https://uk.news.yahoo.com/wikileaks-say ... 52745.htmlWikileaks Says Robert Mueller Gave Russia Nuclear Material - But That's Not The Whole Story
July 2017
Wikileaks has released a classified US State Department from 2009 that appears to prove Special Counsel Robert Mueller, head of the Trump/Russia probe, once supplied the Russians with nuclear material.
The claim, if true, would be a hugely damaging revelation that would throw the whole investigation into chaos and incri
Only it isn’t and Wikileaks knows it.
The text and tweet released by Wikileaks more than suggests Mueller is guilty of a serious crime, passing on nuclear material to the USA’s superpower rival.
6. (S/Rel Russia) Action request: Embassy Moscow is requested to alert at the highest appropriate level the Russian Federation that FBI Director Mueller plans to deliver the HEU sample once he arrives to Moscow on September 21. Post is requested to convey information in paragraph 5 with regard to chain of custody, and to request details on Russian Federation’s plan for picking up the material. Embassy is also requested to reconfirm the April 16 understanding from the FSB verbally that we will have no problem with the Russian Ministry of Aviation concerning Mueller’s September 21 flight clearance.
But the section it omitted from the tweet changes the entire context of Mueller’s actions.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, June 21.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, June 21.
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It reads:
2. (S/NF) Background: Over two years ago Russia requested a ten-gram sample of highly enriched uranium (HEU) seized in early 2006 in Georgia during a nuclear smuggling sting operation involving one Russian national and several Georgian accomplices. The seized HEU was transferred to U.S. custody and is being held at a secure DOE facility. In response to the Russian request, the Georgian Government authorised the United States to share a sample of the material with the Russians for forensic analysis.
This text is included in the document linked to in the tweet but it’s clear many people did took it at face value.
Wikileaks used to be a force for good in the world, playing a major role in the release of the Snowden files and exposing events like the killing of journalists by US forces in Iraq.
But more recently the group and its founder, Julien Assange, have been accused of pandering to a pro-Russian agenda.
Assange has been eager to assist the Trumps in the ongoing probe into possible collusion between the President’s associates and Russia during the 2016 US election.
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http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017 ... -theorist/Behind the Headlines
Robert Mueller, Conspiracy Theorist
He’s unfit to be special counsel
Posted on July 31, 2017
When former FBI chief Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel to preside over the “Russia-gate” probe, official Washington sang hosannas. Democrats, Republicans, the pundits, and the cocktail party chatterers of every persuasion swooned over his “impeccable” credentials.
That should’ve served as a warning sign, right there. Because what are those credentials? What is the Mueller record, and why does it inspire confidence in all the usual suspects?
Mueller has been consistently wrong about every important investigation he’s been involved in: and not only that – he’s erred on the side of a group-thinking warmongering and utterly clueless political class.
Let’s start with the most egregious case: the “Amerithrax” investigation. When, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, letters containing anthrax showed up at the offices of NBC, the New York Post, and two US Senators, then FBI Director Mueller mobilized his agency to get to the bottom of a crime that shocked the nation – and helped push us into the Iraq war. Colin Powell used the anthrax attacks in his talking points for war with Iraq, telling the United Nations:
“Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount – this is just about the amount of a teaspoon – less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shutdown the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope.”
The Iraqis, intoned Powell, had never accounted for their biological weapons. The implication was clear: the Iraqis were behind the anthrax attacks. Americans were told by their government that another terrorist attack utilizing biological weapons was imminent: they rushed to the hardware stores and bought up duct tape and plastic tarps. Mueller appeared before Congress, testifying that cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda on US terrain represented a direct threat:
“Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam may supply al-Qaeda with biological, chemical, or radiological material before or during a war with the US to avenge the fall of his regime. Although divergent political goals limit al-Qaeda’s cooperation with Iraq, northern Iraq has emerged as an increasingly important operational base for al-Qaeda associates, and a US-Iraq war could prompt Baghdad to more directly engage al-Qaeda.”
A month later, the invasion of Iraq began.
And the anthrax investigation dragged on. The probe focused on one Steven Hatfill, a former employee of USAMRIID, the primary US government bio-weapons research lab. Given the weaponized nature of the anthrax contained in the letters, FBI investigators were convinced that a scientist connected to anthrax research was the culprit. But why fixate on Hatfill?
This focus was due largely to the efforts of two individuals who were not experts in the field. Instead of homing in on the science – trying to trace the peculiar anthrax strain found in the deadly missives, which had killed 17 people – the FBI investigation under Mueller’s direction was based on purely circumstantial evidence uncovered by two individuals with little to no scientific knowledge: one was Don Foster, a Vassar College professor whose claim to fame was tracking down Newsweek columnist Joe Klein as the anonymous author of Primary Colors, a roman a clef about Bill Clinton’s scandal-plagued career. The other was Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist and former advisor to President Clinton on bio-weapons, who believed that the anthrax attacks were the unintended consequence of a secret CIA project gone awry and that the FBI wasn’t making any arrests because it would reveal the government’s responsibility for the whole affair.
Like the amateur “investigators” of the Twitterverse, who today weave elaborate conspiracy theories linking various Trump administration figures to murky Russian operatives, Foster had done some digging and uncovered a pile of circumstantial “evidence” pointing to Hatfill: he dug up an interview with Hatfill during his tenure at the National Institutes of Health in which he outlined how bubonic plague could be manufactured and launched in someone’s garage. Foster also found an unpublished novel written by Hatfill that described a biological warfare attack on Washington, D.C. More “clues”: Hatfill had been in Rhodesia during an anthrax outbreak that occurred during the 1970s, and had been a student at a medical school in the town of Greendale – the name of the made up school listed as the return address on the anthrax letters.
Rosenberg was also on to Hatfill’s trail, and she got together with Foster, comparing notes: they had independently come to the same conclusion – Hatfill was the likely culprit. Foster had previously gone to the FBI, which initially rejected his evidence: Hatfill, they told him, had a good alibi. Yet the Foster-Rosenberg team of amateur sleuths soldiered on: Rosenberg carried out a public campaign explicating her pet theories, including authoring a “Possible Portrait of the Anthrax Perpetrator” that did not name Hatfill but surely described him to a tee, even naming one of his friends.
Still, the FBI was uninterested in the Foster-Rosenberg sleuthing effort – but this changed when the two amateur investigators met with Senate staffers, including those whose offices had been targeted by the anthrax letters. The FBI agent in charge of the probe was brought into the meeting. As David Freed, writing in The Atlantic, put it:
“Rosenberg criticized the FBI for not being aggressive enough. ‘She thought we were wasting efforts and resources in a particular—or in several areas, and should focus more on who she concluded was responsible for it,” [FBI agent Van] Harp would later testify.
“’Did she mention Dr. Hatfill’s name in her presentation?’ Hatfill’s attorney, former federal prosecutor Thomas G. Connolly, asked Harp during a sworn deposition.
“’That’s who she was talking about,’ Harp testified.
“Exactly a week after the Rosenberg meeting, the FBI carried out its first search of Hatfill’s apartment, with television news cameras broadcasting it live.”
From that day forward, Hatfill’s life became a living nightmare. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft declared that Hatfill was a “person of interest.” The FBI trailed him everywhere. The media hounded him. He was driven out of two jobs. His friends abandoned him. His home was trashed by agents, as was his girlfriend’s apartment. He was constantly stopped by local police. He became a pariah. Although ultimately exonerated when the “evidence” against him collapsed – Hatfill was awarded a $5.82 million settlement after enduring six long years of torture – his life was effectively destroyed. And all because Robert Mueller fell for a conspiracy theory that had no basis in fact.
As Freed notes, President George W. Bush was constantly needling Mueller about the slowness of the anthrax investigation, and there was tremendous pressure for the FBI Director to come up with something. The hysteria level in the country was reaching new heights on a daily basis. The theory of Hatfill’s guilt filled a need for Mueller, both politically and career-wise. As Freed writes:
“There was enough circumstantial evidence surrounding Hatfill that zealous investigators could easily elaborate a plausible theory of him as the culprit. As fear about the anthrax attacks spread, government and other workers who might have been exposed to the deadly spores via the mail system were prescribed prophylactic doses of Cipro, a powerful antibiotic that protects against infection caused by inhaled anthrax. Unfamiliar to the general population before September 2001, Cipro quickly became known as the anti-anthrax drug, and prescriptions for it skyrocketed.”
Pursuing the trail pioneered by Foster and Rosenberg – Hatfill’s good alibi was apparently forgotten – the FBI tried to tie together the bits and pieces of information linking Hatfill to the attacks into a legally airtight case – and they failed. But that didn’t stop them from leaking to the media all along the way. As Freed writes: “The result was an unrelenting stream of inflammatory innuendo that dominated front pages and television news. Hatfill found himself trapped, the powerless central player in what Connolly describes as ‘a story about the two most powerful institutions in the United States, the government and the press, ganging up on an innocent man. It’s Kafka.’”
Is any of this beginning to sound familiar?
Here is a politically important case, in which several high-level people have been targeted: investigators come into the probe assuming the identity of the responsible party, and are engaged thereafter in looking for confirmation of their assumption.
The parallels with the “Russia-gate” investigation are glaringly obvious: despite the lack of any real forensic evidence, the investigation is based on the assumption that the Russians, under the direction of Vladimir Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election by “hacking” the DNC and John Podesta’s emails, handing them over to WikiLeaks, and otherwise engaging in a concerted campaign to keep Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office. All evidence to the contrary – and there’s plenty of it – is being pointedly ignored. Instead, the Russian conspiracy theory is being pushed by political actors with dubious (and quite obvious) motives, with the probe headed up by a man with a history of succumbing to political pressure in order to get “results.”
Like the Foster-Rosenberg conspiracy theory targeting Hatfill – and the “evidence” the Bush administration utilized to drag us into war with Iraq – bits and pieces of “intelligence” are being strung together to depict a Vast Russian-Trumpian Conspiracy to steal the 2016 election. A meeting with the Russia ambassador: a meeting with some Russian lawyer; the selling of condos to Russian clients; bit and pieces of intercepted communications leaked by anonymous intelligence officials. The whole thing resembles the “factoids” touted by the Bush era “Office of Special Plans” that were disseminated in the media to mislead the public and the Congress into going along with the Iraq war.
Rod Rosenstein’s letter appointing Mueller as Special Counsel assumes a conclusion and then seeks evidence to confirm it: the letter takes as a given the role of the Russian government and gives Mueller the authority to probe “links” – the same carefree methodology that led to Hatfill’s years-long persecution at the hands of the government and its media accomplices.
Speaking of media accomplices, the worst was undoubtedly New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who persistently passed along Rosenberg’s unverified accusations under the thinly-veiled protective shield of prefacing it with “some say.” Weeks after Hatfill was exonerated, Kristof dashed off a reluctant-sounding pseudo-apology: that he’s now among the chief expositors of the Russia-gate conspiracy theory should come as no surprise.
Mueller’s weakness for convenient conspiracy theories that complement the conventional wisdom in Washington make him the worst possible choice for a special counsel. His tendency toward groupthink made him a key player in the campaign to lie us into the Iraq war. His utter lack of epistemological integrity in targeting an innocent man for the anthrax attacks – and refusing to clear Hatfill two years after investigators concluded he wasn’t the perpetrator – demonstrate his unfitness so clearly that one can only marvel there was no public outcry at his appointment. These flaws are more than likely to produce the same results in the Russia-gate probe – albeit on a much larger scale.
If Mueller carries out his mandate as special counsel the way he conducted the Amerithrax investigation, it will be as if Louise Mensch, Eric Garland, and Seth Abramson are providing the FBI with leads and guidance – just as Don Foster and Barbara Hatch Rosenberg did in the Hatfill case. But with this difference: hard scientific evidence – tracing the anthrax variant contained in the deadly letters – eventually led the anthrax probe in a different direction. In the case of Russia-gate, there is no science, only the guesswork of various self-interested cyber-security firms like CrowdStrike, which first fingered the Russians as the DNC/Podesta hackers. The inherent subjectivity of hacking attribution, and the extreme politicization of the investigation, will block this kind of corrective.
Which will empower Mueller to make it up as he goes along. Or, paraphrasing David Freed writing about the anthrax investigation fiasco: If there is “enough circumstantial evidence” surrounding the Trump administration that “zealous investigators could easily elaborate a plausible theory” of them as the culprits in a collusion scheme involving the Kremlin, then that is what we can expect to see.
This goes way beyond the Trump administration, Russia-gate, and the current political brouhaha over the 2016 presidential election: this is about the epistemic corruption that is rife in our political class. It is a pandemic born of groupthink, hypocrisy, smugness, and the willingness to fabricate “facts” in order to achieve political ends. It is a deadly disease, and it is killing us. The only antidote is a free media untethered to political interests and answerable only to the truth – and that is precisely what we don’t have right now. The media is complicit in all this: indeed, they are the carriers of the bacillus that is destroying this country. What happens when a free society poisons itself? I’m afraid we’re about to find out.
Important note: I don’t want to leave the impression that Mueller got it right when he targeted scientist Bruce Ivins as the culprit. In fact, the “evidence” marshaled against Ivins – who committed suicide before he could be brought to trial – was pretty much on the same level as the allegations made against Hatfill. I wrote about the Ivins case here. I also wrote about the anthrax attacks here, here, and especially here, in 2003, where I upheld Hatfill’s innocence and pointed in the direction of the probable perpetrators.
In short, Mueller never got it right.
http://www.herald.ie/news/courts/blood- ... 82880.htmlBlood spray expert will say Jason was struck in the head as he lay ...
Herald.ie
Molly Martens (33), his second wife, and Thomas Michael Martens (67), his father-in-law, a retired FBI agent and lawyer, both deny second degree murder.
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/addi ... -1.3366164https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=01mTKDaKa6Qhttps://fightgangstalking.comhttps://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/ ... -surrenderhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=502zLfzUWmcWe brought John DeCamp to speak at our 12 annual conference investigating crimes
committed by FBI agents held at Bates College in the spring of 2001.
Featured on the program with John was Michael Ruppert, Black panther Darruba Bin Wahid,
Daryl Cherney of Earth First//Judy Bari fame, attorney John Clarke of Vince Foster murder coverup fame
and Frank Wilkinson of NCARL.
I spoke to John's son over 1 year ago and was told DeCamp had Alzheimers and was in the VA.
http://www.omaha.com/news/legislature/j ... 3c728.htmlJohn DeCamp remembered as one of Nebraska's most accomplished, controversial lawmakers
Jul 29, 2017
During an unsuccessful bid for statewide office, former State Sen. John DeCamp once corrected someone who noted he brought to the race good name recognition.
“I’ve got name recognition, but it’s not all good,” he said with his trademark cackle.
Indeed, the 16-year state legislator from Neligh who died Thursday was at the same time one of the most accomplished and controversial lawmakers the Nebraska Legislature has seen. The colorful DeCamp was a power broker and wheeler-dealer of the first order, a pivotal figure in the success or failure of countless bills during his run in the Statehouse from 1971 to 1987.
DeCamp proved a man of both accomplishment and controversy outside the Legislature, too. The former Army captain in Vietnam spearheaded efforts to airlift thousands of orphans from the country; but he was also the author of an infamous memo that fanned rumors of child abuse by prominent Omaha figures during a 1990 investigation of a savings and loan failure.
DeCamp died at the state veteran’s home in Norfolk, where he had lived for more than two years. He was 76. DeCamp had recently been suffering from Parkinson’s and other illnesses, his family said.
A colleague in the Legislature once said DeCamp was “attracted to controversy like a moth to flame.” DeCamp never shied away from such talk, saying he earned his reputation by being in the middle of the fray and getting things done.
“Controversy is a part of accomplishment,” he once said. “Find me a guy that isn’t controversial in some quarter and I’ll show you a guy that hasn’t done a damn thing in his life.”
That certainly can’t be said of DeCamp, who very early cut his own path in life.
A native of Neligh in northeast Nebraska, DeCamp ran away from home at age 13 after his parents separated. Over the next eight years, he’d sell magazine subscriptions in Washington, D.C., spend time in a Minnesota boarding school, work as a cabin boy on a passenger liner and assist an American geologist working in Iran.
Despite not having a high school diploma, at age 21 he enrolled in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which then only required a high school “certificate of attendance.” It took him just five years to earn both bachelor’s and law degrees.
DeCamp then enlisted in the Army and spent two years as an infantry captain in Vietnam. That’s where he met his wife, Nga, who worked for the U.S. government as a secretary.
In 1975, DeCamp was instrumental in organizing Operation Babylift, which placed some 2,800 children orphaned by the war in American and Canadian homes. He was honored in Washington for his efforts.
Vietnam is also where DeCamp launched his political career. In 1970, he filed for Legislature from overseas and mailed home — postage-free — 20,000 letters promoting his campaign. He returned to the States in time for the general election and won.
In Lincoln, the new senator from Neligh showed he had the wit, smarts, eloquence and determination to become a major player in Nebraska’s unique 49-member, one-house lawmaking body. He soon was getting his hand into nearly every big issue, becoming a major negotiator and back-room dealer.
Before long, lobbyists, aides to governors and fellow senators were beating paths to his first-floor office or hobnobbing with him after hours at the Nebraska Club.
He’d help a senator on his bill and collect an IOU he could cash in later. He searched for compromise, married unrelated issues, cut deals, counted votes and shepherded bills through to passage. His bent was conservative and Republican, but he would work with anyone.
“John could operate in a back room or out in the rotunda,” said longtime lobbyist Walt Radcliffe. “He was always trying to bring parties together, to find common ground. He wanted to be a part of things.”
DeCamp delighted in the process. He got up to speak frequently. He darted in and out of the chamber to talk to staff, lobbyists and other senators. He’d pace up and down the aisle as the process droned on, and then gleefully rub his hands together when it came time for a big vote.
During what would turn out to be his last year in the Legislature, DeCamp in 1986 pushed a major phone deregulation bill on behalf of the industry — one his good friend and fellow senator Loran Schmit bitterly opposed.
Schmit recalled that when a legal opinion appeared to torpedo the bill, DeCamp maneuvered to get the Legislature to adjourn early for the week. That gave industry lobbyists time over the weekend to shore up support for the controversial measure. It passed.
“I used to chide him about that,” Schmit said. “But he did a lot of good stuff.”
DeCamp was instrumental in passing major bank deregulation bills (he chaired the banking committee for a decade), a 1977 rewrite of the state criminal code, creation of local lodging taxes, stronger drunken driving laws, restrictions on abortion, and a medical malpractice law that tilted strongly in the interest of doctors.
He also could be caustic and was prone to exaggerate if it advanced his cause, sometimes rubbing colleagues the wrong way. But session after session, he was a powerful force.
“If there’s anyone who knew the art of the deal, it’s John DeCamp,” said former senator Vard Johnson of Omaha.
DeCamp also proved a bit of a political survivor. He once came within a vote of being stripped by colleagues of his banking chairmanship. He barely won re-election in 1982 after it was disclosed he had spent nearly $19,000 in campaign contributions on mortgage payments, gold coins, medical expenses and office furnishings.
In 1986, his history of controversy — and the fact he spent nearly all his time in Lincoln rather than his home district — finally caught up to him. He was defeated in a bid for a fifth term.
DeCamp moved to the rotunda as a lobbyist and was an overnight success. By 1990, he was collecting nearly $200,000 in annual fees. But over the next three years that practice dwindled to almost nothing. While DeCamp liked to be involved in everything, successful lobbying requires focus on single issues and attention to detail.
“There just wasn’t enough action in the lobby for him,” Radcliffe said.
There also were other self-inflicted wounds that helped make him a pariah with the establishment.
In 1990, DeCamp injected himself into the legislative investigation that followed the failure of Franklin Community Federal Credit Union. He wrote a widely circulated memo naming five men he said were suspected of child abuse and drug abuse. A grand jury in Omaha would later say the memo lacked any factual basis and was written for political gain.
DeCamp always defended the memo, saying it helped lead to the convening of the grand jury, and he later wrote a book about the case. Schmit, who was chairing the Legislature’s investigation, said the memo proved counterproductive.
“John could run amok,” Schmit said.
DeCamp numerous times tried to get back into public office — running for attorney general in 1990, governor in 1994, U.S. Senate in 1996 and 2000, and the Legislature in 2006 — but failed each time. As he faded from public life, he practiced law, becoming known for defending anti-government militia members, and owned a variety of businesses. He also was a member of several veterans organizations.
DeCamp is survived by his wife and their four children: daughters Jennifer Lecher of Clarinda, Iowa, Shanda Erb of Columbus, and Tara DeCamp of Omaha; and son Johnny. DeCamp donated his body to science. His family is planning a memorial service at a later date.
“He wasn’t all good, but he sure as hell wasn’t all bad,” Schmit said. “He helped a lot of people, including 2,800 children. If there’s a heaven, John is going there.”
https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... ECD-death/Two Nebraska officers charged
in ECD deathAsked why he didn't charge the LEOs with murder or manslaughter, Attorney Don Kleine said, "there's no evidence whatsoever that these officers intentionally killed" the man
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighbo ... 719122.phpCops crack down on public sex at Memorial Park - sort of
Houston Chronicle-
He said students, a pastor and even an FBI agent have been among those charged in recent years. When they are caught, he said, the apprehension goes ...
At least six people have been arrested for indecent exposure in the last six months, Silva said.
The last high-profile case goes back to 2013, when seven men were arrested in one day.
One was a Harris County sheriff's deputy, Christopher Toomey, who had been a deputy for four years when he was nabbed. Police had operated stings on Picnic Loop for years before that, Gracia said.
One reason he suspects men continue to use a forested spot just feet from cyclists and family picnics despite monthly arrests is "the thrill of getting caught."
Apprehensions go smoothly
He said students, a pastor and even an FBI agent have been among those charged in recent years.
http://www.ktvq.com/story/36005296/mac- ... uter-usersMac malware caught silently spying on computer users
Posted: Jul 30, 2017 5:55 PM EDT
Updated: Jul 30, 2017 5:55 PM EDT
Mac users typically think they're immune to malware. But a new strain used for spying reminds us even Macs can be compromised.
Researchers found an unusual piece of malware, called FruitFly, that's been infecting some Mac computers for years.
FruitFly operates quietly in the background, spies on users through the computer's camera, captures images of what's displayed on the screen and logs key strokes.
Security firm Malwarebytes discovered the first strain earlier this year, but a second version called FruitFly 2 subsequently appeared.
Patrick Wardle, chief security researcher at security firm Synack, found 400 computers infected with the newer strain and believes there's likely many more cases out there.
It's unclear how long FruitFly has been infecting computers, but researchers found the code was modified to work on the Mac Yosemite operating system, which was released in October 2014. This suggests the malware existed before that time.
It's unknown who is behind it or how it got on computers.
Thomas Reed of Malwarebytes called the first version "unlike anything I've seen before."
Wardle says there are multiple strains of FruitFly. The malware has the same spying techniques, but the code is different on each strain.
After months of analyzing the new strain, Wardle decrypted parts of the code and set up a server to intercept traffic from infected computers.
"Immediately, tons of victims that had been infected with this malware started connecting to me," said Wardle, adding he could see about 400 infected computer names and IP addresses.
He believes this reflects only a small subset of infected users.
The discovery of FruitFly reminds users that although Mac malware is considerably less widespread than Windows, it still exists.
"Mac users are over-confident," Wardle said. "We might not be as careful as we should be on the internet or opening up email attachments."
Apple (AAPL, Tech30) did not respond to a request for comment.
Mac malware has increased in recent years. According to a report from McAfee, Mac malware skyrocketed in 2016, but most of it was adware or malicious advertising as opposed to targeted spy campaigns.
Wardle said FruitFly is completely new for Macs. He alerted national law enforcement to the malware. The FBI said it does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3368435NYPD chief loses 45 vacation days after failing to report officer who allegedly pulled gun on him at end of affair
BY THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, July 30, 2017, 4:01 AM
http://sfbayview.com/2017/07/assata-sha ... struggles/Assata Shakur: She who struggles
July 30, 2017
Meet a sista, comrade, soldier, warrior, guerrilla who exemplifies the meaning of revolution through the life that she lives, transforming from the day of her birth to this present day. Born with the slave name JoAnne Deborah Byron, after her emancipation from the shackles of capitalism she took on the name we’re most familiar with, Sista Assata Olugbala Shakur – Assata meaning “she who struggles,” Olugbala meaning “love for the people,” Shakur meaning “the thankful.”
From exile in Cuba, Assata Shakur continues to inspire revolutionary thought and movements.
Assata was raised by a small tribe of family members who instilled the toughness of surviving the racist South with a strong sense of personal dignity and respect. But because of how deep the claws of capitalism were gouged into the social fibers of the family tribe, the key to living a successful life was having your American piece of the pie or living the American dream, a dream that was and is only an illusion, a lure to keep you in a guided trance, sinking deeper into the trenches of capitalism. Thus it became young Asssata’s dream to live such a life.
So much so in her teens she began to rebel against the family tribe to experience life her way, out on her own. Our young naive sista immediately got engulfed into the fast street life and took to small, petty larceny crimes as means of survival. In no time our young brave sista began to master street survival tactics, and life out on the streets started to become easy and very dangerous at the same time.
This fast paced lifestyle was not the cup of tea that filled her. But it was a lifestyle she could count on to get by.
After her emancipation from the shackles of capitalism she took on the name we’re most familiar with, Sista Assata Olugbala Shakur – Assata meaning “she who struggles,” Olugbala meaning “love for the people,” Shakur meaning “the thankful.”
Assata’s early college years came at a time when struggle and the activity of Black consciousness and nationalism was on an upswing. The beat of Afrikan drums could be heard throughout the college campus and ghetto neighborhood, and talk of revolution began to be expressed in many ways.
“Assata, Winnie and Harriet” – Art: Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, 158039, FSP, P.O. Box 800, Raiford FL 32083
Assata began to dive deeper into her Afrikan heritage and her identity as a New Afrikan woman surviving on the blood-soaked stolen soil of a forgotten people. Her love for her people began to be expressed in her words: “I love Black people. I don’t care what they are doing, but when Black people are struggling, that’s when they are most beautiful to me.”
Assata’s studies and intrigue guided her closer toward her revolutionary destiny. This is when Assata began to extract her old capitalist ways of thinking – replacing them with a more revolutionary way of thinking. As she shed more and more of her capitalistic ways, she became more and more revolutionary, and as she became more revolutionary, her destiny as a New Afrikan woman became clear to her and her responsibility to her people became a clear conscious thought and part of her daily activities.
Assata’s story of revolutionary change reads like many of our own. Assata is a strong Afrikan soldier who dared to take revolution on her own shoulders and carry it to its next transition, and her contributions, sacrifices and struggles will always be historic, a guiding light for those who dare to bear the torch, and our sista will always be a living martyr for the struggle.
Thus let us give tribute to our sista in arms by highlighting her contribution to the struggle we maintain today.
Power to all the people who don’t fear freedom!
In a spirit of love,
Jabari Scott
Send our brother some love and light: Aaron Jabari Scott, H-30536, CSP Cor 3A-2-143, P.O. Box 3461, Corcoran CA 93212.
Exiled Panther Assata Shakur feted at 70!
by the New Jersey Black Panther Party Commemoration Committee
On Sunday, July 16, a cross section of activists, artists and humanitarians came together to salute Assata Shakur, the long exiled Black Panther who resides in Cuba, to mark her 70th birthday. The gathering was called For the Love of Freedom: Assata Is Always Welcome Here, An Honoring of 70 Years of a Committed Life.
It was not the usual maligning of Shakur in connection with the bounty on her head that comes from the New Jersey State Police, the FBI and the law enforcement community. Instead, it was an evening of poetry, dance, song and testimony, appreciating the activist’s lifetime commitment to the struggle for human dignity.
On Sunday, July 16, a cross section of activists, artists and humanitarians came together to salute Assata Shakur, the long exiled Black Panther who resides in Cuba, to mark her 70th birthday.
Shakur was born on July 16, 1947, to a proud, independent Black family from Wilmington, North Carolina. At the turn of the 20th century, Wilmington was the site of a vicious ethnic cleansing attack that literally ran legions of African Americans from the town. Shakur’s grandparents dared to be landowning business persons against this violently segregated background. It is from this background that would emerge her own commitment and courage that she would take into the Black Panther Party as a college student.
The FBI and New Jersey State Police joined forces to produce this “wanted” poster for Assata Shakur, a woman who is not, judging from the photos, armed and dangerous, except ideologically. Note the mention that she has a bullet wound on the “underside of right arm,” proving she had her hands raised when she was shot.
When the Black Panther Party was faced with the dangerous distinction of being labelled the “greatest threat to the internal security” of the country by the FBI, and when New York chapters of the party came under particular attack after surviving the NY 21 case, a case where 21 Panthers, officers and rank and file members were put on trial for bogus conspiracy charges to commit terrorist acts, charges that would have landed them in prison for the rest of their lives, Shakur and a number of other Panthers opted to go underground and create the Black Liberation Army to continue their fight.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/p ... -1.3368520Philippine cops gun down 14 people including mayor denounced by Duterte, arrest daughter in drug raid
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the ... ars-241127Judge balks at FBI’s 17-year timeline for FOIA request
07/29/2017 01:17 PM EDT
Getting answers to Freedom of Information Act requests is often a protracted and tiring process, but how long a wait is too long?
One federal judge just came up with an answer: 17 years.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler bluntly rejected the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s proposal that documentary filmmaker Nina Seavey wait until the year 2034 to get all the law enforcement agency’s records for a request pertaining surveillance of anti-war and civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s.
The request involved an unusually large amount of material — about 110,000 pages of records at the FBI and more at other agencies — but Seavey said waiting almost two decades for the complete files wasn’t viable for her.
“Literally, they were talking 17 years out. I’m 60 years old. You can’t do that math,” the George Washington University professor and documentarian told POLITICO this week. “It wasn’t going to work for me.”
The FBI said it has a policy of processing and releasing large requests at a pace of 500 pages a month, while Seavey, represented by D.C. transparency lawyer Jeffrey Light, had proposed 5,000 pages a month. (At one point, the FBI thought it had about 150,000 pages of responsive records, which would’ve meant a 25-year wait.)
Justice Department lawyers and the FBI argued that going faster than 500 pages a month would disrupt the agency’s workflow and create the possibility of a few massive requests effectively shutting down the rest of the their FOIA operation.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3370009Correction officer caught smuggling marijuana into Manhattan jail:
http://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local ... 524028001/Domestic terrorism probe spotlights Minnesota
4:47 p.m. CT July 30, 2017 | Updated 4:55 p.m. CT July 30, 2017
To the FBI, they were part of a Minnesota militia group possibly gearing up for a violent showdown with the government.
Members of the group, called United Patriots of Minnesota 3%, say they’re nothing more than patriots defending hard-won liberties secured by a handful of forefathers who stood against tyranny.
No one has been charged in the investigation, which spilled into public view recently when a federal judge unsealed search warrants in the case. But the probe underscores the complexity of balancing protected speech with trying to root out domestic terror.
Soon after agents kicked in the door to his Red Wing home last December, Jason Thomas documented the aftermath of the raid on Facebook: photos of belongings strewn across his kitchen and a copy of the search warrant, signed by a federal judge, alleging that Thomas and his fellow United Patriots members schemed to illegally obtain and use powerful weapons.
The raid of Thomas’ home followed months of infiltration by a paid FBI informant who documented what agents said was firearms training in Stillwater and Albert Lea and chatter on a secret Facebook page that Thomas helped run. Another man under investigation allegedly built AR-15 assault rifles out of unfinished rifle kits for members whose criminal backgrounds prevented them from legally acquiring firearms.
In court documents, the FBI described the “3 percenters” as a militia that “believes in the violent resistance to, or intended overthrow” of the government. The group formed after Barack Obama’s 2008 election to the presidency. Its name derives from the belief that the American Revolution was waged by just 3 percent of the population.
In applying for warrants, federal agents noted multiple Facebook posts by Thomas, including a March 2016 guarantee that he would “be one of the first to start killing Feds.”
“I’ll openly say that like I always have,” Thomas wrote. “And [I] am actually trying to build up our capacity to challenge them.”
Thomas said in an interview that the remarks cited in the search warrant application were taken out of context. He described United Patriots as a “civil defense” unit and said he was concerned that the Obama administration would confiscate privately owned firearms.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jef ... 8434b6b2f3Jeff Sessions’ Assault On Gay Workers Revealed Yet Another Lie He Told At Confirmation Hearings
The attorney general vowed to “ensure” civil rights protections for LGBTQ people.
Donald Trump is angry with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself in the Russia collusion investigation. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from giving Sessions carte blanche to enforce his brutal hard-right agenda ― one reason why, in fact, conservatives have defended Sessions against Trump’s attacks ― and that includes what are clearly his plans to dismantle LGBTQ rights.
The reason Sessions had to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, of course, is because it became known that he had several meetings with Russian officials during the election, while serving in the Trump campaign, though he claimed during his confirmation hearings that he hadn’t ever met with such officials.
But now we know that’s not the only thing Sessions lied about.
In his opening statements back in January, Sessions said, ”I understand the demands for justice and fairness made by our LGBT community.” He vowed to “ensure ... protecting their rights and their safety,” which he said would be “fully enforced.”
But last week Sessions’ Justice Department used precious time and federal expense to tell a federal appeals court, via a 36-page brief, that employers should legally have the right to fire gay, lesbian and bisexual people based on their sexual orientation. If employers deem homosexuality as immoral, Sessions believes they should be able to tell gay, lesbian or bisexual employees to pack their things and go if they are found out, destroying lives, affecting their families and livelihoods. It’s abhorrent ― and the complete opposite of what the civil rights office at the Department of Justice should be doing.
The DOJ isn’t party to this case. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t invite it to file a brief. Sessions clearly decided to take it upon himself to influence the court, in a case in which a now deceased skydiver claimed he was fired from his job because he was gay (his survivors have continued with the case). According to the Center for American Progress, 10 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual people report having been fired because of their sexual orientation while a staggering 47 percent of transgender people have reported being fired based on their gender identity.
The ACLU’s Ria Tabacco Mar, in a New York Times op-ed, explained the significance of the case that Sessions is attempting to sabotage using the influence of the DOJ:
This latest blow to civil rights by the Trump administration comes at a moment of tremendous promise: The Second Circuit appears poised to expand protections for lesbian and gay workers under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the federal law that bars on-the-job discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion.
Earlier this year, it agreed to reconsider a pair of its decisions from the 2000s that wrongly concluded that discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation isn’t covered by the statute’s ban on sex discrimination.
Coming on the heels of a landmark decision in April from the federal appeals court in Chicago that overruled similar precedent, the news that the Second Circuit would revisit its old conclusions was applauded by the L.G.B.T. community as heralding the end of another barrier to equality.
Trump has given all of his anti-LGBTQ lieutenants ― from Betsy DeVos and Tom Price to Ben Carson and Mike Pence ― free rein to assault LGBTQ rights and, just as profoundly, he has listened to their counsel on the issue. That’s why we’ve seen protections for transgender and gay students threatened, elimination of data collection on LGBTQ seniors and a devastating attack, via Twitter, on transgender people serving in the military.
For Sessions, if he remains at the Justice Department (there have been unconfirmed reports that Trump is thinking of moving him to head up Homeland Security), it means a sustained assault at a time when LGBTQ people are subject to hate crimes attacks more than any other minority group, with transgender women of color disproportionately affected in the worst way.
During his confirmation hearings, senators pointed out how Sessions had vehemently opposed adding gay and transgender people to existing hate crimes laws, which the justice department is charged with enforcing ever since the bill he opposed became law in 2009.
“Today, I’m not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination,” Sessions said at the time. “I just don’t see it.”
In his questioning, Sen. Leahy of Vermont brought Sessions back to his opposition to queer people being protected under hate crimes statutes, and pointed to current statistics:
Last year the FBI said that LGBT individuals were more likely to be targeted for hate crimes than any other minority group in the country. We can study this forever but that’s a pretty strong fact. And in 2010 you stated that expanding hate crimes protections to LGBT individuals was unwarranted, possibly unconstitutional. You said the bill has been said to cheapen the civil rights movement. Especially considering what the FBI is found, do you still feel that way?′
Sessions responded: “Mr. Chairman the law has been passed, the Congress has spoken, you can be sure I will enforce it.”
And in June at a summit at the Justice Department, Sessions focused in on murders of transgender people.
“We have and will continue to enforce hate crime laws aggressively and appropriately where transgendered individuals are victims,” Sessions said. “Last month, Joshua Brandon Vallum was sentenced to 49 years in prison for assaulting and murdering Mercedes Williamson. This is the first case prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act involving the murder of a transgender person.”
But the historic case prosecuted under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed by President Obama, was prosecuted entirely by the Obama Justice Department in 2016. Last December, Vallum finally pleaded guilty to the horrific stabbing murder of 17-year-old Williamson in Alabama in 2015. (It was the sentencing, by a
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/07/28/ ... -d-c-area/Strange Summer Nor’Easter Drops 3 Inches of Rain in 45 Minutes Over Parts of D.C. Area
Climate change related hydrological events. Rain bombs. These are somewhat uncomfortable subjects. But it’s a basic fact that if you warm the Earth, you also crank up rates of evaporation and precipitation. And since we’ve warmed the Earth by about 1.2 C above preindustrial levels by burning fossil fuels and dumping so much carbon into the atmosphere, we’ve loaded the climate dice for producing both more extreme rainfall and more extreme drought events.
In the mid-Atlantic today, a strange summer Nor’easter is dropping multiple inches of rain over parts of Maryland, Virginia and Delaware in very short time periods. In an area just northwest of Silver Spring, M.D., an amazing 3.19 inches of rain fell in just 45 minutes.
A resident of Gaithersburg, M.D., I experienced a comparable deluge situation in which my hilltop residence and home office saw a river forming in its back yard. Just about an hour before, my phone was sending me warnings to avoid the valley regions. Considering the flooding we saw in the hills, it’s tough to imagine what the low-lands might have looked like.
(Extreme rainfall creates streams through the hilltop residences of Gaithersburg, MD on July 28 as a strange summer Nor’Easter taps very high atmospheric moisture levels over the region to produce 1-4 inch per hour rainfall rates.)
It’s worth noting that 1 inch per hour rainfall rates are considered to be extreme. But the short-period volumes of rain being produced by this system (1-4 inch per hour rates) are pretty much off the charts. It’s coming from a storm that has been fueled by an upper level trough dipping down over Canada. One that pushed a large frontal system over the Great Lakes region on Wednesday night. This front then moved across the Ohio Valley on Thursday and out over the Atlantic by Friday. Packed with cooler temperatures, the front ran over ocean waters that are ranging between 1 to 4 degrees Celsius above average. The extra ocean heat helped to create a very moisture-rich environment. A coastal low subsequently forming in this very wet column of air began cranking that moisture over the mid-Atlantic even as its associated instability produced some extraordinarily powerful rainstorms.
(Sea surface temperature anomaly map shows a hot blob of ocean water temperatures off the U.S. East Coast in the range of 1-4 C above average. A deep-digging trough has enabled a strong coastal low to form and feed on the amazing amount of moisture bleeding off this warm water to produce an odd summer nor’easter and related extreme rainfall over the U.S. East Coast. A number of the factors enabling the strength of this system are aspects of human-forced climate change. Notably — the deep summer trough and the very warm Atlantic Ocean surface waters. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)
Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico’s warmer than normal waters have throughout the spring and summer produced tropical levels of moisture over southern and central sections of the Eastern U.S. — fueling numerous extreme rainfall events and adding even more punch to this particular event.
Already warm summer waters produce a serious amount of water vapor. But punch up ocean temperatures to the above average ranges we see today and you get even more moisture bleeding out. If an odd, deep, cool summer trough runs through it, then it provides a big kick of atmospheric instability in a region where there’s already an abnormal amount of fuel for storms. Both the ability of troughs to dig deeper over the U.S. East Coast and the added ocean heat and moisture are arguably aspects related to human-caused climate change. So to talk about this particular event without adding that context would not really be looking at the whole weather and climate picture.
(UPDATES TO FOLLOW AS NEEDED)
Links:
Summer Nor’easter Wallops Mid Atlantic
Earth Nullschool
National Weather Service — DC/Baltimore
Understanding the Jet Stream