc Morano is the vice president of a group titled Climate Exit (Clexit), and a member of the “Clexit Committee.” According to Clexit's founding statement (PDF), “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control the climate.” [71], [72]

As Desmog reports, another key member of Clexit's “60 well-informed science, business and economic leaders” is Hugh Morgan, a former board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia and former CEO of Western Mining Corporation with close ties to Australia's Liberal party. [73], [74]

According to Clexit's founding statement:

“If the Paris climate accord is ratified, or enforced locally by compliant governments, it will strangle the leading economies of the world with pointless carbon taxes and costly climate and energy policies, all with no sound basis in evidence or science […]” [72]

June 22, 2016

After a Massachusetts court sided with a group of teenagers by ruling the state had failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, [57] Marc Morano claimed that today's youth are being indoctrinated by the environmental movement: [58]

“It’s a brilliant tactic by the environmental left,” Morano said. “It gives the kids something tangible they can hold on to and it radicalizes them about the environment early on. However, kids are being spoon-fed a version of science that does not comport with reality.

“The environmental left carefully censors or bans opposing ideas, like in Portland, Oregon, where you now can’t even mention in school textbooks climate change may not be as bad as we thought,” Morano said.

“Accurate climate science is being suppressed, meaning the kids don’t get to hear opposing views,” said Morano. “It’s narrative-crafting, the same kind of thing you would expect from any partisan campaign group.

“And then you add in the media, with people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Laurie David telling kids if you’re a global warming skeptic, you are not cool,” said Morano. “I guess they’re afraid the kids will instantly become skeptics if they hear any opposing ideas.”

May 2, 2016

Marc Morano's Climate Hustle was released in U.S. theatres. The Washington Times reports John Coleman defended the film after Bill Nye described it as “not in our national interest and the world’s interest.” Anthony Watts (who is listed among the film's “key scientists”) also gave the film a positive review. [65]

“I have always been amazed that anyone would pay attention to Bill Nye, a pretend scientist in a bow tie,” Coleman said on Climate Depot.

“As a man who has studied the science of meteorology for over 60 years and received the [American Meteorological Society] Meteorologist of the Year award, I am totally offended that Nye gets the press and media attention he does,” Coleman said. “And I am rooting for the ‘Climate Hustle’ film to become a huge hit — bigger than ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Al Gore.” [65]

The film was produced by the Committee for Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and CDR Communications. As noted at Desmog's project, ClimateHustler.org, CFACT has received funding from ExxonMobil, Chevron, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations associated with Richard Mellon Scaife. CFACT has also received at least $7.8 million in “dark money” through DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. [66], [67]

CDR Communications was behind the 2010 video by the Cornwall Alliance titled Resisting the Green Dragon, which claimed environmentalism was a “false religion” and a “global government” power grab. Chris Rogers of CDR Communictions is also chairman of The James Partnership, the umbrella arm that includes the Cornwall Alliance as one of its projects and pays the salary of Calvin Beisner, Cornwall’s founder and spokesperson. [69]

Individuals listed as “Key Scientists” in Climate Hustle include the following: [68]

Robert Giegengack
Judith Curry
Richard Tol
Caleb Rossiter
Ivar Giaever
Roy Spencer
Daniel B. Botkin
Patrick Moore
Don J. Easterbrook
Robert M. Carter
John Theon
Dennis Rancourt
William M. Briggs
Roger Pielke Sr.
Walter Cunningham
Patrick J. Michaels
Lord Christopher Monckton
Anthony Watts
Leighton Steward
Philip Stott
Will Happer
April, 2016

Marc Morano refused $20,000 in bets from science presenter Bill Nye. Nye said he was willing to bet Morano that 2016 would be one of the ten hottest years on record. He also offered a bet the current decade would be the hottest on record. [70]

Morano turned down both bets, telling DeSmog it was “silly” to take a bet when it was “obvious” the official records would show more global warming. [70]

Video below:



December 10, 2015

The New Republic's Alex Newman interviewed Marc Morano during the COP21 climate talks in Paris. Morano declared that he and other climate deniers came to Paris to be “the turd in the punch bowl.”

“We planned this during this week because the whole world will be watching the UN and the climate, so we wanted to be essentially, well for lack of a better word, the turd in the punch bowl, and that's what we are here,” Morano said in the interview, while dressed in a “climate monarch” costume.




December 7, 2015

Marc Morano's documentary film, Climate Hustle, debuted December 7, 2015 in Paris, France during the COP21 United Nations summit on climate change. [55], [56], [62]

“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 had said before the film was released. [63]

“The reason that this is a unique film,” Morano has said, “is that we are going for a pop culture-friendly… sarcastic approach and we actually give both sides in this movie.”

In an interview with Ezra Levant, Morano said:

“I am not interviewing a lot of the main climate sceptical scientists because I feel like they have been interviewed by many other people and their stories have been told. I am trying to find another layer of scientist whose stories have not been out there yet. You will see a lot of new names in this.” [63]

See a preview of the film below:



At the Paris premier of the film, reporters from Desmog and the Irish Times were denied entrance after having their RSVPs accepted days earlier. [64]

November 20, 2015

Marc Morano spoke at an event hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation titled “At the Crossroads Energy & Climate Policy Summit.” He spoke as part of Session VII, titled “Status of Climate Policy and Mandate: From EPA to Paris,” focusing on federal mandates and “global agreements to shackle energy.” [59]

Event speakers included: [59]

Robert E. Murray Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation, the nation’s largest underground coal mining commpany.
H. Leighton Steward Member, TheRightClimateStuff.com
Dr. Don Easterbrook Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University
Dr. Will Happer Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University
Dr. Richard Lindzen Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT
Dr. Patrick Moore Author and founding member of Greenpeace
Dr. E. Calvin Beisner Spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Horace Cooper Adjunct Fellow, National Center for Public Policy Research
Dr. Caleb Rossiter Adjunct Professor, School of International Service and Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, College of Arts and Sciences at American University
Mark P. Mills Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute and founder andCEO, Digital Power Group
Dr. Hal Doiron Former NASA Engineer and Chairman, The Right Climate Stuff Research Team
Walter Cunningham Fighter Pilot, Col. USMCR-Ret.; Physicist; Apollo 7 Astronaut
Dr. George L. Stegemeier President, GLS Engineering, Inc.
Stephen Moore Distinguished Visiting Fellow on the Project for Economic Growth at the Heritage Foundation
Robert L. Bradley Jr. CEO, Institute for Energy Research
Mike Nas Partner, Environmental and Legislative Affairs Practice Group, Jackson Walker L.L.P.
Marc Morano Founder, ClimateDepot.com
Ray Gifford Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP
Brian Lloyd Executive Director, Public Utility Commission of Texas
John Cornyn U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn
June 11-12, 2015

Marc Morano was a speaker on Panel 14: “Action Items for Policymakers,” at the Heartland Institute’s Tenth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC10) in Washington, D.C., with Myron Ebell and Bette Grande. [51]

At the event, Greenpeace investigator Connor Gibson questioned Marc Morano's role in the national climate discussion, illustrating his role in attacking the science, attacking anyone who questions his relevance in conversations around climate change.[53]

At minute 2:48 of Greenpeace's interview with Morano, he aggressively rejects documentation that 2014 was the hottest year on record.

2014 was the hottest year of global temperatures recorded in human history, as studied and published by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and reported worldwide (BBC, TIME, Scientific American). The AP clarification statement (not a retraction) that Morano mentions did not alter the conclusion of the NASA study, nor the wide body of evidence published by scientists since the 1970s.[54]

View Marc Morano’s Panel 14 presentation at the Heartland Institute’s ICCC10, below: [52]



May 12, 2015

Marc Morano signed an open letter to Pope Francis on climate change inviting the Pope to reconsider his views on climate change before his encyclical letter on the environment. [45]

The open letter was coordinated and signed by Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance. According to the letter, “Good climate policy must recognize human exceptionalism, the God-given call for human persons to 'have dominion' in the natural world (Genesis 1:28), and the need to protect the poor from harm, including actions that hinder their ascent out of poverty.” [45]

April 28, 2015

Marc Morano travels to Vatican City, Italy, with Christopher Monckton and Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance, for a press event hosted by the Heartland Institute in order to “dissuade Pope Francis from lending his moral authority to the politicized and unscientific climate agenda of the United Nations,” according to a Heartland Institute press release. [46], [47]

DeSmogUK attended the event and noted that “just nine journalists made up the audience at Heartland's press conference”:

Morano's full PDF presentation can be viewed online at the Heartland Institute website. According to Morano, “The Vatican and the Pope should be arguing that fossil fuels are the moral choice for the developing world.” His full presentation can be viewed below via The Heartland Institute's YouTube channel. [48]



March, 2015

Marc Morano is one of several climate change skeptics cc'd on an email from S. Fred Singer in hopes of countering the documentary film “Merchants of Doubt,” which exposes the network of climate change skeptics and deniers trying to delay legislative action on climate change. [49]

The October, 2014 email was leaked to journalists before the documentary was released. “Can I sue for damages?” Singer asked in the email. “Can we get an injunction against the documentary?”

InsideClimate News reports in their article “Leaked Email Reveals Who's Who List of Climate Denialists,” how “Many of those copied on the email thread, such as Singer and communications specialist Steven Milloy, have financial ties to the tobacco, chemical, and oil and gas industries and have worked to defend them since the 1990s.” [44]

InsideClimate News also documented all those who were cc'd on the email, including the following skeptics and groups:

Ron Arnold
Timothy Ball
Joseph “Joe” Bast
Joe Bastardi
Michael Bastasch
William Briggs
Russell Cook
Judith Curry
Joe D'Aleo
James Delingpole
David Paul Driessen
James Enstrom
Steve Goddard
Pierre Gosselin
Greenie Watch
William Happer
Jim Lakely
Patrick J. Michaels
Steven J. Milloy
Christopher Monckton
Joanne Nova
Roger Pielke Sr. (Or Roger Pielke Jr. - Unclear in Email)
Thomas P. Sheahen
S. Fred Singer
Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon
Roy Spencer
James Taylor
Anthony Watts
November 5, 2014

The Heartland Institute's “environmental science and policy experts” published comments following the release of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) “Synthesis Report,” completing the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). [43]

Marc Morano wrote it was “hard to fathom yet another IPCC report attempting to crank up climate fears,” and the new IPCC report was “boring, boring, boring,” noting he was having “extreme difficulty covering the latest IPCC report. Please give us something new and different!” [43]

October 9, 2014

Marc Morano is quoted in the Heartland Institute's press release, “Heartland Institute Climate Experts Comment on 18 Straight Years of No Global Warming,” which states “the global mean surface temperature has not risen for 18 consecutive years. This extends the so-called 'pause' in global warming to a new record, one not predicted by the climate models of the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” [42] Morano writes:

“As the global temperature standstill hits 18 years beyond what the models predicted the climate activists are left with more than 50 excuses to explain why temperatures are not rising.

“The ‘pause’ reveals that it is scientifically obvious that carbon dioxide is not the overriding driver of the climate. The global warming movement has morphed into a coalition of ‘climate cause deniers.’ They deny the hundreds of causes and variables of climate change and pretend CO2 is the ‘control knob’ overriding all the others.” [42]

September 25, 2014

Marc Morano attends the “At the Crossroads; Energy & Climate Policy Summit” in Houston, Texas, hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and The Heritage Foundation. Morano presents in “Panel III: History, Politics, and Economics,” with Rupert Darwall and Stephen Moore. [41]



August 30, 2014

Marc Morano, James Taylor, William O’Keefe, Tim Phillips, and S. Fred Singer were all featured in the film Merchants of Doubt, based on the 2010 non-fiction book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. According to the film's synopsis on its website, Merchants of Doubt “lifts the curtain on a secretive group of highly charismatic, silver- tongued pundits-for-hire who present themselves in the media as scientific authorities – yet have the contrary aim of spreading maximum confusion about well-studied public threats ranging from toxic chemicals to pharmaceuticals to climate change.” [49]
In the film, Morano talks about how he has posted climate scientists' email addresses on his website, including a former IPCC lead author Ben Santer, which incited hate mail and death threats asThe Washington Post reported: [60], [61]
“[Morano] attacked me in a very unjust way on his website and posted my email address, and in my view such behavior is basically an incitement to hatred,” Santer said

“Those [emails] are of concern, particularly when you have loved ones and it's clear that some of these people out there are not very rational.” [61]

Earlier in the documentary, Morano describes how he intentionally goes after climate change scientists:

“You can't be afraid of the absolute hand-to-hand combat, metaphorically, and you've got to name names and you've got to go after individuals. You can't just go after a system. And that's what I think I enjoy the most; is going after the individuals. Because that's where something lives or dies.” [49:49]

He also discussed Santer's email:

“I'd say it's possible I posted Ben Santer's email in the early days of Climate Depot, maybe the first six months. He's far from the only one I've done that to.” [49] - [50:54]

Katharine Hayhoe (another climate scientist) talking about hate emails and death threats she receives, says that “sometimes it's one a week. Sometimes when your email address gets posted on [Marc] Morano's website, it's 200 or more in a day.” [49] - [51:13]

Ben Santer: “I think the most disturbing emails or letters were ones that suggest there will be direct physical harm to you and to your family.” [49] - [51:31]

Morano's response: “I don't know what his complaint is. But I'll give you the philosophy behind it […] I think people should be thanking me. I was doing a service. And people go like 'oh, they're death threats.' Well, I get death threats. I enjoy them. I usually email back. So I think it was one of the healthiest things that could have happened in the climate debate. I make no apologies for it. I still do it and I enjoy doing it.”

Morano also discussed his early days working with Senator John Inhofe and how that influenced the formation of Climate Depot:

“I got a call from Senator James Inhofe's office to be the new communications director. It was probably at the lowest point, when I started in June 2006, for global warming skeptics.”

“[After the release of Al Gore's film] we decided for Inhofe to go on the offensive. […] We went after James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer and had a lot of fun with it. We mocked and ridiculed James Hansen.

I was authorized—I couldn't believe they let me do this—I did a two-part, probably ten thousand word, unbelievably scathing critique on James Hansen. I'm not going to question his scientific work, but in terms of influencing the public. And actually, his scientific work isn't really in question. It's more of his public claims and publicity and interviews.

I still felt restrained, so I started doing what I called 'the underground newsletters' which went much further than anything else, we had a lot more fun, a lot more humour, wit, sarcasm, and sometimes nastiness. That went out, and that became the basis for ClimateDepot.” [49] - [47:14]

July 7 - 9, 2014

Marc Morano was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC9) in Las Vegas, Nevada. [40]

DeSmogBlog has done in-depth research on the other speakers and sponsors from Heartland's ICCC9, which can be found here.

May 13, 2014

Morano debates with China Central Television (CCTV) anchor Anand Naidoo, a week following the release of the US government's National Climate Assessment.

When Morano was asked about his qualifications for speaking about an issue such as climate science, he responded by saying, “I have a background in political science, which is the perfect qualification to examine global warming.” [38]



August 21, 2013

Marc Marano releases a “sampling of what current and former UN scientists have to say about the UN's climate claims and its scientific method” on Climate Depot, a few months before the UNIPCC's 19th COP in Warsaw, Poland. The “claims” come from well-known climate skeptics such as Vincent Gray, Kiminori Itoh, Arun Ahluwalia, Kenneth Green, John Christy and others. [33]

December 27, 2012

Marc Marano was named “2012 Climate Change Misinformer of the Year” by the conservative watchdog group Media Matters for America. According to Media Matters, he has earned this title due to his “history of smears and lies” including his work running ClimateDepot.com, a group funded by the Heartland Institute. [14]

December 5, 2012

Piers Morgan hosted a CNN “Debate” on climate change between Marc Morano and Bill Nye. CNN did not disclose that Morano doesn't have a scientific background in the area, and that he has received funding from an organization linked to industry interests. During the segman, Morano cliams that “we've gone 16 years without global warming according to UN data.” [18]

November 26, 2012

As one of five appearances in 2012, Marc Morano spoke on the Fox News program your World with Neil Cavuto to discuss his views on climate change. On this date, Morano suggests that there is no link between extreme weather and climate change, saying that “every time there's a bad weather event the global warming activists think we need more taxes and regulations to somehow stop bad weather. This is a primitive form of science.” [14]

He also compares climate models to end-of-the-world predictions, saying that “This has now reached the level of the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus when it comes to science.”

August 2, 2012

In an appearance on the Fox News program Your World with Neil Cavuto, Morano clamed that modern climate change predictions are failing and that they are akin to “medieval witchcraft, where we used to blame witches for controlling the weather.”

He also said that climate change has been supposedly proven to be based on “subprime science,” and that the “whole movement has collapsed.” [14]

July 6, 2012

Morano appeared on the Fox News program Your World with Neil Cavuto and claimed that the goal of UN climate negotiations is “global governance” and the redistribution of wealth. “It`s very Orwellian,” he said. “This is stuff Orwell couldn't conceive of, your home energy use, your travel, your train travel, airline travel all monitored by international agencies. It`s not the stuff of science fiction.” [14]

May 21 - 23, 2012

Marc Morano was a speaker at the Heartland Institute's 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). In his speech, Morano raised “concerns” over the fact that some of Mitt Romney's advisors accepted the mainstream science of climate change. He added that “It's very frustrating for global warming skeptics when you realize who is the Republican standard bearer right now and how far we've come […] We need a president who actually can stand up to this whole global warming brigade.” [26]

DeSmogBlog researched the co-sponsors behind Heartland's ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers and the conservative Scaife family foundations.

May 15, 2012

Marc Morano defended the Heartland Institute's unsuccessful billboard campaign that compared those who believe in man-made climate change to individuals associated with mass murder and terrorism. The billboards featured pictures of Ted Kaczynski, Charles Manson and Fidel Castro next to the text “I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” The Heartland Institute was forced to take down the controversial billboards shortly after they were unveiled. [21], [22]

Morano described the billboard campaign as “edgy”:

“This is so silly. Every day now, skeptics are compared to Holocaust deniers and the media yawns. But Heartland does an edgy billboard accurately reflecting the views of those featured in it and the media acts as though they are offended?” [23]

December 2011 – September 2012

Marc Morano appeared numerous times on the Alex Jones' show which has popularly discussed conspiracy theories. The following is a summary of Morano's appearances provided by Media Matters for America as part of their profile on Marc Morano as “Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year”: [14]

After Morano predicted that Romney would win the election, Jones said that Obama might “start a war” to win re-election. Morano responded, “they could try to do that, yes, that's always possible.” [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 9/1/12]
Morano claimed that the UN climate summit in Rio was pushing a “global EPA” that is “going to be able to police the world.” He added, “Think of our own EPA that speaks French. If that doesn't send chills up your spine, I don't know what will.” [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 2/7/12]
Morano claimed scientists used “data that had been monkeyed around with” to state that July 2012 was the hottest month on record in the continental U.S. [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, [9/1/12]
Morano claimed that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a leading body of thousands of scientists assessing climate change, is a “small group of scientists” that was “blocking studies that disagreed, blocking data that disagreed, and then essentially, sometimes, generating studies that did.” He later added that scientists are trying to “cover up the fact that sea level not only isn't accelerating, it's dropping.” In fact, sea levels have been rising for decades and have studies indicate this rise is accelerating. [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 2/8/12]
Morano said that those concerned about global warming are attempting to exert “a level of control that George Orwell didn't contemplate,” adding: “He who controls carbon, and controls land use policy, and even the oceans, controls the world. And that's what they're going for. And this isn't conspiracy talk, this is in their documents.” [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 12/10/11]
July, 2011

Morano was a speaker at the Heartland Institute's Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC6). [7]

His speech was titled “R.I.P. Man-Made Global Warming Fears? 1988-2011.”

June, 2010

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP) gave Morano the Petr Beckmann Award for “demonstrating courage and achievement in defense of scientific truth and freedom.” [1]

May, 2010

Morano was a speaker at the Heartland Institute's 4th International Conference on Climate Change. [11]

DeSmogBlog concluded 19 of the 65 sponsors (including Heartland itself) have received a total of over $40 million in funding since 1985 from ExxonMobil (funded 13 orgs), and/or Koch Industries family foundations (funded 10 orgs) and/or the Scaife family foundations (funded 10 orgs).

February 18, 2010

Marc Morano received an award from Accuracy in Media for “outstanding contributions to journalism” for his “excellent reporting on the ClimateGate scandal that exposed the politicized science behind claims that the science is settled on global warming.” [24]

In his acceptance speech, Morano said that as of “the fall of 2009, more Americans believed in haunted houses than manmade global warming, and I'm not making that up. Science wins in the end.” He also said that he did not understand why Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist is “taken seriously.” [25]

December, 2009

Marc Morano was listed as one of “17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming” in an article in Rolling Stone magazine, titled “The Climate Killers.” The article also describes Morano as the “Matt Drudge of climate denial.” [15]

March, 2008

Morano was a speaker at the Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. [8]

The conference was titled “Global Warming: Truth or Swindle,” and described as a “platform from which they [skeptics] can be heard.”

December 11, 2008

While he was working with Senator Inhofe, Morano helped author a report titled “More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims,” which was initially released in 2008.

The report was debunked, and found to contain at least 84 individuals who took industry money, 49 retirees, 44 television weathermen, 20 economists, and 70 with no expertise in climate science. [9]

January 13, 2006

While working for CNS news, Morano broke the “Swift Boat” story that suggested that senator John Kerry did not deserve the Purple Heart award he earned in Vietnam. FactCheck.org notes that “the veterans who accuse Kerry [of lying to receive his war medals] are contradicted by Kerry's former crewmen, and by Navy records.” [27], [28]

Climate Scientist Michael Mann has since accused Morano of using “Climategate” to “Swift Boat” climate scientists. Morano's ClimateDepot claimed to have uncovered “collusion” and “deliberate manipulation of facts and data” by UN scientists. Michal Mann, who has been a subject of the accusations of ClimateDepot, said that Morano is funded by “vested interests to 'swiftboat' climate scientists, to try to distort our work, to try to undermine the public's credibility in the science.” [29]

May, 2004

According to SourceWatch, Cybercast News Service and Morano were the first sources of the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” campaign against presidential nominee Senator John Kerry.

In the run up to the official launch of the Swiftboat campaign, Morano wrote, “hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is 'unfit to be commander-in-chief.'”

Affiliations

Climate Depot — Executive Director and Chief Correspondent. [1]

The Heartland Institute — “Expert.” Archived February 29, 2016. [10]

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) — Communications Director, 2006 to 2009. [1]

Clexit (Climate Exit) — Vice President. [71]





https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/28/b ... -4-billion

BREAKING: Southern Co. Suspends Kemper "Clean Coal" Project, Warns Investors It May Recognize Losses up to $3.4 Billion
By Sharon Kelly • Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - 15:08


http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Congre ... 58643.html

Congressmen Oppose Texas Wildlife Refuge as Border Wall Site
NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth-
Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX) was one of many lawmakers who responded via Twitter to President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/que ... -1.3510991

Off-duty NYPD sergeant cuffed for threatening cyclist with gun, shoving him off bike
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, September 21, 2017, 10:15 AM





Link du jour


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... en-toilets

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3511063




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3511183

Man's deportation to Mexico turns out to be 'death sentence' despite wife's plea to judge
BY DAVID BOROFF


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3511155





http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/20/politics/ ... index.html


Senate Judiciary Committee to Subpoena 2 FBI Officials Over Comey’s Firing



The Senate Judiciary Committee is preparing for a showdown with the Justice Department after it prevented two senior FBI officials from testifying on Capitol Hill about President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.

The Senate legal counsel plans to subpoena the senior FBI officials – Carl Ghattas and James Rybicki – to force their testimony about Comey’s firing, CNN reports.



http://www.telegram.com/news/20170920/f ... bi-framing


Federal judge mulls FOIA lawsuit of Muslim man alleging FBI framing






http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation- ... 77136.html


Therapy dog shot ‘point blank’ by hunter right in front of owner


Thursday, September 21, 2017, 11:06 AM





https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/us/p ... .html?_r=0

Mueller Seeks White House Documents Related to Trump’s Actions as President

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTSEPT. 20, 2017



http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-p ... story.html


Senate race in Alabama pits Trump against his own supporters and advisors







http://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/ ... t-for-talk


'Donnie Brasco' infiltrates St. Vincent for talk
Tribune-Review-
International organized crime is everywhere, and most groups have a presence in the United States, said retired FBI Special Agent Joe Pistone on Wednesday ...


We brought former FBI agent William Turner to speak at Bates College


http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKturnerW.htm


William Weyland Turner
William W. Turner
William Weyland Turner was born in Buffalo, New York, on 14th April, 1927. At seventeen he enlisted in the United States Navy. During the Second World War he served on board an LST in the Pacific.

After the war Turner enrolled at Canisius College, a Jesuit school, and in 1949 obtained a degree in chemistry. Turner also played semi-professional baseball and ice hockey.

Turner joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1951. He worked for the FBI for ten years but grew increasingly concerned with the way J. Edgar Hoover ran the organization. Turner became convinced that Hoover was placing too much emphasis on the dangers of the American Communist Party. Instead, he felt he should be using more resources to tackle organized crime. In 1961 Turner was dismissed from the FBI. He hired Edward Bennett Williams and sued the FBI but lost. However he did manage to get anti-Hoover testimony by other agents into the record.

Turner became a journalist. In 1963 he investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and concluded that he was the victim of a conspiracy. Later he worked with Jim Garrison, the district attorney of New Orleans. Turner and Garrison argued that a group of right-wing activists, including Guy Bannister, David Ferrie, Carlos Bringuier and Clay Shaw were involved in a conspiracy with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kill Kennedy. Turner and Garrison claimed this was in retaliation for his attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam.

Turner argued that the Kennedy assassination was a paramilitary operation, with riflemen firing from at least three angles. Stephen Rivele agreed with this viewpoint and in the television documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, named Lucien Sarti as being the gunman on the grassy knoll.



Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia

Turner later became senior editor of the radical magazine Ramparts. Under the editorship of Warren Hinckle, the magazine became the voice of the American New Left. It was also highly critical of the Warren Commission. In a series of articles he revealed abuses perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency. He also explored the assassinations of John F. Kennedy , Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Books by Turner include Hoover's FBI: The Men and the Myth (1970), Power on the Right (1973), The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy(1978), The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (1981),Deadly Secrets (1992) (with Warren Hinckle), his autobiography, Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails (2001). In his book he published details of wiretapping and bugging abuses by the FBI, its secret campaign against left-wing groups such as Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers Union and the stealth war against Cuba.

Turner also argues that John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he was planning to withdraw American forces from Vietnam. He also argued that Robert Kennedy was murdered because if he had been elected president he would have ordered a full investigation into his brother's death.

In 2004 Turner published Mission Not Accomplished: How Bush Lost the War on Terrorism (2004). His writing career came to an end when he developed Parkinson's disease.

William Weyland Turner died in San Rafael, California, on 26th December, 2015. He was survived by his wife of 51 years, Margaret, two children Mark and Lori, two sisters Janet and Maggie, 3 grandchildren Austin, Cassidy, and Kolton, and great grandson Michael.





(1) William Turner, Hoover's FBI: The Men and the Myth (1970)
Although sturdily built with rather short legs, Hoover is not as abbreviated as generally thought. But the bulldog mein, pursed lips, crooked smile, spatulate nose, and fixed brown eyes were unmistakable. So was his brusque, no-nonsense manner. He talks plosively with machinegun syncopation. It is said that he can be engaging when he chooses. Drew Pearson has written that "he can also be a boon companion who relishes a good joke, a lively conversationalist who can discourse on an astonishing range of topics, a genial host who personally attends to the wants of his guests." A Pittsburgh agent who once had a conversational interview with him came away impressed with his clinical knowledge of martini stirring. But another agent with an impressive personal record was startled when the Director suddenly interrupted the banalities and roared with fire in his eyes, "We've got to get rid of the slackers!"

The office mirrors the man. One traverses some thirty-five feet of deep pile carpet to reach the polished mahogany desk issued by the General Services Administration. Its surface is adorned by a pair of brass pistol lamps, a potted plant, and a brass plaque inscribed: "Two feet on the ground are worth one in the mouth." Flanking the desktop are two small furled American flags with gold eagle standard-tops; a small replica of the FBI seal is at center. Against the wall to the rear are two large furled American flags with gold eagle standardtops; a large replica of the FBI seal hangs at center.

The anteroom where visitors wait is a storehouse of the artifacts figuring in FBI lore. The most ghoulish is a white plaster facsimile of John Dillinger's death mask, a sort of Kaiser's mustache with the FBI. There is the straw boater he was wearing when gunned down, and the Corona-Belvedere cigar from his shirt pocket. Also prominent is the roll of martyrs of the FBI, now standing at twenty-two since 1924. There is a revolving rack containing over a hundred newspaper cartoons extolling the exploits of the G-men over the years. And covering the walls-space is practically exhausted -are hundreds of scrolls and plaques bestowed by groups ranging from bible schools to patriotic organizations, heaping praise on the Director. His awards vary from a 1933 Commander of the Royal Order of the Crown of Rumania to a 1961 proclamation designating a J. Edgar Hoover Day in the state of Ohio.

(2) William Turner, The Warren Report: Part 2, CBS Television (27th June, 1967)
Now, what happened there was that the Kennedy motorcade coming down there, the Kennedy limousine - there were shots from the rear, from either the Dallas School Book Depository building, or the Dell Mart, or the courthouse; and there were shots from the grassy knoll. This is triangulation. There is no escape from it, if it's properly executed.

I think that the massive head wound, where the President's head was literally blown apart, came from a quartering angle on the grassy knoll. The bullet was a low velocity dum-dum mercury fulminate hollow-nose, which were outlawed by The Hague Convention, but which are used by paramilitary groups. And that the whole reaction is very consistent to this kind of weapon. That he was struck and his head - doesn't go directly back this way but it goes back and over this way, which would be consistent with the shot from that direction, and Newton's Law of Motion.

Now, I feel also that the escape was very simple. Number one using a revolver or a pistol, the shells do not eject, they don't even have to bother to pick up their discharged shells. Number two, they can slip - put the gun under their coat, and when everybody comes surging up there they can just say, "He went that-a-away". Very simple. In fact, it's so simple that it probably happened that way.

(3) William Turner, Rearview Mirror: (2001)
It was a measure of the panic gripping Langley that Richard Helms, who had succeeded Raborn as director, now formed a Special Operations Group (SOG) focused on Ramparts and designed Operation MHCHAOS to run parallel with FitzGerald's off-channels campaign. Heading the SOG was Richard Ober, another buttoned-down Ivy Leaguer with reddish hair and complexion, who was designated by Helms to succeed the director of security, Howard Osborn, as chief of the Ramparts Task Force. The move was made to prevent any leaks to the media: Ober was a veteran counterintelligence officer-the elitist of the elite, and he functioned in the tightest security (so secret that even his closest associates were supposed to deny knowing him) with a select staff of twelve. Ober had tried in vain to imagine a way to stop Ramparts from publishing the NSA piece, and it was he who conceived the idea of staging the preemptive press conference by the student leaders that Hinckle finessed with the full-page newspaper ads. It was almost the stuff of fiction to pit the shadowy Ober in a war of wits against the conspicuous Hinckle with his eye patch.

Ober wasn't outed until i975 when he was summoned to testify before the Rockefeller Commission investigating intelligence agency abuses. He admitted to parts of MHCHAOS but kept silent on its most sensitive secrets. The "MH" signified that the operation was worldwide, zeroing in on not only Ramparts but, eventually, the entire antiwar press, while "CHAOS" stood for what it spelled. Ober persuaded the IRS to send over tax data on the magazine and its personnel, and one of his analysts thought he had found a discrepancy (although there is no record of what was done about it). He pulled out all the stops to try to find foreign funding and influence, which might have justified a domestic spying operation, but struck out. Undeterred by legal niceties, Ober wrote a memo proposing "certain operational recommendations." While the text of this document remains classified, some idea of its sweep can be gained from other sources. CIA officer Louis Dube, deposed in the course of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, disclosed that all Ramparts staff writers and researchers, as well as other persons somehow linked to the magazine, were thoroughly investigated. On March 4, 1967, Dube said, a report was received at Langley from a person who had attended a Ramparts staff meeting at which interviews with high-ranking executive branch officials were discussed, which suggested that infiltration was one of Ober's methods. Twelve days later Ober's men picked up a CIA agent in Washington who was a good friend of a Ramparts reporter, took him to a hotel, debriefed him, gave him a cover story, and sent him back to get more information from the reporter. At the same time, Ober was trying to recruit five former Ramparts employees as informants. My own CIA file, which is noteworthy for what is redacted, shows that under CHAOS there was a continuing interest "in any information on members of the staff; their travel, contacts and activities."

Ober also mounted a propaganda campaign against Ramparts using CIA assets in the media. As an example, nationally syndicated columnist Carl Rowan, an erstwhile director of the CIA-affiliated United States Information Agency, wrote shortly after the NSA expose broke, "A few days ago a brief, cryptic report out of Prague, Czechoslovakia, was passed among a handful of top officials in Washington. It said that an editor of Ramparts magazine had come to Prague and held a long, secret session with officers of the Communist-controlled International Union of Students." The intent obviously was to imply that the magazine was communist-influenced, which was comic to anyone who knew the editors. But the content was necessarily skimpy on details because it was fictitious (Rowan refused to discuss the subject).

(4) William Turner, Rearview Mirror (2001)
Playboy loved the article, entitled "Crime Is Too Big for the FBI," and offered $1,000 for it. But Fisher felt it needed some rearrangement for emphasis, and proposed bringing in crime reporter Sandy Smith of the Chicago Sun-Times. Smith accepted the assignment, but within days of being handed the manuscript he informed Fisher that it "was filled with inaccuracies and errors," and he "didn't feel that there was enough in it to salvage." Based on Smith's "general criticism," Playboy killed the article. It was not until I obtained my FBI file under FOIA years later that Sandy Smith was exposed as a Bureau stooge. When he had left Playboy with my manuscript in hand, he made a beeline for the Chicago FBI office. He was not a stranger there. A March i6, 1965, communique from the Chicago SAC to Deke DeLoach advised that Smith was, as DeLoach knew, "a great admirer of the Director and a very strong backer of the Bureau," and that "we have utilized Smith on many different occasions and his value to the Bureau and the Chicago Office is inestimable."

Smith had shown up at the FBI office with a great sense of urgency, saying Playboy had attempted to hire him for $500 to rewrite the article, but, although he "had absolutely no intention of doing this assignment," he saw "an opportunity to get the article ... so that we could take a look at it." The communique said that Smith intended "to tell Fisher that he wants no part of this article as it is completely ridiculous, inaccurate and not worth the paper it is written on." A few days later, DeLoach was able to gloat that Playboy "turned it down based on Smith's objection and advice."

(5) William Turner, Rearview Mirror (2001)
In February 1967 I received a call from Jim Garrison, the New Orleans District Attorney, whose probe into the JFK assassination had broken into the news a few weeks earlier. "Bill, I need your help," he said. "The paramilitary right and Cuban exiles are figuring prominently in the investigation." He had pegged me as an expert on the subject after reading a Ramparts article I had done on the Minutemen, a forerunner of today's ultraright militia units. I had interviewed the national leader of the Minutemen, Robert B. DePugh, in his Missouri redoubt, venturing there with some trepidation since a California unit had warned that time was short for Ramparts editors to "change our nefarious ways." But DePugh was surprisingly cordial. He boasted, "We have the most sophisticated and best-equipped underground army movement this world has ever seen." His membership harbored specialists not only in firearms but electronics, demolition, and chemical and biological warfare. And he added, out of the blue, that he suspected a couple of his members were on the shooting team at Dallas, using ammo encased in plastic sleeves so it could be fired from a larger caliber weapon without being matched to that weapon. DePugh knew that in 1962 one of his "patriots" named John Morris cooked up a plot to assassinate Senator J. William Fulbright because he wasn't "voting American" (he opposed the Vietnam War). When DePugh got wind of it, after money had actually changed hands, he squelched it, he said, in order to head off a massive federal probe of his organization. In researching the article, I picked up information that a Minutemen cell in Dallas threatened to "snuff" Stanley Marcus of the upscale NiemanMarcus department store chain because he was Jewish and liberal (I called Marcus to inform him of the danger).

When Garrison phoned, I was familiar with him through the legal press, for which I wrote forensic science articles. Such was his reputation in the law enforcement field that he had been asked to write the foreword to Crime, Law and Corrections, a collection of criminology essays. It was haunting. As an army officer, Garrison had helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, and he had witnessed its horrors. Allegorizing on an extraterrestrial being descending onto a self-desolated world, he asks, "What happened to your disinterested millions? Your uncommitted and uninvolved, your preoccupied and bored? Where today are their private horizons and their mirrored worlds of self? Where is their splendid indifference now?"...

Garrison's political philosophy defied categorization-the closest I could come was to term him a Bayou populist. He subscribed in part to Ayn Rand's libertarian dogma, but was too much of a traditional democrat to accept its inevitable elitism. He was friendly with segregationists and archconservatives but bristled at mention of the Ku Klux Klan. Black leaders had no quarrel with his conduct of office, and he appointed blacks as assistant DAs, a rare move in the Deep South in those days. When the police vice squad tried to sweep James Baldwin's Another Country from bookstore shelves, he refused to prosecute ("How do you define obscenity?") and denounced the censorship in stinging terms, thus incurring the wrath of the White Citizens Council. After starting his assassination probe, some of his views on other issues changed. "A year ago I was a mild hawk on Vietnam," he told me. "But no more. I've discovered the government has told so many lies in this case it can't be believed on anything."

Garrison was by far the most intellectual law enforcement official I ever met. He avidly devoured history (as reflected in his metaphor, "Honorable men did in Caesar," apropos Kennedy's slaying) and quoted a wide variety of sources-from Graham Greene and Lewis Carroll to Shakespeare. He especially liked to recite Polonius's advice to Laertes. He was a chess master. But he was not exactly a square. Once known as a Bourbon Street swinger, he remained a familiar sight in several night spots, where he held forth on the piano while crooning a basso profundo rendition of tunes popular half a generation earlier. His imbibing was moderate-two Tanqueray martinis. He had a wry sense of humor. Once, when a file entrusted to a volunteer helper suspected of informing to the FBI disappeared, he quipped, "Well, would you ask a rabbit to deliver a carrot?" He was sensitive about others' feelings. On several occasions I watched him sit fretfully listening to a visitor give him worthless information but give the departing person the impression that it had immeasurably aided the investigation. Although he was accused of using the Kennedy case to advance his political ambitions, in private moments he talked wistfully about going back to private practice as a defense attorney. He saw no virtue in capital punishment, nor in guns. Once he handed me a photo of Dallas police holding aloft a rifle in front of the Texas School Book Depository building moments after the assassination in the hope that I could identify the model.

"I can't," I said. "And besides, I hate guns."

"So do I," he chuckled. "The Bureau had to give me special training so I could just qualify on the range."

(6) William Turner, Rearview Mirror (2001)
Eladio del Valle's body was found in a Miami parking lot twelve hours after Ferrie's was discovered in New Orleans. The DA investigator who was searching for del Valle, Bernardo De Torres, turned out to be a suspicious character in his own right. A veteran of the Bay of Pigs, De Torres showed up on Garrison's doorstep early in the probe, saying he was a private detective from Miami who wanted to help, and dropping the name of Miami DA Richard Gerstein, a friend of Garrison's, as an opener. In retrospect, Garrison remembered that every lead De Torres developed ended up in a box canyon. He also learned that De Torres was forwarding reports on his investigation to the Miami CIA station. In 1977 the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) came to believe that De Torres might have played a role in Dallas. "De Torres has pictures of Dealey Plaza in a safe-deposit box," a HSCA report states. "These pictures were taken during the assassination of JFK." When hauled before the committee, De Torres denied any implication.

(7) William Turner, Rearview Mirror (2001)
I walked over to 531 Lafayette Place. There was no inscription on the door denoting it as Banister's business, only a realtor's shingle and a sticker of the then-nascent Republican Party of Louisiana. The door opened to stairs leading to a second-floor space that was unoccupied. Diagonally across the space was a second set of stairs, which led down to a door on Camp Street. The number over the door read "594." 594 Camp Street was the return address Lee Harvey Oswald had stamped on the first batch of pro-Castro literature he handed out on the streets of the Crescent City in August 1963- Subsequent batches bore a post office box number, suggesting that the use of the street address had been a lapse. What was Oswald's connection to Banister?

When I reported the Camp Street discovery to Garrison, I recommended that we assign priority to interviewing Banister. Too late, he said, Banister had been found dead in bed in June 1964, his pearlhandled, monogrammed .357 Magnum revolver at his side. Although there was no autopsy, his demise was attributed to a heart attack. But Brooks, who had done some clipping and filing for Banister in 1962, had identified his deputy, Hugh F. Ward, as also belonging to the Minutemen as well as an outfit called the Anti-Communism League of the Caribbean, which was headed by Banister after he came to New Orleans in 1955. Brooks credited the ACLC with helping the CIA overthrow the leftist Arbenz government in Guatemala, opening the way for a succession of rightist strongmen. The ACLC continued to act as an intermediary between the CIA and right-wing insurgency movements in the Caribbean, including Cuba after Castro gained power. There was a chance that Ward would be willing to talk, but it turned out he was gone as well. On May 23, 1965, he was at the controls of a Piper Aztec chartered by former New Orleans mayor DeLessups Morrison when the craft, engines sputtering, crashed on a fog-shrouded hill near Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, killing all on board. That left Maurice Brooks Gatlin, Sr., an attorney associated with Banister, on Brooks's list of key Minutemen in Louisiana. According to Brooks, Gatlin served as legal counsel to the ACLC. In fact, Brooks had been a kind of protege of Gatlin. The attorney's passport was stamped with visas of countries around the world. In Brooks's estimation, he was a "transporter" for the CIA. On one occasion Gatlin bodaciously told Brooks, "I have pretty good connections. Stick with me-I'll give you a license to kill." Brooks became a firm believer in 1962 when Gatlin displayed a thick wad of bills, saying he had $ioo,ooo of CIA money earmarked for a French reactionary clique planning to assassinate General de Gaulle. Shortly thereafter Gatlin flew to Paris, and shortly after that came the Secret Army Organization's abortive ambush of the French president. But Gatlin as well was beyond Garrison's reach. In 1964 he fell or was pushed from the sixth floor of the Panama Hotel in Panama, dying instantly.

As I sat in Garrison's office discussing the fates of Banister, Ward and Gatlin, my mind flashed back to the previous November when Ramparts had run a story on the "mysterious deaths" theory of doughty Texas editor Penn Jones, Jr. With David Welsh, I had gone down to Midlothian, a dusty cotton market town south of Dallas, to meet with Jones on his front porch. He had compiled a list of an unlucky thirteen people who were witnesses to the assassination or somehow touched by it and had died violently or questionably inside of three years, which he saw as a highly excessive actuarial rate. One on the list was Tom Howard, Jack Ruby's initial attorney, who concocted the story that the mobster killed Oswald to spare Jacqueline Kennedy the ordeal of a trial (he died of a supposed heart attack). Another was Lee Bowers, who was sitting in a railroad tower behind the grassy knoll and spotted two strange men behind the picket fence on the knoll just as the presidential limousine passed and a flash and commotion ensued (he was involved in a one-car accident). A third was Earlene Roberts, the boarding house manager who stated that Oswald rushed into his room for a few minutes shortly after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, during which a Dallas police car stopped in front and honked twice as if to signal (she was struck by a presumed heart attack). The mysterious-deaths article so fascinated Walter Cronkite that he sent a film crew to Midlothian for a CBS News series on Jones. Although the theory caught on as "evidence" of a conspiracy, I was bemusedly skeptical.

But the untimely deaths of Banister, Ward and Gatlin gave me pause that there might in fact have been systematic elimination of people who knew too much. Two months earlier there had been a fourth curious mortality in this set: David William Ferric, an investigator for the ex-FBI official's private detective agency, Guy Banister & Associates. Garrison's interest in Ferric dated back to the morning after the assassination, when he summoned his staff to the office for a "brainstorming" session to explore the possibility that Oswald had accomplices in New Orleans.

Although it would not be known until after the Warren Report was published, on that same Saturday morning the Secret Service was checking out the return address of 544 Camp Street that the accused assassin had rubber-stamped on some of his handouts promoting a rump chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The agents asked the building manager if Oswald "had occupied office space" but learned instead that "Cuban revolutionaries had been tenants until recently." They talked to an exile accountant who revealed that "those Cubans were members of organizations known as `Crusade to Free Cuba Committee' and `Cuban Revolutionary Council,"' which had been headed by Sergio Arcacha Smith, a former Batista diplomat. The agents reported that they had been unable to find any trace of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, evincing no curiosity over why pro-Castro literature would bear the address of anti-Castro groups.

On Monday, the Warren Report later disclosed, the FBI's Ernest C. Wall, Jr., a Spanish-speaking agent who liaisoned with the exile groups, called Guy Banister to inquire about Arcacha Smith. According to Wall's single-paragraph report, Banister responded that Arcacha Smith had been the head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council and "some time ago had told him on one occasion that he, Smith, had an office in the building located at 594 Camp Street." Nothing about Banister and the Cuban Revolutionary Council, created by the CIA as an umbrella group for the Bay of Pigs invasion, being under the same roof. As a limited hangout, it was a classic. The Warren Report dutifully stated that "investigation has indicated that neither the Fair Play for Cuba Committee nor Lee Oswald ever maintained an office at that address."

(8) William W. Turner, The Rebel, (13th February, 1984)
Garment manufacturer Abraham Zapruder was a spectator at Dealey Plaza who captured the entire shooting sequence with his cheap movie camera. Life magazine immediately snapped up the film for an untold sum. Although Life ran several frames in its cover story on the Warren Commission Report, the motion picture itself had never been shown in public. (Not even members of the Commission had seen it.) Now it had surfaced, courtesy of La Bell France.

The Zapruder film is horrifyingly graphic. It shows Kennedy clutching his throat as a shot from the rear goes through his neck. There are agonizing moments as he slowly slumps forward in the limousine. Then his head literally explodes, sending up a blood-mist halo. The force of the hit rocks him back so violently into the rear seat cushion that it is compressed. He bounces forward as Jackie grabs for him. There is no mistaking that he was killed by a shot from the front. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was at the rear.

I rushed to Hollywood with the film to have it analyzed by experts. They pronounced it authentic, probably a second or third generation copy. I then understood why Life, which had taken a stand in support of the Warren Report and featured Gerald Ford's rendition of how the no-conspiracy conclusion was arrived at, had kept the film sequestered. In fact an anonymous caption writer at the magazine had described the head-shot frame as a shot from the front, and a number of subscribers received copies with that caption. But the press run was quickly stopped at tremendous expense, and the offending plate broken and replaced by one whose caption was in conformity with the official position.

(9) William W. Turner, Hoover's FBI: The Men and the Myth (1970)
At headquarters there wasn't even a section working on organized crime. In the field, what we did get on top mobsters was just dropped into the General Investigative Intelligence file - to be forgotten.

(10) Warren Hinckle & William Turner, Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (1992)
Mitch WerBell was a charter member of the intelligence Old Boy Network. He had been a secret agent with the OSS during World War II; thereafter he was always on the spot on the griddle where the Cold War was heating up. He was a player in the CIA's secret cross-border war against China in the 1950s through the 1960s; he went to Vietnam as a weapons adviser with the simulated rank of Brigadier General; and he did the prep work for the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic. He frequently worked with the CIA and infrequently worked against them. While the agency was fumbling the ball on its attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, the ever gung-ho WerBell initiated his own assassination plots. His wild nocturnal speedboat rides to Cuba were scenes out of some paramilitary Strangelove movie-Mitch playing the pipes under a moonless Caribbean sky, the Confederate flag flapping from the rear of the boat. (Sometime later, the U.S. government hypocritically indicted WerBell for his anti-Castro plots while ignoring its own.)

The last decade of WerBell's life was filled with sufficient adventures and misadventures for the lifetimes of ten men. In 1973 WerBell began a "New Country Project" for a group of capitalist revolutionaries on Abaco Island in the Bahamas who wanted to shed the bondage of Nassau. The secessionists believed that the black population of the tourist islands was turning whites off and that sparsely settled Abaco, with a lower profile of blacks, could become a haven for investment money in gambling casinos, resorts, and housing restricted to the wealthy. The new currency would be called the rand, not in emulation of South Africa's medium of exchange but in honor of Ayn Rand, the dowager empress of rugged egoism.

WerBell sounded out his contacts in the high Arctic of the CIA and the State Department. He got the word that there would be no great American objection, provided there was no violence. WerBell was confident there would not be. He proceeded to sign up Soldier of Fortune-supreme Robert K. Brown to recruit a dozen Vietnam vets as the nucleus of an Abacoan standing army strong enough to dissuade Bahamian Premier Lyndon Pindling from invading with his own puny armed services. The date for seccession was set for New Year's Day 1975.

However, three months before liberty day WerBell was indicted in Atlanta, and the plan had to be canceled. That indictment, later dropped, stemmed from his aggressive marketing of his silencer equipped Ingram machine gun, which starred in the movie Killer Force. (There are some interesting connections here. WerBell was manufacturing the Ingram under the name Defense Services, Inc., and marketing it through an outfit called Parabellum, which was headed by Anselmo Alliegro, Jr., an heir to the shadowy Ansan millions. Parabellum employed Gerry Hemming and Rolandito Masferrer, nephew of the dreaded El Tigre Rolando Masferrer. When Anastasio Somoza's dictatorship in Nicaragua was collapsing in 1979, Cuban veterans of the Secret War rallied to his cause. Some engaged in combat against the insurgent Sandinista guerrillas; others acted as instructors with the elite National Guard, which had enabled the Somoza family to remain in power over the decades. One of the instructors was WerBell's partner in arms dealing, Anselmo Alliegro, Jr. In September 1980 Somoza, in exile in Paraguay, met a violent end. There were many flowers but few tears at his funeral.)

(11) Monique Tushingham, article on Rearview Mirror (June, 2001)
I woke up today with the clock radio - telling me that William Turner had the exclusive proof, that John Kennedy was killed by the CIA, because he might stop the war in Vietnam. As well as; the fact that, Bobby was killed because, if elected he would investigate the killing of his brother John.

For years I tried to work out why I was so deeply affected by John Kennedy's assassination. Was it really as superficial as, the fact that he was a young and good looking man and that he had a beautiful wife? But now, I know. He was a good person, who was going to do a 'good thing' and stop an escalation of stupidity, that for all 'intents and purposes' culminated in the present President - dumbed down and introspective.

(12) San Francisco Chronicle (3rd January, 2016)
William Weyand Turner 88, of San Rafael, CA passed away on Saturday, December 26th after a long struggle with Parkinson's. He was born April 14, 1927 in Buffalo, NY. He served in the Navy during WWII and then attended Canisius College in Buffalo, NY where he obtained a Chemistry degree and was their first goalie. He was drafted by the New York Rangers, but ended up working for the FBI as a Special Agent for 10 years. He "resigned" after testifying to Congress about problems at the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. After leaving the FBI he worked as a journalist investigating the JFK assassination, then as an Investigator for Jim Garrison's inquiry into the JFK assassination. This led to his becoming an author and authority on both Kennedy assassinations. He wrote such books as Hoover's FBI, The Fish is Red, and the 10 Second Jailbreak that was made in to the movie Breakout with Charles Bronson. He loved tennis, golf, reading, and spending time with friends and family. He is survived by his loving wife of 51 years, Margaret, two children Mark and Lori, two sisters Janet and Maggie, 3 grandchildren Austin, Cassidy, and Kolton, and great grandson Michael.




https://www.policeone.com/swat/articles ... ntroversy/

Boston Police Deputy Superintendent O'Toole at Center of Red Sox Fan Death Controversy




BOSTON (AP) - To some, Deputy Superintendent Robert E. O'Toole Jr. is a cop's cop, a 36-year police veteran who commands respect from his troops. To others, he's a rogue cop with a temper.

O'Toole has become a flash point in the investigation into the death of 21-year-old Victoria Snelgrove, an Emerson College student killed last week by a pepper-spray pellet fired by police trying to control a crowd of 80,000 Red Sox revelers.

Supporters say he is a disciplined, by-the-book cop who is well-equipped to lead the police department's Special Operations Unit. His lawyer says he did not fire the pellet that struck Snelgrove in the eye.

But O'Toole's critics say he has a tendency to use excessive force and should not have been in charge of crowd control and police deployment. They recall an incident in 1986, the last time the Red Sox played in the World Series, when a television crew filmed O'Toole slapping a drunken reveler in the face as he was being taken into custody.

"There's certainly some kind of impulse-control problem with him," said Howard Friedman, a Boston attorney who represented Rodney Armstrong, the man O'Toole slapped. "A supervisor isn't supposed to jump in and grab someone on his own, and worse is a supervisor who uses excessive force in front of all the officers he's supposed to be supervising."

Armstrong sued O'Toole and won $5,000 in punitive damages, plus $500 in compensatory damages. Friedman said the jury found that although Armstrong was not injured, O'Toole used excessive force. He was demoted, only to be reinstated years later by current police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole, who is of no relation.

Kathleen O'Toole said she decided to give him a second chance based on his performance since the incident and the recommendations of others. "More than anybody else I appointed during my early days here, Bob O'Toole received very high marks," the commissioner said.






http://www.king5.com/news/local/seattle ... /477309833


FBI investigates off-duty work by Seattle police officers

Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole has asked the FBI to open a criminal investigation into “a small number” of police officers.

Neither she nor the FBI would discuss the details. But O'Toole said it has to do with the “management of secondary employment,” according to her statement the department released Wednesday.

If you drive by almost any one of the dozens of construction sites in Seattle, you will see off-duty officers working traffic and safety control, highly profitable and highly sought after secondary




https://www.heraldnet.com/northwest/mai ... s-top-cop/

Making sense of the rape allegation against King County’s top cop
The sheriff says it’s bogus. His accuser says it’s been buried.


Thursday, September 21, 2017 2:03


King County Sheriff John Urquhart
SEATTLE — When the King County Ombudsman’s Office released a critical review of Sheriff John Urquhart’s handling of a sexual-assault charge made against him in 2016, it came with a recommendation. The office had concluded that the sheriff mishandled the case and recommended, among other things, that the Sheriff’s Office require “the appointment of an external, independent official to investigate serious complaints against the Sheriff or other senior command staff.”


https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/when ... 369079d05a

If you like this research, please support it www.LoriHandrahan.com & www.Data4Justice.org



When Law Enforcement is the Perpetrator
Last Thanksgiving I posted Police Trading in Child Rape & Torture profiling nearly 70 local and state police officers arrested on child pornography charges.
My research was out of date almost as soon as I hit publish. A year later, an update is necessary.
As I am self-funded, conducting a year-long study of all local and state police arrested on child porn charges has not been possible. Instead, I looked at just one month. More than two officers per week have been in the news for child porn arrests in November — not including arrests of federal law enforcement.
The Associated Press (AP) recently published a year-long investigation of police officers disciplined for sex crimes including trade in child rape often called child pornography. This summer FBI Assistant Director Joseph Campbell announced there is an epidemic of child sex trafficking and pedophilia in America.
All too often it is men in positions of authority, including far too many in law enforcement, engaged in this crime. How many police in America have been arrested for participating in child sex trafficking? No one knows because, like police fatalities, the US government has not been collecting the data.
Let me say clearly, while there are many dedicated law enforcement for whom I have tremendous respect (especially those who investigate crimes of child rape) the arrests I’ve reviewed are deeply concerning.
Two Trends
Two trends are clearly apparent.
First, many police are being caught exchanging infant and toddler rape.
One example is Captain David Bourque in Connecticut with more than

David Bourque’s Criminal Complaint
328,528 images/4,000 videos, including “sadistic and violent acts” against infants and toddlers and more than 300 folders named “photos — babies — men” and “6–10yo boys pics.”
Another example is Sergeant Jonathan Gamson in Tampa, Florida who possessed at least one baby rape, a “little girl was bound and blindfolded and then photographed while someone sexually assaulted her” and “little girl who was “hung by her wrists from the ceiling.” Investigators said the images, dating to 2006, are “sadistic” and “horrific.”
Then there is Officer Michael Harding, of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was arrested, 22 September 2015, on child pornography charges. He was caught in a chatroom called #toddlerfuck.

Michael Harding
Harding was trading in child rape while on duty and possessed hundreds of videos/images including “6 yo boy sucks” and “7 yo girl fingered deep in both holes.”
He was Officer of the Year in 2011.
Second, many law enforcement leadership are being arrested.
Such as Chief Robert Geist, the “number one possessor and distributor of child porn” in Pennsylvania, caught sending images/videos including “6Yo babyj — Bedtime rape.” Geist received no jail time.
Or former Maine State Police Chief Andrew Demers, charged with child sex abuse of his four year old granddaughter.

By Scott Dolan, 5 November 2014, “Ex-Maine State Police chief pleads guilty to sex assault, will serve 4 years”
Demers was sentenced to five years, one of which was suspended. He served 26 years with the Maine State Police and was chief from 1987 to 1993. In 2003, Demers, the most decorated officer in state police history, was named a “Legendary Trooper.”
Then there is Chief Brian Fanelli, of Mount Pleasant, New York, arrested in January 2014, who plead guilty to child porn charges in July 2015. Fanelli had images/videos of children as young as seven. Other videos included 10 and 12 year old girls

Brian Fanelli’s Criminal Complaint
engaged in sex acts and a video called “10 y touch pussy webcam.”
November 2015
Here is a sample, not at all comprehensive, of other local and state law enforcement in the news in November 2015 for trading in child rape and torture:
• On 23 November Sergeant Kevin Wayne Dunn, with Tennessee’s Murfreesboro Police Department, was arrested and charged on five child pornography related counts.
• On 17 November David Hubbard, a retired State Trooper of 30 years with Iowa State Police, agreed to a plea deal for sexual exploitation of a minor related to child porn charges.
• On 17 November retired Detective Brent Vanderhaar, from Saginaw Police Department in Michigan, was arrested and charged with eight felony counts related to child pornography. He had over 100,000 images of two victims.
• On 16 November, William Walker’s, Information Officer and former School

William Walker, Fairfax County Police Officer
Resource Officer for Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, child pornography trial was continued until February 2016.
• On 10 November Sergeant Carlos Alberto Martinez, formerly with Monroe Police Department in Washington State, was found guilty of “secretly videotaping a teenage babysitter” when she showered. He also molested her. Martinez met the girl when she was ten years old and in his drug-abuse resistance class in elementary school.
• On 9 November Sergeant Kyle Adam Kirby, Live Oak Police in Florida, was in court on child pornography charges that included a video in a known series called Baby J and searches for “10Yo Girl PTCH Alicia,” “My 10Yo Daughter,” “PTHC 5Yo.” PTHC is pre-teen hard core indicating brutal violence and rape.
• On 6 November Charles Lee Ghent was arrested for “repeatedly raping a child younger than 13.” Ghent was the technology systems manager for the Vienna, Virginia Police Department.
• On 6 November, Richard Tucker, a Phoenix, Arizona police officer, was charged with eight counts of sexual exploitation of a minor resulting from images found in his possession after his arrest for domestic violence.
• On 4 November, Corporal Joe Cummings of Denton County, Texas was sentenced to 12.5 years for hundreds of images/videos of child rape including “prepubescent minors and sadistic and masochistic abuse.” Cummings was a police officer for 18 years. He was caught when he posted child porn on Twitter.
On 4 November University of North Dakota (UND) campus police officer,

Paul Bradley Meagher
Paul Bradley Meagher, was charged with ten felony child porn counts possessing more than 100,000 images/videos including the rape of a four year old child.
• On 2 November Officer Dustin O’Dell, of Conway, Arkansas, was arrested on child pornography charges. O’Dell’s computer folders included “Young,” “Beast” and “Asian.”
What can be done?
Three actions could immediately prevent law enforcement’s involvement in child sex trafficking.
First, law enforcement officers should be required to sign consent forms allowing random searches of their government issued electronics for child pornography.
Second, all law enforcement agencies should purchase software, like

NetClean
NetClean, that monitors network activity and reports attempts to trade in child rape to child exploitation law enforcement.
Third, a public database, like Data4Justice, must be available to inform the public of law enforcement agencies with histories of child porn arrests.
What happens when the police officer is the perpetrator?
Children’s lives are destroyed and public trust is broken. These are real children being brutalized in these videos and images. Maybe even your child.

Data4Justice.org
Help the good cops police the bad.
Ask your local police department to take immediate steps to prevent their employees from engaging in the trade of child rape.
This Thanksgiving help stop America’s child sex trafficking epidemic.
Dr. Lori Handrahan runs the start-up organization Data4Justice.org and is working on her forthcoming book, Child Porn Nation: America’s Hidden National Security Risk. Her Ph.D. is from The London School of Economics. She can be reached on Twitter @LoriHandrahan2






http://www.greencarreports.com/news/110 ... s-of-range

2017 electric cars with more than 100 miles of range (updated)



September 20, 2017

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3539674

Pro-life Republican congressman urged woman he was having an affair to get an abortion
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, October 3, 2017, 9:54 PM




https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/03/murde ... ss-part-2/

OCTOBER 3, 2017 | PETER JANNEY
THE MURDER OF JOHN KENNEDY’S MISTRESS, PART 2
Excerpt from Mary’s Mosaic THIRD Edition by Peter Janney

see link for full story



In Part 1 of this absorbing mystery, we saw some of the confounding facts that have made this event so incomprehensible, even after so many decades.

Mary Pinchot Meyer, mistress to John F. Kennedy, was shot twice while jogging in a deserted area in a Washington DC park. She was neither robbed nor raped. A witness who heard screams and shots ran to a wall overlooking the scene, arriving in time to see a man standing over the body, holding an object that appeared to be a gun. He described the gunman as a “negro male,” between 5 feet 8 and 5 feet 10 inches, and weighing about 185 pounds.

Soon after, a black man was arrested — but according to his driver’s license, he was only 5 feet 3.5 inches, and weighed 130. Yet the witness positively identified him.

The witness, Henry Wiggins, Jr., had been sent to that area along with a mechanic to service a “broken down” Nash Rambler. Very soon after he had arrived, the screaming started.

Later that same day, the car disappeared — and so did the all paperwork concerning the written record of the request to service the car. While this is also strange, it would not seem significant, not normally. But it appears to be part of an astonishing pattern that is eventually revealed in the latest edition of Peter Janney’s book.

In Part 2 below, more anomalies are revealed.

Second excerpt from Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace: Third Edition (Skyhorse Publishing, 2016), by Peter Janney. For Part 1 of this three-part series, please go here.

Introduction by Milicent Cranor

Mary Pinchot Meyer
WhoWhatWhy

“It looks like you got a stacked deck”
.
Ray Crump Jr. was sticking to his story. During the drive to police headquarters, he kept asking Crooke, “What did I do?” Each time, Crooke replied, “You tell me what you did.”

Crump would say only that he had been drinking. He had been fishing from some rocks and had fallen into the river. He was still shivering in his wet clothes, and Crooke suggested that he might be more comfortable if he took off his wet sweatshirt. In a white T-shirt that clung to his narrow chest, Crump appeared frail and childlike, much younger than his twenty-five years. A press photographer was waiting for the arrival of the black man suspected of murdering a white woman on the towpath. Crump bowed his head to avert the glare of flashbulbs as the photographer captured his arrival at police homicide headquarters.

Detective Crooke led Crump to a windowless interrogation room. Just a few months earlier, on June 22, 1964, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren had ruled in a 5-4 decision that a suspect had the right to have an attorney present during questioning. The ruling emanated from Escobedo v. Illinois and became known as the Escobedo Rule. Crooke was well aware of the ruling but chose not to inform Crump of his right to an attorney. The Miranda decision, which would have required Crooke to notify Crump, prior to questioning, of his right to an attorney, would not be decided for another two years.

“I think he’s the guilty person,” Bernie Crooke would later explain by way of justification for ignoring Crump’s rights. “Not for any piece of evidence against him, but because of that other sense you develop about witnesses and defendants. You sort of know.”26

Crooke may have had an additional motivation to prove his suspect’s guilt. One year earlier, a judge ruled in a defendant’s favor arguing that the confession that Crooke had extracted from him was no good. “The judge said [Crooke] practiced very sophisticated methods of psychological brutality,” a colleague said of the case. “Bernie couldn’t even spell the words he used. And here he was, just a poor cop, trying to make a living.”27 Crooke apparently didn’t want to suffer the humiliation of losing again.

Detective Crooke ordered Crump to put on the jacket that had just been fished out of the Potomac. It was a perfect fit. “It looks like you got a stacked deck,” Crump said, close to tears. Crooke patted him on the back, and Crump began to cry.28 By the time Crooke returned to the interrogation room, Crump appeared to have pulled himself together. He had stopped crying and was staring at his shoes. Crooke decided to leave him to set up the lineup. Part of the preparation would involve instructing Henry Wiggins, his only eyewitness, what to do. “He told me to go right up to [Crump], put my hands on him, and say, ‘This is the guy. That’s him,’ so there’s no doubt in my mind, no ‘ifs’ or anything,” Wiggins recalled years later.29

Ray Crump was easy to pick out in the lineup. “The lineup isn’t that close as far as the other guys being Crump’s type, so he really sticks out,” Wiggins recalled. Crump didn’t react when Wiggins identified him. “He didn’t act concerned, like he isn’t bothered about anything. He looks like he knows what to do: just keep your mouth shut and don’t say anything,” Wiggins later said.30 What Henry Wiggins didn’t remember that day was that he and twentyfive- year-old Ray Crump Jr. had been classmates, first at Briggs Elementary in Washington, then in junior high school, from which they had graduated in 1954.

Neither school at the time was integrated, but Wiggins had gone on to Western High School and had graduated. Crump had given up on school after junior high. A friend of Wiggins’s had reminded him that he knew Crump after Wiggins had identified him.31


Wiggins gave a formal statement about what he had observed that day, and Crooke showed him the windbreaker that had been found near the shoreline of the Potomac. “That looks like the jacket,” Wiggins said, referring to the one worn by the man he had seen standing over the dead woman on the towpath. Henry Wiggins was “satisfied” that he’d made law enforcement’s case against Ray Crump. Even so, he knew that rumors had already begun to cloud the facts. “One of the detectives was saying they found Crump knee-deep in water in a shallow part of the river in a little inlet,” Wiggins said. According to this version of events, Crump had said that “he was trying to retrieve his fishing rod,” said Wiggins. Another version had it that Crump was in the water to wash the victim’s blood off, while still another held that Crump was apprehended while he hid behind some rocks in the woods that bordered the river.32 Most of the speculation, however, centered on the identity of the beautiful dead woman. Who was she? And what was she doing on the towpath? Some parts of the canal, such as the concrete abutment and first arch supports of Key Bridge, had acquired unsavory reputations as havens for vagrants, truants, and dealers who supplied the affluent of Georgetown with recreational drugs. Henry Wiggins overheard one officer speculate that the murdered woman might have flirted with her killer. Wiggins didn’t buy it. “She wasn’t any bum or some old drunk like you’d expect down there,” he said. “This woman you could tell was a lady.”33

Detective Crooke gave Wiggins his card and told him not to talk to the press or anybody else about the case. Wiggins, who had once fancied himself cop material, apparently enjoyed his status at the center of this murder investigation; in fact, he had hoped to become a police officer in Washington, D.C., after his discharge from the Army. He had done some coursework — “in psychology, search and seizure, all that stuff” — and had passed the written exam, even dieted to meet the weight requirements, but “they still wouldn’t take me,” he said. He suspected that the color of his skin had something to do with his rejection.34 In those days, the D.C. Metropolitan Police force was largely white. In any event, even though he hadn’t passed muster as a potential police officer, Wiggins — a black man pointing the finger at another black man — seemed to be the ideal witness.

That afternoon, Ray Crump had been fingerprinted, photographed, weighed, and measured, but he wasn’t tested for gunpowder burns or residue, which would have indicated whether he had recently fired a handgun. “His hands had been in water,” Chief Detective Art Weber explained later at Crump’s trial. “That would have washed away any nitrates that were present. The paraffin test wasn’t what it’s supposed to be. The FBI doesn’t think much of it either, so we don’t use it.”35 Lacking forensic evidence that would have linked Crump to the crime, police resorted to using his height and weight to help make their case. According to the intake documents, at the time of his arrest, Crump stood 5 feet 5½ inches and weighed 145 pounds — two inches taller and 15 pounds heavier than his driver’s license indicated.36 It was never clarified whether Crump had on his shoes with their 2-inch platform heels when he was measured, or whether he had been wearing wet clothes when he was weighed. Still, he was significantly smaller than the original description of the wanted man listed on Police Form PD-251: 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall and 185 pounds.

The Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia had been alerted to Ray Crump’s arrival. Legal Aid public defenders typically represented indigent clients at preliminary criminal hearings, at coroner’s inquests, and at mental health hearings. “We were right there on the fourth floor of the courthouse, room 4830,” said George Peter Lamb, a former defense attorney. “Our offices would be notified if someone was being brought in. It wouldn’t be too long after the arrest. D.C. had the most restrictive laws on preliminary hearings of any federal court in the United States. Police were required to bring an arrested person before a magistrate as soon as it was feasible. To dillydally and hold a suspect in jail and interrogate the hell out of him was one sure way to result in the suppression of all evidence.”37



Lamb was one of five new lawyers brought into the office by Edward “Ted” O’Neill, the sharp-tongued, indefatigable public defender. Lamb had been working in the Public Defender’s Office of the Legal Aid Society for just one month when he met Ray Crump. A graduate of American University’s Washington College of Law, Lamb had accepted a cut in pay to take the job, with an annual salary of just $6,900. It wasn’t much, he later joked, for “a dyslectic with ulcers, married with two kids.”38 But he was fired up about the work. “What made it an incredibly exciting time to be a criminal lawyer was that the Warren Court was in full swing,” he recalled in 1990. “Decisions were coming down that were upsetting long-established procedures that had been used as evidence in American courts for centuries.” Lamb considered himself part of the revolution that was taking place in criminal law to balance the inherently unequal contest between the individual and the state.

As a public defender, Lamb reserved particular admiration for Judge David Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals. “He was the bane of the conservatives,” Lamb recalled. “He’d invite all these young lawyers into his chambers and tell us how to be better, and he would talk about what the responsibility of a public defender was: Whatever could be done for the richest of the rich, it was our job to do for the poorest of the poor. We spared no effort in that respect, and that was pretty thrilling, and really very exciting.”39 That afternoon, Lamb had hurried to the basement stockade to interview the new prisoner and to discern whether he met the criteria for a court-appointed lawyer.

He did. At the time of his arrest, Ray Crump had only $1.50 in his pocket. He didn’t have a bank account. He didn’t own real estate, an automobile, or any other valuable property, nor did his wife, Helena, his parents, or any other person who might have been able to assist in paying the costs of his defense. Lamb conducted a background check on his new client and found that he was married with five children. He had been twice arrested for disorderly behavior and he had served sixty days for shoplifting.

Years later, Lamb recalled how scared Crump had been. “He had to know when he was arrested that he would be charged with first-degree murder. You can be sure that during the time he went through the booking procedure at Homicide, the police were beating him up trying to get a confession out of him — not physically, because that was pretty much a thing of the past in this town.” Crump was crying, Lamb said. He repeatedly told Lamb that he didn’t know what had gone on at the canal, that he hadn’t killed anybody, and that the police had arrested the wrong man.40

Lamb explained to Crump the first step: In a first-floor hearing room, the police would try to establish before a magistrate that there was enough evidence to hold him for a grand jury. Crump would either be charged or released. What Lamb didn’t tell his client was that with U.S. Commissioner Sam Wertleb presiding — a “curmudgeon,” in Lamb’s opinion — the chances were slim that Crump would be let go.

“It wasn’t possible to get a fair hearing from him,” Lamb said. “Wertleb almost always accepted the word of a police officer against that of a defendant, especially a black defendant.”41 Wertleb did inform Crump, however, of his right to counsel and to a preliminary hearing, but he declined to schedule the hearing.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Crump blurted out. “I was down there fishing and lost my rod. I almost got shot myself.”42 Crump was held without bail. “The way to get around granting bail was to say Crump was a danger to the community by reason of what he’s been charged with,” Lamb recalled. “So denial of bail was purely on the basis of the heinousness of the crime. When, in fact, the only evidence the government had at this point was whatever Detective Bernie Crooke said it was.” With bail denied, “you’ve got to move quick to try to prevent the government from bringing an original indictment,” Lamb said. “We went straight to the Court of Appeals on the bail issue and denial of a preliminary hearing the next morning with Ted [O’Neill] and I leading the charge.

Already there was some strong heat coming down on this case from somewhere — we didn’t know where. That’s why we were in court so damn fast, to try to set up a preliminary hearing. The reason you wanted a prelim, it was the only chance you had to cross-examine witnesses and find out what the police had for evidence. So you freeze the case in a timeline so that it never gets any better, unless the police find something new. And all they had was Crump being in the vicinity of the murder. He was just somebody who’d been identified as being there.”43

Shackled and under heavy guard, Crump was taken by federal marshals to the D.C. jail and placed in isolation. Crump changed into prison denims but kept his shoes. The guard urged him to confess, saying that if he did, he would get the help he was entitled to, possibly even a deal with the prosecutor, but Crump remained confused. “What was going on down in that place?” he wanted to know. The officers who arrested him hadn’t told him anything. When he had been escorted in handcuffs past the bloodied body of the dead woman on the towpath, Crump had asked Detective Crooke, “You think I did that?” Crooke hadn’t answered.

Meanwhile, something weighed heavily on the freshly minted public defender, George Peter Lamb. Though new to his job, he was savvy enough to know that it was highly unusual for Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Smith to be representing the government at Ray Crump’s hearing. “That was unheard of to send a senior man to one of these things,” Lamb said. “Usually, a very inexperienced criminal assistant would be there just to observe the proceedings. So right away, we knew there was some ‘Mickey Mouse’ stuff going on.”44

Donald Smith’s presence signaled that somewhere within the corridors of the U.S. Department of Justice an alarm had sounded. But why? Surely not because of Ray Crump, who wouldn’t have merited such high-level attention. It had to be the murder itself — and the murder victim. Given the crime’s location — right in the heart of Washington’s elite Georgetown enclave — was it that the dead woman was one of them, a person of consequence in her Georgetown milieu? But the police had not yet determined her identity.

Detective Bernard Crooke, on arriving at the D.C. morgue, was immediately granted access to an autopsy room where Randolph M. Worrell, the morgue technician, had already logged in the body of a white female, name and address unknown. Worrell had taken a sample of blood that would be delivered for classification to the FBI the following day. He had prepared the body for examination by removing her clothes in the presence of Deputy Coroner Dr. Linwood L. Rayford.



http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/footb ... -1.3537487


How much does it cost to kneel during the national anthem? Ask the Detroit Lions



Tuesday, October 3, 2017, 7:59 AM




According to CNN, the Department of Defense spent $6.8 million on "paid patriotism" between 2012 and 2015 amongst 50 teams from the NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS, and NASCAR.

Mind you, besides 9/11 and the Super Bowl, teams in the NFL weren't mandated to be on the field for the national anthem until 2009.

Money is in play, yet again.

Check this out from an article on ThinkProgress.com.

"Overall, the Defense Department spent at least $10.4 million on 'marketing and advertising contracts with professional sports teams' across the board between 2012 and 2015, although, the report noted, the department '[could not] accurately account' for the full number of contracts and payouts it had awarded. 'It only reported 62 percent (76 of 122) of its contracts and 70 percent ($7.3 million) of its spending in its response to our inquiry," wrote Arizona Senators Jeff Flake(R) and John McCain (R).

"Even with that disclosure, it is hard to understand how a team accepting taxpayer funds to sponsor a military appreciation game, or to recognize wounded warriors or returning troops, can be construed as anything other than paid patriotism."

I never knew patriotism had a dollar amount.

But wait, there's more.

The article goes on to say that the NFL announced in May 2016 that it would refund $724,000 of the Defense Department payouts, which had been awarded for military "appreciate activities."

The NFL has shown once again that money is its motive, and that they'd rather cut a check to be a patriot, then to do the actual work of one.

Now, players inside of the Lions locker room, and as I suspect, others from around the league, are now being forced to answer some serious internal questions.

How much is taking a knee worth?

And is that price high enough to allow you to sleep at night?




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jud ... -1.3537057


Judge acquits Black Lives Matter activist in NYPD prosecution case after videos show police lying again
on the stand
BY SHAYNA JACOBS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, October 2, 2017, 5:43 PM




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/joe ... -1.3536551

Joe Torre tells cops at domestic violence training about the struggle of growing up with an abusive father



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3538339

Brooklyn’s Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice prepares young women for college success
BY BEN CHAPMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, October 3, 2017, 11:22 AM



https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states ... m-suspects

DEA Agent Charged With Stealing Money From Suspects
A veteran agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in New Orleans has been indicted on charges he engaged in a scheme to steal money and property seized in drug investigations and perjured himself in court.

Oct. 2, 2017, at 4:43 p.m.




http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com


Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Doing Things The Right Way


Doing things the right way is hard. It takes more time, energy, and resources than any of the other possibilities that we think of to ease the load. Daily compromises are unavoidable.

Doing things the wrong way in public means running the risk of being caught, the risk that your shortcuts, maybe justifiable, maybe not, are publicly discussed. Those moments are revealing about people who don’t try to get things right.

Tom Price was Cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services, confirmed by the Senate, right at the center of American politics. He must have thought that appointment was a promotion from his House seat, Newt Gingrich’s seat in Georgia, where he had no primary challenger and beat his opponent for his seventh term 62% to 38%.

Now he could play a dominant role in achieving his political dream, getting rid of Obamacare and recreating America’s entire health care system, having led the Republican charge since 2009. After that, maybe he could go one step further and get rid of Medicare: his organization, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, publishes “The Physicians Guide to Opting Out of Medicare” and works to make vaccinations optional.

What a dream job. But now, as the Minneapolis StarTribune headlined on Saturday, “High-flying Price takes off”. From May to September, Price took a flight every week on private charter planes at taxpayers’ expense, costing us $400,000 in just a few months. He spent $25,000 of public money to fly from Washington to Philadelphia, when a train costs $72 and takes about the same time.

Price didn’t steal anything. All of his very expensive travel was on government business. His mistake was thinking that his time and comfort were worth a great deal to us, the people who are paying, at the same time as he was arguing that the government is spending much too much on our health care. Price is a hypocrite who doesn’t care a bit about the values of “Trump voters” or any voters.

In the wake of Price’s ouster, other Trump appointees have hastened to draw a clear ethical line. Billionaires Betsy DeVos and Wilbur Ross pay for all of their travel on their own planes, and others like Ben Carson and Alex Acosta fly commercial unless they are with the President or Vice President. They are clear that they would never use government money to pay for personal travel. That would be stealing.

So where does that leave Steven Mnuchin? The Secretary of the Treasury requested that a government jet take him and his bride on their honeymoon to Scotland, France and Italy this summer. Mnuchin is worth about $300 million. Mnuchin is also not guilty of stealing, because his request was turned down. But he tried, in a textbook attempt at corruption.

Now he says he’ll do the right thing in the future: “I can promise the American taxpayer the only time that I will be using milair [military aircraft] is when there are issues either for national security or where ... there’s no other means.”

Is the swamp being drained? Seems not.

Price resigned under pressure. Before his flights became a public scandal, Trump announced to the Boy Scouts that if Price failed to get the votes to repeal Obamacare, Trump would say “Tom, you’re fired.” A “senior White House official” complained that Price was “nowhere to be found” in the Republicans’ final effort to kill Obamacare. Price made the boss look bad, not because he wasted our money, but because he couldn’t deliver.

He’s gone, but the swamp is deeper.

Price’s luxury travel is the visible tip of the iceberg of the wider corruption of values and morality of those in power. Price said “all of this travel was approved by legal and HHS officials.” The Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin took his wife to Europe, where they visited four palaces, took a river cruise, and watched the Wimbledon tennis tournament, paid by taxpayers. He did a bit of work, too. The VA said that its “ethics counsel” okayed everything. The Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who is proposing big cuts in his department, which includes the EPA, flew an entourage in private jets to the Virgin Islands for 3 days. Not a peep out of the swamp-drainer-in-chief.

Mnuchin will still decide what taxes we all will pay in the future. He and his fellow multi-millionaires will save enough by the tax cuts to take European vacations whenever they want.

Trump’s voters thought that draining the swamp in Washington would be the right thing. There is no evidence that it’s happening. Trump’s hand-picked advisors are living it up in unprecedented fashion at our expense. His ethics watchdogs say it’s all okay.

That’s not doing anything the right way.






http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/o-n ... -1.3539215

NYPD top cop says detectives will ‘pay the price’ if they sexually assaulted teen
BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, October 3, 2017, 4:50 PM





https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk

Lobster magazine began in 1983. Its initial focus was on what was then called parapolitics - roughly, the impact of the intelligence and security services on history and politics - but since then has widened out to include:

contemporary history and politics
economics and economic politics




Link du jour


https://injusticetoday.com


https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... at-for-sex

http://www.vachss.com/mission/protect-z ... otter.html


http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/facul ... ainer.html






https://robertscribbler.com/2017/09/29/ ... nadequate/

Reflections of Opal and Why Trump’s Response to Maria’s Monumental Strike on Puerto Rico is, Thus Far, Vastly Inadequate
As a veteran of the U.S. Army National Guard, I’ve responded to my fair share of natural disasters. And having responded to some of the costliest and most devastating storms to strike the U.S. in the 90s, I know what it means when damage estimates, as they do now with Maria, hit a range of 30-95 billion dollars. When you get reports that evacuees are fleeing Puerto Rico with many saying they will never return.

It means total devastation of infrastructure requiring an equally unprecedented level of response to effectively manage a disaster of a class that we are not presently used to dealing with. And without an effective response, you get exactly what we are seeing now — refugees fleeing what has become, through neglect, a sacrifice zone.


(Editorial note — too little, too late.)

The present response to Maria by the Trump Administration is comparable to the level of response to Hurricane Opal. Opal was a devastating storm in its own right. But the damage inflicted by Opal was more than an order of magnitude less than the damage inflicted by Maria. Our response, therefore, must be equal to the level of harm and dislocation inflicted by the disaster. 5,000 troops and FEMA responders for Maria is, therefore, about 45,000 short of the mark.

Moreover, we can absolutely say that failure to pre-position an adequate number of troops, supplies and ships leading up to this disaster, a failure to secure a means of entry into Puerto Rico for troops and other emergency relief workers, a failure to establish law and order in devastated regions, and a failure to adequately and in a coordinated manner work to re-establish infrastructure and communications on the island is leading to a combined expanding disaster and mass exodus.

Reflections on the Effective Response to Opal

Back in 1995, when category 4 Hurricane Opal was roaring toward the Florida Panhandle packing 150 mph sustained winds, I received word of my mobilization while sitting in Shakespeare class, interrupted from listening to the lilting voice of my professor recite the bard in the idyllic halls of Flagler College.

It was October 3rd. And with the storm expected to make landfall sometime early on October 4, troops were already being called in. Units were already prepping. And supplies were already being pre-positioned.

My unit, an Infantry Company based out of Sanford Florida, possessed air mobile capabilities. This meant we linked up with a helicopter unit, mounted up, and performed the functions of air cavalry and air assault. A majority of the unit were ex-Rangers or Special Ops types serving out their retirement in the Guard. The rest were mostly ‘green’ college-age kids like me and a number of police officers, public servants, and school teachers. Our commanding officer was a Bank exec — your archetypal citizen-soldier. Our ranking NCO was a company first sergeant and ex-Ranger who’d served multiple tours in Vietnam.



(When hurricane Opal made landfall along the Florida Panhandel, it became the third most costly hurricane to ever strike the U.S. at the time. Hurricane Maria [above] was larger than even Opal — which at the time was considered to be one of the largest strong storms to strike the U.S. Its impacts devastated the entire island of Puerto Rico — not just a single long stretch of coastline. In dollar estimates, Maria is presently ten times more costly than Opal. However, with the economy of Puerto Rico less vibrant than that of the Florida panhandle, comparative damages are far more extensive. Image source: Commons.)

In the event of war, our mission was to support the 82nd Airborne. But in this peace-time disaster relief operation, our goal was to put first boots on the ground in the disaster area. To assess damage, establish rule of law and order, establish communications, secure key infrastructure, protect life and property, and to establish secure points of entry for disaster relief supplies and technical relief personnel such as medical professionals, engineers, and FEMA personnel.

The lessons-learned from devastating Hurricane Andrew were fresh on our minds as we readied for a hit that some thought could be as bad or worse.

A Far More Effective Mobilization and Response

For my part, mobilization meant cramming my individual gear into my personal vehicle — a 50 mpg Honda CRX — and making an unexpected drive from St. Augustine to Sanford to join with my unit on the afternoon of October 3. As with the environments around most hurricanes, the weather at the time was fair. But a tall, white outflow plume could be seen far off to the west.

Arrival at the unit was met with the usual flurry of activity. Most of our supplies had already been sent out on two and a half ton trucks to a pre-position location in the Pan Handle, but far enough away from the expected path of the storm not to put the unit at serious risk. We drew weapons, communications equipment, and packed up on food and water. Someone issued water purification tablets. I was the radio guy for my platoon — which was a recon platoon modeled after similar units in the U.S. Army’s Ranger divisions. So I picked up that heavy thing and loaded out with the necessary lithium batteries.


Flooding can be seen from the air as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Air and Marine Operations, DHC-8 prepares to land in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, September 22, 2017. U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Kris Grogan. More than a week after Maria, the situation in Puerto Rico is arguably getting worse. After a few days of a well organized response and relief effort following Opal, impacted regions had already begun to recover.
We piled into our two and a half ton trucks — which we called duces — and headed out.

By late that evening we arrived at a local school gym in some small town inland in the panhandle. Spreading out on the floor of the gym — we mostly slept. This is a habit you pick up on real quick in the military — sleep when you can, because you don’t know when you’re going to get it next.

Outside, the winds picked up, and tree limbs fell to the ground as Opal’s outer tropical-storm-force bands lashed over our location.

As soon as conditions had relented early that morning, we were loading up into our trucks and running out to a local tar-mac. Helicopters were waiting at the airport. Some of us, including me, piled into the ‘copters. The rest formed a convoy that would attempt to forge a land route out to the beaches along the far western Panhandle. Places like Destin Beach, Fort Walton Beach, and Gulf Breeze near Pensacola.

But those of us on the helicopters would be first in to the disaster area.

Opal had weakened as it roared into the coast. Still packing 115 mph winds, the storm had pushed a massive 15 foot storm surge through the region we were now approaching. From the air, we could see large sections of barrier islands that were literally cut in half. A one-mile section of coastal highway 98 was completely taken out by the surge. Most barrier islands were park beaches. But damage to homes along waterways and the shore line was immediately apparent. In parts, the homes had been completely removed from their foundations as if they were never there in the first place.



(In Navarre Beach, storm surge damage from Opal was quite extensive. In places, homes were washed across barrier islands and into the sound. Image source: Weather.gov. Maria’s impacts were far more widespread and severe.)

Power lines and trees were down everywhere and damage was extensive — if no-where near rivaling the wind-caused devastation of Andrew. Most causeways to the islands appeared to have suffered extensive damage and it appeared that the convoy was going to have a tough time getting in.

After getting a visual assessment from the air, we located a relatively clear landing zone in Destin and set down. Immediately, we began to set up a forward base of operations while sending out patrols into the nearby cities. In the hardest hit sections, we placed armed guards at intersections as a show of force to reassure the public and prevent looting. Residents who’d stayed had lost power entirely. Many were grilling all the food in their refrigerators — engaged in an odd kind of block party where once the food was gone, it was uncertain when one would get more. We handed out some of the water we had (a few pallets had come on the ‘copters) and let people know where we were setting up aid locations for food, water, and medical attention.

We were initially very concerned about individuals needing immediate medical attention or those trapped in buildings. But at our location, it appeared that most people were fortunate — aside from the odd scrapes, bruises and gouges. Most residents near the immediate coast appeared to have gotten out before the massive storm surge rolled in, which was a blessing.

Reports of looting at a local car dealership came in and our platoon dispatched a squad to secure the area, apprehend and detain looters, and secure car keys so that no vehicles were stolen. And that was all on day one.

Over the next few days we slowly re-established order and rapidly widened the aid chain. It was a rough hit, but not as bad as Andrew, and it looked like the region was on the road to recovery.

Quantifying the Urgent Need for a Larger Response

Hurricane Opal inflicted 5.1 billion dollars of damages — mostly to the Florida and Alabama coasts and inland due to very heavy rainfall totaling up to 15 inches. The storm killed 63 people. In total, 3,500 National Guard troops and 700 police officers were mobilized to respond to the disaster. As you can see from the above account, much of this mobilization effort occurred prior to the storm striking land.

In contrast, Hurricane Maria has inflicted far greater damage over a much wider region. Total damage estimates for Maria now range between 30 and 95 billion dollars. Maria’s winds were close to 150 mph at landfall and the thunderstorms associated with this very powerful hurricane dumped as much as 40 inches of rain over Puerto Rico. As of one week and a day following Maria striking Puerto Rico, the Department of Defense had only mobilized 4,500 troops. Members of the U.S. Congress, meanwhile, recommend sending 50,000 — which would be an appropriate response.

Due to a failure to immediately mobilize the forces necessary to deal with such a massive disaster, Puerto Rico remains on its knees. Reports are coming in that looting is expanding even as people grow desperate after being unable to access food, water, electricity and controlled climates for more than a week. Many homes have been destroyed and the homeless are mostly destitute and without help as disaster relief organizers blunder about trying to reach them. Meanwhile, thousands are leaving a Puerto Rico that looks, increasingly, as if it was basically abandoned for at least one week following one of the most devastating strikes by a hurricane in the Caribbean on record.

To be very clear, this thus far totally inadequate response to Maria is a failure of leadership at the highest levels.

Links:

Hurricane Maria Could Be a 95 Billion Dollar Storm for Puerto Rico

50,000 Troops Needed for Puerto Rico

U.S. Response to Puerto Rico Pales Next to Haiti Quake

Hurricane Opal

Hurricane Maria

Hurricane Opal Floods Florida

Hurricane Maria Dumps 40 Inches of Rain on Puerto Rico

Evacuees Leave Puerto Rico by Cruise Ship — Some Doubting They Will Ever Return



https://injusticetoday.com/indiana-man- ... 099d59b081

Indiana man free after misconduct leads to his murder conviction being thrown out


A Madison County man who had his conviction thrown out earlier this year due to misconduct will not be tried a second time.
Trondo Humphrey, 38, got out of jail earlier this month after being locked up for 21 years. Prosecutors originally planned to retry him after his original 60-year prison sentence was thrown out, but changed their mind days before his retrial was scheduled to begin. Humphrey, who was 16 when the crime occurred, is now a free man for the first time in his adult life.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/fed ... -1.3570651

Federal hearing to probe if there is 'widespread lying' by NYPD on witness stand




NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 2:56 AM


Judge Jack B. Weinstein ordered the hearing in the case of bodega clerk Hector Cordero, who is suing the city on false arrest and malicious prosecution claims.

A federal judge in Brooklyn has ordered a special hearing to examine how commonly police officers lie and whether the NYPD does enough to stop it.

Judge Jack Weinstein ordered the hearing in the case of bodega clerk Hector Cordero, who is suing the city on false arrest and malicious prosecution claims.

During the trial, slated to begin in January, the jury will first decide on the claims against the individual officers.

If the jury finds them liable, the panel will then hear evidence related to whether there is “widespread lying by police officers,” Weinstein wrote in his decision. He noted that the NYPD’s top lawyer, Lawrence Byrne, has said that cops don’t lie on the stand any more than any other type of witness.

“This statement misses the point,” Weinstein wrote. “Police officers, unlike civilians, have the power to terminate constitutionally protected liberty. With this power comes great responsibility.”

The judge didn’t draw his own conclusion on the matter in his decision Tuesday, but he referred to more than a dozen news articles about similar cases.

The reason he split up the trial, he said, was because trying both the individual's claims and the broader claims would hurt their cases. If there were just one trial, the city would be hurt by evidence of the officers’ untruthfulness, and the cops, by the introduction of evidence showing other cases in which officers were accused of lying, Weinstein said
Cordero’s case might be weakened by the necessary exclusion of some evidence, the judge said.

Cordero claims police trumped up drug charges against him because they wanted an arrest near the end of their tour to get overtime.

“Such cases are becoming increasingly difficult to try fairly,” Weinstein wrote. “Jurors are ever more aware of stories in the media reporting police officers lying to justify false arrests and to convict criminal defendants.”

Cordero’s lawyers argue that the NYPD has long known about a widespread practice of bad arrests at the end of tours to make overtime, but has done nothing to prevent it. The four officers involved in Cordero’s arrest got 20 hours of overtime.


If the jury finds them liable, the panel will then hear evidence related to whether there is “widespread lying by police
One, Hugo Hugasian, has been caught falsifying overtime and has been sued repeatedly on false arrest grounds.

Weinstein said prominent civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander has written that some experts on police practices treat lying by police as “commonplace.” He also cited a 2011 scandal in which hundreds of drug cases had to be dismissed after several officers were accused of mishandling evidence.

The city has stubbornly fought Cordero’s claims.

During 2016 deposition, a city lawyer objected 600 times to questions asked of Officer John Essig, one of the four involved in Cordero’s arrest.

Police claimed Cordero sold a small amount of drugs outside the bodega. But both Cordero and the bodega owner said in their depositions







http://www.theroot.com/janaya-khan-blac ... 1819627086


THE MOVEMENT
Janaya Khan, Black Lives Matter Leader, Dismantles FBI’s Fraudulent ‘Black Identity Extremist’ Report

Kirsten West Savali

It should come as no surprise, then, that this white supremacist organ, which has targeted the Movement for Black Lives since its inception, recently had the audacity to create the term “black identity extremists.” The FBI-created myth of the black identity extremist was discovered in a leaked Aug. 3 report obtained by Foreign Policy:


FBI BIE redacted report (Foreign Policy)
For those who aren’t aware, according to the FBI, BIEs are motivated by “perceived” cases of police brutality and a violent ideology that endangers the lives of upstanding law-enforcement officers around the country. Moreover, the FBI has “high confidence” in these assessments because its own investigations—and those of police departments—confirm them.



“Black identity extremism is the FBI’s latest tactic to criminalize black activists and justify increased police presence in black communities,” khan narrates.

“Right-wing extremism leads to far more police deaths than what the report sites. This year alone, 168 black people have been killed by police,” khan continues. “In fact, white supremacists and right-wing extremism are responsible for 73 percent of deadly U.S. domestic-terror attacks since 2001 and have killed more than two-thirds of police officers compared to their left-wing counterparts.

“Despite these stats, police officers kill black people two-and-a-half times more than they kill black people and kill unarmed black people at five times the rate as they kill unarmed white people,” khan adds.








https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017 ... of-the-fbi

‘Black Identity
Extremists’ and the Dark Side of the FBI
Leaked documents remind us of the agency’s history of dirty tricks.

DAVID DENNIS


RECENT POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS have helped put the FBI in a favorable light. The agency and its leadership have been praised for its performance throughout the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Former director James Comey affirmed the agency’s fundamental goodness in a letter to his colleagues after he was relieved of his post President Trump.

“I have said to you before that, in times of turbulence, the American people should see the FBI as a rock of competence, honesty, and independence,” wrote Comey. “It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing.”

While Comey might only have good things to say about the FBI, newly leaked documents suggest he shouldn’t. Despite the agency’s new, upstanding image, it might be back to its Hoover-era dirty tricks—if it ever really departed from them.

Foreign Policy reported recently on the existence of a document that circulated within the FBI’s counterterrorism division. Just nine days before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, it named a major threat to public safety: not organized white nationalists, but “black identity extremists.”

“The FBI assesses it is very likely Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence,” the report reads in part.

The “black identity extremist” tag might be new but the tactic behind it is not. The FBI’s attempt to characterize the police reform movement as violent and extremist is but the agency’s most recent effort to criminalize black activism by labeling it a danger to public safety and national security.

There’s perhaps no better example of the contrast between the FBI’s reputation and its character than its behavior during the 1964 Freedom Summer. If you learned about that historic summer in school, you probably heard stories of how the civil rights campaign would not have been a success without protection provided to volunteers by the FBI. That’s definitely the story I was told in school, but it’s not the whole truth.

My father, David Dennis, was integral to organizing the Freedom Summer as co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations. In fact, a bout of bronchitis kept him from traveling with James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on the day the three young civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan. He told me the full story of the FBI’s involvement that summer.

The truth is that J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the agency from 1924 to 1972, never wanted the FBI to protect civil rights workers. When the Council of Federated Organizations asked for his help as it registered black Mississippians to vote, he responded in no uncertain terms.

“We most certainly do not and will not give protection to civil rights workers,” Hoover said at a news conference early that summer. “In the first place, the FBI is not a police organization. It’s purely an investigative organization, and the protection of individual citizens, either natives of this state or coming into the state, is a matter for the local authorities.”

Of course, the FBI did later become heavily involved with the Freedom Summer after Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner went missing, beginning its now-famous “Mississippi Burning” investigation. For that, the agency is given more credit than it deserves.


RECENT POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS have helped put the FBI in a favorable light. The agency and its leadership have been praised for its performance throughout the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Former director James Comey affirmed the agency’s fundamental goodness in a letter to his colleagues after he was relieved of his post President Trump.

“I have said to you before that, in times of turbulence, the American people should see the FBI as a rock of competence, honesty, and independence,” wrote Comey. “It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing.”

While Comey might only have good things to say about the FBI, newly leaked documents suggest he shouldn’t. Despite the agency’s new, upstanding image, it might be back to its Hoover-era dirty tricks—if it ever really departed from them.

Foreign Policy reported recently on the existence of a document that circulated within the FBI’s counterterrorism division. Just nine days before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, it named a major threat to public safety: not organized white nationalists, but “black identity extremists.”

“The FBI assesses it is very likely Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence,” the report reads in part.

The “black identity extremist” tag might be new but the tactic behind it is not. The FBI’s attempt to characterize the police reform movement as violent and extremist is but the agency’s most recent effort to criminalize black activism by labeling it a danger to public safety and national security.

There’s perhaps no better example of the contrast between the FBI’s reputation and its character than its behavior during the 1964 Freedom Summer. If you learned about that historic summer in school, you probably heard stories of how the civil rights campaign would not have been a success without protection provided to volunteers by the FBI. That’s definitely the story I was told in school, but it’s not the whole truth.

My father, David Dennis, was integral to organizing the Freedom Summer as co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations. In fact, a bout of bronchitis kept him from traveling with James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on the day the three young civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan. He told me the full story of the FBI’s involvement that summer.

The truth is that J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the agency from 1924 to 1972, never wanted the FBI to protect civil rights workers. When the Council of Federated Organizations asked for his help as it registered black Mississippians to vote, he responded in no uncertain terms.

“We most certainly do not and will not give protection to civil rights workers,” Hoover said at a news conference early that summer. “In the first place, the FBI is not a police organization. It’s purely an investigative organization, and the protection of individual citizens, either natives of this state or coming into the state, is a matter for the local authorities.”

Of course, the FBI did later become heavily involved with the Freedom Summer after Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner went missing, beginning its now-famous “Mississippi Burning” investigation. For that, the agency is given more credit than it deserves.


COMMENTARY
Original analysis and perspectives from across the spectrum on criminal justice
After the three civil rights workers disappeared, Hoover ordered FBI agents to begin a preliminary search. He sent additional agents to Mississippi to look for the men after their car was found burned out.

The buried remains of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were finally found 44 days after they disappeared.

Most people don’t know, however, that President Lyndon B. Johnson had to pressure Hoover and the FBI to get involved. Hoover expressed his disdain for the civil rights workers, even after they went missing. In fact, in a recorded phone call, Hoover can be heard noting to Johnson that Schwerner and his wife were communists, the “extremists” of the era.

My father told me the story of the FBI’s mixed record that summer and other stories of his interactions with the agency—the spying, intimidation, and blatant racism of agents. My understanding of the FBI’s capacity for wrongdoing only grew as I learned about COINTELPRO, its covert, often illegal, campaigns to break up the civil rights movement and “neutralize” activists.

Hoover has been scapegoated as the nexus of that evil. According to reports, Comey kept a copy of a 1963 order authorizing Hoover to conduct round-the-clock surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. on his desk as a reminder of the director’s abuses.

News of the agency’s most recent anti-activist activity suggests, however, that anti-blackness and dirty tactics aren't relegated to the agency’s history or one man’s leadership.

It’s unclear how the new “black identity extremists” tag will impact the lives of activists. We do know that the Department of Homeland Security has been surveilling Black Lives Matter activists since 2014, but there’s no way to know what’s next. Damage has already been done, though. With its report, the FBI has legitimized the idea that black activism is a threat and should be treated accordingly—with violent force, no doubt.

We all should be keeping a much closer eye on the FBI than we have in recent years. If its history teaches us anything it's that the agency is capable of serious harm and tremendous good, often at the same time.

It’s great that the FBI is competent, honest, and independent when it comes to its handling of the president, but that’s not all it handles. The agency has incredible power. Despite the changing political winds, we must maintain our skepticism of the FBI to be sure that power isn’t abused.

David Dennis is a journalist and a professor of journalism at Morehouse College.




http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/k ... iclerecirc

NorCal teacher who knelt during homecoming rally placed on leave
By Michelle Robertson, SFGATE


A Yolo County high school teacher was placed on paid leave after kneeling during the national anthem, administrators said.
Woodland High School chemistry teacher Windy Pappas took a knee at a Friday homecoming rally as the speakers blared the "Star Spangled Banner." She held two signs reading, "Black Lives Matter" and "It's OK to disagree with every sign here," according to a photo of the protest circulating on social media.




https://www.lawfareblog.com/fbi-directo ... ection-702

Privacy Paradox: Rethinking Solitude
On Friday, FBI Director Christopher Wray delivered a speech at the Heritage Foundation concerning FISA Section 702. The following is his speech as delivered:

Thanks, David and thanks to the Heritage Foundation for putting on this whole program so that we can have a better and more informed discussion about FISA, Section 702, which I think is sorely needed. I'm very happy to be here this morning and I'm extremely fired up to be back in public service at the FBI. As David says, I think I still qualify as new. I still feel new, and I've spent the first two months trying to get up to speed on a lot of things, including Section 702 and the reauthorization effort.

I've also seen the enormous strides that the Bureau has made in transforming our work in the new reality—I still think of it as new, post-9/11. Following the 9/11 attacks, the Bureau and its partners in the intelligence community and elsewhere systematically worked to tear down walls that had prohibited or dangerously inhibited critical sharing of intelligence across our programs. I know that because I was there. I was there in the days before 9/11, I was in the FBI Headquarters on the days of the attack themselves, and I was there for the four years afterwards.

The fact that we have not suffered another 9/11-scale attack is not just luck. It is the product of an enormous amount of very, very hard work and diligence by thousands of professionals. Most importantly, it’s a product of teamwork and information sharing and dot-connecting by those professionals in the post-9/11, post-wall world with dot-connecting made possible, especially by tools like Section 702.

Unfortunately, some of the potential amendments that we’ve heard about as part of this reauthorization discussion strike me as eerily similar to essentially rebuilding walls like we had before 9/11. It’s like watching well-intentioned people start positioning bricks back in the walls again, perhaps growing complacent from the fact that we haven’t had another attack.

So what I’d like to try to do in my brief remarks today—and then obviously, I’d like to have a discussion—is talk first about the current threat landscape, which has evolved and changed since 9/11. Second, the value of Section 702 and helping us stay ahead of those threats. Third, some clarification about what the 702 program is and what the 702 program is not. Last, I want to talk about some of the potential real world practical impact of some of the proposed changes in the 702 program. So, let me start with the current threat landscape.

When I left public service in 2005, we were still very much focused on the 9/11-style attacks, the kind of terrorist threat posed by al Qaeda and groups like that. That threat remains, but since coming back, I’ve learned very quickly how much the threats have changed and diversified. We now face a serious and constantly evolving threat landscape where travel and technology have blurred the lines between foreign and domestic threats. We still have enemies who are plotting the kind of elaborate mass casualty attacks that we suffered on 9/11—attacks that might take months or even years to plot and plan. But that’s not all.

New technologies now allow ISIS and others to recruit, radicalize, and direct people worldwide much more easily and more remotely than ever before, including right here in the U.S. Homegrown violent extremists or lone actors who self-radicalize at home with little warning also continue to be a major concern. We worry that terrorists and others are going to be using, as we’ve seen in Europe, crude but agile methods of attack, from vehicles to drones—attacks that can be planned much more leanly and with fewer participants and executed in a matter of days or even hours instead of weeks or months.

So overall, what that means is we now have a greater volume of arguably more compact threats and much less time to detect and disrupt any one of those potential attacks. We have a much shorter flash to bang, as the professionals would describe it. So, that’s a very thumbnail description of the threat landscape. That volume of threats combined with fewer dots within each one of those threats to connect and much shorter and tighter time windows in which to detect them and connect them puts a huge, huge and obvious premium on agility. One of the things that I’ve also learned since coming back is the tremendous value of the 702 program for just that purpose. That is that agility.

As most of you know, after the 9/11 attacks, our government worked very hard to figure out why we had failed before 9/11 to connect the dots. That’s a phrase that should be familiar to everyone in the audience. As the 9/11 Commission found, a major problem was our inability to take seemingly disparate pieces of information held by different parts of our government—or even sometimes within the same agency—and to integrate those different pieces into a coherent picture. Since then, through a lot of hard work and a lot of motivation by a lot of professionals, we’ve succeeded in changing that dynamic.

The value of Section 702 is that it gives us the lawful ability to connect those dots between foreign threats and homeland targets using information that is already within FBI holdings. I want to make sure people understand that. When you hear about the FBI conducting queries, what they’re doing is doing database checks against databases of information the FBI already has, has already lawfully obtained. So, query, database check, lawfully obtained information we already have. That’s what we’re talking about. That information in our databases gives us the agility we need to stay ahead of those threats.

There’s been some discussion about limiting the FBI’s ability to access that database, accessing its 702 collection, which, I’m telling you now, would create a serious risk to the American public. Every day, the Bureau—across the country and, indeed, across the world—receives tips and leads from lots and lots of different sources: from the public, from other agencies, from state and local law-enforcement, from our international partners. The tips and the leads are flooding in hourly. That’s the good news. The American people rightly expect that we’re going to take every one of those tips and leads seriously and figure out whether that nugget, that fragment of information, represents something innocuous or whether that’s the key flag of the next attack.

To do that, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to figure out which ones are innocuous and which ones are the indication of something really serious at that early stage with that short time window I was describing, we’ve got to be able to connect the dots from the different pieces were getting and figure out whether that nugget fits in with something else we have elsewhere that causes that aha moment that’s so important. The queries of the FBI databases, including the 702 database, is the first step in connecting those dots.

Those queries help us better understand the information, again, that we’ve already lawfully collected from a variety of sources through Section 702 and a lot of other means by allowing us to cross-reference the information. That’s what helps us prioritize and work the threats rather than just randomly working one-off cases. The only way we can do that is by being able to search our data when we get a tip or a lead. So, for that reason, at that early and critical stage, Section 702 is one of the most important tools that we have.

So let me be clear. Obstacles to conducting those database queries will put the American public at greater risk. Obstacles to allowing us to conducting those queries will put the American public at greater risk. They’re going to do that because it will either delay us when time is of the essence in conducting those queries, or worse, in a lot of instances, prevent us from being able to look at all. That’s going to blind us to information that is already lawfully in our possession.

So let me talk a little bit about what 702 is and what it is not. There are a lot of misconceptions out there, and I’m hoping that our discussion afterwards will help us go into a little bit more detail about some of these. But let me just briefly make a few basic points. First, what Section 702 is: Section 702 is a law that has been passed not once but twice by Congress with strong bipartisan support— first in 2008 and then reauthorized in 2012. Section 702 is constitutional, lawful, and consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Every court to consider the 702 program, including the Ninth Circuit, has found that.

A lot of those court holdings, as well as the privacy and civil liberties oversight board, have specifically concluded that those queries I was just describing, the FBI’s queries, that practice itself is consistent both with FISA and with the Constitution. So what that means is all this debate about potentially tinkering with 702, it’s not the Constitution that’s requiring that. That’s not driven by the Constitution. The courts have uniformly held that both the program and the way it’s being executed are constitutional. So a straight reauthorization of 702 would be fully consistent with the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment. So: bipartisan support, fully constitutional.

What else is 702? Section 702 is, as I’ve described, an essential foreign intelligence collection program for the entire intelligence community, including the FBI. But it is a target authority. By that, I mean that the collection is only focused on specific selectors, like a particular e-mail address. Then one last point about what Section 702 is: It is subject to rigorous oversight. Oversight by not just one, not just two, but all three branches of government. I will tell you from a practical perspective, that oversight is demanding. It can be painstaking. It’s certainly resource intensive. But we want to make sure that the program is working the way it should be. So we take that oversight seriously, and we respect that and embrace that.

But that brings me to what Section 702 is not: It is not bulk collection of anybody, not even foreign persons. We in the U.S. government can’t cast a broad net to collect information indiscriminately, and Section 702 doesn’t provide for that. It does not permit targeting surveillance on U.S. persons anywhere in the world, whether they’re here or abroad. It doesn’t even allow targeting of just any foreigner abroad. Even with foreigners there has to be a reasonable expectation that the target will receive or communicate specific types of foreign intelligence information.

The NSA, and you’ve heard from Admiral Rogers already, is the lead agency for the targeting part. One thing you might find reassuring is that the FBI only receives collection for a very small percentage of what the NSA does. So, it’s about 4.3 percent of the targets that are under NSA collection. But that 4.3 percent is unbelievably valuable and important to our mission. So let me be clear here. When we run our queries that I’ve been describing, we’re running those against just a fraction of NSA collection and the NSA collection itself is not bulk collection. We can get NSA collection only for targets that are relevant to ongoing full national security investigations.

So let me close by making clear that this is not an abstract or theoretical debate that we’re having about this tool. This has real-world consequences. Just to give one example, a tip under 702 from the NSA that was crucial in helping the FBI stop an attack on the New York City subway system in 2009. Just stop and process what a successful attack on the New York subway system would look like, feel like, sound like. 702 helped us prevent that.

Take a different kind of example. 702 helped us reveal the terrorist propaganda of an ISIS member, a guy named Shawn Parson, and identified additional members of his network. He was using social media to radicalize and recruit actors for ISIS. Part of his network was encouraging followers online to carry out attacks in Western Europe and right here in the homeland in the U.S. He was even posting the names and addresses of American service members. I just want to quote from his postings in case there’s anybody who missed understands the seriousness of this.

I’m quoting from him: “Kill them in their own lands. Behead then in their own homes. Stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking they are safe.” These are real-world consequences. Those are American servicemen and servicewomen he’s talking about there, and Section 702 helped us break that network, identify the people he was in contact with. So given these kinds of potential consequences, I am, as you might imagine, very concerned about some of the kinds of proposals being discussed in this reauthorization debate. Any material change to the FBI’s use of Section 702 would severely inhibit our ability to keep the American people safe.

I think back to the time that I was in government before on 9/11, right before 9/11, right after 9/11. I think about how hard dedicated men and women throughout the intelligence community worked to try to tear down the walls that had prevented us from connecting all the information that might have been able to prevent those attacks. As I said at the beginning, listening to this debate right now, watching some of the potential ideas that are being floated strikes me as eerily similar to people, well-intentioned, starting to put bricks into a wall. Normally, the idea of imposing more restrictions on our ability at the FBI to do our jobs would be based on some kind of constitutional challenge. That’s not the case here. As I said at the beginning, every court to consider this program has upheld its constitutionality. So it’s not because of the Constitution. But why else might somebody want to impose restrictions? Maybe in the past there have been times when government has abused its power. So maybe that’s a reason to have restrictions. But there’s been no evidence of any kind of abuse of power under Section 702, despite all the oversight I mentioned before, with three branches of government and quite a few years of experience now.

So the proposed changes to Section 702 that you’re hearing about are not based on a need to somehow make this statute constitutional, either as written or as applied. As I’ve noted, it already is. These are policy changes—policy changes based on personal views that people have, again, well-intentioned views, and I respect that, on privacy. But as you can tell, my views are different. I think our responsibility, our role, my duty, the duty of the people at the FBI and in the intelligence community, is that we owe it to the American people to use the full extent of our authorities that are consistent with the Fourth Amendment, and that we shouldn’t be creating gaps and limitations in those authorities simply for policy reasons.

One of the experiences I had in my prior time in government was meeting with the family members of the victims of 9/11. I am not going to look the families of future victims in the eye and tell them that there were things, there was more that we could have done that was fully constitutional, fully within our legal authorities, but that we simply chose not to. I think Americans rightly expect us to use all of the available information that we have and all the tools that we have that are consistent with the Constitution to combat the threats that we face as a country. The FBI has made enormous strides since 9/11 to make sure that it’s doing just that.

So I urge—I implore—Congress to reauthorize Section 702 in its current form so that we can keep using one of the most valuable tools that we have in our toolbox to keep America safe. Thank you for having me here







http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San ... iclerecirc

San Francisco deputy’s assault conviction overturn by court
Tuesday, October 17, 2017

A state appeals court overturned the felony conviction of a San Francisco sheriff’s deputy for assaulting a homeless and disabled man at San Francisco General Hospital, saying Tuesday the trial judge failed to let the jury decide whether the officer’s use of force was necessary.
Michael Lewelling was convicted in October 2015 of assault by an officer and was granted probation, with 100 hours of community service. As a member of the sheriff’s patrol unit at the hospital, he had been charged with illegally attacking Fernando Guanill in the waiting room in November 2014.
Guanill, 60, had come to the hospital in severe pain, and argued with a nurse. He fell asleep while awaiting an appointment, but staff members asked Lewelling to escort him out. The deputy tapped Guanill on the shoulder to wake him, then tried to handcuff him.
In a followup report, Lewelling said Guanill had threatened him and tried to attack him with his cane. Guamill said Lewelling and two other deputies hit and choked him. Prosecutors charged the officer with assault and said a video of the incident showed he was the aggressor.
Guanill sued for damages, and the city agreed to pay a little over $100,000 in a settlement, said Guanill’s lawyer, Randolph Daar.
At Lewelling’s trial, a sheriff’s sergeant who reviewed the deputy’s report testified that Lewelling had used reasonable force to overcome Guanill’s resistance, but that choking him was excessive.
A jury convicted him under a rarely used state law that forbids public officers to assault or beat someone “without lawful necessity.” In Tuesday’s ruling, the First District Court of Appeal said Superior Court Judge Ellen Chaitlin had failed to define “lawful necessity” for the jurors and instead allowed them to decide that any use of force — like pushing Guamill back in his chair — amounted to assault if Lewelling had no legal basis for detaining Guamill.



http://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/17/nf ... gislation/


NFL uses its muscle to endorse sentencing reform legislation
NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart: “We thought it was appropriate to lend our support to it”



Link du jour

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/17/a- ... ife-at-75/



https://www.courthousenews.com/justices ... lty-cases/


https://theintercept.com/2017/10/15/ale ... -policing/


http://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/16/st ... -colorado/


http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Cali ... iclerecirc

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... a-somalia/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/17/di ... artphones/






https://theintercept.com/2017/10/16/ten ... man-fired/

TENNESSEE MAN FIRED FOR SITTING DOWN DURING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

October 16 2017, 5:37 p.m.


TYLER CHANCELLOR STARTED his job as a coach at a kickboxing gym in Chattanooga, Tennessee, less than two weeks ago — the culmination of years of hard work.

“I played football my whole life, and I’ve been around a gym setting and training people — that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life,” he told The Intercept.

He worked at 9Round Fitness for a week before he was fired for sitting down during the national anthem at a boxing event a few weeks ago.

9Round didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Intercept, but confirmed to a local reporter that Chancellor was indeed fired for his political gesture.

Chancellor’s termination occurred amid widespread debate over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, a protest of police brutality started by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

At first, Chancellor said the job was a good fit. “The people were cool, they were fun to be around,” the 24-year-old said. But he soon learned that the owners, Courtney and Phil Grubb, were avid Republicans and that Phil Grubb was a former police officer.

“I never thought anything of them, until one day, we were talking about the NFL, and [Courtney] mentioned her husband didn’t like the NFL because of the protests and what’s going on,” he explained.



On October 7, he decided to sit while others stood for the national anthem at a local sporting event.
He explained to The Intercept that his opposition to police brutality motivated him to remain seated.

“I’m not about to stand up for a flag that means nothing to me,” he said. “That flag stands for justice for all? There’s not justice for all right now.”

His bosses didn’t see it that way. The Monday after Chancellor chose to sit during the anthem, he was promptly fired by Courtney Grubb.

“I was dressed for work, I went to work, I didn’t even get to start my shift,” he said. “She flat-out said. ‘We’re no longer doing business with you because of what you said Saturday night. That’s disrespectful here at 9Round, we don’t do that.'”

Chancellor doesn’t buy arguments that the national anthem protests are an affront to the military. He points out his father is a veteran who served for two decades.

“I’m 24 years old. My dad served 20 years out of my life in the military,” he said. “I know more about the military than my bosses did.”


“I have a son on the way,” Chancellor said, explaining why he needs the job. “That was my means of income for my family, and they took that away from me.”

While some states and cities have enacted laws that protect employees from being fired for expressing political views, there is no federal law that enshrines those labor rights. As the law firm of Parks, Chesin, and Walbert notes: “The First Amendment protects the government from infringing on your speech. It does not prohibit private employers from taking negative employment actions, including termination against you for your political speech.”

Other countries, however, have enshrined a national right to air political views in private fora. As the People’s Policy Project’s Matt Bruenig notes, Denmark’s equivalent of the Civil Rights Act, known as the Anti-Discrimination Act, protects political speech.





https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... heft-ring/

October 17, 2017
Mexican spymaster’s car theft ring shows CIA’s tolerance for corruption
FBI investigation of Agency asset Miguel Nazar Haro put the CIA in direct conflict with the Department of Justice

When Mexican spymaster Miguel Nazar Haro was implicated in a car theft ring operating in both the United States and Mexico, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) moved to prevent prosecution of one of their most valuable assets. As the investigation revealed, however, the web of corruption surrounding Nazar, the head of Directorate of Federal Security (DFS), connected to more than just grand theft auto, with ties to narcotics trafficking, the torture and disappearance of numerous dissidents, and at the murder of DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar.



When a U.S. Attorney wanted to prosecute Nazar for his role in the car theft ring, CIA intervened to protect their asset. As a result of the prosecutor revealing CIA’s obstruction, he was fired by President Reagan.

As it would turn out, the Agency had shared Nazar with the FBI. Former FBI Special Agent John Foarde stated that Nazar and Mexico were both “pretty amenable to cooperate fully” with the Bureau. He also traced Nazar’s relationship with the Bureau back to George Munro, who had worked for the FBI in Mexico before joining the Agency and who had been responsible for their surveillance of the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. According to Foarde, Nazar “was actually developed for the Bureau” by Munro. This not only re-confirms Nazar’s pre-existing relationship with both CIA and FBI, it links Nazar’s work with the Bureau to the Agency.



Before Nazar’s death, he was interviewed by Jefferson Morley and Michael Scott for the book Our Man In Mexico. In the interview, not only did Nazar no longer deny his relationship with CIA, he described “his close working relationship and friendship with [CIA’s Mexico City station chief] between 1960 and 1971.” As a result of his role in Mexico’s police and intelligence forces, he was in a prime position to provide the U.S. Government with information - or not to. When the House Select Committee on Assassinations interviewed Nazar about Lee Harvey Oswald’s mysterious time in Mexico City, he appears to have waved them off and encouraged them to focus their investigation on the time after Oswald had been arrested. This is especially significant in that it was a report by Nazar that provided CIA with some of their intelligence on Oswald’s activities and contacts in Mexico City.



Perhaps far too unsurprisingly, the released FBI file on Nazar barely acknowledges his involvement in drug trafficking or his ties to CIA. While this might be expected due to the connections to CIA and Nazar’s own role as an intelligence officer, the FBI failed to include either their standard GLOMAR for such individuals or a citation of FOIA exemption b(1) (classified information) with the FOIA releases on Nazar. Exemption b(3) was cited only in regards to the rules of federal procedure and grand jury information. If we take the FBI’s response and lack of cited-exemptions at face value, it means that the Bureau was aware of, but chose to ignore connections between a high profile CIA asset/FBI liaison and major trafficking operations that involved stealing cars into Mexico. No mention is made in the released file of Munro or of Nazar’s cooperation with the Bureau.



Nazar’s role in the Mexican police and intelligence establishments, as well as his long history of cooperating with CIA, gave him considerable protection from prosecution. With vehicles being stolen in the United States and transferred into Mexico, prosecution became even less likely and investigation far more difficult. Nazar enjoyed this virtual immunity until November 1980, when the FBI opened an investigation into a car theft and trafficking ring. The investigation ultimately determined that “several thousand” vehicles were stolen and transported into Mexico. The ring’s reach was considerable, extending up to San Francisco, 500 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Given that its reach extended as far east as San Antonio, the car theft ring appears to have operated in up to 850,000 square miles of territory within the United States.



The ring’s tactics will be familiar to investigators with experience in high end car theft: rather than steal cars off the street, the ring’s thieves would visit dealerships and service stations. From there, they would take the keys, either stealing them or taking them with permission for a supposed test drive, and deliver the vehicle to another person who would then deliver the stolen car either into Mexico or directly to Mexican authorities. According to the FBI’s file, it wasn’t unheard for the Mexican authorities, “consisting mainly of elements from the Direccion Federal de Seguridad” (which Nazar led) to come into the United States to help with the theft or delivery of the cars.



According to the 1986 FBI document, at least one of the stolen vehicles was delivered personally to Nazar. This information would later be corroborated by news outlets.



As John Stossol noted on 20/20, the thieves targeted high end cars, with Stossol expressing the view that the high value of the cars made the crimes worse. He did, however, appear to concede that the theft of “a few motor homes” was also unfortunate.



A page from the FBI file, written in 1987, expanded on some of the details of the thieves’ modus operandi:



Eventually, Nazar was indicted, along with twelve other individuals from the DFS, for his role in the car theft ring.



While heavily redacted, the FBI file reveals that part of what led them to Nazar’s involvement in the ring was an informant who had personally delivered a stolen van to Nazar.



The 20/20 segment archived by CIA provides some additional details. Along with the Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Diego, 20/20 explains that Nazar didn’t start the car theft ring - he seized control of it from Gilberto Peraza Mayan.



As a pseudonymous Mexican intelligence officer told 20/20, “The [DFS] has unlimited powers. They can arrest a person and put you in prison there as a political prisoner for life, as long as they want. They don’t have to answer to anyone.” Nazar and DFS acted with impunity in Mexico.



While it was impossible to catch and punish Nazar’s ring in Mexico, they weren’t quite as immune in the U.S. In November of 1980, California’s Highway Patrol stopped two cars stolen by the ring on their way into Mexico, with one of the thieves becoming a Bureau informant. With the help of the informant, the FBI was able to film the car theft ring as they met in a San Diego apartment. At this meeting, one of the DFS agents bragged about their “ability to bring cars and guns into Mexico.”



For eight months, the FBI ran an undercover operation against the ring as hundreds of cars continued to disappear into Mexico. When the car theft ring started smuggling automatic weapons into Mexico as well, the Bureau decided it was time to move.



But when the indictment came down, partially as a result of an assassin apparently having been dispatched to the United States to eliminate the Bureau’s undercover agent, Nazar’s name was conspicuously missing despite the clear evidence against him.



20/20 learned that Nazar had been protected by the U.S. Government, with an FBI cable reportedly saying that damaging Nazar’s interests would damage U.S. national security interests.



According to multiple individuals, including unidentified intelligence personnel and two named members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Agency considered Nazar to be “indispensable” and their “most important source in Mexico and Central America.” Prosecution would endanger that by depriving Nazar of his position of authority. “If we lost him”, DOJ officials were told, “it would be a disaster.” In response to the obstruction, U.S. Attorney William Kennedy went public with the San Diego Union.



As a result of this exposure, Kennedy was pressured to resign. When he refused, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) ultimately decided not to fire him, President Reagan fired him for exposing one of CIA’s sources. According to one report, senior officials at the DOJ had recommended his firing to President Reagan. The reason behind DOJ’s apparent change in position isn’t immediately clear, though it seems extremely unlikely that under the circumstances senior DOJ personnel would have made such a recommendation without at least the indirect support of CIA. According to the Attorney General at the time, Kennedy’s “comments were highly prejudicial to the interests of the United States.” After all, according to the New York Times, “the Federal Security Directorate gathered information used by the Reagan administration to justify assertions of Soviet and Cuban subversion in the region.”

The exposure is one of several factors believed to have contributed to the temporary end of Nazar’s career with law enforcement and intelligence. As a result of Nazar’s cover being blown, CIA ultimately withdrew their objections to prosecution - most of the damage was already done. Nazar, however, still believed he was untouchable. In response to a TIME article that referred to his criminal activities, Nazar decided to come to the United States to file an $11 million lawsuit against the outlet. The FBI used the opportunity to arrest him on February 23rd, 1982.



Bail was set at $1,000,000 with a $200,000 bond, which was promptly paid in cash by an unidentified party.



For its part, the Agency disagreed with the negative press surrounding Nazar, and found at least some of it lacking in objectivity “from the Agency’s point of view” according to a memo sent to the CIA Director. The Agency did not explain in any of their declassified documents what they considered the facts to be or what they thought objective reporting would have looked like. The Agency’s Acting Director for the Office of External Affairs also called 20/20 “more entertainment and muckraking than news” in response to their reporting on Nazar.



As a result of having skipped out on bail and still being wanted in the United States, officials quickly determined that Nazar was unlikely to return. Once a bench warrant was issued, it seemed all but certain that he wouldn’t come back. After he missed the deposition for his lawsuit against TIME, the lawsuit was dismissed by a U.S. District Court Judge.



Once Nazar had returned to Mexico, the FBI’s Special Agents in San Diego - at least some of whom had worked on the case and participated in the arrest of Nazar - were warned “not to enter Mexico for safety reasons.”



The perceived danger was likely real. Another memo referred to a specific threat against the FBI and/or the DEA in relation to the case.



In addition to his more common criminal activities and threats made against law enforcement, Nazar was known for his considerable role in Mexico’s Dirty War, which saw the disappearance of an estimated 1,200 individuals. Nazar was personally infamous for his brutality and would be accused and tried for the disappearance of several high profile individuals. The United States, however, was unable to extradite Nazar despite the treaty that was in place, and the Government of Mexico declined to prosecute Nazar. He was prosecuted several years for his actions during the dirty war, though he would be acquitted apparently as a result of insufficient legal evidence.



By this time, Nazar’s career with the DFS was finished - though he would later return to the Mexican intelligence apparatus, where he would officially reconnect with its web of corruption, as discussed later.



For its part, the Agency offered a weak defense for its protection of Nazar. According to the defense CIA and DOJ offered to the New York Times, the story had been “misreported, [and CIA] exerted absolutely no pressure on Justice to protect Mr. Nassar Haro, and merely responded properly to a legitimate query from the Criminal Division. Mark Richard, an old pro at the division, resolutely confirms the C.I.A. account, and explains that the indictment was originally blocked because the department wanted to be sure that no ‘’greymail’‘ - threats to expose national secrets - would be used in the defense, and to make that determination required delays.”



The Agency’s explanation seems to ring only half true. Nazar’s known activities involving the Agency not only stretched back decades, but were also very recent and potentially damaging. Nazar’s knowledge not only would have let him use graymail against the Agency, but given him enough information to fabricate especially damaging lies. These lies would’ve become both graymail and blackmail, as the Agency would need to use classified information to disprove allegations that Nazar could have made. These accusations could have not only resulted in embarrassment and the burning of CIA sources and methods, but the release of spies who had been imprisoned for providing information to Russia in the case that would form the basis for The Falcon and the Snowman.

Read Part Two tomorrow.



https://www.courthousenews.com/no-forfe ... pd-admits/

No Forfeiture-Database Backup With Millions on the Line, NYPD Admits
October 17, 2017
MANHATTAN
New York City is one power surge away from losing all of the data police have on millions of dollars in unclaimed forfeitures, a city attorney admitted to a flabbergasted judge on Tuesday.

“That’s insane,” Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arlene Bluth said repeatedly from the bench.





http://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/16/fo ... l-contact/


Former Commerce City police officer convicted of unlawful sexual contact
The officer, who later resigned, fondled two women during DUI traffic stops
John Reinhart, 24, was accused of fondling two women as he arrested them on suspicion of DUI on separate occasions in December 2015. He was convicted by a jury on two misdemeanor charges, according to the Adams County District Attorney’s Office.

The incidents involved a 34-year-old woman and a 36-year-old woman. Reinhart was acquitted on a third charge involving a 22-year-old woman in September 2015.








http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/s ... -1.3571312

Swiss investor thanks God ‘white people populated America, and not the blacks’
BY JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 9:46 AM





http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/l ... -1.3571578


Lego introduces 'Women of NASA' sets featuring female astronauts and scientists, but ‘Hidden Figures’ inspiration not included
BY ARIEL SCOTTI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 12:45 PM

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3598064

Woman attacked at Tennessee bar after 'White Lives Matter' rallygoers ask her to leave black boyfriend
BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 29, 2017, 11:16 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3598085

NYPD surgeon questioned for allegedly driving woman to his Brooklyn home, raping her
BY JOHN ANNESE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 29, 2017, 11:33 PM







FBI grooming Trump for President knew 30 years ago about Trump muck starting with his father
and Trump's relationship to Roy Cohn
Better get used to it the FBI elects our political leaders

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3597241

Wire transfers connected to Paul Manafort were flagged to feds as far back as 2012
BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 29, 2017, 11:06 AM











http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/r ... -1.3596164



Ramsey Orta says he's been beaten by jail guards, thrown in solitary as retaliation for filming Eric Garner death


BY STEPHEN REX BROWN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 29, 2017, 5:01 AM







https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... dle-finger

Hail to the chief: cyclist gives Trump the middle finger
Woman makes her feelings clear as she is overtaken by the US president’s motorcade on its way back from golf club




We live about 2 miles from Woods End Composting in Mount Vernon Maine

https://woodsend.org

http://bangordailynews.com/2017/10/28/h ... echnology/


Maine at the cutting edge of compost technology








http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3595414


Illinois judge, 65, shocked to learn she’s on ‘known terrorist list’


BY JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, October 28, 2017, 12:44 PM




https://www.boston.com/culture/lifestyl ... trek-scene

6 pumpkin carving tips from the guy who can sculpt an entire ‘Star Trek’ scene





https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/us/p ... ility.html








F.B.I. Agents Faced Arrest and Ruin After Trying to Conceive a Child



Oct. 28, 2017

Matthew Litton was fired from the F.B.I. after failing to disclose drugs he was taking to deal with infertility. He has been ordered reinstated, though it is unclear if he will ever be able to rejoin the F.B.I., and he now has two daughters. Credit Justin Gilliland for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Matthew Litton, a former Army officer and member of the F.B.I.’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, choked up as he sat in a courtroom in Virginia earlier this year, questioned by his lawyer about his infertility problems.





Media and Public Relations - FBI-LEEDA

FBI-LEEDA is pleased to present a 4 1/2-day course on media and public relations. Police cannot succeed without the support of the community they are sworn to protect. The image of an agency as a professional and ...



Hunterdon 200 Club to host FBI special agent
MyCentralJersey.com-
The 200 Club of Hunterdon County will host Timothy Gallagher, the FBI's Special Agent in Charge of the Newark Division of the FBI on Wednesday,



https://whowhatwhy.org/2014/04/09/media ... ok-review/

MEDIA FAIL
APRIL 9, 2014 | STEVE WEINBERG
HOW THE MEDIA CONNED THE PUBLIC INTO LOVING THE FBI: BOOK REVIEW





“Press Every Angle”: FBI Public Relations and the “Smear Campaign” of 1958: American Journalism: Vol 19, No 1 - Taylor & Francis ...

by M Cecil · 2002 · Cited by 4 · Related articles
Jun 3, 2013 · When criticized by writer Fred J. Cook in The Nation, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his associates declared a communist-organized smear campaign was under way and quietly called upon a trusted ...




Link du jour
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... re-worried

http://www.mattcremona.com

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... -interview



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


https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-in ... r-is-fluid




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... zi-rallies

White nationalists were heavily outnumbered by around 600 counter-protesters during a Saturday afternoon “White Lives Matter” rally in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, that passed off uneventfully after police kept the two groups separated.




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... harper-lee



Mississippi students allowed to read To Kill a Mockingbird – with a parent's note
Biloxi officials had pulled novel from lesson plan for junior high students






https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ly-exhumed

Body of Iraq WMD dossier scientist David Kelly exhumed
Family of weapons expert who killed himself in 2003 asked for his grave to be dug up owing to fears it was being desecrated






https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... y-sex-toys



Cabinet Office to investigate after minister admits asking assistant to buy sex toys
Conservative MP Mark Garnier admits Caroline Edmondson’s claims, as sexual harassment allegations swirl around Westminster





https://www.boston.com/sports/new-engla ... -franchise



Big men with broken minds: The largely forgotten faces of the Patriots franchise



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3597680

Two SEALs being investigated after a Green Beret is strangled in Mali
BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Sunday, October 29, 2017, 5:30 PM





https://robertscribbler.com/2017/10/29/ ... s-step-in/


Whitefish Puerto Rico Contract Cancelled, Now How About Letting Renewable Industry Leaders Step in?
by robertscribbler
At this blog I often cover how climate change is worsening the global weather situation. How fossil fuel burning is the primary cause of climate change. How renewable energy adoption is the primary means for removing global carbon emissions. And how bad, on our present track, climate change outcomes could become.

What I often do not talk about in main posts (though we see quite a bit in the comments section) is how underlying factors such as political corruption and the ideologies supportiing that corruption can harm effective responses to climate change.

Who would you rather have rebuild PR grid? US clean energy leader #Tesla. Or #Whitefish, a firm that has more investors than employees?

— Robert Fanney (@robertscribbler) October 29, 2017

Witness Puerto Rico. A U.S. territory that has suffered a very severe blow from one of the worst hurricanes ever to make landfall in the Caribbean. A storm fed by the warming waters of human caused climate change which were, in turn, fed by a rampant and harmful climate change denial afflicting a number of our powerful political leaders.

There, electricity has now been largely knocked out for more than a month. U.S. Citizens have been forced to go without water, power, and basic life-saving medical services. The Trump Administration's response to the disaster could best be described as incompetent. More incompetent than the Bush Administration during Katrina. And that's being generous.

Great piece! We published something today that looks at the energy democracy piece of this in more depth: https://t.co/i0HJq7ZbRH

— Next System Project (@TheNextSystem) October 20, 2017

Though people died during the storm, a far more substantial death toll is emerging due to the Administration's lagging response. With 900 people now estimated to have perished as a result of life-threatening conditions due to a loss of infrastructure and due to Trump's larger failure to rapidly deploy a necessary massive relief and restoration effort.

If this spiraling situation wasn't bad enough, Trump Administration incompetence has been followed on by allegations of corruption. The most glaring example comes in the form of a recently cancelled 300 million dollar contract with Whitefish to restore power on Puerto Rico -- a small contracting firm reported to have only two permanent employees, links to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and whose larger investors are known Trump donors.

.@CARMENYULINCRUZ tells #AMJoy why she believes the Whitefish company’s contract must be cancelled. Like to agree. pic.twitter.com/6RHEJvSFZ0

— AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) October 29, 2017

Due to the fact that this contract appeared to contain a number of conflicts of interest that looked like a 'pay for play' arrangement, and due to concerns over a privatized grab for control of Puerto Rico's energy grid, both Republican and Democratic leaders have called for an investigation into the power repair contract. FEMA had also flagged the contract for potential problems. Meanwhile, review of the contract has found a number of cases that could best be construed as over-charging. According to NPR:

Much of the controversy that has surrounded the contract has focused on the high rates Whitefish is charging for labor. The contract shows those labor rates are pricey indeed: $240 an hour for a general foreman and $227 for a lineman. The per diems are also expensive: almost $80 a day for meals, and $332 a day for lodging. Employee flights are billed at $1,000 each way. For subcontractors, the bulk of Whitefish's workforce, the prices go even higher. A general foreman costs $336 an hour and a lineman, $319.

The combined allegations of corruption, overcharging, and various links to the Trump Administration are all hallmarks of vulture disaster capitalism -- where private firms exploit government contracts following disasters or military conflict to bilk exorbitant sums from the government (and by extension the taxpayer) while providing only standard or substandard service. Such exploitation comes along with a policy push for privatization of previously provided government services. And there was serious concern that the Whitefish contract would result in just such a privatized electrical grid in Puerto Rico following over-charging and possible shoddy work.

The new emergency manager of Puerto Rico's Electric Power Authority plans to privatize it “as soon as possible.” https://t.co/hmwZcV9jHx

— The Intercept (@theintercept) October 26, 2017

Today, amid rising scandal, both Puerto Rico's governor and the mayor of San Juan called for the cancellation of the Whitefish contract. Work already started by Whitefish will be completed -- this includes refurbishing two major power lines. But the contract is expected to be awarded to a less shady agency going forward. San Juan's mayor, on AM Joy today called for work to be led by companies like Tesla or Southern California Edison -- both of which have substantial experience with both grids and renewables.

Tesla, for its own part, restored power for a children's hospital by providing solar + power packs without any incentive. The renewable energy company has become increasingly involved in building power systems for islands and helping to stabilize grids through its renewables based energy storage. Tesla played a pivotal role in providing solar+battery based power for the Hawaiian island of Kauai. It has also worked with Australia to provide batteries to assist in grid stabilization activities.

Today, only 24% of PuertoRico’s power has been restored. But here’s some good news. https://t.co/cWpvNR7igs

— Katharine Hayhoe (@KHayhoe) October 25, 2017

Given Tesla's long track record and due to the fact that Tesla workers were already on the ground helping Puerto Ricans, it was a no-brainer add this company to a mixed list of experienced corps in assisting the power restoration effort. In addition, renewable energy systems like those provided by Tesla help to mitigate the root causes of the climate change related extreme weather that has so terribly damaged Puerto Rico -- putting of the U.S. citizens there in danger. A fact that was obviously missing in the decision to hire Whitefish -- a company with practically zero renewable energy chops.

And it is here that we need to return to the basic problem that arises from having climate change deniers as leaders in government. First, such politicians tend to favor contracts by fossil fuel companies, or worse, by shady firms like Whitefish. They also tend to be ideologically opposed to actual functional government -- which leads to harmful privatization, related over-charging, and exploitation following disasters. In other words, such ideologues on the right leave wide open the door to corruption by establishing links with shady corporations. Finally, they tend to block more upstanding corporate players like Southern California Edison and Tesla who have a track record for building public utilities up by establishing solid renewable energy systems rather than by tearing them down by seeking to ram through fossil fuel linked privatization.

RELATED STATEMENTS AND INFORMATION:

It was similarly appointed "emergency managers" who made the fateful decisions that poisoned Flint. These financial coups are not neutral. https://t.co/hrlYqCHdY2

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) October 26, 2017

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://apnews.com/0f8d5d7c2429453aad9dcbd343b420a9


ACLU: New Mexico deputies kept pulling over black US agent


Dec. 07, 2017

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

A black female federal immigration agent on assignment in New Mexico was repeatedly pulled over by sheriff’s deputies — and twice by the same deputy — with no probable cause, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.

The group filed a lawsuit Tuesday in state district court on behalf of Sherese Crawford, 38, against the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department stemming from three traffic stops that the ACLU said amounted to racial profiling.


Crawford, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation agent, was first stopped in April on suspicion of driving a stolen car but was actually driving a rental car provided by her agency, the lawsuit said.

Later that month, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Deputy Patrick Rael then pulled her over for tailgating, the lawsuit said. When he examined Crawford’s license, court documents said he recognized her name and asked her if she had been pulled over the week before. Rael said he remembered Crawford’s name because an officer also with her federal agency and a sheriff’s deputy present at the first stop had said that she had an “attitude,” according to the lawsuit.

Days later, Rael pulled over Crawford for driving too slow, the lawsuit claimed.

Crawford did not receive warnings or citations during any of the traffic stops, the lawsuit said.

“Our client is an accomplished federal agent who was targeted for driving while black,” said ACLU of New Mexico attorney Kristin Greer Love. “BCSO unlawfully and repeatedly stopped her because she fit a racial profile. Targeting people because of the color of their skin is unconstitutional and bad policing.”

Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Felicia Maggard said the department cannot comment on pending litigation. A Facebook message left seeking comment with the union representing sheriffs’ deputies, the Bernalillo County Deputy Sheriff’s Association, was not immediately returned.

The ACLU seeks an unspecified amount in damages for Crawford and policy changes on racial profiling within sheriff’s department.

According to the department’s website, Undersheriff Rudy Mora, during his two decades in law enforcement, has helped to develop various policies, including one addressing racial profiling.

As for the sheriff’s office, Maggard said its standard operating procedures are posted online.


Those procedures state that the department takes seriously any allegations of bias-based policing. Deputies who witness incidents or are aware of them are required to report them to supervisors.

The lawsuit comes as the Bernalillo County deputies who patrol the state’s largest metro area in and around Albuquerque have been involved in nine shootings in a four-month period, spurring criticism from civil rights groups and activists.

Sheriff Manuel Gonzales also has drawn criticism for saying that no one has provided him with data showing that body cameras on deputies make the community safer.

He said last month that he won’t require his deputies to wear them because he said the media would use the footage to criticize the officers. Gonzales told KOAT-TV that the video “gives a lopsided, one-sided story, which I think is a disservice to the whole





http://thehill.com/homenews/media/36563 ... inst-trump

Fox guest floats possibility of FBI assassination plot against Trump
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 12/19/17 02:16 PM EST 303






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3710594

San Francisco cop being probed for sex with a minor kills self in mall parking lot


, December 20, 2017, 4:07 AM

One used a gun that fires bean bags to break a window and discovered Cacatian’s body inside. Cacatian was under investigation over allegations that he may have committed sexual acts with a child under the age of 14 in 2014, Las Vegas Metropolitan police spokeswoman Laura Meltzer told the San Francisco Chronicle.







http://www.phillytrib.com/justice-serve ... 12396.html


Justice served in South Carolina
The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina Dec 19, 2017
Justice was not swift, but it has been served.

On Dec. 8, U.S. District Judge David Norton sentenced former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager to 20 years in prison for the shooting death of Walter Scott, bringing to an end a painful chapter in the city’s history.

Mr. Norton’s decision came on the third day of testimony in a sentencing hearing after Mr. Slager pled guilty in May to federal civil rights charges. Mr. Slager shot Mr. Scott in the back five times in April 2015 as Mr. Scott was running away from police following a routine traffic stop.

Judge Norton had a wide range of sentencing options: Mr. Slager could have received a life sentence or he could have been set free.

It is frustrating that the case could not have been resolved in a state trial, which ended with a hung jury in December. Consequently, Mr. Slager, who is white, was sentenced under a federal civil rights violation of using excessive force to deprive Mr. Scott, a black man, of his rights under the law.

The underlying charge was second-degree murder, according to Judge Norton. The federal prison system does not have parole, meaning that Mr. Slager will have to serve his entire term, barring a successful appeal.

Mr. Slager’s guilty plea and his sentence mark milestones in the ongoing effort to bring greater accountability to police departments and address racial disparities in policing both here in the Lowcountry and nationwide.

It is a particularly critical moment for North Charleston.

The city still struggles with violence — this year has been its deadliest on record — and a strong and effective police department is as important as ever. But the work of keeping North Charleston residents safe will rightly proceed with supportive oversight from citizens who have stepped up to serve on a police review board.





Ever since cellphone video evidence surfaced revealing that Mr. Slager shot Mr. Scott in the back as he was fleeing, the North Charleston Police Department and city officials, including Mayor Keith Summey, acted commendably in condemning Mr. Slager’s actions and working to improve the city’s law enforcement.

The city’s swift and decisive action helped prevent the kind of unrest that has harmed other communities like Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore. North Charleston set an example that other cities dealing with officer-involved shootings would be wise to follow.

But







https://www.courthousenews.com/house-to ... coattails/


House to Attempt to Pass Spy Bill Without Treading Coattails


December 19, 2001
WASHINGTON

House Republicans will attempt to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program that allows the government to collect foreign intelligence on U.S. soil without attaching it to any spending bills or other must-pass legislation.

The high-stakes plan, according to GOP lawmakers who attended a conference meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan Tuesday morning, is to release one reauthorization bill that combines recommendations previously endorsed by the House and Senate Intelligence committees, and the House Judiciary Committee.

The decision to handle reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as a separate item comes amid outcry from a handful of Senate Republicans, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah.

Both Rand and Lee warned Tuesday that their support for any short-term spending bill to keep the government open beyond next week would only be granted if permanent reauthorization was taken off the table and renewal wasn’t rammed through without debate.

Section 702, which was adopted in 2008 and renewed in 2012, grants intelligence agencies the ability to collect “foreign intelligence that is vital to protect the nation against international terrorism and other threats.”

The program is regularly blasted by Democrats as well as privacy and civil rights advocates. They contend Section 702 is a thinly-veiled domestic spy program that tramples the Constitutional rights of ordinary, law-abiding Americans.

On Tuesday, Sen. Paul dismissed the idea of a permanent reauthorization, saying the intelligence community needed “more oversight, not less.”

Sen. Lee agreed, saying, “a permanent reauthorization of Section 702 would be completely unacceptable.”

Section 702 will expire on December 31 unless Congress acts.

Paul and Lee share common ground with democratic Sens. Ron Wyden, of Oregon, and Patrick Leahy, of Vermont.

Both Wyden and Leahy have long opposed permanent reauthorization. Republican Sen. Steve Daines, of Montana, has also called for short-term renewal only.

Wyden and Paul aren’t strangers to collaboration. The lawmakers cosponsored a Section 702 reform bill, the USA Rights Act, in October. That legislation specifically called for an end to backdoor searches on Americans.

“[The CIA and the NSA conduct] more than 5,000 searches for the content of Americans’ communications and more than 30,000 for metadata,” Wyden wrote for Just Security, a New York University-affiliated think tank.

“Opponents of reform also fail to mention that the FBI’s backdoor searches, which it refuses to even count, can be conducted for evidence of a crime or for foreign intelligence unrelated to terrorism, or that the results of those searches can be used by the government for purposes that have nothing to do with national security,” he continued.

The legislation has since stalled.

Another bill, sponsored by Rep. Devin Nunes, of California, would not only reauthorize the surveillance program through 2021, but would also increase the power granted to intelligence agencies.

Nunes’ bill redefines statutory terms like “foreign power” and “agent of foreign power” to include cyber-related activities deemed a national security threat.

In a possible combination bill, like Sen. Ryan suggested Tuesday, lawmakers would be tasked with balancing three different proposed revisions.

In addition to a change of terms in Section 702, the House Intelligence Committee’s bill also creates a new hurdle for the FBI: agents must first obtain a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before conducting a search on a “known United States person.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s proposed legislation goes a step further and demands the FBI, in criminal cases, obtain a warrant before even viewing a single query on an American whose information may be in the National Security Agency database.

This would not apply to counterterrorism or counterintelligence cases, however.

Regardless of the hurdles, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Tuesday it fully expects Section 702 to survive.

“If Congress did not reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act by year-end, Section 404(b) of that statute makes very clear that ‘any order, authorization, or directive issued or made under title VII of [FISA] … shall continue in effect until the date of the expiration of such order, authorization, or directive,’” the office said in a statement.










https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... 19/mkruby/

December 19, 2017
After he shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby’s psychosis was diagnosed by the same CIA doctor who had once killed an elephant with psychedelics
MKULTRA researcher wanted to continue his mind control experiments at the same time he was treating Ruby
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
Some researchers in the JFK assassination community are aware of the fact that one of the doctors that treated Jack Ruby was none other than Louis Jolyon West, a figure equally infamous for allegedly killing an elephant with LSD and for his work in MKULTRA - the Central Intelligence Agency’s infamous interrogation, hypnosis, and mind control program. An analysis of available documents from the CIA’s declassified archives and the recovered MKULTRA files shows that not only did West want to continue his work with the Agency during the period he was treating Ruby, the University he researched at thought that’s exactly what he was doing.



In August of 1977, CIA attorney Anthony A. Lapham sent out a form letter to eighty or more institutions which had been used in the MKULTRA program and whose identities were suddenly revealed in the cache of documents that had recently been discovered to have escaped the shredding and burning of all MKULTRA-related files ordered by former CIA Director Richard Helms. When Paul F. Sharp, the president of the University of Oklahoma, received his letter he wrote back to the Agency and requested “all information possible” about the project’s operations at the University. To date, neither Sharp’s letter nor the CIA’s response have been made public, although a copy of the form letter sent by Lapham has been located.



In a UPI article published by the New York Times, Sharp reveals the the University performed LSD tests on animals in the 1960s, which included the time period when West killed Tusko the elephant with LSD (and other drugs). According to an Associated Press article, the university president believed that this referred to the research that had been conducted by West. According to the same article, West said that he received funds from the Geschickter Fund sometime “before coming to Oklahoma.” Surviving MKULTRA documents and his resume show that he began MKULTRA work with money from the “Geschickter Foundation for Medical Research” in 1955 - the year he came to the University of Oklahoma.

West also said that his LSD research was limited to animals, although it’s known from the recovered documents that he worked with humans. While he publicly denied being aware that the project was CIA funded, documents show that he was explicitly aware of it and he was in direct contact with the CIA project heads.



A recovered CIA document listing different MKULTRA subprojects shows that Subproject 43, associated with West and occurring at the University of Oklahoma, began in 1955 and ended in 1956 (when he also retired from the Air Force). The LSD work with animals that he and Sharp referred to took place years later and may or may not have involved human experimentation (although it’s known that his earlier work did). It might be easy to dismiss this, if not for the proposal for West to continue his MKULTRA work with CIA for another 11 years.

Other researchers who previously examined some of the documents embedded at the bottom of the article missed crucial facts. Colin Ross’ examination in The CIA Doctors describes the proposal, but fails to note the fact that it was written after the $20,000+ documented funds that West received from CIA. The letter accompanied with the proposal is dated February 1956, and clearly references upcoming work for the next fiscal year.



In the first subsection of the proposal itself, West says that he wants to continue the work for another 11 years. ”It is proposed that the experiments begun during 1955-56 involving hypnotizability, suggestibility, and the roles of certain drugs in altering these attributes, be continued and extended during 1956-67.” This would place West’s treatment of Ruby about three years before the proposed end of this particular MKULTRA subproject. In the proposal, West describes several elements of experiments that match the isolated experience of Ruby and West’s stated reason for going to see him.



Ruby had an isolated cell constructed for him to live in as he awaited his fate and contemplated the possibility of being executed. The proposal stated that “There is reason to believe that environmental manipulations can affect the tendencies for dissociative phenomena to occur. Isolation, in particular, can markedly change the individual’s response to suggestion in the form of verbal communication. It is proposed that new experiments utilizing special environmental manipulations, including sensory isolation, be begun …”

West’s proposal specifies that these can produce marked personality changes, which Ruby appeared to have undergone in West’s examination of him. The report asserts that Ruby was psychotic and delusional at the time.



In his report, West said that “hypnosis and intravenous sodium pentothal were included among possible techniques” to be used on Ruby. In his proposal to CIA for continuing his MKULTRA work with them, he proposed that “the combined use of hypnotic techniques and autonomic drugs be exercised.” Sodium pentothal, as a barbiturate, is one such autonomic drug that - frequently used in various MKULTRA experiments and other interrogation or hypnosis related programs. In total, West requested an additional $35,995.00 for the next year’s work, not including the other ten years of research he had proposed. This included $5000.00 for “polygraphic, electroencephalographic, electromyographic, and special stimulatory apparatus.”



The Agency’s response to West’s proposal was apparently ordered destroyed along with all the other MKULTRA records. However, he continued to appear in CIA files as late as 1991. According to one document, West was indirectly involved in the STARGATE program which had a surprising amount of crossover with MKULTRA and its sister programs. While this particular project was undertaken by the Defence Intelligence Agency, the CIA’s counterpart in the Department of Defense, it was considered a CIA equity.

According to the document, “Serious government-funded research of both these domains began in 1973 when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) initiated a modest effort to determine if a genuine anomalous phenomenon could be verified and to assess the degree to which it could be applied to general intelligence problems.” Coincidentally, 1973 is the same year that the MKULTRA program was officially terminated.

While the research project’s stated goal was studying anomalous phenomena such as remote viewing and remote interference, the experiments themselves focused on remotely altering someone’s perceptions and nervous system, essentially making the research dual-purpose. If it had been successful, the research could have been used not only as part of a psychic remote viewing program but to design a way to remotely interfere with someone’s perceptions, personality, or consciousness. While many of the documents relating to this program wound up in declassified CIA files, being CIA equities and an extension of a CIA program, many more seem to remain classified.

Whatever evidence there was about CIA’s continuing relationship with West, and whether or not they accepted his proposal to continue his MKULTRA research, was destroyed decades ago. This blanket destruction removed any chance to properly exonerate the Agency, leaving just enough information to provide disturbing glimpses into the potential connections between Ruby and MKULTRA after Oswald was assassinated.

You can see a selection of CIA documents relating to West below, along with the report of his examination of Ruby and his description of the latter’s psychosis.


CIA CREST Database
Image by Jack Beers via Wikimedia Commons




http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/ ... utsid.html

Cleveland plans to hire outside company to investigate outstanding citizen complaints against police officers

Updated Dec 18, 3:38 PM; Posted Dec 18, 1:52 PM
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The city of Cleveland plans to hire a private company to complete a backlog of unfinished investigations into citizen complaints filed against police officers.

The new measure was detailed in a court filing the city filed Friday that outlines its plans to prop up the beleaguered Office of Professional Standards, which has struggled for years to either complete investigations or conduct them in a proper fashion.

In general, the city's plan calls for the six full-time investigators and six temporary ones to eventually focus solely on completing investigations into complaints filed in 2018. Employees from an outside investigative company, once hired and trained, would address the backlog of cases filed between 2015 and 2017, according to the court filing.

There were 378 open investigations as of Nov. 30, with 218 of those coming from complaints filed in 2015 and 2016, the filing says. The city anticipates it will receive between 200 and 240 complaints in the coming year.

(You can read the filing here or at the bottom of this story.)

A federal monitor hired in 2015 as part of a settlement the city reached with the Justice Department found hundreds of cases stretching back to 2014 were in various stages of completion and has also been critical of the investigations OPS has completed.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... S-Plan.pdf





Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/en ... -1.3710865


http://www.fedcops.org/2013/01/02/fbi-a ... out-pants/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3710128


http://www.sciencemag.org


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... s-reissued









http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3710147

Alleged lewd cop accused of flashing three more girls in the Bronx



Wednesday, December 20, 2017, 12:08 AM



Four more people, three of them young girls, are accusing an NYPD cop of exposing himself to them in the Bronx.

Adam Fridson, 43, who was busted in October on charges he flashed two young girls, was hit with two new public lewdness and child endangerment charges Tuesday in Bronx criminal court.

In the first new case, he beckoned a woman to his SUV on Merry and Corrington Aves. in Schuylerville on Jan. 10, and asked for directions, according to a criminal complaint.

He allegedly was exposed and masturbating when she approached.

Off-duty cop arrested for allegedly flashing young girls in Bronx
“Do you want to watch?” he asked, according to the complaint.

On Oct. 13, he exposed himself to a 12-year-old girl, and two 13-year-old girls, at a bus stop





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3710218



ALBANY — A coalition of child abuse survivors and advocates is pushing for a meeting with the head of the state Senate to discuss passing a bill designed to make it easier for victims to bring cases as adults.

The coalition, New Yorkers Against Hidden Predators, requested the meeting after Senate GOP Leader John Flanagan recently told the Daily News that he would be “more than willing to sit down to have real adult conversations that inure to the benefit of everyone.”

The Senate GOP has blocked the Child Victims Act from coming to the floor for a vote. The Assembly earlier this year passed the bill for the first time since 2008.

In the letter to Flanagan (R-Suffolk County), New Yorkers Against Hidden Predators said “we have been, and continue to be, ready to meet with you to convince you of the merits of the legislation and encourage you to stop blocking the bill.”

“Senator, as the #metoo movement sweeps the nation, calling out those who failed to protect the vulnerable, you do not want to be on the wrong side of history,” the coalition’s founders, Marci Hamilton, Stephen Jimenez and Kathryn Robb wrote.







http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3711532

FBI once feared ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ featured communist themes
BY PETER SBLENDORIO





FBI Octopus




https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/12/19/wh ... al-agents/
ñpp
Why Silicon Valley Is Hiring Ex-Federal Agents




FBI Anti-Bribery Official To Leave for Consulting Firm
Wall Street Journal
An anti-bribery official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leaving government for Exiger, a compliance risk consulting firm. George “Ren” McEachern, a supervisory special agent in the Washington, D.C. field office for the FBI's international corruption unit, will leave government at the end of the year, the FBI confirmed.








http://beta.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... t07a-14gp2

Sheriff McDonnell was not aware of some misconduct, says list of problem deputies is key to reform


DEC 19, 2017 | 8:50 AM




J. EDGAR, CALL YOUR OFFICE!
Exclusive: Barry Farber is old enough to remember when Americans revered the FBI

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2017/12/j-edgar-call ... YYIadx3.99





http://www.whas11.com/news/local/tripwi ... /500786424

‘TRIPwire' program links business owners, Lou. FBI agents spot potential terrorists




https://www.villagevoice.com/2012/12/11 ... ck-driver/


FBI Agent Arrested For Driving Without Pants and Allegedly Trying to Seduce a Truck Driver

by JASON LEWIS








https://www.denverpost.com/2017/12/19/w ... petitions/


White House takes down “We the People” petitions site without responding to a single one
The White House has taken down a popular online tool created by the Obama administration that allowed citizens to create online petitions, some of which required an official response.






https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ch-stories



The Texas boys were beaten, abused, raped. Now all they want is an apology
The youngsters at Cal Farley’s Ranch in Texas were subjected to years of abuse. But the institution’s feeble response has been a slap in the face to survivors
Steve Smith brought together victims in a Facebook group. They say the abuse was systemic, affecting hundreds of others who went through the Ranch.




Wed 20 Dec ‘17 06.00 EST Last modified on Wed 20 Dec ‘17 10.04


Steve Smith was just eight when his mother left him in the care of Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, a Texas institution for at-risk children. From the moment he got there in 1959, the place didn’t sit right with him.

“I cried probably more than any boy that I know that came out [of] there, just homesick, and I didn’t take it very well.”

Almost immediately upon his arrival, Steve was subject to the first of many beatings. For the following decade, he endured regular and arbitrary violence at the hands of staff. He also had to watch helplessly as his younger brother, Rick, was beaten by adults until he couldn’t stand.


Along with the physical punishment, Steve’s pets were killed, and his friends were worked to the bone in atrocious conditions. Some boys, including Rick Smith, were also sexually abused while under the care of the ranch.

The ordeal has permanently damaged their lives.

At the kitchen table in his immaculate home in the Amarillo suburbs, Steve, now almost 70, goes through all of the details of what happened to him without showing much pain. He’s a tough man – he served in the Vietnam war and was wounded in the line of duty – and his piercing blue eyes only sprout tears twice.

The first time is when he describes how a succession of dogs he owned, all called Boots, were killed by staff members. The other is when he talks about what happened to his younger brother Rick, and how powerless he was to help him.

Rick, Steve, and six other men the Guardian spoke to named staff members responsible for the abuse, which lasted from the 1950s until at least the early 1990s. They say the abuse went beyond them, and was systemic, affecting hundreds of others who went through the ranch.

They say Lamont Waldrip, a long-serving superintendent, was one of the worst abusers. Last month, at the behest of a wealthy donor who wrote a cheque for $1m to build a new dormitory, the ranch named the new building Waldrip House.

The ranch’s current CEO, Dan Adams, acknowledged the weight of the accusations against Waldrip, who died in 2013, but he said that other boys had had “very different experiences” with him and “admired and liked” him.

For the survivors who want to make the ranch accountable for the abuse – and have been encouraged to break their silence after Steve Smith brought them together in a Facebook group – this is an unbearable affront.

A very wealthy ranch – and a revolt

Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch is accustomed to the generosity of well-heeled donors, but is less used to having its reputation called into question. Almost since its foundation, the “Christ-centered” but nondenominational institution has been a byword in Texas for juvenile reform and a can-do spirit. There is no suggestion that there is abuse at Cal Farley’s now – indeed, there is broad acknowledgment, even from advocates for the men, that current practices at the ranch are in line with the best in the sector.

With 100 direct employees and 526 across its subsidiaries, it is no small fish, and notable individuals from the ranching and oil industries queue up to serve on its board. Cheques like the one that funded Waldrip House are not unusual: the most recent publicly available tax filings show an annual income for the ranch just north of $56.8m. About $43m of that came from contributions and grants. The ranch also owns parcels of land as far away as California.

The ranch’s founder, Cal Farley, was a professional wrestler and Amarillo businessman. He had been a prominent college athlete before he moved to Amarillo, where he gained prominence as the owner of a tire shop. Throughout the 1930s, he ran a sporting club, The Mavericks, which tried to channel the energies of troubled and abandoned boys in the panhandle. Eventually he was gifted land in Tascosa, a ghost town, by a local rancher, so he could set up a more permanent home for the boys.

But for all their organizational success, Farley and his staff had no special training to deal with wayward children. In 1950, the superintendent was overpowered and thrown in the river by a group of boys who staged an effective revolt, and for a brief moment they were running things to suit themselves.

My brother didn’t even have clothes on, just his underwear. He was screaming and begging and I couldn’t do anything
Steve Smith
In an otherwise laudatory biography of Farley published in 1959, A Shirttail to Hang To, this moment is presented as a major crisis for the ranch. The situation “demanded immediate attention. One ‘revolution’ or mass runaway would mean that Cal would never again win public support for his project.”

Faced with a risk to the ranch’s prestige, Farley replaced his superintendent with a professional wrestler named Dorrance Funk, who turned to violence as a solution to the discipline problem at the ranch.

In A Shirttail to Hang To, author Beth Day writes that in the wake of the revolt, “Funk’s immediate problem was to command their respect and obedience”. He would invite “the big boys to ‘work out with him’ on the wrestling mat … Funk illustrated wrestling holds and techniques, and also managed to get over to each boy the suggestion of potential power … After a round apiece with Funk on the mat, not one of the leaders of the embryo revolution suggested they might throw *him* in the river.”

By the time Rick and Steve Smith arrived in 1959, there were about 250 residents, and Texas courts had taken to diverting young offenders out of the juvenile justice system and into the ranch. Those boys were thrown together in dorms with others who had never committed a crime, but whose parents could not take care of them.

‘They made me run in front of horses’
Ed Cargill lives in New Mexico now, after a stint in the US army and some years of riding motorcycles all over the south-west. His time in Cal Farley’s overlapped with Rick Smith’s.

After years of living in what he calls “a paradise for adult abusers”, he made repeated escape attempts. Each time he was caught, and punished. On one occasion, he says, Lamont Waldrip delivered a punishment straight out of the Old West.

“I ran away on foot and got about halfway to Amarillo when they caught me, using a helicopter. Lamont Waldrip and another staff member then took me 10 miles away from the ranch, and made me run in front of these horses all the way back. Anytime I floundered, they’d hit me with coiled-up rope or run over me with the damn horse.”

Several of the men say that another escapee was dragged for miles behind two horses back to the ranch. Again, one of the horses was ridden by Waldrip. The man in question talked about the incident in a private survivors’ group on Facebook, which was set up by Steve. His comments were seen by the Guardian.

Cruel punishment wasn’t the only ordeal students had to endure. Sexual abuse also happened, and Rick Smith says he was raped by another boy while under the care of the ranch.

The way Steve tells it, his brother “has been nervous all his life, like he was hiding something. Just in the last year he told me that when he moved into Maynard [his dorm], one of the bigger boys said he’d beat the hell out of him if he didn’t sleep with him that night. He’s had it bottled up in him all that time.”

Cargill says that the wife of a staff member was having sex with him and three other boys – in effect, statutory rape. It’s only in retrospect he has come to realize how damaging this was. “I didn’t realize how bad it was @#$!%&! me up. And, she was committing a @#$!%&! felony,” he says.

As for Steve Smith, he recalls seeing a dorm parent make a boy take his penis out and hit it with a ruler.

‘He was screaming and begging and I couldn’t do anything’
For decades, the men say, a culture of abuse prevailed at Cal Farley’s.

Martin (not his real name) was sent to the ranch in the early 1980s aged five after being brutally abused and mutilated by his father. Of that time, he says, “if you wanna know what it’s like to die over and over again and watch yourself die in the mirror – I know that”.

On his first night at the ranch, an older male student “dragged me out of the bed, and I went into the bathroom and he basically stuck his dick in my mouth”.

Steve Smith’s standard release form from Cal Farley’s.
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Steve Smith’s standard release form from Cal Farley’s. Photograph: Steve Smith
When he committed a minor infraction not long after, Martin’s female dorm parent ordered him to jump in a trash can and scrub it in freezing weather.

“When you put a little kid who’s been tortured inside a trash can, upside down, and make it like a little prison cell and have him scrub … You know, you got these tiny little holes at the top just to let a little light in, you’re scared, you’re freezing, you know?”

Cargill says that his dorm parent would also encourage other boys to administer physical punishment. “I saw him hit two boys with his fist and then tell the rest of the dorm, ‘You better finish what I started or it’s all gonna happen to you.’

“So I watched as they literally beat these two guys half to death, and me and another guy tried to intervene. We didn’t get beat up as bad, but we got beat up.”

Cargill says “their only crime is they were gay. Which, that’s not my place to judge, or my place to punish.”

Steve Smith remembers his helplessness while his brother was beaten mercilessly. “A staff member did it. I heard Rick screaming at the top of his lungs so I ran down there. I looked into his room and the guy was beating the hell out of him with a belt. My brother didn’t even have clothes on, just his underwear. He was screaming and begging and I couldn’t do anything”.

Afterwards, Rick’s nervousness at being at the ranch led to a pattern of behavior that only led to more beatings.

“I pissed the bed till I was probably 10, and for that they beat the hell out of me till I bled,” he says.

Bill Varnado, who was there at the same time as Steve Smith, says “you really didn’t have to ‘get in trouble’ for them to beat the hell out of you.” Normally, he says, “they used a belt, but as you got older they used their fists on boys.”

Joe Stroud, who was there in the 1980s, says the ethos of punishment at Cal Farley’s “went all the way from how people treated themselves, down to how people treated animals, to how people treat anything. It was a culture of violence.”

‘It’s not that I don’t believe it, it’s just that it’s past’
Jan Heimlich, a former journalist, now runs a nonprofit in Austin called the Child Friendly Faith initiative. Through her work and in a book, she has worked to expose religious groups that abuse children. “I am always in search of faith-based organizations that are really great,” she says.

When she first wrote about Cal Farley’s, she used it as an example of best practices in youth care. She still maintains that currently Cal Farley’s appears to be in keeping with modern and humane standards of childcare, and says they “run a flagship program for cutting-edge child therapy”.

In 2015, after she published a laudatory post about Carl Farley’s on her blog, Steve Smith left comments. He wrote about the constant abuse, and the beating meted out to Rick. Alarmed by what she was reading, Heimlich got in touch with Adams, the ranch CEO.

“I asked Dan, ‘Is what this guy is saying true?’ He said, ‘Yes. But we’re evolved.’”

Heimlich decided to help Steve talk it out with Adams.

Their first conversation was a two-and-a-half-hour meeting on 23 March this year, which Heimlich attended as an observer via Skype. She observed that Adams’s attitude to Smith was sympathetic. “We were both blown away with what Steve was telling us. Every so often Dan would reach out and touch Steve’s shoulder.”

On 7 and 8 April, the three of them met in Amarillo, first at a coffee shop, and then the next morning for breakfast. At this point, she started to become concerned about how the ranch was going to deal with Smith’s allegations.

“I thought that meeting was his opportunity to say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do’, but I was getting nothing from him.”

At breakfast, she presented a draft letter suggesting the approach Cal Farley’s could take. These included investigating allegations of abuse, setting up a fund for survivors’ medical needs, and ensuring that information on their website and in their marketing material was “truthful and not misleading”.

Adams, she says, was uncomfortable. Most of all, he was resistant to the idea of going public with any it. “He thought that involving the media would not bring the men the healing they were looking for,” she says.

It got ingrained into me for a period of five years that violence fixes everything
Arnold Wells
At the same meeting, Adams told Heimlich that the ranch was planning to name a new dorm after Lamont Waldrip.

For survivors, she says, it was a slap in the face.

In conversation with the Guardian, Adams acknowledged that abuses had occurred in the past, but also reaffirmed his stance.

“I can’t deny Steve or anybody else their experience,” he said. When asked if the behavior of staff at the time sounded like abuse, he responded, “absolutely, no doubt about it”. But he stressed that practices had changed, including the phasing out of corporal punishment since he took over in 1996.

“I knew Lamont. And there are guys today that had very different experiences with Lamont and admired and liked him. In his early days, I think he probably was way over his head in terms of knowing how to deal with all those kids … any time you have a system that’s scantily staffed, and not trained, abuse happens.”

Adams has no plans to change the dedication of the new building.

“I do think when it comes to honoring founders or former employees, that’s a collective thing, that’s bigger than me, it’s not arbitrary. I think [a public apology] can be disruptive, because I’ve got 260 kids out there that we’re working very well with, and we have a lot of younger people whose experience has been good at Boys Ranch, and a lot of families that count on us.

“I don’t say it’s hearsay and I don’t deny it. It’s not that I don’t believe it, it’s just that it’s past.”

‘I want somebody to stand up and say, Hey, I’m frickin’ sorry’
The men the Guardian spoke to say they have carried the scars of this experience for decades, as well as a sense that their lives have been misshapen by their time there. Many talked about extensive substance abuse, suicide attempts,
and incarceration among alumni.






https://apnews.com/b07a163a8a3249188d98 ... ive-onsite




Edwards says he asked ex-State Police leader to live onsite


BATON ROUGE, La.
Despite auditors’ criticism it was improper and possibly illegal, Gov. John Bel Edwards defended the living arrangements of retired Louisiana State Police leader Mike Edmonson, saying he asked Edmonson to live in a state-owned home as agency superintendent.

Edmonson moved into the house at state police headquarters in 2008, after he was named superintendent by then-Gov. Bobby Jindal. Edwards kept Edmonson in the job when he took office in 2016 and said he asked the state police leader to remain in the house, because the governor thought it was the best way for Edmonson to quickly respond to emergencies.


Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera’s office suggested living in the house without paying rent, utilities or taxes could have violated state law.

“I’m less than convinced that the legislative auditor got it right relative to the use of the residence by Col. Edmonson,” Edwards said Wednesday at a wide-ranging news conference.

Edwards didn’t defend Edmonson, however, against other charges raised by auditors that Edmonson misused tax dollars to finance a lavish personal lifestyle. The governor called those allegations “very troubling.”

Edmonson had been the state police’s longest-serving superintendent, holding the job for nine years before retiring in March amid questions about lax spending practices and his leadership style. Edwards tapped Col. Kevin Reeves to fill the position.

“I have 100 percent confidence in Col. Reeves and in his leadership abilities, in the changes that he’s already made in the organization. I think that morale among state troopers has increased, and I believe the professionalism of that agency will be fully restored,” the governor said.

Auditors suggested Edmonson used the Louisiana State Police troopers and equipment for personal gain. They say he put family and friends in New Orleans hotel rooms planned for troopers assisting with Mardi Gras safety, used troopers to run personal errands for him and his family and asked state police staff to perform maintenance on family members’ vehicles.

Edmonson left the agency after criticism erupted about troopers billing thousands of dollars to taxpayers for overtime and expenses on a 2016 trip to a law enforcement conference in San Diego, during which they took sightseeing trips to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.





https://apnews.com/aa06eb1ed91b495f9a93 ... ng-shopper


Off-duty Detroit cop charged with assaulting shopper



DETROIT

A Detroit police officer who was moonlighting as a security guard has been charged with assaulting a shopper at a Meijer store.

The Wayne County prosecutor’s office says Officer Lonnie Wade was wearing his police uniform during the Oct. 10 incident. A shopper, David Bivins, was hit in the head and face with a baton after Wade questioned him about bags in his cart.

The prosecutor’s office says there was no evidence of aggressive behavior by the 23-year-old Bivins. The incident was recorded on video and witnessed by other shoppers.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/01/2 ... -belong-to

Judicial Watch reveals FBI is refusing to turn over more text messages — here’s who they belong to




http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/167878

The FBI’s Maoist Faction

1/28/18
by Aaron J. Leonard
Aaron Leonard is author of Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists (Zero Books, 2015), and A Threat of the First Magnitude—FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration: From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union—1962-1974 (Repeater Books, UK, January 2018). He lives in Southern California.

Among the Maoist organizations to arise out of the political tumult of the 1960s was a group known as the Ad Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party (initially called the Ad Hoc Committee for a Scientific Socialist Line). The entity, begun in 1962, was said to be a secret faction within the US Communist Party working against the “revisionism” of Nikita Khrushchev and US party leader Gus Hall. That the entire operation was an FBI construct was a mystery to all but a handful of FBI agents and informants.








http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/ ... -hypocrisy

FBI agents’ texts reveal disgusting hypocrisy



https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... -on-trump/

The FBI's war on Trump
Washington Times-
Mr. Strzok also officially launched the FBI's investigation into the alleged Russia-Trump collusion that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is directing. Mr. Strzok was removed from that probe last summer after messages to Ms. Page surfaced in which Mr. Strzok denounced Mr. Trump as an “enormous douche” and an “idiot.




https://www.bainbridgereview.com/opinio ... -cartoons/

Trump's 53rd week in office | In cartoons
Bainbridge Island Review
It's the 53rd week of Donald J. Trump in the White House and we can't even look at Jell-O the same way anymore. Thanks, Trump! Our cartoon chronicle of the 45th president continues with more fallout from his comments about Haiti and African countries, the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential ...



Link du jour
http://www.wordsandunwords.com

http://www.jir.com


https://www.venganza.org


https://www.semesteratsea.org/voyages/s ... gram-fees/


http://www.mediacosm.com/eating/

http://www.normgoldblatt.com




Blink Tank

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hKQchK4X8r0








http://norfolkdailynews.com/news/omaha- ... 3c2e1.html


Omaha officer found to have had ‘inappropriate relationship’ while on Lincoln force



Jan 27, 2018 Updated Jan 27, 2018

An Omaha police officer who formerly served in Lincoln reportedly was found to have participated in an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman while on the Lincoln force.

The officer, Jared Grayson, was one of five Lincoln police officers involved in an internal investigation that began in October, the Lincoln Journal Star reported. The newspaper reported it had confirmed Grayson’s identity using public records and “sources close to the situation.”


The investigation was prompted after the Nebraska State Patrol looked into a report of an inappropriate relationship and sexual assault of a woman by a sixth officer, Gregory Cody, who was charged in November with first-degree sexual assault. His trial is pending, and he has denied the allegations. Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister said Wednesday that the internal investigation involving the other officers has concluded.

Grayson wasn’t named in Bliemeister’s statement, but the chief said the investigation found that an officer participated in an inappropriate relationship that “was not in accordance with our policies and Code of Ethics. The officer had previously resigned in 2016.”

Grayson was a member of the Omaha police recruit class that graduated in March 2017. He resigned from the Lincoln department in 2016. Grayson had served three years as a police officer in Lincoln.

Lincoln’s internal investigation had only recently been revealed to Omaha officials by the Lincoln Police Department, said Omaha Police Deputy Chief Greg Gonzalez.

A background investigation conducted by the Omaha Police Department during the hiring process in 2016 did not uncover anything concerning about Grayson, Gonzalez said.

Grayson had multiple positive references from the Lincoln department, Gonzalez said.

“We don’t investigate incidents during employment that occur from a prior employer,” Gonzalez said.






http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/28/te ... olice.html

Texas woman who said she was being stalked shot dead by police



https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-navalny- ... 03353.html

Russian Police Try To Pull The Plug, But Navalny's YouTube Protest Rolls On




http://www.oaoa.com/editorial/columns/g ... l?mode=jqm

Why FBI's missing texts is worse than Watergate


Richard Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods erased 18 minutes of tape recording of the president and became infamous in1972. The FBI failed to preserve five months of text messages and expects the American public to believe it was a random mistake.

This is worse than Watergate. The text messages between agents Peter Strozk and Lisa Page are instructive for several reasons.

First, the texts were sent in the lead-up to Robert Mueller being named a special counsel in the investigation of Russia and the 2016 presidential election.

Second, earlier messages that have been released included not only the involvement of outgoing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but the desire of top-level FBI officials to create an “insurance policy” against a Donald Trump presidency.

Strozk and Page eventually ended up working on Mueller’s probe into possible Russia connections to the Trump campaign. However, Strozk was removed after the Justice Department’s inspector general revealed Strozk’s extramarital affair with Page, and also disclosed the anti-Trump bias that was animating Strozk and Page. Page had already left the probe before the texts were discovered.

The period in question – Dec. 14, 2016 to May 17, 2017 – includes several key moments in the FBI’s investigation into alleged Trump campaign-Russia collusion. These include activities by Michael Flynn, who briefly served at national security adviser before he was fired by President Trump; Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from overseeing the investigation; significant leaks from the FBI investigation, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court reprimanding the unmasking of U.S. citizens, and finally, the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

All of these events surely would have involved Strozk and Page. But now we can only speculate what level of misconduct occurred after President Trump took office.

This apparent FBI cover-up and failure to retain evidence must be met with the harshest penalties available under the law. It is reassuring that Sessions promised to leave “no stone unturned in an investigation,” and that, “If any wrongdoing were to be found to have caused this gap, appropriate legal disciplinary action measures will be taken.”

Sessions is on solid legal ground to demand answers. The missing text messages may have included evidence of a crime having been committed, and that itself is a crime. 18 U.S.C. Section 1519 states: “Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

Now, we don’t know what is contained in these missing messages. But even if they did not contain evidence of crimes per se but were simply relevant to investigations by congressional committees’ and the Office of Inspector General at the Justice Department, those institutions were entitled to have the messages.

If the texts were destroyed intentionally, then that would absolutely be a crime.

It is beyond convenient that key pieces of potential evidence are disappearing before the American peoples’ eyes as congressional committees struggle to get answers about how the Trump campaign, transition and administration were targeted by the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This only fuels suspicion and further erodes public trust in these institutions.

If one was not already cynical about how power is wielded in Washington against political opponents, there is little left to keep public confidence intact. The entire manner in which the Obama administration seems to have carried out its investigation into the Trump campaign – which then carried over into the transition and administration in 2017 – could turn out to be one of the greatest scandals in modern U.S. history.

This is very much worse than Watergate. We’ll know more when the House Select Committee on Intelligence releases its own memo revealing its findings into this whole affair.

The only thing that separates the U.S. from a banana republic is respect for the outcome of elections – that is, the consent of the governed. Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, and now we are learning of what looks to be an attempt by our own government to target his campaign before he ever won by setting up an “insurance policy” investigation – and doing so using dubious sources like the infamous dossier paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign.

After Trump won, the investigation appears to have been put on steroids with the seeming incredible ultimate goal of overturning the 2016 elections.

Without prejudging the contents of either Chairman of the House Select Committee Devin Nunes’ memo or the erased texts, it is clear that the American people need to know what was done by the Obama FBI and Justice Department to attempt to interfere with the 2016 election and the peaceful transfer of power.

We can deal with how best to reform these institutions after we know the facts. But right now what we need is the truth – so that this can never happen again.

Richard Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government.



https://networks.h-net.org/node/5299/re ... old-bureau

Schorman on Cecil, 'Branding Hoover's FBI: How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America'

Author:
Matthew Cecil
Reviewer:
Rob Schorman

Matthew Cecil. Branding Hoover's FBI: How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016. 344 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-2305-1.

Reviewed by Rob Schorman (Miami University of Ohio Regionals)
Published on H-FedHist (October, 2017)
Commissioned by Caryn E. Neumann

Matthew Cecil, in Branding Hoover's FBI: How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America, lays out a case that the prestige and public trust enjoyed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during most of J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure resulted not so much from the agency’s investigative prowess as from a finely tuned public relations apparatus that began operation only a few years after the term “public relations” was coined. As Cecil puts it: “The bureau practiced, at an early stage in the development of the field, sophisticated public relations techniques on a nationwide scale” (p. 15). Cecil sees the success of this effort as the achievement of specific, talented individuals. He suggests that had they not been on the scene, the agency would have fared much differently in the public estimation from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, and that had they not departed, the agency might have avoided its precipitous fall from grace in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In-depth coverage is given to the careers of both Louis Nichols and Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, the two most prominent overseers of the agency’s PR efforts, the former from 1935 to 1957 and the latter from 1959 to 1970. Nichols established the template for agency policies, and the book details the manner in which he led efforts to control its image in popular radio shows, fought to head off critical findings from a presidential commission, strategically leaked information on alleged Communist sympathizers to force them from public office, and recruited liberal “moles” to offer intelligence about such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union. DeLoach followed the template but with a different style. Whereas Nichols was a sometimes subtle manipulator of a vast network of media contacts—both friend and foe—DeLoach focused his attention on “managing upward” and influencing decision makers in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Justice Department, and White House (p. 263).

Nichols and DeLoach are well-known figures, although their methods have never been examined with such care. Perhaps even more valuable, the book provides an equally detailed appraisal of the contributions of agency staff members who are never more than bit players in standard FBI histories. These include Milton Jones, who for almost thirty years was personally responsible for maintaining the content standards for thousands of letters, memos, speeches, articles, and reports the agency produced, and Fern Stukenbroeker, who among other things was the chief ghostwriter for publications that appeared under Hoover’s name, ranging from law journal articles to the best-selling book Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It (1958), which sold more than two million copies. The book includes readable character sketches of these people and many others with whom they interacted, along with analysis of their activities.

Cecil’s work has an impressive research base, most notably an extensive review of the FBI’s own files of correspondence, memos, and handwritten notes. At its peak, the FBI department responsible for public relations employed almost two hundred people and in a single year responded to about seven thousand letters a month, placed dozens of articles in national magazines, wrote hundreds of speeches and official statements for bureau employees, and performed thousands of “name checks” for the White House. For the network television series The FBI (1965-74), it rewrote scripts, vetted cast and crew members (blackballing “subversives”), and had two agents permanently assigned to the set while filming occurred. Censure, probation, demotion, and reassignment were penalties imposed on agency personnel for offenses as small as a typographical error on a letter that went out on the agency’s letterhead.

The book also covers the tsunami of criticism that led to a decline in the FBI’s reputation at the end of Hoover’s tenure. By that time, the health and vigor of Hoover and his top aide, Clyde Tolson, were in decline, and Nichols and DeLoach had moved on. Cecil states: “It seems likely that the Bureau could have weathered the kinds of public relations challenges it faced in the late 1960s and early 1970s had its leadership team been at full strength” (p. 252). I suppose that’s possible—certainly he provides examples of inept and inadequate response by the agency during this period. He also notes, however, that by the late 1960s the “FBI represented mainstream 1950s values in a counterculture America” (p. 214), and one wonders if any PR effort could have countered the rising suspicion and scrutiny of public institutions that were fueled by civil rights and Vietnam protests, the culture of scandal and investigative reporting that began to permeate Washington media, and the collapse of the Cold War consensus that had dominated public perception and discourse since World War II.

Branding Hoover’s FBI is well done in every respect. The book is well written and organized, its use of both primary and secondary sources is excellent, and overall its argument is convincing. It is a valuable addition to our understanding of the internal workings of the FBI.

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=49531





http://napavalleyregister.com/news/loca ... ce77c.html


From FBI agent to PI: The life of a Napa private investigator
Napa Valley Register-
King, Napa's only female private investigator, started her career after leaving her former job as an FBI agent. ... With encouragement from her boyfriend and other agents she met, in 1989 she applied to become an FBI agent. ... In one case, King and other FBI agents spent days surveilling one particular robbery suspect.






https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-claim ... conviction

Man Claims FBI Conspiracy in Overturned Conviction
George Perrot spent 30 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. He says his overturned conviction was based on a forged confession and testing the FBI admits is faulty.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... nship-with



Watchdog: DEA supervisor had 'improper personal relationship' with confidential source
BY ZACK BUDRYK - 07/09/19 11:34 AM EDT



http://ticklethewire.com/2019/07/12/bor ... ted-on-it/



Border Patrol Chief Not Only Knew about Secret FB Page, She Posted on It
Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost.
By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost responded with repulsion when a news agency discovered a secret Facebook group filled with racist, demeaning and sexist content.
“These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see — and expect — from our agents day in and day out,” Provost said in a statement after Intercept revealed the group’s vulgar messages. “An





https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/07/11 ... t-oakland/

Gun, ammo, jacket stolen from FBI agent’s vehicle in East Oakland
Latest in series of thefts from law-enforcement vehicles







https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/bay-a ... -six-year/

Bay Area Cops Lost at Least 944 Guns in The Last Six Years
BY ROBERT FARAGO |
JUN 27, 2016


https://www.wboy.com/news/crime/man-fac ... bi-center/

Man faces federal indictment after trespassing incident at Clarksburg FBI Center






http://www.charkoosta.com/news/native-a ... 6b626.html

Native Americans rally behind case alleging FBI bias
*
*



https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/11/ex-f ... h-witness/



Prosecutors Plan To Call Michael Flynn’s Son, Ex-FBI Official As Witnesses In Turkish Lobbying Trial




https://www.thestate.com/news/local/cri ... 36922.html


Former SC police chief pleads guilty to theft of federal funds



https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/73843637 ... s-too-late


FBI Records Could Have Solved A Civil Rights Cold Case. Now It's Too Late





https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jason-c ... sa-fbi-doj
July 9, 20195:05 AM ET



Jason Chaffetz: Battle looming over FBI surveillance abuse – Will IG report become classification cover-up?





Inspector General Horowitz reportedly nears end of probe into FISA abuse
DOJ wrapping up its investigation; reaction and analysis from Rep. John Ratcliffe




https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... -1.2573954

Texas cop charged in Sandra Bland’s death pleads not guilty in court appearance as he’s greeted by two dozen protesters 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS |
MAR 22, 2016 | 6:05 PM



https://www.westernjournal.com/list-att ... iled-stop/

Here Is The List Of Attackers The FBI Was Warned About But Still Failed To Stop
By Becky Loggia
Published February 17, 2018 at






https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/edi ... story.html

Body-cam bill is bad for public transparency



https://www.rt.com/usa/464118-aliens-ar ... e-warning/


‘Ready to protect US & its assets’: Military warns 750k+ alien hunters NOT to storm Area 51
Published time: 14 Jul, 2019 01:35




https://www.rt.com/news/464109-porn-co2 ... ns-report/

Online porn ‘produces the same amount of carbon emissions as all the households in France’
Published time: 13 Jul, 2019 16:55
Edited time: 14 Jul, 2019 07:08






https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... i-bari-ii/

July 10, 2019
A glimpse inside the FBI Investigation into Judi Bari and Earth First!
The environmental activist’s file contains fake press releases, the Bureau’s take on the Civil Rights movement, and a redacted description of The Nation magazine
Written by Julia Rock
Edited by Beryl Lipton, JPat Brown
Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, members of the environmental organization Earth First!, were driving Bari’s car through Oakland, California one night in May 1990 when a bomb exploded in the vehicle’s backseat. The Oakland Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation were soon on the scene, arresting the pair for possessing and transporting an explosive.
The FBI’s subsequent inquiry involved an intelligence gathering operation into the politics and tactics of Earth First!, according to the agency’s file on Bari, in addition to forensic research and interviews.
At the time of the car bombing that almost killed Bari, she and Cherney were organizing the Redwood Summer, a movement to stop lumber companies from clear-cutting old-growth redwoods in Northern California. In 2002, the FBI and OPD awarded Bari and Cherney’s estate $4.4 million following a federal civil suit against the agencies, which were charged with falsely arresting Bari and Cherney and violating their rights.




Mary Liz Thomson

Who Bombed Judi Bari? Documentary Trailer






While the mystery of the car bombing remains unsolved, the information contained in the file reveals the scope of the FBI’s investigation into Bari as a suspect in the case. The file contains notes from searches of Bari’s home, news clippings about Earth First! activities during the Redwood Summer, and arrest reports - all standard features of such an investigation. More unusual are letters addressed to the Bureau, which recount strange and interesting theories of who the perpetrator may have been: A religious extremist calling themselves “The Lord’s Avenger,” Maxxam, the owner of Pacific Lumber, and even the OPD or FBI itself.
The most striking aspect of the file is the presence of misinformation about Earth First! and Bari in the FBI file. Lies and smear tactics were an important aspect of the campaign by Maxxam and pro-logging groups against Redwood Summer, and it is notable that the FBI retained this “intelligence” as part of its investigation.
One document, sent to the FBI from Mother’s Watch, an organization that judibari.org lists as a front for Maxxam, is likely a flyer that was distributed as part of the group’s disinformation campaigns against Earth First!
This document is almost certainly fake - Earth First! sought solidarity with loggers as a key feature of their Redwood Summer platform.
Other disinformation about Earth First! tactics were retained by the FBI. One clipping from the Earth First! Journal headlined “Eco-Kamikazes Wanted” is included in the file, although the sender and recipient of the clip are redacted.
See link for full story

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

http://moses.law.umn.edu/mondale/intelligence.php

"None of us can afford to be insensitive to the grave implications of unjustified and unlawful spying by the Government. It poses a very real danger to the personal freedoms which are the cornerstone of our democratic system." 93rd Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record 119 (September 11, 1973) at 29146.





https://samuelwalker.net/wp-content/upl ... fenses.pdf

Addressing Sexual Offenses and Misconduct by Law Enforcement:




https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-to- ... bi-records

Judge to DOJ: Make Decision on McCabe Charges—or Face Release of FBI Records
Audrey McNamara
Reporter
Published 10.01.19 2:33PM ET 





https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... mp/598972/


Revenge of the Intelligence Nerds
Trump has long worried that America’s intelligence professionals would try to undermine him from the shadows. All they had to do was play by the rules.





Knoxville FBI analyst accused of ‘contact’ with target of investigation
Defendants in the prosecution of a massive pill mill case are raising concerns that the misconduct affects their cases.





https://www.courthousenews.com/fbi-orde ... -reporter/


FBI Ordered to Expunge Threat Assessment of Anti-War Reporter


https://archive.triblive.com/news/fbi-a ... echt-case/

FBI agent’s records unsealed in Wecht case

JASON CATO | Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:00 a.m.


The FBI agent leading the public corruption case against Dr. Cyril H. Wecht has been investigated by the bureau for seven infractions that led to a demotion and two suspensions without pay, according to internal disciplinary records made public today.
Special Agent Bradley W. Orsini, 44, was described by former colleagues in the Newark, N.J., office as “abrasive and self-centered,” with a former supervisor characterizing him as a “bully.”
The Office of Professional Responsibility, the department which investigates allegations of wrongdoing by agents, initiated four investigations into Orsini’s behavior between 1997 and 2000. Those investigations, which were consolidated into one case, found Orsini:
&#149 Engaged in a prohibited sexual relationship with another agent for nearly two years, which came to light after Orsini presented his paramour at bureau Christmas parties in 1998 and 1999 with a pet collar inscribed with the note “If found, please return to Brad Orsini” and a toy wheel with a guide for assigning the best cases, which always landed on her picture when spun
&#149 Threatened a subordinate whom he believed told superiors about his relationship with the female agent
&#149 Damaged government property by punching holes in office walls with his fists and breaking chairs
&#149 Made unprofessional and insensitive “homophobic remarks” while joking around with other agents in the office.
For those transgressions, Orsini was demoted from a supervisor’s role within the Newark public corruption squad to a street agent working narcotics investigations in an outlying field office. He also was suspended without pay for 30 days, placed on probation for one year and forced to undergo sensitivity training.
That investigation also found Orsini violated bureau procedures by signing other agents’ initials to interview reports in 1993 and 1994. Orsini told investigators he did not know how many times he had done so, but said he did it only because “it was a convenience and a shortcut,” according to the reports.
In 1998, Orsini was suspended for five days without pay for falsifying chain of custody forms and evidence labels by signing other agen


https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/who-ki ... 1115703638

Who Killed Kennedy?: The Definitive Account of Fifty Years of Conspiracy Paperback – July 1, 2014
(Author), Cyril H. Wecht (Author)



See previous article






https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free ... tricks.pdf


Dirty Tricks
Nixon, Watergate, and the CIA
Shane O’Sullivan1
New York: Skyhorse Books, 2018; £20.00 h/b; 536 pages, notes, index
Robin Ramsay
So what can a major reappraisal of Watergate






https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue77.php

Lobster Issue 77 - Summer 2019





https://www.unionleader.com/news/crime/ ... 6fef2.html

Rare reversal of AG finding in officer-involved shooting after Claremont cop convicted of lying
* By Damien Fisher Union Leader Correspondent Oct 1, 2019 Updat





https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/ph ... p-11366768



City to Approve $125,000 Settlement for Woman Who Says Phoenix Cop Stalked Her
MEG O'CONNOR | OCTOBER 2, 2019 | 6:30AM







https://samuelwalker.net/2014/09/drivin ... -continue/

“Driving While Female” Abuses Continue
* In the Media posted by Samuel Walker
The recent arrest of an Oklahoma City police officer for sexually assaulting seven women while on duty between February and June of 2014 dramatized the continuing problem on-duty sexual abuses by police officers. Read the story here: DWF2014  The problem was highlighted in 2002 by Sam Walker and Dawn Irlbeck’s report Driving While Female. Read the report here:   Partly in response to the report, but also because of growing concern about the issues, The International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2011 issued a Task Force report on Addressing Sexual Offenses and Misconduct by Law Enforcement. Read the IACP report here: IACPAddressingSexualOffenses




https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... astfeeding


Mother claims cop gave her 'retaliatory' ticket for breastfeeding in car at Philadelphia airport
BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 10/01/19 11:59 AM EDT





https://nbcmontana.com/news/local/monta ... fbi-agents


Montana's U.S. senators call for more FBI agents

by KECI StaffTuesday, October 1st 2019








http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/27/siu.fb ... 3A+U.S.%29

CNN exclusive: FBI misconduct reveals sex, lies and videotape






Source: CNN

Washington (CNN) -- An FBI employee shared confidential information with his girlfriend, who was a news reporter, then later threatened to release a sex tape the two had made.

A supervisor watched pornographic videos in his office during work hours while "satisfying himself."

And an employee in a "leadership position" misused a government database to check on two friends who were exotic dancers and allowed them into an FBI office after hours.

These are among confidential summaries of FBI disciplinary reports obtained by CNN, which describe misconduct by agency supervisors, agents and other employees over the last three years.


https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/201 ... ad-vpx.cnn

Dems on FBI report: Not even a halfway effort
The Lead
The FBI has completed its investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and while Republican senators are confident with the report, Democrats disagree.




https://www.nycitynewsservice.com/2011/ ... e-ferraro/


FBI Probed Geraldine Ferraro
* OCTOBER 31, 2011JOSE BAYONA
The FBI investigated Geraldine Ferraro after her historic run for vice president, questioning the Queens Democrat for five hours about how she financed her first election to Congress, documents show.
At least one Reagan Administration Justice Department attorney wanted to put the politically charged case before a grand jury – but the agency later reversed course, according to the documents. The FBI ultimately recommended against prosecution.
The revelations – and accounts of how Ferraro was subjected to death threats after she joined former Vice President Walter Mondale on the Democratic presidential ticket in 1984 – are contained in her 143-page FBI file. The documents were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, which calls on the agency to release certain documents after the subject’s death.
Ferraro, a former schoolteacher and lawyer who became the first woman to represent a major party in a national election, died in March at age 75 after battling a blood cancer.
Threats and a Probe
The FBI dossier contains 59 pages that detail four incidents of men who threatened Ferraro during the peak of her political career – including one Dallas man who mixed in insults against women and Italians, and another who uttered threats on a San Francisco-bound flight. The FBI redacted numerous passages and withheld two pages from the file, citing national security and privacy reasons.
The bulk of the file – 84 pages – outlines the ethics probe the F


https://www.jstor.org/stable/3542622?se ... b_contents


Congressional Supervision of America's Secret Agencies: The Experience and Legacy of the Church Committee
Loch K. Johnson
Public Administration Review
Vol. 64, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2004), pp. 3-14



https://www.retroreport.org/transcript/ ... s-secrets/

Stealing J.Edgar Hoover's Secrets
January 7, 2014





https://books.google.com/books?id=AVdjC ... ss&f=false

The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X
edited by James DiEugenio, Lisa Peas

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjw ... is-weirder


Bob Lazar Says the FBI Raided Him to Seize Area 51's Alien Fuel. The Truth Is Weirder
New documents obtained by Motherboard show why the FBI raided the Area 51 insider's scientific supply company.


On May 24, 1989, in a live interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on KLAS-Las Vegas, Robert “Bob” Lazar took the first steps toward becoming one of the most influential (and controversial) figures in all of UFO lore.
Concealing his identity and using the pseudonym “Dennis,” Lazar said that deep within an unconfirmed section of Area 51 called “S4,” he’d once worked on recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft for the US government


https://www.kark.com/news/digital-origi ... e-of-duty/

Digital Original: FBI honors its agents killed in the line of duty



https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... f-the-fbi/


November 13, 2019
The “Melissa Worm” through the eyes of the FBI
A look back at the FBI investigative files on new millenium-era malware
Written by Emily Crose
Edited by Beryl Lipton
The year was 1999. Talk of the Y2K crisis was driving technological discussion throughout the United States, and fears that computers would suddenly stop working when clocks hit midnight of the year 2000 stoked fears of the technology we had all come to rely on so heavily. As companies began to consider what they needed to do to ensure continuity into the new millennium, a less abstract threat began to spread itself across the early Internet. It’s name was “Melissa”.
Materials released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in response to a Freedom of Information Act request reveal a level of maturity in its investigation that they don’t consistently demonstrate in investigations of other crimes of similar nature. They also contain some entertaining stories provided by individuals who were investigated in pursuit of this worm, as well as the humanity—not always apparent in other contexts—of the FBI’s investigation.
On an FD-71 form, the FBI’s standard complaint form, dated March 29, 1999 at 6:00 p.m., the FBI described a telephone call from a man (identity withheld) with concerns that his AOL account had been hacked. The man claimed that he had been contacted by two reporters, one from Wired and another from the Seattle Times, who advised him the “Melissa” virus appeared to have originated from his AOL acco



https://www.newsmax.com/politics/fbi-at ... id/941530/

Home | Politics

AG: DOJ IG Report on FBI Surveillance of Page 'Imminent'


Read Newsmax: AG Barr Says Release of DOJ IG Report on FBI Surveillance of Page 'Imminent' | Newsmax.



https://www.reporternewspapers.net/2019 ... d-suspect/

Panel recalls FBI, AJC roles in case of Richard Jewell, Olympics bombing hero turned suspect
Posted by John Ruch | Nov 13, 2019
One of the darkest moments in Atlanta’s history, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, grew darker still when the FBI and major media wrongly fingered heroic security guard Richard Jewell as the bomber. A Nov. 12 panel discussion at the Atlanta History Center about “The Suspect,” a new book telling Jewell’s story, was a historic moment in itself, gathering significant figures from the case onstage and in the audience.
Drawing a crowd of hundreds, the event was partly a preemptive strike on how Atlanta may be portrayed in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming movie about Jewell, partly a lecture on history and Jewell’s life, and partly an emotional reflection on an investigation gone astray while the real bomber escaped to continue his crimes. Jewell died at age 44 in 2007.



https://theintercept.com/2019/11/13/nyp ... -database/



THE NYPD KEPT AN ILLEGAL DATABASE OF JUVENILE FINGERPRINTS FOR YEARS
Alice Speri
November 13 2019, 8:00 a.m.



https://theintercept.com/2019/11/13/rod ... w-texas-2/

THE CASE OF RODNEY REED
Intercepted
November 13 2019, 2:07 p.m.



https://theintercept.com/2019/11/12/cli ... ork-court/

EVERYTHING SO FAR HAS FAILED: WHY EXXON MOBIL IS BEING TAKEN TO COURT OVER CLIMATE CHANGE
Ryan Devereaux
November 12 2019, 7:30 a.m.





https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... agM9iEFQg/

Watch video


Two Florida Police Agencies Caught on Video Entering Homes without warrant
One cop was wearing a ski mask when he slapped the phone out of the hands of a man recording.
Twice in one week, videos surfaced showing South Florida cops from two different agencies entering homes without search warrants or owner consent in search of suspects who did not live in the homes.
The first video shows a group of Broward County sheriff's deputies entering the home of Johnny Emmanuel while he was at work in search of his 25-year-old son who does not live at the home.
Emmanuel said he received a text message from his home security system on August 19 showing deputies entering his home from a side door that nobody ever uses.
Emmanuel's son is accused of assaulting a cop which is the excuse they will likely use to explain their disregard for the Constitution, as if that makes any difference.
Had it not been for his security video system, Emmanuel would have never known they had entered his home because they never bothered contacting him, much less served him a warrant.
According to the Miami New Times, which obtained the video:
Emmanuel says the cops left no note they'd been there, let alone copies of a search warrant. He says nobody called him to say cops had been there either. If it weren't for the security system, he says, he never would've known BSO deputies had entered his home and snooped around.
"I have two young children," he says. "Thank God they weren't home — they'd be traumatized for life. Someone could have been shot."
As it turns out, video and documents obtained by New Times show BSO had obtained what's known as a capias warrant to look for Emmanuel's 25-year-old son, Eric Reese, who at the time was wanted on charges of aggravated assault on an officer and fleeing arrest. But Reese did not live at Emmanuel's home. And, more important, a capias warrant — essentially an arrest warrant — in most cases does not allow officers to enter a home without the resident's consent. Officers typically need to have "reasonable suspicion" a suspect is inside a residence before they can bust in legally. Emmanuel doesn't believe the cops did.
BSO spokespeople did not immediately respond to a message from New Times yesterday. (After this story was published, the department said that its spokespeople were not in-office Monday in order to observe Veterans Day.) But Emmanuel says he's freaked out — even if the cops had a reasonable right to break into his house (which he doesn't believe they did), he's floored no one ever informed him they'd entered his house.
The second video was posted to Facebook Thursday showing an Opa-Locka police officer wearing a ski mask entering a man's home with his gun pointed. The man recording tells the cop he is not welcome in the home. The cop responds by slapping the phone out of his hands.

According to the Miami Herald:
Cellphone video footage of an Opa-locka police officer inside an apartment during the search for a suspected gunman has landed the cop in potential hot water and caused the police chief to make an unusual announcement.
In a rare press release, Opa-locka Police Chief James Dobson released the address of the Facebook link to the video and said the incident is being investigated internally by his department.
Dobson said the officer, who hasn’t been named, was searching last week for a man with a handgun who was suspected of “threatening” and demanding money from people in an apartment complex at 13875 NW 22nd Ave. Someone had called Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers and given a description of the suspect, Dobson said.
“The Opa-locka police department can not comment on the exact facts of an active investigation, but it takes any and all allegations of misconduct very seriously,” Dobson said. “Any allegation of police misconduct will be investigated immediately.”
Opa-Locka has long been one of



https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-in- ... rrIReE68w/

Police Impersonator who Robbed Couple at Gunpoint had just Resigned from Force



https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-g ... l0A5FA50w/



8 Days Left Before Rodney Reed Is Executed for a Murder a Cop likely Committed





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

Graffiti Wall

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... t-holdings

Prison food is the latest target in a campaign to divest holdings



https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/stor ... poles-dies


First black woman to reach north and south poles


https://www.mainepublic.org/post/demons ... prosecuted

Demonstrators Arrested At Bath Iron Works Won't Be Prosecuted


https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html

Fifty years after the ‘Black 14’ were banished, Wyoming football reckons with the past



https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/le ... story.html

Gov. Larry Hogan granted parole to people sentenced as teenagers, rekindling calls for parole reform





https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html

Federal prosecutor busted in Manhattan for trying to stop police from arresting drunk-driving boyfriend

By WES PARNELL

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 30, 2019 | 4:45 PM





https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny- ... story.html


A half a loaf? NYPD relaxes its body camera policy, but not enough

By DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD




https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html



Sex abuse in NYC jails: Dept. of Correction says it’s on the path of reform

By CHELSIA ROSE MARCIUS

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 30, 2019 | 11:00 PM


https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politi ... story.html

Supreme Court to hear appeal over former NYPD rule that barred gun owners from transporting firearms out of the city

By DENIS SLATTERY

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 01, 2019 | 12:07 AM


https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ ... story.html

$15K judgment for Canadian woman cuffed for refusing to hold escalator handrail

By STORM GIFFORD

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 30, 2019 | 5:20 PM


https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/nypd-traf ... ing-brawl/

NYPD traffic cop busted for punching aunt in Thanksgiving brawl
By Ruth Weissmann
November 30, 2019





Disgraced Oakland cop linked to Chinatown underworld implicates another officer

Disgraced Oakland Cops




Records: San Jose cops punished for shooting at cars, dog biting kid

San Jose cop punished




Bridgeport cop recruit sues city over rejection sparked by blood test
Brian Lockhart Nov. 30, 2019



* BRIDGEPORT — Ishmael Muhammad appeared to be the perfect candidate to become a city police officer when offered the job earlier this year.
Not only did he pass a background check, a polygraph test, physical fitness and psychological evaluations and a screening for the use of illegal drugs, but Muhammad lives in Bridgeport and would have further diversified the force.






https://www.enmnews.com/2019/11/30/a-pe ... -concerns/

Pennsylvania County’s Election Day Nightmare Underscores Voting Machine Concerns
November 30, 2019 11:48 am ENM NEWS 30 Comments

Vote totals in a Northampton County judge’s race showed one candidate, Abe Kassis, a Democrat, had just 164 votes out of 55,000 ballots across more than 100 precincts. Some machines reported zero votes for him. In a county with the ability to vote for a straight-party ticket, one candidate’s zero votes was a near statistical impossibility. Something had gone quite wrong.
Lee Snover, the chairwoman of the county Republicans, said her anxiety began to pick up at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 5. She had trouble getting someone from the election office on the phone. When she eventually got through, she said: “I’m coming down there and you better let me in.”
With clearly faulty results in at least the judge’s election, officials began counting the paper backup ballots generated by the same machines. The paper ballots showed Mr. Kassis winning narrowly, 26,142 to 25,137, over his opponent, the Republican Victor Scomillio.

“People were questioning, and even I questioned, that if some of the numbers are wrong, how do we know that there aren’t mistakes with anything else?” said Matthew Munsey, the chairman of the Northampton County Democrats, who, along with Ms. Snover, was among the observers as county officials worked through the night to count the paper ballots by hand.
The snafu in Northampton County did not just expose flaws in both the election machine testing and procurement process. It also highlighted the fears, frustrations and mistrust over election security that many voters are feeling ahead of the 2020 presidential contest, given how faith in American elections has never been more fragile. The problematic machines were also used in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs — areas of Pennsylvania that could prove decisive next year in one of the most critical presidential swing states in the country.


In an era where some candidates and incumbents try to challenge or discredit a close loss by questioning the system, either with unfounded allegations of voter fraud or claims of a “rigged” election, the proper functioning and security of election machines have never been more crucial.
“There are concerns for 2020,” Ms. Snover said, questioning whether the paper ballots generated by the same machine that had a digital error could be trusted. “Nothing went right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That’s a problem.”

Election Day here had been marred by complaints of long lines, glitch-prone touch screens and frustrated poll workers. Voters across the county said the experience further eroded their already shaken confidence in the election process.
“It made me sad because with everything that’s going on, you kind of worry about: Was something tampered with, or was it just a mistake,” said Michelle Broadhecker, 48, of Easton, who said her anxiety about elections began after 2016. “There’s just too much going on that you worry about those things. And you don’t want the wrong people in the wrong places.”
Though there has been no conclusive study as to what caused the machines to malfunction, as the machines are locked away for 20 days after an election according to state law, the prevailing theory is that the touch screens were plagued by a bug in the software. A senior intelligence official who focuses on election security said there were no visible signs of outside meddling by any foreign actors.
County officials who led the purchase of the machines have argued that the system actually functioned as it should: The paper ballot backup process worked. The touch screens failed, but the backups had the correct vote, so while it was inconvenient, it proved the necessity of a paper backup.

“We also need to focus on the outcome, which is that voter-verified paper ballots provided fair, accurate and legal election results, as indicated by the county’s official results reporting and successful postelection risk-limiting audit,” said Katina Granger, a spokeswoman for Election Systems & Software, the manufacturer of the machines. “The election was legal and fair.”


But for others, it underscored the fractured system for selecting voting systems. Major decisions for testing, purchasing and operating complex machines are often left to county and city officials. Federal testing standards for election machines haven’t been updated since 2005, when a large percentage of the machines were not digital.

“Not only is that a decade before the current cybersecurity threats to our elections, it is two years before the first iPhone,” said Kevin Skoglund, a senior technical adviser for the National Election Defense Coalition, a nonpartisan group that focuses on election security issues. “There is a newer 2015 standard, but the Election Assistance Commission lets voting system vendors choose which one to use.”
The machines that broke in Northampton County are called the ExpressVoteXL and are made by Election Systems & Software, a major manufacturer of election machines used across the country. The ExpressVoteXL is among their newest and most high-end machines, a luxury “one-stop” voting system that combines a 32-inch touch screen and a paper ballot printer.
To initiate a vote, a voter places a blank ballot-shaped piece of paper in the machine, makes their selections on the screen, and then presses the word “vote.” The machine prints a ballot that is protected under a plate of glass for the voter to review. The voter then clicks “cast” on the screen, the digital votes are recorded on a USB and the backup ballot is transmitted to a sealed canister in the back of the machine.
The machines began arriving in the county in August, having gone through a federal and state certification process. The only remaining testing to be done was what officials called a “logic and accuracy test,” which is a quick dry run of roughly 20 dummy ballots. But the ExpressVoteXL has an auto-test function in which the machines can simulate a full digital test, a feature that election security experts say is ill-advised.
“It doesn’t test if the touch screen or the scanner work. It doesn’t even cast votes for everyone on the ballot,” Mr. Skoglund said. “It is especially concerning that it can send made-up votes to the vote counting software without needing a real ballot. Fake ballots are a feature no voting machine should have.”
The automatic tests in Northampton proved problematic, and did not even cast a test vote for every candidate, according to test receipts shown to The New York Times. But the machines were still rolled out on Election Day.


And instantly, there were problems.
“I walked into my booth, and I knew that I was going to vote straight Democratic and I’m voting that way until we get some balance back into the government, but when I hit straight Democratic, straight Republican is what registered,” said Angela Anderson, 55, of Forks Township, who said that many of her neighbors shared similar stories. “I kind of panicked for a second. But thankfully it easily reset, and I reset my system, and that time it registered Democratic.”

Deb Hunter, a member of the county election commission, said they were actually lucky that the county judge election went so poorly because that made the problem obvious.
“What would have happened if there was a glitch there that got at a 10 percent or 20 percent undercount?” she said. “That worries me. That worries me going forward.”
Ms. Granger noted that there are nearly 6,300 ExpressVoteXL voting machines in use across the country, and none had experienced similar counting problems to those in Northampton County.
It was the way the machines were selected by Philadelphia elected officials that drew the most scrutiny over the last year. Since 2013, E.S.&S. had been courting the two city commissioners who were responsible for choosing the next voting machine, according to a report from the city comptroller.
The lobbying firm for E.S.&S. had donated $1,000 in 2013 to the campaign of Al Schmidt, one of the city commissioners, and again to a group supporting his re-election effort in 2018. They also spent more than $27,000 in direct lobbying of Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt made a visit to only one company’s headquarters: E.S.&S.
In total, E.S.&S. spent more than $425,000 in lobbying expenses related to the City of Philadelphia.

Emails obtained by the city comptroller also found that E.S.&S. had influenced the writing of the city commissioners’ $22 million


https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/12/01/h ... iry-calls/

Hong Kong cop who drove motorbike into protesters back on active duty as police chief rejects inquiry calls
1 December 2019 20:11 Holmes Chan3





https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/12/01/ ... r-officer/



https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html

Kansas cop bitten in testicle by deputy’s K-9 nabs $37,500 payout from county: report

By TIM BALK

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 01, 2019 | 2:40 PM


https://boingboing.net/2019/11/29/woman ... river.html

Woman calls cops on black UPS driver because "walking around with a bunch of packages" makes her "nervous"





https://www.ctinsider.com/news/thehour/ ... o-18688481



Video: ‘I’m one to protect other cops,’ state trooper tells Norwalk officer in DUI arrest
Pat Tomlinson Nov. 30, 2019 Updated: Dec. 1, 2019 7:42 a.m.



https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 871714.php

Proposal seeks body cams for cops
Bill would allow state troopers to record interactions, including during traffic stops
Ryan Tarinelli, Associated Press Published 9:04 pm EST, Friday, November 29, 201



https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jason-c ... -to-action

Jason Chaffetz: FBI deep state clear – will FISA report finally lead to action?



Following a series of four damning inspector general reports over the last two years, there is little doubt the senior leadership of the Obama-era FBI was weaponized in the service of the Democratic Party. But as America awaits what many expect to be the most damning investigation of all, it's fair to ask what has been done to rein in our rogue FBI.
The report on FISA abuse set for release on Dec. 9 is expected to show how the FBI used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on American citizens affiliated with the Trump campaign in 2016. As damning as such a conclusion would be, it will only be the latest in a series of explosive revelations from the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz, some of which got muted coverage from the mainstream press. Advance leaks suggest the upcoming report will, at a minimum, show an FBI lawyer illegally altered documents to justify a FISA application.


https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/ca ... bi-spying/

Calls for Barr to Be Investigated–and Possibly Impeached–Intensify After Lying to Congress About FBI Spying
by Colin Kalmbacher | 11:21 am, November 30th, 2019





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‪9/11 and Other Deep State Crimes Teleconference‬


‪ ‬

‪              ‬
‪Draft agenda for December 4, 2019‬
‪  ‬
‪          ‬
‪8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT) teleconference dial-in # ‬
‪(605) 313-4118 Access code: 464958#‬
‪ ‬
‪[Note: Some telephone service providers block access to this teleconference service, or require additional charges. If you encounter any of these difficulties, please try calling this alternative number: (425) 535-9195. You will then be required to key in the original phone number above before entering the access code. Please inform of us of any technical difficulties you encounter in accessing the teleconference.]‬
‪ ‬
‪*Important note: Teleconference ‬
‪this Wednesday night!‬
‪It was agreed on the last teleconference that we would have one call for November and December. That will be this coming Wednesday night, December 4, at the usual time (8 p.m. EST). There will not be a call on the last Wednesday of December. In January, we’ll get back to the regular schedule with a call on the 29th.‬
‪ ‬
‪Greetings all,‬

‪Our last call of the year will feature some interesting guests and an important update.‬
‪ ‬
‪Our first speaker will be giving his second talk to the teleconference. Jack Rasmus will discuss his new book, The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Trump. The book examines neoliberalism as both an Idea and a historical practice composed of a particular mix of fiscal-monetary-trade-industrial policies that began with the latest U.S. capitalist restructuring in the late 1970s.‬
‪ ‬
‪Rasmus, who teaches economics at St. Mary’s College in California, has written a number of books, including Alexander Hamilton & The Origins of the Fed, and Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression. Jack’s website is www.kyklosproductions.com where his published articles, radio and TV interviews, plays, and book reviews are available for download.‬
‪ ‬
‪And because our second speaker can’t be with us until 9:30, we’ll follow Jack with an open discussion period (tell us what’s on your mind!) and then announcements.‬
‪ ‬
‪At 9:30, we’ll have Mick Harrison of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry who will bring us up to date on what is happening with the committee, including the grand jury petition. He’ll also tell participants how they can help with the committee’s efforts.‬
‪ ‬
‪Mick Harrison is a public interest attorney, who graduated from the University of the District of Columbia School of law. He has a national practice focused on cases that involve whistleblower protection, government accountability, corporate fraud and false claims, and dangers to public health or the environment.‬
‪ ‬
‪It should be very interesting. We hope you join us!‬

‪Cheryl Curtiss‬
‪Craig McKee‬
‪ ‬

‪DRAFT AGENDA for Wednesday December 4 teleconference‬

‪I Roll call/minutes approval (copied below)/agenda approval (5 min)‬

‪II The scourge of neoliberalism [Jack Rasmus] (45 min. including Q&A,)‬

‪III Open discussion [This and announcements must be finished by 9:30]‬
‪ ‬
‪IV Announcements‬
‪ ‬
‪V Lawyers’ Committee update [Mick Harrison] (15 min. + 10 min. Q&A)‬
‪ ‬
‪VI Updates on 9/11 topics (as needed)‬
• ‪New articles, books, films, or recent news about 9/11 or other Deep State crimes‬
• ‪9/11 and the Deep State on the legal front, including current adjudicatory efforts by Lawyers for 9/11 Inquiry, JASTA, 28 pages, William Pepper’s efforts with AE911Truth against NIST and the Dept. of Commerce‬
• ‪Censorship and cognitive infiltration: new examples of censorship or harassment of members of the Truth community;  MSM treatment of 9/11 Truth‬
• ‪Google (et al.) censorship‬
• ‪9/11 Truth political candidates‬
  VII  Adjournment

‪  --------------------‬
‪This draft agenda sent to: ‬
‪Richard Gage, John Heartson, Don DeBar, Scott Halfmann, Steven E. Jones, William Rodriguez, David Ray Griffin, William Douglas, Steve Alten , Tom Tvedten, Justin Martel, Les Jamieson, Michael Jackman, Michael Wolsey, Peggy Brewster, Barrie Zwicker, Erik Lawyer, Gabriel Day, Kevin Barrett, PhD, Carol Brouillet, Mia Hamel, Paul Craig Roberts, Jack Blood, Diana (for investigar11s.org), Cheryl Curtiss, Jodie Baltazar, Jarek Kupsc, Joseph Culp, Ken Jenkins, Ellen Mariani, Gerhard Bedding,  Jack Shimek, Paul Krik, Rock Creek Free Press, Damon Bean, Allan Giles, Kyle Hence, Michael Berger, Dylan Avery,  Jason Burmas, Mike Palecek, Donald Stahl, Ray McGovern, Cynthia McKinney, Ph,D, Don Plummer, Doug Wight, Global Outlook,  Paul Zarembka, Penny Little, Bob Cable, Suzanne Warson, Peter Thottam, Ralph Schoenman, Carol Wolman, Scholars for 911 Truth & Justice, Hummux, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Frank Morales, Frank Tolopko, Alan Miller, James Hufferd, Ph.D., Erik Larson, Ted Walter , Suzanne Warson, Frederick Coward, Gordon Duff, Sherri Kane, Leonard Horowitz, William Woodward, Jerry Mazza, William Pepper, Wayne Madsen, David Kimball, Jeffrey Orling, Michael Marino, Lenny Mather (in memoriam), Ken Freeland, Tania Torres, Graeme MacQueen, Yumi Kikuchi, Stuart Hutchison, Roland Angle, Frank Agamemnon , Harold Hilton, Phil Restino, Rich McCampbell, John Zito, Manny Badillo, John Hankey, Oskar Mosquito, Edwin Jewett, Ms Anisa Fattah, Robert Barron, Shelton Lankford, Matthew Hayward, Anna Yeisley, Chris Pratt, Craig Ranke, Susan Lindauer, Barbara Honegger, Democritus Blantayre, Joseph Baltar, Jim Hogue, Sheila Casey, Steve Martin, Ben Collet, Elizabeth Woodward,  Runyan Wilde, Susan Wolfe, Adam Ruff, Conrad Gilber. Jonathan Mark, Tonya Sneed, Dan Sutton, Richard Krushnic, Mark Crispin Miller, Byron Belitsos, George Ripley, Laurie Manwell ,  Susan Serpa, Nicolas Guillermo, Dwain Deets, Craig McKee, Steve Fahrney; Fran Shure; David Petrano, Lawrence Fine, A.K. Dewdney, Steve De'ak, Allan Rees, Art Olivier, Ron Avery, Michael Booth, Jim Fetzer, Laura Katleman, Don Gibbs, Mark Basile, John-Michael Talboo, Julian Stroh, Christopher Gruener, Elias Davidsson, Martin McGee, Adnan Zuberi, Jan Ravensbergen, Rich Aucoin (in memoriam), David Hooper, Don Fox, Bill Wilt, William Jacoby, Ron Neils, John Campbell, Dan Hennen, Barton Bruce, Cheri Aspenleiter, Stephen Phillips, Dick Atlee, Lynn Ertrell, Nita Renfrew. Frank Tolopko, Mark McDonald, Christopher Bollyn, John Paul OMalley, Rodger Bories, Mark Snyder, Jane Clark, Richard Sacks, Tim Michel, Lynn Bradbury, Xander Arena, David Cole, Rick Tufts, Jerry Turner, Rick Shaddock, Rebecca Schmoyer, Mark Mckertich, Kip Beckford, Doug West, PF Soto, Dennis Cimino, Jane Clark, Charles Ewing Smith, Lucy Morgan Edwards, Pablo Novi, David Rolde, Gregory Flynn, Pat O'Connell, Jeff Long, Greg McCarron, Andy Steele, Thomas Robichaud, Doug Mackenzie, Peter Michael Ketcham, Gene Laratonda, Karl Golovin, Steve Jarrott, Neil Marquis, Matt Van Slyke, Tony Hall, Ph.D., Mike Springmann, Ezra Smith, Samuel Smith, Janane Tripp, Daniel Fielding, Gerald Pechenuk, Ralph Lopez, Robert Griffin, Linda McPherson, Marie Spike, Kathy Allard, PhD, Trina Silvers, Julio Gomez, Ann Hendricks, Malcolm Arnold, Nooria Ghafoor, Bonnie Faulkner, Clay Smith, Andrew Kreig‬
‪Draft minutes for October 30, 2019‬
‪November 10, 2019‬
‪Ann Hendricks, Secretary 9/11 Monthly Teleconference Call‬
‪**********************‬
‪Draft minutes for the October 30, 2019 regular conference call.‬

‪Present were:‬
‪Cheryl Curtiss, Teleconference co-facilitator, Connecticut 9/11 Truth‬
‪Craig McKee, Teleconference co-facilitator, Truth and Shadows‬
‪Ann Hendricks, Teleconference secretary‬
‪Peter Michael Ketcham, formerly of NIST‬
‪John O’Malley, DC911Truth‬
‪Cheri Aspen, San Diego 9/11 Truth‬
‪James Hufferd, 9/11 Grassroots‬
‪Fern Tishman‬
‪Lynn Bradbury, Maine 9/11Truth‬
‪Michael Cook, AE911Truth‬
‪Christopher Bollyn, Solving 9/11‬
‪Christopher Gioia, commisioner, Franklin Square and Munson Fire District‬
‪Nita Renfrew, New York 911Truth‬
‪Bonnie Faulkner, Guns and Butter‬
‪Charles Ewing Smith, The Demolition of Truth‬
‪ ‬
‪The minutes of the September 25, 2019 conference call were APPROVED.‬
‪ ‬
‪Jeffrey Epstein and 9/11‬
‪Christopher Bollyn presented on Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to Leslie Wexner, Ehud Barak, and Michael Chertoff and about the dissolution of the Iraqi and Syrian states and their military power. He also spoke about the lack of political will to investigate the 9/11 crimes. “We see that the Department of Justice is completely controlled and unable to do an investigation of the government, of itself, or of the crime that changed America. The media, the universities, and the churches have not investigated 9/11. All the institutions that we believe in in our democratic society, somehow being responsible for standing for the truth, have failed us.” Christopher’s new book, Solving 9-11 The Original Articles Vol. ll is available at www.bollyn.com. His recent articles are: The Turkish Invasion of Kurdish-Occupied Syria (https://www.bollyn.com/#article_16281) and The Epstein Connection to 9/11 (https://www.bollyn.com/#article_16267).‬

‪Franklin Square and Munson resolution moving ahead‬
‪Christopher Gioia told of plans to get other fire departments in New York behind the Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department Resolution, and behind the Grand Jury investigation. He and his fellow commissioners are taking their initiative across the country and seeking the support of every fire department or district to support the Grand Jury Petition. ‬
‪“What happened on 9/11 was evil incarnate; it was just tremendous evil that was perpetrated on our country and on our people… That is something we have to fight. I’m not going to stop until justice is done for the people who were murdered.” Christopher said it is critical to keep the pressure and the spotlight on the court to act. He urged everyone to contact U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman and inquire about the status of the Grand Jury investigation.  The address is: Southern District Court of New York, 1 St. Andrew’s Plaza, New York City, NY 10007 (or call: 212-637-2200) https://www.ae911truth.org/news/540-new ... stigation‬
https://www.ae911truth.org/news/541-see ... her-gioia‬
https://commonground.ca/explosives-used ... ssioners/‬

‪Announcements and discussion.‬
1 ‪Cheryl Curtiss said the next teleconference call will be Wednesday, December 4. She also spoke about Max Blumenthal’s arrest, and said updates are posted on https://thegrayzone.com‬
2 ‪Craig McKee asked for suggestions on how to transfer the archive of the 9/11 List Serve emails to another location, because Yahoo Groups will no longer maintain this older content as of December 14. ‬
3 ‪Lynn Bradbury said it would be a good idea to exchange email or postal addresses with each other.‬
4 ‪Nita Renfrew spoke of attending Robert Kennedy Jr.’s presentation on vaccine issues, at which his mic was pulled and the venue immediately closed. He continued his talk outside on the sidewalk. His organization is Children’s Health Defense.‬
‪The call began at 8 p.m. EST and adjourned at 9:51 p.m., PST/5 p.m. to 6:51 p.m. PST. Audio of the October call can be heard here:‬
http://truthandshadows.com/wp-content/u ... 03019.mp3‬
‪The next monthly teleconference will take place on Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 8 p.m. EST, 5 p.m. PST. Agenda items should be emailed to facilitator Cheryl Curtiss ([email protected]) no later than one week before the call. Please use subject line “Agenda item for 911 Truth Teleconference.” Please include a brief description of your item and any relevant links you’d like participants to be aware of, together with your estimate of the number of minutes your agenda item will require. If you would like to join the teleconference list serve, contact Craig McKee ([email protected]), and anyone who would like information such as links included in the minutes should email Ann Hendricks ([email protected]).‬


https://popculture.com/movies/2018/12/2 ... unism-fbi/

'It's A Wonderful Life' Was Once Considered Controversial by the FBI, and Social Media Weighs In


https://www.worldtribune.com/fbi-contin ... h-lawsuit/


FBI continues to find more Clinton emails, 4+ years after Judicial Watch lawsuit
By World Tribune on December 1, 2019





https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-b ... each-other

Mueller, Barr, Giuliani, Comey and Kallstrom Once Fought Terror Together—Now Trump Has Them Fight Each Other

TANGLED FATES IN ‘THE DEEP STATE’
This is the first in a three-part series, a first-hand look at men now known as Trump allies or adversaries who once worked together to fight terrorism—and how that shaped them.

Patricia Ravalgi

Published Dec. 01, 2019 5:00AM ET 





https://theintercept.com/2019/11/30/dav ... heir-side/

David Duke and His Twitter Nazis Got Mad at Me. Twitter Took Their Side.
Jon Schwarz
November 30 2019, 10:00 a.m.



https://theintercept.com/2019/12/01/us- ... -cameroon/

CAMEROONIAN ASYLUM-SEEKERS AT THE BORDER ARE FLEEING A U.S.-BACKED MILITARY FORCE
Joe Penney
December 1 2019, 7:00 a.m.


https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/11/30/a-med ... al-injury/

NOVEMBER 30, 2019 | MILICENT CRANOR
A MEDICAL MIRACLE: STEM CELL THERAPY FOR A CATASTROPHIC SPINAL INJURY




https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... r-29-2019/

November 29, 2019
This week’s FOIA roundup: Millions for Cali DMV from personal info sales, DHS is disappearing FOIA requests, and $75,000 for e-mails on iguana killing
Florida official on iguana disposal: “This is not the wild west.”

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://lbjthemasterofdeceit.com/2019/0 ... ed-dallas/



A Brilliant Essay by Edgar F. Tatro: “A Cozy Little Town Called Dallas”
august 20, 2019 by lbjthemasterofdeceit

ED’S ESSAY WAS PUBLISHED AS THE FOREWORD TO RICHARD BARTHOLOMEW’S EXCELLENT BOOK “THE DEEP STATE IN THE HEART OF TEXAS” WHICH I RECOMMEND TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN FURTHER EXPLORING THE “TEXAS AXIS” OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION.

Within the essay, Ed explains how he was invited to write this piece by Richard Bartholomew to set the stage for Richard’s intensive examination of the numerous assassination-related events that transpired within Texas before, during and after November 22, 1963. Ed’s narrative exposes a number of them as well, in the context of how they were done independently of any direct involvement of the CIA: These events, all conducted under the aegis of what Ed calls the “Texas Axis” — including members of the Dallas Citizen Council, the millionaire oil men throughout Texas, the Dallas Police Department, Lyndon Johnson and his aides and cronies — were crucial to the success of the mission being conducted with the assistance of the CIA, yet were not among the tasks under their control.
Mr. Tatro listed twenty specific examples of critically-important parts to the “executive action” mission, tasks that the “CIA DID NOT” have anything to do with, the first two of which were:

This essay — which can (as of this date) be read in full at the Amazon page for Bartholomew’s book (click here then “Look Inside” to scroll down for Ed’s Foreword) — like the book itself, is a very thoughtful, and thought-provoking, look at the overall scope of the plot to assassinate the President and then to cover it up, ensuring the success of the 1963 coup d’état. To this date, I know of no one who has effectively rebutted his argument, and doubt that anyone could possibly do that if they tried.




https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... -cover-up/


JANUARY 23, 2020
An Impeachment Smoking Gun: The Damning Letter Trump Can’t Cover Up
Case closed.





https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... t-scandal/



The Main Trump Super-PAC Is Covering Up Its Own Role in the Impeachment Scandal
A conspiracy theory, a chronology, and a con.



https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... op-ivanka/

New Court Documents Reveal That Corruption at the Trump Inaugural Fund Went to the Very Top
The lawsuit could reveal the depths of chaos and waste in Trump’s introduction as





https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... ng-scandal


LAPD chief moves to fire Metro Division officer in gang ID scandal
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore is seeking to fire an officer in the department’s elite Metro Division accused of falsely portraying people as gang members.




https://www.masslive.com/news/2020/01/u ... ifies.html

US attorney’s office passed on prosecuting Springfield cop brawl case, FBI agent testifies
Updated 6:27 PM; Today 6:24 PM





https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime ... d4f2ca7232

CRIME
Video: KHOU
Galveston cop arrested on family violence charge
Sgt. Justin Popovich had been under investigation since October.

Author: Michelle Homer
Published: 2:00 PM CST January 24, 2020
Updated: 5:47 PM CST January 24, 2020




https://www.mymoinfo.com/former-park-hi ... -date-now/


Cop Facing Sex Abuse Charges has Jury Trial Date Now
JAN 24, 2020 @ 2:46PM




https://qctimes.com/news/local/crime-an ... 23a54.html

Detailed allegations emerge in East Moline cop's sex assault case
* Tom Loewy Jan 24, 2020 Upda



https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/2020 ... of-coverup

Sarasota Schools fire cop who accused district of sexual misconduct coverup




https://theintercept.com/2020/01/24/ama ... g-ukraine/



RING UKRAINE NEWS SUPPRESSED AT AMAZON’S REQUEST, JOURNALISTS SAY
Sam Biddle
January 24 2020, 11:56 a.m.






https://www.thenation.com/article/can-t ... uses-work/

These Students Are Bringing Transformative Justice to Their Campus



https://abcnews.go.com/US/nypd-cop-fian ... d=68525985

NYPD cop and fiancee allegedly froze 8-year-old boy with autism to death, police said
NYPD officer Michael Valva allegedly left son in the freezing garage overnight.
By
Christina Carrega
January 25, 2020, 11:31 AM




https://midhudsonnews.com/2020/01/25/fo ... -the-town/


Former Fishkill cop sues the town



https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/gbi ... bFEhws1PI/

GBI: Ex-Tybee Island cop arrested after ‘use of force incident’ involving Atlanta woman


https://www.nj.com/news/2020/01/new-jer ... ology.html

New Jersey cops told to halt all use of controversial facial-recognition technology
Updated Jan 25, 2020; Posted Jan 24, 202



https://www.wired.com/story/londons-cop ... -suspects/

London Cops Will Use Facial Recognition to Hunt Suspects
The deployment, at an unspecified number of locations, will be one of the largest uses of the technology by government authorities in the West.



https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-a ... ting-case/

Federal agent: Cops offered payment to witness in Wilkinsburg mass shooting case

MEGAN GUZA | Friday, January 24, 2020 6:22 p.m.




https://www.policeone.com/federal-law-e ... rQ3bRlPHi/


FBI background check system to be audited
The audit of the NICS was requested last year after Sol Pais was allowed to purchase a gun after flying to Colorado from Florida





https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2020 ... ssing.html



He told me of his battle to save the monarch butterfly from illegal loggers. Now he’s missing.




https://www.thestar.com/halifax/2020/01 ... lifax.html

Police watchdog to investigate case of alleged racial profiling in Halifax
By The Canadian Press
Wed., Jan. 22, 2020timer1 min. read




WATCH VIDEO

https://www.powerstrugglemovie.com/frances-crowe


FRANCES CROWE
In Memoriam: March 15, 1919 - August 27, 2019
 
Frances was a stellar light in western Massachusetts, inspiring thousands of people to become social justice and peace activists.
 
I feel very honored and personally inspired to have known Frances for over 40 years.
 
I first met Frances when I was 18 as a college student at Hampshire College in 1976.  Within a month of arriving in the Pioneer Valley, I was in Frances’ car driving to a peace demonstration in Washington, DC.
 
In May 1977, I filmed my first interview with Frances at the mass civil disobedience protest on the construction site of a nuclear reactor in Seabrook, New Hampshire, for my first documentary, SEABROOK 1977. (See video excerpt below)
 
Frances Crowe was featured prominently in my latest documentary, POWER STRUGGLE, which chronicles the successful grassroots citizens’ effort to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vermont. (See video excerpts below)
 
In March 2019, when Frances celebrated her 100th birthday, she was joined by hundreds of people marching through the streets of Northampton, MA. I made a short film about this joyous day, FRANCES TURNS 100. (See video below)
 
On August 29, Amy Goodman, host of DEMOCRACY NOW, a global daily television and radio news program, featured an in-depth tribute to Frances, which featured extensive scenes of Frances protesting at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant from POWER STRUGGLE, along with a 2005 interview with Frances conducted by Amy. It was a very moving tribute. (See video below)
 
Later this fall, I will be posting on this page a video of a discussion panel that I moderated with Frances, along with Marcia Gagliardi and Hattie Nestel of the Shut It Down Affinity Group, talking about their experiences as activists in the Vermont Yankee struggle. This took place at the Northampton Center For The Arts in June 2019.

For more information on Frances’ long life of activism about a diversity of issues, see the newspaper tributes below.
 
If I hear of an official website memorial to Frances, I will post a link here.
 
As Frances says about her life of activism in POWER STRUGGLE, “You can't do it alone. You need community to do this, so that you can support one another and move ahead together.”

While Frances will be sorely missed, her legacy of activism lives on in the countless people she inspired to join movements for grassroots social change.

In particular, I feel heartened that Frances’ activism — and those of other activists from Vermont and western Massachusetts who participated in the struggle to close down the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor — will continue to inspire people who see POWER STRUGGLE, as this film chronicles a rare victory of grassroots activists who actually won.  

— Robbie Leppzer








https://metaphysicalpodcast.com/MC-095- ... e-JFK.html

Episode 96: JFK and The Deep State in the Heart of Texas

Follow

The Fedora Chronicles Radio Show
Metaphysical Connection 96: JFK and The Deep State in the Heart of Texas


Posted by Eric Renderking Fisk | November 17th, 2018
Author Richard Bartholomew visits us with some new revelations about the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy and The infamous Zappruder Film.
About The Book
The Deep State in the Heart of Texas: The Texas Connections to the Kennedy Assassination - Written by Richard Bartholomew and featuring a foreword by Edgar Tatro of THE MEN WHO KILLED KENNEDY, this book examines many of underlying connections in Texas to the assassination on 11/22/1963. Not a simple Lyndon Johnson-did-it book, this is rather a potent analysis of the forces that continue to enable the kind of power politics existent even to the present day.

Richard Bartholomew, a political cartoonist by trade, is a co-founder and director of the Center for Deep Political Research. CDPR boasts many of the best researchers and historians in the field on its Board of Advisors, including Peter Dale Scott, Colleen Rowley, Cynthia McKinney, and William Davy. Bartholomew's talent, education, training, and professional experience have been primarily in the visual arts, resulting in his career as an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator and editorial cartoonist.

His research of the JFK assassination includes his discovery of a 1959 Rambler station wagon possibly used in the conspiracy; a study co-authored with Walter F. Graf involving a rifle clip that contaminates the ballistic evidence; a chronological reconstruction and placement of missing movements edited out of the Zapruder film; an in-depth interview of Erwin Schwartz, with author Noel Twyman, regarding Mr. Schwartz's and Mr. Zapruder's early chain of possession of Zapruder's film; and work for author Barr McClellan resulting in Bartholomew's monograph establishing the methods by which the FBI and the Warren Commission concealed and obfuscated latent fingerprints from the alleged sniper's nest.
Links
Center for Deep Political Research
The mission of the Center for Deep Political Research (CDPR) is to provide the premier venue for journalists and researchers dedicated to the dissemination of existing and new research in counter-measure to official versions of Deep State-orchestrated events.
"JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters," James W. Douglass "Historian James Douglass proves not only that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, but more importantly (for the first time) explains WHY."
"The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government," by David Talbot| October 13, 2015 "An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful—and secretive—colossus in Washington, from the founder of Salon.com and author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers.
America’s greatest untold story: the United States’ rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on revelatory new materials—including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials—Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most powerful and influential figures."



https://nypost.com/2020/01/25/cop-says- ... ted-drunk/


Cop says NYPD orchestrated revenge for arrest of ‘well-connected drunk’



https://www.thenation.com/article/polit ... cash-bail/

How Much Did Chesa Boudin’s Election Matter? He Just Eliminated Cash Bail.
The move proves that revolutionary change is possible.
By John NicholsTwitter
JANUARY 24, 2020

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/ ... imate-bill


Vermont House Approves a Key Climate Bill
POSTED BY KEVIN MCCALLUM ON THU, FEB 20, 2020 AT 8:13 PM



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


Colorado River flow shrinks from climate crisis, risking ‘severe water shortages’
Millions of people rely on the 1,450-mile waterway as increasing periods of drought and rising temperatures reduce flow of river


https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... -in-humans

African killifish may hold key to stopping ageing in humans
Turquoise killifish is able to suspend its development for longer than its average lifespan



https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/ ... -the-skirt


Vagina is not a rude word': the scientist fighting to empower women, one word at a time
Twenty years ago, Catherine Blackledge’s history of the vagina The Story of V broke boundaries. As it is reissued, she talks about anasyrma as activism and why we lie about the clitoris



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... n-collapse

Fates of humans and insects intertwined, warn scientists
Experts call for solutions to be enforced immediately to halt global population collapses



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... protesters

Canadian police had 'no authority' to search pipeline activists, says watchdog




https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/ ... ce-charges


Winooski Cop Denies a Slew of Domestic Violence Charges
POSTED BY DEREK BROUWER ON THU, FEB 20, 2020 AT 9:09 PM





https://www.nj.com/union/2020/02/colleg ... ports.html

College cop says he was wrongfully suspended after barring directors from seeing police reports
Updated Feb 19, 9:06 PM; Posted Feb 19, 7:57 PM






https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/for ... MI5tTtrpM/

Gwinnett cop found guilty of excessive force




East Moline cop makes appearance on sex crime charges
* STAFF Feb 20, 2020 Upd

Kirk DeGreve, 47, is charged with two counts each of criminal sexual assault and possession of child pornography






https://www.pottsmerc.com/news/ex-upper ... d1862.html

Upper Gwynedd cop sent to prison for domestic abuse



https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investiga ... e/2311313/

LA City Attorney Rejects Charges Against Ex Cop Accused of Rape
Office cites “insufficient evidence” in accusation he drugged, held captive, and sexually assaulted a woman.




https://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/ ... 818008002/


Peekskill cop strip case: DA urges any other abuse victims to come forward

Matt Spillane, The Journal News Published 11:39 a.m. ET Feb. 20, 2020 | Updated 12:52 p.m. ET Feb. 20, 2020






https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/fired ... 0k-pension

Fired Chicago top cop getting $190K pension






https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/ ... 808172002/

Westchester County police officers, ex-FBI agent on DA's list with credibility issues

A former FBI agent now heading the intelligence center at the Westchester District Attorney’s Office is among six active law enforcement officers whose credibility has been flagged by county prosecutors





https://au.news.yahoo.com/lead-cop-bris ... 41467.html


Lead cop on Brisbane murder-suicide stood down after 'disgusting' comments






https://www.stabroeknews.com/2020/02/20 ... -argument/


Cop shoots girlfriend who is also a cop over text message argument



https://face2faceafrica.com/article/stu ... th-battery

‘Stupid little children’ – Dismissed Florida cop filmed yanking student’s hair charged with battery





https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKa ... 1KcfmeGlsA


Cops Confirm Talks with Buttigieg and Donors on Replacing Police Chief

* By: Jonathan LarsenFeb 20, 2020






https://www.trentonian.com/news/the-tre ... 2d98b.html







The Trentonian wins OPRA lawsuit appeal against Ewing Township, holds cops accountable statewide




https://www.afro.com/300-cops-added-to- ... call-list/

300 Cops Added to `Do Not Call’ List
By Special to the AFRO -
February 20, 2020




https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/02/2 ... irty-data/

AI Now: Predictive policing systems are racist because corrupt cops produce dirty data
The Institute's Executive Director recently testified in front of the European Parliament



https://abc7.com/video-long-beach-polic ... t/5946156/

Video shows Long Beach police using baton to subdue carjacking suspect
Cellphone video captured part of a Long Beach police incident, which appears to show officers using a baton multiple times on a suspect who was already on the ground.





https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/02/ ... r-the-job/

The FBI Is Looking To Fill Over 1K Special Agent Vacancies, Here’s How You Can Make The Cut
By Rachael Cardin
February 19, 2020 at 4:25 pm
Filed Under:Baltimore, Baltimore News, FBI, Local TV, Talkers




http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27577307/ns/u ... k9ekS9Om-o



Earlier Thursday, Omar, who has pleaded guilty to bank fraud himself, admitted to smoking marijuana — including on Oct. 24, just a few days before he took the stand in the trial. He also complained that his nearly $95,000 in annual compensation by the FBI was inadequate.





https://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-sid ... ng-tickets


D.C. issues record $1 billion in traffic and parking tickets, AAA calls it 'predatory'

by Lisa Fletcher, ABC7 Wednesday, February 19th 202



https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... -escape-b/


Secession fever spikes in five states as conservatives seek to escape blue rule




http://ticklethewire.com/2020/02/21/pol ... rida-home/

Police: CBP Employee Fatally Shot Wife, Sons And Self at Their Florida Home





https://theintercept.com/2020/02/21/oca ... as-senate/

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ ENDORSES CRISTINA TZINTZÚN RAMIREZ IN TEXAS SENATE PRIMARY, BUCKING CHUCK SCHUMER
Ryan Grim
February 21 2020, 9:39 a.m.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: LDSFF Psychological Soup Kitchen for the Political Homeless

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.madcowprod.com/2020/03/04/t ... -glitches/

THOSE WEREN’T “GLITCHES.” AND THIS WAS NO ACCIDENT
By Daniel Hopsicker -
March 4, 2020
0
737
People were still standing in line waiting to vote at 1 AM in Houston, and at midnight in Santa Monica.

Why is that? Is our government really that incompetent? The question has barely been mentioned in the mainstream media. But, at least on Twitter, voters appear to be catching on…




https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... taught-us/

* POLITICS
MARCH 5, 2020
What Elizabeth Warren Taught Us
The Massachusetts senator’s legacy will outlive her campaign.







https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/ ... ders-rally

Published on
Friday, March 06, 2020
byCommon Dreams
'Absolutely Sickening—and Scary': Man Unfurls Nazi Flag at Bernie Sanders Rally, Heightening Security Concerns
"All people of conscience must condemn this anti-Semitism against the most visible Jewish politician in the country."
byJake Johnson, staff writer



"Whoever it was, I think they're a little outnumbered tonight," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said after the man with the Nazi flag was removed from the rally. (Photo: Screenshot/Bernie Sanders Campaign via Storyful)
An Arizona campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is vying to become the first Jewish president in U.S. history, briefly took a disturbing turn Thursday after a man in the crowd unfurled a swastika-emblazoned flag





https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html

Anti-gay ex-congressman Aaron Schock comes out as gay himself

By LAUREN THEISEN

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAR 05, 2020 | 7:19



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/ ... cal-option

Published on
Friday, March 06, 2020
byCommon Dreams
Russia Fears US Considering Use of Nuclear Weapons as 'Viable Political Option'
"This dramatically increases the chance of a nuclear exchange due to miscalculation or human error."
byEoin Higgins, staff writer




https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html


SEE IT: ‘Just glad to be alive,’ says man tackled by cops on Brooklyn street; police commissioner promises probe

By ESHA RAY, ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, THOMAS TRACY and LEONARD GREENE

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAR 05, 2020 | 4:13 PM





http://ticklethewire.com/2020/03/06/jud ... of-candor/


Judge Orders Review of Barr’s Report, Criticizes AG’s ‘Lack of Candor’






http://ticklethewire.com/2020/03/05/doj ... xtremists/

OJ Watchdog Criticizes FBI’s Handling of U.S.-Based Violent Extremists



The Justice Department’s inspector general criticized the FBI’s handling of U.S.-based extremists who successfully carried out attacks against Americans after the bureau investigated them.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report identified homegrown violent extremists (HVE) who continued to act violently after the FBI prematurely closed their cases.
“Since September 11, 2001, HVEs have carried out over 20 attacks in the United States, some of which occurred after the FBI closed a counterterrorism investigation or assessment on the individual,” the report said.





https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/03/05/covid ... nt-truths/

MARCH 5, 2020 | CELIA WEXLER
COVID-19: A FEW INCONVENIENT TRUTHS


https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/03/05/inves ... was-bogus/

ELECTION INTEGRITY
MARCH 5, 2020 | GABRIELLA NOVELLO
INVESTIGATION FINDS KEMP’S 2018 HACKING ALLEGATION WAS BOGUS




https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/03/04/can-f ... a-country/

MARCH 4, 2020 | LANA COHEN
CAN FREE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION TRANSFORM A COUNTRY?





https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/06 ... red-ships/

MARCH 6, 2020
Cancer in US Navy Nuclear Powered Ships
by CHRIS BUSBY

USS Ronald Reagan, Kitty Hawk and Abraham Lincoln. Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate Todd P. Cichonowicz.
Here is a good one. In 2011, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was about 100km off the coast of Japan


https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/06 ... day-sting/

MARCH 6, 2020
The Super Tuesday Sting
by MATTHEW STEVENSON
This is the sixth of a periodic series on the early primaries and caucuses. The other pieces can be found here.

The fix on Super Tuesday in the presidential election was a clubhouse deal in which the elders of the Democratic Party, led by Barack Obama, shook down the primary system to teach Bernie Sanders a civics lesson, which is that the party ideals must remain convertible into gold or silver.
I know that, at least on paper, the current Democratic Party is the heir of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackso



http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020 ... ality.html

Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Infectivity, JHU stats and mortality estimates

Johns Hopkins is keeping track of COVID-19 cases internationally, in real time, here.

There have been 51,171 recovered cases and 3,254 deceased, for a 6% mortality rate.  This number should drop, I hope considerably, as we begin to identify more asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases.

One hopeful piece of information is that spread has been mostly within families...suggesting infection requires a large inoculum size (a large number of viral particles) and may therefore be considerably less contagious for those with only casual contact with cases.  We hope.

Update 3/5/20:  Spread might be high within families because they have genetic markers in common that either promote infection or lead to more severe infection.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 6:43 PM



https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... nd-protec/

February 28, 2020
This week’s FOIA roundup: expensive calls to nowhere and protecting the right to be curious about government
The week in transparency and accountability battles, threats, and wins
Written by Sarah Alvarez





https://www.truthdig.com/articles/biden ... for-trump/

MAR 04, 2020


Joe Biden Would Be Donald Trump's Dream Opponent




https://www.truthdig.com/cartoons/some-threat/


Some Threat
by MR. FISH



https://theintercept.com/2020/03/05/esp ... s-freedom/

NEW BILL WOULD PROTECT JOURNALISTS FROM BEING PROSECUTED FOR PUBLISHING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
Alex Emmons
March 5 2020, 9:00 a.m.



https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7j9 ... lectronics


Leaked Plans Suggest Europe Wants to Pass Right to Repair Laws for Electronics
A draft action plan says that Europe wants to make electronics a "priority sector for implementing the right to repair."



https://www.newsweek.com/arizona-cop-fi ... or-1490826

ARIZONA COP FIRED AFTER PULLING OVER BLACK MAN FOR HANGING AIR FRESHENER ON REAR-VIEW MIRROR
BY MATT KEELEY ON 3/5/20 AT 6:29 PM EST






https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/20 ... rison.html

March 6 2020

Cop fired amid child sexual assault charges sentenced 7 to 50 years in prison



https://www.foxnews.com/us/alabama-pris ... r-his-life

Alabama man's family calls execution in cop killing case 'modern-day lynching'




https://www.middletownpress.com/middlet ... 109134.php


Hamden cop suspended in connection with case of missing Middletown man
By Cassandra Day Updated 6:19 pm EST, Thursday, March 5, 2020
* 




https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/cri ... story.html



Chicago TribuneChicago police union president forced into runoff election against cop
facing discipline for filing report onChicago police union president forced into runoff election against cop
facing discipline for filing report on Eddie Johnson. Jeremy Gorner. By ...4 hours ago




https://www.fox19.com/2020/03/06/cincin ... due-court/

Cincinnati police officer accused of outing undercover cop indicted, due in court







Excellent article! Medical furloughs for the elderly in prisons and jails and other necessary precautions!

https://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/9 ... -liberties




3/6/2020
Muslim Americans overwhelmingly voted for Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday
Rafi Schwartz, Mic
Stealth political ads flourish on Facebook
Mark Scott, Politico
Espionage Act Reform Bill Would Protect Journalists Like Julian Assange
Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof
New Bill Would Protect Journalists From Being Prosecuted For Publishing Classified Information
Alex Emmons, The Intercept
Nathaniel Woods executed in Alabama after Supreme Court denies stay
Bill Hutchinson & Ella Torres, ABC News
3/5/2020
Inside Trumpf’s Divisive Mission to Identify and Deter Potential Extremists
Julia Harte, The Nation
Banjo AI surveillance is already monitoring traffic cams across Utah
Christine Fisher, Engadget
▶ Inside the Assange courtroom: Kevin Gosztola explains the US-UK assault on press freedom
Anya Parampil, The Grayzone
Attorney General Bill Barr splits with Trump, other Republicans over reauthorization of FISA
Alexander Mallin & Katherine Faulders, ABC News
3/4/202

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