Police Under Attack in Hemet, CA
Wow. This is pretty crazy. Thomas Watkins writes on the AP via Salon:
California police department on alert for deadly traps.
Police in this picturesque city in rural Riverside County have been on edge in recent weeks. Someone is trying to kill them.
First, a natural gas pipe was shoved through a hole drilled into the roof of the gang enforcement unit’s headquarters. The building filled with flammable vapor but an officer smelled the danger before anyone was hurt.
“It would have taken out half a city block,” Capt. Tony Marghis said.
Then, a ballistic contraption was attached to a sliding security fence around the building. An officer opening the black steel gate triggered the mechanism, which sent a bullet within eight inches of his face.
In another attempted booby trap attack, some kind of explosive…
Ponerology 101: The Psychopath’s Mask of Sanity
Harrison Koehli writes on Signs of The Times:
A Wall Street Psychopath?
In 1960 Bernie Madoff founded his Wall Street firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. As chairman of its Board of Directors until his arrest in December of 2008, Madoff saw his firm (and himself) rise to prominence on Wall Street, developing the technology that became NASDAQ, the first and largest electronic stock exchange in America, in the process.
A multimillionaire with over $800-million in shared assets with his wife and high school sweetheart, Ruth Alpern, Madoff was well-regarded as a financial mastermind and prolific philanthropist. He exuded an aura of wealth, confidence, and connections, and many trusted him as a pillar of the community. Sounds like a great guy, huh?
His humanitarian image was supported by his work for various nonprofit…
Lehman Brothers Was More Dangerous Than Enron
Here’s an excellent explanation from The Dylan Ratigan Show of an arcane “accounting gimmick”, employed by Lehman Brothers as the firm failed in 2007 and 2008.
According to the 2,200-page court examiner’s report this practice, known as “Repo 105″ (“Repo”? Really, why not call it “Steal 105″?), was like “a drug” propelling the bank to conceal the true nature of its financial health.
The collapse of “venerable” Wall Street investment house Lehman Brothers was the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Here’s Dylan Ratigan and Eliot Spitzer making sense of what is clearly a crime against the economic health of the United States:
Pope Benedict Under Fire for Transfer of Suspected Pedophile Priest in Germany
This latest scandal involves not just the pope’s inner circle, but the head honcho himself. NICOLE WINFIELD writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
VATICAN CITY — Germany’s sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese acknowledged it transferred a suspected pedophile priest while Benedict was in charge and criticism is mounting over a 2001 Vatican directive he penned instructing bishops to keep abuse cases secret.
The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict’s handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977–1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes — a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.
Benedict got a firsthand readout of the scope of the scandal Friday in his native land from the head of…
Florida Woman Arrested for Shaving Private Parts While Driving
CBS4 reports:
CUDJOE KEY ― You’ve heard of the dangers of texting while driving, and talking on the phone while behind the wheel of a car. But how many people actually debate the merits of doing a little, well, “landscaping” while on the road?
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, a two-car crash on Cudjoe Key was caused by a 37-year-old woman who was shaving her bikini area while in the driver’s seat. Her ex-husband was steering from the passenger seat.
Trooper Gary Dunick explained, “She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit.”
Megan Mariah Barnes and her ex-husband Charles Judy were driving southbound Tuesday morning when they slammed into the back of a pick-up driven by David Schoff of Palm Bay after he slowed to…
Splitting the Sky on Trial in Canada for Attempting to Arrest President Bush
Via YouTube:
A man named Splitting the Sky, tried to arrest former President George W. Bush for war crimes. He crossed police lines on one of President Bush’s visits to Canada and was arrested. He now faces criminal charges in court, the trial began today.
Pentagon Shooting Yet Another Sign of Boiling Anti-Government Sentiment
From Alternet:
The media are trying to find political affiliations for the Pentagon shooter, but they’re missing the big picture.
Another day, another violent anti-government kamikaze act. As the feds recover from Joseph Stack flying his airplane into an IRS building in Austin on Feb. 18 — leaving one dead and 13 injured — the media and government have another dead man to worry about.
Thursday night, after having driven cross-country from California to Washington, John Patrick Bedell walked up to a screening area at the Pentagon and starting firing his two semiautomatic weapons. In less than a minute, he’d wounded two police offers and received gunshot injuries that would later kill him.
Like Stack, Bedell was well-educated and left behind comprehensive material that outlined his longtime anger at the U.S. government. But his…
Juries Are Allowed To Judge The Law, Not Just The Facts
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
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In order to guard citizens against the whims of the King, the right to a trial by jury was established by the Magna Carta in 1215, and it has become one of the most sacrosanct legal aspects of British and American societies. We tend to believe that the duty of a jury is solely to determine whether someone broke the law. In fact, it’s not unusual for judges to instruct juries that they are to judge only the facts in a case, while the judge will sit in judgment of the law itself. Nonsense.
Juries are the last line of defense against the power abuses of the authorities. They have the right to judge the law. Even if a defendant committed a crime, a jury can refuse to render a guilty verdict. Among the main reasons why this might happen, according to attorney Clay S. Conrad:
When the defendant has already suffered enough, when it would be unfair or against the public interest for the defendant to be convicted, when the jury disagrees with the law itself, when the prosecution or the arresting authorities have gone “too far” in the single-minded quest to arrest and convict a particular defendant, when the punishments to be imposed are excessive or when the jury suspects that the charges have been brought for political reasons or to make an unfair example of the hapless defendant …
‘Never Get Busted’ Filmmaker Barry Cooper Arrested for ‘KopBusters’ Reality Show
KopBusters is a new project from Never Get Busted Again filmmaker and activist Barry Cooper:
[We] were discussing the thousands of citizens who sent emails to NeverGetBusted asking for help regarding krooked kops in their communities. Formerly one of our nation’s top drug enforcement officers, [Barry Cooper] has first hand knowledge of the korruption the American Drug War produces. He knew the constant flow of emails complaining of civil rights violations, specifically the 4th Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure), were true.
Barry Cooper says his arrest last week was in retaliation for his “KopBusting” and was politically motivated:
As hard as it was on my family for myself to go to jail … it’s nothing compared to how hundreds of thousands of families feel every year, because of those raids. Other families do not have the resources nor the experience or the knowledge to safely make it through a raid, so when they’re raided, they can’t and don’t and won’t fight back. So my family is fighting back for those families.
As far as I know, there’s no other human or family exposing cop corruption. The proof that cops will retaliate if you expose them, is our arrest and the raid they conducted on my home. For that exact reason, other families just take it. This happened to my family because I caught and filmed one of their officers stealing drug money.
Brother of Pentagon Shooter Describes a Path from Early Promise to Madness
In addition to the piece below from the Washington Post, I have included a video embed from what’s claimed to John Patrick Bedell’s YouTube Channel. The media reports first described him as a right-wing extremist, which has now been modified to him having an “anti-government” ideology.
Ian Shapira writes in the Washington Post:
John Patrick Bedell was an independent-minded and skeptical teenager — bright and questioning, with strongly held opinions, like countless other young people, his brother remembered Saturday.
Bedell, who went by Patrick, had vigorously objected to the government’s role in the 1991 Persian Gulf War since high school, telling relatives that the United States was trying to enrich itself and oil companies, said his brother, 33-year-old Jeffrey Bedell.
But, in about 2002, after the breakup of a long-term relationship with a girlfriend, his skepticism began to turn to deep-rooted suspicion. And soon it became paranoia, his brother said.
Patrick would point skyward, convinced that “they” were watching him. He believed songs he heard on the radio were meant as warnings. Deeply concerned, the Bedell family and close friends tried to seek medical help for him, but Patrick refused, convinced that he was privy to information that warranted his mind-set.
Michael Moore Talks Wall Street Crime with Bill Maher on ‘Real Time’
Michael Moore returns to the scene of the crime of our time, interviewed in front of the Goldman Sachs offices in New York City on the March, 5, 2010 episode of Real Time With Bill Maher. The Moore interview begins at around 2:20 in this clip:
Berlin Poker Heist Video
AOL News reports:
A group of robbers wielding machetes and handguns stormed a Berlin poker tournament Saturday — escaping with as much as $1.1 million in a stunt that was captured by German television cameras.
In what looks like a scene out of an action movie, four robbers in disguise burst into the poker competition at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, sending panicked players, hotel employees and spectators scrambling for the exits as security guards attempted to tackle the thieves…
Fears of A Second Crash Are Real: Congress Lacks The Appetite for Action…
What will it take? What are they waiting for? What part of the reality of a systemic crisis that will get worse don’t they get?
How is it possible that after near three years of economic turmoil, with possibly hundreds of TRILLIONs down the rabbit hole — not that anyone is counting or apparently can count — that the geniuses who run our economy still don’t “get” that the sh*t has already hit the fan? How many more jobs and homes have to be lost?
Michael Moore is not the only one predicting a second crash. Paul Krugman is all out words excoriating the Administration for its tepidness. Nouriel Roubini, who forecast the first meltdown, now says we are in serious danger of a “double-dip,” a lethal combo of rising inflation and deeper recession.
Woe to us if we can’t see the handwriting on so many walls.
The people in the know know that nothing has been fixed, know that all the stimuli have barely stimulated, that the new jobs bill will never generate the number of jobs that are needed, and that the banks have obscenely been raking in oodles of money thanks to all the financing taxpayers pumped into their coffers.
Even as the Obamaites finally get around to proposing a measure to break up the big banks and erode the notion of financial institutions being too big to fail, we have the New York Times telling us that Congress does not have the “appetite” — that’s the word they use — to tackle even modest financial reforms.
Why Are The Australian Media And Politicians Totally Silent On The Latest Crime Figures?
[disinformation editor's note: the author's native language is not English and he makes numerous spelling and grammar errors. We chose to publish the article notwithstanding this and hope that readers will value the author's opinions nonetheless.]
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) issued a media release on the 18th February 2010 under the heading: “Over a million cases of household property damage”, found that: “there are approximately 1.6 million incidents of malicious property damage” across Australia, and that: “912,500 households (11%) were victims of at least one incident of property damage in the 12 months” between 2008 and 2009.
In a more detailed report on the crime victimisation figure, ABS also released the following information:
In December 2008, 16.9 million people aged 15 years or over were living in private dwellings in Australia. It…
Kraft Foods Employees Sell Millions of Molded Tomato Products For Bribes
His name was Robert Watson. (There are three others.) WILLIAM NEUMAN reports in the New York Times:
Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants.
The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes.
Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices near Chicago and confronted Mr. Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a startling vein of corruption in the food industry. And because the scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato…
Utah Aborts Logic and Reason, But They Weren’t Using Them Anyway
Mutterhals writes on the Black Sun Gazette:
For most Americans, science is akin to magic. We don’t know how much of this shit occurs, but as long as everything keeps humming along smoothly we feel some sense of peace. The problem with this state of being is that it allows for all sorts of rival interpretations on things that are basically cut and dry.
I’ve had many arguments with religious types regarding abortion, and most cannot wrap their heads around the fact that the gestating fetus is indeed a part of the woman whose belly it’s in, which seems fairly straightforward. I don’t mean to go all Amazon woman on you, but I have to believe the fervently religious who protest in front of abortion clinics and wish death on doctors who…
Baby ‘Starved to Death’ Because He Did Not Say Amen
On the AP via the Sydney Morning Herald:
(Left) Ria Ramkissoon and her son Javon Thompson, (top right) Queen Antoinette and (bottom right) Trevia Williams.
For more than a week, Ria Ramkissoon watched passively as her one-year-old son wasted away, denied food and water because the older woman she lived with said it was God’s will. Javon Thompson was possessed by an evil spirit, Ramkissoon was told, because he didn’t say “Amen” during a mealtime prayer. Javon didn’t talk much, given his age, but he had said “Amen” before, Ramkissoon testified in a US court in Baltimore.
On the day Javon died, Ramkissoon was told to “nurture him back to life”. She mashed up some carrots and tried to feed the boy, but he was no longer able to swallow. Ramkissoon put her…
Woman Says Her Love Handles Saved Her Life
Via AP via Yahoo News:
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ — A Florida woman said her love handles saved her life when she was shot entering an Atlantic City bar. Samantha Lynn Frazier said she heard two pops when she walked into Herman’s Place early Saturday. The 35-year-old then felt pain and saw blood on her hand after she grabbed her left side. Atlantic City police said Frazier was an innocent bystander.
Detective Lt. Charles Love said the gunman was aiming for a man who escaped with a bullet hole in his down jacket. The suspect remains at large.
Frazier told The Press of Atlantic City that ‘I could have been dead. They said my love handles saved my life.” Frazier also told the newspaper that she had been “hollering” that she wanted to lose weight.…
Clay County, Kentucky: Precinct Worker Testifies She Stole Votes
Bill Estep writes in the Lexington Herald-Leader:
FRANKFORT — A former Clay County precinct worker testified Friday that top election officers in the county taught her how to change people’s choices on voting machines to steal votes in the May 2006 primary.
Wanda White testified that Clerk Freddy Thompson — the county’s chief election officer — helped show her how to manipulate voting machines along with Charles Wayne Jones, the Democratic election commissioner.
The scheme involved duping people to walk away from the voting computer before they had finished their selections, then changing their choices, said White, the Democratic judge in a precinct in Manchester.
White said she stole more than 100 votes that election. “It was easy done,” she said.
White said she also went into the booth with people who had sold their…
