43 years in solitary: Federal court blocks release of last imprisoned Angola 3 inmate
RT | June 9, 2015
Screenshot from RT video
A federal court blocked the release of the last imprisoned member of the Angola 3, after a Louisiana judge ruled the state must release Albert Woodfox. The 68-year-old has spent 43 years in solitary, arguably the longest term of such confinement.
The ‘Angola 3’ ‒ Albert Woodfox, Robert King and Herman Wallace ‒ were inmates accused of murdering a guard at Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, during a prison riot in 1972. Though they maintained their innocence, the three men were convicted of murder and spent decades in solitary confinement. Woodfox and Wallace insisted that they were implicated solely for their involvement in a prison chapter of the Black Panthers.
On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay of Woodfox’s release, temporarily halting the ruling of US District Judge James Brady. The appeals court will hear arguments from Louisiana on whether or not to overturn Brady’s decision after he issued an unconditional writ of habeas corpus on Monday, citing five main reasons in his ruling to release Woodfox from prison.
“The five factors include: Mr. Woodfox’s age and poor health, his limited ability to present a defense at a third trial in light of the unavailability of witnesses, this Court’s lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done onto Mr. Woodfox by spending over forty-years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr. Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial for a crime that occurred over forty years ago,” he wrote.
Woodfox suffers from Hepatitis C, diabetes, renal failure and a history hypertension, his lawyer told the (New Orleans) Times-Picayune.
“He a host of issues that elderly people commonly face, but his are in [the] context of [solitary confinement],” attonrey George Kendall said.
Woodfox has remained in solitary confinement for 43 years, which makes him the longest-serving solitary confinement prisoner in the US, Kendall told the Guardian in September.
Teenie Rogers, the widow of slain prison guard Brent Miller, has said she believes the two men were not involved in her husband’s death, and previously called for the release from prison, the Times-Picayune reported.
“If I were on that jury, I don’t think I would have convicted them,” she wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2008.
King was exonerated and he was released in 2001, while Wallace’s was overturned in October 2013. Wallace died of liver cancer three days after he was released, even though a Louisiana grand jury re-indicted him on his death bed. He was never retried.
Woodfox was first convicted of second-degree murder in 1973, a verdict that was overturned in 1992 by a state court due to “systematic discrimination.” He was re-indicted by a different grand jury in 1993, then reconvicted in 1998.
Brady overturned Woodfox’s second guilty verdict in 2008, citing ineffective counsel. The state appealed, and the case wound its way up to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That federal court reversed Brady’s ruling, saying that Woodfox couldn’t prove he would not have been convicted if he’d had a different defense team.
In 2012, Brady again overturned Woodfox’s conviction, and the state appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which then agreed with the case judge. In February, Louisiana state’s attorneys announced that a grand jury had indicted Woodfox for a third time in the Angola 3 case.
In his release order, Brady barred the state from conducting a third trial, ruling that further prosecution “would be unjust,” he wrote.
The state condemned the unconditional writ, having argued before Brady that releasing Woodfox is against the public interest and that the inmate “is a danger to the public and is a flight risk.”
“With today’s order, the Court would see fit to set free a twice-convicted murderer who is awaiting trial again for the brutal slaying of Corrections Officer Brent Miller,” Aaron Sadler, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Justice, told TheTimes-Picayune.
Woodfox’s attorneys, however, applauded the judge’s decision, saying that a third trial would have been unfair to their client.
“Now, because the State’s key witnesses are deceased, and Mr. Woodfox’s alibi witnesses are also deceased, there is no practical way for there to be a third trial which comports with the standards of a fair, American trial,” Kendall and Carine Williams said in a statement.
The state has long denied that Woodfox and Wallace were held in solitary confinement, but rather in a lockdown called “closed cell restricted,” which is designed to protect prisoners and guards.
“Contrary to popular lore, Woodfox and Wallace have never been held in solitary confinement while in the Louisiana penal system,” Louisiana Attorney General James Caldwell wrote in a 2013 statement. “They have always been able to communicate freely with other inmates and prison staff as frequently as they want. They have televisions on the tiers which they watch through their cell doors.”
King and watchdog groups define “closed cell restricted” lockdown as solitary, however. Since his 2001 release, King has advocated against the use of solitary confinement. He also fought for the freedom of his fellow Angola 3 defendants.
Amnesty International ‒ which has been part of a long-running, international campaign to free the Angola 3 ‒ praised the judge’s ruling as a “momentous step toward justice.”
“Woodfox has spent 43 years trapped in a legal process riddled with flaws,” Jasmine Heiss, a senior campaigner for Amnesty, said in a statement. “The only humane action that the Louisiana authorities can take now is to ensure his immediate release.”
The purpose state secrecy serves, from SEAL Team 6 down to Boston Police
PrivacySOS | June 7, 2015
The New York Times has published a long, detailed history of the Navy’s special operators in SEAL Team 6, also known as the Special Warfare Development Group, or by its insider name, DEVGRU. This paragraph caught my attention.
The unit’s advocates express no doubts about the value of such invisible warriors. “If you want these forces to do things that occasionally bend the rules of international law,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, referring to going into undeclared war zones, “you certainly don’t want that out in public.” Team 6, he added, “should continue to operate in the shadows.”
That perfectly sums up the mentality in the US National Security State, from the most elite Navy SEALs all the way down through the FBI, and increasingly, to our local police.
Just last week, the Boston Police Department and FBI killed a man in a confrontation in Roslindale, Massachusetts. The cops have said that Usaama Rahim was plotting to kill police officers, although they never prepared an arrest warrant for him. Instead of preparing to arrest him by obtaining a warrant and sending a tactical team to do it safely, a few plainclothes JTTF officers shot him dead after approaching him to have what they describe as a 7am chat in a CVS parking lot. The Feds say the FBI and BPD were following him 24 hours a day during the week preceding his killing. But asked how Rahim initially came to the attention of investigators, Boston police commissioner William Evans said he cannot say. That information, he says, is “classified.”
When we hear claims like this, it’s crucial to recall what purpose secrecy usually serves in the security context. The truth of the matter was spelled out in unusually frank terms by the former NATO commander quoted in the NYT story about special operators cited above. “If you want these forces to do things that occassionally bend the rules of…law, you certainly don’t want that out in the public.”
That’s an unacceptable approach to foreign war fighting. It borders on the authoritarian here at home. And we cannot lose sight of the connection between the two.
Assuming general tolerance for official secrecy regarding forever wars abroad won’t trickle down to the domestic policing space is a fool’s errand. We now see clearly what that trickle down means in Boston. Police and FBI killed a man, and now they’re saying National Security prevents them from talking about why. That should send a chill down your spine.
Instead of Training to Solve Crimes, Cops Team Up with the Military to Prep for War
By Gary Franchi | The Free Thought Project | June 9, 2015
NORTH VERNON, IN – While the media was focused on Bruce Jenner’s transformation into Caitlyn Jenner last week they missed the further transformation of the Indiana State Police into a militarized police Force.
Together with the Indiana National Guard they weren’t practicing solving crimes, they were practicing Fast Rope techniques from a Blackhawk helicopter.
The above video contains actual footage which the Free Thought Project secured from the department of Defense, of the exercises.
Unlike in the recent special forces exercise that just occurred in Michigan, using live ordinance at an abandoned public school, this exercise took place at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center.
Discarding their traditional police uniforms they adorned military fatigues and we’re fully equipped to kill.
This clearly contradicts Obama’s declaration of last month to crack down on the militarization of local police.
Even while Obama claims a crackdown is occurring, the local police can still use military equipment because through a loophole that equipment doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to the military.
All around us we are witnessing a military buildup enslave a free people while the media fixates on issues of no consequence to liberty.
The only way around it is to bypass them altogether. Use the power in your hands right now to inform others. Without an informed and activated citizenry can we ever be free.
So join Next News in the New Media Coalition with the Free Thought Project and share this to your social networks.
If you’d like to see what military equipment your local department has acquired through the Fed’s 1033 program, you can do so at this link.
163 Egyptians ‘forcibly disappeared’ in past 2 months, claims report
By Mostafa Mohie | Mada Masr | June 8, 2015
At least 163 people have been forcibly disappeared and illegally detained by security forces in the past two months alone, according to a document published by the Freedom for the Brave campaign on its official Facebook page.
According to the group’s breakdown of these cases, 66 activists have gone missing in this time period, and their whereabouts are still unknown. Another 64 people were only located after they had been detained without charges or interrogation for more than 24 hours in an undisclosed location, in violation of the Constitution. Another 31 cases cited in the document have not yet been verified by the group.
At least two of the people included in the list were allegedly killed by security forces, including Ain Shams University student Ismail Atito and Sinai resident Sabry al-Ghoul.
The majority of these incidents occurred in Cairo, where 60 cases of forced disappearances have been reported, followed by Kafr al-Sheikh with 31, 16 in Giza and 13 in Daqahlia. Suez, Matrouh, the Red Sea, the New Valley and South Sinai were the only governorates that did not report any such cases in the past two months.
Freedom for the Brave said that the majority of the information compiled to create this database was gathered from the group’s own research on certain cases it has been directly following, as well as from documentation compiled by other rights organizations and complaints circulated on social media by the families of the disappeared. The campaign also published the tracking numbers of the official complaints that families have submitted to the prosecution.
“Activists have been forcibly disappeared since July 2013, but this number is now increasing at an unprecedented rate,” Freedom for the Brave member Tarek Mohamed told Mada Masr.
He believes that the current crackdown is a general “continuation of the regime’s policies against any movement associated with the January 25 revolution,” but also a specific reaction against the April 6 Youth Movement’s call for a general strike on June 11.
But the crackdown is baseless, Mohamed argued. The call to strike does not violate any law, as it is a “call for the people to stay home in protest against deteriorating economic conditions and ongoing arrests,” he claimed.
Several of the people who have been illegally detained and held in undisclosed locations were later charged with belonging to the April 6 Youth Movement, which the courts ruled an illegal organization last year, Mohamed pointed out. They also faced accusations of coordinating with the banned Muslim Brotherhood group and calling for the June 11 strike.
“Those accusations were leveled against activist Dalia Radwan, the only one released on bail, and a member of the Helwan University Student Union, Ahmed Khattab, who appeared in front of the prosecution bearing signs of torture,” Mohamed said. “Nagwa Ezz and Ahmed al-Zayyat faced similar charges”.
However, Mohamed added that the prosecution has since reversed its decision to release Radwan and remanded her into custody for 15 days pending investigations.
Mohamed also spoke of photojournalist Israa al-Taweel, Sohaib Mohamed and Amr Mohamed, who were illegally detained on June 1. Their families and lawyers have still not been able to obtain any information on their whereabouts.
“We fear that those who disappeared face the same fate of Atito,” Mohamed said, referring to the Ain Shams University student who disappeared on May 19 after he was allegedly summoned out of an exam room by a security officer and another unidentified man. He was found dead the following day. The Interior Ministry released a statement claiming the student was involved in the assassination of a police officer, and had been killed in an exchange of fire with police forces when he tried to evade arrest.
The ministry has denied all reports of forced disappearances. One source from the ministry told the privately owned newspaper Al-Shorouk that “we are in a state of law and we cannot detain citizens in the streets unlawfully. Whoever is arrested faces accusations according to judicial orders.”
Translated by Mai Shams El-Din
Meet RCEP, a Trade Agreement in Asia That’s Even Worse Than TPP or ACTA
By Jeremy Malcolm | EFF | June 4, 2015
It’s been a big few weeks for leaked trade agreements. Just when we thought we had seen all the leaked text of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), Wikileaks went ahead and published some more yesterday. And on the same day, a leaked draft of the intellectual property chapter of yet another trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was leaked by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI).
If we described TISA as a treaty you’ve never heard of, RCEP has been even more obscure. RCEP can be compared with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), except that rather than being driven by the United States, it is being driven by the ten-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), with the addition of their trading partners from the broader Asia-Pacific region including most notably India and China, who are absent from the TPP pact.
We might then, expect that RCEP could be the “anti-TPP”; a vehicle for countries to push back against the neo-colonial ambitions of the United States, by proposing alternative, home-grown standards on the TPP’s thorniest issues such as copyright, patents, and investor protection. Some members of RCEP have indeed spoken out against the TPP because of its unbalanced promotion of strict copyright and patent laws, and some commentators have characterized RCEP and the TPP as competitors.
But based on yesterday’s leaks, the promise of RCEP pushing back against the TPP is being squandered. Instead, its IP chapter is turning out as a carbon copy. The text for the chapter that South Korea proposes, which KEI rightly and succinctly describes as “terrible”, calls for many of the same provisions and more, including:
- Copyright terms of life plus 70 years.
- Prohibiting temporary copies of works in electronic form (a thoroughly misguided and anti-innovation provision that has even been erased from the TPP).
- Confining copyright limitations and exceptions to those which comply with the three-step test, which ignores exceptions, such as the quotation right, that are exempted from that test under international law.
- Remuneration rights to performers for radio airplay, which goes beyond U.S. law.
- A prohibition on the Internet retransmission of broadcasts, mirroring proposals for a Broadcast Treaty that would inhibit the free use of public domain material.
- A prohibition on trafficking in devices used to circumvent DRM, even if the circumvention is for fair use purposes.
- Inflated awards for copyright or patent infringement, by calculating damages payable for the infringing works on the assumption that they were sold at full retail market value.
- Granting ex officio authority to customs authorities that allows them to seize goods suspected of being infringing at the border, without even the need for a complaint by the claimed rightsholder.
- Criminal penalties for “commercial scale” copyright and trademark infringement, even where the infringer has not sought or made any profit from the activity.
- Criminal penalties against those who record any part of an audiovisual work in a cinema, regardless of whether the clips recorded would amount to fair use, for example because they are to be used in criticism or review.
- Suspension of the Internet accounts of repeat infringers, and censorship of bulletin boards that are “considered to seriously damage the sound use of copyrighted works” (whatever that means).
- Authorizing a fast-track process for rightsholders to obtain personal information of alleged infringers from their ISP, without a judicial order.
This draft is much worse than a previous leaked Japanese proposal that was earlier published by KEI. It’s far worse than ACTA, and is even worse than the most recent leaked draft of the TPP. Far from setting up a positive alternative to the TPP, South Korea is channeling the USTR at its worst here—what on earth are they thinking? The answer may be that, having been pushed into accepting unfavorably strict copyright, patent, and trademark rules in the process of negotiating its 2012 free trade agreement with the United States, Korea considers that it would be at a disadvantage if other countries were not subject to the same restrictions.
There are other examples of this kind of vicious cycle; for example, when negotiating its FTA with the United States, Australia resisted increasing its copyright term to life plus 70 years (knowing that it would derive no benefit from doing so), before eventually capitulating. Now Australia (along with Chile and Singapore, both of which were also forced into increasing their copyright terms in similar circumstances), are amongst those pushing extended copyright terms to other countries in the TPP. (We know this from the first leaked text of the TPP IP chapter, which reveals them as proponents of a life plus 70 year term.)
Since RCEP is shaping up as even more extreme than the TPP, one might well ask with resignation whether concluding a trade agreement with balanced IP rules is actually impossible. Surprisingly, it isn’t. Consider the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership [PDF] (TPSEP), yet another trade agreement in the so-called “noodle bowl” of bilateral and multilateral Asian FTAs. If the TPSEP sounds like a relative of the TPP, that’s because it is. In fact, it’s the predecessor of that broader agreement, that was concluded in 2006 between Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, and Singapore, and remains in force between those countries.
For those of us used to FTAs that ratchet up standards of copyright, patent and trademark protection, the TPSEP is somewhat remarkable. It explicitly acknowledges “the need to achieve a balance between the rights of right holders and the legitimate interests of users and the community with regard to protected subject matter,” but goes further than this to give some specific examples of user-friendly policies that countries should be permitted to adopt, including:
- Respecting the first sale doctrine, even for works sold across borders.
- Prohibiting companies from removing your fair use rights through small print in license agreements.
- Allowing users to bypass DRM for fair use purposes.
These are the kind of pro-user rules that could have differentiated RCEP from the TPP, if its members were bold enough to think outside the box. And since RCEP is still at an earlier stage of discussion, they still can: Korea’s proposed rules are an opening gambit, not an agreed text.
Unfortunately, the process of negotiation of the RCEP is just as closed as that of the TPP, which makes it the wrong place for IP rules altogether. But now that the text has been leaked and it has been revealed to be so atrocious, we can begin to build pressure for the negotiating countries to open up the process. If, heaven forbid, the TPP eventually passes—and perhaps even more so if it doesn’t—the Asia-Pacific region needs to ensure that its trade regime doesn’t lock in restrictive and punitive copyright, patent, and trademark rules.
Family Raided by SWAT and their Dog Shot, for Being Unable to Pay Utility Bill
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | June 5, 2015
St. Louis, MO — Nothing says Police State USA quite like a SWAT team raiding a family home and killing their dog because they are unable to pay their natural gas bill.
The woman whose dog was killed and home destroyed by SWAT officers is Angela Zorich, and her story about her police state experience will shock the conscience.
According to a federal lawsuit filed this month, Zorich was the victim of a massive military-style raid and subsequent puppycide. The raid was carried out because police said they needed “to check if her home had electricity and natural gas service.”
“This is an example of police overreaching and using excessive force to get a family out of their house,” said Kenneth Chackes to the Riverfront Times, the attorney who represents Zorich.
According to the lawsuit, on April 25, 2014, St. Louis County Police officers came to her house. Her son cussed at them. They inspected the home’s exterior and placed a “Problem Properties” sticker on the front window.
Days after being publicly shamed and labeled by the St. Louis Police Department as a “Problem,” on April 28, Zorich called them to follow up. She was told by police that she was being investigated for failing to have natural gas or electric service; two violations against city code.
Zorich admitted to the police that she did not have gas, but said that she did have electricity. Zorich asked for another inspection to prove that she had the utilities. The officer told her that was fine, but that the investigation would continue.
The next day, on April 29, 2014, the home of Angela Zorich was raided by multiple officers from the St. Louis County Police Tactical Response Unit.
The Riverfront Times outlines the details of the lawsuit:
Zorich was at home with several family members and her pit bull, Kiya, when a St. Louis County Police Tactical Response Unit burst through the door without knocking, according to her suit. The unit had at least five officers with M-4 rifles, supported by at least eight uniformed officers.
The officers entered so quickly, Zorich’s suit alleges, that Kiya didn’t even have time to bark. A tactical officer fired three shots into the dog, and the dog’s “bladder and bowels released and she fell to the floor.” The dog “was laying on the floor in her own waste and blood struggling to breathe. She had a gaping hole in her chest.”
Zorich claims the officers kept trying to talk to her about the natural gas, but she was focused on her dog, whom she’d raised as a puppy and who (she says) had “never shown aggression to any person.”
At one point in the raid, Zorich alleges, an officer pointed his firearm at her son’s head and said “One word, motherfucker, and I’ll put three in you.”
Zorich was subsequently taken into custody at the police station. When she was finally let go and allowed to return to her home, she found it to be completely trashed. Beds had been overturned, and items that were once on shelves had been thrown to the floor.
The citations issued to Zorich, which had allegedly justified the heavily militarized raid on her home, were for substandard siding, guard rail, screens, window glass and deck.
A dozen armed men dressed for war, were dispatched to a woman’s home, killed her dog, and kidnapped her because of some moldy wood and her inability to pay her gas bill.
In what world is this considered “justice”?
The apologists will say that Angela Zorich provoked police into this action against her. If she didn’t want to be raided, they will say, she should have just paid her gas bill. The thought of the raid being retaliatory in nature won’t enter their minds.
Named in the lawsuit is the county of St. Louis and two officers, Corey Zavorka and Robert M. Rinck. Her allegations include unlawful seizure and unlawful infliction of emotional distress (for the killing of the dog) and unlawful retaliation.
Hopefully, with her legal team, Zorich will get the actual justice she deserves.
The Oversold ‘USA Freedom Act’
By Norman Solomon | Consortium News | June 5, 2015
The morning after final passage of the USA Freedom Act, while some foes of mass surveillance were celebrating, Thomas Drake sounded decidedly glum. The new law, he told me, is “a new spy program.” It restarts some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act and further codifies systematic violations of Fourth Amendment rights.
Later on Wednesday, here in Oslo as part of a “Stand Up For Truth” tour, Drake warned at a public forum that “national security” has become “the new state religion.” Meanwhile, his Twitter messages were calling the USA Freedom Act an “itty-bitty step” — and a “stop/restart kabuki shell game” that “starts w/ restarting bulk collection of phone records.”
That downbeat appraisal of the USA Freedom Act should give pause to its celebrants. Drake is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency — and a whistleblower who endured prosecution and faced decades in prison for daring to speak truthfully about NSA activities. He ran afoul of vindictive authorities because he refused to go along with the NSA’s massive surveillance program after 9/11.
Drake understands how the NSA operates from the highest strategic levels. He notes a telling fact that has gone virtually unacknowledged by anti-surveillance boosters of the USA Freedom Act: “NSA approved.” So, of course, did the top purveyor of mendacious claims about the U.S. government’s surveillance programs — President Barack Obama — who eagerly signed the “USA Freedom” bill into law just hours after the Senate passed it.
A comparable guardian of our rights, House Speaker John Boehner, crowed: “This legislation is critical to keeping Americans safe from terrorism and protecting their civil liberties.”
While some organizations with civil-liberties credentials have responded to the USA Freedom Act by popping open champagne bottles at various decibels, more sober assessments have also been heard. Just after senators approved the bill and sent it to the president, Demand Progress issued a statement pointing out: “The Senate just voted to reinstitute certain lapsed surveillance authorities — and that means that USA Freedom actually made Americans less free.”
Another astute assessment came from CREDO, saying that Congress had just created “sweeping new authorities for the government to conduct unconstitutional mass surveillance of Americans.”
As it happened, the President signed the USA Freedom Act into law while four U.S. “national security” whistleblowers — Drake as well as Coleen Rowley (FBI), Jesselyn Radack (Justice Department) and Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) — were partway through a “Stand Up For Truth” speaking tour from London to Oslo toStockholm to Berlin. Traveling as part of the tour, I’ve been struck by the intensity of interest from audiences in the countries we’ve already visited — Great Britain and Norway — where governments have moved to worsen repressive policies for mass surveillance.
Photo of (left to right) Kirk Wiebe, Coleen Rowley, Raymond McGovern, Daniel Ellsberg, William Binney, Jesselyn Radack, and Thomas Drake by Kathleen McClellan (@McClellanKM) via Twitter
Right now, many people in Europe and elsewhere who care about civil liberties and want true press freedom are looking at the United States: to understand what an aroused citizenry might be able to accomplish, seeking to roll back a dangerous accumulation of power by an ostensibly democratic government. Let’s not unwittingly deceive them — or ourselves — about how much ground the U.S. surveillance state has lost so far.
Rand Paul vs. the NSA
By EOIN HIGGINS | CounterPunch | June 5, 2015
Rand Paul’s temporary stopping of the Patriot Act’s bulk metadata collection has spurred a predictable assault from both the mainstream left and the mainstream right. Two particular examples show the strange political mating that can take place when interests align. First, on Sunday night, John McCain grumbled on the Senate floor that Rand Paul was letting the world burn to score political points. Then, on Monday, Salon published an article arguing that the collection of big data is a net positive for people of color and that Paul’s attack on the NSA is a function of his white privilege.
At this point, it appears John McCain has no idea what the hell he’s talking about from day to day. We all saw the writing on the wall when he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. He hasn’t been getting better. This is an old, confused, angry man whose answer to every problem is war and/or authoritarian domestic policies.
As for Salon, whether or not Rand Paul’s opposition is a function of white privilege is irrelevant in this case. The fact that he’s a Senator in the first place is a function of white privilege. Opposing the authoritarian horror show that is the Patriot Act is important enough that this really doesn’t matter. Same thing with the dismissive argument from the mainstream left that Paul is insincere in opposing the Patriot Act. It just doesn’t matter. What’s important is that he’s opposing it.
The alliance between Salon and McCain against Rand Paul is an interesting coming together of political foes. Essentially, their loathing of Paul overcomes their loathing of each other. For McCain, making common cause with a liberal online magazine that spent the entirety of the 2008 Presidential election cycle savaging him must be an odd feeling. And for Salon, allying with the man who gave us the Palins must be similarly odd.
But it makes sense when you think about it.
Salon’s attacks on Rand Paul are at least in large part due to the possibility he may be the opponent to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Add to that the fact that President Obama wants the Patriot Act and data collection renewed and editor in chief Joan Walsh’s particular antipathy to Paul, and you have a perfect storm of political hay making.
And as for McCain, who has no possibility of ever entertaining another run at the presidency, the only thing he has left is his waning influence on a Republican Party that is moving further and further away from his neocon ideology. To McCain, Rand Paul is the most visible representative of this wing taking over his Grand Old Party.
This has produced the odd political bedfellows of Salon and John McCain. Both despise Rand Paul for their own reasons. And both apparently support the collection of bulk data, albeit in distinct variances of enthusiasm. I’m hesitant to assign the blame for Salon taking this position on the fact that it is President Obama asking for the draconian policy, but there’s no denying that when it was George W Bush asking for political support for the Patriot Act, the general mood at the site was different.
As far as McCain goes, he’s a senile crank who hasn’t met a war he doesn’t love or a civil liberty he doesn’t want to take away from the general public in the name of “security” in the last decade and a half.
Until the inevitable reauthorization of the bulk collection of the phone records of the American people, we can expect more of these attacks on Rand Paul from the representatives of the Democratic and Republican party establishments. On the one hand, the bulk collection of metadata is an anti-Constitutional atrocity. On the other hand, it will be nice for people to see the “rare” bipartisanship of the security state’s apologists on the right and the further right joining together against the junior Senator from Kentucky.
Police search house, prepare charges against German Holocaust skeptic
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | June 4, 2015
German media have reported that police have raided the house of 86-year-old Ursula Haverbeck, a German lady who has publicly doubted the Holocaust story.
A report in Mindener Tageblatt says:
“The public prosecution department of the city of Bielefeld has been investigating a case of “incitement to hatred“ (Volksverhetzung) against … Ursula Haverbeck. Now, a new lawsuit was added: prosecutors of Niedersachsen’s State Office of Criminal Investigations have searched the houses of Vlotho resident Haverbeck with the support of authorities of the city of Herford. The houses of three further accused were also searched on that day.”
Haverbeck has been constantly pursued by German authorities for her nonconformist opinions about the Holocaust. In Germany, a self-professed ‘democracy,’ individuals do not have the right to question establishment myths about the Second World War. The public is forced to accept the self-serving interpretations of the winners of World War II under penalty of fines and imprisonment.
The government of Germany should be boycotted and condemned until the present Stasi-like police state is disbanded.
Tony Blair to head European council on anti-Semitism
By Gilad Atzmon | June 4, 2015
The Guardian reports this morning that Tony Blair is to take on a new role leading the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation.
This is no doubt great news. The 21st century’s greatest war criminal is called to lead the campaign against ‘extremism’ which he himself instigated. Truth be told, it only makes sense to appoint a mass murderer to such a delicate job because only a genocidal character could be intimately familiar with the nitty gritty of institutional hatred and intolerance.
The British former prime minister who launched an immoral interventionist war has been appointed as chairman of the European Council on Tolerance following his spectacular success as a Peace Envoy to the Middle East introducing reconciliation and new harmony to the entire region.
In a joint article (paywall) with Moshe Kantor, the president of the council of the European Jewish Congress, Blair recently expressed his devotion to the Jews and the primacy of their suffering. “Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem, but one infecting the whole of society and needs to be tackled for the sake of us all.”
The penny dropped. Blair, seemingly understands his contribution to Jew hatred. Next time when he launches a global criminal war with no end he must make sure that rather than using Lord Cash Point Levy as his chief fund raiser he should consider using someone else, preferably a ‘gentile’ (If he finds one). Even Blair must have grasped by now that the clear association between his Ziocon war and a Jewish financier is ‘not just a Jewish problem.’ With 5 million people dead in the region it infects the whole universe.
It is encouraging to learn that the council chaired by Blair doesn’t really believe in elementary freedom, quite the opposite, it believes it should promote legislation to confront ‘holocaust denial’, and this makes a lot of sense to me. As a person who perpetrated a holocaust himself, Blair is interested in laws that would stop any attempt to narrating and revising the past. I totally agree. I believe that all history except the Jewish one, must be abolished all together and immediately. We are moving forward, we progress, we should invest in the future rather than attempt to find out what really happened let alone why.
Virginia Cop Shoots to Death an Unarmed Man… for the Second Time
By Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley | AllGov | June 3, 2015
A Virginia police officer has shot to death a second unarmed man, four years after doing it the first time.
In 2011, Officer Stephen Rankin of Portsmouth, Virginia, killed Kirill Denyakin, shooting him 11 times, after responding to a 911 call about the 26-year-old behaving drunkenly and aggressively outside a building in which he’d been staying. Rankin claimed at the time that Denyakin charged him and reached into his waistband.
Rankin, a former U.S. Navy sailor, avoided indictment for the shooting, but was limited to desk duty for three years.
Then, one day before the fourth anniversary of Denyakin’s shooting, The Guardian reported, Rankin shot and killed William Chapman, an 18-year-old unarmed black teenager suspected of shoplifting from a Walmart. Neither Portsmouth police nor Walmart would say if Chapman actually took anything from the store.
Prior to the Denyankin shooting, police supervisors had been warned that Rankin had use-of-force issues and was “dangerous,” The Guardian reported. After that shooting, Rankin commented on a local newspaper website under a pseudonym defending the shooting. He later admitted to posting the comments.
Portsmouth Police Chief Edward Hargis refused to say why Rankin had been allowed to stay on the street after the problems had been reported. “That’s a personnel matter and I can’t comment.” He added: “I’m not going to comment on what people may say, allegation-wise,” he told The Guardian.
Rankin is now on administrative leave.
To Learn More:
Stephen Rankin: The Military-Trained Officer Who Killed Two Unarmed Men (by Jon Swaine, The Guardian )
William Chapman: Unarmed 18-Year-Old Shot Dead by Officer Who Killed Before (by Jon Swaine, The Guardian )
Death of Kirill Denyakin (Wikipedia)
Neocon Fugitive Given Ukraine Province
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | June 2, 2015
The latest political move by the U.S.-backed “pro-democracy” regime in Ukraine was to foist on the people of Odessa the autocratic Georgian ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, a neoconservative favorite and currently a fugitive from his own country which is seeking him on charges of human rights violations and embezzlement.
New York Times correspondent David M. Herszenhorn justified this imposition of a newly minted Ukrainian citizen on the largely Russian-speaking population of Odessa by saying that “the Ukrainian public’s general willingness to accept the appointment of foreigners to high-level positions underscores the deep lack of trust in any government after nearly a quarter-century of mismanagement and corruption.”
But Herszenhorn made no apparent effort to gauge how willing the people of Odessa are to accept this choice of a controversial foreign politician to govern them. The pick was made by President Petro Poroshenko and is just the latest questionable appointment by the post-coup regime in Kiev.
For instance, shortly after the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the new U.S.-endorsed authorities in Kiev named thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk in southeastern Ukraine. Kolomoisky, regarded as one of Ukraine’s most corrupt billionaires, ruled the region as his personal fiefdom until he was ousted by Poroshenko earlier this year in a dispute over Kolomoisky’s use of strong-arm tactics to maintain control of Ukrainian energy companies. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Oligarchs Turn on Each Other.”]
Poroshenko also has granted overnight Ukrainian citizenship to other controversial foreigners to hold key positions in his government, including Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, an ex-U.S. State Department official whose qualifications included enriching herself through her management of a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund for Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Finance Minister’s ‘American Values’.”]
Beyond his recruitment of questionable outsiders, Poroshenko has made concessions to Ukraine’s far-right nationalists, including signing legislation to extend official recognition to Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews and Poles during World War II. In a bitter irony, the new law coincided with the world’s celebration in April of the 70th anniversary of Russian and U.S. troops bringing an end to the Holocaust. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine Commemorates the Holocaust.”]
Now Poroshenko has given Saakashvili his own province to govern, rescuing him from an obscure existence in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. According to a New York Times profile last September, Saakashvili was there “writing a memoir, delivering ‘very well-paid’ speeches, helping start up a Washington-based think tank and visiting old boosters like Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state.”
McCain and Nuland were key neocon backers of the coup that ousted Yanukovych and touched off the bloody civil war that has killed thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, while also reviving Cold War tensions between the West and Russia. Before the coup, McCain urged on right-wing protesters with promises of U.S. support and Nuland was overheard hand-picking Ukraine’s new leadership, saying “Yats is the guy,” a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who became prime minister after the coup.
According to the Times profile, Saakashvili also “entertained David H. Petraeus, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” another neocon favorite who ran into legal trouble himself when the FBI discovered he had shared top-secret information with his biographer/lover and then lied about it to FBI agents. Petraeus, however, received only a suspended sentence and a fine in contrast to intelligence-community whistleblowers who have faced serious prison time.
Models, Nude Artist and Massage Therapist
While cooling his heels in Brooklyn, Saakashvili fumed over charges leveled against him by prosecutors in his home country of Georgia. According to the Times profile, Saakashvili was accused of “using public money to pay for, among other things, hotel expenses for a personal stylist, hotel and travel for two fashion models, Botox injections and hair removal, the rental of a yacht in Italy and the purchase of artwork by the London artist Meredith Ostrom, who makes imprints on canvases with her naked, painted body. …
“Mr. Saakashvili is also accused of using public money to fly his massage therapist, Dorothy Stein, into Georgia in 2009. Mr. Saakashvili said he received a massage from Ms. Stein on ‘one occasion only,’ but Ms. Stein said she received 2,000 euros to massage him multiple times, including delivering her trademark ‘bite massage.’ ‘He gave me a bunch of presents,’ said Ms. Stein, who splits her time between Berlin and Hoboken,” including a gold necklace.
The Georgian prosecutors also have charged Saakashvili with human rights violations for his violent crackdown on political protesters in 2007.
However, in Herszenhorn’s May 31 article about Saakashvili’s appointment as Odessa’s governor, the Times correspondent (who has behaved more like a pro-Kiev propagandist than an objective reporter) wrote that the criminal charges against Saakashvili and other officials from his government are “widely perceived as a campaign of political retribution.”
Herszenhorn didn’t say where he had gained that perception, but it is true that Official Washington’s neoconservatives will broach no criticism of their longtime hero Saakashvili, who was a big booster of the Iraq War and even named a boulevard in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in honor of U.S. President George W. Bush.
Saakashvili apparently felt that his close ties to the Bush administration would protect him in summer 2008 when he provoked a border clash with Russian troops over the rebellious territory of South Ossetia. Georgia suffered a sharp military defeat and Saakashvili’s political star quickly faded among his countrymen, leading to his party’s rejection at the polls and his exile.
But Saakashvili’s love of the high life might find similar attitudes among some of the other “carpetbaggers” arriving in Ukraine to take Ukrainian citizenship and get top jobs in the post-coup government. Estonian Jaanika Merilo, an associate of Finance Minister Jaresko’s, was brought in to handle Ukraine’s foreign investments, but Merilo is best known on the Internet for her provocative party photos.
Janika Merilo, the Estonian being put in charge of arranging foreign investments into Ukraine. (From her Facebook page via Zero Hedge)
Janika Merilo, an Estonian brought into the Ukrainian government to oversee foreign investments. (From her Facebook page via Zero Hedge)
Yet, as much fun as some of these well-connected politicians and bureaucrats may be having in Kiev, the plight of the average Ukrainian continues to worsen as “free-market” reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund take hold. Those “reforms” have included slashing old-age pensions, removing worker protections, and hiking the price of heating fuel.
Now, the latest “democratic” reform is to appoint a neocon politician on the run from his own country’s criminal justice system to govern what is likely to be a hostile population of ethnic Russians in Odessa.
On May 2, 2014, neo-Nazi street fighters set fire to Odessa’s Trade Union Building and burned alive dozens of ethnic Russians who had taken refuge there. The building was also spray-painted with Nazi slogans, including praise for the Galician SS, a Ukrainian force that fought with the Nazis and slaughtered Jews. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Dr. Strangelove Reality.”]
Overseeing that tense city now is an unelected ex-Georgian neocon politician who is facing charges in his homeland for human rights abuses and misuse of government funds — more “democracy promotion” in the tragic land of Ukraine.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com)
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