FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon May 08, 2017 3:23 pm

Link Du jour


http://www.fleoa.org/






https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... 8/fbi-cve/





May 8, 2017
FBI struggled with “messaging challenges” surrounding its controversial counterterror program for teens
In internal emails Bureau decried “self-proclaimed activists who are providing incorrect information to the media” regarding CVE
Written by Waqas Mirza
Edited by JPat Brown
FBI officials fretted over critical press coverage of their interactive website and online game on violent extremism aimed at high school students and attempted to assuage concerns raised by civil liberties and Muslim organizations, according to documents released through a FOIA request by Michael Best.
The FBI’s Don’t Be a Puppet website is intended to raise awareness of violent extremism and the risk of radicalization to vulnerable students. It relies on flawed theories of radicalization which erroneously assumes that there are “indicators” or “risk factors” of violent extremism.

The website and the online game were immediately met with criticism and ridicule. A letter signed by 19 organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Immigration and Law Center, and others, accused the FBI website of promoting “bigotry and hatred” and doubling down on “the problematic law-enforcement strategy of profiling.”
The FBI held a meeting with representatives of many organizations which had criticized the website. According to Abed A. Ayoub, the legal and policy director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the meeting was “very tense” and FBI officials received “blowback from everybody.”
The documents released by the FBI are heavily redacted and exclude nearly every substantial discussion of the website, including meeting presentations and notes, changes proposed by groups, input by students and teachers, and media briefings.
What the documents do show, however, is the clear frustration of many FBI officials due to critical coverage of the website and pushback from civil liberties and community organizations.
One e-mail laments the “unfortunate press” in the New York Times and the Washington Post “as a result of criticisms by several groups” whose “characterizations of the website” it claimed were “very inaccurate.” The e-mail also claimed that such a response was not representative since FBI focus groups with “nearly 50 groups and 200 individuals” yielded an “almost universally positive” response.

Such critical press coverage was foreseen by at least one shrewd FBI official, who, in a response to queries by the New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein, remarked to colleagues that “NYT should certainly be discouraged from writing a story as they have little to nothing to go on.”

There documents included notes on one meeting with the Muslim Leaders’ Council, perhaps to showcase the “almost universally positive” response to the website, which also derided “self-proclaimed activists who are providing incorrect information to the media.”

It is unclear exactly what the Muslim Leaders’ Council is. The notes refer to “our” Muslim Leaders’ Council and one of its members as one of “our” members, which seem to suggest that it has close connections to the FBI and would also explain the effusive response of the group to the FBI website.
Nonetheless, such an “almost universally positive” response by individuals and groups FBI held focus groups with did not solve the Bureau’s “messaging challenges,” for which it ultimately reached out to a woman who worked on the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiative in Montgomery County, MD.

The woman whose name is redacted is likely someone who works for the World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE), which runs a CVE initiative that relies on a flawed theory of radicalization, stigmatizes Muslim Americans, and has the potential to curtail civil rights and political expression and organizing.
The Bureau attempted to confront its “messaging challenges” by replacing at least one “Islamic angle” with a focus on animal rights activists.

Nonetheless, the Bureau ran into an easily avoidable logistical difficulty when it attempted to meet with religious leaders to further its messaging efforts.

One individual invited to a briefing with the Bureau hoped the FBI’s CVE initiative would not brand bearded Muslims as terrorists.

To which an FBI official helpfully responded by stating that “facial hair” would not be a part of the discussion.

While the FBI boasts of holding focus groups and seeking inputs from students, teachers, community leaders, and members of religious organizations, the actual input is curiously not made available to the public. Previously, the Department of Education had rejected a FOIA request for the feedback that it provided to the FBI on its website. The documents released by the FBI also redact all input received from the public but include the consent forms signed by parents of students.





http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/05/08/govern ... ett-brown/




May 8, 2017
The Government Is Not Done Messing with Barrett Brown

A recent lawsuit against the FBI is shedding light on the complex game the Bureau is playing to silence investigators of the cyber-industrial complex.
The lawsuit concerns the subpoenaing of anonymous donor information to the legal defense fund for formerly incarcerated journalist Barrett Brown. Brown had investigated data from private intelligence corporations that was leaked by the hacker collective Anonymous. He created a wiki, ProjectPM, to crowdsource the work of sifting through the data — which found interesting bits of information, like an effort to discredit WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald through fake documents and propaganda.
The FBI did not like this snooping. Agents arrested Brown in September 2012 after a raid on his apartment and his mother’s house. They initially indicted him on the now infamous “linking” charge — because he linked the already leaked data from one chatroom to another — but that was dropped in favor of lesser charges: threatening an FBI agent on a Youtube video, interfering with a search warrant’s execution by hiding his laptop, and accessory after the fact. Brown was in prison for four years, before being released to a halfway house in November 2016. He is now on parole.
Kevin Gallagher, an advocate for privacy who followed Brown’s work and arrest, created the website FreeBarrettBrown.org and used the donation platform WePay.com to collect anonymous donations for a legal defense fund during his incarceration. Suspecting that these anonymous donors may have had ties to hackers, or were hackers themselves, the FBI subpoenaed WePay for its information — demanding “any and all records” regarding the donations to Brown’s defense fund. Gallagher and an anonymous donor decided to officially retaliate, signing on as plaintiffs to the lawsuit.
Is the subpoena legal? Gallagher’s lawyers say no. The lawsuit claims that the FBI violated the First Amendment, the Stored Communications Act, and the privacy rights in the California Constitution (Gallagher and some of the donors are from California, according to the lawsuit). Whatever the charges against Brown were, the lawsuit claims that “the identities of, and the amounts donated by, the journalist’s supporters are completely irrelevant to the charges levied against the journalist.”
The gravity of the problem is right in the lawsuit: “the WePay subpoena was part of a larger scheme… to unlawfully surveil the donors in violation of the First Amendment.” We know the intelligence community has an unseemly knack for crushing dissent, the most high profile example being Edward Snowden; but the incarceration of Brown and the subpoenaing of anonymous donor information shows the lengths to which they will go. Snowden can at least be cast as a villain by the government because he leaked classified information, but Brown was deemed a criminal because he looked at information that was already leaked. And now donors, who have nothing to do with what Brown did, are on the FBI’s list.
Why would the FBI jail a journalist, whose worst crime was a mildly threatening Youtube video because he was angry about the FBI raiding his mom’s house, for four years? It was simply part of a long play to intimidate journalists, and to find more information on hackers. Once the defense fund was set up, the FBI saw an opportunity for more information and they subpoenaed it. Maybe some of those donors have hacker ties, or are hackers themselves, or maybe not. But an innocent man was jailed for those names.
Brown is now out on parole in Texas, but the ire of the FBI is not over. He was re-arrested on April 27 for speaking to the press about his plight, only to be released on May 1. According to Brown himself in a column for D Magazine, the Texas Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had begun demanding Brown and his interviewers sign forms prior to interviews, which Brown rejected on claim that there is no relevant rule, either in the Bureau of Prisons Program Statement on News Media Contacts or in the Constitution, which constrains his dealings with the press. The BOP retaliated by ordering him on the morning of April 27 to appear at the Volunteers of America halfway house that day, where he has biweekly meetings with his case manager.
Brown could tell something was amiss, so he called journalists and Dallas City Councilman Philip Kingston to tell them what was going on. At 10 am, Brown was taken into custody. He was never given an official explanation of why he had been re-arrested, and waited for four days while a lawyer retained by D Magazine, David Siegal of Haynes and Boone, made a series of calls to the BOP describing “what they’d gotten themselves into.” On May 1, the jail’s counselor summoned Brown into his office and told him “You won. Get your stuff ready. You’re leaving.”
But did he win? Brown was taken back to the halfway house and pressured, yet again, to sign forms that had nothing to do with his situation. The forms can be seen here and here; these are forms for the press gaining access to speak to a prison inmate, not for someone out on parole.
Brown wrote a detailed description of his last meeting:
“Woody Hossler, the aforementioned halfway house staffer, had to pick me up in his car and take me back to Hutchins, where I was given a breathalyzer and drug test before being cajoled into meeting with Wells, who this time had some other fellow in his office with him whom he identified vaguely as his new ‘program director.’ After commenting that I ‘look mad,’ Wells said that the BOP wanted me to sign two forms. I asked him what would happen if I didn’t. He replied that in that case we would ‘be back where we started’ and that he would have to call the BOP. I asked who at the BOP had told him all this; he said that Lujan was absent that day and someone else was acting in her role. I spent about two minutes trying to get him to admit that I was being threatened with yet another unlawful arrest if I failed to sign these two inappropriate forms, an idea that he attempted to depict as wholly silly. I asked, for instance, if I





https://patch.com/us/across-america/ari ... y-theorist



Arizona Police Training Event Criticized Because Of Conspiracy ...

... sponsored by the Arizona Police Association - includes a class, Understanding and Investigating Jihadi Networks, taught by former FBI agent John Guandolo.




http://www.courthousenews.com/whistlebl ... lf-mexico/






Whistleblower Says USA Went Easy on Dumping in Gulf of Mexico



May 8, 2017
whistleblower who told authorities three oil drilling companies dumped chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico claims a federal prosecutor ignored his evidence, costing the United States $28 million in fines.
Evan Howington sued the United States on May 4 in Federal Court.
The Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships encourages whistleblowers to speak out, but they need the cooperation of federal prosecutors to collect any reward.
Whistleblowers can be paid up to 50 percent of penalties the government gets from a polluting ship operator under the law, which Congress passed in 1980.
Howington’s lawsuit turns on how that law defines a ship.
He says that Jon Maestri, an assistant U.S. attorney in New Orleans, came to the “patently incorrect” conclusion that an oil drilling support vessel from which Howington saw chemicals dumped into the Gulf is not “capable of being used as a means of transportation” so it does not meet the definition of a ship under the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.






http://www.courthousenews.com/texas-pol ... -murder-2/

Texas Policeman Charged With Murder

A fired, white Dallas-area police officer who inexplicably shot and killed an unarmed black teenager with a rifle as he was leaving a party in a car was arrested late Friday on a murder charge and sued in federal court for wrongful death.






http://www.courthousenews.com/tickled-c ... iles-suit/




Tickled by CIA’s Tweets, Anthropologist Files Suit




May 8, 2017
BOSTON (CN) – The CIA’s tongue-in-cheek Twitter posts inspired a federal complaint from an anthropologist specializing in social media, hoping to get records on the spy agency’s funny bone.
Set to get her doctorate this year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Amanda Johnson brought her May 4 complaint in Boston after waiting years on an answer by the CIA to her request under the Freedom of Information Act.
“It is rare for a federal agency – especially an agency whose duties are so serious – to employ a humorous tone when communicating with the public,” the 11-page complaint states. “This makes the CIA’s decision to do so a matter of both public and academic interest, especially for scholars in the humanities.”
Johnson notes that a sarcastic tone has been evident in the CIA’s Twitter communications from the get-go.



FBI OCTOPUS



France votes for president
Chronicle-
Kenneth Grey, a retired FBI special agent and lecturer at the University of New Haven, said he is not surprised by the hacking attack. “It certainly does seem to be ...






http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/ ... man-173908


Repeat Felon Is Hero Alt-Right Deserves

Ex-con has cracked heads at Berkeley street demonstrations
Kyle Chapman, 41, is a thrice-convicted felon who has spent ten years behind bars for his various crimes. He now seeks to destroy "neo-Marxists."

MAY 8--The latest hero of the alt-right, a California man who has beaten and maced anti-Trump protesters on the streets of Berkeley, is a thrice-convicted felon who has served three separate prison terms, jumped bail, twice violated parole, used cocaine, LSD, and meth, and was described by his own lawyer as having “severe psychological problems,” court records show.
Kyle Chapman, a 41-year-old rough boy committed to destroying the “neo-Marxist scourge,” was arrested March 4 following a melee at a rally organized by Trump supporters. While marchers purportedly were there in support of free speech, Chapman--who has spent a combined 10 years behind bars--came dressed for a fight.
Chapman, a Bay Area resident, was one of ten combatants










http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/sou ... fle-758392

No, It Is Not A Crime For A 57-Year-Old Guy To Carry A Rifle While Only Wearing Light Blue Thong Underwear


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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun May 14, 2017 10:17 pm

http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3160671


The 11 candidates Trump is considering for FBI director including FBI agent Mike Rogers
involved in the 911 coverup

Friday, May 12, 2017, 7:45 PM










http://www.floridabulldog.org/2014/12/f ... 11-report/


DECEMBER 29, 2014 AT 6:04 AM
Florida congressman denied access to censored pages from Congress’ 9/11 report



The U.S. House Intelligence Committee has denied a Florida congressman’s request for access to 28 classified pages from the 2002 report of Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, told BrowardBulldog.org he made his request at the suggestion of House colleagues who have read them as they consider whether to support a proposed resolution urging President Obama to open those long-censored pages to the public.

“Why was I denied? I have been instrumental in publicizing the Snowden revelations regarding pervasive domestic spying by the government and this is a petty means for the spying industrial complex to lash back,” Grayson said last week, referring to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

Redacted on orders from then-President George W. Bush, the report says the 28 pages concern “specific sources of foreign support” for the 9/11 hijackers while they were in the U.S. Specifically, that is “the role of Saudi Arabia in funding 9/11,” according to former Florida Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the Joint Inquiry and helped write the 28 pages.

Graham has long called for declassifying those pages in order to help 9/11 victims and their families find justice, and to better serve national security. In July, 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton also came out in support of declassification.

“I’m embarrassed that they’re not declassified,” said Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman. “We emphasized transparency. I assumed incorrectly that our records would be public, all of them, everything.”

House Resolution 428, sponsored by Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., R-NC, asks President Obama to release the 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry’s report, saying they are “necessary for a full public understanding of the events and circumstances” surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., is one of 21 co-sponsors including Florida Reps. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, and Ted Yoho, R-Gainesville. Massie has challenged all members of Congress to read the report, which he said poses no threat to national security.

In 2003, 46 senators – including Joe Biden, Sam Brownback, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry – wrote to President Bush asking him to declassify the pages.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando
U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando
In a party line vote, the House Intelligence Committee voted 8-4 on Dec. 1 to deny Democrat Grayson access to the 28 pages. The same day, the committee unanimously approved requests to access classified committee documents – not necessarily the 28 pages – by 11 other House members.

Grayson, an outspoken liberal and a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said his denial was engineered by outgoing Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. Rogers is a former FBI agent who did not seek re-election in November.

“Congressman Rogers made serious misrepresentations to other committee members when he brought this up,” Grayson in a telephone interview. “When the Guardian reported on the fact that there was universal domestic surveillance regarding every single phone call, including this one, I went to the floor of the House and gave a lengthy speech decrying it.”

“Chairman Rogers told the committee that I had discussed classified information on the floor. He left out the most important part that I was discussing what was reported in the newspaper,” said Grayson. “He clearly misled the committee for an improper purpose: to deny a sitting member of Congress important classified information necessary for me to do my job.”

Rogers did not respond to a request for comment. An aide in his Lansing, Michigan office referred callers to a spokeswoman for the House Intelligence Committee who could not be reached for comment.



New push to release censored pages in Congressional report that detail 9/11 link to Saudi Arabia
Bob Graham: FBI hindered Congress’s 9/11 inquiry, withheld reports about Sarasota Saudis
FBI’s attempt to water down judicial order denied; 9/11 documents begin to flow to judge
FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark








Link Du Jour


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/m ... ocumentary


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/m ... nald-trump







https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... fundraiser


Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants



Saturday May 13 at 7 pm

Emlen Hall, The Bay School in Blue Hill, Maine*

Portrait Unveiling by Rob Shetterly

Author Talk

Music by Timbered Lake and Shawn Mercer



*The Bay School address is 17 Bay School Dr. off South St. east of Tradewinds.

An Appeal to the Friends of AWTT:

Americans Who Tell the Truth is proud to have initiated the effort to bring Robin Wall Kimmerer to Blue Hill and to be unveiling her portrait at this event. We are also extremely grateful to our co-sponsors, among them the Reversing Falls Sanctuary, Blue Hill Books, Wabanaki Reach, Maine Veterans for Peace, Peninsula Peace and Justice, and The Reversing Falls Women’s Circle. Ms. Kimmerer’s wise voice tells us what values we must choose to live by to survive on a healthy planet. Scientist, botanist, native storyteller, activist -- Ms. Kimmerer is fundamentally an educator for political and social communities desperately in need of education.

Since 2002, Americans Who Tell the Truth has been dedicated to providing models of courageous citizenship. Now, the fundamental focus of the AWTT organization is educational. The more than 220 portraits travel to schools, colleges, libraries and churches all over the US.

But our primary initiative is right here in Maine’s middle schools. Through our Samantha Smith Challenge (SSC) we engage hundreds of students around the state, helping them to identify and address key social, economic and environmental issues; research those issues; and then work toward real world solutions. The SSC is now in its third year. The first year seven schools participated. This year 12 schools will bring students to the culminating event at Thomas College on June 5, Samantha Smith Day.

Because of this growth and the enthusiasm for our work in schools, we need your help!

We need funding to complete the programming for this year’s SSC and to expand the program within Maine next year. Please make a donation. Let’s help students realize their power to be agents of change as they follow the wisdom of Robin Wall Kimmerer and other models of courageous citizenship to make a better future for us all.

Make your donation on the AWTT website or by returning this letter with a check to 46 Bridge Road, Brooksville, Maine 04617. Americans Who Tell the Truth is a 501 c (3) non-profit and your donations are fully deductible.

Thank you,

Robert Shetterly, Founder and artist


More on Braiding Sweetgrass:

“Braiding Sweetgrass has become an essential companion for my life. I was sold early on in the book when Kimmerer talked about the importance of integrating scientific ways of knowing, indigenous ways of knowing and storytelling ─ what an incredible trinity! My first exposure to the book was on my Kindle Fire, and thus I was treated to Robin’s melodious voice as she told her stories. In every chapter, I was gifted with new ways of looking at our world. I had never heard of mast fruiting (Council of Pecans) ─ if one tree fruits, they all fruit. All flourishing is mutual. Wow! What a lesson from our Mother Earth, and these teachings are multiplied in every chapter. We learn how trees communicate, we learn how we are all beneficiaries of reciprocity, we learn the value of the gift economy. We learn that strawberries belong to themselves and that we dwell in a world full of gifts scattered right at our feet! I will be forever grateful to Robin Wall Kimmerer for tilting the axis of my world just enough so that I am seeing with new eyes and understanding our world with new insights.” Anne Ferrara



“I have been mightily impacted by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s books, both Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass. I have been using her thoughts and words to create ritual for change in our Sanctuary community for years. Rereading Braiding Sweetgrass with our women’s circle has brought great delight to me. Here is a Kimmerer text from an Equinox ceremony I conducted with Susan Merrill and Leslie Goode: Ceremony is a vehicle for belonging. . . to a family, to a people, and to the land. Ceremonies large and/ small have the power to focus attention to a way of living AWAKE in the world.” Pat Wheeler



“Something I love about Kimmerer’s writing is that she weaves all the threads of her knowledge, experience, in short. . . life, in such a way that one aspect informs and enhances the other. She doesn’t separate her science background from her mothering, gardening, or native traditions. She sees that everything truly is connected and this becomes the base coherent structure of her writing.” Daksha Baumann



“Robin Kimmerer’s writing is so full of tough insight and vulnerable openness, precise scientific description and philosophical musing, humble gratitude and stern prescription. . . in short she teaches how to see our broken relationship with nature and history and how to make it whole again. This quote is one of many I’ve copied out from Braiding Sweetgrass:The fear for me is that the world has been turned inside out, the dark side made to seem light. Indulgent self-interest that our people once held to be monstrous is now celebrated as success. We are asked to admire what our people viewed as unforgiveable.” Rob Shetterly

“The thought that comes to mind is the primacy of greed or selfishness as a single commandment versus the 10 of Judaism and Christianity. With income equality escalating (and more so with our President’s proposed tax revision favoring the rich), the focus on an economic system which creates extravagant luxuries for a tiny portion of the populace, while a large percentage are without basic needs, appears particularly germane. I believe in the adage, There is nothing more powerful as an idea whose time has come. I’m hoping this next idea will be Medicare for all. Tony Ferrara







Location: The Bay School, Blue Hill, Maine
Date: May 13, 2017



http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com/2017 ... istry.html




Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Better Living Through Chemistry


On Earth Day, April 22, a hundred thousand people marched all across the world for science. Tens of thousands demonstrated in Los Angeles and London, while 200 people marched 200 miles north of the Arctic circle in Norway. In 600 cities on every continent, citizens and scientists carried signs like “Fund science, not walls” and “Science trumps alternative facts”.

In Washington, DC, the biggest crowd protested Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts to scientific research in public health and climate.

Trump is carrying out normal Republican politics. None of the many Republican candidates for President in 2016 thought evolution should be taught in public schools. A majority of Republican voters believe in creationism.

The issue of climate change shows the influence of political ideology on attitudes toward science. A Pew poll found that only 15% of conservative Republicans believe “the earth is warming mostly due to human activity”, 34% of moderate Republicans, 63% of moderate Democrats, and 79% of liberal Democrats. A majority of conservative Republicans believes that climate scientists are influenced by desire to advance their careers and political ideology, not by scientific evidence or public interest. To put it simply, conservatives don’t believe in science or scientists, if it’s inconvenient.

Here’s how science denial works in real life. Lots of private websites offer their version of science, paid for by private money which they don’t disclose, using clever tactics to pretend to search for truth. An example is the Heartland Institute, which has been denying the existence of warming for decades.

On the other side is “Understanding Science”, a public project of the University of California at Berkeley, funded by the federal National Science Foundation. This step-by-easy-step primer offers a balanced and authentic understanding of “how science REALLY works”. But those who automatically accuse both government and the nation’s best universities of politicized scientific fraud would dismiss this site as propaganda. So they won’t learn from it how our scientific community does a far better job of policing high standards for honesty and frankness than either politicians or corporations.

And they won’t think about who pays for science: “Most scientific research is funded by government grants (e.g., from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, etc.), companies doing research and development, and non-profit foundations.” Public and private sources have different priorities for funding scientific research. My nephew works on the development of a drug to stop Alzheimer’s for a biotechnology company formed by scientists and venture capitalists. Their research is motivated both to find better medicines for our collective health and to make money. As I approach 70, the prospect of preventing brain degeneration before it hits me is exciting. Their profit might extend my useful life.

Some privately funded scientific research is not in the public interest at all, such as the tobacco companies’ effort to deny the link to cancer, funneled through sciency-sounding propaganda organizations like the Heartland Institute.

The Republicans in Congress are not waging a war on all science; they quote from Heartland’s fake science. They attack government-supported science because it might lead to government spending. For example, the discovery of lead in Flint’s water meant that old pipes must be replaced on 17,000 homes at an estimated cost of $7500 each, totaling $127,500,000. Government-paid scientific research documented how lead affects babies’ brains, supported the creation of regulations which forced industry to stop using lead, compared the levels of lead in Flint’s water to experimental evidence on poisoning, and thus demonstrated the need for federal intervention.

Republicans in the Senate voted overwhelmingly to deny funding to deal with Flint’s crisis, but that effort lost by one vote. Congress authorized $170 million for Flint.

In the words of “Understanding Science”, “Science affects your life everyday in all sorts of different ways.” Good public science saves lives and serves the public interest through government spending and government regulation. But those are Republican curse words. That is the deep secret behind the anti-science policies of Republicans in Congress and the White House. If they want to shrink government, they have to slow down or even stop science. They use tactics of obfuscation and delay. House Science Committee chair Lamar Smith attacked a 2015 NOAA study showing rising global temperatures. He used his old tactics, honed over decades in Congress: he demanded thousands of e-mails and other documents in search of malfeasance, misspent funds, or corruption. He has never found any of those things. But he slowed down science he doesn’t like.

This is not in our national interest. If we don’t prepare for the world’s new climate, if we don’t prevent health crises through regulation of pollutants, if we don’t spend now on inconvenient science, we will have to spend much more later in economic and social costs. Peter Muennig, professor of public health at Columbia University, estimates that the two fewer healthy years of the 8000 Flint children exposed to lead might cost American society $400 million.

The astrophysicist and TV explainer of science Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe it.”

The bad thing about Republican science politics is that our children and grandchildren will pay the price. Without science, it’s just fiction.

Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Posted by Steve Hochstadt






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


LOCAL L.A. Now
Ex-L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca sentenced to three years in prison in jail corruption scandal







http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/p ... -1.3134079


Pennsylvania police officer beat and shot students with Taser on surveillance video, attorney says
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 3, 2017, 1:55 PM



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -negotiate




Some Yale teachers are refusing to eat in protest of the university. I'm one of them
Lukas Moe





http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3157233



Off-duty NY officer charged in fatal DWI crash


Thursday, May 11, 2017, 5:10 PM




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/n-m ... -1.3159660



New Jersey man high on PCP busted after he stops car in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel to masturbate
BY THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, May 12, 2017, 12:09 PM





https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... -rodriguez



Mexican woman who uncovered cartel murder of daughter shot dead
Human rights commission attacks government failure to protect Miriam Rodriguez, who was killed





http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 09775.html


US-trained cartel terrorises Mexico
Founders of the Zetas drug gang learned special forces techniques at Ft. Bragg before waging a campaign of carnage.


Despite the deployment of 50,000 troops, Mexico seems to be losing the 'war on drugs' [AFP]
It was a brutal massacre even by the gruesome standards of Mexico’s drug war: 72 migrant workers gunned down by the "Zetas" - arguably the country's most violent cartel - and left rotting in a pile outside a ranch in Tamaulipas state near the US border in late August.

The Zetas have a fearsome reputation, but the real surprise comes not in their ruthless use of violence, but in the origins of where they learned the tricks of their bloody trade.

Some of the cartel's initial members were elite Mexican troops, trained in the early 1990s by America’s 7th Special Forces Group or "snake eaters" at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, a former US special operations commander has told Al Jazeera.

“They were given map reading courses, communications, standard special forces training, light to heavy weapons, machine guns and automatic weapons,” says Craig Deare, the former special forces commander who is now a professor at the US National Defence University.

"I had some visibility on what was happening, because this [issue] was related to things I was doing in the Pentagon in the 1990s," Deare, who also served as country director in the office of the US Secretary of Defence, says.

"Other cartels have accused the Zetas of not following the 'gentlemen's code' of drug trafficking"

Kristen Bricker, NACLA Research Associate

The Mexican personnel who received US training and later formed the Zetas came from the Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE), which is considered an elite division of the Mexican military.

Their US training was designed to prepare them for counter-insurgency and, ironically, counter-narcotics operations, although Deare says they were not taught the most advanced commando techniques available at Ft. Bragg.

Military forces from around the world train at Ft. Bragg, so there is nothing unique about Mexican operatives learning counter-insurgency tactics at the facility. However, critics say the specific skills learned by the Zetas primed them for careers as contract killers and drug dealers.

“The Zetas definitely have the reputation of being the most dangerous, the most vicious, the most renegade of the cartels,” says Kristen Bricker, a Mexico-based research associate with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).

About 29,000 people have died since Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, declared war on the drug cartels in 2006.

Extreme violence

The group has mounted the severed heads of its victims on pikes in urban areas, posted torture and execution videos on the internet, forced poor migrants into prostitution and massacred college students during house parties.

"Other cartels have accused them of not following the 'gentlemen's code' of drug trafficking and causing undue violence," Bricker told Al Jazeera.

"At one time, it was considered bad form to kill pregnant women, but not any more." For safety concerns, Bricker didn’t want to say where she lives in Mexico.

Deare estimates "probably more than 500" GAFE personnel received special forces training. He is unsure exactly how long the programme lasted. The Zetas came to the attention of Mexico’s Attorney General’s office in 1999.

After US training, GAFE operatives defected from the Mexican military to become hired guns, providing security to the Gulf cartel, a well established trafficking organisation, according to Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas program of the International Relations Center.

"They split from the Gulf cartel and formed as a cartel in their own right," Carlsen, based in Mexico City, told Al Jazeera.

The Zetas' alleged current leaders, Heriberto Lazcano, known as Z-3 and Miguel Trevino, or Z-40, were first recruited by Osiel Cardenas, the now-jailed leader of the Gulf cartel. The name "Zetas" originates from the radio code "Z" used by top military commanders in Mexico.

But unlike Zorro, the Mexican outlaw hero who also used the "Z" alias, Los Zetas steal from everyone, not just the rich. And they certainly don’t give much back to the poor, except the corpses of their relatives. "They are just known for being a different kind of human being," says Bricker.

Frequent defections








SOA Watch: Close the School of the Americas at Fort Bragg



s
SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works through creative protest and resistance, legislative and media work to stand in solidarity with the people of ...
Search domain www.soaw.org



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3160264




MAKO LOVE, NOT WAR: Ex-NYPD cop is naked man in Florida dead-shark hump photo mystery, reporter says
BY NANCY DILLON
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Friday, May 12, 2017, 5:03 PM







http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/g ... -1.3146793



Georgia sheriff accused of exposing himself at Atlanta park, running away from bike cop

Monday, May 8, 2017, 5:07 AM


DeKalb County Sheriff Jeffrey Mann was arrested late Saturday after allegedly exposing himself in an Atlanta park. (DEKALB COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE)
One of Georgia’s top cops was busted after exposing himself at an Atlanta park on Saturday night, according to local reports Sunday.

Police said DeKalb County Sheriff Jeffrey Mann bolted when confronted by a bike cop in Piedmont Park, according to an incident report obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3160013




Press Secretary Sean Spicer cutouts now available to decorate your bushes following fiasco at White House
BY DAN GUNDERMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, May 12, 2017, 2:38 PM







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




LAPD settlements soar as officials close the books on high-profile lawsuits against police



The Los Angeles Police Department paid nearly $81 million in legal settlements last fiscal year, a sharp increase as the city closed the books on several high-profile and costly cases.

The settlement numbers were significantly higher than in previous years and involved cases that had been working their way through the court system for the last few years.

Among them were two wrongful convictions of men for separate murders. The men each spent more than 25 years behind bars, and the department settled their cases for about $24 million.

An additional $15 million went to a boy left paralyzed after an LAPD officer shot him. The city last fiscal year also agreed to settle a case that it fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court involving a man who was shot by officers while holding a cellphone they apparently mistook for a gun. The city paid $7 million.




http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/pont ... -1.3148381



Ponte, beyond correction: the jails boss deserves the boot


Editorials

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, May 8, 2017, 7:13 PM




http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/04/ ... lower.html



FBI’s AMERITHRAX Case just unravelled. Ex-FBI agent who directed investigation suing FBI, turns whistleblower!!!
Posted on April 8, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog
Preface by Washington’s Blog: See also 2 U.S. Government Agencies Say FBI’s Anthrax Case Is Full of Holes, and our archive of Anthrax articles.

By Meryl Nass, M.D. Dr. Nass is a board-certified internist and a biological warfare epidemiologist and expert in anthrax. Nass publishes Anthrax Vaccine.





http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/dianne- ... id/788614/




Feinstein: Comey's 'October Surprise' Impacted Election







http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/


http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2017 ... -make.html




Friday, May 5, 2017
How the federal government helps make healthcare unaffordable/ Medscape
One big contributor to ridiculously high administrative costs of medicine in the US is the federal government.

Constantly changing federal rules seem to aim for complexity. Compliance is nearly impossible for small medical practices, because Medicare changes its rules every few months. Doctors have to play by its rules, but it is very difficult to keep up with them. Medicare feels no need to issue its rules on time, even after it announces their schedule for release.

Here is an example from today's Medscape. Just remember that YOU are paying for this nonsense, and it is one reason that healthcare has basically become unaffordable in the US:
"The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that by the end of May, it will notify all clinicians who are eligible for payment under the new Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). One of two payment tracks in CMS' Quality Payment Program, MIPS was launched January 1. Physicians who are subject to MIPS will have their performance on quality, electronic health record (EHR) use, and practice improvement measured this year to determine positive or negative payment adjustments in 2019.
Physicians and other clinicians are subject to MIPS if they bill more than $30,000 a year in Medicare Part B allowed charges a year and provide care for more than 100 Part B–enrolled Medicare beneficiaries annually. They are exempt from MIPS, however, if they receive a specified percentage of income from one of several care delivery models that are known as advanced alternative payment models.
CMS originally said it would notify clinicians who must participate in MIPS by last December, before the 2017 performance measurement period began. But CMS failed to do that, leaving many physicians and group practices in limbo...
CMS recently released a list of "qualified registries" clinicians can use to report their quality data, he said. But the agency has not issued a list of approved "qualified clinical data registries." The qualified registries are mainly offered by EHR vendors, which can charge hefty fees for the service. In contrast, the more reasonably priced qualified clinical data registries are operated by specialty societies and quality improvement collaboratives.
Gilberg views this omission as a challenge for some practices that want to report more data to CMS this year to qualify for a bonus in 2019...
CMS' requirement that all MIPS participants use 2015 Edition EHRs presents practices with another quandary. So far, only two major EHR vendors, Epic and Allscripts, have had their 2015 Edition EHRs certified by the government. There is serious concern in the industry that the bulk of eligible clinicians will not have 2015 EHRs by the start of the 2018 reporting period....
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D.




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3144743



Idaho congressman tells town hall that ‘nobody dies because they don't have access to health care’
BY JASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, May 7, 2017, 1:31 PM





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3074001

Police could lose last chance to legally have sex with prostitutes they’re investigating
BY JASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, April 19, 2017, 10:51 AM
fruhmenschen
 
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon May 22, 2017 1:42 am

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3178605




Artist projects anti-Trump hashtags, quotes onto FBI, DOJ buildings in Washington, D.C.
BY DAN GUNDERMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, May 19, 2017, 4:08 AM



https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... is-part-2/



May 18, 2017
The Undying Octopus: FBI and the PROMIS affair Part 2
As connections in the case grew deeper and more wide-reaching, newly released evidence hints that the Bureau sabotaged its own investigation
Written by M Best
Edited by JPat Brown
Read Part 1 here
While declassified FBI records showed the fear that agents felt over questioning the suspicious death of Danny Casolaro, a journalist investigating the PROMIS affair, the FBI file on PROMIS describes two instances of apparent retaliation associated with the case.
The first instance was against Judge Bason, who had found for Inslaw and ruled that the Department of Justice had stolen the software through fraud, trickery, and deceit. Shortly after his ruling, he was not reappointed to the bench. Believing there was a connection, he filed a lawsuit over it, only to have it dismissed.

On the next page, the FBI document describes how Leigh Ratiner, Inslaw’s attorney, had been fired from his law firm for his “failure to control” Inslaw. Ratiner believed that this was in retaliation for naming Lowell Jensen in the Inslaw suit.

According to WIRED, “his firing came after another Dickstein partner, Leonard Garment, met with Arnold Burns, then- deputy attorney general of the DOJ. [Garment] testified before a Senate inquiry that he and Meese discussed the Inslaw case in October 1986, and afterward he met with Burns. Two days later Ratiner was fired.”
Ratiner ultimately settled with his firm over the wrongful termination to the tune of $600,000, which apparently had been supplied by Hadron. In testimony included in a DOJ release on Inslaw, Burns testified in a sworn interview that he had discussed the matter with Garment.

Burns went on to clarify his meaning about not airing the issue out in a Congressional hearing - his own confirmation hearing. A letter had been written by Ratiner or someone at the law firm which threw a “monkey wrench” into Burns’ confirmation process and he “thought [that] was unlawyer-like.” He compared this to the effects of naming Lowell Jensen when his nomination was pending. According to Burns, they were bringing Jensen into the affair to “blackmail him.”



https://jfkbirthday.com/


JFK 100th Birthday Online Conference – Honoring the Life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
https://jfkbirthday.com
Join The WORLD for an ONLINE conference featuring nine experts on JFK - his life, legacy, and the coup d'état assassination. PLUS a Q&A with John Barbour and our speakers after the Beverly Hills, California ...



Link du jour


https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... eseatchers


http://www.siriusdisclosure.com

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... a-new-york

http://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/akron-206/ ... -oh-29450/

http://farsight.org/FarsightPress/JFK_main_page.html


http://www.courthousenews.com/







https://www.liberationnews.org/robert-m ... nder-rich/



ANALYSIS

Robert Mueller: Prosecutor of the poor, defender of the rich

May 20, 2017


Robert Mueller, yes man for the capitalist class
The anti-Russia witch-hunt continued on Wednesday when U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel to investigate President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice.

Since the appointment, every mainstream media headline has boasted non-stop about Mueller’s impeccable credentials and impartiality. A closer look however reveals that Mueller’s record is anything but progressive from the perspective of working people.

The rise of America’s Top Cop

Mueller was a soldier in the U.S. army during the genocidal war against the people of Vietnam and Southeast Asia. A graduate of University of Virginia, Mueller made a career as a corporate and government lawyer.

A reliable Yes Man, he proved from early on his allegiance to the rich and powerful.

When Mueller prosecuted Manuel Noriega, he made sure that any mention of Noriega’s role as a CIA agent was inadmissible in court. He was formerly a litigator as WilmerHale, a law firm which has represented Jared Kushner and Paul Maniford, among other members of the 1 percent. When Muller was tasked with investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, he ignored their money laundering and connections to the Bin Ladin family, the Bushes or anyone else deemed inconvenient.

After J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller was the longest serving FBI Director. He was the agency’s head, from 2001 to 2013, under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Originally appointed by George Bush, Mueller oversaw an Islamophobic campaign that violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of Muslims. The FBI and police departments across the U.S. spied on and infiltrated peaceful Muslim religious and student organizations. Part of the agents’ training included manuals that described the prophet Mohammed as “a violent cult leader” and Islamic charities as “terrorist organizations.” Along with Attorney General John Ashcroft, Mueller was responsible for the persecution and rounding up of 1,200 innocent people. Those who were illegally detained are currently suing Mueller in federal courts.

Mueller’s FBI also assigned undercover agents to find vulnerable individuals who could be manipulated into uncritically latching on to elaborate terrorist ideas or plans the FBI agents themselves introduced. These entrapment techniques landed many unsuspecting individuals in prison.

Though it was U.S. bombs exploding over Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the Muslim world, the entrapment strategy gave the U.S. war makers what they wanted—catchy headlines that inverted who the victims and aggressors were.

The FBI: A sordid history

The media’s “Mr. Clean” is anything but. Mueller consistently trampled on the constitution in his 12 years as FBI Director.

After the illegal U.S. re-invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mueller’s FBI secretly sent agents into antiwar organizations in an attempt to disrupt dissent.

The Occupy movement was another one of Mueller’s targets. Working with Homeland Security, Mueller oversaw the surveillance of peaceful protesters involved in Occupy encampments across the country.

It is worth remembering the FBI’s very reason for existence is to immobilize social movements that pose any threat or perceived threat to those in power.

The FBI played a role in the assassination of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. They orchestrated the murder of Black Panther Party (BPP) leaders; just in 1969, 26 Panthers were gunned down. Ward Churchill’s Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars against the BPP and the American Indian Movement is an insightful expose of the agency’s sordid history.

Mueller more than earned his place alongside J. Edgar Hoover in the pantheon of arch-defenders of the rich and enemies of working people.

Russia is not the enemy, our own ruling class is

Mueller’s investigation is expected to take years to conduct. While it is difficult to predict the outcome, the accusations, without any hard evidence, is an end goal it itself. The constant rumormongering has the duel effect of delegitimizing the Trump administration and pinning them into an anti-Russia position.

It is important to clarify that our party is a leader in the anti-Trump movement, not because of any fear of Russia, but because Trump represents racism, misogyny and unrestrained capitalism. The fact that the Democrats oppose Trump primarily on the basis of Russophobia, while proposing no alternative program of their own, proves just how spineless they are as well.

Russia-gate’s function is to distract the U.S. people from the real issues at hand.

In Robert Mueller, the intelligence community has found their faithful servant who is sure to uphold their “justice,” the justice of the 1 percent. It is only a people’s fightback movement that can topple Trump and the entire wretched system that produced him.


https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... x-wiretap/


The year before his murder, Malcolm X was under electronic surveillance by the FBI
by JPat Brown
May 19, 2017
The last section of Malcolm X’s 10,000 plus page FBI file concerns the Bureau’s electronic surveillance of the activist shortly before his death. For months, agents listened to X’s phone calls, photographed his comings and goings, and even considered bugging his Queens residence - only to hastily discontinue the operation for fear it would taint a potential conviction.
Read More





http://www.courthousenews.com/cop-says- ... s-tainted/



Cop Says Evidence About Shooting at Black Teens Is Tainted
May 19, 2017
CHICAGO (CN) – A white Chicago police officer claims in a motion to dismiss that federal prosecutors used self-incriminating testimony to secure an indictment against him for shooting into a car full of black teenagers.

Marco Proano was charged last year with two counts of deprivation of rights for using excessive force, both punishable by up to 10 years in prison, stemming from a 2013 incident in which he injured two of the six teens in a car he pulled over for speeding on the city’s South Side.

The police car dashcam video of the shooting was released in 2015 when a Cook County judge hearing the criminal case of one of the boys sent it to a local newspaper, the Chicago Reporter.

Judge Andrew Berman, now retired, told the Reporter at the time that he was unsettled by the video.

“My first reaction was, if those are white kids in the car, there’s no way they [would] shoot,” he said.

The video shows Proano coming up to the car, which is backing away from him, and opening fire into it. It was later found that he discharged all 16 rounds in his gun.





https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ange-goals




Shell shareholders to vote for new climate change goals
Investors including the Church of England and activists will send signal to Anglo-Dutch company’s board at AGM this week





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3181856




Texas police officers demoted for leaking body cam footage of controversial arrest
BY JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, May 20, 2017, 3:47 PM



http://www.latimes.com/politics/essenti ... story.html



Anger, protests erupt over results of the California Democratic Party's election of a new leader



http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-veg ... story.html



A white police officer kills an unarmed black man, and, in Las Vegas, there are no protests
Venetian Hotel and Casino
The scene in Las Vegas where an unarmed man died this week after an officer choked him.

It appeared to have all the ingredients for protests, hashtags and calls for justice on 24-hour cable news channels.




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3179229


Former NYPD Detective Frank Serpico reflects on Knapp Commission, exposing police corruption and
today's brutality issues

Saturday, May 20, 2017, 9:03 AM



Frank Serpico reflects on exposing corruption inside the NYPD.
Frank Serpico is a name that either makes you stand taller and push your shoulders back with pride — or makes you spit on the ground in anger.

The former New York City police detective, now 81, became a household name in the '70s when he exposed corruption inside the department, then testified against fellow cops who capitalized on it before the Knapp Commission, an organization formed to investigate Serpico's claims.

As a result, the decorated law enforcement officer was shunned by some of his colleagues and nearly left for dead after an on-duty shooting.

His story garnered national attention and was brought to life on the big screen, when Hollywood legend Al Pacino brilliantly portrayed him in the 1973 classic “Serpico.”



The self-proclaimed lamplighter — the term he prefers instead of whistleblower — spoke to the Daily News in depth about exposing New York's Finest as the anniversary of the Knapp Commission's formation draws near.

"The only thing I ever wanted was justice," Serpico said. "And that was something I never got."

Serpico said his first glimpse of corruption began in the '60s while working as a patrolman in the 81st Precinct. He recalled getting a phone call from his panicked girlfriend late one night about a burglary taking place at a garage by her home.

Serpico, who was off duty at the time, was confused by why she would call him, instead of dialing 911, who could dispatch police to the crime scene.


"She says, 'It is the cops,'" Serpico told The News.


Al Pacino played the former New York police officer in the movie “Serpico.”
Serpico said he called an inspector to look into the situation — and while the officers were caught burglarizing and pocketing items from the garage, they were never reprimanded.

"Everybody knew there was police corruption," he said. "I knew there was police corruption. I never really had anything tangible or concrete until a cop placed an envelope in my hand."

The former detective said the envelope contained $300, his cut of an illicit deal some officers had made. According to Serpico, the few hundred bucks he was given was the lowest amount an officer could pocket — and more than a few cops took home thousands of dollars a month.

KING: I'm not anti-police, I'm anti-brutality and corruption
While his colleagues were "living it up big time," as he described it, Serpico decided to turn the cash over to fellow officer David Durk and Arnold Fraiman, who led the city's Commission of Investigations. Durk would eventually testify with Serpico against NYPD officers during the Knapp trials.

Officer David Durk also testified during the Knapp Commission trials.

"The Knapp Commission did a very good job in revealing the systematic corruption. Anybody that didn't know (corruption) was going on either had his head in the ground or was too involved with his next promotion and just couldn't be bothered," he said.

A small group rallied around Serpico, praising him for blowing the lid off police wrongdoings. His colleagues, however, began to turn their backs on him.

That became evident on the night of Feb. 3, 1971, when Serpico was shot in the face during a drug bust in Brooklyn. His partners never called in a 10-13, the dispatch code that an officer had been shot. Serpico survived the shooting because an elderly neighbor alerted 911.

Frank Serpico running for town council in upstate New York
"They could have taken me to the hospital if they wanted to," Serpico said of his partners.

Two other cops responded to the 911 call and rushed Serpico to a nearby hospital.

"For years I said, 'Well, at least there was two cops who took me,'" he recalled. "And then I found out one of them would later say, 'If I knew it was Serpico I would have left him there to bleed to death.'"

Shortly after the shooting, Serpico retired from the NYPD. And although it's been decades since he's worn the uniform and turned in his badge, he's still fighting to end corruption.

Hero cop Frank Serpico thinks corruption is worse than ever
Frank Serpico was the first officer to expose corruption inside the New York City police department.

"I like to perform my duty the way it was meant to be performed. And if more would do it, we wouldn't be having what we're having around the country today," he said. "Police should be an honorable profession."

According to the Medal of Honor recipient, communication will help lessen the divide between police and the public. The retired patrolman also urged cops to assess situations better before firing their gun.

"Any case where the police use excessive force and take human life is a tragedy for the families, and society, because they leave their trust and confidence in the police. Some of these people are not criminals, but you make them criminals," he said.

One particular case that bothered Serpico was the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Cleveland boy who was shot and killed at a playground by officer Timothy Loehmann. Officers were responding to a 911 call about a male wielding a gun in the park. The caller told dispatch — twice — that the gun was "probably fake" and the person waving it was "probably a juvenile."

911 dispatcher in Tamir Rice shooting suspended for eight days
Tamir Rice was fatally shot by a Cleveland officer.
"Someone called up and said, 'I think he's playing with a toy gun,' and you pull up and shoot him dead, and you call that police work? If you were afraid, why didn't you stop your car and take cover and talk to whoever it is," he said. "That's the way I used to do it. You have to respect life and this goes for everybody."

Serpico, who has developed a love for travel since his retirement, plans to share more about his time in the NYPD and his life — both before and after the force — in his upcoming book, "It's All A Lie."





https://www.policeone.com/legal/article ... ers-trial/


Black judge refuses to step down from white officer's trial
The defense for the officer argued the judge should give up the case because of a Facebook post the judge made before he was assigned the case

May 18, 2017
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5704
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri May 26, 2017 3:53 pm

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2 ... -isis-plot


Victim in Garland terror attack tormented by belief that FBI knew of ISIS plot
• May 26 2017
The Garland cop and the school security guard stood beside each other in the shade through most of the day, trading stories about chasing bad guys and raising kids.
Just before 6:50 p.m., a voice crackled over the radio saying the event they were guarding was over. It had been controversial and dangerous — a cartoon contest sponsored by anti-Muslim activists to see who could make the most outrageous drawings of the prophet Muhammad.
"Looks like we might get out a little early," said the unarmed security guard, a 60-year-old Sunnyvale man named Bruce Joiner.
Joiner had no idea that, at the same moment, court records show, an undercover FBI agent investigating terrorism was sitting in a nearby car, snapping a cellphone photo of him and Garland police Officer Greg Stevens.

Seconds later, a black sedan pulled up. Two men with assault rifles jumped out and began shooting. Joiner was struck in the left calf as he ran behind a tree. His wounds marked him as the first ISIS victim on U.S. soil. Stevens returned fire with his service pistol, striking the shooters, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, who both died on the scene.


http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/25/politics/ ... -director/


Former TSA Chief John Pistole Under Consideration for Top FBI Job
John Pistole, the former TSA chief who had been appointed by President Obama, is now being considered for the position of FBI director, CNN reports.
Pistole, who was named deputy FBI director in 2014, met with Deputy Attorney General




http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/26/ ... -hearings/



June 26, 2004
John Pistole Decision Not to Explore Quashed FBI Investigations Prior to 9/11 Tarnishes Hearings

At the twelfth and final public session of the 9/11 commission hearings this week in the NTSB building in Washington, DC, the disappointment was palpable among family members of the 9/11 deceased. A less-than distinguished panel of FBI and CIA agents took turns praising the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Al-Qaeda, and offered little hope that future efforts would be successful in stopping terrorism. But give the CIA and FBI this: they can still recognize a marketing opportunity when they see it.
Apparently unfamiliar with the concept of shame, representatives from two of the agencies whose failures bear clear responsibility for the events of 9/11 saw the morning session as an opportunity to shill for ‘patience’ and, tacitly, more money. One after another, in front of the surviving family members, many of whom clutched pictures of their dead sons, daughters, husbands and wives, the agents fawned over the incredible resourcefulness, commitment and dedication of Al Qaeda operatives (in one notable exchange, Al Qaeda was glowingly described as “innovative,” “creative” and “entrepreneurial”—why not just say you were outsmarted?) The CIA agents referred familiarly to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama Bin Laden as ‘KSM’ and ‘UBL’. The uninitiated might have gotten the impression they were speaking of protégés, and not hated enemies. Earlier, in a jaunty tone completely incongruous with the substance of his statement, the CIA’s Dr. Kay told the commission that “(Al-Qaeda) may strike next week, next month or next year, but it will strike.” The agencies took no responsibility for the attacks, and they were not challenged to.
But the nadir of the morning session came when commissioner James Thompson asked all of the panelists how best to combat the new type of stateless enemy Al-Qaeda represents. FBI special agent Mary Deborah Doran answered last. She had already warned the Commission in her introductory remarks that, as a “street agent”, she was removed from the “policy and administrative decision-making processes” that determined the scope of the FBI’s investigation of Al Qaeda, and thus could not speak to them (no one did that day, including Executive Assistant FBI Director John Pistole, seated to her right). Her answer to Thompson’s question was: “I think what we need to do . . at the FBI street-agent level, is to continue what we’ve always done, and that is to pursue all the information that we do get. . . to its logical end. . .”
Here, in classic doublespeak fashion, Doran gives an answer that is a non-answer. She had to be aware that several FBI “street-level” investigations into the activities of the 9/11 terrorists were stymied by higher-ups in the weeks prior to 9/11, each under strange circumstances, and well before the street-level agents felt like they had reached their “logical end”. Consider the following cases, all drawn from mainstream news sources, summarized in David Ray Griffin’s well-researched expose, “The New Pearl Harbor”:
1) Ken Williams of the Phoenix FBI office sent a now-famous July 10, 2001 memo to the counterterrorism division of the FBI suggesting that the organization institute a national program to keep tabs on suspicious flight-school students. This came just a few weeks after the CIA learned that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 plot and a well-known terrorist at that time who the CIA was monitoring, was recruiting jihadists to come to the US to take part in attacks here. Williams, who had previously been transferred to an unrelated arson case despite tracking the hijackers for more than a year, had been back on the case for about a month when he wrote the memo, which also warned of a possible “effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and colleges” (Fortune, May 22, 2002). His suggestion for a national program was ignored before 9/11;
2) FBI agent Robert Wright of the Chicago field office, who had been investigating a suspected terrorist cell for three years, was informed in January 2001 that the case was being closed. This despite Wright’s contention that his case was growing stronger. His investigation included individuals from the notorious Ptech, a software company which provided product for the White House, Congress, FBI, CIA, IRS, Army, Navy, and FAA and which was raided by federal agents in December 2002.
Three months before September 11, Wright wrote a stinging internal memo charging that the FBI was not interested in thwarting a terrorist attack, but rather “was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred.” (UPI, May 30, 2002, cited in Griffin, p. 83);
3) Legal officer Colleen Rowley worked in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office when agents arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August of 2001. The commission made repeated mention of the fact that Moussaoui, by that time, was considered a very dangerous person capable of crashing a plane into the World Trade Center. The Minneapolis felt so strongly about the need to detain him that a request was sent to FBI headquarters to search Moussaoui’s laptop computer under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Approximately 10,000 requests under FISA over the past 20 years had been made without a single request being turned down, but the Minneapolis agency’s request never got out of the FBI. The request had been excised of the critical intelligence that made the case for Moussaoui’s connection to Al Qaeda in Chechnya on its path to FBI headquarters. Excised of that justification, the request was never forwarded for FISA consideration, spurring Rowley to charge that the FBI was “sabotaging” the case, and another agent to charge that headquarters was “setting this up for failure.” (Senate Intelligence Committee, October 17, 2002; Time, July 21 and July 27, 2002 and Sydney Morning Herald July 28, 2002, each cited in Griffin, p. 81);
4) On Aug 28, 2001 the New York FBI office requested opening a criminal investigation in soon-to-be hijacker Khalid Almihdhar based on evidence he had been involved in the USS Cole bombing. The request was turned down, on the basis that, as Griffin puts it, “Almihdhar could not be tied to the Cole investigation without the inclusion of sensitive intelligence information.” This led one frustrated FBI agent to write in an email that “someday someone will die–and. . . the public will not understand why we were not more effective.” (Congressional Intelligence Committee, cited in Griffin, p. 83). Perhaps Doran, a New York FBI agent herself, knew something about this? She was not asked directly.
What these examples make clear is that FBI “street agents” and translators don’t have the power to follow their investigations to their logical ends when they are obstructed by their superiors. In light of these facts, Doran’s breezy recommendation that the FBI street agents “keep doing what we’ve always done” is entirely inadequate, and inspires no confidence. Neither Thompson nor any other commissioner pressed for a better answer. And while the FBI’s “unprecedented transformation” after 9/11 testified to by FBI Executive Assistant Director For Counterterrorism John Pistole on April 14 may sound impressive to some, it does not explain nor address the past obstruction of promising investigations. Factor in the erosion of civil liberties required for its execution, and the “unprecedented transformation” appears to be of dubious value.
There are several other aspects about the FBI’s behavior pre- and post-9/11 that scream out for further investigation. One of the most bizarre cases still unfolding involves the targeting of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who was fired by the agency shortly after reporting a number of complaints to her superiors. According to a June 7, 2004 story in The New Republic, those complaints included the charge that a fellow FBI translator, Can Dickerson, tried to recruit Edmonds into a foreign organization whose documents Dickerson had been translating and which had been under investigation by the FBI. Edmonds then filed a wrongful termination suit and took her grievance to Senators Charles Grassley and Patrick Leahy, as well as the television program “60 Minutes,” which aired an interview with her in 2002.
But the FBI has since gone to extraordinary lengths to silence Edmonds. In May, the Bureau re-classified all of the information it presented to Sens. Grassley and Leahy, nearly two years after it had become public. It even violated its own rules for reclassification in doing so. The reclassification has had the effect of silencing Grassley and Leahy on the matter, too, who had been pressing the Bureau for a fuller account of the matter. Now they were limited to writing classified letters to the FBI.
Edmonds, meanwhile, has seen her wrongful termination suit delayed for two years and most recently was informed by Judge Reggie Walton on June 14 that her hearing was delayed once again (for the fourth time), with no date set for a rescheduling. The delays result from an effort from Attorney General John Ashcroft to invoke the State Secrets Privilege, which can quash lawsuits on the basis that their continuation would damage national security. Judge Walton is still waiting for the government to make its case for the invoking of the States Secrets Privilege. In the meantime, as the New Republic notes, while Edmonds herself is not gagged, she is not permitted to reference any of the now-classified information that could substantiate her claims.
At her June 14 press conference outside the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, DC, Edmonds summarized her charges clearly, stating that for more than two years, “John Ashcroft has been relentlessly engaged in actions geared toward covering up my report and investigations into my allegations. His actions. . . .include gagging the United States Congress, blocking court proceedings on my (wrongful termination suit) by invoking the State Secrets Privilege, quashing the subpoena for my deposition on information regarding 9/11, withholding documents requested under the Freedom Of Information Act and preventing the release of the Inspector General’s report of its investigations into my report and allegations.”
She threw down a gauntlet to all citizens, members of Congress and federal officials that so far have not spoken out, saying, “To become an American citizen, I took the citizenship oath. In taking this oath, I pledged I would support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Therefore, not only do I have the right to challenge John Ashcroft’s anti-constitution(al) and un-American actions, but as an American citizen I am required to do so. So are you.”
Edmonds did testify with the 9/11 commission behind closed doors, but a host of disturbing questions still remain before the commission:
• Why weren’t any of the agents mentioned above called to testify in the commission’s public hearings? What legitimate claim to a thorough investigation can be made without their public testimony?
• Were the FBI agents who saw their investigations stymied at least deposed in private sessions?
• Why was Robert Wright’s investigation derailed, and why did the government move to block significant portions of his book in 2002, such that it remains unpublished to this day?
• Why was the information connecting Moussaoui’s connection with rebels in Chechnya excised before it reached the FBI Deputy General?
• And why have lower-level agents been demoted and/or punished for doing their jobs while their superiors, who spiked, obstructed or otherwise compromised their promisin



John Pistole FBI in the news


https://books.google.com/books?id=LgJzC ... 11&f=false


Cia Earth Blood: Animal Liberation Front - Google Books Result
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=132979527X
Igor Kryan - 2016 - ‎History
Joyce Dietrich VA FBI framed innocent Cost Guard officer Daniel D Dubree VA ... FBI 9/11 cover up Jason Pinegar FBI 9/11 cover up John Pistole FBI 9/11 cover ..


John Pistole FBI 911 coverup
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... yer-214996


http://shareblue.com/trump-fired-comey- ... y-session/
Trump fired Comey one day after FBI called in Trump’s sons for “emergency session”
By Oliver Willis | May 26, 2017
The day after the FBI and CIA held an emergency meeting with Donald Trump's adult sons over a possible foreign intrusion into Trump Organization servers, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.


http://www.npr.org/2017/05/25/530074684 ... nfirmation


Bi-Partisan Bill Seeks to Require Senate Confirmation of Secret Service Director



https://democrats-homeland.house.gov/si ... clarke.pdf

Democratic Lawmakers Urge Against Homeland Security Appointment of Sheriff David Clarke
There are few law enforcement officials as controversial and divisive as Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke.
That’s why Democrat


https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2016 ... o-the-fbi/


Was Orlando Terrorist a FBI informant?

Orlando shooter: deeper hidden ties to the FBI?
Orlando shooter: deeper hidden ties to the FBI?
by Jon Rappoport
June 13, 2016
The website Cryptogon has pieced together some interesting facts, and a quite odd “coincidence.” I’m bolstering their work.
First of all, the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, changed his name in 2006. As NBC News notes: “Records also show that he had filed a petition for a name change in 2006 from Omar Mir Seddique to Omar Mir Seddique Mateen.”
Why is that important? Why is his original last name, Seddique, also spelled Siddiqui, significant? Because of a previous terrorism case in Florida, in which the FBI informant’s name was Siddiqui. And because that previous case may have been one of those FBI prop-jobs, where the informant was used to falsely accuse a suspect of a terrorist act. The New Yorker (cited above) has details:
“This is not the first time that the F.B.I. has attracted criticism from national-security experts and civil-liberties groups for generating terrorism cases through sting operations and confidential informants. In ‘The Imam’s Curse,’ published in September, I reported on a Florida family that was accused of providing ‘material support’ to terrorists. In that case, a father, Hafiz Khan, and two of his sons were arrested. The charges against the sons were eventually dropped, but Hafiz Khan was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. At Khan’s trial, his lawyer, Khurrum Wahid, questioned the reliability of the key [FBI] informant in the case, David Mahmood Siddiqui. Wahid accused Siddiqui, who’d had periods of unemployment, of lying to authorities because his work as a confidential informant was lucrative. For his role in the case, Siddiqui had received a hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars, plus expenses. But in a subsequent interview with the Associated Press, Siddiqui stood by his testimony and motives: ‘I did it for the love of my country, not for money.’”
The website Cryptogon, which pieced this whole story together, comments: “What are the odds that an FBI informant in a [previous] Florida terrorist case shares the same last name as the perpetrator of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history—also in Florida—[Omar Mateen] a lone wolf cop poser with multiple acknowledged contacts with the FBI, who was formerly listed on the terrorist watch list and associated with a suicide bomber… while holding a valid security guard license?”
Indeed.
And in case you think Siddiqui is a common last name, here is a statement from Mooseroots:
“Siddiqui is an uncommon surname in the United States. When the United States Census was taken in 2000, there were about 4,994 individuals with the last name “Siddiqui,” ranking it number 6,281 for all surnames. Historically, the name has been most prevalent in the Southwest, though the name is actually most common in Hawaii. Siddiqui is least common in the southeastern states.”
If for some reason the name Siddiqui throws you off, suppose the last name was, let me make something up, Graposco? A few years ago, an FBI informant in Florida, Graposco, appeared to have falsely accused a man of terrorist acts—and in 2016, another Graposco, who changed that last name to something else, killed 50 people in a Florida nightclub shooting—after having been investigated twice by the FBI? Might that coincidence grab your attention?
Again—the 2016 Orlando shooter had extensive contact with the FBI in 2013 and 2014. The FBI investigated him twice and dropped the investigations. The FBI used an informant in a previous Florida case, and that informant had the same last name as the Orlando shooter. It’s quite possible the previous informant was told to give a false statement which incriminated a man for terrorist acts.
You can say this is a coincidence. Maybe it is. But it seems more than odd. Are the two Siddiqui men connected?
Was the Orlando shooter involved in some kind of FBI plan to mount a terror op that was supposed to be stopped before it went ahead, but wasn’t? Was the Orlando shooter “helped” over the edge from having “radical ideas” to committing mass murder?
________________________________________
I could cite a number of precedents. Here is one I reported on in 2014:
There seems to be a rule: if a terror attack takes place and the FBI investigates it, things are never what they seem.
Federal attorney Andrew C McCarthy prosecuted the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing case. A review of his book, Willful Blindness, states:
“For the first time, McCarthy intimately reveals the real story behind the FBI’s inability to stop the first World Trade Center bombing even though the bureau had an undercover informant in the operation—the jihadists’ supposed bombmaker.
“In the first sentence of his hard-hitting account, the author sums up the lawyerly—but staggeringly incomprehensive—reason why the FBI pulled its informant out of the terrorist group even as plans were coming to a head on a major attack:
“’Think of the liability!’
“The first rule for government attorneys in counterintelligence in the 1990s was, McCarthy tells us, ‘Avoid accountable failure.’ Thus, when the situation demanded action, the feds copped a CYA posture, the first refuge of the bureaucrat.”
That’s a titanic accusation, coming from a former federal prosecutor.
Yes, the FBI had an informant inside the group that was planning the 1993 WTC bombing that eventually, on February 26, killed 6 people and injured 1042.
His name is Emad Salem, a former Egyptian Army officer. Present whereabouts unknown. Yanking Salem out of the group planning the Bombing was a devastating criminal act on the part of the FBI.
But there is more to the story.
On October 28, 1993, Ralph Blumenthal wrote a piece about Emad Salem for the New York Times: “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast.” It began:
“Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer [Emad Salem] said after the blast.”
Continuing: “The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer [Emad] said.”
The FBI called the “plan” off, but left the planners to their own devices. No “harmless powder.” Instead, real explosives.
The Times article goes on: “The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers.”
This is a shockingly strong opening for an article in the NY Times. It focuses on the testimony of the informant; it seems to take his side.
Several years after reporter Blumenthal wrote the above piece, I spoke with him and expressed my amazement at the revelations about the FBI—and wondered whether the Times had continued to investigate the scandal.
Blumenthal wasn’t pleased, to say the least. He said I misunderstood the article.
I mentioned the fact that Emad Salem wasn’t called as a prosecution witness in the 1993 WTC Bombing trial.
Of course, why would the Dept. of Justice bring Salem to the stand? Would they want him to blame the FBI for abetting the Bombing?
Again, Blumenthal told me I “didn’t understand.” He became angry and that was the end of the conversation.
I remember thinking: letting the bomb plot go forward…what else do you need for a criminal prosecution of the FBI?
Here is an excerpt from one of those tapes Emad Salem made when he was secretly bugging his own FBI handlers. On this phone call, he talks to his Bureau friend John. Others have claimed this is an agent named John Anticev. The conversation is taking place at some point after the 1993 WTC Bombing. The main topic is Salem’s fees for services rendered as an informant. He apparently wants more money. He also wants to make sure the Bureau will pay him what they’ve agreed to. During the conversation, Salem suddenly talks about the bomb. His English is broken, but his meaning is clear enough. When he finishes, his Bureau handler John just moves on without directly responding.
Salem: “…we was start already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the DA and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful great case!”
According to Salem, there was a bomb, it was built under FBI and “DA” supervision, Salem himself built it, and it exploded.
Questions remain. Did Salem literally mean he built the bomb? Or was he claiming he successfully convinced others to build it? As a provocative agent for the FBI, did Salem foment the whole idea of the WTC attack and entrap those who were eventually convicted of the Bombing? Without his presence, would they have planned and carried out the assault? Was the truck bomb set off under the North Tower the only weapon? Were there other bombs? If so, who planted them?
But the role of the FBI seems to be clear enough. They aided and abetted, and at the very least, permitted the 1993 attack on the Trade Towers.
________________________________________

________________________________________
What about Omar Mateen in 2016, in Orlando?
As the LA Times, reports, the FBI investigated him on two occasions (LA Times, June 13, “Orlando terror attack live updates…”):
“While working as a courthouse guard in 2013, Mateen made ‘inflammatory and contradictory’ statements to co-workers about having relatives in Al Qaeda, the radical Sunni terrorist group, [FBI Director] Comey said. Mateen also claimed to be a member of Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Shiite militia, and his remarks drew an 11-month FBI investigation, Comey said. Both groups oppose Islamic State.
“Comey said the FBI also briefly investigated Mateen in 2014 for allegedly watching videos by Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar Awlaki and attending the same mosque as an American who would later become a suicide bomber for Al Nusra Front in Syria — another Al Qaeda affiliate opposed to Islamic State.
“Both investigations were closed without charges.”
Did the FBI just investigate the Orlando shooter? Or did they in some way enlist him in an operation?
Is it merely a terrible mistake that enabled the shooter to work nine years for G4S, the world’s “biggest guarding company” and one of the biggest contractors to the DHS, as Bloomberg News states? Is it merely a terrible mistake that G4S was aware the FBI was investigating the shooter in 2013 and did nothing about it?
Or did some federal group intervene and tell all parties to leave the shooter alone and in place—because he was part of an operation?
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews



http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/bre ... story.html


Orange County Sheriff's Office hosts national counter-terrorism ...
Orlando Sentinel-
Orlando Police Chief John Mina, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, FDLE Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks and FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge ...



http://www.whsv.com/home/headlines/6018616.html

FBI Analyst Sentenced
A former FBI analyst has been
sentenced to seven years in prison for having sex with a young girl
in Spotsylvania County.
44 year old Anthony John Lesko entered an Alford plea
yesterday in Spotsylvania County Circuit Court to nine counts of
felony indecent liberties upon a child. An Alford plea means Lesko
doesn't admit guilt but believes there is enough evidence for a
conviction.
Under a plea agreement, he was sentenced to seven years in
prison with another 15 years suspended. He also was ordered to pay
ten-thousand dollars in restitution to cover the cost of the girl's
mental-health counseling.
Authorities say Lesko engaged in a sex act with her nine times,
beginning when she was nine years old.
Lesko's attorney says he worked as an intelligence analyst at
the F-B-I for 17 years .
According to the plea, Lesko said he was a victim in the case.
He said the girl initiated the contact.


FBI Portland Honors Missing Children's Day
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The FBI continues to partner with local law enforcement agencies to provide ... the country," said Loren Cannon, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon.



FBI OCTOPUS


Roofer arrested, incognito congressman puts up a sign and other ...
Dallas News
Retired FBI agent turned public school investigator Don Southerland Jr. of Plano introduced us to problems in several school districts, including Hearne ISD.



http://observer.com/2017/05/inside-the- ... y-says-ep/


‘Inside the FBI: New York’ Is Scary but Necessary, Says EP



05/25/17 11:32am


There was probably a time when the average citizen didn’t spend much time thinking about the work of the FBI. Those days are pretty much long gone. Now, because of the current tenuous status of the entire world, because of atrocious actions, the work of this agency has taken on increased importance.

In an effort to educate the public about what the FBI actually does, a new series focuses not only on the activities of the agency but also on the people who spend their lives working to enforce the law and provide global security.


Inside the FBI: New York follows the agency and its various units (counterterrorism, cyber crimes and human trafficking, among others) as they deal with various crimes and criminals.

“The FBI is basically a secret institution that everyone knows about, but no one knows what they really do,” explains series executive producer Marc Levin. “Their default answer for 50 years to virtually every question has been, ‘no comment.’ Until now.”


Working with uber scripted television producer Dick Wolf, Levin says that former FBI director James Comey was onboard with the series because he felt it was important for the public to know about the inner-workings of the agency.

But just because Wolf and Comey wanted to do it doesn’t mean it wasn’t without trouble, explains Levin. “First, we had to determine what the term ‘access’ really meant. Fortunately, we were pretty much all on the same page about that. And, then there had to be a real level of trust on both sides—we had to trust that they would let us show as much as we wanted and they had to trust that we were going to show everything with a certain level of respect. I think we worked it out so really everyone’s happy about what we’re showing viewers.”

Levin says that he and his team were embedded during a very interesting time within the agency. “We were inside the FBI during two historic moments that were not good—this change in global terrorism which shifted from organized groups to these sort of social media lone wolf types acting out—and the whole suspicion of Russia hacking the U.S. election.”

The subject matter here is awfully heavy, admits Levin, saying, “I got scared watching a lot of this. There were things that I never gave much thought until I worked on this show. A lot of what happens rocks you, but this is the world we live in and it’s better to be in the know than to try and hide from it. You can’t just hide from it. It’s not going to go away.”

The recent surge in news coverage about the agency actually worked in the series favor, in a way, says Levin. “The intense focus on the FBI by the media made more people within the organization want to work with us because they felt they were being attacked. Every day there are people screaming that the FBI is corrupt. They felt like they were unseen and that nobody understood what they do. I think that worked in our favor in a strange way.”






https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2305-1.html


Branding Hoover's FBI
How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America

Matthew Cecil

Hunting down America’s public enemies was just one of the FBI’s jobs. Another—perhaps more vital and certainly more covert—was the job of promoting the importance and power of the FBI, a process that Matthew Cecil unfolds clearly for the first time in this eye-opening book. The story of the PR men who fashioned the Hoover era, Branding Hoover’s FBI reveals precisely how the Bureau became a monolithic organization of thousands of agents who lived and breathed a well-crafted public relations message, image, and worldview. Accordingly, the book shows how the public was persuaded—some would say conned—into buying and even bolstering that image.

Just fifteen years after a theater impresario coined the term “public relations,” the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover began practicing a sophisticated version of the activity. Cecil introduces those agency PR men in Washington who put their singular talents to work by enforcing and amplifying Hoover's message. Louis B. Nichols, overseer of the Crime Records Section for more than twenty years, was a master of bend-your-ear networking. Milton A. Jones brought meticulous analysis to bear on the mission; Fern Stukenbroeker, a gift for eloquence; and Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, a singular charm and ambition. Branding Hoover’s FBI examines key moments when this dedicated cadre, all working under the protective wing of Associate Director Clyde Tolson, manipulated public perceptions of the Bureau (was the Dillinger triumph really what it seemed?). In these critical moments, the book allows us to understand as never before how America came to see the FBI’s law enforcement successes and overlook the dubious accomplishments, such as domestic surveillance, that truly defined the Hoover era.

“This unique, creative, and excellent study makes a significant contribution to the literature on the FBI. Cecils brilliant mining of FBI personnel files has resulted in a fascinating, richly detailed, and wholly satisfying look at the inner workings of Hoover’s FBI.An outstanding work on an important subject.”

—Douglas Charles, author of Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” Program

“Branding Hoover’s FBI is a path-breaking assessment of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s public relations initiatives. Cecil’s brilliantly researched study documents Hoover’s success in transforming the image of the FBI from a minor and suspect to a powerful and autonomous agency, in the process reshaping American politics in the twentieth century. His thoughtful monograph has particular contemporary relevance highlighting how control over information undermined a constitutional system based on accountability and transparency. ”

—Athan Theoharis, author of The FBI and American Democracy: A Brief Critical History

About the Author

Matthew Cecil is Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Minnesota State University, Mankato. He is the author of The Ballad of Ben and Stella Mae: Great Plains Outlaws Who Became FBI Public Enemies Nos. 1 and 2 and Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau’s Image, both published by Kansas.







http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/bost ... h-47621968



Family of Boston Marathon-bomber's friend sue agents over death

ORLANDO, Fla. — May 24, 2017, 6:48 PM
The parents of a Chechen man who was fatally shot while being questioned in Florida about a Boston Marathon bombing suspect in 2013 have sued four law enforcement agents for wrongful death.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Orlando by the estate of Ibragim Todashev and Todashev's parents against two Massachusetts state troopers, an FBI agent and an Orlando police officer who was working under the FBI's supervision. Todashev's estate is being represented by an official with the Council of American-Islamic Relations Florida.

The lawsuit seeks damages for lost earnings as well as funeral and medical expenses.

The agents interviewed Todashev four years ago as they looked into the background of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The men had been friends in Boston through mixed martial-arts circles.

The agents have said Todashev became agitated during the interview, grabbed a weapon and was killed. But the lawsuit claims that Todashev was leaving his apartment when he was shot, and agents tried to rearrange the scene.

"The actions of the law enforcement agents were designed to escalate conflict and attempt to justify the wrongful use of force," the lawsuit said.

FBI spokeswoman Kristen Setera in Boson declined to comment because of the pending litigation. Massachusetts State Police spokesman David Procopio also said he couldn't comment on pending litigation, but that "we expect that a vigorous defense of our personnel will be presented in court."

The lawsuit alleges that FBI agents followed, harassed and repeatedly questioned Todashev in the weeks after the Boston bombing even though he had nothing to do with it. The lawsuit also says the FBI was negligent in its investigation into the death of Todashev, who was shot seven times, and that the FBI agent who fired the shots had a history of misconduct.

"Todashev's death ... was the result of excessive force by FBI agents and negligent hiring/ supervision by the FBI — all of which resulted in Todashev's wrongful death," the lawsuit said.




http://kfdm.com/news/guests/retired-fbi ... -in-studio


Retired FBI agent, outspoken critic in JFK assassination findings joins KFDM in studio







https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/po ... f3f4f19277



Why a House Democrat is lobbying for a former GOP lawmaker to be FBI director



Many analysts have argued that the next FBI director shouldn’t be a politician. But try telling that to Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), who has been pressing Senate Democratic leaders to consider former GOP congressman Mike Rogers (Mich.) for the post.

Ruppersberger told me Wednesday that in conversations with Democratic leadership, he had endorsed Rogers’s “integrity, competence and patriotism.” Rogers, a former FBI agent who served as House Intelligence Committee chairman until his retirement in 2015, has also been endorsed by the FBI Agents Association. The group said in a May 13 statement that Rogers “exemplifies the principles that should be possessed by the next FBI director.”





https://28pages.org/2015/02/04/saudi-ar ... nsparency/


NSA
Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Intelligence Community: Allies Against 9/11 Transparency?

February 4, 2015 28 pages, 9/11, Bob Graham, CIA, cover-up, FBI, ISIS, Norm Coleman, NSA, Richard Clarke, Saudi Arabia
By Brian McGlinchey

One of the distinguishing hallmarks of the drive to declassify the 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers is the absence of vocal opposition. That’s not to say there are no opponents—only that they are working quietly and effectively behind closed doors.

It’s likely that among the most powerful of those unseen opponents of 9/11 transparency are two strange bedfellows:
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—which has fueled the growth of terror
The U.S. intelligence community—which is charged with thwarting terror
Saudia Arabia’s Broad Influence on U.S. Policy

Saudi Arabia has claimed it wants the 28 pages released, but the kingdom is surely bluffing. At a January 7 press conference promoting the reintroduction of a House resolution urging the president to declassify the 28 pages, former Senator Bob Graham was pointed in describing how Saudi Arabia figures in the censored chapter of the report of a joint Congressional intelligence inquiry into 9/11: “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.”

Like many other countries, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in building influence within American shores, and that influence may be a big reason why Barack Obama hasn’t reversed George W. Bush’s extraordinary redaction of 28 consecutive pages of a Congressional intelligence report, and why most of our federal legislators haven’t even bothered reading those pages despite the strong urging of peers who have.

Former Senator Norm Coleman: On the Saudi Payroll
Former Senator Norm Coleman: Once a Saudi Critic, Now on Kingdom’s Payroll
One relatively new pillar in Saudi Arabia’s influence infrastructure illustrates its strength. In September, The Nation’s Lee Fang—in a piece outlining the remarkable depth and breadth of the Saudi web of influence—revealed that Saudi Arabia had made an eyebrow-raising addition to its army of lobbyists: Norm Coleman, former United States senator and current chair of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a prominent Republican super PAC.

The hire breaks new ground, writes Fang, as Coleman “appears to be the first leader of a significant Super PAC to simultaneously lobby for a foreign government.” The move also reveals cringe-inducing hypocrisy: In 2005, Coleman signed a letter condemning Saudi Arabia for fostering Islamic extremism around the world, and today he serves on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy.

While noteworthy, Coleman is just one star in a broad constellation of Saudi Arabian influence on American policymakers. As The New York Times reported in a September expose, another major avenue of foreign government influence is the funding of American think tanks:

“The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.”

The pressure on scholars isn’t always indirect: Some “donations” are accompanied by an explicit quid pro quo understanding that the think tank will advance the interest of its foreign state benefactor.

According to a Times infographic, Saudi Arabia has given money to many of the think tanks that journalists and policymakers turn to for analysis, including The Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, the Middle East Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Does the work product of these think tanks reflect their Saudi sponsorship? Consider the rather Saudi-friendly insights the CSIS’s Anthony Cordesman recently offered decision-makers on the transition of power following the death of King Abdullah. In it, Cordesman heralds Abdullah as “one of (Saudi Arabia’s) most competent and impressive kings” and “a strong ally.” While he touches briefly on extremism, strikingly absent from Cordesman’s examination of Saudi Arabia’s role as a “close partner” in U.S. counterterrorism efforts is any mention of the country’s well-documented financial support of Islamic extremism and terror. To the contrary, Cordesman declares that Saudi Arabia “has been critical to preserving some degree of regional stability…during the rise of Islamic extremism.”

Considering Saudi Arabia’s think tank sponsorship, it’s no wonder that 28Pages.org is only aware of one occasion where one of these influential entities has allowed an analyst to use its platform to promote the release of the 28 pages: Last month at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin urged their release and implored journalists to make the 28 pages a 2016 campaign issue.

Intelligence Community’s “Pervasive Pattern” of Covering Saudi Role

Saudi Arabia’s reasons for wanting the 28 pages kept secret are clear, but what about America’s intelligence community? Actually, its motives are likely identical: Shielding itself from public humiliation and the consequences that would accompany it.

Former Senator Bob Graham
Former Senator Bob Graham
The intelligence community would have us believe that publishing the 28 pages would somehow pose a threat to national security, a notion that’s been pointedly rebutted by many who’ve read them, including former Senate intelligence committee chairman Graham.

At the January 7 press conference, Graham said, “Much of what passes for classification for national security reasons is really classified because it would disclose incompetence. And since the people who are classifying are also often the subject of the materials, they have an institutional interest in avoiding exposure of their incompetence.”

The intelligence community’s failure in the years and months leading up to 9/11 isn’t exactly secret, but the 28 pages may shed powerfully unflattering new light on it. Remember, they’re found in the report of the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Secrecy about American intelligence agencies’ performance before and after the 9/11 attacks stretches far beyond the 28 pages. Perhaps the most prominent example of that broad veil relates to a 9/11 hijacker cell in Sarasota: Graham says the FBI failed to disclose its knowledge of that cell to the joint congressional intelligence inquiry he co-chaired.

When the cell later came to the attention of investigative journalist Dan Christensen at FloridaBulldog.org, the FBI first denied that it found any connection between 9/11 hijackers and a wealthy Saudi family that suddenly fled the country two weeks before September 11, and then denied it had any documentation of its investigation. Now we know the FBI indeed found direct links between that family and the hijackers, and a federal judge is studying more than 80,000 pages of FBI documents relating to the Sarasota investigation for potential release in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Relating the FBI’s Sarasota secrecy to the 28 pages, Graham said, “This is not a narrow issue of withholding information at one place, in one time. This is a pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 by all of the agencies of the federal government which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11.”

Richard Clarke
Former Counterterror Czar Richard Clarke
The CIA may want the 28 pages kept secret, too. Richard Clarke, who was the White House’s counter-terrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations, says the CIA never told him that two known Al Qaeda operatives were living in southern California under their own names. Considering the San Diego cell figures prominently in the joint inquiry report, the 28 pages may shed light on the CIA’s motives for its history-altering failure to inform Clarke or the FBI or elaborate on what disaster-averting information the CIA had and didn’t share.

Like the CIA, the NSA also knew about the San Diego-based hijackers well before September 11. Keeping the 28 pages under wraps may serve the agency in its fight to preserve the post-9/11 mass surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden: If the 28 pages amplify the fact that the government had all the information it needed to thwart the 9/11 attacks without those controversial programs, the NSA’s arguments would be further weakened.

A Deadly Bargain

Amid all this discussion of the actions and inactions that enabled the terrible loss of life on 9/11, one shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that lives continue to hang in the balance—and the fact that former Senator Graham and current Congressmen Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and Thomas Massie have all said that declassifying the 28 pages is imperative to understanding and countering the ongoing terror threat.

Said Graham at the 28 pages press conference that came just hours after the terror attack on the offices of French magazine Charlie Hebdo: “There is no threat to national security in disclosure (of the 28 pages). I’m going to make the case today that there’s a threat to national security by non–disclosure, and we saw another chapter of that today in Paris.”

According to Graham, shielding Saudi Arabia from scrutiny of its role in 9/11 has emboldened the kingdom to continue its sponsorship of extremism and, in the process, enabled the rise of ISIS. If so, the continued censorship of the 28 pages has cost more lives around the world than were lost on September 11, 2001—and with growing U.S. involvement in the fight against ISIS, American lives could become increasingly imperiled.

Americans may not be surprised that a faraway monarchy would be willing to gamble the lives of innocents in a bid for continued power, but they should be deeply troubled that the U.S. intelligence community would—wittingly or not—make the same deadly bargain. By shielding themselves from the oversight that’s vital to our system of government, our national security agencies also shield Saudi Arabia from accountability. In so doing, they endanger the very lives they’re charged with saving.

Brian McGlinchey is the founder and director of 28Pages.org.

REDACTED w911Help release the 28 pages: Call or write to Congress today with our help.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and grow the 28 pages movement.


Grayson to Submit New Request to Read 28 Secret Pages on 9/11

January 26, 2015 28 pages, 9/11, Alan Grayson, Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, NSA
Congressman Alan Grayson
Congressman Alan Grayson
Congressman Alan Grayson, one of three representatives who last week joined the growing movement to declassify a 28-page finding on foreign government support of the September 11th hijackers, told 28Pages.org he did so because “the American people have the right to know what happened on 9/11 in every regard.”

As he takes a stand for releasing the 28 pages to the public, he remains determined to read the 28 pages himself. Denied permission by the House intelligence committee in the waning weeks of the last Congress, Grayson will try again in the new one.

The Florida congressman said the December 1 refusal of his first request was “politics, pure and simple.”

“There are people on the intelligence committee who are unhappy with the fact that I have been a staunch opponent of pervasive domestic spying here in the United States,” said Grayson. “The vote was almost entirely on party lines because the Republican chairman (Mike Rogers) misrepresented information to the committee about my actions.”

Rep. Grayson on the House Floor, June XX 2013
Grayson Speaking on the House Floor, June 2013
In June 2013, amid the first wave of Edward Snowden’s revelations of NSA mass domestic surveillance, Grayson delivered a speech on the House floor that was accompanied by a display of NSA briefing slides that had already been published in The Guardian and The Washington Post. Grayson said the information he shared in the speech relied “solely on information in The Guardian…and that was misrepresented to the (intelligence) committee members as my misusing classified information.”

“Frankly, if they’re going to be playing those kinds of games, it’s a wonder that good people ever get to find out anything about the octopus tentacles of the spying-industrial complex,” said Grayson.

Grayson is hoping for a different outcome when he submits a new request to read the 28 pages.

“Chairman Rogers is no longer chairman of the committee—in fact he’s no longer on the committee or even in Congress—and I hope the current chair will not try to twist the facts the way that Rogers did and I’ll be able to see the information that not only I should be able to see but also every member of the public,” said Grayson.

Grayson cast doubt on the notion that releasing the redacted information could pose a risk to national security or intelligence operations.

“It’s inconceivable to me at this point, more than 13 years later, that there’s any actionable information the administration needs to keep secret in order to be able to do anything with it,” said Grayson, who represents Florida’s 9th congressional district. “No one has ever claimed there’s anything in those 28 pages that needs to remain classified in order to protect current U.S. interests,” he added.

Grayson’s criticism of the continued secrecy of the 28 pages is echoed by many who have read them, including former Senator Bob Graham—who co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry that produced the 28-page chapter in an 838-page report—and Congressmen Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and Thomas Massie.

While Grayson is well-known as an outspoken Democrat, support for the declassification of the 28 pages on Capitol Hill comprises a near-perfect 50/50 mix of Republicans and Democrats united by a common belief that foreign government links to the 9/11 terrorists shouldn’t stay secret.

REDACTED w911Pressure your legislators to read the 28 pages and support their release. Call or write today.









http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/edito ... b6890.html




Tulsa World Editorial: Keating would do a good job as FBI director
By World's Editorial Writers






http://www.rense.com/general10/30.htm



Frank Keating Coverup of OKC bmbing


Ex-Congressman's aide has video of explosion?

"The Fairfax County, Va., home of John Culbertson once a member of former U.S. Rep. James Traficant's scandal-plagued congressional office was raided Friday afternoon by Oklahoma City police detectives searching for evidence related to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing."

According to this article, Culbertson may have in his possession a number of crucial videos and still photos never known to federal or state prosecutors until recently. If true, it is inconceivable that this Culbertson would conceal, at his private residence no less, important evidence no matter who it may or may not implicate.

Further into the article it states:

"In an affidavit obtained by this newspaper, Detective Easley said Mills told him the images he was shown included the Murrah building in ''pristine condition.''

"Mills then said, ''Mr. Culbertson pushed a button and a second photograph came up with a small glow at the bottom of the building. Mr. Culbertson pushed another button and another frame appeared of a ball of fire rising from the building and the building fell."

Other videos still out there?

Martin Keating (brother of Frank Keating, former company man for the FBI and Governor of Oklahoma at the time of the bombing), bragged after the bombing that he had copies of the surveillance film from the Southwest Bell building across the street from the Murrah building.

Another odd thing about Martin Keating that just can't be ignored: Brother Martin wrote a manuscript in 1991, roughly four years before the OKC bombing. Keating could not get this work published until after the bombing.

This manuscript, now a published book, is titled The Final Jihad. In this book, Keating lays out a story of terrorists based in OKC who decide to bomb a federal building. Guess what the name of the one of the key "terrorists" in the book is? Tom McVey. And for the kicker of this fictional work: The terrorists in The Final Jihad are stopped by an Oklahoma highway patrolman for a broken tail light.

How extraordinary! We have a book in manuscript form written four years before the OKC bombing whose story line involves terrorists in Oklahoma City. This part of this fictional work comes true. We have a main character in the book by the name of Tom McVey. In real life, the bomber four years later in OKC is named Tim McVeigh.

We have the terrorists in this fictional work stopped by Oklahoma state troopers for a broken tail light. In real life, our bomber, Tim McVeigh, is pulled over by an Oklahoma state trooper because of a missing license plate.

How's that for fiction being stranger than reality? In this book, written in 1991, Martin Keating also predicts the TWA downing and the World Trade Center bombing. Was this just a premonition that Mr. Keating had? The bottom line is why hasn't Martin Keating been put under the microscope regarding his own statements that he has videos that could unlock the truth?

That aside, now we are starting to touch on the real issue in the OKC bombing: What really destroyed the building? It is the key to the crime and this two part series, I hope, will encourage the American people demand a real investigation by experts, who have no ties whatsoever to the Federal government, into all the facts and evidence about OKC.

McVeigh's Second Trial

Millions and millions of words have been written about Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Most of it focuses on the "anti-government" hate mongers, Tim McVeigh, Nichols and the Ryder truck filled with drums of ammonia nitrate, which once cooked and detonated, turned into "weapons of mass destruction" that brought down the Murrah Building or it is alleged.

Several weeks before McVeigh's execution, this writer authored a 228-page document titled McVeigh's Second Trial. This meticulous statement of facts was not compiled to defend Timothy McVeigh, although every defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. That was impossible in the United States v. Timothy McVeigh trial.

The greatest majority of the American people have never been told the truth about the facts surrounding that heinous act. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations, through their minions, Janet Reno and John Ashcroft, have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the truth and have participated in a colossal cover up pertaining to the slaughter of 168 innocent men, women, children and babies.

I am compelled to cite some of the factual details contained in McVeigh's Second Trial because it is one of my life goals to see those who perpetrated this screaming act of murder suffer the full consequences of the law at the state level; the feds have no jurisdiction to try McVeigh or Nichols for murder; see the U.S. Constitution.

These are just a tiny fraction of issues covered in McVeigh's Second Trial:

Question: With no suspects and absolutely no leads, how is it the feds zeroed in on McVeigh within 48 hours?

Fact: Because, quite conveniently, his social security number was put out to all law enforcement as a suspect within two days of the bombing. This is how patsy's are made.

Question: Was Trooper Charlie Hanger alone when he pulled McVeigh over near Perry, Oklahoma?

According to the official trial transcripts, apparently not:

Trooper Hanger under cross by the completely incompetent McVeigh defense team:

Q: Did you drive even with the driver's side of Mr. McVeigh's vehicle?

Response by Trooper Hanger: "I actually overshot him. We passed him."

"We" passed him? Was this just a slip by Hanger because he usually rides with a partner or was there another trooper in his official car that day when the real Timothy McVeigh was pulled over? If so, why was he/she never mentioned or put on the stand?

On May 20, 1995, just a few days before the evidence (the Murrah Building) was destroyed, I drove the stretch between the crime scene (the Murrah Building) and the location where McVeigh was pulled over. It would have been impossible for him to drive this distance in the time available for the government's time line to work without exceeding a consistent speed of 80+ mph.

No one has ever stepped forward to say they observed this 1977 crummy old Mercury Marquis speeding away from OKC at high speed, all the way up the interstate to the Perry turn off. Not to mention how foolish it would have been for McVeigh to draw such attention to himself. McVeigh's car had very distinct rust markings, yet no one remembers seeing this vehicle speeding away from OKC to the Perry exit. How extraordinary.

The Carol Howe Case

This case was directly connected to the investigation of the loons who lived in Elohim City, McVeigh and the bombing. During Ms. Howe's trial, a single witness destroys the government's time line regarding Timothy McVeigh. As this witness was a victim of the bombing, it isn't likely she would want to do anything to help mass murderer Timothy McVeigh, but she did. Why on earth Stephen Jones never subpoenaed her to testify at McVeigh's trial in Denver remains a mystery to this writer.

Testimony from the official transcripts of Germaine Johnston; the full transcript testimony can be read in McVeigh's Second Trial. Certain parts have been omitted for brevity. Please be prepared when you read the transcript contained in that document because the testimony of victims and their families will rip your heart out.

Q. Did you have an encounter with someone that stood out in your mind?

Answer by Ms. Johnston: Yes, I did. When I got down here, to the Southwestern Bell property, there was a car sitting facing north, and there were two young men standing by it. And as -- approached them.

Q. Do you know about how long after the bombing that would have been?

A. My estimate would be that it was 20 or 25 minutes afterwards. I think between 9:25 and 9:35 or something like that.

Q. Okay. Now, you said that there were two young men that you saw?

A. Uh-huh, there were two men standing by the passenger side of this car. It was yellow car. It was parked in the alley, close to this building right here, facing north; and they were standing by the driver's door.

Q. Now, did you recognize the type of car?

A. It was a Mercury.

Q. How do you know that?

A. My husband and I used to drive a Mercury, about that same age and about that same color.

Q. What model, year model was your Mercury?

A. '77.

Q. What color was this Mercury?

A. It was faded yellow.

Q. Okay. Was it a four-door?

A. Yes.

Photos of McVeigh's car are at: [www.okcitytrial.com/content/current/April/exb41 2.jpg]
[www.okcitytrial.com/content/current/April/exb41 3.jpg]
[www.okcitytrial.com/content/current/April/exb41 4.jpg]

You will notice on the driver's side of the car, there is huge discoloration and rust. There is no mention of this in Mrs. Johnston's testimony above because, unfortunately, she is standing on the passenger side of the car. Did she happen to see the other side of the car before going on her way? The question was never asked, but it should have been by McVeigh's defense attorneys.

The other critical statement during Mrs. Johnston's testimony that must be considered is this:

She states that she approached this yellow '77 Mercury approximately 20-25 minutes after the bombing. That would make it somewhere between 9:25 and 9:35 am in her words. That is her testimony.

These are very, very important minutes. Why? Because Trooper Hanger stated in his testimony that "we" pulled McVeigh over at approximately 10:20 am. According to his log for that day, it says he called in the arrest at 10:22 am.

That would mean that McVeigh would have driven from the Murrah Building to the location of his arrest in 50 minutes or less. As I said earlier, unless McVeigh was flying in his clunker, which no one observed, the time line doesn't fit. Come on, with all the horror and publicity surrounding his arrest, not one single person on that highway that day at around that time came forward to report seeing McVeigh's car.

A whole lot of people saw the brown pick up with Middle Eastern looking men inside speed away from the building. However, that solid lead was quickly dropped at the altar of political correctness. How revolting.

According to the feds in McVeigh's trial, he allegedly left the Ryder truck at 9:00 am, walked quickly away and 1 hr and 20 minutes later, he was pulled over. That can be done if you drove straight as the crow flies, however, it doesn�t square with Ms. Johnston's sworn testimony.

Even if McVeigh walked straight to his get-away car, the Murrah Building was not located next to the freeway on-ramp. Precious minutes would be eaten up getting to I-35 north. Trooper Hanger says McVeigh was not speeding when he approached him.

Now, let's go back to Mrs. Johnston. She says she spoke with McVeigh and another man at roughly 9:25-9:35 am. She testified that as she approached them, they were just standing there on the driver's side. She briefly spoke with them and then moved on.

The question is how long did this McVeigh and the other unidentified man continue to stand there? Did they get in this yellow car and leave? Did the unidentified man leave then and then this McVeigh get in his car and take off? We don't know.

One thing I do know: If it was 9:25-9:35 am and McVeigh was standing around near the building, there simply is no way, without traveling at a high speed all the way, that McVeigh could have made it to marker 202-203 where Trooper Hanger stopped him at 10:20 am. Also, what happened to the second man this McVeigh was with when Ms. Johnston spoke with them? It wasn't Nichols.

McVeigh would have had to leave the minute Mrs. Johnston walked away, hurry to I- 35, which would have drawn a lot of attention, some one fleeing instead of sticking around to help, and race up I-35 to travel 75 miles in the 45 minutes left to him based on Mrs. Johnston's testimony. Could you drive 75 miles in 45 minutes? This means getting to the freeway through the massive mess and heading out at a very high speed.

The time line doesn't work. Mrs. Johnston was a victim. It's unlikely she would want to mislead anyone during her testimony to protect McVeigh. This not only establishes very reasonable doubt, it also puts us once again with two McVeigh look-alikes.

In the June 1995 issue of Soldier of Fortune Magazine is a photo of three ATF agents taken in a court room during the Waco trials. Two are identified; the agent in the middle is not. He is also a dead ringer for Timothy James McVeigh.



Link du jour



https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... togenetics




http://www.statesman.com/news/agent-fea ... odOav6iBP/


Agent feared leak of Trump tax returns could affect election
MICHAEL KUNZELMAN JEFF MARTIN Associated Press
6:21 p.m Wednesday, May 24, 2017 Nation & World





https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... g-comments



Mississippi lawmaker calls for lynchings after removal of Confederate symbols







http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/v ... -1.3192816


Video appears to show San Antonio police officer repeatedly striking 14-year-old girl in face during arrest
BY DAVID BOROFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 24, 2017, 2:32 PM




http://www.vocativ.com/432762/vermont-d ... tion-aclu/


Vermont DMV Caught Using Illegal Facial Recognition Program - Vocativ
The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles has been caught using facial recognition software — despite a state law preventing it.

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont describe such a program, which uses software to compare the DMV’s database of names and driver’s license photos with information with state and federal law enforcement. Vermont state law, however, specifically states that “The Department of Motor Vehicles shall not implement any procedures or processes… that involve the use of biometric identifiers.”

The program, the ACLU says, invites state and federal agencies to submit photographs of persons of interest to the Vermont DMV, which it compares against its database of some 2.6 million photos and shares potential matches. Since 2012, the agency has run at least 126 such searches on behalf of local police, the State Department, FBI, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.






https://federalnewsradio.com/government ... -20-years/


Former Mississippi prison chief sentenced to nearly 20 years

May 24, 2017 7:25 pm

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Christopher Epps once called himself the “tallest hog at the trough,” but he was cut down to size Wednesday when a judge sentenced Mississippi’s former corrections commissioner to nearly 20 years in prison for crimes connected to more than $1.4 million in bribes.

U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate handed down the sentence, rejecting prosecutors’ recommendation for a more lenient 13 years. Wingate said Epps’ decision to break into his former house to retrieve outdoor lights in October — after Epps had pleaded guilty — made him question whether the 56-year-old truly took responsibility for his crimes. He also ordered Epps to pay a $100,000 fine. Epps has already forfeited more than $1.7 million in assets.

“This is the largest graft operation that certainly I have seen, and I have seen a lot,” said Wingate, a federal judge since 1985. “He has bruised tremendously the image of the state of Mississippi.”

Epps pleaded guilty in 2015 to charges of money laundering and filing false tax returns related to bribes he extracted from contractors doing business with the prison system. The charges carried a maximum sentence of 23 years.




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3189296


Illinois 16-year-old commits suicide hours after police tried to ‘scare him straight’
BY JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 1:02 PM





http://ticklethewire.com/2017/05/24/gua ... oover-era/



FBI is much more destructive than under J Edgar Hoover


Guardian: Trump Seems Primed to Return the FBI to the Hoover Era

Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

By Editorial Board
The Guardian

The country is still reeling after the bombshell report that Donald Trump asked the former FBI director James Comey to shut down the bureau’s investigation into Michael Flynn. Did the president fire Comey to slow down the FBI Russia investigation? Did Trump obstruct justice?

These questions are getting the attention that they deserve. But the focus on Comey’s firing is obscuring the issue of who Trump will hire to replace him – and the threat that this appointment poses to Americans’ civil liberties and civil rights.

Recently, the journalist Ashley Feinberg uncovered Comey’s personal Twitter account; he had used the pseudonym “Reinhold Niebuhr”. Tellingly, the real Niebuhr was a theologian, public intellectual, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient targeted for FBI surveillance because of his lawful opposition to the Vietnam war.

Niebuhr wasn’t alone. The FBI has a long history of abusing its power to serve political ends. In the early 20th century, J Edgar Hoover created his Radical Alien Division to conduct dragnet surveillance of American immigrants. It surveilled Marcus Garvey to collect evidence used in his deportation to Jamaica. It wiretapped Dr Martin Luther King Jr during the civil rights era. At President Dwight Eisenhower’s direction, Hoover compiled a “list of homosexuals” to root out gay people working for the government.

Comey had serious flaws. But he understood the past misdeeds of the FBI. He kept a copy of the original order to wiretap King on his desk and required new FBI agents and analysts to visit King’s memorial on the National Mall. As Comey put it in 2015, he tried to “to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them”.



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/cha ... -1.3181986




Changing tactics, NYPD focuses on helping drug users, rather than locking them up
BY JOHN ANNESE RICH SCHAPIRO LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, May 22, 2017, 7:00 AM





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


A state-run universal healthcare system? California only? It’s fantasy.

Current legislation in Sacramento is fatally flawed and foolhardy.

Why? It would be astronomically expensive, politically impossible and beyond state government’s competence.

But it’s a rallying cry for many liberal followers of Bernie Sanders. And some Democratic legislators are seriously pursuing the idea, urged on by the politically powerful California Nurses Assn.

The nurses were marching and shouting at last weekend’s Democratic Party state convention in Sacramento. Their hero is Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom the nurses have endorsed to replace the termed-out Gov. Jerry Brown in next year’s election.

They like Newsom because he installed a local universal healthcare system as San Francisco’s mayor.

The activist nurses have also endorsed state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) for California insurance commissioner. He and Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) are sponsoring the universal healthcare legislation. It’s called “single payer” because the state would pay for all healthcare in California.

Lara is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where his bill, SB 562, is expected to be approved and sent to the Senate floor. It’s up against a June 2 deadline for Senate passage to the Assembly.
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5704
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon Jun 05, 2017 5:42 pm

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3210185


GOP Rep. Tim Walberg says God will ‘take care of’ climate change



BY MEERA JAGANNATHAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 31, 2017, 3:17 PM



Link du jour


http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.com/

http://www.counterpunch.org/

https://www.facebook.com/NLGStudents/

https://www.nlg.org/students/

http://www.campusactivism.org/blog/





http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2017 ... ootic.html



Rhodesia used anthrax against it's own people

Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Zimbabwe's historic anthrax epizootic: new analysis
A paper has been published here and, while in draft form, discussed at length here, which reanalyzes the features of Zimbabwe's anthrax epizootic, which began in 1978 and slowly tailed off after 1980.

The authors include an MD and geography specialists from the University of Nevada, Reno. The first author, James M. Wilson, MD, has founded a center to investigate and forecast epidemics. From his bio:
Director, Nevada State Infectious Disease Forecast Station @ the University of Nevada-Reno.This is the first operational infectious disease forecast station in the United States that operates at the state level.
The group has done a great job collecting information about weather (temperature, rainfall), soils, outbreak locations, possible means of spread, and number of animals and humans affected, as well as the movement of the epidemic over time. The group has pulled together the detail needed to create maps and tables that convey how the epidemic evolved chronologically.

The authors have [as I believe I did in 1992] put to rest a number of unsupported theories as to the nature of the epidemic, and confirmed that the geographic "hops" anthrax made are not explained by natural occurrences. The authors confirm that anthrax cases extended to the borders of Zimbabwe, but remained confined within Zimbabwe's boundaries. Adjoining countries experienced no similar epizootic.

The authors agree that the vast majority of human cases were associated with exposure to anthrax-contaminated animals, hides or meat.

Of interest, a number of anonymous commenters were extremely critical of Wilson's paper as it was in progress. Their arguments were mostly specious, and I would be able to knock each down if it was useful to do so; I did knock down a few, then stopped sparring with anonymous critics. If the critics were serious, presumably they would have used their names. What was interesting was the concerted attack on Wilson, some 38 years since the onset of the epizootic, to deny the event could have been due to biological warfare. Yet there is no other explanation, consistent with the facts, that has ever been put forward.

Wilson's paper also makes clear that the 2015 report on this epizootic, by Stephan P. Velsko from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), self-published by LLNL, is not worth the paper it is printed on. Velsko ditched the facts and built a house of cards based on his own inferences about the epidemic, providing an example of the extreme lengths a so-called scientific exercise can be taken to turn the scientific method on its head. I criticized his work here.

Wilson reported that I had been living in Zimbabwe at the time of the epizootic. Actually, I was living in the US. I travelled to Zimbabwe to study the epizootic in 1992, and did a poster presentation on the epizootic in Nairobi at the International Society for Infectious Diseases in July 1992, making the argument that the many unique features of this epizootic could only be explained as an act of biological warfare. Margarete Isaakson, a South African infectious disease scientist with likely connections to Project Coast, and an interest in Ebola, screamed at me in Nairobi for daring to present such rubbish. I believe this was because I came too close to her area of expertise.

Nothing has changed since Zimbabwe's tragic epizootic. Biowarfare is a horrible mode of warfare that has not been eradicated, identifying it is controversial, and developing the scientific tools that allow one to definitively identify when an act of offensive biowarefare has been used, shifts the balance of power from the perpetrators to the investigators and to those who were attacked. That seems a very fair power shift, but it isn't to everyone's liking. (What makes biological warfare especially attractive is the ability to hide that it actually occurred, and who caused it.) Scientific studies that remove this advantage are, unsurprisingly, being attacked.

The attacks, mostly spurious, that Wilson has received for his paper tell us there are still many people who would keep the whole subject under wraps.

Finally, despite a 2010 paper by Fasanella et al. that flies can transmit anthrax spores in the lab (and several similar earlier papers going back decades have found the same thing), the problem is the flies' failure to transmit enough spores or viable vegetative forms to cause illness in livestock, because on the order of one million spores is required to achieve an infectious dose. It is much more likely that flies could transmit anthrax to rodents, for whom several orders of magnitude fewer organisms are required. But in nature, they do not seem to do this, either. So much for the fly theory.

While I am pleased this subject is getting the careful attention it deserves, I wonder why it is getting it now?

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 12:33 AM



http://www.latimes.com/politics/essenti ... story.html

California Legislature California politics
MAY 31, 2017, 9:20 P.M.
Trump wouldn't release his tax returns, so lawmakers move to make it mandatory for California's primary





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3207795



Disabled man spent 42 hours on filthy floor of Brooklyn jail after police took away his wheelchair: lawsuit



BY DENIS SLATTERY MARCO POGGIO ANDREW KESHNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, May 30, 2017, 9:27 PM





https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... anti-media

Kentucky newspapers suffer twin threats amid rising anti-media climate
Shooting at Lexington Herald-Leader shattered windows and bogus bomb alert in London caused staff to be evacuated – as Trump revives attacks on media



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/m ... -1.3207524

Men probing working conditions at company producing Ivanka Trump brands in China arrested, missing



http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/05/30/wh ... more-14265


What You Should Know About Oleg Deripaska
Posted on May 30, 2017 by Daniel Hopsicker





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3206889

KING: Too little, too late in firing Cleveland cop who killed Tamir Rice

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, May 30, 2017, 1:27 PM






http://www.latimes.com/politics/essenti ... story.html


2018 electionCongressional races
MAY 30, 2017, 2:29 P.M.
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON
Darrell Issa gets on his office roof to take a picture of protesters. A mild hubbub ensues
Sarah D. Wire and Teri Figueroa







http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/m ... -1.3207373


Defense team for cop doesn’t want jury to know Philando Castile had permit to carry weapon
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, May 30, 2017, 4:52 PM



https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrew ... 52430c4b0f



MAY 30, 2017 @ 03:55 PM 2,323


That Time The FBI Phished A Cop With Poisoned Microsoft Docs




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.3209720



NYPD sergeant charged with murder in fatal shooting of schizophrenic black Bronx woman Deborah Danner
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, May 31, 2017, 2:02 PM




http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/stor ... 349678001/



Justice Department didn't read letters they refused to release



Adam Silverman , Free Press Staff Writer 6:00 a.m. ET May 31, 2017




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3210280



Teen in Bay Area police sex scandal to receive nearly $1M from Oakland after settlement


Wednesday, May 31, 2017, 3:52 PM



The teen at the center of a Bay Area police sex scandal will receive nearly $1 million from the city of Oakland after her claims dredged up the muck of widespread alleged misconduct in its department.

Jasmine, a 19-year-old also known as Celeste Guap, said she was sexually involved with dozens of officers from multiple police departments in the Bay Area, including some while she was underage.

The Daily News does not normally identify alleged victims of sexual exploitation, though Jasmine says that she was coming forward to help other victims of mistreatment and wants to be known by her first name.

Oakland City Council voted Wednesday to approve $989,000 to settle with the teen, the daughter of an Oakland police dispatcher, who had sued for $66 million.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu Jun 08, 2017 2:52 pm

Link du jour


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ar ... story.html



http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... /wahhabis/


https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -scientist



http://www.atimes.com/eea-giving-cover- ... americans/


Evidence suggests FBI racially profiling Chinese Americans

JUNE 8, 2017 10:22 PM (UTC+8) 01
On May 26, the Committee of 100 (C100) published its findings on the systemic profiling by the US government of Chinese-Americans suspected of economic espionage. Many Chinese-Americans have always known that they are victims of institutionalized racism. This study puts a measuring dipstick into this controversial issue.

Andrew Kim, a recent cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, performed the actual analysis of public arrest records of cases under the Economic Espionage Act from 1997 to 2015. He found that under the administration of president Barack Obama, that is, after 2009, the percentage of people charged under the EEA who were Chinese-Americans tripled to 52%. If non-Chinese of Asian descent were also included, the total would add up to 62% of all the cases.

THE DAILY
Brief

Must-reads from across Asia - directly to your inbox

Since ethnic Asians represent only 5-6% of the total US population, it would seem that Asian-Americans and particularly Chinese-Americans are extraordinarily busy spying on the United States.


However, Asians charged under the EEA are also twice as likely as those with Western surnames to have the charges dropped or reduced to minor offenses so as to justify release on probation.

Conversely, if convicted of espionage, the average prison sentence is 25 months for Chinese-Americans as compared with 11 months for those with Western surnames.

In summary, if you are a Chinese-American living in the US, you are more likely to be suspected of being a spy, more likely to be falsely accused, and more likely to pay dearly whether or not you are guilty of any real infractions. Just having the Federal Bureau of Investigation imagine wrongdoing is enough to put you through hell.

Frank Wu, chairman of C100, recruited Kim to do the study. Kim’s work did not start from scratch but was built on top of data already collected by C100 member Jeremy Wu. Wu in turn initially took notice of the disparity based on ethnicity from the work of a Palo Alto, California, law firm.

C100, a national organization of prominent Chinese-Americans, has been following closely cases when Chinese-Americans have been arrested. When Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested and put in solitary confinement in 1999, C100 had a leadership role in coming to his defense.

Nelson Dong, then general counsel of C100, via a series of conference calls, organized a national coalition of Asian-American organizations to present a unified voice of protest to the administration of president Bill Clinton. Dr Lee was not given due process and the group protested that an FBI agent gave misleading and false testimony during Lee’s trial.

Even though the presiding judge apologized to Lee for government misconduct, Lee still had to plead guilty to downloading data into his computer in violation of accepted national-laboratory procedure. The misdemeanor charge was necessary to justify his 10 months of solitary confinement. There was no other way for the government to save face.

Eventually, the Lee family got some monetary compensation from the media for violating his privacy thanks to C100 member Brian Sun, who acted as the plaintiff’s counsel. Getting compensation from the government for wrongful prosecution is nearly impossible, as my review disclosed as recently as two years ago.

There are currently two pending cases involving Chinese-American scientists seeking compensation from the government. As reported last year, even after all charges were dropped against her, Sherry Chen still could not get her job back as a hydrologist with the National Weather Service (NWS).

Chen later retained legal counsel and got a hearing with the Merit System Protection Board of the US government that took place in Cincinnati, Ohio, in March. The purpose of the hearing before the administrative judge of the MSPB was to determine why Chen should not get her job back.

At the hearing, it became clear that one Deborah Lee was the principal cause for denying Chen her old job. Even after the charges against Chen were dropped, Lee wrote a two-page letter insisting that Chen was a danger to the US. Tom Adams, onetime colleague of Lee and Chen, told Chen’s supporters at the hearing that on a social occasion, he had heard Lee express hatred and prejudice against ethnic Chinese.

Lee’s letter apparently became the basis for Laura Furgione to draft the letter to dismiss Chen in her capacity as deputy director of the NWS. Furgione, a self-described ambitious career bureaucrat, had to submit her removal letter twice because the director of the NWS refused to have anything to do with this sordid business.

Until her appearance at the hearing in Cincinnati, Furgione had never met Chen, did not know her and had no personal reason to insist on denying Chen her old post. Perhaps she thought writing the proposal to dismiss Chen would be a boost for her career.

Last December, Furgione moved from the NWS to become chief of the Office of Strategic Planning, a small office with a handful of staff at the US Census Bureau. Wu, who had retired from the bureau, observed in LinkedIn that given the organizational disarray there and in face of a pending national census, Furgione might have been given assignments where she had no chance to succeed.

Professor Xiaoxing Xi of Temple University in Philadelphia attended the C100 conference in Washington and I interviewed him about the civil suit he had filed against FBI agent Andrew Haugen. He said the decision to sue Haugen was a very difficult one because the action meant having to relive the trauma of being taken away in handcuffs and at gunpoint in front of his family, after being falsely accused of having sent restricted US technology to China.

However, he was infuriated not just by the way he was treated and that his rights as an US citizen has been violated, but because he had never been given any explanation from the government as to why he was targeted.

His complaint charged that “FBI Special Agent Andrew Haugen … intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly made false statements and representations and material omissions of facts in his reports, affidavits, and other communications with federal prosecutors, thereby initiating a malicious prosecution of Professor Xi”.

Xi hopes his legal action will give him some answers. He understands and expects that the due process will take a long time and that the system protects government wrongdoing.

The way the system works in the US, even when an officer shoots an unarmed black man in the back, the officer may still find a justifiable probable cause to wiggle away. So it is with Haugen. Even if Haugen has a proclivity to arrest Chinese on sight on trumped-up charges, he can hide behind his badge of authority and never face charges for hate crimes.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/c ... -1.3228665


'Inhumane' Toronto police officers caught on video making fun of 29-year-old woman with Down syndrome
BY DAVID BOROFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 2:32 PM






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3231540


Former Milwaukee black inmate awarded $6.7M after she was raped by jail guard, shackled during childbirth
BY MEGAN CERULLO






https://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/trumps ... re-deaths/



Trump’s new FBI nominee gave Congress a ‘less than truthful answer’ on Abu Ghraib torture deaths
Bob Brigham BOB BRIGHAM



http://wuwf.org/post/trumps-pick-head-f ... agent-says


Trump's Pick To Head The FBI Leads By Example, Ex-Special Agent Says



JUN 7, 2017


Originally published on June 7, 2017 11:14

President Trump has picked a new FBI director. He announced his choice on Twitter this morning. And he has tapped Christopher Wray, a former federal prosecutor who once ran the criminal division of the U.S. Justice Department. Our next guest is a former FBI special agent who worked closely with Christopher Wray. Joe Robuck joins us from his home just outside Atlanta. Joe, thanks for being here.

JOE ROBUCK: Good morning.

MARTIN: I understand you worked with Christopher Wray on a corruption case when he was a U.S. attorney. What were your impressions?

ROBUCK: Chris has got incredible work ethic. He's one of the smartest lawyers I've ever met. He's a patriot, a family man. He's calm under pressure. I would describe him as a man of integrity. I mean Chris has all the tools to be a incredible FBI director. And I think the agents in the bureau will be proud to work for him.

MARTIN: Sounds like you believe he's a good choice. You say he can stand up to a lot of pressure - no doubt there will be some. The president called his qualifications impeccable, and he has had a distinguished career. What can you tell us, though, about how he leads? What's his leadership style like?

ROBUCK: Chris leads by example. He is somebody that comes to work early and leaves late. I told another person who was asking me about him recently that I remember he used to work up until the last minute during our case that we worked together on, and then he would run to his car to get home to his family. And I used to chuckle about that.

But he would put whatever time was necessary into the mission. And - but he never forgot what's really important to him, his family, his country, the - his team members on the case. I mean he was - he really left an impression on me. And I worked with a lot of lawyers over the years, and nobody's better than Chris Wray.

MARTIN: If he - if and when he gets to a confirmation hearing, he will no doubt be asked about his level of independence, whether or not he can be an independent voice in some very controversial cases. Does he have that independent streak?

ROBUCK: I've never seen any evidence to the contrary. I mean I think Chris has one rule, and that's do the right thing. He's - I mean I was proud to be around somebody and work around somebody who thinks like that. And I certainly think he's up






http://www.westkentuckystar.com/News/St ... tucky.aspx


Kentucky
West Kentucky Star-
LOUISVILLE, KY - The FBI is planning a recruitment event in Louisville in hopes of persuading more minorities and women to join their ranks. The event is set for ...






http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =104074962


Black FBI Agent Accuses FBI Of Retaliation Over Race Suit


A former FBI agent at the center of one of the biggest discrimination cases in the agency's history has filed a new lawsuit, in which he says the FBI continues to exact retribution for a case he settled back in 1990.

Donald Rochon was 37 years old when he filed his landmark discrimination suit against the FBI. Rochon, who is black, was a young agent in Omaha, Neb., when some troubling things started to happen. In one incident, Rochon returned to his desk to find that someone had put a picture of monkey over his son's face in a family photograph.

Another episode took place shortly after Rochon learned to scuba dive. "Their ideology [was that] blacks couldn't swim," he says. "And they put up a photograph of me and another black person swimming in a garbage dump."

The situation escalated when Rochon and some of his tormentors were transferred to Chicago. He started getting death threats. In one instance, white agents said they would cut off his genitals. Then, about a week later, a death and dismemberment insurance policy appeared on Rochon's desk.

"That was traced back to an FBI agent," he says. The agent forged Rochon's signature on the policy.

The FBI supervisor said it was harmless fun and wrote the incidents off as pranks.

In separate investigations, the Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saw it differently. They found that Rochon was humiliated by agents because he was black. The former special agent in charge of the Omaha office told the EEOC that he considered the pranks to be "healthy" and a sign of "esprit de corps." He said he was aware of Rochon's racial harassment complaints, but he didn't take any formal action.

FBI Assistant Director John Miller says the bureau is on top of the issue. The Rochon case happened 20 years ago, he says, and the bureau has come a long way since then. It has systems in place so if people need to report something, they can. And the Justice Department eventually took full responsibility for what happened with Rochon: There were investigations. Agents were disciplined. Rules were changed.

Both the Justice Department and FBI declined to comment on Rochon's new lawsuit because it is ongoing.

The new charges allege that the FBI — which is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws — continues to retaliate against Rochon. His suit claims, for example, that a mobster he had helped put in jail threatened his life, and the FBI said it would investigate. Rochon says he discovered the agency never did.

As part of his earlier case, Rochon, who left the bureau, was supposed to receive a settlement that was essentially his salary and retirement. But one of Rochon's attorneys, Mike Rubin, says that has been a problem, too.

"He was promised once he reached mandatory retirement age in May of 2007, he would receive full pension like any other employee who had remained at the FBI throughout that entire time period," Rubin says. He says that hasn't happened.

When the two sides disagreed over the pension, Rochon filed his new claims. This time, the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder are named in the suit. Rochon says it isn't about the money. He says there is a bigger issue involved — intimidation. "The FBI is kind of using me as an example to scare other employees — whether they be Title VII claimants or whistleblowers — into not making complaints," he says. "Otherwise, they are going to be haunted for the rest of their life."

The question now is whether Holder will use this case to look at the issue of race at the bureau — the very issue that he famously said in February the American people were too cowardly to tackle head on.

Rubin says he took Holder at his word when he said he wanted to talk about the racial issues lurking in the shadows. That's why before he filed Rochon's new lawsuit, he wrote Holder a letter and included the background of the case. He got a form letter back that said the case was being looked into.

"What's going on behind the scenes I don't know," says Rubin. "We're hopeful that he will turn his attention to this and put actions behind the great words that he articulated."

This week, the Justice Department asked the court for an extension to answer the case: Officials want 45 more days to study it. A spokesman declined to comment beyond that.

Rochon says he is looking forward to hearing what the new administration has to say.




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ex- ... -1.3231369

NYPD psychologist gets three and a half years in prison for shooting husband as he slept
BY THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 8, 2017, 12:18 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3229467

Jersey City cops caught on video kicking and beating burning innocent bystander near scene of fiery crash


BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 9:24 PM





https://robertscribbler.com/2017/06/07/ ... t-ice-age/


New Study: Ice Sheet Retreat Led to Rapid Methane Hydrate Release at End of Last Ice Age
Andreassen et al. found evidence of large craters embedded within methane-leaking subglacial sediments in the Barents Sea, Norway. They propose that the thinning of the ice sheet at the end of recent glacial cycles decreased the pressure on pockets of hydrates buried in the seafloor, resulting in explosive blow-outs. This created the giant craters and released large quantities of methane into the water above. — Science

******

At the end of the last ice age, a warming world released a portion of its carbon stores into the atmosphere. The result was, ultimately, an increase in atmospheric CO2 by around 100 parts per million and in increase in atmospheric methane by around 300 parts per billion.

This increase in greenhouse gasses was a direct response to the Earth warming by approximately 4 degrees Celsius over the course of about 10,000 years. Under a present human-forced warming that is currently 1.2 C above late 19th Century averages and that is predicted to reach between 3.3 and 7 C warming this Century if fossil fuel burning continues, it is important to consider what additional carbon forcing the Earth System will produce under such an extreme and short-term temperature departure.


A new study recently published in Science indicates that these massive craters in the sea bed off Svalbard formed as methane hydrate erupted from the sea bed when ice sheets retreated at the end of the last ice age. Many of these craters are over a kilometer wide. Image source: K. Andreassen/CAGE.
One subject of concern is the behavior of methane hydrate deposits under warming conditions. It is estimated that upward of trillions of tons of hydrate exist in various frozen deposits around the world. And that even a fractional release from these deposits could contribute to the increasing greenhouse gas overburden in our atmosphere and further exacerbate warming. A potential for such a release in the short term would add risk of increased warming this Century on top of planned emissions from human fossil fuel burning — adding urgency to already necessary rapid emissions cuts (and a related swift transition to renewable energy based economies).

Paleoclimate Evidence of Massive Hydrate Release

This past week, a new study entitled — Massive blow-out craters formed by hydrate-controlled methane expulsion from the Arctic seafloor — lends credence to concerns regarding hydrate release as a potential amplifier to human warming. The study found that as ice sheets retreated and as pressure was relieved from the sea floor near Svalbard 12,000 years ago, pockets of methane hydrate rapidly migrated toward the surface as they turned to gas. This newly gasified methane formed large, high-pressure, mounds on the sea floor. Such mounds were unstable. Sensitive to changes in the local environment, they generated explosive outbursts which released considerable volumes of methane into the ocean and ultimately also added heat-trapping carbon to the Earth’s atmosphere.

The lead author of the study, Karin Andreasson, a professor at the CAGE Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate noted in Phys.org last week that:

The researchers characterized these blow-out mounds as similar to those that have recently been forming in the Russian permafrost in places like Yamal and Yakutia. And their research indicates that a process like the one that occurred off Svalbard at the end of the last ice age may be at play as permafrost thins and as gas beneath this cap of frozen soil more rapidly migrates toward the surface — creating unstable blow-out mounds. Researchers also indicated that places presently locked in surface ice — like Greenland and Antarctica — could generate further methane blow out risk as ice sheets melt, withdraw and remove pressure from the methane deposits beneath them.

Conditions in Context

These are important findings due to the fact that paleoclimate evidence of past large-scale hydrate release provides a study-identified mechanism for how permafrost hydrates and gas deposits are being liberated due to present warming, how such warming may increase their rate of liberation in the future, and how ice sheet withdrawal could contribute to this hydrate liberation trend. What remains highly uncertain is the ultimate volume of hydrate response to a given level of warming over a given period and how significantly such releases would contribute to the already very considerable heat forcing provided by human emissions. That said, the new study does add to serious concerns regarding the potential for future warming and greenhouse gas levels — which will tend to be higher than present model studies indicate due to generally not accounting for these kinds of Earth System carbon feedbacks.

Links:

Massive blow-out craters formed by hydrate-controlled methane expulsion from the Arctic seafloor

Massive Craters Formed by Methane Blow-outs on Arctic Sea Floor

Massive Crates From Methane Explosions Found in Arctic

Paleoclimate Record of Atmospheric Greenhouse Gasses




http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/08/loret ... omey-says/



Loretta Lynch Successfully Pressured Comey To Mislead Public ...
The Daily Caller-
Loretta Lynch, the former attorney general under Barack Obama, pressured former FBI Director James Comey to downplay the Clinton email server investigation ...



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3229306


Two drunk jail officers arrested after leaving accident scene, waving gun at motorist


BY BARRY PADDOCK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 8:11 PM





http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/07/politics/ ... index.html



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/syr ... -1.3231624

Syracuse-area priest raped child, videotaped abuse in 1980s, $25M lawsuit claims
BY RICH SCHAPIRO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 8, 2017, 2:02 PM


http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/07/politics/ ... index.html

'I literally wanted to rinse myself off,' ex-FBI agent says of Comey statement
By Jason Kurtz, CNN
Updated 11:31 PM ET, Wed June 7, 2017



http://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-tru ... ad-the-fbi

Trump’s FBI Announcement Is ‘an Insult to Every Agent,’ Bureau Veterans Say
With ex-FBI boss James Comey’s Congressional testimony only a day a way, agents worry the president is already politicizing Comey’s replacement, Christopher Wray.

BETSY WOODRUFF
SPENCER ACKERMAN
06.07.17 8:05 AM ET




http://theweek.com/speedreads/704316/co ... t-disclose


Comey explains that the FBI is aware of ties between Jeff Sessions, Russia that he can't disclose
11:33 a.m. ET

Former FBI Director James Comey hinted at another potentially explosive story during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden (D) prompted Comey with a question about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who earlier this year recused himself from the probe into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. Sessions on multiple occasions met with the Russian ambassador during the presidential campaign.

"In your statement you said that you and the FBI leadership team decided not to discuss the president's actions with Attorney General Sessions," Wyden began. "Even though he had not recused himself. What was it about the attorney general's own interactions with the Russians, or his behavior with regard to the investigation, that would have led the entire leadership team of the FBI to make this decision?"

Comey replied that the FBI knew Sessions was going to recuse himself but added cryptically, "We were also aware of facts that I can't discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic." Watch below. Jeva Lange




http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/s ... -1.3226319

The Secret Service can now smoke marijuana
BY MIKE ADAMS
THE FRESH TOAST Tuesday, June 6, 2017, 4:39 PM






http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/han ... -1.3230086


‘Hansel and Gretel’ Manhattan exhibit combines art, surveillance while keeping visitors under constant watch
BY AARON HOLMES
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 8, 2017, 1:31 AM
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu Jun 15, 2017 4:58 pm

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


Unanswered Questions About Tamerlan Tsarnaev
June 15, 2017Updated 6/15/2017


The Medical Examination for Immigrant or Refugee Applicant form, from Tamerlan Tsarnaev's redacted immigration file, from the U.S. Department of State. The top photo depicts Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The bottom photo is an unknown entity.closemore
Was Tamerlan Tsarnaev a federal informant?

On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, attacked the Boston Marathon. It was one of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11.

In all, the Tsarnaevs killed four people and injured hundreds more. One of the most intense manhunts in recent history culminated in a violent shootout with police in Watertown, on April 19. Tamerlan was killed in that shootout. Dzhokhar was arrested. Two years later, Dzhokhar was tried on federal terrorism charges. He was found guilty of the bombing and formally sentenced to death.

However, four years after the bombing, after a high-profile federal terrorism trial and multiple government investigations, there are still many unanswered questions, particularly about Tamerlan.

In this special report, we'll investigate some of the most controversial unanswered questions about Tamerlan Tsarnaev:

Was he a federal informant?
How does the federal informant program work?
How do federal agencies recruit Muslims and other immigrants to become informants?
And did Tamerlan Tsarnaev receive special treatment through this program for his application to become a U.S. citizen?
Part 1: The Theory

In 2014, as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev prepared his defense, his lawyers filed a motion seeking all documents relating to FBI contact with Tamerlan. Why? They believed Tamerlan had been a federal informant.

They wrote: "We base this on information from our client’s family and other sources that the FBI made more than one visit to talk with ... Tamerlan ... and asked him to be an informant, reporting on the Chechen and Muslim community."

Excerpt of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev defense motion, filed March 28, 2014
Excerpt of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev defense motion, filed March 28, 2014
It was the first time that claim had entered the official record.

The government denied then, as it does today, that Tamerlan was ever a federal informant. An FBI spokesperson referred us back to an Oct. 18, 2013 statement the FBI issued along with Boston police and Massachusetts state police. The statement says law enforcement officials did not know the identities of the Tsarnaev brothers before the Watertown shootout, and that they "were never sources for the FBI nor did the FBI attempt to recruit them as sources."

The theory was most recently picked up by investigative reporter Michele McPhee in her new book, "Maximum Harm: The Tsarnaev Brothers, The FBI, and the Road to the Marathon Bombing."

"Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the perfect recruit," says McPhee. "He had tentacles in the drug world. He spoke multiple languages. He could mix in anywhere. He was tall and handsome. He had an American wife. Here was a guy that really was the perfect recruit."




http://www.floridabulldog.org/2017/06/f ... about-911/

JUNE 15, 2017 AT 5:21 AM
FBI asks Miami judge to reconsider, keep secret ‘sensitive details’ about 9/11




The 9/11 hijackers
The FBI is pushing back against a federal judge’s findings that certain classified details about the funding of the 9/11 attacks and the 19 al Qaeda suicide hijackers should be made public.

Specifically, the government is asking Miami U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga to reconsider her May 16 ruling that would largely open for public inspection a 60-page FBI slide show titled “Overview of the 9/11 Investigation.” The FBI showed the overview to the 9/11 Review Commission in secret on April 25, 2014.

The FBI released some of the overview’s pages in full earlier this year, but many more were either partially blanked out or withheld completely for privacy or other reasons. The overview and numerous other FBI records are the focus of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by Florida Bulldog one year ago.

Here’s what an FBI official told the court last week about four blanked-out PowerPoint slides regarding “the transfer of money prior to and funding of the attacks”:

“The release of this information would reveal sensitive details about how much money was being moved around, when it was being moved, how it was being moved, the mode of transfer and locations the FBI had detected movements in. Disclosure of this information would provide a playbook to future subjects on how much money one can move around in certain forms without attracting attention,” FBI record chief David M. Hardy said in his sixth declaration in the case,

Questions about who financed the 9/11 attacks are at the heart of sprawling civil litigation brought against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and others by survivors and relatives of the nearly 3,000 people who died that day. The plaintiffs and their lawyers contend that the kingdom, its official charities and others were responsible. Saudi Arabia has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

Florida Bulldog’s Miami FOIA case seeks records of the 9/11 Review Commission. The Bulldog also sued the FBI in 2012 in federal court in Fort Lauderdale seeking records about its 2001-2002 Sarasota investigation of a Saudi family who moved abruptly out of their upscale home two weeks before 9/11 – leaving behind cars, clothes, furniture and other personal possessions. The probe was triggered by neighbors’ calls to authorities, but the FBI never disclosed its existence to Congress or the original 9/11 Commission.

Six months after that initial FOIA case was filed, the FBI released a small batch of records, including an April 2002 report that said agents found “many connections” between the Sarasota Saudis and the hijackers. In 2014, the FBI told the 9/11 Review Commission in closed session that the agent who wrote the 2002 report had no basis for doing so, but did not further explain or identify the agent.

Also in 2014, Fort Lauderdale U.S. District Judge William Zloch ordered the FBI to produce its records about the matter. The FBI turned over all classified records about 9/11 maintained in its Tampa field office — 80,000 pages. The judge continues to review those documents for possible public release.

Trial date sought

Judge Altonaga’s order last month granted in part and denied in part an FBI motion for summary judgment, notably on the lawfulness of the FBI’s redactions of certain information from several records that it has produced. The FBI, however, has not restored any of those redactions, and attorneys for the Bulldog have asked the judge to set a date for trial this summer.

“At trial, the FBI will be required to offer admissible evidence through witnesses – not through inadmissible hearsay by declaration – to attempt to sustain the redactions,” wrote attorney Thomas Julin in a June 2 “Joint Status Report” to the court. “The Bulldog will have the opportunity, in accordance with due process, to cross-examine any FBI witnesses presented.”

The government asked Judge Altonaga to reconsider her prior ruling the same day. The judge has not yet decided whether an FOIA trial is needed, but if one does happen it would be highly unusual.

Hardy, who heads the FBI’s Records/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), went on in his most recent declaration to discuss other redacted pages in the 9/11 Overview. He said they were withheld to protect FBI “techniques and procedures not well-known to the public as well as non-public details about the use of well-known techniques and procedures.” Hardy’s descriptions shed some light on what’s in those records.

One page, withheld in full, “is a photo taken by a security camera.” The FBI does not identify the photo’s subject, the date it was taken or its general location.

“This was withheld because the release of this picture would disclose the location of the security camera at the site where the photo was taken. The disclosure would allow future subjects to know where to find the security camera so as to avoid the area in which the camera points, thereby circumventing detection or the ability for the FBI and law enforcement to try to obtain an image of the subject.”

Two more pages from the overview section about the FBI’s “ongoing investigation,” also completely withheld, contain “information about a conspirator and his actions taken in preparation for the attacks. This is sensitive information, which if revealed, would put at risk the collection techniques used to obtain such information. It also reveals sensitivities that future subjects could exploit in the future while planning and performing an attack.”

‘Under the radar’

Another page the FBI wants to remain hidden “contains specific factors deemed pertinent in the analysis of the actions of the hijackers’ concerning financial transactions before September 11, 2001. Disclosure of this information would reveal what the FBI already knows about the [sic] hijacker’s financial actions and how they were able to stay ‘under the radar.’”

The FBI’s Hardy similarly advocates for secrecy regarding:

The kinds of weapons and identification the conspirators carried.
Information about the arrival of the pilots, intended pilots and conspirators in the U.S.
Information about when the conspirators moved to their respective departure cities and the timing of their plane ticket purchases.
“A timeline of telephone records and money transfers between conspirators.”
Information about “previous flights the conspirators took before the attacks to include the collection and timing and locations of flights.”
Finally, Hardy said that information about “investigative leads derived from forensic analysis” and “leads and the sources of data the FBI finds useful to or significant in its analysis” should also remain veiled.

“The places the FBI does not look for information can be just as telling as the places it does look for information,” Hardy wrote.

In responding to Hardy’s assertions in court papers filed Monday, attorneys for Florida Bulldog noted that the “referenced techniques apparently are those techniques that the 9/11 hijackers evaded on September 11, 2001. One would hope that different techniques are in place today.”

“If anything, the PowerPoint slides might reveal outdated, failed law enforcement acts or omissions,” wrote attorney Julin. “The 9/11 attacks on the United States are a consequence, at least in part, of the failure of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to detect and halt them.”

The government has until Monday, June 19 to file a reply. The judge will then decide whether the case will go to trial.


Trial looms as judge denies FBI request to keep 9/11 records secret for privacy reasons
Miami federal judge denies FBI motion to postpone trial on secret 9-11 records
U.S. judge cites ‘shameful’ FBI delays in making 9/11 records public
More secret 9/11 documents identified, but FBI has yet to turn them over to judge
Judge awaits FBI’s Sarasota Saudi documents; Justice Department wants more time

Trial looms as judge denies FBI request to keep 9/11 records secret for privacy reasons
Miami federal judge denies FBI motion to postpone trial on secret 9-11 records
U.S. judge cites ‘shameful’ FBI delays in making 9/11 records public
More secret 9/11 documents identified, but FBI has yet to turn them over to judge
Judge awaits FBI’s Sarasota Saudi documents; Justice Department wants more time








How do We Work with Power?
Posted June 1, 2017

When I was in India, this very powerful Shiva swami took me at four in the morning and lead me down the street.

He took me up to a little temple at the top of the street, and he whispered a mantra into my ear. He did puja (prayer) over me for two hours, and I went out of my consciousness, I went out somewhere, I don’t know where I went, and later they came and whispered in my ear and brought me back. I couldn’t stop doing this mantra, and I said to him, “What’s that mantra Baba-ji?” He said, “It will give you vast wealth and vast power.” So I said, “But I don’t want that wealth and vast power unless you will promise me an equal amount of love and compassion.” It’s a nice thing to have said, and he said to me… “Just do the mantra.”

So we get back to his ashram, we had been on pilgrimage, and he puts me in a special suite with special sadhus waiting on me. I’m not to meditate where anybody else meditates, so I go into the inner, special chambers of the building. I get in at 2 in the morning and it’s hot in there, so I am lying on the floor with my arms out, doing this mantra, and I get taken to an astral plane. I get taken out of my body, and I come into a room, and there is sitting this swami, and he looks directly in my eyes, and I start to fly. I start to do astral flight which is a power, and I thought “Wow, I’m flying!” and then I tilted a bit, and as I went to right myself, I thought, “Why am I lying on my back?” …Then I was back in the physical plane. I walked out of the room that morning, and the swami walks over to me, and he says, “Enjoy flying?”

About a month later I’m meditating in seclusion in a cave, where they lock you in and bring you food. And I was doing this mantra the swami had given me. I couldn’t stop and I hated it, and I’m doing it and get taken to another plane, out of my body, and I come into a room, and my guru is there. He looks at me, puts his blanket up over his face, breathes three times, expanding my body like I’m at a pump, and then I am back in my physical body. And I’ve forgotten that mantra. It’s gone. I mean, I remember it, but there’s no desire to say it. A few weeks later I go to visit him and tell him, “Swami gave me a mantra for power, should I use it?” He said, “Listen to your heart, listen to your heart.”

That’s the way in which I’m being worked with about power. This is part of power, and the interesting thing is when you don’t desire power, you just keep letting the energy go through you, you don’t collect it. You don’t keep trying to build off of it. See the tradition is that when you have a certain kind of power, you parlay it into more power. However, when you have no attachment, you just keep letting it go. You just keep dissipating, you don’t keep collecting.

To the extent that I denied my desire of power, I had to keep being confronted with this stuff. Only when finally I was willing to do the mantra, say, “Ok, I’ll get it all,” was I freed from it. As long as you deny death, you’ll keep dying. Just one moment in that realization is enough, if you only get that.

The only thing that ever dies is the model you have in your mind of who you think you are. That’s what dies ".

Harvard Professor Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass




Link du jour

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... n-pictures

http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... fell-fire/


“Thomas Henry Horan joins Our Interesting Times to discuss his research on the notorious “Zodiac Killer” murders. We talk about the evidence that Zodiac was a hoax perpetrated by corrupt police officials and sensationalist newspapers. Later we discuss why perhaps the serial killer meme was used to obstruct justice and cover up systemic political corruption that extends from the Napa Valley in California to the halls of imperial power in Washington DC*. Horan draws a disturbing picture that connects the events in the Bay Area in late 1960’s to the July 2016 murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich and the current Pedogate scandal”

http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.c ... egend.html

* The Podesta Brothers get mentioned at about the 36-minute mark.




http://www.mcalesternews.com/news/local ... da9bf.html

Police officer released on $100,000 bond


By JAMES BEATY MANAGING EDITOR



Jerry “Jay” Lynn Gragg Jr., 40, of rural McAlester, is charged with four felonies in connection with a January 21, 2017, traffic stop in Savanna, according to information filed at the Pittsburg County Courthouse by District 18 District Attorney Chuck Sullivan.

Jones said the woman who is the victim in this case told him and FBI Agent Rich Davis that she was stopped for a traffic violation, she thought, about 90 miles from her home in Texas. During the stop, the officer later identified as Gragg informed her she was driving with a suspended driver’s license and that she was going to jail unless she could pay the fine in full, according to allegations in the affidavit.

The woman didn’t have enough money to pay the fine in full, but offered to pay the officer what she had, the affidavit states, but the officer didn’t agree with that.

During her interaction with the officer, he began making sexual advances toward her, Jones’ affidavit alleges. The woman refused several times and was told to take off her clothes, the affidavit continues.

The two ended up in the officer’s vehicle together, according to investigators. She told investigators she was scared and thought she was going to be raped, the affidavit states. The affidavit accuses the officer of cupping the woman’s breasts and forcing her to commit sexual acts.








https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-the ... 380d53aa1d





EXCLUSIVE: In 2016, the FBI allowed 300,000 gun sales before completing a background check
New data from the FBI reveals the problem is only getting worse.

Dylann Storm Roof was flush with cash from his 21st birthday when he walked into Shooter’s Choice, a gun store in the small town of West Columbia, South Carolina, on April 11, 2015. He was there to buy himself a handgun.
The FBI delayed the sale, saying it needed more time to complete a background check after seeing his arrest for drug possession. Roof had admitted to the charge, which should have kept him from purchasing a firearm.
But the FBI examiner doing Roof’s background check couldn’t get records on that case’s final disposition within three business days. That triggered a loophole in the Brady Bill that allows dealers to sell a firearm without a completed background check, if they choose to — a “default proceed” sale.
The agency calls these sales “default proceeds,” but many gun-safety advocates call it the “Charleston loophole.”
And so, a few days later, Roof walked out of Shooter’s Choice with a .45-caliber Glock 41 Gen4 handgun. Two months later, he used it to shoot and kill nine black churchgoers after a Bible study at a historic black church in Charleston.






FBI Octopus


Hays native graduates from FBI National Academy
Hays Daily News
MANHATTAN — The Kansas State University Police Department's Lt. Jessica Brooks is one of 228 law enforcement officers to graduate from the FBI National ...




This Morning With Ray Dunaway June 15, 2017
CBS Connecticut
8:50- Kenneth Gray, former special agent of the FBI who worked counterterrorism, is now a lecturer at the University of New Haven. Gray discusses the shooting ...




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3244497

NYPD cop busted after she's accused of helping move cocaine
BY SHAYNA JACOBS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Tuesday, June 13, 2017, 5:19 PM


An NYPD cop who also worked as a drug transporter — moving marijuana and cocaine onto the streets — faces a minimum of eight years in prison for her alleged crimes, Manhattan prosecutors said Tuesday.

Nysia Stroud, 29, who has been a cop for six years, awkwardly bent her body in half and waddled through the courtroom to hide her face from photographers.











http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/n ... -1.3248254


N.J. cop who killed 2 passengers in drunken Staten Island crash sentenced to jail


BY SARAH GABRIELLI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, June 14, 2017, 9:15 PM







http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3243855



City must pay $19M to end suits by wrongly convicted pair over 1993 Brooklyn kidnapping


Tuesday, June 13, 2017, 11:32 AM


The city must pay out $19 million to end the wrongful conviction suits of two men who spent decades in prison because of police misconduct.

Everton Wagstaffe, 48, and Reginald Connor, 49, said their 1993 kidnapping convictions were the product of a shoddy corner-cutting frame-up, done to keep up the crush of cases during the early 1990s in Brooklyn.

The men sued the city after a state appeals court tossed their convictions in 2014.

Brooklyn federal court records show Wagstaffe and Connor told the court about the deal with the city last week.

Brooklyn men suing over wrongful convictions in 1992 kidnap
Wagstaffe will receive $11.4 million for his 23 years of incarceration; Connor will get $7.95 million for the 16 years he was locked up, according to the city’s Law Department.

Police found a dead, partially dressed 16-year-old girl in an industrial area of East New York early on New Year's Day in 1992. She was stabbed, strangled and beaten. Although a rape kit was destroyed within weeks, DNA analysis of hairs on the girl's body in 2009 excluded Wagstaffe and Connor.

Police arrested Wagstaffe and Connor on the word of a now-dead woman who was drunk and high when she said she saw the girl getting forced into a car.

Police never revealed the witness’s identity or that she was a regular and "often unreliable" informant, the suit said.

Men convicted in Brooklyn kidnapping see verdicts overturned
Everton WagstaffeMen convicted in Brooklyn kidnapping see verdicts overturned ()
The men were convicted of kidnapping, but the trial judge threw out the murder charge. The pair said they were innocent and kept fighting their convictions over the years.

The 2014 appeals decision said the defense didn't have any good way to take a look at key documents that could've made a difference at trial. The documents showed police were looking at the men even before they talked to the purported eyewitness - but that contradicted testimony from a detective who said the woman led them to Wagstaffe and Connor.

Prosecutors turned over the documents within a heap of other papers, while jurors were getting picked for trial, the appeals court said, noting that didn't give the men a fair chance to defend themselves.

"Based upon our evaluation of the criminal trial record and the decision by an appeals court overturning the convictions, we have determined that settlement was in the best interest of the city," a Law Department spokesman said.

Men wrongly jailed in '93 kidnapping fully exonerated
Emma Freudenberger, an attorney for Connor, declined to comment, citing her client's privacy.

State court documents showed last year that Connor settled a separate lawsuit against New York State for $3 million.

Jonathan Moore, an attorney for Wagstaffe, said there was "overwhelming evidence he was wrongly convicted" and it was clear from the case's start.

Reginald Connor will receive $7.95 million for the 16 years he was locked up.
Reginald Connor will receive $7.95 million for the 16 years he was locked up. (COURTESY REGINALD CONNOR)
Moore said Wagstaffe spent an extra seven years in prison because he refused to tell the parole board he did anything wrong.

Gala honoring ex-Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes draws outrage
"It is testament to the man's belief system that he was unwilling to admit he did something wrong when he didn't do something wrong," Moore said.

He noted that Wagstaffe had also reached a settlement on a separate lawsuit against New York State for $3.15 million.

The settlement adds to a string of pay outs on old Brooklyn cases.

For example, three months ago, the city agreed to a $26 million settlement in another Brooklyn wrongful conviction case.

Anthony




http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/crime/a ... 215229.php



Jury re-watches 2 key videos in police shooting of black motorist




STEVE KARNOWSKI, ASSOCIATED PRESSJune 12, 2017 Updated: June 13, 2017 3:15pm






http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/artic ... tings.html


Black community wants answers on ATF’s Albuquerque sting, says it was ‘punch in the face’


June 13, 2017, 3:40 pm

Black community leaders and citizens want to know who invited out-of-town federal agents and informants into Albuquerque and how the decision was made to focus an undercover sting operation on an impoverished, largely minority section of the city, netting a highly disproportionate number of black defendants.

They plan to put those and other questions into a letter to the federal bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“We want to know exactly what happened and why,” said Patrick Barrett, a member of the two organizations drafting the letter — the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Sankofa Men’s Leadership Exchange, a grassroots organization of black men.

Barrett and others interviewed for this story were reacting to a NMID investigation of the sting published last month. NMID found 28 of the 103 people arrested — or 27 percent — were black in Albuquerque, whose black population is 3 percent. Blacks composed just 5 percent of drug and gun defendants in federal court in New Mexico from 2006 through 2015. Hispanics also were overrepresented among those arrested, while whites were heavily underrepresented compared to Albuquerque’s population.

Additionally, ATF appears to have arrested few if any of the high-level gun and drug runners the bureau says it sought, NMID found. Many swept up were homeless, living in cars and drug addicted. Many lacked the lengthy violent criminal histories agents say they used as a prerequisite for targeting.

In a follow-up story, NMID reported that ATF imported five confidential informants — three of whom were black and two Hispanic — from out of town to help agents choose targets for the operation. The informants, at least some of whom have previous criminal histories themselves, were paid $1,400 a week or more plus bonuses and expenses.

Federal officials called the operation an “unprecedented success” that took down “the worst of the worst” in the city.

But black residents interviewed by NMID called the findings “appalling” and “disturbing.” And they vowed to seek reforms, including questioning mayoral candidates about the ATF operation at a forum in advance of the October election.

“After reading your article, a lot of people are alarmed by what this looks like,” Barrett said. “I don’t think it was fair at all, and I think it was racially motivated.”

Black citizens, leaders and the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico said the operation echoed racial targeting by law enforcement stretching back to the 1960s and raised concerns about constitutional and civil rights violations. They also worried the ATF sting did little to blunt crime in Albuquerque, but instead damaged a tenuous trust in law enforcement among minority communities that had shown signs of improvement.

- See more at: http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/artic ... sSAMz.dpuf
a






http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/t ... or-destroy


OPINION: CNN's lawsuit could vindicate or destroy Comey



BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/15/17 02:00 PM EDT 3
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5704
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Tue Jun 20, 2017 3:19 am

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-sater-maf ... har-627408


DONALD TRUMP, FELIX SATER AND THE MOB: LAWYERS PUSH TO UNSEAL COURT DOCUMENTS THEY SAY COULD SHOW FRAUD BY PRESIDENT





http://www.bostonherald.com/news/column ... of_the_fbi


Carr: Mobster’s life tells real story of the FBI



Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Peter Limone, a Mafia soldier from the North End who just died at the age of 83, spent 33 of those years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit — because he was framed by the FBI.

Think about that the next time you see some talking head on TV pontificating from Washington about how the FBI is the world’s greatest law enforcement agency blah-blah-blah.

Think about Peter Limone, and his three innocent co-defendants, Louie Grieco, Henry Tameleo and Joe “the Horse” Salvati. Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity — yeah, right.

Not only did the FBI know Limone et al. weren’t guilty, they also knew who the real killers were. The morning after the hit on Teddy Deegan in a Chelsea alley in March 1965, the Boston FBI sent an “airtel” memo to J. Edgar Hoover naming the real triggermen.

But one of them was Joe “the Animal” Barboza, the first hood in the Witness Protection Program.

Barboza wanted to take some Mafia guys off the board, and so did the crooked agents in the Boston FBI.

Grieco and Tameleo died in state prison. The only one who survives is Salvati. In 2007 Limone and the others (or their estates) were awarded $101.7 million by a federal judge, which sounds good for about two seconds until you remember the 33 lost years.

The frame was set up by two Boston G-men, H. Paul Rico and Dennis Condon. They wanted to protect their prize canary, Joe the Animal.




http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/17/0 ... ate-lawyer



Trump's FBI Pick Billed Taxpayers $2.1M, as Christie's Bridgegate ...
NJ Spotlight-
President Trump's pick to be the next FBI director, Christopher Wray, billed New Jersey taxpayers more than $2.1 million in legal charges and expenses while ...





http://wamu.org/story/17/06/19/firm-con ... ed-online/


Firm Contracted By RNC Left Millions Of Voter Files Unsecured Online
WAMU 88.5-
In January, then-FBI Director James Comey testified there had been “penetration on the Republican side of the aisle and old Republican National Committee ...




http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crim ... 56844.html


Former Navy SEAL and CIA special agent charged in S.C. federal drug-smuggling case


BY JOHN MONK


A man said to be a former decorated U.S. Navy SEAL and CIA special agent has been arrested in connection with an ongoing national federal marijuana smuggling investigation with major ties to Columbia.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crim ... rylink=cpy



http://www.rgvproud.com/news/local-news ... /745566648


FBI Agent Stop By A Forensics Middle School
RGVProud-
EDINBURG, Texas - A special agent from the FBI speaks to a forensics class in Barrientes Middle School. Students received the opportunity to learn about this ...






FBI agent blows whistle on FBI Forensics Lab



Tainting Evidence
by

John F. Kelly and Phillip Wearne


http://www.truthinjustice.org/taint.htm

Look what reviewers are saying about TAINTING EVIDENCE
Washington Post/David Burnham

Because most of the critics have aimed their fire at the processing of individual cases brought in geographically dispersed jurisdictions over the last decade or so, however, the collective weight of these negative judgements has not been obvious. Tainting Evidence, a powerful new book by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne, has now provided this disturbing perspective. The documented failures of the lab, they argue, are not isolated events. Rather, they are strong evidence of systematic rot.

Through extensive interviews, detailed analyses of the FBI’s forensic work in selected cases, and the intense mining of government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Kelly and Wearne persuasively argue that the lab has frequently failed to meet the scientific and ethical standards required of such an important institution. They further contend that when
these problems have been disclosed, the agency’s typical response has been denial and coverup rather than meaningful corrective action. They finally assert that the recent remedial steps ordered by FBI Director Louis Freeh, largely as the result of Whitehurst’s very public disclosures, are not adequate.

Examing how well or poorly a powerful and secretive agency like the FBI performs its work is one of the most difficult and important tasks that any reporter can take on. Kelly and Wearne have met this difficult challenge, successfully documenting a shocking condition that should outrage every American concerned with justice.


From Publisher's Weekly:

The media has familiarized the public with the vocabulary of forensic science: DNA identification, fingerprinting, bomb signatures, etc. However, as journalists Kelly and Wearne make clear in this expos of the FBI crime lab, some of these practices are dubious at best, and any of them is only as effective as the scientist behind it.

The book was prompted by the complaints lodged against the bureau by FBI crime-lab scientist Fred Whitehurst, and the congressional inquiries that arose from his whistle-blowing. The problem Whitehurst identified is twofold. First, the bureau allegedly puts so much faith in its reputation that it refuses to submit to external certification even as it fails to maintain state-of-the-art labs. Second, the FBI lab is said to operate as a good-ol'-boy network, promoting unqualified agents and often taking direction from field investigators.

Kelly and Wearne detail how the FBI crime lab's alleged arrogance and incompetence has, they say, affected the investigation of six high-profile cases, with apparent offenses ranging from laziness and bungling in the Unabomber, O.J. Simpson and Oklahoma City cases to possible perjury in the World Trade Center bombing case and conspiracy to withhold evidence in the investigation of the FBI assault on Ruby Ridge and a series of bomb attacks on federal judges in the late 1980s.

Their book is painstakingly researched and highly detailed. This volume belongs on the reading list of any criminal defense attorney as a road map to the successful cross-examination of forensics experts.

TAINTING EVIDENCE: INSIDE THE SCANDALS AT THE FBI CRIME LAB was nominated for
a Pulitzer Prize.

Whether you are an attorney, forensic scientist, professor, or instructor can you afford to be



http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz- ... ff/2327761


Where did FDLE go in NYT investigation of Florida sheriff?




Monday, June 19, 2017 12:49pm


There's much to unpack with the New York Times' investigation of St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar, but perhaps one of the most inexplicable elements is how the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is behaving.


Sunday's 1A blockbuster was actually the second part of a story that Walt Bogdanich, a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, wrote in 2013. That story, co-written with Glenn Silber, depicted the botched initial investigation of the 2010 shooting death of Michelle O'Connell, a 24-year-old mother of a 4-year-old girl. O'Connell died from a gunshot in the mouth. Found next to her was a semiautomatic pistol that belonged to her boyfriend, Jeremy Banks, a deputy sheriff for St. Johns County.



http://www.inquisitr.com/4307530/trump- ... ne-report/


JUNE 19, 2017
TRUMP RUSSIA INVESTIGATION: MICHAEL FLYNN NOW SINGING TO FBI, SENATOR CLAIMS — ECHOING EARLIER ONLINE REPORT

JONATHAN VANKIN



http://www.myajc.com/news/crime--law/fb ... o8JQ6YG4H/

FBI report raises serious questions about gym mat death investigation that involved
sons of white FBI agent accused of murdering black student.
ATLANTA-NEWS


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E9J1mE12m7Q


Stupid People Use Guns



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

LAPD suspends cadet programs at stations where teens accused of stealing police cruisers were assigned



Link du jour

http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#T2


http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... currently/


http://climatenewsnetwork.net/


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-w ... t02a-16li3





http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fbi- ... w-48125857




FBI missed rigged jackpot in 2006 before lottery scheme grew



IOWA CITY, Iowa — Jun 19, 2017, 7:33 AM ET





https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/06/13/class ... ax-breaks/


JUNE 13, 2017 | RUSS BAKER
CLASSIC WHO: WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT OIL INDUSTRY TAX BREAKS


http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3259565


Too hot to handle: Study shows Earth's killer heat worsens


Monday, June 19, 2017, 10:09 AM


WASHINGTON
Killer heat is getting worse, a new study shows.

Deadly heat waves like the one now broiling the American West are bigger killers than previously thought and they are going to grow more frequent, according to a new comprehensive study of fatal heat conditions. Still, those stretches may be less lethal in the future, as people become accustomed to them.

A team of researchers examined 1,949 deadly heat waves from around the world since 1980 to look for trends, define when heat is so severe it kills and forecast the future. They found that nearly one in three people now experience 20 days a year when the heat reaches deadly levels. But the study predicts that up to three in four people worldwide will endure that kind of heat by the end of the century, if global warming continues unabated.

"The United States is going to be an oven," said Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii, lead author of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change .

The study comes as much of the U.S. swelters through extended triple-digit heat. Temperatures hit records of 106, 105 and 103 in Santa Rosa, Livermore and San Jose, California on Sunday, as a heat wave was forecast to continue through midweek. In late May, temperatures in Turbat, Pakistan, climbed to about 128 degrees (53.5 degrees Celsius); if confirmed, that could be among the five hottest temperatures reliably measured on Earth, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of Weather Underground.

Last year 22 countries or territories set or tied records for their hottest temperatures on record, said Masters, who wasn't part of the study. So far this year, seven have done so.

"This is already bad. We already know it," Mora said. "The empirical data suggest it's getting much worse."


Mora and colleagues created an interactive global map with past heat waves and computer simulations to determine how much more frequent they will become under different carbon dioxide pollution scenarios. The map shows that under the current pollution projections, the entire eastern United States will have a significant number of killer heat days. Even higher numbers are predicted for the Southeast U.S., much of Central and South America, central Africa, India, Pakistan, much of Asia and Australia.

Mora and outside climate scientists said the study and map underestimate past heat waves in many poorer hot areas where record-keeping is weak. It's more accurate when it comes to richer areas like the United States and Europe.

If pollution continues as it has, Mora said, by the end of the century the southern United States will have entire summers of what he called lethal heat conditions.

A hotter world doesn't necessarily mean more deaths in all locales, Mora said. That's because he found over time the same blistering conditions — heat and humidity — killed fewer people than in the past, mostly because of air conditioning and governments doing a better job keeping people from dying in the heat. So while heat kills and temperatures are rising, people are adapting, though mostly in countries that can afford it. And those that can't afford it are likely to get worse heat in the future.

In this June 16, 2017, photo, a girl walks through a mister during the start of a heat wave in Las Vegas. A new study finds that deadly heat waves are getting worse and more frequent and have already been bigger killers than we thought. But future heat waves may not be as lethal as they used to be because we are doing a better job coping with the heat. The study comes as a brutal heat wave bakes the American West with triple digit temperatures. (AP Photo/John Locher)
In this June 16, 2017, photo, a girl walks through a mister during the start of a heat wave in Las Vegas. A new study finds that deadly heat waves are getting worse and more frequent and have already been bigger killers than we thought. But future heat waves may not be as lethal as they used to be because we are doing a better job coping with the heat. The study comes as a brutal heat wave bakes the American West with triple digit temperatures. (AP Photo/John Locher)
"This work confirms the alarming projections of increasing hot days over coming decades — hot enough to threaten lives on a very large scale," said Dr. Howard Frumkin, a University of Washington environmental health professor who wasn't part of the study.

Mora documented more than 100,000 deaths since 1980, but said there are likely far more because of areas that didn't have good data. Not all of them were caused by man-made climate change.





http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3260019


The Latest: Phoenix and Tucson tie heat records for the date



Monday, June 19, 2017, 7:45 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3259372



Black and Latino drivers more likely to be cited and arrested than whites during traffic stops, study finds


BY MINYVONNE BURKE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, June 19, 2017, 10:00 AM





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3259230




Seattle police shoot and kill black pregnant mom who reported burglary attempt, showed knife to officers



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3259674


Former Bush officials, including Robert Mueller, can’t be sued for harsh treatment of immigrants after 9/11: Supreme Court
BY JASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Monday, June 19, 2017, 12:34 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3259255


Rep. Jason Chaffetz trashes Trump and Sessions in interview days before leaving Congress
BY JASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Monday, June 19, 2017, 9:08 AM








http://ticklethewire.com/2017/06/19/tru ... e-scandal/


Trump’s Nominee for FBI Director Still Represents Gov. Christie in Bridgegate Scandal



Even after President Trump nominated Christopher Wray for the new FBI director post, the attorney continues to work as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s personal attorney in connection with the Bridgegate investigation, trial and aftermath.

Wray, whose law firm has collected $2.1 million from New Jersey taxpayers, never stopped his legal work seven months after two of the governor’s former aides were found guilty of conspiring to shut down George Washington Bridge access lanes, the Asbury Park Press reports.

Trump nominated Wray on June 7 after the president fired James Comey as the FBI’s director.

A hearing has yet to be set on Wray’s confirmation.

Wray is collecting $340 an hour.

Christie, a Trump adviser, has a close relationship with Wray and said the attorney who “would provide great leadership at the FBI.”






FBI Octopus




Florida Bar board of governors names executive director

The Florida Bar reports that its board of governors has selected Joshua Doyle to be the organization’s next executive director.

His appointment follows a nationwide search to follow John “Jack” Harkness Jr., who after 37 years of service will shift from executive director to a consulting role. Doyle and Harkness will begin a six-month transition in July.

Doyle, 37, comes to the Bar following a lengthy career in civil service, most recently as a special agent for the FBI working in the bureau’s Tallahassee office.

Before his seven-year tenure at the FBI, he worked as a lawyer and lobbyist for Metz, Husband & Daughton, including serving as an outside legislative consultant to The Florida Bar.

Doyle grew up in Tallahassee and received his undergraduate and law degrees from Florida State University.

Before law school, Doyle served as special assistant to U.S. Sen. Bob Graham.

He also was special assistant to Tallahassee attorney Martha Barnett in 2001 when she was president of the American Bar Association.



http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/2017/0 ... rosecutors


Moore also said that the FBI, Australian federal police, the Santa Cruz County sheriff’s department and Seaside police department had previously investigated Kohut since 1997, but he has never been charged.
fruhmenschen
 
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:37 pm

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... at-bayrock


Trump, Russia and a Shadowy Business Partnership
An insider describes the Bayrock Group, its links to the Trump family and its mysterious access to funds. It isn't pretty.

June 21, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT

Trump, Arif and Sater, at right, Trump Soho launch party, 2007 Photographer: Mark Von Holden/WireImage
The special counsel’s investigation of the White House has come more sharply into focus.

Robert Mueller is examining whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice when he fired James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Washington Post recently reported. As we've heard for months now, there is also a probe of possible collusion between Trump's campaign team and the Kremlin to tilt the 2016 election in the president's favor.

But the Justice Department inquiry led by Mueller now has added flavors. The Post noted that the investigation also includes "suspicious financial activity" involving "Russian operatives." The New York Times was more specific in its account, saying that Mueller is looking at whether Trump associates laundered financial payoffs from Russian officials by channeling them through offshore accounts.





Trump has repeatedly labeled Comey's and Mueller's investigations "witch hunts," and his lawyers have said that the last decade of his tax returns (which the president has declined to release) would show that he had no income or loans from Russian sources. In May, Trump told NBC that he has no property or investments in Russia. "I am not involved in Russia," he said.

But that doesn't address national security and other problems that might arise for the president if Russia is involved in Trump, either through potentially compromising U.S. business relationships or through funds that flowed into his wallet years ago. In that context, a troubling history of Trump's dealings with Russians exists outside of Russia: in a dormant real-estate development firm, the Bayrock Group, which once operated just two floors beneath the president's own office in Trump Tower.

Bayrock partnered with the future president and his two eldest children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, on a series of real-estate deals between 2002 and about 2011, the most prominent being the troubled Trump Soho hotel and condominium in Manhattan.

During the years that Bayrock and Trump did deals together, the company was also a bridge between murky European funding and a number of projects in the U.S. to which the president once lent his name in exchange for handsome fees. Icelandic banks that dealt with Bayrock, for example, were easy marks for money launderers and foreign influence, according to interviews with government investigators, legislators, and others in Reykjavik, Brussels, Paris and London. Trump testified under oath in a 2007 deposition that Bayrock brought Russian investors to his Trump Tower office to discuss deals in Moscow, and said he was pondering investing there.

"It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia," Trump said in that deposition. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment."

One of Bayrock's principals was a career criminal named Felix Sater who had ties to Russian and American organized crime groups. Before linking up with the company and with Trump, he had worked as a mob informant for the U.S. government, fled to Moscow to avoid criminal charges while boasting of his KGB and Kremlin contacts there, and had gone to prison for slashing apart another man’s face with a broken cocktail glass.

In a series of interviews and a lawsuit, a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, claims that he eventually departed from the firm because he became convinced that Bayrock was actually a front for money laundering.

Kriss has sued Bayrock, alleging that in addition to laundering money, the Bayrock team also skimmed cash from the operation, dodged taxes and cheated him out of millions of dollars. Sater and others at Bayrock would not comment for this column; in court documents they have contested Kriss's charges and describe him, essentially, as a disgruntled employee trying to shake them down.


Jody Kriss in a luxury unit in a building he is developing in New YorkPhotographer: Jeff Brown for Bloomberg
But Kriss's assertion that Bayrock was a criminal operation during the years it partnered with Trump has been deemed plausible enough to earn him a court victory: In December, a federal judge in New York said Kriss's lawsuit against Bayrock, which he first filed nine years ago, could proceed as a racketeering case.

(I have my own history in court with the president. Trump sued me in 2006 when I worked at the New York Times, alleging that my biography, “TrumpNation,” had misrepresented his business record and his wealth. Trump lost the suit in 2011; my lawyers deposed him and Sater during the litigation. Trump's representatives didn't respond to repeated interview requests for this column.)

Trump has said over the years that he barely knows Sater. In fact, Sater — who former Bayrock employees say met frequently with Trump in the Trump Organization's New York headquarters, once shepherded the president's children around Moscow and carried a Trump Organization business card — apparently has remained firmly in the orbit of the president and his closest advisers.

Sater made the front page of the New York Times in February for his role in a failed effort — along with Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen — to lobby former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on a Ukrainian peace proposal.

Comey was still Trump's FBI director when he testified before the House Intelligence Committee in March about Russian interference in the 2016 election. During that hearing, Comey was asked if he was "aware of" Felix Sater, his criminal history and his business dealings with the Trump Organization. Comey declined to comment.

It's unclear whether Sater and Bayrock are part of Mueller's investigation. But Mueller has populated his investigative team with veteran prosecutors expert in white-collar fraud and Russian-organized-crime probes. One of them, Andrew Weissmann, once led an FBI team that examined financial fraud leading to the demise of Enron. Before that, Weissmann was a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn and part of a team that prosecuted Sater and mob associates for investment scams in the late 1990s.

However the Mueller probe unfolds, a tour of Trump's partnership with Bayrock exposes a number of uncomfortable truths about the president's business history, his judgment, and the possible vulnerabilities that his past as a freewheeling dealmaker — and his involvement with figures like Sater — have visited upon his present as the nation's chief executive.

Zegna Suits and Luxury Cars

Sater was born in the Soviet Union in 1966 and emigrated with his parents to the heavily Russian enclave of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, when he was about eight years old. He attended Pace University before dropping out when he was 18, then found his way to Wall Street where he worked as a stockbroker.

His early years on Wall Street, according to the recollections of his one-time business partner, Salvatore Lauria, were flush. By his mid-20s, Sater was collecting expensive watches, spending thousands of dollars on Zegna suits and buying luxury cars. That all came to a brief halt in 1993 when he was sent to prison for using the stem of a broken margarita glass during a bar fight two years earlier to attack another stockbroker; Sater’s victim needed 110 stitches to hold his face together.

When Sater emerged from prison 15 months later, he found his way back into trouble. With a group that included Lauria (who admits to having had ties to organized crime figures and grew up in New York as a close friend of a prominent Mafia boss), Sater opened an investment firm on the penthouse floor of 40 Wall Street, a Trump-owned building in Manhattan. From there, according to federal prosecutors, Sater and his team set about laundering money for the mob and fleecing about $40 million from unwitting and largely elderly investors, a number of whom were Holocaust survivors.

By the time law enforcement authorities eventually caught on to the 40 Wall Street operation, Sater had fled to Russia. Lauria visited him there.

Sater "was always hustling and scheming, and his contacts in Russia were the same kind of contacts he had in the United States," Lauria wrote in a 2003 memoir, "The Scorpion and the Frog." "The difference was that in Russia his crooked contacts were links between Russian organized crime, the Russian military, the KGB, and operatives who played both ways, or sometimes three ways."

Sater, who had been charged with racketeering and money laundering by the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn in connection with the 40 Wall Street scam, eventually decided to return to America and face those charges. He had a card to play, however: his knowledge, gleaned from contacts in Russia, about a small stock of Stinger antiaircraft missiles loose on the black market in Afghanistan that were of interest to U.S. intelligence officials.


"We were hoping for a free ride or a get-out-of-jail-free card for our crimes on Wall Street," Lauria wrote of Sater's maneuvering with U.S. officials.

Sater told authorities that he could use his Russian contacts to buy the Stingers and, according to court filings in Kriss's lawsuit and other accounts, a deal was struck in December 1998. Sater pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges and then entered into a cooperation agreement with the government that sealed court records in the case and allowed his sentencing to be postponed for 11 years. (Sater would ultimately only pay a $25,000 fine and never go to prison.)

Many years later, as part of her confirmation hearings to become President Barack Obama's attorney general, Loretta Lynch would note that the cooperation deal she made with Sater when she was the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn lasted for a decade — from 1998 to 2008 — and that Sater gave the government "information crucial to national security and the conviction of over 20 individuals, including those responsible for committing massive financial fraud and members of La Cosa Nostra."

At some point after becoming an informant, Sater also recast himself as a real-estate savant. He made his way to a Manhattan real-estate investment firm, APC Realty, where he raised money for deals and where he met Kriss in 2000.

Kriss, a native of Miami and a business graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, was an aspiring real-estate developer who was in his early 20s when they met. He says he was initially captivated by Sater.

“Felix knew how to be charming and he knew how to be brutally nasty,” says Kriss. “He has a talent for drawing people in. He has charm and charisma. But that’s what con men do.”

After APC began to fall apart in 2002, Kriss decided to strike out on his own back home in Miami, doing real-estate deals. Sater made his way to a small Hong Kong investment bank that used him as a New York-based rainmaker for real-estate deals.

In addition to his new life as a real-estate investor and government informant, Sater owned a comfortable home in Sands Point, Long Island, a toney New York suburb that was a setting for “The Great Gatsby.” He also had a wife and three daughters and was a member of an Orthodox synagogue in neighboring Port Washington. On one occasion Sater brought his rabbi with him to meet U.S. intelligence officials in New York, where, the rabbi said, agents praised Sater's service to the country.

When Sater received a community service award at his synagogue on another occasion, a band played "Hail to the Chief." Sater gave an acceptance speech in which he noted that he was "not a very religious person" but that his goal in life was to "repair the world or make it a better place."

'Air of Success'

About a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sater joined Bayrock, a company that marketed itself as a property developer and had opened Manhattan offices on the 24th floor of a well-known building at 725 Fifth Avenue: Trump Tower.

In late 2002, Sater phoned Kriss and invited him to consult at Bayrock, bragging about a deep-pocketed investor, Tevfik Arif, who was partnering with him in search of bigger deals.

Arif, born in Kazakhstan, was a former Soviet official who had relocated to Turkey to make his fortune. He ran several upscale, seaside hotels there that catered almost exclusively to Russians, according to Kriss, and he had also redeveloped a shopping center in Brooklyn. At one point in his post-Soviet years, Arif also reportedly took over a former Kazakh state-owned chromium producer with his brother.

Like Sater, Arif had a home in Sands Point and Kriss says that Arif brought his children there from Turkey to learn English. (Arif's representatives declined to respond to a list of questions about his business history, including how he met Sater and brought him to Bayrock, citing ongoing litigation.)

Bayrock was initially funded, in part, with a $10 million investment transferred to the firm by Arif's brother in Russia, who, according to Kriss's lawsuit, was able to tap into the cash reserves of a Kazakh chromium refinery. (A spokeswoman for Arif declined to comment on that allegation.)

A marketing document Bayrock once circulated to prospective investors noted that Alexander Mashkevich, an oligarch born in the former Soviet Union, was one of Bayrock's primary sources of funding. Mashkevich's firm, the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, was based in Kazakhstan and elsewhere and had interests in chromium, aluminum, coal, construction, and banking. (A person close to Mashkevich, who requested anonymity because of the Kriss-Bayrock litigation, said Mashkevich never invested in Bayrock.)

Bayrock never seemed to be short of money, however. According to Kriss’s lawsuit, the team running the little development firm in Trump Tower could locate funds "month after month, for two years, in fact more frequently, whenever Bayrock ran out of cash." If times got tight, Bayrock's owners would "magically show up with a wire from 'somewhere' just large enough to keep the company going."

Kriss says that Sater and Arif wooed him to Bayrock by offering him 10 percent of the firm's profits. Bayrock’s Trump Tower offices gave “an air of success to it,” Kriss says. Bayrock also gave Kriss, then 28 years old, the opportunity to work with Trump.

It was Sater who initially developed the relationship with Trump, according to Kriss and court records from Trump's lawsuit against me. Sater had made the acquaintance of three Trump Organization executives who then introduced him to their boss. When the Bayrock team met Trump in 2002, the future president was enduring a long stretch in the financial wilderness, having narrowly escaped personal bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

He eventually emerged from that mess as a pariah among big banks. He was also a determined survivor and tireless self-promoter and he parlayed those skills into recreating himself as a branding machine and golf course developer in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Kriss says that it was Arif and Sater who pitched the future president on the idea of launching an international chain of Trump-branded, mixed-use hotels and condominiums. And Bayrock got to Trump at a time when his “brand” could help get a little extra attention for a condo project, but didn’t amount to much more than that.

“Trump was trying to build his brand and Bayrock was trying to market it,” Kriss recalls. “It wasn’t clear who needed each other more. This was before the show, remember.”

The “show,” of course, was “The Apprentice.” It aired for the first time on Jan. 8, 2004, and became a sensation that vaulted Trump into reality TV stardom. In the real world, Trump's casinos were faltering. But on reality TV, Trump posed as a successful leader and dealmaker who embodied a certain kind of entrepreneurial flair and over-the-top billionairedom — an impression that stuck with tens of millions of TV viewers.

The popularity of "The Apprentice" also gave the Bayrock-Trump partnership added zing.

“That put Bayrock in a great position once the show debuted,” Kriss says. “The show did it for Trump, man. Nobody was interested in licensing his name before that.”

The hook at Bayrock, for Trump, was an 18 percent equity stake in what became the Trump Soho hotel, a steady stream of management fees on all Bayrock projects and the ability to plaster his name on properties without having to invest a single dollar of his
It’s not clear how carefully Trump vetted his Bayrock partners. But his lack of concern about their backgrounds — and the potential risk to his own reputation from dealing with them — was part of a pattern. In Atlantic City, he had partnered with men with organized crime ties. Later, he and his children struck deals in Brazil and Azerbaijan with partners who had murky backgrounds or unusual legal entanglements.

Sater said in court filings that he disclosed his securities fraud conviction to members of the Trump Organization. He assumed they had told Trump, but he wasn't sure.

"It's not very hard to get connected to Donald if you make it known that you have a lot of money and you want to do deals and you want to put his name on it," Abe Wallach, who was the future president's right-hand man at the Trump Organization from 1990 to about 2002, told me in an interview. "Donald doesn't do due diligence. He relies on his gut and whether he thinks you have good genes."

Given Arif's halting English, it was Sater and Kriss who interacted most frequently with the Trump family—and Sater the most often with Trump himself. Kriss says that most of his own contacts were with the elder Trump children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, and included drafting contracts and occasional nights on the town.

While Trump’s kids were involved in the back-and-forth with Bayrock, it was Trump himself who always had the final say.

“Donald was always in charge,” says Kriss. “Donald had to agree to every term of every deal and had to sign off on everything. Nothing happened unless he said it was okay to do it. Even if Donald Jr., shook your hand on a deal, he came back downstairs to renegotiate if his father told him to.”

The Trumps, Kriss says, saw Sater "frequently" and valued the relationship because “Felix demonstrated that he was loyal to them.” He says that at one point Sater was meeting with the future president in his Trump Tower office multiple times a week. Sater, according to a later court deposition, said that his business conversations with Trump in that office were wide-ranging and frequent — “on a constant basis."

The pair had what Sater described as "real-estate conversations," and they talked about "gathering intelligence, gathering know-how, general market discussions," and also chatted about using Sater's Russian connections to build a "high-rise, center of Moscow” that would be a “great opportunity, megafinancial home run."

Although Sater socialized with Trump, "I wouldn't call him my friend," he said in the 2008 deposition. Still, Sater said he traveled with Trump to look at deals and was proud of Bayrock's relationship with the famous developer. "Anybody can come in and build a tower," he said. "I can build a Trump Tower because of my relationship with Trump."

Bayrock and the Trumps then began laying the groundwork for domestic and international hotel-condo projects, eventually exploring deals in Turkey, Poland and Ukraine. Sater escorted Ivanka and Don Jr. on a trip to Moscow, where they looked at land for a Trump-branded hotel.

None of those overseas projects got past the planning stages. In the U.S., Bayrock and Trump projects moved forward haltingly.

In Phoenix, a one-story mall that Bayrock bought out of bankruptcy was meant to be the site of a Trump-branded tower. It became ensnared in zoning debates and then the national real-estate downturn and never got built.

Sater's dealings in Phoenix later landed him in court with a local developer who had invested in the Phoenix project, Ernest Mennes. Mennes said in a lawsuit that when he threatened to reveal Sater's criminal record, Sater told him that he would have a cousin "electrically shock Mr. Mennes’ testicles, cut off Mr. Mennes’ legs, and leave Mr. Mennes dead in the trunk of his car."

In Mennes's suit against Bayrock and Sater, he alleged that Sater also skimmed money from the Phoenix development. Bayrock and Sater settled the suit (which was later sealed and its terms left undisclosed; Sater's lawyer, in an interview with ABC News, denied Mennes's allegations).

The next project Trump and Bayrock pursued was the Trump International Hotel and Tower, a mixed-use hotel and condominium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Announced in 2005, it later went into foreclosure.

The third and final major project Bayrock and Trump worked on together was their most high-profile effort, the 46-story Trump Soho hotel in lower Manhattan.

Trump, Sater and Arif were all photographed together at a splashy launch party for the Trump Soho in 2007. Trump also pitched the Trump Soho on an episode of "The Apprentice," promising that "this brilliant, $370 million work of art will be an awe-inspiring masterpiece."

Helping Trump and Bayrock fund that masterpiece was a fresh influx of money from an Icelandic investment bank called the FL Group. Sater and Lauria, his longtime mob associate, had jointly recruited FL, introducing the firm to Bayrock and the Trump Organization. (I’ll have more on the FL Group and Bayrock in a future column; the firm's former leaders, one of whom was later convicted of tax and accounting fraud, declined to comment or did not respond to interview requests for this column.)

Yet again, the Trump Organization — even though it signed off on the FL investment — appeared to care little about vetting a firm that came into the partnership through Sater. FL operated in a country with a porous, vulnerable banking system, and some investigators who scrutinized other Icelandic banks at the time said they suspected those banks of being conduits — unwitting or otherwise — for dirty funds from outside Iceland. (The FL Group collapsed a little over a year after it invested in Bayrock. The firm itself was never prosecuted; the leaders of a number of other Icelandic banks were prosecuted or jailed for crimes including money laundering).

Kriss said in an interview that an Icelandic competitor of the FL Group also contacted him to invest in Bayrock. When he took that offer to Sater and Arif they told him, he says, that the money behind Icelandic banks “was mostly Russian” — and that they had to take FL’s funds for deals they were doing with Trump because the investment firm was “closer to Putin."

“I thought it was a lie or a joke when they said Putin,” Kriss recalls. “I didn’t know how to make sense of it at all.”

(Kriss says he doesn't have financial records showing that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a connection to the FL Group and that his own knowledge is purely anecdotal. A Kremlin spokesman said via email that Putin had no connection to the FL Group or Bayrock.)

'Somebody Said That He Is in the Mafia'

Kriss says that in the wake of the FL deal he was owed a payout that could have ranged from about $4 million to $10 million, but that Bayrock reneged. When he persisted, he claims, Sater threatened him.

So Kriss says he accepted a $500,000 payment instead and then eventually quit. Sater, as it turns out, didn’t have much time left at Bayrock either.

In December 2007, the New York Times published an article detailing some of Sater’s past run-ins with the law and some of his ties to organized crime (the article also noted that Sater had begun using “Satter” as an alternate spelling for his last name so he could try to “distance himself from his past” if people Googled him).

Two days after the Times story ran, Trump sat for a deposition with my attorneys as part of the libel lawsuit he had filed against me for “TrumpNation.” They asked him whether he planned to sever his relationship with Sater because of Sater's organized crime ties. Trump said he hadn't made up his mind.

"Have you previously associated with people you knew were members of organized crime?" one of my lawyers asked.

"No, I haven't," Trump responded. "And it's hard to overly blame Bayrock. Things like that can happen. But I want to see what action Bayrock takes before I make a decision." (In fact, Trump had partnered in the past in Atlantic City's real-estate business with men he knew were mobbed up.)

Whenever he was asked in later years about his relationship with Sater, Trump routinely misrepresented it as distant. In a 2013 deposition taken as part of litigation surrounding Trump and Bayrock’s failed Fort Lauderdale project, Trump was asked again about his partnership with Sater.

"He was supposedly very close to the government of the United States as a witness or something," Trump said. "I don't think he was connected to the Mafia. He got into trouble because he got into a barroom fight."

"I don't know him very well," Trump added, saying that he hadn't conversed very often with Sater. "If he were sitting in the room right now I really wouldn't know what he looked like."

Trump also said that he didn't think that questions about Sater’s background meant that he should have ended his business partnership with him: “Somebody said that he is in the Mafia. What am I going to do?”

Shortly after my lawyers asked Trump about Sater, Bayrock began discussing the best way for him to resign, according to company email and court records. By 2008, Sater had left the firm.

The Trump Soho ended in failure. It opened in 2010, but many units failed to sell and early condo purchasers sued Bayrock and the Trumps. Three years later, the Trump Soho went into foreclosure with most of its units still unsold, and a new company took control of the property. Bayrock hasn’t done another deal since then. (A spokeswoman for Bayrock attributed the failures of the Trump partnerships to fallout from the 2008 financial meltdown.)

'He Seems to Have Unlimited Funds'

After Kriss left Bayrock, he set up his own development firm in New York and then sued Sater, Arif, Trump and Bayrock in Delaware in 2008, alleging that Bayrock was a criminal enterprise and demanding to be paid in full for his work there.

When the case moved to New York in 2010, it came with a twist. Sater had left a copy of his cooperation deal with the government – the one dating back to his Stinger missile and mob informant days – on the hard drive of his Bayrock computer. A Bayrock employee leaked it to Kriss’s attorney, who promptly filed it as an exhibit in court.

Trump was eventually dropped from the case and Sater began carpet-bombing Kriss with his own lawsuits, ultimately filing several separate actions that claimed, among other things, that Kriss has used the courts to prosecute him maliciously.

Sater also apparently kept busy outside of the courtroom.

Kriss says that about three years ago he started receiving threatening email from websites carrying versions of his name (“JKrissInfo.com,” for example). He soon discovered there were hundreds of other new websites that also contained false, disparaging information about him.

Kriss sued the anonymous authors of the websites for defamation and when the court ruled in his favor he was able to get a large portion of the sites delisted from Google. He says he also was able to use the court order to untangle the provenance of the websites, discovering that their registration tracked back to Sater’s home address in Sands Point.

Kriss says that goons once showed up at real-estate developments he was overseeing in Brooklyn, asking his employees if they knew the true story about their boss. Waves of letters questioning his bona fides have arrived at his office and in the mailboxes of every resident in two separate buildings where Kriss kept apartments.

Kriss says investors in his new company, East River Partners, have stood by him, but he's worried that Sater's digital vendetta may be hard to overcome. His new lawyer, Bradley D. Simon, says that he's mystified by how Sater has managed to stay afloat all these years.

“Sater was a cooperating witness for the Eastern District of New York and he continued going on a crime rampage,” says Simon. “He’s filed all kinds of frivolous lawsuits, but that’s what he does. He seems to have unlimited funds.”


MuellerPhotographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images
For his part, Sater continues to wear many hats. A couple of years after he left Bayrock, the Trump Organization hired him briefly as a consultant to prospect for real-estate deals, giving him company business cards with his name engraved on them.

More recently, Sater got enmeshed in litigation again, this time around the sale of an Ohio shopping mall — and the alleged disappearance of tens of millions of dollars — in a court case that was settled in 2013.

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Sater has also entered into a war of words with his former Bayrock partner, Tevfik Arif. Sater claims, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, that Arif owes him money — and that if he isn't paid he'll publicize what he describes as Arif's ties to organized crime and to tainted dealings in Kazakhstan’s metals business. (A Bayrock spokeswoman says that Sater's claims about Arif are baseless.)

Meanwhile, Trump is mired in a probe that now pivots off sensitive topics for him and his family: their money, their deals and Russia – all of which will test his promise to testify under oath to Mueller and his investigators.







Mobsters Without Borders



Trump Mansion Sold to “Mobsters Sans Frontières”

Russian "businessman" to whom Donald Trump sold his Palm Beach mansion for a purported $100 million was arrested in Russia in April of 1997 and charged with masterminding the killing of a business rival, in what law enforcement authorities called "a contract hit."

The MadCowMorningNews has uncovered an April 13, 1997 report in the official Russian news agency TASS announcing that Russian law enforcement authorities arrested Russian fertilizer king Dmitry Rybolovlev and charged him with being behind the murder of the head of another Russian chemical company, in what authorities said was a war for control of Russia’s lucrative fertilizer business.

“The suspected murderers and organizers of the crime, including the head of the FD-Kredit Bank, Dmitry Rybolovlev, have been arrested,” TASS reported.

Trump's announcement of his big sale Wednesday received wide play. It was trumpeted everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to Entertainment Tonight.

The Wall Street Journal, with perhaps unintended irony, called Rybolovlev, a 42-year-old Russian billionaire who currently ranks #59 on the Forbes list of the world's billionaires, “one of Russia's richest and most discreet businessmen.”

None of the stories mentioned Palm Beach's newest billionaire's mainline connection to the Russian Mob.

The real 'never-ending story'


How Donald Trump came to own and sell Maison de l’Amitie, his 6.5 acre Palm Beach waterfront estate, is just the latest chapter in the “Never-Ending Story,” the continuing saga of the moves and machinations of spooks & crooks and other major players in the netherworld of transnational organized crime.

Billionaire mogul Trump supposedly received a massive windfall, selling a property for one of the the highest prices ever paid in the United States that he had scooped-up at a bankruptcy sale five years earlier.

Trump’s self-promoting announcement yesterday may inadvertently provide a public service, shining a spotlight on the dark 21st Century phenomenon of the corruption of hapless nation-states by the insidious forces of global organized crime, who clearly appear to have a leg up in the contest.

News accounts identified Dmitry Rybolovlev, the man whose investment company purchased Trump’s lavish 6.3-acre estate, as, variously, a ‘Russian businessman,’ a ‘Russian oligarch,’ a ‘mysterious Russian billionaire.,’ a ‘Russian fertilizer magnate’ and a ‘fertilizer billionaire.’

The Russian oligarch’s fortune increased by an amazing $10 billion, just in the past year, according to London’s Financial Times.

And all this time we thought the hot tip was plastics.
iRybolovlev runs Uralkali, a Soviet-era fertilizer company founded in the 1930’s, and his designation as “fertilizer king” should have been newsworthy, marking him as the first person from that industry to splash in quite such dramatic fashion onto the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” Palm Beach social scene.

But the fertilizer business— as an explanation for a $13 billion fortune—left suspicions. No one in the recorded history of Planet Earth has ever made $10 billion dollars in fertilizer before, let alone in just one year.



Link du jour


http://ricefarmer.blogspot.com/2017/06/ ... -2017.html

THE USE OF MUSIC
IN PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS

SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.)

http://www.psywarrior.com/MusicUsePSYOP.html


http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... lobal-war/






http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-e ... t12aH-2la1


California invested heavily in solar power. Now there's so much electricity that other states are sometimes paid to take it
By IVAN PENN

JUNE 22, 2017



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3270193


LAPD officer arrested for sex with 15-year-old cadet involved in theft of police cruisers



BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, June 22, 2017, 7:17 PM



http://buffalonews.com/2014/02/17/fbi-d ... -40-years/

FBI documents confirm murder of activist missing for 40 years

The Robinson family circulated this “missing” poster in South Dakota.
By Phil Fairbanks
Published Mon, Feb 17, 2014


For the first time since her husband went missing 40 years ago, Cheryl Robinson can go to bed at night knowing what happened to the man she and her kids want so desperately to find.

The only questions now are why was he killed and where is he buried.

Robinson always suspected her husband, civil rights activist Ray Robinson, was murdered at Wounded Knee, S.D., where he had gone to support the American Indian Movement (AIM) in its fight against the federal government.

She also suspected he was killed because someone believed he was a government informant.



Thanks to the work of two Buffalo lawyers, Robinson now knows that her husband, a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson, was shot to death, and that the FBI suspects the killers were members of AIM.

Newly released documents from the FBI shed new light on what many consider one of America’s great unsolved murders and confirm what Robinson’s family has long suspected – that he was murdered at Wounded Knee.

“There have been rumors for years, and there’s multiple people who say he was shot,” Robinson said recently. “We just want some answers.”

They got some of those answers when the FBI, in response to a Freedom of Information request by their lawyers, released hundreds of pages of previously secret documents regarding Robinson.

The documents date back to 1973, the year of the Wounded Knee occupation, and for the first time reveal evidence that the FBI gathered over the years.

They cite confidential sources and witnesses who claim to have firsthand knowledge of what happened to the civil rights activist.

“They confirm the rumors that have been floating out there for years,” said Michael Kuzma, one of the Robinson family’s Buffalo-based lawyers. “The only missing part of the puzzle is where Ray’s buried.”

Ray Robinson, well known within civil rights circles, traveled to Wounded Knee with the intention of preaching his message of nonviolence and building a bridge between Indians and African-Americans.

By the time he backpacked into the Pine Ridge Reservation, a 71-day siege, an often-bloody confrontation with a federal government many thought had ignored treaties between the two sides, was well under way.

What happened next was, until now, unclear, but the speculation always centered around the belief that Robinson was shot and killed during the occupation.

“That was the story from the very beginning,” said Cheryl Robinson, who now lives in the Detroit area. “That he was shot in the knee and allowed to bleed to death.”

The newly released records provide few details about how Robinson was murdered but make it clear the FBI believes AIM was involved in the killing.

As recently as 2000, the Minneapolis office of the FBI developed information that the civil rights activist was killed by “militant members of the American Indian Movement.”

A memo documenting the new evidence says a confidential source had come forward with new information indicating “Robinson had been tortured and murdered within the AIM occupation perimeter, and then his remains were buried ‘in the hills.’ ”

The memo indicates the new evidence came from someone who took part in the Wounded Knee occupation and was present when AIM leaders talked about Robinson.

That same FBI memo also mentions a confidential witness who allegedly recorded a conversation in which AIM leader Vernon Bellecourt spoke of Robinson and said AIM, “really managed to keep a tight lid on that one.”

Bellecourt, who is not linked to the murder, has since died.

“I think AIM members were involved in Ray’s murder,” said Barry Bachrach, a Massachusetts lawyer working with the Robinsons. “They were very, very paranoid about informants and may have thought he was an informant.”

In the FBI’s eyes, the evidence of AIM’s possible involvement in Robinson’s disappearance was strong enough to warrant a criminal investigation.

It’s not clear from the documents if that investigation, separate from the one into his disappearance, was actually started and, if it was, where it went.

For a variety of reasons, Cheryl Robinson is skeptical.

She says the FBI never interviewed her about why her husband was there or, even basic information, like what he was wearing.

If there was an investigation, she thinks the FBI is covering up the results in an effort to protect its informants.

“It’s speculation on my part but there’s no other answer to the question of why they didn’t do more,” she said. “They never interviewed who they should have.”

Bachrach agrees.

“This is a case they don’t want solved,” he said. “A murder occurred. Why wasn’t it pursued and why wasn’t it pursued aggressively?”

Robinson and her lawyers think the answer may lie in FBI documents that are still confidential and they are currently working to make public.

“Why did they sit on this?” Kuzma said of the information suggesting AIM was involved in Robinson’s killing. “I think the most valuable information is still being withheld.”

The FBI declined to comment on the Robinson case, except to confirm that its 40-year investigation into his disappearance was closed when the documents were released.

“If new information comes forward, the FBI could reopen the investigation, depending on the information that comes forward,” said Gregory Boosalis, division counsel for the FBI in Minneapolis.

When asked about the allegations that it used informants at Wounded Knee and might be withholding evidence in an effort to protect them, Boosalis said the FBI could not comment.

Robinson’s lawyers say there’s a long history of sloppy or improper investigations by the government and they point to the case of Anna Mae Aquash, an AIM member whose body was discovered three years after the standoff.

Aquash was originally determined to have died of exposure, but a second autopsy found a gunshot wound to her head.

In 2004, 28 years after Aquash’s body was found, two men were convicted for her murder. The evidence also indicated she was shot because AIM members believed she was an FBI informant.

Even now, decades after Wounded Knee, the American Indian Movement continues to operate and one of the leaders is Vernon Bellecourt’s brother Clyde.

“I hear these rumors all the time,” Bellecourt said of the FBI memos claiming AIM was involved in Robinson’s murder. “It’s just another attempt by the FBI to get involved in legitimate organizations like ours by making crazy charges.”

When asked about the memo suggesting his brother had knowledge of Robinson’s murder, Bellecourt said it was news to him.

“I was pretty close to my brother and he never mentioned one word about that,” he said.

While the newly released documents shed light on Robinson’s disappearance, they stop well short of answering the question his widow and children have been asking for decades.

Where is Robinson buried?

One of the family’s lawyers thinks the FBI might know.

“They were watching everybody and everything,” said Buffalo attorney Daire Brian Irwin. “It’s just amazing to me that his body just went missing.”

With that in mind, Irwin, Kuzma and Bachrach have hired a private investigator who is circulating posters around Wounded Knee seeking information about where Robinson is buried.

“I never give up hope,” said Cheryl Robinson. “That’s all I want to know. Just tell me where he’s buried.”

She says her children were very young when their father went missing, but are nevertheless anxious to find his body.

“He’s there but just out of reach,” she said of her kids’ interest in their father. “We’ve never had a funeral. We’ve never had a burial. And that’s important to the kids.”





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3269926



Indiana air conditioning plant to send 700 jobs President Trump bragged about saving to Mexico



GINGER ADAMS OTIS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 22, 2017, 5:44 PM





http://gizmodo.com/leaked-files-show-ho ... 1796165706



Leaked Files Show How the CIA Can Hack Your Router to Spy on You

Dell Cameron
6/16/17 11:28am
The CIA has had the ability to turn routers and network access points into surveillance devices for years, according to secret documents published by WikiLeaks on Thursday.

In the latest installment of its Vault 7 series of leaks, WikiLeaks has disclosed an alleged CIA program known as CherryBlossom. The purpose of the initiative is to replace a router’s firmware with a CIA-modified version known as FlyTrap. In some cases, WikiLeaks says, physical access to the device may not even be necessary.

The potential applications of this toolkit are harrowing. With control over their router, a remote observer could monitor the target’s local network and internet traffic and inject malicious malware for a variety of purposes—injecting keyloggers to collect passwords or seizing control of a device’s camera and microphone, for example.

Further, CherryBlossom would allow the CIA to detect when a person is using their home network and divert the user’s traffic through predetermined servers.


Most of the router listed in the leak are older models, indicating that the documents themselves may be somewhat outdated, though there are undoubtedly plenty of targets still using the affected devices. One document, which is not dated, lists over 200 WiFi devices allegedly susceptible to the CherryBlossom program..

Once FlyTrap is deployed successfully, agents are able to monitor the target using a web-based platform called CherryWeb, the documents say. The command-and-control server that receives the data collected by FlyTrap is codenamed CherryTree.

The CherryBlossom disclosure is part of an ongoing WikiLeaks series titled Vault 7 which began on March 7 with the leaking of weaponized 0-day exploits used by the CIA in targeting a wide range of US and foreign products, including iPhones, Android devices, and Samsung TVs.

The CIA did not immediately respond to a request





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3269461

California teen shot and killed by police aiming for dog

BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 22, 2017, 2:52 PMz






As Commissioner of Youth Services in Massacusetts Jerome Miller
shut down all the reform schools



http://www.ncianet.org/dr-jerome-g-mill ... age-of-83/

Dr. Jerome G. Miller, Co-Founder of NCIA, Dies at the Age of 83

Dr. Jerome G. Miller With saddened hearts, we announce that Dr. Jerome G. Miller, Co-Founder of NCIA, passed away on August 7, 2015. Dr. Jerome Miller, better known as “Jerry”, was compassionate and committed to the human service and juvenile corrections field throughout his 60 year career. “We at NCIA owe a lot to Dr. Miller. He was my mentor, my inspiration and instilled in me the need to provide services to those most in need. He lived his life with the tenets of unconditional care and the need to provide individualized plans for all those we serve. His constant theme was to treat each client as we would want our own family and friends treated. These are all values I have tried to instill in NCIA. He was a prolific writer and always spoke from his heart”, stated Herb Hoelter, Co-Founder & CEO of NCIA. Since Herb & Jerry founded NCIA in 1977, Jerry has had a profound impact on our company’s continued success. With Jerry’s expertise, NCIA became known for influencing public policy in the development and growth of alternatives to incarceration across the United States. Through NCIA, Dr. Miller opened the Augustus Institute, one of the first community-based clinics for the treatment of sex offenders, and helped numerous jurisdictions in closing or reducing juvenile prison populations throughout the country. He also authored and assisted on numerous books and studies including the Real War on Crime (HaperCollins, 1996) and Search and Destroy: African American Males in the Criminal Justice System (Cambridge University Press, 1996; 2nd edition 2011). Dr. Miller was a powerful force in the justice system and we are grateful for all his efforts, as NCIA wouldn’t be the same without him. His funeral was held on Friday, August 14, 2015. Below are links to Dr. Miller’s obituaries from the New York Times and Washington Post:
http://wapo.st/1N9TOj7


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/je ... aries&_r=0






http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/cou ... -1.3270166

Convicted mobster sees 40-year sentence restored by federal court after receiving reduction for explosives tip
regarding Oklahoma City bombing


BY ANDREW KESHNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 22, 2017, 7:06 PM

A federal appeals courts has reinstated the full 40-year sentence of a convicted mobster who passed along a tip leading to the recovery of explosives stashed away in the one-time home of convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols.


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/off ... -1.3269932


SEE IT: Off-duty NYPD cop just stands there as friend beats FDNY battalion chief's son unconscious in bar parking lot




BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, June 22, 2017, 7:01 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3269478

President Trump and White House staffers are illegally deleting messages, lawsuit says
BY JASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, June 22, 2017, 3:13 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3269247


KING: Until these two Supreme Court cases are successfully challenged, police brutality will continue



NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 22, 2017, 2:00 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/en ... -1.3270457

At Glastonbury, Depp asks about assassinating the president




Thursday, June 22, 2017, 8:12 PM



https://robertscribbler.com/2017/06/21/ ... -the-east/



Scribbling for environmental, social and economic justice


U.S. Climate of Troubles: Record Heat Out West, Severe Floods in the East

Yesterday a record heatwave affecting 40 million people cracked pavement, grounded flights, threatened power grids and risked serious injuries across the Southwestern U.S. Meanwhile, today, a heavily moisture laden tropical storm Cindy is threatening to dump 10 to 15 inches or more of rain on parts of the U.S. Southeast. A pair of opposite weather extremes of the kind we’ve come to expect more and more of in a world that’s warmed by about 1.2 C above 1880s averages.


(Very extreme weather conditions settled over the U.S. on June 20. Today, Cindy is expected to bring extraordinary rainfall totals to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Video source: ClimateState.)

Record-Shattering Western Heat

Yesterday, the mercury struck a scorching 127 degrees F in Death Valley California — the hottest June 20th ever recorded for that heat-blasted lowland. Meanwhile, Death Valley-like heat spilled out over a large swath of the southwest. Phoenix fell just shy of its daily record as temperatures struck 119 F. And Las Vegas tied its all-time record of 117 F (which was set just four years ago on June 30th). Needles, Daggett and Barstow in California joined Kingman in Arizona and Desert Rock in Nevada to also break previous heat records as temperatures soared to between 111 and 115 F across these cities and towns.



(Record heat hammered the U.S. West on Tuesday spiking fire hazards, grounding planes, causing power outages and increasing the risk of heat injury. Image source: National Weather Service.)

All these severe high temperatures took a serious toll as both cities and citizens fell under blast-furnace-like conditions. In Phoenix, 43 flights were grounded. Aircraft could not generate enough lift for a safe take-off in the thin, low-density hot air. Total number flights grounded since Monday now tops 50 for the city — with more expected Wednesday when temperatures are expected to hit 118 F.

As flights were grounded in Phoenix, fires began to spark across the Southwest. Several fires ignited in Southern California including a large 950 acre blaze near Big Bear. In Utah, hundreds of people were forced to evacuate a ski town when a weed-killing torch ignited a swiftly spreading fire. And in southwest Arizona, a wildfire burned 8 structures as more than 100 firefighters rushed to contain the blaze. Firefighters across the southwest struggled against some of the most difficult conditions imaginable — extreme heat, blustery southerly winds, and rapidly-drying vegetation.

Record heat also overwhelmed grids when customers cranked up air conditioning and high temperatures put a major strain on power lines and transformers. With California temperatures climbing to historic levels yesterday, power outages were reported across Central Valley and on into the Bay area. Extreme warming of road surfaces caused highways to buckle even as hospitals prepared for a surge of various heat-related injuries from burns, to heat exhaustion, to heat stroke.



(Recent warming of ocean surfaces to well above average ranges off the U.S. West Coast have likely boosted the development of the recent western heatwave. Ocean surface warming is a signature condition of human-caused climate change. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

A strong high pressure system and a large associated ridge aided by abnormally warm waters off the U.S. West Coast are the primary regional causes of the most recent heatwave. The pool of warm water in the Northeast Pacific — somewhat reminiscent of the Hot Blob that formed in the nearby ocean zones during 2014 and 2015 — appears to be boosting the development of upper level ridges and related surface heat over the region as temperatures climb to 10 to 25 F or more above normal for many locations. Despite recent record winter and spring rainfall for parts of the region, this new heatwave is starting to again advance drought conditions across the Southwest. Yet another hard shift in weather extremes from wet and cool to dry and hot that can likely be linked to climate change.

Cindy Ushers in Severe Flooding across the Gulf Coast

While the west scorches under extreme heat, the weather threat to the U.S. Southeast comes in the form of severe flooding. In the Gulf of Mexico, a sprawling Tropical Storm Cindy is interacting with a stalled frontal system to spike moisture levels in the atmosphere above the U.S. Gulf Coast. Already, between 3 and 9 inches of rain have fallen over parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama. But the slow-moving, heavy rain bearing Cindy is poised to dump still more.



(24 hour rainfall totals show that heavy precipitation in the range of 3 to 9 inches have already fallen across the Gulf Coast. Cindy is expected to bring even more over the coming days. Image source: NOAA.)

According to NOAA QPC predictions for the next week, as much as 8.5 additional inches of rainfall could impact already-flooded parts of SE Louisiana. And when all is said and done, the system is forecast to drop between 10 and 15 inches or more of rainfall over parts of the area. The storm is not presently expected to rival last year’s August rain event which dumped up to 30 inches over the same region. Of course, with climate change boosting rainfall potentials by warming the Gulf of Mexico and spiking atmospheric moisture and instability, the unexpected can certainly happen. Let’s just hope that’s not the case with Cindy. But 10-15 inch rainfall totals are certainly disruptive enough. And with some streets in New Orleans already seeing 2-3 feet of flooding as more storms rush in from the Gulf, this event is certainly far from finished.

Links/Credits:

National Weather Service

ClimateState

Earth Nullschool

NOAA

Tropical Storm Cindy Pushes Toward Central Gulf Coast
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5704
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:39 am

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.
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5704
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:12 am

Link du jour

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencen ... story.html




https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ion-caper/

Intelligence agency takes on intelligence agency in the “Astral Projection Caper”
Unearthed memo shows NSA evidence contradicted the CIA’s reports of psychic confirmation
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
A formerly TOP SECRET document from the NSA describes an incident which it called the “Astral Projection Caper,” which revolved around what seems to have been fabricated, or at least nonexistent, CIA evidence of confirmed psychic phenomenon.

Though the first chapter of the history is missing, another memo (seemingly from CIA) provides some insight. That memo, dated July 3, 1974, proposed an experiment where Patrick Price would be asked to use “remote viewing” to psychically gain information about a Soviet installation in the Ural Mountains. CIA already had some detailed information on the area, and so saw the opportunity to test Price’s abilities in a semi-operational setting. The experiment was to proceed in three stages: Describing the distinctive exterior features, providing floor plans and descriptions of the interior, and describing operations within





http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... venge.html


June 30, 2017
Could Flynn's Unmasking be McCabe's Revenge?
By Daniel John Sobieski

It has been thought that the unmasking of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the opening of an FBI investigation of all things Russia in which Flynn was a prime target was retaliation for Flynn’s drumbeat of criticism of the foreign policy of an Obama administration he once served.

The unmasking of Flynn in the Russia probe may indeed be retaliation against Flynn for perceived political sins, but not for what and by whom you might think if reports from the investigative watchdog site Circa News are correct. It seems that Michael Flynn and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe have a past, and McCabe a possible motive against Flynn. As Sara A. Carter and John Solomon of Circa News report:

The FBI launched a criminal probe against former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn two years after the retired Army general roiled the bureau’s leadership by intervening on behalf of a decorated counterterrorism agent who accused now-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and other top officials of sexual discrimination, according to documents and interviews.

Flynn’s intervention on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was highly unusual, and included a letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationary, a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was soaring through the bureau’s leadership ranks.

The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent, asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn….


McCabe eventually became the bureau’s No. 2 executive and emerged as a central player in the FBI’s Russia election tampering investigation, putting him in a position to impact the criminal inquiry against Flynn.

Three FBI employees told Circa they personally witnessed McCabe make disparaging remarks about Flynn before and during the time the retired Army general emerged as a figure in the Russia case.

In legal circles, that’s called motive. We have to factor in as well that McCabe and Flynn come from different ends of the political spectrum. Flynn became a key Trump supporter after accusing President Obama of facilitating the rise of ISIS through his policies and inaction. McCabe is a Democratic loyalist whose wife campaigned for state office in Virginia as a Democrat with heavy Democratic financial support. In fact, McCabe’s efforts on behalf of his wife are now the subject of multiple federal probes:

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a central player in the Russia election case, is 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….

Circa 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….

In addition, the Justice Department Inspector General is investigating allegations from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that McCabe may not have properly disclosed campaign payments to his wife on his ethics report and should have recused himself from Hillary Clinton's email case.

McCabe is probably not a happy camper right now and certainly has no love lost for Michael Flynn, who was a potential witness on behalf of one of McCabe’s accusers. As PJ Media reports:

In 2014, Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, personally intervened on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz by writing a letter vouching for her on his official Pentagon stationary and offering to testify on her behalf. He also supported her case in a radio interview in 2015….

The FBI, for its part, claimed that Gritz had become "underperforming, tardy to work, insubordinate, possibly mentally ill or emotional and deserving of a poor performance review."…

Flynn argued just the opposite in his May 9, 2014 letter: “SSA Gritz was well-known, liked and respected in the military counter-terrorism community for her energy, commitment and professional capacity, and over the years worked in several interagency groups on counter-terrorism targeting initiatives.”

McCabe did not disclose Democratic contributions to his wife’s campaign in Virginia in financial disclosure forms, donations that raise questions about both is integrity and objectivity. As Fox News Politics reports:

The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe left the box blank for wife Dr. Jill McCabe's salary, as a doctor with Commonwealth Emergency Physicians. And there is no documentation of the hundreds of thousands of campaign funds she received in her unsuccessful 2015 Virginia state Senate race.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Clinton confidant and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe urged McCabe’s wife to run for statewide office shortly after news reports were published that Hillary Clinton used a private email server and address for all her government business while serving as secretary of State.

For the reporting period of October through November 2015, McCabe's campaign filings show she received $467,500 from Common Good VA, a political action committee controlled by McAuliffe, as well as an additional $292,500 from a second Democratic PAC.

Connect those dots, Democrats and others looking for Russians hiding under Republican beds. We Have a Deputy FBI Director, Andrew McCabe, campaigning for his wife who receives huge sums of money from the Democratic Party of Clinton political ally Terry McAuliffe. After Clinton blames Russia for her election loss, Flynn becomes a target of an FBI probe in which his identity is illegally unmasked. He was a character witness on behalf of one of McCabe’s accusers. Was Mrs. McCabe’s largesse a quid for a future





http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryla ... story.html

House panel approves yanking money for new FBI headquarters
Baltimore Sun-
"It is reprehensible that House Republicans are playing politics with our national security by rescinding $200 million in funding for the new, fully consolidated FBI ...



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3287659


No drugs or alcohol found at party where police officer killed Texas teen Jordan Edwards


BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, June 29, 2017, 7:31 AM



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3150363

Here's what happened the night honor student Texas black teen Jordan Edwards was fatally shot by officer Roy Oliver
BY TERENCE CULLEN





http://www.4029tv.com/article/atf-medic ... s/10237108

ATF: Medical marijuana cardholders may not purchase firearms

KHBS Updated: 10:50 PM CDT Jun 28, 2017




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3274994

Christian preschool teacher fired for refusing stop doing porn


Saturday, June 24,2017



FBI Octopus

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... us-attorn/

Trump nominating former FBI agent Russell Coleman to US attorney post



http://abc13.com/society/live-lets-talk ... n/2155841/

Top FBI agent and local law enforcement officials talk criminal justice during NAACP discussion


http://www.wfmj.com/story/35782437/fbi- ... lice-chief

FBI agent named next Boardman Police Chief - WFMJ.com News ...
WFMJ-
Werth is the current Supervisory Special Agent in Charge of the Youngstown FBI. Other candidates considered by the trustees were Captain Rod Foley, current ...




https://franklinhomepage.com/fbi-hosts- ... -franklin/



FBI hosts four-day leadership and management conference in Franklin
By A.J. DUGGER III

The FBI National Academy Associates of Tennessee held their annual state conference this week in Franklin from June 25 to 28.

The training, which focuses on leadership and management, took place at the Franklin Marriott in Cool Springs.

“Our Tennessee chapter is made up of FBI agents, TBI agents and officers from the state level, county level and municipal level. We have a gambit of everyone,” Bill Sorrells said. Sorrells is the Assistant Chief of Police in Gallatin and President for the National Academy Associates of Tennessee.





http://www.wbko.com/content/news/FBI-Ci ... 99483.html


FBI Citizens Academy held in Bowling Green
WBKO-
"For the FBI to have contact with the people we serve, I think is critical to our success," says Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Louisville, Kentucky field office, ...

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) -- A typical classroom was transformed into an academy for community leaders in Bowling Green May 18th- June 24th, as the FBI held it's Citizens Academy.


"For the FBI to have contact with the people we serve, I think is critical to our success," says Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Louisville, Kentucky field office, Amy Hess.

Each year a Citizens Academy is held in Louisville and Lexington, but this is the first time for the class in Bowling Green. The classes take place one a week for six weeks.

"It's been amazing," says Seth Daugherty, an account executive for Central Screen Printing, who attended the classes.

According to Bowling Green's Mayor, Bruce Wilkerson, the academy teaches students "What they [FBI] do and how they do it."

Special Agent Hess agrees, saying, "This is our opportunity to say what we really do."

The Wednesday night classes had guest speakers from the FBI, and a different lesson each week.

"We've covered from child pornography cases to human trafficking, white collar crime, the drug task force," says Daugherty.




http://www.ajc.com/news/local/former-po ... mPS7YTGFwJ

Former police chief accused of bank robbery

Ellen Eldridge The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
8:05 p.m Tuesday, June 27, 2017




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3289144

Southern, Midwestern states will be hardest hit by climate change: study
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 29, 2017, 4:49 PM





http://www.ajc.com/news/local/fbi-says- ... Ua3br1HVP/

Bryson-Taylor Wayne Banks, 31, of Cartersville, was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury, U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Bob Page said in a news release.

Banks allegedly tipped off drug traffickers when he was part of a drug task force with the Cartersville Police Department in 2015, Page said.






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3289473

Person of color Family of Washington state man shot and killed by deputy hours before graduation demands answers
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, June 29, 2017, 6:53 PM



http://www.climatecentral.org/news/lars ... he%20story



A rift has torn the Larsen C ice shelf asunder and now the outside edge of the ice is moving at an unprecedented pace. When it breaks off, it will become one of the largest icebergs ever recorded.

The crack is just eight miles away from breaking off what will likely be the second-biggest iceberg observed. The massive hunk of ice has already started to wiggle like a loose tooth. That includes ice near where the crack began, which is moving at an unprecedented speed of 33 feet per day. In the world of glacial-paced ice, that’s the equivalent of an all-out sprint.







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

Kern County sheriff's deputy arrested in connection with domestic violence incident

A Kern County sheriff’s deputy was arrested Thursday on suspicion of spousal battery and false imprisonment, authorities said.

He is at least the third Kern County sheriff’s deputy this year to face criminal charges.

In May, two former deputies, Logan August and Derrick Penney, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possession with the intent to distribute marijuana, according to U.S. Atty. Phillip A. Talbert.



https://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/ ... .fnA6xy5Ep

Jeff Sessions Once Opposed A Federal Hate Crimes Law. Now He Vows To Enforce It.
When he was a senator, Sessions voted against hate crimes legislation. But at a hate crimes summit on Thursday, the US Attorney General said enforcing those laws is a "top priority."
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5704
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:43 am

http://boingboing.net/2017/07/01/cops-a ... lians.html

Quantifying the additional killings commited by cops when they get military weapons


The US Department of Defense's 1033 program sends "surplus" military equipment to US police forces ("surplus" in quotes because military contractors lobby for the US military to buy more weapons than they need in order to feed materiel to the program), which has created a situation in which cops show up in their communities literally clad in the armor of an occupying army.

This is reflected in many ways, such as the use of "civilian" to denote someone who isn't a police officer. Police are also civilians, which is why the military police are called "Military Police" -- to contrast them with "civilian police." If your police force considers you a "civilian" then they, perforce, consider themselves to be military occupiers, not community peace officers.

A academic trio consisting of a political scientist, a psychologist, and a social scientist examined the use of force records from similar police forces with differing levels of military equipment and training transfers under 1033 to determine whether militarizing the police results in increased use of force by the officers.

Conclusion: "We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings across all models."

Moreover, they used clever methods to determine that the causal arrow runs in the direction they hypothesized, showing that it wasn't that cops in violent communities got more military stuff and were thus involved in more violence -- rather, getting military goods made the cops more violent.

Political scientists possess theoretical and methodological tools to weigh into today’s debates about police violence. This study answers the call for evidence-based policy analysis by Representative Ratcliffe and others as they continue to debate the merits of the 1033 program (Murtha, 2016). We acknowledge that the present analysis is relatively preliminary. Due to notoriously unavailable data on police violence against the public, we present what we consider to be a best attempt at establishing the proposed relationship between military transfers and violence.9 Further, while no research method offers full certainty of a causal effect, we attempt to increase the plausibility of the claim that 1033 transfers lead to more police violence. We do so by measuring the transfers in the previous year, as well as by leveraging three different dependent variables. While the first dependent variable – civilian killings – represents the most direct measure to test the claim, using the next two dependent variables – change in civilian killings and dog killings – helped bypass endogeneity concerns to an extent. As more social scientists take up this sort of research, we expect replication and extension of these results in different jurisdictions with different methods.

As for policy, our results suggest that implementing the EO to recall military equipment should result in less violent behavior and subsequently, fewer killings by LEAs. Taken together with work that shows militarization actually leads to more violence against police (Carriere, 2016; Wickes, 2015), the present study suggests demilitarization may secure overall community safety. The EO represents one avenue of demilitarization. However, given Kraska’s (2007) typology, other aspects of militarization may be targeted. For example, perhaps training can affect cultural or operational militarization leading to less violent outcomes. Future work should explore the relationship, though the highly-decentralized nature of US police institutions presents serious challenges to systematic cross-sectional study.






http://www.fatalencounters.org/


Download Database

Data Visualizations

THE
FATAL ENCOUNTERS




The data is available for download right here. Just go under File > Download as > pick a format. We recommend downloading as csv. It wouldn’t hurt any to read our caveats here.

“The nation’s leading law enforcement agency [FBI] collects vast amounts of information on crime nationwide, but missing from this clearinghouse are statistics on where, how often, and under what circumstances police use deadly force. In fact, no one anywhere comprehensively tracks the most significant act police can do in the line of duty: take a life,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in its series Deadly Force (Nov. 28, 2011).

This site is founded upon the premise that Americans should have the ability to track that act.

Fatal Encounters intends to help create a database of all deaths through police interaction in the United States since Jan. 1, 2000. You can check to see how far we’ve gotten with your state here.

We don’t believe we’re a finished product; we’re just the first step toward creating an impartial, comprehensive and searchable national database of people killed during interactions with law enforcement. We expect other media organizations, law enforcement, universities, artists and activist groups will advance our work, and that’s why we let anyone use the data for any reason for free.

This site will remain as impartial and data-driven as possible, directed by the theory that Americans should be able to answer some simple questions about the use of deadly force by police: How many people are killed in interactions with law enforcement in the United States of America? Are they increasing? What do those people look like? Can policies and training be modified to have fewer officer-involved shootings and improve outcomes and safety for both officers and citizens?

.


Founder’s Note:
Hello. Our efforts to collect information about officer-involved deaths going back to January 1, 2000, is completely funded by donations. Today, June 29, 2017, we’ve got 20,790 records of people killed during police interactions in the database. We’re about 91 percent of the way





http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... lt-on-lie/


Ex-Weapons Inspector: Trump’s Sarin Claims Built on ‘Lie’
Scott Ritter takes on White House Syria attack claims.
By SCOTT RITTER • June 29, 2017


Link du jour
https://wemeantwell.com/blog/2017/06/30 ... ddle-east/

http://theknow.denverpost.com/2017/06/3 ... et/149156/


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3292678



https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... j-and-fbi/

http://www.thewrap.com/trump-national-e ... ough-mika/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/30/ca ... n-hospice/






https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/06/29/water ... on-part-3/

CATEGORIES: DEEP POLITICS
JUNE 29, 2017 | RUSS BAKER
Watergate and the Downing of Nixon, Part 3
More revealing details on the intricate ways in which President Richard Nixon clearly seems to have been set up. And the role of Big Oil behind some of the machinations — but who else was involved, and why?



https://federalnewsradio.com/federal-ne ... -standoff/


A key House committee voted to repeal the resolution that’s served as the legal underpinning for dozens of U.S. military actions overseas since the September 11 attacks. The amendment was offered by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) – the only member of Congress who opposed the original authorization for the use of military force three days after the 9/11 attacks. She’s argued, unsuccessfully, for years that the resolution has turned into a blank check for presidents of both parties, so the lopsided vote in the House Appropriations Committee came as a surprise. (Federal News Radio)



The Senate version of the defense authorization bill authorizes $700 billion for the Defense Department and wars overseas. The bill will put the military pay raise at 2.1 percent. It also created a cyber war policy to allow the U.S. to use all possible instruments to respond to cyber attacks.




http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-worl ... -on-leave/

Nebraska State Patrol head fired



http://www.richmond.com/opinion/their-o ... ec1e4.html

MASS SURVEILLANCE
John W. Whitehead column: A dangerous proposition: Making the NSA's powers permanent
By John W. Whitehead




https://rightsanddissent.org/news/safe- ... d-members/


Safe Coalition NC Wins Grassroots Victory As City Council Adopts New Standards for Civilian Review Board Members

June 29, 2017 by Chip Gibbons

Safe Coalition NC scored an important victory in Charlotte, North Carolina. This Monday the city council voted unanimously to accept the coalition’s proposed administrative revisions to the Citizens Review Board. According to Robert Dawkins, Safe Coalition NC’s state organizer and Defending Rights & Dissent Patriot Award recipient, the changes include the following:

A stated commitment to diversify the board to reflect the city of Charlotte.
An interview process for potential board members instead of just an endorsement from a city council member.
Banning all current and former city employees and immediate family from serving on the board.
Staggered terms for serving on board.
The city council will also start the process of revising the trainings that Citizen Review Board members receive. There is some hope that this will included implicit bias trainings. Dawkins and other Safe Coalition NC activists feel like the training board members currently receive is “heavily police friendly.” They hope this can be offsetted by a training that includes “a history of why minorities do not trust police based on the history of police as oppressors.”

The Charlotte Citizens Review Board

The Citizens Review Board is an important potential tool for police accountability, yet since its formation in 1997 it has never ruled in favor of citizens bringing complaints against the police.

The board recently made headlines when it decided to review a police conclusion that the killing of Keith Lamont Scott by a police officer was justified. In a 8-2 closed door decision, the board determined there was “substantial evidence of error” in the police department’s decision. This does not mean that the board has decided that Scott’s killing was not justified, only that it would hold an evidentiary hearing on the matter. After hearing the evidence the board will decide whether they found the shooting to be justified or not.

Safe Coalition NC

Safe Coalition NC was formed in 2013 to promote police accountability. It led a campaign that resulted in the Charlotte City Council passing a civil liberties resolution based on Defending Rights & Dissent model ordinances. Safe Coalition NC is currently in court attempting to obtain dashcam and body camera footage of the fatal police shooting of Iaroslav Mosiiuk.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3294034

Black student forced to share valedictorian title with white student, despite lower GPA, lawsuit claims
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, July 1, 2017, 3:49 PM




http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... mp-dossier

BuzzFeed issues subpoenas for info on Trump dossier
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 07/01/17 07:02 PM EDT 145



http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/20170 ... -virginia-


A look at firefighter arson in West Virginia
Giuseppe Sabella , Staff Writer





http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/06/29/b ... eo-online/

Boston Police Officer Suspended After Posting Racist Video Online
June 29, 2017 7:17 PM




https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mon ... a2226e3144


Does military equipment lead police officers to be more violent? We did the research.
By Ryan Welch and Jack Mewhirter June 30 at 5:00 AM






Blink Tank

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I1MONwea3kc



FBI Octopus


https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-politi ... years.html



NABU, FBI continue cooperation during next two years
Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news-
Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnyk and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Matthew Moon signed a Memorandum of ...






https://rightsanddissent.org/news/repor ... ng-police/


Report: NYPD Unlawfully Interfered With Cop Watchers and Other Civilians Recording Police

June 29, 2017 by Joo-Hyun Kang


Yesterday, the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) released a report on hundreds of complaints and incidents of NYPD officers interfering in civilians’ Constitutional rights to film public police activity during the first 3 years of the de Blasio administration. Such interference by officers to block New Yorkers observing and documenting policing, the practice known as CopWatch, constitutes misconduct. (A copy of the report can be found here)

NYPD interference and misconduct cited in the CCRB report include:

Attempts to block filming of police interactions by the public, including physical interference and use of force, blocking recordings, knocking recording devices out of the hands of person(s) filming, and intimidation/threats
Unlawful searches, unlawfully reviewing/deleting recordings, damage to/destruction of filming devices, and taking recording devices from people filming
Retaliation by officers by issuing false summonses, unlawfully detaining people, false arrests and charges
Lying and false statements by officers — In a number of cases substantiated by the CCRB, there were numerous examples of lying and false statements by officers who engaged in above misconduct and officers who witnessed the misconduct. Available video from the public and civilian witnesses were often the only ways to prove that the version of events initially put forward by the NYPD was false — including justifications by NYPD officers for false summons/arrests.
This is an important report from CCRB and helps to validate the concerns that many individual Cop Watchers and Cop Watch teams from Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) member/partner organizations have raised for years. The report also reaffirms what we all know as the critical role that individuals play when observing, documenting and recording police misconduct and violence. Here is CPR’s statement on the report: http://bit.ly/2sVDWMN

Remember – It’s legal to #FilmThePolice and #CopWatch. Observing, documenting and filming police activity and abuse is a key tactic that CPR has supported and promoted since our founding.
Lineage — Collectively, we owe so much to Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) for the lineage of #CopWatch training that many NYC CPR members have gone through, even before there was a CPR. MXGM also had one of the longest-standing #CopWatch teams in the City. And, of course, the lineage extends back to former Black Panther Party members and other activists in the Black Liberation Movement.







https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue73.php


The view from the bridge (PDF) by Robin Ramsay Updated 19 May 2017
Brexit: an accident waiting to happen (PDF) by Simon Matthews
Team mercenary GB Part 2 – This is the modern world (PDF) by Nick Must
Blackmail in the Deep State (PDF) by Jonathan Marshall
Colin Wallace and the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (PDF) by Robin Ramsay
Blair and Israel (PDF) by Robin Ramsay
Sex scandals and sexual blackmail in America’s deep politics (PDF) by Jonathan Marshall
The Hess flight: still dangerous for historians – even after 75 years (PDF) by Andrew Rosthorn
Deaths in Parliament: a legend re-examined (PDF) by Garrick Alder
The Russian Laundromat and Blackpool Football Club (PDF) by Andrew Rosthorn
A Jimmy Savile sex scandal concealed during the 1997 General Election (PDF) by Garrick Alder

Book Reviews

Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the robber baron culture of Texas, by Joan Mellen (PDF) reviewed by Robin Ramsay
The CIA As Organised Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, by Douglas Valentine (PDF) reviewed by Dr. T. P. Wilkinson
The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, by Lt. General Michael T Flynn and Michael Ledeen (PDF) reviewed by John Newsinger
Of G-Men and Eggheads: The FBI and the New York intellectuals, by John Rodden (PDF) reviewed by John Newsinger



http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/30/of ... er-police/

Officers fatally shoot woman in Denver following Littleton carjacking, chase



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... a-security

Portland Republicans to use militia for security as far-right rallies continue
Controversial move to enlist armed militia groups for public events comes amid tension between far-right and anti-fascist protesters





http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/06/26/tr ... more-14274




Trump, Khashoggi, & Germany’s Criminal Deutsche Bank
Posted on June 26, 2017




It is public knowledge that two well-known customers of Deutsche Bank have deals considered sensitive to scrutiny. One is Donald Trump.

The other is—or was— Adnan Khashoggi.

The death of Saudi arms dealer and CIA fixer Adnan Khashoggi in London two weeks ago reminds the world again about Adnan Khashoggi’s rich history with fellow Palm Beach ‘homie’ Donald Trump.

Not just in yachts—as interminably reported in obituaries— but in banks.

Khashoggi spent 40 years in the intermittent glare of worldwide publicity, from the Lockheed bribery scandal in the 1970’s, Iran Contra in the 1980’s and BCCI, the Bank of Crooks & Criminals, in the early 90’s, to name just a few.

Had he lived a bit longer, he would likely become famous again, especially if Deutsche Bank continues to stonewall the Congressional probe into why the bank—alone among major banks worldwide—was willing to loan $300 million dollars to Donald Trump, a man who’d stiffed investors by declaring bankruptcy six times.



A continuing criminal conspiracy



Deutsche Bank loans to Donald Trump are relatively well-known. Just google “Trump and $300 million.”

On the other hand, Adnan Khashoggi’s business dealings with Deutsche Bank—except in certain circles—are not.

But Adnan Khashoggi’s criminal collusion with Deutsche Bank offers clues to Trump’s own, and may provide evidence supporting prosecutorial use of the three words many defendants fear hearing: “Continuing criminal conspiracy.”

The urgency of such an investigation was made clear in today’s Washington Post report detailing how Deutsche Bank gifted Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner with a $285 million loan just one month before Election Day.

It’s ironic that Khashoggi, a notorious fame whore, will not be around for the fun part just beginning; the part where, when actor Hal Holbrook in “All The President’s Men” stands half-hidden in shadows in the middle of the night in a parking garage in Washington D.C. and whispers to Robert Redford that he should “Follow the money.”



This wasn’t Adnan’s first rodeo.

Journalists who track the underhand dealings of international fraudsters have long been well aware of Khashoggi and his assorted partners in crime, including infamous stock fraudsters in Vancouver.

As a former American security official who knew him told me, “He didn’t get involved in all those scandals by singing too loud in church.”

How the financial press covered it:

“Deutsche Bank settled a lawsuit filed against it by to recover losses incurred as part of a massive securities fraud allegedly orchestrated by the German financial giant, a fugitive Saudi arms dealer and other individuals that bankrupted the Minneapolis-based securities firm.”

“A Minneapolis brokerage Stockwalk subsidiary called MJK Clearing became insolvent after losing more than $200 million in a series of risky deals that involved borrowing and lending securities. Regulators took over MJK Clearing and forced it into bankruptcy.”

Khashoggi, an acknowledged stock fraud master, ran an intricately planned and spectacularly-successful pump and dump scheme that, with assistance from the Russian Mob and the Mafia—two organizations who also partnered with Trump—stole more than $300 million in just a few years.



The Khashoggi-Deutsche Stockwalk scam

Khashoggi and Deutsche Bank partnered in what became called the Stockwalk scandal, colluding in what were, financially-speaking, more innocent times.

Stockwalk was called “the most massive stock fraud in American history,” and it became the largest liquidation of a securities firm in U.S. history.

It was basically an ingenious financial game of musical chairs, during which Deutsche earned sizable fees, passing around stock normally settled in boring brokerage back offices as a bookkeeping function.



Only this time, the brokerage left standing when the music stopped, Minneapolis’ Stockwalk Group, was left holding $200 million of worthless stock in a Khashoggi company called Genesis Intermedia, now worth just pennies.

Earlier Genesis stock had been pumped up as high as $26 dollars a share by Khashoggi’s cronies, before everyone in on the joke cashed out and went home.

When the scam collapsed in 2001, the poor Minneapolis brokerage filed for bankruptcy and went under. 200 employees lost their jobs. Khashoggi and his chief lieutenant, Ramy El Batrawi, went home at least $130 million dollars richer.



What Really Happened

Deutsche Bank’s little Khashoggi indiscretion cost the bank a record $280 million dollar fine in the U.S. The bank settled shareholder lawsuits worldwide out of court, paying $350 million dollars in cash, while nonetheless denying responsibility.

U.S. officials scoffed at the bank’s claim of innocence.

“Full recoveries just don’t happen,” said Ken Caputo, senior associate general counsel for litigation at the The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). “You’re hard pressed to find anybody with money to provide recompense. You might get judgments. But these guys paid in full.”

As for Khashoggi? “Well, no one knows just where he is, Caputo said. “He’s one of those elusive guys.”

From the New York Times:

”El-Batrawi, Khashoggi and others also drove up the price of the stock by engaging in large numbers of buys and sells,” the S.E.C. said in the suit. ”The buys and sells were often done in small lots of 100 to 500 shares, amplifying the false appearance of general investor interest.”

“Lawyers for Mr. El-Batrawi and Mr. Khashoggi could not be immediately located for comment. An S.E.C. lawyer, Kara Brockmeyer, said the agency had not determined who their lawyers were. Mr. El- Batrawi has no listed telephone number in Los Angeles, and Mr. Khashoggi’s whereabouts is unknown.”



They became the object of what—with hindsight— was doubtlessly a half-hearted search. Even so, finding Khashoggi and his chief lieutenant proved elusive.

Later, a Palm Beach resident who’d clashed with Trump over Indian gaming (which Trump at the time was against) told me the rumor locally had been that Khashoggi, also wanted at the time in the collapse of a bank in Thailand, was hiding out in a bungalow at Mar-a-Lago.



Deutsche Bank-HSBC race to the bottom

Germany’s Deutsche Bank has been in a race with HSBC Bank in London for the title of World’s Biggest Criminal Bank, based on the size of fines each pays to host governments who—who knows?—may even be mildly chagrined at being unable to bring individual bankers to justice.

Deutsche Bank has paid more than nine billion dollars in fines and settlements since 2008. The bank paid up after getting caught conspiring: to manipulate the price of gold and silver; defraud mortgage companies; violating U.S. sanctions against illegal trading; more.

Deutsche Bank was caught manipulating the London Interbank Rate, or Libor, the uber-interest rate banks charge one another; (it paid a two and a half billion dollar fine.)

Deutsche Bank’s own staff blew the whistle in 2010, accusing the bank of masking twelve billion dollars’ worth of losses. One of the whistleblowers, a former risk analyst, told the Securities and Exchange Commission that if the bank’s true financial health had been known in 2008, it might have collapsed.

“There was cultural criminality,” the whistleblower told reporters. “Deutsche Bank was structurally designed by management to allow corrupt individuals to commit fraud.”



“Mirror, mirror, on the wall…Just launder my money already”

In January, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $630 million in fines over a sophisticated-yet-simple money laundering scheme called mirror trading, used to launder—just in recent years—more than $60 billion out of Russia.

Lawmakers are seeking information about Deutsche Bank’s latest scandal: a Russian “mirror trading” scheme that allowed $10 billion to flow out of Russia in sham trades. One Deutsche customer would buy Russian stocks for rubles, while selling an identical amount of stock to a related customer for dollars.

It was instant money laundering. No need to add water.



What happens if they come for the furniture?

There’s an unexamined downside in demanding explanations from Deutsche Bank for its unexplained benevolence towards Donald Trump, the ominous prospect that during Trump’s however-brief time in office, the American people will endure a national embarrassment unequalled in history.

Because he was desperate for money, in his loan dealings with Deutsche Bank Trump broke one his own cardinal rules.

Gulp before you read this: he personally guaranteed the loans. Donald Trump is personally on the hook to Deutsche Bank for roughly $300 million. The debt—on a Florida golf resort, a Washington D.C. hotel and a Chicago tower—is currently being paid.



But if the loans default, the bank could go after Trump’s other assets. Americans may be witness to the horrible spectacle of watching a bank foreclose on a sitting President of the United States.

The White House, at least currently, appears to be safe.



Get aboard the Money Train



Deutsche Bank is desperately trying to keep the money train running from Moscow to New York (and perhaps to Donald Trump), in the face of demands by Democrats in Congress for Trump’s banking records.

Deutsche Bank politely demurred, claiming privacy laws prevent turning over records of loans made to Trump of reportedly $300 million, with loan guarantees in excess of $1 billion.

Lawmakers fired back that Federal laws protecting banking customers’ confidentiality do not apply to requests from Congress, said a
fruhmenschen
 
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Tue Jul 04, 2017 4:52 pm

https://robertscribbler.com/2017/06/30/ ... l-warming/

Scorching 129 Degree (F) Temps Hit Iran; Severe June European Heatwave Attributed to Climate Change; Satellite Data Confirms Rapid Global Warming


In a slew of climate change related news this week, Iran’s city of Ahvaz saw temperatures hit near the highest readings ever recorded on Earth, a new scientific model study has found that climate change made the recent heatwave that hit Europe this June two to ten times more likely, and climate change deniers lost a major cherry-picked talking point as the most recent satellite data now confirms the rapid global temperature rise that ground stations have been reporting all along.

129 F in Iran — Near Record for Globe, But Not a 35 C Wet Bulb Reading

On Thursday, in Ahvaz, Iran, temperatures hit a blazing 53.7 degrees Celsius or 128.66 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures were just shy of the 54 C (129.2 F) global records in Mitribah, Kuwait on July 21, 2016 and in California’s Death Valley on July 30, 2013 identified by Chris C Burt of Weather Underground. The reading was also the hottest temperature ever recorded in Asia.


This very severe high temperature came just one day after the thermometer struck 52.9 C (127.2 F) on Wednesday and is the strongest temperature spike of a broader Middle Eastern heatwave that has been baking the near-Persian-Gulf-region for many days. Such severe heat did not, however, tip wet bulb readings above the 35 C human self-cooling threshold despite an extremely hazardous heat index near 142 F. A combined dew point of 72 F, a 129 F temperature, and 995 hPa pressure resulted in wet bulb readings of around 30.2 C for the city — quite dangerous, but not beyond the human limit for temperature self-regulation.

June European Heatwave Attributed to Climate Change

As the Middle East was testing new all-time high temperature records for planet Earth, Europe was also sweltering under combined severe heat and drought. Throughout June, dry weather and high temperatures have plagued Europe. Extreme record heat sweltered the UK, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium — setting off heat emergencies and forcing some regions to ration water. Belgium as a country saw its highest night-time temperature readings on record. England endured its hottest day since 1976. Meanwhile, the heat and extreme dryness set off wildfires that resulted in the tragic loss of 64 lives in Portugal while 1,500 were forced to evacuate from similar extreme blazes in Spain.



(June heat set off a rash of extreme conditions across Europe. World Weather Attribution has linked this extreme event to climate change. Image source: Climate Central.)

This kind of heat is becoming more typical around the world as global temperatures have increased, on average by around 1.2 C since the 1880s. And a recent climate change model attribution study has confirmed that this particular heat wave was a lot worse than it otherwise would have been without the added kick provided by human-forced warming. For a study by World Weather Attribution found “clear and strong links between June’s record warmth and human-caused climate change.”

According to the new study:

“These high temperatures are no longer rare in the current climate, occurring roughly every 10 to 30 years depending on the country. The team found that climate change made the intensity and frequency of such extreme heat at least twice as likely in Belgium, at least four times as likely in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and central England and at least 10 times as likely in Portugal and Spain.”

Satellite Data Confirms Rapid Global Warming

In another climate science related development, remote sensing researchers at the University of California have significantly revised their lower troposphere temperature record. The revision corrected for orbital decay in satellites that caused the world to appear to warm more slowly than actual trends. As a result of these revisions, a significant subset of the satellite data now largely confirms the more accurate land based temperature record showing significant global warming over the past few decades.



(Satellite data revised to correct for orbital decay now basically confirms land-based observations of global temperature increase. Image source: Carbon Brief. Data Scource: RSS and NASA.)

Dr Carl Mears, a co-author of the new findings, in a statement to Carbon Brief noted:

By correctly accounting for the changes in satellite measurement times, the new satellite data are in better agreement with the surface data.

Carbon Brief goes on to add that:

Unlike the satellite temperature record, where only a few satellites are measuring temperatures at any given point of time, there is a large amount of redundancy in surface temperature observations, with multiple independent sets of data producing consistent results. Therefore, it is not too surprising that corrections to problems with satellite data would move them closer to surface records.

Climate change deniers (self-labeled skeptics), have long pointed to satellite data showing the Earth warming at a slower rate than land-based measures. These ‘skeptics’ have then gone on to falsely claim that such data throws the whole issue of human-caused climate change into doubt. But this same group has failed to acknowledge the fact that orbital decay, as pointed out by the very researchers that run the satellite sensors, tends to result in artificially cool readings.

The recent reworking of satellite data to account for orbital decay along with researchers’ direct acknowledgement of the higher accuracy of land-based data removes the rational scientific basis for this line of ‘climate skeptic’ argumentation and renders past assertions in this vein mostly moot.

Links:

Mercury Tips Record 53.7 C in Iran

World Weather Attribution

Europe’s Extreme June Heat Clearly Linked to Climate Change

Chris C Burt

Major Correction to Satellite Data Shows 140 Percent Faster Warming Since 1998

Hat tip to wili

Hat tip to bostonblurp




Link du jour



http://www.alanmagee.com/

https://defcongroups.org/dcpages.html

http://narconews.com


https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/fede ... 1493c5b919


http://hollytornheim.com


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in- ... 74ebc0ef82



https://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteb ... ngling-all


The US president’s business partners in the Caribbean nation are linked to a Venezuelan tycoon who is allegedly the target of a major US investigation
By Bill Conroy
via The Narcosphere




https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spe ... ge%2Fstory

Ancient Romans made the world’s ‘most durable’ concrete. We might use it to stop rising seas.
The mixture of volcanic ash and quicklime reacts with seawater to create a rare crystal called tobermorite, which may resist fracturing. One engineer called it "the most durable building material in human history."



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3300143

Missouri set to reduce St. Louis minimum wage from $10 to $7.70


BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 12:37 PM



http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capita ... p-makes-it


Justice Department's Corporate Crime Watchdog Resigns, Saying Trump Makes It Impossible To Do Job
BY DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA ON 07/02/17 AT 6:01 PM





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3300059

Florida’s updated ‘Stand Your Ground’ law is unconstitutional: Miami judge


BY MEERA JAGANNATHAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 11:13 AM



https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... c31552c66f

See which states would be hit hardest by the Senate’s Obamacare repeal bill
By Kim Soffen




https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... egulations


Trump's alarming environmental rollback: what's been scrapped so far
Since January, the White House, Congress and EPA have engineered a dizzying reversal of regulations designed to protect the environment and public health



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... 676e27b6a1


The winning entry in Iran’s Trump cartoon contest shows a drooling president wearing a jacket made of U.S. dollar






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3300457


Facebook video showing cop punching woman sparks investigation
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 2:02 PM



http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/07/02/go ... more-14454


← Trump, Khashoggi, & Germany’s Criminal Deutsche Bank
GOP operative soliciting Russian hackers was bagman for ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’
Posted on July 2, 2017 by Daniel Hopsicker
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The GOP operative leading a team looking for Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails—the same ones Donald Trump had publicly implored Russia to find—was active as a Republican bagman in what Hillary Clinton famously called the “vast right-wing conspiracy” during the Bill Clinton-era Troopergate sex scandals.

Chicago financier and leading GOP donor Peter W. Smith last year launched a well-funded quest for Clinton’s missing emails, according to a pair of stories by Shane Harris in the Wall Street Journal.

During his hunt for the stolen emails Smith told computer specialists he approached that he was working with Michael Flynn, then a top Trump foreign policy adviser, as well as Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.

Smith, an old Clinton foe and an enthusiastic backer of Trump, died of undisclosed causes less than two weeks after talking to the Journal.

Corroboration for the story came from a former British government intelligence official who said he was approached last summer by the veteran Republican operative to help verify hacked Hillary Clinton emails from a mysterious and most likely Russian source.



The incident, recounted by Matt Tait, who was a information security specialist for British intelligence (GCHQ) and now runs a private internet security consultancy in the UK, sheds new light on pathways used by the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour.

Tait’s account, published on the Lawfare national security blog, shows Republican operative Peter Smith’s willingness to collude with the Russians, as well as possible collusion by Trump aides.



Troopergate bagman revealed



In his efforts during the campaign last year, Smith reprised a role he first played in 1992 as a Republican bagman, passing out an estimated $ 80,000 cash while trolling for dirt on Bill Clinton.

“Chicagoan was trooper bagman” was the headline of a United Press International report on March 31, 1998.

“A Chicago banker says he played a pivotal role in getting the so-called ”Troopergate” story into print. Investment banker Peter W. Smith says he paid out $80,000 to two Arkansas troopers and their lawyer as part of a plan to bring sexual misconduct allegations against President Clinton into the mainstream press.

“The story led to the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton, which led to the special prosecutor’s sex-and-cover-up investigation involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and others.”

A revealing April 10, 1995 story in Crain’s Chicago Business headlined “NEWT’S DOLE: HIS ILLINOIS PATRONS” stated:

“When Newt Gingrich talks, a lot of people listen these days. What a lot of people don’t know is that when Peter W. Smith talks, Newt Gingrich listens.

Smith started his own political efforts in 1988, organizing the Republican Candidates for the Future Political Action Committee (PAC). Shortly thereafter he met Newt Gingrich.

“I was introduced to him by some people from Goldman Sachs in New York,” said Smith. ”I became a supporter pretty much on the spot.”

“In addition to his support for GOPAC, Mr. Smith is a major backer of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank, as well as a contributor to various GOP candidates for Congress.

“He also hosts lunches in his Wrigley Building offices every month or so for visiting GOP luminaries, such as Mr. Gingrich, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and noted Republican strategist William Kristol.

“In 1992 Smith began an effort to dig up dirt on Clinton to help re-elect George Bush president. Although the White House contended there is an anti-Clinton network, Smith said he worked alone.



Another lone wolf financier?

Yet there is ample evidence this was not the case, and that Smith was assisted by operatives who were also officials in the Republican party.

For example, Richard W. Porter, a law partner in Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s private practice, provided advice and shared information with Smith’s covert investigation of President Clinton’s sex life conducted between 1992 and 1994.

At the time that Porter first began assisting Smith, he had been directing an opposition research effort against Clinton for the Bush reelection campaign,” Salon magazine reported. Billing records showed Porter was paid for “legal strategy” and prepared a memo on “investigative leads” that could embarrass Clinton.

That Richard W. Porter, a key player in Smith’s efforts, was also Kenneth Starr’s law partner was never admitted in Starr’s statements to the attorney general’s office, which supported Clinton’s assertions that a perjury trap had been set for him.

During the 1992 presidential race, then-President George Bush suggested that Clinton might have done something unpatriotic, saying that Clinton should disclose to voters “how many demonstrations he led against his own country from a foreign soil.”

Salon magazine reported that Smith discussed underwriting an investigative effort to obtain information about a college trip that President Clinton made to the Soviet Union in 1969.

Sources said Smith discussed probing Clinton’s Soviet trip in a meeting with other conservative activists. The sources, two of whom participated in the discussions, said that Clinton’s trip was only one of a number of issues that Smith thought worthy of investigation.



“Condolences on your recent death”

Anyone who suspects that the Trump campaign’s defense will be to paint Peter Smith as a “lone wolf financier” may find it profitable to check out the encomiums to Smith that have been left on a ‘Life Tributes’ page at Reuland & Turnbough Funeral Directors in Smith’s hometown of Lake Forest, Illinois.

The first to leave a message of condolence was conservative columnist Charles K. Ortel, who wrote “Peter was a great American patriot who helped me enormously in an ongoing investigation of the Clinton family charity frauds.”

Ortel, who a financial writer calls “A Harvard MBA Guy out to Bring Down the Clintons,” has often been featured on Breitbart. A story headlined “Al-Jazeera, Global Jihad, and the Suicide of the West” noted “Cliff Kincaid is holding another one of his amazing press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.”

“One speaker, Jerry Kenney, an independent television producer, has uncovered evidence of public television stations illegally turning over their airwaves to foreign propaganda channels, including Al-Jazeera and Russia Today (RT) television. He has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over this illegal activity and will tell us all about it.”

Another one of the featured participants was Charles Ortel, “who’s been warning that many initiatives launched by the Obama Administration constitute a “War on Capitalism.”

The War on Capitalism aside, Ortel was obviously out of sympathy with expressions about “public television stations illegally turning over their airwaves to foreign propaganda channels, including Al-Jazeera and Russia Today (RT) television.”



“Vault 7: Plan 9 from outer space for nerds

Because when Russia’s Sputnik News wanted to stir up comment about whether the release of WikiLeaks’ “Vault 7” would contain anything comparable to the Iraq War Logs or the Podesta emails, Ortel was only too happy to share his views “on the mysterious “Vault 7″ and secret materials which may find their way out in the near future.”

Ortel responded to Sputnik with what some might say sounds like a winking aside.

“I am happy to try answering your questions with the caveat applying to each of my answers that I am joining you in making educated guesses — I have no connection, direct or indirect, with WikiLeaks or with anyone connected to WikiLeaks.”

“I suspect that the next set of WikiLeaks papers may drop earlier than this coming April — if they are extensive, they may need many days to disseminate this information to the general public,” Ortel said.

Then he serves the main course, noting:

“If Vault 7 is a reference to the 7th Floor at the US State Department (which it may or may not be), then it is possible that the forthcoming release will document more intervention in foreign elections and referenda and show previously unseen communications and deliberations involving US government personnel, possibly including Hillary Clinton, her aides, and other members of the Obama Administration.”



Bagman with a mean streak

Republican moneyman Smith was spreading cash around in Arkansas in 1992 in hopes of securing some devastating sex stories. Yet when Hillary Clinton responded to the Monica Lewinsky meltdown by positing a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” she was widely mocked as an X-files-type fantasist.

Journalists also sniffed at disclosures by Salon magazine and elsewhere tracing hundreds of thousands of dollars in conservative money into the pockets of anti-Clinton investigators and operatives like Peter W. Smith.

An In These Times story headlined “Was Hillary Correct? Right-Wing Conspiracies & Hardball Politics” by reporter Robert Perry reviewed reports of Smith’s efforts to catch Bill Clinton with his pants down, then offered an unexpectedly poignant passage:

“At the time Hillary Clinton told confidants she did not believe any of the troopers’ allegations.

“The troopers’ stories were circulated after one of the troopers was caught by his wife with the telephone number of a woman in his pocket while doing her husband’s laundry, the first lady told friends.

“When the trooper’s wife demanded an explanation, according to the first lady’s version of the story, he falsely said that he had obtained the phone number for the governor. After the incident, Hillary Clinton told her friend stories began to circulate about the troopers assisting Clinton in meeting women.

“Said the friend who was told the story: “You listen to the story and you know that it’s not plausible. But you don’t have the heart to say anything.”

Then, more than 20 years later, it happened again.

That the same Republican moneyman who helped finance the sex scandals during Bill Clinton’s presidency was leading a search more than 20 years later for Russian hackers who could deliver Hillary Clinton’s missing emails for public consumption is, for Clinton,




By this time next year, CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling will be out of prison. But in the meantime, Jeffrey and his wife Holly continue to endure a very painful ordeal.

For both of them, you’re been a lifeline -- signing petitions in support of Jeffrey, maybe donating to the Sterling Family Fund, maybe writing to Jeffrey. Whatever you’ve done has been vitally important, lifting their spirits.

Now, please read the new message from Holly below.

-- The RootsAction.org Team

_________________________________________

Dear Friends,

The anticipation of the appellate court issuing its decision is over. On June 22, the court upheld the unjust convictions of my beloved husband Jeffrey. An entire judicial system failed him yet again. We are grieving another horrific loss and miscarriage of justice that has been allowed to continue for so many years. We always maintained the hope and belief that the truth would prevail and true justice would be delivered; instead we are devastated and reliving the nightmare of the conviction once again.

The start of this summer also marked completion of the second year of Jeffrey's incarceration. He had this to share reflecting on this tragedy:

"Two years of imprisonment have given me ample time to reflect on the circumstances in which I find myself today. I often retrace my steps, carefully recalling each conversation I had and action I took that landed me in this prison. However, in the two years that I have served, my position has never wavered. I know who I am, and I know what my values are. My name is Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, and I am an innocent man who has been wrongfully convicted of espionage after dedicating my life to serving the U.S. government.

"I was convicted of espionage against the U.S. government for being in communication with a reporter. The CIA accused me of offering New York Times journalist James Risen classified national defense information regarding Operation Merlin, a top-secret operation that targeted Iran’s nuclear program, which Risen later described in his book ‘State of War.’

“Though I have persistently maintained that I never disclosed any classified information to Risen and was only in touch with him regarding my discrimination case against the CIA, I was nonetheless convicted of espionage based solely on metadata from phone calls and emails we had exchanged. Despite the lack of any direct evidence proving I was the source for Risen’s book, I am now entering the third year of my three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.”

Jeffrey and I are beginning to look forward to and preparing for his return home as his official release date is June 14, 2018.

Please continue to support and assist us in those preparations:

** Your help for the Sterling Family Fund would continue to grant me the privilege of visiting Jeffrey in Colorado and provide funds for essential preparations. You can make a donation by clicking here. Contributions of any amount are a real help and gratefully received.

** Please continue to send words of support and encouragement to my beloved husband. Your sentiments will lend much-needed support and strength handling the news of this latest injustice. You may write letters and/or send cards to him at the following address:

JEFFREY STERLING, 38338-044
FCI ENGLEWOOD
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSITUTION
9595 WEST QUINCY AVENUE
LITTLETON, CO 80123

Jeffrey and I continue to find solace in your unwavering support. We remain eternally grateful as you have remained by our side through this seemingly endless nightmare. Thank you to each of you for your warm sentiments and overwhelming generosity. All of you are in our thoughts and we wish you continued health, happiness, and peace.

Your friend,
Holly Sterling

PS from the RootsAction.org Team: We hope that you can write to Jeffrey and/or click here to make a contribution to the Sterling Family Fund. The thoughtful letters and the donations, no matter how short or how small, loom large for providing vital ongoing support to Jeffrey as a CIA whistleblower who is paying a steep personal price for his courage.

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Background:
>> BBC News: "Jeffrey Sterling's Trial by Metadata"
>> John Kiriakou: “CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Placed in Solitary Confinement”
>> ExposeFacts: Special Coverage of the Jeffrey Sterling Trial
>> Marcy Wheeler, ExposeFacts: "Sterling Verdict Another Measure of Declining Government Credibility on Secrets"
>> Norman Solomon, The Nation: "CIA Officer Jeffrey Sterling Sentenced to Prison: The Latest Blow in the Government's War on Journalism"
>> Reporters Without Borders: "Jeffrey Sterling Latest Victim of the U.S.' War on Whistleblowers"
>> AFP: "Pardon Sought for Ex-CIA Officer in Leak Case"
>> Documentary film: "The Invisible Man: NSA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling"
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http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

Homeland Security officer charged with kicking handcuffed man in the head



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3281008

S.C. inmate details strangling, beating four blockmates to death: 'I did it for nothing'


Tuesday, June 27, 2017, 9:30 AM






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3300601


Naked man arrested after video shows him slapping Houston cop before being Tasered



BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 3:26 PM




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


California Supreme Court makes it harder for three-strike prisoners to get sentence reductions



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3300764

American tourist urinating in Cancun lagoon loses arm to crocodile attack


BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 4:18 PM




http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com/2017 ... ickly.html


Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Gay Equality is Coming Quickly


Usually public opinion on important and emotional subjects shifts gradually. The realization that discrimination against African Americans and women was wrong came very slowly. For more than a century, Americans spoke out against sexism and racism. In the 19th century, they were considered radicals, advocating unpopular political positions against traditional beliefs in white male superiority. By the 20th century, opinion in America was split and some discriminatory laws were changed, but common practices based in prejudice persisted.

Only after World War II did majority public opinion shift away from entrenched discrimination, but even then progress was halting. The two Supreme Court decisions that declared school segregation (1954) and laws against mixed-race marriages (1967) unconstitutional were 13 years apart, and they were just way stations along a much longer journey toward equality. In both cases, defenders of discrimination used religious arguments to oppose equal treatment for blacks and women, citing Biblical verses written thousands of years ago to claim that God had declared the superiority of white men for all time.

Change comes more quickly in modern society, as we can see in the technological innovations which replace each other with bewildering rapidity. In 1999, Ray Kurzweil proposed the “The Law of Accelerating Returns”; he believed that change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems, including technology, would come with accelerated speed. We might see this “law” operating in the third great shift in public opinion about traditional discriminatory practices, the acceptance of homosexual people as normal and deserving of equal rights.

Data from the Pew Research Center shows a dramatic recent shift in American public opinion on same-sex marriage, which may be taken as an indicator of more general attitudes about homosexuality. After years of relative stability, in the last 8 years the proportion of Americans who oppose gay marriage dropped from 54% to 32%, as the number who favor it rose from 37% to 62%. That same amount of opinion shift on inter-racial marriage took about twice as long.

The popular shift has been rapid, but not smooth. After Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003, 12 states passed constitutional amendments outlawing it in the next year alone, and eventually 30 states passed such backlash legislation. The Supreme Court decision in 2015 that rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all citizens included the right to get married came four years after support for same-sex marriage reached majority status.

Like many shifts in social attitudes, this was led by young people. The latest Pew survey shows 18- to 29-year-olds against discrimination by 79% to 19%, while Americans over 72 remain opposed to this change by 49% to 41%. But every demographic group, whatever their attitudes were a few years ago, has shifted towards acceptance. Opposition remains concentrated among white evangelical Protestants, conservative Republicans, and the oldest Americans, groups which considerably overlap. Those who demonize their neighbors who have a different sexual orientation continue to use arguments derived from Christian tradition as justification.

What caused this rapid shift in public opinion? When Pew asked why people had changed their minds, the most common answer was that they knew someone who is homosexual. Visibility has been a significant factor in the increasing acceptance of gays in America. While race and gender are usually obvious, homosexuality was not.

I grew up in an America where homosexuality was queer, meaning strange and unnatural. It was dangerous for a gay person to reveal their orientation, which could cost them their jobs. Homosexual relations were criminal across the country, until Illinois was the first state to decriminalize same-sex relations in 1962. So I didn’t know any homosexuals. I, like most Americans, had no evidence from life experience that gay people were not as they were portrayed in medical practice (sick), in official propaganda (dangerous), and in common talk (weird).

Over the course of 30 years, the proportion of Americans who said that someone they knew revealed to them that they were gay rose from 24% in 1985 to 75% in 2013. Since it is unlikely that the incidence of homosexuality has changed significantly, what did change was the realization that there are gay people in everyone’s social circle.

The end of discrimination against homosexuality is determined by changing public opinion and political practice, which differ from country to country. Germany, in many ways more officially opposed to discrimination of all kinds than the US, just legalized gay marriage last week. A recent poll showed that 83% of Germans approved of same-sex marriage, much higher than in the US. But the politics of the conservative party, the Christian Democrats, who have led the government since 2005, prevented any vote on the issue until now.

Bigots will keep using religion as a cover for prejudice, as in the so-called religious freedom laws. But the shift toward acceptance of homosexuality will continue, as older opponents are replaced by younger advocates. Because our gay relatives and friends do not fit the prejudicial stereotypes, discriminatory impulses will lose their persuasive power.

Happy birthday, America.

Steve Hochstadt
Springbrook, WI
Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, July 4, 2017
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5704
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu Jul 06, 2017 2:00 am

Link du jour
http://www.app.com/story/news/2017/07/0 ... 444012001/

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/h ... -1.3302781


http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3302312



http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/35818753/us ... ive-sludge






http://www.floridabulldog.org/2017/07/m ... oia-trial/

Miami judge rules out FOIA trial, says FBI document on 9/11 funding ...


Florida Bulldog
Secret FBI information about who funded the 9/11 attacks will remain hidden ... The FBI has since sought to discredit that report, saying the unnamed agent who ...


Miami U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga. Photo: Federal Bar Association, South Florida Chapter


Secret FBI information about who funded the 9/11 attacks will remain hidden indefinitely after a Miami federal judge reversed herself last week and decided that the FBI was not improperly withholding it from the public.

At the same time, Judge Cecilia Altonaga ruled out holding a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) trial to evaluate the need for such continued secrecy nearly 16 years after the 9/11 attacks. A trial would likely have included testimony from government witnesses in support of continued secrecy as well as others like Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who co-chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 and believes the FBI documents should be made public.

“The court sees no need for further facts to be elicited at trial,” Altonaga wrote in her seven-page order granting the FBI’s request to keep secret large portions of an FBI slide show titled “Overview of the 9/11 Investigation.” The FBI had argued the information was exempt from public disclosure because it “would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.”

Altonaga’s decision reversed her May 16 order that the 60-page document – referred to in court papers as “Document 22” – that was shown to the 9/11 Review Commission on April 25, 2014, should be largely opened for public inspection. The commission is also known as the Meese Commission, after its most prominent member, Reagan-era attorney general Ed Meese.

Florida Bulldog attorney Thomas Julin said the judge “should have ordered the FBI to stand trial for its decision to withhold information about its investigation.” He added that an appeal is being considered.

“The order requires the FBI to release information that was illegally redacted. That information will shed light on 9/11, but we did not get everything we wanted,” said Julin. “Much of what we did get confirmed the Bulldog’s reporting about Sarasota has been 100 percent correct and the FBI lied to the public about that. This case may be headed to the Supreme Court.”

Graham disappointed by ruling

Sen. Graham was disappointed by the judge’s ruling. He said the FBI’s 9/11 overview likely contains “important information relating to the funding of 9/11 and presumably the role of Saudi Arabia in doing so. Knowledge of these facts could change public opinion and governmental actions as to the liability of the Saudis as allies and the wisdom of us supplying them with hundreds of billions of dollars of military armaments.”


Bob Graham
Graham said, “The court essentially accepted without detailed substantiation the FBI’s assertions that techniques and procedures would potentially be compromised. I believe a trial was needed at which those unsubstantiated statements would be challenged with questions such as, ‘Over the 16 years since the events of 9/11 occurred have these techniques and procedures which proved to be so ineffective in preventing 9/11 been continued?’”

Florida Bulldog, working with Irish author Anthony Summers, first reported in September 2011 about a secret FBI investigation into a Saudi family living in Sarasota who abruptly departed their home in an upscale, gated community about two weeks before the 9/11 attacks – leaving behind their cars, clothes, furniture and food in the refrigerator. A senior counterterrorism agent said authorities later found phone records and gatehouse security records that linked the home of Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji to 9/11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta.

The FBI kept its Sarasota investigation secret for a decade. Former Sen. Graham has said the FBI did not disclose it to either the Joint Inquiry or the original 9/11 Commission.

An April 2002 FBI report released by the FBI during the litigation confirmed that account, saying agents found “many connections” between the Sarasota Saudis and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” The FBI has since sought to discredit that report, saying the unnamed agent who wrote it had no basis for doing so.

The lawsuit forced the FBI to review 1,858 pages of records and to release parts of 713 pages. The FBI withheld 1,145 pages.

“The FBI violated FOIA by failing to respond to the Bulldog’s request for the Meese Commission records,” said Julin. “The Bulldog would not have gotten any of the records if it had not filed the lawsuit.”

The FBI PowerPoint pages Judge Altonaga has now ruled should remain under wraps include:

Two pages titled “Funding of the 9/11 Attacks” and “Early to Mid-2001 Additional Funding”
Pages titled: “Early to Mid-2000: Pilots/Intended Pilots Arrive U.S.”; “Investigative Findings” regarding hijacker “Identification” and “Financial. Ample Financing was provided”; “Early to Mid-2001: Non-pilots arrive U.S.”; “July-August 2001: Knife Purchases”; “August 2001: Reserving 9/11 Tickets”
Four pages titled “Ongoing Investigation”
Who bankrolled the 9/11 attacks is the central question at issue in complex civil litigation in New York in which 9/11 victims – survivors and relatives of the nearly 3,000 dead and businesses that suffered property damage – are seeking enormous damages from the oil-rich monarchy of Saudi Arabia. The country has denied any role in funding the September 11 attacks.

Seeking 9/11 Review Commission files

Florida Bulldog, through its corporate parent Broward Bulldog Inc., sued the FBI in June 2016, seeking records of the 9/11 Review Commission, a congressionally authorized body whose duties included reviewing new evidence not considered by Congress or the original 9/11 Commission. The Review Commission, whose members were chosen, paid and spoon-fed information by the FBI, issued its report in March 2015.

The FBI released a heavily redacted copy of its 9/11 Overview in February. The FBI cited national security, privacy and other reasons to withhold much information, including Exemption 7(E) of the Freedom of Information Act, which protects law enforcement “techniques and procedures.”

On May 16, Judge Altonaga ruled that the FBI had “failed to meet its burden in establishing Exemption 7(E) applies to the redacted information” in the 9/11 Overview because “much of it does not discuss any FBI investigative techniques and procedures; instead the material often encompasses facts and information gathered FBI suspects.”

In early June, the FBI asked Altonaga to reconsider her ruling, arguing that while the overview doesn’t “discuss techniques and procedures, the information contained in the document could still reveal” them. For example, the FBI said it had withheld a photograph taken by a security camera because its release “would disclose the location of the security camera,” possibly enabling future terrorists to circumvent detection.

Attorneys for Florida Bulldog countered that security measures have changed “immensely” since 9/11 and the government had not shown that security measures “that supposedly would be revealed would be of any utility to future terrorists.”

Altonaga’s new order doesn’t address that argument, but nevertheless sided with the FBI, saying the redactions are “necessary to prevent disclosure of FBI techniques or procedures.”









European Scientific Journal Concludes 9/11 was a controlled demolition ( CIA FOIA Documents 9/11 )
May 8, 2017 - The authors of the report are Steven Jones (former Physics Professor at Brigham Young University), Robert Korol (Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at McMaster University in Ontario and a graduate of the ...


European Scientific Journal Concludes 9/11 was a Controlled Demolition In a deafening media silence, the Europhysics News magazine published a study confirming that the 3 rounds of the World Trade Center have been subjected to controlled demolition. The European Scientific Journal , a publication of the European Scientific Institute , published an article titled “ 15 Years Later: On the Physics of High-Rise Building Collapses ,” in which they analyze the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings.
Europhysics News is not, however, a site that the media could call "complotist" and that is the problem. It is a renowned magazine of the European physics community held by the European Physical Society. The authors of the report are Steven Jones (former Physics Professor at Brigham Young University), Robert Korol (Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at McMaster University in Ontario and a graduate of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and the Canadian Institute Engineers Mechanical design engineers with more than 25 years experience in structural design in aerospace design Anthony Szamboti (mechanical design engineer with more than 25 years of experience in structural design Aerospace and Communications) and Ted Walter (Director of Strategy and Development for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, AE911Truth), a non-profit organization that today represents more than 2,500 architects And engineers.

From fires collapse steel skyscrapers? Never seen.

First of all, the authors recall that never before 9/11 a skyscraper with a steel structure did not just collapse following a fire. On the site of the author, we invite you to visit this site. The only reason for these collapses would be controlled demolition. The report for why a fire can not produce the fall of such a building:

Concerning eyewitness accounts, 156 witnesses, including 135 rescuers, claimed to have seen and / or heard explosions before and / or during the collapses. The fact that the Twin Towers were destroyed with the explosive seems to have been the dominant initial opinion for most rescuers. "I thought it was exploding, in fact," said John Coyle, a firefighter. "Everybody, I think at this point thought that these buildings had been blown up."

Conclusion

It should be reiterated that fires have never caused the total collapse of a steel skyscraper before or since September 11. Did we attend an unprecedented event three times on September 11, 2001? NIST reports, which attempt to support this unlikely conclusion, fail to convince an increasing number of architects, engineers, and scientists. Instead, the evidence clearly leads to the conclusion that the three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition.
Read the study here :
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/Avice ... ats-du-119

CIA has released to the public declassified versions of five internal documents related to the Agency’s performance in the lead-up to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The documents can be found at CIA’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) online reading room at http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/decl ... 11-attacks .


Here's a direct link to download the Europhysics News report, 15 Years Later: On The Physics of High-Rise Build Collapses

https://www.europhysicsnews.org/article ... 474p21.pdf

And a link to the entire issue it was published in:
https://www.europhysicsnews.org/article ... 6-47-4.pdf





Confirmation hearing date set for Trump’s FBI pick

July 5, 2017
Updated July 5, 2017 4:22pm


WASHINGTON >> The confirmation hearing for Christopher Wray, President Donald Trump’s choice for FBI director, will be held July 12.




http://www.centralmaine.com/2017/07/03/ ... andalized/


Two Republican lawmakers say their cars were vandalized
Rep. Sheldon Hanington of Lincoln and Rep. Tim Therriault of China have filed police reports, and Hanington mentioned the vandalism on the House floor during efforts to end the government shutdown.


AUGUSTA — Two Republican lawmakers say their cars were vandalized in recent days, coinciding with hot tempers and frayed nerves at the statehouse where lawmakers were trying to pass a budget amid a government shutdown.

Rep. Sheldon Hanington of Lincoln said his truck was vandalized Saturday night in the driveway of his home. A door was visibly dented and a rock was left in the bed of the truck.

Earlier in the day, protesters had clashed with Hanington in the hallways of the statehouse, according to Rob Poindexter, the spokesman for the Maine House Republicans.

Hanington mentioned the vandalism on the House floor Monday.

There were no witnesses to the damage, but the reports of vandalism prompted speculation that it was related to the unrest over the shutdown.

Poindexter said a second lawmaker, Rep. Tim Therriault of China parked his Mercedes in the legislative parking at the Maine State House on Monday. He later “noticed what he believed to be a mark consistent with a key scratch or possibly someone had hit the vehicle,” Poindexter said.

Capitol Police are




https://robertscribbler.com/2017/07/05/ ... t-in-june/

Racing to Catch Ludicrously Fast Model 3 Production Ramp, U.S. Automakers Grew EV Sales by 102 Percent in June
Early on, Tesla recognized that responses to climate change were necessary — not just from individuals and governments, but also from industry. And Tesla realized that, when mated with wind and solar energy, electrical vehicles could become a powerful force for driving an energy transition capable of rapidly cutting global carbon emissions.



(Reduction in coal burning and lower than predicted demand for fossil fuels has helped to generate a carbon emissions plateau during 2014 to 2016. Rapid additions of renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and electrical vehicles provides a potential to begin to bend down the global emissions curve near term and reduce the damage that is now being locked in by fossil fuel based carbon emissions. Image source: IEA.)

Tesla’s Market-Driven Response to Climate Change

Electrical vehicles possess a number of key sustainability advantages that aren’t widely talked-about in the public discourse. Electrical motors are considerably more efficient than ICE engines — so broadening EV use lowers energy consumption in transportation while at the same time allowing EVs to draw power from traditional and newly emerging renewable sources. The massive batteries housed in EVs and sold after-market also have the capacity to become a major solar and wind energy storage asset that could ultimately enable the removal of peaking, high emissions, coal and gas plants.

In light of these opportunities, back in the mid 2000s, Tesla made a bold, necessary move. Its leadership decided that it would attempt to become a major automaker dedicated solely to electrical vehicle sales. This business plan would hitch Tesla’s economic future entirely to the success or failure of clean energy ventures. Unlike most present automakers, Tesla would not suffer from divided loyalties to harmful incentives linked directly to fossil fuel based economies. It decided to make its clean energy break by producing top of the market, high-quality electric-only vehicles and, then, by leveraging loyalty to a superior brand, move vertically down into broader market segments.



(If Tesla’s planned Model 3 production ramp to 5,000 vehicles per week by end of 2017 holds true, then the all-electric automaker’s quarterly deliveries are about to go exponential. Image source: EV Obsession.)

Such a disruptive end run on the world’s energy and vehicle markets was bound to encounter stiff resistance and loud detractors. However, if successful, Tesla would force traditional energy and transport players to make a tough choice — follow in Tesla’s footsteps and try to compete, or face dwindling customer bases as a massive wave of innovation completely upended markets. The automaker decided that the best way to goad a broader transition toward electrical vehicles in western markets was to lead it. And that’s exactly what Tesla has been doing.

Major EV Sales Growth on Tap for 2017 Due to Automaker Shift + Model 3 Sales

In the U.S., during 2017, the trend of an emerging industry reaction to Tesla is becoming quite clear. The major automakers are all in a scramble as the imminent arrival of the Model 3 nears. The vehicle, which begins production this month, aims to provide very high quality, Tesla’s trademark swift acceleration, top-notch tech, groundbreaking automation, and 215+ miles of all-electric range for a 35,000 dollar base price. An offering that is disruptive due to quality and accessibility alone. But add to it the 400,000 + preorders that Tesla has accumulated and you’ve got what basically amounts to a volcanic eruption in the global auto market.

In large part, as a response to Tesla’s market-transformation plan, a number of major automakers are deciding to provide their own competing offerings. This year, GM beat the Model 3 to the start line with the 200+ mile range, high-quality Chevy Bolt. Toyota, launched its competitively-priced Prius Prime plug-in hybrid. Nissan redoubled efforts to position its best-selling Leaf all electric vehicle even as it announced plans for a 200+ mile range version in 2018. Meanwhile, Volvo plans to electrify all its vehicles by 2019.





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.3304177


NYPD cop who encouraged 2-year-old niece to use N-word in Instagram video gets suspended without pay


BY LAURA DIMON GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 5, 2017, 9:14 PM



http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/0 ... ion-240210

Democrats: Did Americans help Russia hack the election?
Some Republicans say Democrats are playing a dangerous game by stoking such a charged story line without evidence.
By CORY BENNETT and MARTIN MATISHAK 07/05/2017 05:04 AM EDT





http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/news/v ... -1.3302782


Starting in 2019, all new Volvos will be powered by an electric powertrain


BY AMANDA SILVESTRI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 5, 2017, 11:33 AM



http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... story.html


Border Patrol agent charged with lying to a San Diego grand jury in friend's fraud investigation




A Tucson Border Patrol agent is being charged with lying to a San Diego federal grand jury in connection with a military housing voucher fraud scheme, according to a complaint unsealed last month.

David Wayne Skinner was called to testify about his friend, who was a Camp Pendleton Marine, and another Marine — both reservists who had been on active duty.

Maj. Jason Wild owned a home in Oceanside while Lt. Col. Michael Strom owned a home in Laguna Niguel. As part of the scheme, both men falsely claimed to be renting the other person’s home, according to court records. Both men filed travel expense vouchers with the military asking to be reimbursed for their lease payments, resulting in $147,715 in reimbursements going to Strom and nearly $60,000 to Wild, according to documents.




http://www.semissourian.com/story/2425786.html


Sheriff bound over on forgery charges; case shines spotlight on notary issue
Thursday, July 6, 2017






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/v ... -1.3302974


Vatican police raid drug-fueled gay orgy at top priest's apartment


BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 5, 2017, 12:32 PM




http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultur ... of-privacy

The Bootlegger, the Wiretap, and the Beginning of Privacy
July 5, 2017

Roy Olmstead, pictured arriving at a dock in Steilacoom, Washington, in 1931, was a Prohibition-era rum-runner who found himself at the center of a debate on Americans’ right to privacy.Photograph Courtesy MOHAI / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection


Nearly a century before a U.S. President accused his predecessor of ordering a “tapp” on his private telephone line, and before he tweeted a warning to the head of the F.B.I. that he had “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations,” a professional spy, armed with a pack of cigarettes and an earpiece, hid in the basement of the Henry Building, in downtown Seattle, catching crackling bits of words being spoken miles away. Richard Fryant had worked as a wiretapper for the New York Telephone Company, tasked with eavesdropping on his own colleagues, and now took freelance assignments in the Queen City. On this occasion, he was seeking dirt on Seattle’s corrupt mayor—who was suspected of having ties to Roy Olmstead, a local bootlegger—for a political rival. At the behest of his client, Fryant rigged micro-wires to a certain exchange, ELliott-6785, and began to listen.
“They got that load,” one man said, breathing heavily.
“The hell they did—who?” asked another.
“The federals.”
The men speaking on ELliott-6785 hung up, but the conversation had only just begun.
Criminals and Prohibition officials alike called Olmstead “the good bootlegger,” a moniker that reflected his singular business philosophy. He never diluted his whiskey with water or corrupted it with poison; he declined to dabble in the seedier offshoots of his profession, such as drugs or prostitution; and he abhorred violence, forbidding members of his organization from carrying weapons (“No amount of money is worth a human life,” he cautioned). If apprehended, his men were instructed to rely on bribes instead of violence.
Olmstead had a particular respect for policemen, having been a member of the Seattle force for thirteen years, reaching the rank of lieutenant. In 1920, with the onset of Prohibition, the thirty-three-year-old married father of two ventured to the other side of the law, making midnight runs to retrieve imported Canadian liquor from tugboats in the Puget Sound. This practice earned his dismissal from the force and made him a local celebrity. With his old police colleagues on his payroll, he was free to conduct business brazenly and with impunity, often unloading his booze at high noon from trucks marked “Fresh Fish.” Seattle citizens were thrilled to glimpse Olmstead on the street, wearing a fine suit and carrying a wallet fat with money, always ready with a joke. As one acquaintance noted, “It made a man feel important to casually remark, ‘As Roy Olmstead was telling me today.’ ”
Olmstead’s organization, comprised of an ever-growing staff of attorneys, dispatchers, clerks, skippers, navigators, bottlers, loaders, drivers, deliverymen, collectors, and salesmen, dominated the bootlegging scene in the Pacific Northwest. They relied heavily upon the telephone for day-to-day operations, using it to take orders, communicate updates on deliveries, and warn of impending raids, their words coursing across a web of wires connecting the city’s fifty-two thousand devices (approximately one for every six citizens). Olmstead set up his communication headquarters in the Henry Building, just a block from the Federal Building, and established three exchanges: ELliott 6785, 6786, and 6787. One of his men, a former taxi dispatcher, sat during business hours at a roll-top desk, taking and making calls, keeping meticulous records of each transaction. If a serious matter arose, such as an employee’s arrest, Olmstead himself called a friend on the Seattle police force to have it quashed. At the end of each day, the dispatcher unplugged the three telephones, to stop their ceaseless ringing, and the routine began anew in the morning.





FBI Octopus

City Police Officer receive overseas training
St. Lucia Times Online
A United States expert, Mr. Julio Pinera, a Bomb Technician and Former Secret Service and FBI Agent shared strategies and best practices in Operational ...




Finance specialist says A&B continues to be scrutinised
Antigua Observer-
Retired FBI agent, Dennis Lormel who will be the feature speaker at the conference said Antigua & Barbuda will continue to face scrutiny following the biggest ...
G-man joins the legal team
Long Island Business News
Long Island law firm Ruskin Moscou Faltischek added a former FBI agent to its legal team. Richard Frankel joined the firm, which is based in Uniondale, as of ...




http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... -russia-i/

It is perhaps the key piece of forensic evidence in Russia’s suspected efforts to sway the November presidential election, but federal investigators have yet to get their hands on the hacked computer server that handled email from the Democratic National Committee.
Indeed, the only cybersecurity specialists who have taken a look at the server are from CrowdStrike, the Irvine, California-based private cybersecurity company that the DNC hired to investigate the hack — but which has come under fire itself for its work.
Some critics say CrowdStrike’s evidence for blaming Russia for the hack is thin. Members of Congress say they still believe Russia was responsible but wonder why the DNC has never allowed federal investigators to get a look at the key piece of evidence: the server. Either way, a key “witness” in the political scandal consuming the Trump administration remains beyond the reach of investigators.




http://www.wcyb.com/news/tennessee/cock ... /577054905


Charles Webb, 23, is charged with four counts of introduction of drugs into a penal institution following his indictment on June 26, according to a report from NBC affiliate WBIR in Knoxville. He had only been on the job seven months and has been terminated, according to Sheriff Armando Fontes.

Fellow jail workers Jason Phillips and Alissa Lane were fired from their jobs last week and potential civil rights violations, the sheriff noted.

Charles Webb, 23, is charged with four counts of introduction of drugs into a penal institution following his indictment on June 26, according to a report from NBC affiliate WBIR in Knoxville. He had only been on the job seven months and has been terminated, according to Sheriff Armando Fontes. Fellow jail workers Jason Phillips and Alissa Lane were fired from their jobs last week and potential civil rights violations, the sheriff noted.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Jul 07, 2017 3:56 pm

https://trial-and-terror.theintercept.com

TRIAL AND TERROR
The U.S. government has prosecuted 805 people for terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Most of them never even got close to committing an act of violence.
DATA LAST UPDATED ON JUNE 29, 2017




http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/que ... -1.3308886

NYPD cop arrested in Queens for biting wife, choking her


BY GRAHAM RAYMAN





http://www.wweek.com/news/city/2017/07/ ... ts-a-riot/

Protest Emails Between Portland Police and Homeland Security: “It’s a Riot”
Emails from "Operation Columbia Crest" show law-enforcement agencies prepared for a crackdown by discussing rumors of Molotov cocktails.



http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/07/07 ... detainees/

Muslim group: Probe FBI nominee on post-9/11 immigrant detainees



Tamar Hallerman
July 7, 2017



http://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2017/07 ... -fbi-sting

The Case Of Alex Ciccolo: How The FBI Uses Sting Operations
July 07, 2017
Alison Bruzek, Jill Kaufman




http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/20/politics/ ... index.html


FBI Director nominee removed reference to case involving Russian government from law firm bio -


CNNPolitics.com - CNN.com
CNN.com › 2017/06/20 ›
Jun 20, 2017 - Christopher Wray represented an American energy executive in 2006 who was being criminally investigated by the Russian government. The detail, which was included on Wray's biography on the website of the law firm King and Spalding dating back to 2009, was removed in 2017 ...



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3308931


KING: Thomas Jefferson was a horrible man who owned 600 human beings, raped them, and literally worked them to death


Shaun King

Friday, July 7, 2017, 11:55 AM


Heat is online

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


131-year-old heat record in downtown L.A. could fall on Saturday, forecasters say





https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... protection



Texas companies penalized in less than 3% of illegal air pollution cases – report
Figure underscores need for federal oversight as the Trump administration seeks to slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and roll back rules







https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... lean-dirty

Trump's Hollywood star: fans polish it while haters take the piss
The Hollywood Walk of Fame has become a zero-sum battleground as Trump supporters clean up dirt, graffiti, beer and urine left behind by angry citizens






https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... es-aged-78



Sheila Michaels, who brought 'Ms' into mainstream, dies at 78
Feminist turned the term into a symbol signifying a woman’s right not to be defined by any relationships to men






https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... us-huxley/


July 7, 2017





FBI kept tabs on Aldous Huxley’s dark vision of the future
Bureau followed with interest Huxley’s warnings of technology eroding the foundation of democracy
The FBI file of Aldous Huxley, released after a FOIA request by Joseph Lloyd, reveals that while the English author was never under official investigation, the Bureau found his dystopian view of the future interesting enough to follow him and take notes.

The file begins in 1958, after Huxley had been interviewed on television by Mike Wallace. The interview was the work of the Fund for the Republic, a think tank founded in opposition to McCarthyism, which was itself enough to raise the FBI’s eyebrows. Huxley, the file notes, had never been deemed sufficiently suspicious to warrant an investigation …



though the Bureau was wary about his strong views on pacifism.



Despite the lack of official investigation, the Bureau taped the program and even took notes on Huxley’s views.



Those views include the literally growing threat of overpopulation …



the danger of emerging technology’s ability to erode reason …



the gradual conditioning of human beings to accept and embrace totalitarianism …



and the unfathomable horrors of science’s unintended consequences.



The Bureau, interest piqued, did their own version of subscribing to Huxley’s newsletter and started collecting press clippings.



Huxley apparently left enough of an impression on the FBI that when he spoke at a conference at UCLA three years later, there was an agent in attendance, again taking notes.



The last few years must have mellowed Huxley somewhat, as his “science will doom us all” message had been tempered into “science shouldn’t doom us all, if we can help it.”



(The old man still had enough harsh truth in him, however, to start the occasional “riot.”)



And in a true reversal, he even managed to end on a pretty heartwarming, optimistic note …



or at least as heartwarming and optimistic as you can get in the notes of an undercover FBI agent.

Read the full conference summary embedded below, or on the reque





http://www.arkansasmatters.com/news/loc ... /759548116


Governor Creates Law Enforcement Task Force to Combat Violent Crime in Capital City
"The looming cloud of violence harms us all."

By: Jessi Turnure
Posted: Jul 06, 2017 07:14 PM CDT
Updated: Jul 06, 2017 10:20 PM CDT



https://lasvegassun.com/news/2010/dec/2 ... nslaughte/


Jury finds ex-FBI special agent guilty of manslaughter in hammer death of woman
whom he beat to death with hammer
Judge sets sentencing for February for 63-year-old former law enforcement officer



http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... cia-213197

HISTORY DEPT.
Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up
John McCone was long suspected of withholding information from the Warren Commission. Now even the CIA says he did.
By PHILIP SHENON October 06, 2015






https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ544189

A Quantitative Description of FBI Public Relations.
Gibson, Dirk C.
Public Relations Review, v23 n1 p11-30 Spr 1997
States that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had the most successful media relations program of all government agencies from the 1930s to the 1980s. Uses quantitative analysis to show why those media efforts were successful. Identifies themes that typified the verbal component of FBI publicity and the broad spectrum of mass communication channels that were tapped. (PA)







http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-book-re ... ssination/

New book reveals how much FBI, CIA knew about Oswald before Kennedy assassination - CBS News
CBS News › news › new-book-reveals-h...
Oct 27, 2013 - Some of the FBI's other attempts to cover up their connections with Oswald have previously been revealed, such as the fact that Dallas-based FBI agent James Hosty had received and later destroyed a ...




https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 102603214/

Christopher Wray's law firm has ties to Russian energy companies - USA Today
USA Today › opinion › 2017/06/08 › tr...
Jun 8, 2017 - On paper, Christopher Wray appears to be an excellent choice to serve as the next FBI director. He has "impeccable" academic credentials (Yale law school) and has had a decades-long ...
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