More than 24,000 murders were recorded in Venezuela last year. This year, Caracas alone is averaging 35 murders a day. Many locals choose simply not to go out after dark. Crews billeted in Caracas with American air carriers are ordered to stay in their hotels, no exceptions. Billboards throughout town go dark at night, because the power grid is crumbling. The shortages started to get serious in December as collapsing oil prices proved the final straw for a wildly mismanaged economy.
Oil accounts for 95 per cent of export earnings. In the years since Mr Chavez came to power, oil output has dropped 25 per cent and huge quantities are essentially given away, to neighbours to curry favour or to Venezuelans for whom petrol is roughly one penny a gallon – or basically free. Items that today are almost impossible to find in the capital include milk, baby milk, nappies, deodorant, soap and shampoo. So too are many medicines. Also absent from the shelves are condoms, bringing the threat of increased HIV rates and unwanted pregnancies from unprotected sex. Queues form outside supermarkets before dawn and purchases are being rationed by the government. Military police patrol checkouts to quell fights.
“It’s horrible, horrible,” lamented Lina Lorusso, 77, in the aisles of a San Lorenzo supermarket in the Chacao district of Caracas, jealously clasping a bag of beans and two cans of peas. It’s the third supermarket she had tried that day. “I have watched people hitting each other and shouting. If you find anything it’s three times more expensive than it used to be.” Ms Lorusso arrived in Venezuela 57 years ago from Bari in southern Italy. Now she is watching as her grandchildren go back to Italy. “The situation here is like it was when I left,” she explains, her lower lip trembling. “Please help us.”
“It’s like a post-war economy with hyper inflation, shortages, fixed prices and the country’s capacity to produce goods destroyed,” Amabilis Castillo, 27, a treasury products analyst for an international bank, explained. A possible default by Venezuela on its ever-expanding debt is also looming.
President Maduro, according to the most recent polls, has seen his support fall to a perilous 22 per cent. When he took to the airwaves a week ago to trumpet foiling one more conspiracy to topple him most observers rolled their eyes, including the US which dismissed as “ludricous” any notion it had played a part. Since becoming President, he has spoken of more than a dozen purported such plots. But this time he said an ex-general had been arrested and 10 other officers implicated. If the added flourish that jets were to bomb the palace was fantasy, his fears of a military mutiny may have had more foundation. Within hours Venezuela’s high command was on television reiterating its loyalty to the President. More... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/corruption-falling-oil-prices-and-talk-of-a-coup-the-end-of-chavezs-socialist-dream-in-venezuela-10060576.htmlPolitical opponents are being arrested without warrants. Inflation running 60%. Even basic goods hard to find. They just devalued their currency 69%. Authorization was given to arrest any protesters without any charges. Rampant corruption. Support for President Maduro down to 22% (who barely won the last election against government picked candidates). He had been relying on oil for 95% of revenues to support programs but the collapse of the price of oil severly cut their income. 24,000 murders last year (there were 14,000 in the US which has eleven times as many people). |
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Corrections officials in Texas are relocating nearly 3,000 inmates after about two-thirds of them broke out of their housing units during a lockdown at a prison in south Texas
The prisoners at the Willacy County Correctional Center refused to take part in work duties on Friday and some inmates said they were unhappy with medical services, said Management & Training Corp., the company that runs the prison, in a press release.
The inmates were put on lockdown but some broke out of their housing units, MTC said. About 2,000 prisoners went into the recreation area, though none breached the outer fences, MTC said.
Another 1,000 prisoners in another part of the facility were not involved.
With assistance from other law enforcement agencies and by using tear gas, the prisoners were brought under control, MTC said. Two officers and three inmates suffered minor injuries.
The offenders are mostly low-level custody inmates who are “criminal aliens,” MTC said. Willacy County is located in the southern tip of Texas.
MTC said the process of moving inmates to other prisons will take about a week.
“Once all the inmates are moved, we will begin assessing the damage. Soon after the disturbance began yesterday afternoon, inmates set three small fires which were quickly extinguished,” said Issa Arnita, director of corporate communications for MTC. http://fox6now.com/2015/02/21/texas-prison-riot-causes-nearly-3000-inmates-to-be-relocated/ |
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday other countries should not have the illusion that they can attain military superiority over Russia, Interfax reported.
"No one should have the illusion that they can gain military superiority over Russia, put any kind of pressure on it. We will always have an adequate answer for any such adventures," he was quoted as saying in an address dedicated to the Defenders' of the Fatherland Day holiday next week. Video discussion... https://ca.news.yahoo.com/putin-says-russias-military-strength-unmatchable-interfax-162632082.html |
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-Woman is staging legal bid to become pregnant with her own grandchild -Her daughter's eggs would be fertilised by donor sperm and implanted -She and her husband, 58, will claim it was their daughter's dying wish -Their only child died of bowel cancer four years ago while still in her 20s -Potentially large risks to the health of the woman and the unborn child  A British woman is staging a desperate legal bid to become pregnant with her own grandchild – using her dead daughter’s eggs.
In the first case of its kind in the world, the woman, 59, and her husband will claim it was their daughter’s dying wish that her eggs be fertilised by donor sperm and implanted into her own mother’s womb. It would be the couple’s only chance to become grandparents after their daughter, an only child, died of bowel cancer four years ago while still in her 20s.
She chose to freeze her eggs in the hope that she could have children in the future, but tragically lost her battle with the disease. No UK-based clinic has agreed to treat the mother, who is now hoping to export the eggs to New York, where a clinic is lined up to provide fertility treatment at an estimated cost of up to £60,000.
At her age, the woman’s chances of becoming pregnant using the eggs are small.
There are potentially large risks to her health, and the health of the unborn child, if fertility treatment succeeds.
However, the woman and her 58-year-old husband say they are determined to honour their daughter’s wishes and the case is now set to be decided by a judge.  More... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2963277/British-mum-59-bid-world-medical-ll-birth-baby-dead-daughter.html |
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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis urged members of Italian organized crime groups on Saturday to repent, saying the Catholic Church would welcome them if they promised to stop serving the cause of evil.
He spoke during an audience at the Vatican for pilgrims and anti-crime activists from the southern region of Calabria, home to the 'Ndrangheta, mainland Italy's equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia.
"Open your hearts to the Lord. The Lord is waiting for you and the Church will welcome you if your willingness to serve good is as clear and public as your choice to serve evil was," he said.
When he visited Calabria last June, he accused organized crime groups of practising "the adoration of evil" and said members had excommunicated themselves from the Church by their actions. More... http://news.yahoo.com/pope-mafiosi-repent-church-welcome-back-141531440.html |
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TULSA - A night out drinking and an argument with his girlfriend nearly cost a Tulsa man his penis.
Officers responded to a Tulsa hospital early Thursday morning where a man claimed his girlfriend attacked him while he slept.
Amber Ellis was arrested for maiming and assault with a dangerous weapon.
According to the police report, the victim said he and his girlfriend were out drinking and began arguing while walking home "about how needy she had become." The couple verbally fought in the apartment until the victim told police Ellis stormed off, slamming the bedroom door.
Police say the victim fell asleep on the couch only to wake up to find Ellis "biting his (penis) off."
The victim told police he fought Ellis off but she hit him in the head with a laptop computer.
Once hospitalized, the victim received several stitches to the base of his penis and was treated for injuries to his head, face, neck, fingers and knee.
Ellis was taken into custody for an interview and ultimately booked into the Tulsa County Jail. http://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/woman-arrested-for-maiming-after-man-claims-girlfriend-tried-to-bite-his-penis-offLooks like he lucked out, unlike that one dude who's broad threw acid on his johnson. |
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With only weeks left to the deadline to reach a first-stage nuclear deal with Iran, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday that "significant gaps" remained and warned that America was ready to walk away from the talks if Tehran doesn't agree to terms demonstrating that it doesn't want atomic arms.
Kerry spoke after the Iranian Atomic Energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi and U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz added their muscle to the talks for the first time to help resolve technical disputes standing in the way of an agreement meant to curb Iran's nuclear programs in exchange for sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic.
But Kerry warned against undue optimism. Salehi's and Moniz's presence is no "indication whatsoever that something is about to be decided," he said. "There are still significant gaps."
World powers and Iran have set an end of March deadline for a framework agreement, with four further months for the technical work to be ironed out. The talks have missed two previous deadlines, and President Barack Obama has said a further extension would make little sense without a basis for continuing discussions.
Kerry, who flies to Geneva Sunday from London, said there was no doubt Obama was serious. The president, he said, "is fully prepared to stop these talks if he feels that they're not being met with the kind of productive decision-making necessary to prove that a program is in fact peaceful."
If the talks fail, Obama may be unable to continue holding off Congress from passing new sanctions against Iran. That, in turn, could scuttle any further diplomatic solution to U.S.-led attempts to increase the time Tehran would need to be able to make nuclear arms. Iran denies any interest in such weapons.
Skepticism about the negotiations already is strong among congressional hardliners, Washington's closest Arab allies and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to strongly criticize them in an address the U.S. Congress early next month.
Western officials say the U.S. decided to send Moniz only after Iran announced that Salehi was coming. They were expected to discuss the number of centrifuges Iran can operate to enrich uranium; how much enriched material it can stockpile; what research and development it may pursue related to enrichment, and the future of a planned heavy water reactor that could produce substantial amounts of plutonium — which like enriched uranium is a potential pathway to nuclear arms.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is also at the talks, and Kerry is to meet him Sunday and Monday.
For months, the negotiations have been primarily between Washington and Tehran. But Kerry insisted "there is absolutely no divergence" between the U.S. and the five other powers — Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — over what Iran needed to agree to, "to prove that its nuclear program is going to be peaceful in the future." http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/top-us-iranian-nuke-officials-joining-iran-talks-29123530 |
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A new study by Yale University Professor Dan Kahan confirmed that skeptics of the controversial anthropogenic global-warming theory — or realists, as they often call themselves — know more about climate science than AGW theorists. The latest findings directly contradict the myths, or lies, put forward by man-made warming alarmists about the countless scientists and the majority of the U.S. public that does not accept their theory.
The warmists consistently label those who reject their climate alarmism as “deniers,” “anti-science,” and worse. In reality, however, Kahan’s study, set to be published in the journal Advances in Political Psychology, shows yet again that the skeptics are generally more familiar with the science and the evidence surrounding the climate than warming theorists. Other recent studies have found that skeptics know more about science generally, too. More... http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/20158-global-warming-skeptics-know-more-climate-science-study-shows |
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On February 18th New Hampshire Rep. Hoell’s HB 407 and Montana Rep. Schwaderer’s HB 330 advanced, both passing state legislative chambers as amended. HB 407 is a repeat of Rep. Hoell’s bill from last session, HB 1307. HB 1307 failed in the NH House last year. However, the bill made national news, leading to the creation of Rep. Shwaderer’s bill, a similar bill in Tennessee, and a much more narrow federal bill.
The idea of police militarization reform legislation was inspired by the coalition of liberal activists and Free Staters that attempted to convince the Keene and Concord, New Hampshire city councils to vote against acquiring Department of Homeland Security BEARCATs. Despite Rep. Hoell neither being a liberal nor a Free Stater, he decided to lead the national legislative effort to bring about reform. The tragedies of Ferguson, Missouri further intensified the issue. Unfortunately, opposition to BEARCATs didn’t pick up much steam outside of NH and the University of Berkeley. Instead, critics were mostly concerned about a different federal program that distributed much larger military vehicles called MRAPs to local governments.
Rep. Hoell’s HB 407 was recommended Inexpedient to Legislate by the Municipal and County Government Committee. The NH House overturned the Committee recommendation 204 to 134. Committee member Rep. Ammon proposed to amend the bill so that it would create a committee to study police militarization reform. The amendment passed with the help of Rep. Hoell, Rep. Simmons, and the chair of the Committee, Rep. Belanger. The bill was sent to the NH Senate.
Rep. Shwaderer’s HB 330 originally called for reining in on the militarization of police in Montana, including MRAPs. On February 16th, the Judiciary Committee amended and passed the bill. The amendment weakened the bill, dropping opposition to MRAPs (remember, the bill never included opposition to BEARCATs). On February 18th, the MT House voted 88 to 12 to pass the bill. The bill was sent to the Appropriations Committee. https://nhfreedom.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/police-militarization-reform-bills-advance-in-new-hampshire-and-montana/ |
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Sadistic Police Likely Salivating Over New Handcuffs that Will Shock and Drug the Restrained2/20/15 – Today is National Handcuff Day. How will you be celebrating?Besides cops, handcuff companies, and BDSM enthusiasts, hardly anyone will cheer this potent symbol of state oppression.
Handcuffs provide an easy pathway for police brutality. Whether it’s beating children, raping women, or garden variety savagery, cops routinely carry out violence on people while they are handcuffed.
Alas, simple handcuffs are no longer enough for the militarized police state. In the near future, authorities may have “augmented detainee restraints” that deliver electric shocks, sedatives, and paralytic drugs to detainees. Scottsdale Inventions, based in Arizona, filed a patent application for just such a device.
The handcuffs can deliver electric shocks between 20,000 and 150,000 volts for durations of 0.5 to 10 seconds. Shocks can be triggered remotely from up to 300 feet away, or programmed to happen automatically in a variety of situations such as the detainee stepping outside a boundary.
It doesn’t take much to imagine sicko cops using the handcuffs as a torture device when no one is looking.
Drugs are delivered through a moveable needle or gas injection system. A great deal of fear and anxiety can be induced in a person who is told they could be shocked or drugged at any moment.
Whoever came up with National Handcuffs Day did not do it on Positive Thinking Day. Pics and more... http://thefreethoughtproject.com/sadistic-police-salivating-handcuffs-shock-drug-restrained/
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AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.
The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.
In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”
With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.
More... https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist/ |
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The lack of equipment does not come as a surprise to close observers of the German army. Last year, the parliamentary defense committee was informed that out of 89 German fighter jets, only 38 were ready for use. The list of damaged items also included helicopters, as well as a variety of weapons.
After the lack of arms and vehicles was made public, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen vowed to upgrade and repair the equipment. According to some soldiers and officers, the minister has so far failed to deliver on her promises.
According to the confidential report that was leaked on Tuesday, the German NATO task force would face serious problems if it had to intervene abroad. More than 40 percent of the task force's soldiers would have to do without P8 pistols, and more than 30 percent lacked general-purpose machine guns, known as MG3. Operating at night would be particularly difficult for Germany's armed task force, given a lack of 76 percent of necessary night viewers. More... http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/19/germanys-army-is-so-under-equipped-that-it-used-broomsticks-instead-of-machine-guns/?postshare=3701424352358293Europe's crown jewel spends too much on social welfare that they can't even maintain even a modest and respectable defense capability. No worries, the US has god knows how many bases there costing US taxpayers untold sums of money - for many decades at this point. |
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Note: The first rule and last five (or six, depending on situation) rules are generally not directly within the ability of the traditional disinfo artist to apply. These rules are generally used more directly by those at the leadership, key players, or planning level of the criminal conspiracy or conspiracy to cover up.
1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don't discuss it -- especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it's not reported, it didn't happen, and you never have to deal with the issues.
2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the 'How dare you!' gambit.
3. Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations. Other derogatory terms mutually exclusive of truth may work as well. This method which works especially well with a silent press, because the only way the public can learn of the facts are through such 'arguable rumors'. If you can associate the material with the Internet, use this fact to certify it a 'wild rumor' from a 'bunch of kids on the Internet' which can have no basis in fact.
4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent's argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.
5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary 'attack the messenger' ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as 'kooks', 'right-wing', 'liberal', 'left-wing', 'terrorists', 'conspiracy buffs', 'radicals', 'militia', 'racists', 'religious fanatics', 'sexual deviates', and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.
6. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer. This works extremely well in Internet and letters-to-the-editor environments where a steady stream of new identities can be called upon without having to explain criticism, reasoning -- simply make an accusation or other attack, never discussing issues, and never answering any subsequent response, for that would dignify the opponent's viewpoint.
7. Question motives. Twist or amplify any fact which could be taken to imply that the opponent operates out of a hidden personal agenda or other bias. This avoids discussing issues and forces the accuser on the defensive.
8. Invoke authority. Claim for yourself or associate yourself with authority and present your argument with enough 'jargon' and 'minutia' to illustrate you are 'one who knows', and simply say it isn't so without discussing issues or demonstrating concretely why or citing sources.
9. Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues except with denials they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion. Mix well for maximum effect.
10. Associate opponent charges with old news. A derivative of the straw man -- usually, in any large-scale matter of high visibility, someone will make charges early on which can be or were already easily dealt with - a kind of investment for the future should the matter not be so easily contained.) Where it can be foreseen, have your own side raise a straw man issue and have it dealt with early on as part of the initial contingency plans. Subsequent charges, regardless of validity or new ground uncovered, can usually then be associated with the original charge and dismissed as simply being a rehash without need to address current issues -- so much the better where the opponent is or was involved with the original source.
11. Establish and rely upon fall-back positions. Using a minor matter or element of the facts, take the 'high road' and 'confess' with candor that some innocent mistake, in hindsight, was made -- but that opponents have seized on the opportunity to blow it all out of proportion and imply greater criminalities which, 'just isn't so.' Others can reinforce this on your behalf, later, and even publicly 'call for an end to the nonsense' because you have already 'done the right thing.' Done properly, this can garner sympathy and respect for 'coming clean' and 'owning up' to your mistakes without addressing more serious issues.
12. Enigmas have no solution. Drawing upon the overall umbrella of events surrounding the crime and the multitude of players and events, paint the entire affair as too complex to solve. This causes those otherwise following the matter to begin to lose interest more quickly without having to address the actual issues.
13. Alice in Wonderland Logic. Avoid discussion of the issues by reasoning backwards or with an apparent deductive logic
which forbears any actual material fact.
14. Demand complete solutions. Avoid the issues by requiring opponents to solve the crime at hand completely, a ploy which works best with issues qualifying for rule 10.
15. Fit the facts to alternate conclusions. This requires creative thinking unless the crime was planned with contingency conclusions in place. More... http://www.whale.to/m/disin.html |
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Part 1 The development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred to as the "Watch," or private-for-profit policing, which is called "The Big Stick” (Spitzer, 1979).
The watch system was composed of community volunteers whose primary duty was to warn of impending danger. Boston created a night watch in 1636, New York in 1658 and Philadelphia in 1700. The night watch was not a particularly effective crime control device. Watchmen often slept or drank on duty. While the watch was theoretically voluntary, many "volunteers" were simply attempting to evade military service, were conscript forced into service by their town, or were performing watch duties as a form of punishment. Philadelphia created the first day watch in 1833 and New York instituted a day watch in 1844 as a supplement to its new municipal police force (Gaines, Kappeler, and Vaughn 1999).
Augmenting the watch system was a system of constables, official law enforcement officers, usually paid by the fee system for warrants they served. Constables had a variety of non-law enforcement functions to perform as well, including serving as land surveyors and verifying the accuracy of weights and measures. In many cities constables were given the responsibility of supervising the activities of the night watch.
These informal modalities of policing continued well after the American Revolution. It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place.
These "modern police" organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980).
In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the "Slave Patrol" (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing "Jim Crow" segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.
The key question, of course, is what was it about the United States in the 1830s that necessitated the development of local, centralized, bureaucratic police forces? One answer is that cities were growing. The United States was no longer a collection of small cities and rural hamlets. Urbanization was occurring at an ever-quickening pace and old informal watch and constable system was no longer adequate to control disorder. Anecdotal accounts suggest increasing crime and vice in urban centers. Mob violence, particularly violence directed at immigrants and African Americans by white youths, occurred with some frequency. Public disorder, mostly public drunkenness and sometimes prostitution, was more visible and less easily controlled in growing urban centers than it had been rural villages (Walker 1996). But evidence of an actual crime wave is lacking. So, if the modern American police force was not a direct response to crime, then what was it a response to?
More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to "disorder." What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the "collective good" (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state. 5 more parts... http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1 |
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Says former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg while addressing the Aspen Institute “It’s controversial, but first thing is all of your — 95 percent of your murders and murderers, and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all of the cops. They are male, minorities, 15 to 25. That’s true in New York, it’s true in virtually every city in America,” Bloomberg is heard saying in the newly released audio.
“That’s where the real crime is,” he added. “You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed. First thing you can do to help that group is to keep them alive.”
Bloomberg would later make even more candid comments, defending New York’s “stop-and-frisk” policy and even admitting that the city of New York does arrest mostly minorities.
“So one of the unintended consequences is, people say ‘Oh, my God you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods,” he said. “Yes that’s true, why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the first thing you can do for people is to stop them getting killed.” Audio and more... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-17/michael-bloomberg-95-murderers-fit-one-mo-male-minorities-15-25 |
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Prosperity Requires Privacy
Privacy is a prerequisite for a prosperous economy. Even the White House admits:
People must have confidence that data will travel to its destination without disruption. Assuring the free flow of information, the security and privacy of data, and the integrity of the interconnected networks themselves are all essential to American and global economic prosperity, security, and the promotion of universal rights.
Below, we discuss five ways that mass surveillance hurts our economy.
1. Foreigners Stop Buying American
Foreigners are starting to shy away from U.S. Internet companies, due to the risk that American spooks will spy on them.
American tech companies – including Verizon, Cisco, IBM and others – are getting hammered for cooperating with the NSA and failing to protect privacy. The costs to the U.S. economy have been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And see this and this.
That doesn’t even take into account the just-revealed NSA program of infecting virtually all popular Western hard drives with spyware. This will cause huge markets like China to insist that locally-produced hard drives be used, to make it harder for the NSA to hack into them.
So the NSA’s shenanigans are hurting dual pillars of the U.S. tech sector: computers and Internet. (The sale of mobile devices might not be far behind.)
2. Trust and the Rule of Law – Two Main determinants of Prosperity – Are Undermined By Surveillance
Trust is KEY for a prosperous economy. It’s hard to trust when your government, your internet service provider and your favorite websites are all spying on you.
The destruction of privacy by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and the entire U.S. economy (Facebook lost 11 millions users as of April mainly due to privacy concerns … and that was before the Snowden revelations). If people don’t trust the companies to keep their data private, they’ll use foreign companies.
And destruction of trust in government and other institutions is destroying our economy.
A top cyber security consultant points out:
If privacy is not protected while performing mass surveillance for national security purposes, then the people’s level of trust in the government decreases. More... http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/nsa-destroying-american-economy.html |
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If Congress doesn't act before February 27, the Department of Homeland Security is going to run out of money and go into a partial shutdown. (Eighty-five percent of employees would still be working, but they wouldn't be getting paid.) Congress doesn't appear to have a plan for action; as of last week, before it broke for recess, House and Senate lawmakers were each telling each other to do something. Meanwhile, politicians in both parties have already skipped to the step where they blame the other party for the possible shutdown — making them seem pretty resigned to it happening. House Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday he's "certainly" ready for a DHS shutdown.
It helps that both parties think they can win on the politics of a shutdown. Democrats see this as a replay of the government shutdown of 2013, when congressional Republicans tried to undo a major Obama administration policy (then Obamacare; now the president's executive actions on immigration) as a condition of keeping the government open. Republicans, for their part, appear to believe that because the Senate's Democratic minority is filibustering their funding bill, Democrats will take the blame — though there's little indication that they would become willing to roll back all of Obama's executive actions to end a shutdown. It's also not clear if Republicans could get a critical mass of support within their own party for anything less.
But the nonchalance with which both parties are treating the prospect of a Department of Homeland Security shutdown raises a big policy question: why does the department even exist?
The answer is that it shouldn't, and it never should have. DHS was a mistake to begin with. Instead of solving the coordination problems it was supposed to solve, it simply duplicated efforts already happening in other federal departments. And attempts to control and distinguish the department have politicized it to the point where it can't function smoothly — and might be threatening national security.
This isn't to say that DHS should be fully liquidated. The argument is there's no reason for it to exist as its own department when it can be reabsorbed into the various departments (from Justice to Treasury) from which it was assembled.
Since neither side is fighting to make the case for DHS, it's as good a time as any to look back over the agency's decade-plus-long history, and assess how the department's actually worked. The answer appears to be that the problems built deep in the department haven't aided national security — and might have damaged it. More... http://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8047461/dhs-problems |
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INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’
The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet.In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, western governments are moving fast to legitimize expanded powers of mass surveillance and controls on the internet, all in the name of fighting terrorism.
US and European politicians have called to protect NSA-style snooping, and to advance the capacity to intrude on internet privacy by outlawing encryption. One idea is to establish a telecoms partnership that would unilaterally delete content deemed to “fuel hatred and violence” in situations considered “appropriate.” Heated discussions are going on at government and parliamentary level to explore cracking down on lawyer-client confidentiality.
What any of this would have done to prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks remains a mystery, especially given that we already know the terrorists were on the radar of French intelligence for up to a decade.
There is little new in this story. The 9/11 atrocity was the first of many terrorist attacks, each succeeded by the dramatic extension of draconian state powers at the expense of civil liberties, backed up with the projection of military force in regions identified as hotspots harbouring terrorists. Yet there is little indication that this tried and tested formula has done anything to reduce the danger. If anything, we appear to be locked into a deepening cycle of violence with no clear end in sight.
As our governments push to increase their powers, INSURGE INTELLIGENCE can now reveal the vast extent to which the US intelligence community is implicated in nurturing the web platforms we know today, for the precise purpose of utilizing the technology as a mechanism to fight global ‘information war’ — a war to legitimize the power of the few over the rest of us. The lynchpin of this story is the corporation that in many ways defines the 21st century with its unobtrusive omnipresence: Google.
Google styles itself as a friendly, funky, user-friendly tech firm that rose to prominence through a combination of skill, luck, and genuine innovation. This is true. But it is a mere fragment of the story. In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex.
The inside story of Google’s rise, revealed here for the first time, opens a can of worms that goes far beyond Google, unexpectedly shining a light on the existence of a parasitical network driving the evolution of the US national security apparatus, and profiting obscenely from its operation. More... https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959ePart 2: Why Google made the NSA https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/why-google-made-the-nsa-2a80584c9c1
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He never tells the entire truth but it's always close enough for foreign policy savvy types to know what he's getting at. Anybody want to guess which "friends" he's talking about? Yeah.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHLqaSZPe98Short interview on CNN today |
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