American Cops Now Steal More Property than All US Burglars Combined
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | November 17, 2015
For decades now, federal government and their cohorts in law enforcement have been carrying out theft of the citizenry on a massive scale. We’re not talking about taxes, but an insidious power known as Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF).
The 1980’s-era laws were designed to drain resources from powerful criminal organizations, but CAF has become a tool for law enforcement agencies across the U.S. to steal money and property from countless innocent people.
No criminal charge is required for this confiscation, resulting in easy inflows of cash for law enforcement departments and the proliferation of abuse. This phenomenon is known as “policing for profit.”
In the last 25 years, the amount of “profit” stolen through CAF has skyrocketed.
According to the US Department of Justice, the value of asset forfeiture revoceries by US authorities from 1989-2010 was $12,667,612,066, increasing on average 19.5% per year.
In 2008, law enforcement took over $1.5 billion from the American public. While this number seems incredibly large, just a few years later, in 2014, that number tripled to nearly $4.5 billion.
When we examine these numbers, and their nearly exponential growth curve, it appears that police in America are getting really good at separating the citizen from their property — not just really good, criminally good.
To put this number into perspective, according to the FBI, victims of burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses in 2014.
That means that law enforcement in America has stolen $600,000,000 more from Americans that actual criminal burglars.
When police surpass the criminal accomplishments of those they claim to protect you from, there is a serious problem.
The good news is that Americans are waking up to this Orwellian notion of police robbing the citizens, and they are taking a stand.
Even police officers are taking a stand against CAF. In an exclusive interview in September, the Free Thought Project talked officer Stephen Mills, chief of police at the Apache, Oklahoma police department. Mills became an outspoken advocate against CAF, after he became a victim of it.
The idea of thieving cops has also united organizations on opposite ends of the political spectrum. In October, the ACLU and the Koch Brothers came together to stop the inherent police theft in America.
While the police keep grabbing your property, it is important to remain vigilant. Only through a lesser ignorance and the spreading of information will we overcome this blatant tyranny. Please share this article with your friends and family to wake them up to the criminal reality that is – civil asset forfeiture.
Corbyn’s rejection of ‘shoot-to-kill’ causes Labour rupture
RT | November 17, 2015
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been criticized by members of his own shadow cabinet after publically opposing a “shoot-to-kill” counter-terrorism policy on British streets.
Days after the Paris terror attacks the UK government ordered special forces to “shoot to kill” if Islamic State terrorists were to threaten a large number of people.
During a parliamentary meeting on Monday, a clear division among Labour Party factions emerged when MPs questioned Corbyn’s views on the policy and his stance on the legality of the extrajudicial execution of Mohammed Emwazi (also known as ‘Jihadi John’).
Ann Coffey and John Mann were among MPs to challenge their leader. A spokesperson for Corbyn said only a small minority of MPs had expressed themselves “volubly” during the meeting.
Corbyn was asked if he considered the strike that killed Emwazi to be legal. According to the Telegraph, he refused to answer, angering several Labour MPs.
‘I can’t speak for Corbyn’
Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn admitted he is struggling to defend Corbyn’s stance on the shoot-to-kill policy.
In an interview with the BBC, Benn said he “can’t speak” for the leader of his party.
“I can’t speak for Jeremy in relation to the particular circumstances he may have been thinking about,” he said.
He added it is “reasonable” to kill a terrorist where there is an “immediate threat to life.”
“All I can say is what is the position of the party. The long-standing position in the UK – there are procedures, it has got to be reasonable, it has got to be proportionate. But you have got to protect human life.”
Benn’s comments contrasted with Corbyn’s remarks when he was asked if he would be pleased to order the military or police to follow such a policy.
‘Shoot-to-kill policy is dangerous’
On Monday, Corbyn called the policy dangerous. “I’m not happy with the shoot-to-kill policy in general – I think that is quite dangerous and I think [the policy] can often be counterproductive,” he told the BBC.
“I think you have to have security that prevents people firing off weapons where they can, there are various degrees of doing things as we know.
“But the idea you end up with a war on the streets is not a good thing. Surely you have to work to try and prevent these things happening, that’s got to be the priority,” he added.
However, Corbyn’s aide insisted he is not opposed to the policy in all cases, adding he is “committed to what the existing law is – that any armed action by the police has to be proportionate to the threat.”
‘We are as ruthless as they are’
Commenting on the policy, Metropolitan Police (MPS) Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said officers working in terror situations would need to know they are supported when they are forced to pull the trigger.
“We work within the law and we make sure the people on the other side – the terrorists – know that we’re as determined as they are, we’re as ruthless as they are,” he told LBC radio.
“We work within the law, but the officers have some difficult decisions. They deserve all our support.”
Hamas: Banning the Islamic Movement is an Israeli racist measure
Palestine Information Center – November 17, 2015
GAZA – The Hamas Movement strongly denounced the Israeli decision to outlaw the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied lands as “an act of racism.”
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri stated in a press release on Tuesday that the Israeli ban measure against the Islamic Movement targets the Arab presence in the 1948 occupied territories.
“The Israeli decision is aimed at punishing the Islamic Movement and preventing it from continuing its role in protecting the Aqsa Mosque,” Abu Zuhri added, calling the decision as “a badge of honor” to the Islamic Movement.
The Hamas spokesman called on the international community to intervene to curb such Israeli racist measures against the Palestinians.
The Israeli security cabinet on Tuesday declared the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied lands an unlawful organization, effectively outlawing the group led by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah.
Following the decision, police forces raided over a dozen of the group’s offices in the 1948 occupied lands, seizing computers, files and funds.
The Israeli occupation authority also froze its bank accounts and said that 17 organizations affiliated with the Movement were served with orders to close down.
The police also called in several of the Movement’s officials for questioning, including Sheikh Salah, his deputy Sheikh Kamal Khatib, and the organization’s director of Jerusalem and Aqsa Mosque affairs, Salman Abu Ahmad.
Eye-witness account of a murder: ‘They didn’t want her alive, they want her dead, they meant to kill her”
International Solidarity Movement | November 16, 2015
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – On 25th October 2015, 17-year old Dania Arsheid was gunned down by Israeli forces in front of the Ibrahimi mosque in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) and left to bleed to death. One of the shopkeepers nearby the Ibrahimi mosque witnessed the events leading up to this ruthless murder and agreed to make a statement.
After school finished around 1:20pm on that fateful Sunday, Dania was on her way from the Palestinian souq (market) in the Old City of al-Khalil towards the Ibrahimi mosque. She passed the first revolving gate and the metal detector without any problems – the metal detector did not indicate any metal objects. When passing the second revolving door, soldiers at the nearby checkpoint at the entrance of the mosque called for her to come there. Upon hearing this, the witness, who owns a shop, just meters away from the revolving gate, decided to go through the checkpoint to make sure that the girl was okay.
Dania passed yet another metal detector at the checkpoint at the mosque entrance and put her bag on the table there, as requested by the Israeli forces. They searched her entire bag but they were not able to find anything. Regardless of that, Israeli forces kept asking
Dania ‘where is the knife’ over and over again – completely ignoring her answer that ‘there is no knife’. When one of the soldiers suddenly shot a bullet between her feet yelling at her, she raised her hands and moved back down the stairs. Nevertheless, the soldiers continued questioning her aggressively about a knife – even though she had her hands raised and her bag had been searched with no knife found; and Dania repeatedly asserting that she did not have any knife.
After the first shot was fired, more and more soldiers arrived to the checkpoint, so that it was impossible to tell how many of them shot the 6-7 fatal bullets at Dania – a girl who had her hands up in the air, who had been searched extensively and who had at no point posed any threat. Immediately after she was gunned down, Palestinians in the area – including the witness – were forced to move back through the checkpoint into the souq. The soldiers pointed their assault rifles at the witnesses pushing them out of the area and immediately afterwards closed off the checkpoint for anyone to enter and exit for about an hour.
The first ambulance arrived about 15 minutes after Dania was gunned down. “They didn’t want her alive, they want her dead, they meant to kill her”, explains the witness, stating that they could have easily arrested her. At no point after her body was perforated with bullets was any first aid provided, and the shooters left her lying on the ground slowly bleeding to death. Instead of giving first aid, Israeli forces proceeded to block the view so nobody but them would be able to see the 17-year old school-girl bleed to death.
“She came [to the checkpoint] and didn’t do anything – and then she was killed.”
France Has a Powerful and Controversial New Surveillance Law
By Arik Hesseldahl – <re/code> – November 14, 2015
As it plans its response to a series of six terrorist attacks Friday night that killed 129 and injured 352, the government of France will likely step up its efforts to keep tabs on the movements and communications of people within its borders.
As it happens, the attacks have occurred only a few months after legislators in that country passed a sweeping new surveillance law that gives the government broad powers to closely monitor the mobile phone and Internet communications of French citizens.
Passed by the French Parliament in May in response to the attacks on the Paris-based magazine Charlie Hebdo, the law allows the government to monitor phone calls and emails of people suspected of connections to terrorism without the authorization of a judge.
But it goes further than that. The law requires Internet service providers to install “black boxes” that are designed to vacuum up and analyze metadata on the Web-browsing and general Internet use habits of millions of people using the Web and to make that data available to intelligence agencies.
In exceptional cases, the law allows the government to deploy what are called “ISMI catchers” to track all mobile phone communications in a given area. These catchers are basically designed to impersonate cell towers, but they intercept and record communications data from phones within its range, and can also track the movements of people carrying the phones.
Finally, the law allows government agents to break into homes of suspected terrorists for the purpose of planting microphone bugs and surveillance cameras and installing keyloggers on their computers, devices that capture data on every keystroke and mouse click.
Critics of the law complain that there’s not much oversight and that the conditions under which the law’s powers can be triggered are vague. As The Verge noted in July, the government can authorize the surveillance for “major foreign policy interests” or to counter “organized delinquency.”
Surveillance operations are overseen by a nine-person committee led by Prime Minister Manuel Valls. But that committee has only an advisory role, and cannot overrule decisions by the prime minister.
The Extraordinary Trial of Arthur Topham: Part 2
By Eve Mykytyn | Dissident Voice | November 14, 2015
Read Part 1.
On November 12th the jury found Mr. Topham guilty of ‘inciting hate.’ This leads to a few questions.
First, the jury found Mr. Topham guilty on Count 1 but not guilty on Count 2. Ordinarily, this is a result we are comfortable with since the state (the Crown) may have proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that a defendant committed an assault but not have shown sufficient evidence of battery. Mr. Topham’s case is different. He was charged with two virtually identical counts, both relating to his website but covering different periods of time, that is, count 1 was for the period from April 28, 2011 to May 4, 2012, and count 2 was for January 29, 2013 to December 11, 2013.
If Mr. Topham intended to incite hate, would he really have changed his mind in the brief period between counts 1 and 2? We will never know what the jury relied upon; in yet another abrogation of free speech, the jury was threatened that if they spoke to anyone about their deliberations, they would be committing a criminal offense. How is the public supposed to understand the mysterious machinations of the term ‘hate’ without knowing what caused a jury to convict a fellow citizen of such a crime?
Hate is a crime the essential elements of which have been left undefined. As a writer, one must not only discern from the miasma what constitutes ‘hate’ but also guess what elements a jury will find persuasive. If one of the main goals of the criminal law is to prevent certain behavior then clarity of what such behavior is, is essential. What can Canadians say? May they say they disagree strongly with a particular group? What evidence can one print in support of their disagreement? Surely, it is not the defendant’s responsibility that a particular political group is also associated with an ethnic identity and a religion. The Crown, by controlling website content through its ‘hate’ law, is controlling not only what Canadians may say but also what Canadians may read. Mr. Topham’s is not the only blog to criticize Israel and Zionism. Should Canadians then read political criticism only from other countries? Very troubling.
Second, the crown had almost 2 years to prepare its case. Its evidence was contained in 4 binders. Many of the pages were illegible and the Crown itself seemed to have extraordinary difficulties in citing to its own arguments. The defense quite properly objected. The Crown wanted to provide clear copies of the illegible pages in yet another binder cross referenced to the originals. The trial could have been an exercise in maze solving. Judge Butler ruled that the Crown had to provide legible copies. This seemed to present a large obstacle and endless court time was wasted in discussions of printing costs, etc. As a foreign observer it seemed ironic that the crown spent $190 an hour on its expert witness, who as an earlier independent complainant against Mr. Topham might have been willing to accept less, and I don’t know how much money on ‘security’ but had so much trouble producing legible copies.
I belabor this point because it is very odd for the prosecution to allow its evidence to be blurry. I would expect in proving an elusive crime like ‘hate’ they would want their evidence to be as clear and convincing as possible. Was the intent to confuse the jury? Was the Crown merely incompetent? This is not impossible. The judge spent much time instructing the crown’s representative, Ms. Johnston, on procedural issues. This gave me the impression (and perhaps the jurors as well?) that the judge was helping and thus favoring the prosecution. Surely this was unintentional on Judge Butler’s part.
Third, and this relates to point two, the jury was given 62 pages of ‘charges’ (or what Americans call jury instructions). Even if all twelve jurors, ordinary men and women, are speed readers, how are they to read and evaluate 62 pages of instructions and then apply them to four binders? The plethora of material leads me to suspect that the jury was not intended to read the material at all. This would tend the jury toward a guilty verdict.
There is not a sinister act by the jury. They were asked to sit through weeks of testimony about Jewish politics, history, religion, and identity. Jury selection would have excluded anyone who was actually interested in such topics. They were handed stacks of paper. Faced with these circumstances, they presumably decided that the Crown and the judge worked for their province and had British Columbia’s best interests at heart. It is actually a testimony to the weakness of the Crown’s case that Mr. Topham was found not guilty at all.
The battle is not over. Following the verdict, both sides indicated that they intended to appeal. (Here Canada differs from the United States where prosecutors can appeal only under very limited circumstances). The Crown asked that Mr. Topham’s bail restrictions be changed and that his website be taken down. Judge Butler did not decide these issues because first, as the defense pointed out, these requests were improperly made. Mr. Topham intends to present a Charter (constitutional) argument that the judge had stayed at the beginning of the trial so that the ‘facts’ of the case could be more fully developed at trial.
Eve Mykytyn graduated from Boston University School of Law and was admitted to bar of the state of New York.
Pro-Palestinian Scottish lawmaker strip-searched on Israel trip
Press TV – November 14, 2015
A pro-Palestinian Scottish lawmaker travelling to the occupied Palestinian territories on a parliamentary fact-finding mission has been strip-searched by Israeli forces upon arrival and refused entry.
Andrew Murray, the head of the Friends of Palestine group in the Scottish National Party (SNP), was detained at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on Monday and held in custody for over 24 hours, he told AFP on Friday.
“They strip-searched me, scanned me, swabbed me everywhere,” Murray said, adding, “Twice I asked for representation from the British embassy, twice I was told no.”
He was later deported and banned from entering the occupied territories for 10 years, apparently over his campaign for Palestinian rights.
Carol Monaghan, a member of the SNP, said that she “absolutely condemned” the Israelis’ behavior, adding, “Andy was there on a peaceful, fact-finding trip.”
Sabine Haddad, a spokesperson for Israel’s interior ministry, claimed that Murray lied about the reason of his trip by saying he was a tourist.
Murray, however, responded that he did not lie about any of the questions asked.
Egypt sentenced nearly 600 to death last year
Reprieve | November 14, 2015
The Egyptian government has sentenced nearly 600 people to death in the last year, with the vast majority of death sentences handed down in relation to political protest, human rights organization Reprieve has found.
Data collected by Reprieve has found that since January 2014, at least 588 people have been sentenced to death in Egypt. In the cases that Reprieve was able to identify, some 72% of sentences were handed down for attending pro-democracy protests.
Reprieve’s report, released today, also found that the Egyptian authorities are overseeing a marked rise in actual executions. Between 2011 and 2013, only one execution was carried out in Egypt; but since January 2014, some months after President Sisi seized power, at least 27 people have been executed. The report also finds that at least 15 mass trials have taken place since March 2014.
Since taking power, President Sisi has overseen a regime of mass trials and sweeping death sentences for protestors – sometimes involving hundreds of prisoners at a time. Among those on trial and facing a potential death sentence is Irish teenager Ibrahim Halawa, who is being assisted by Reprieve. Yesterday, it was revealed that Ibrahim has witnessed torture methods including ‘crucifixion’ and electrocution being carried out in Wadi Natrun prison, where he is being held.
Mr Halawa’s family were last week joined by several British MPs in asking the UK to intervene on the case, during President Sisi’s visit to London for talks with the Prime Minister. The Foreign Office has told Reprieve that the UK is ‘monitoring’ Ibrahim’s case, and has said that it has been raised with the Egyptian authorities.
However, there are concerns over the UK government’s apparent support for the Egyptian security forces. Reprieve has found that the British government invited security and policing firm G4S to be part of the UK delegation at a recent major Egyptian trade conference hosted by President Sisi.
Commenting, Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at Reprieve, which is assisting Ibrahim Halawa, said: “President Sisi has overseen an unprecedented surge in death sentences as part of a wave of repression that should attract condemnation from Egypt’s allies. Since 2013, many thousands of people – including journalists, activists and juveniles like Ibrahim Halawa – have been locked up for attending protests. Police torture is reported all too often, and Kafkaesque ‘mass trials’ have seen hundreds of death sentences handed down at a time. More than ever, the UK must use its increasingly close relationship with Egypt to urge an end to these terrible abuses – including the release of juveniles like Ibrahim.”
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‘Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison’: A Tale of Two Diaries
By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 13, 2026
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private diary reveals a “mind-numbing” contradiction between what the former top U.S. infectious disease official knew about COVID-19 and what he told the public, senior White House adviser Peter Navarro, Ph.D., said last week on “American Thought Leaders.”
In his new book, “Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison,” due out Oct. 20, Navarro compares Fauci’s private entries to his own pandemic-era diary, and uses what he calls “a tale of two diaries” to argue that Fauci should face criminal prosecution.
“I show, actually, how a prosecution can and should happen … at the state level, most likely,” Navarro said. “He should wind up in prison, and we’ve got the receipts in this book to put him there.”
Navarro said Fauci repeatedly acknowledged important facts in private, then publicly pursued policies that contradicted those facts — with devastating consequences.
“What he says many times privately in his diary is so at odds with both his public behavior and public statements that it’s mind-numbing,” Navarro said.
Navarro examines the lasting damage caused by lockdowns and other pandemic policies, and the ongoing toll of long COVID.
His book also addresses questions about vaccine safety, including why healthy young people faced COVID-19 vaccination mandates despite concerns about myocarditis, and why women were not warned about miscarriage risks linked to the shots. … continue
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- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
