Commanders of Missouri National Guard saw protesters in Ferguson as “enemy forces,” “adversaries,” “hate groups”

by Steve Watson

Documents obtained by CNN reveal that the Missouri National Guard referred to Americans in Ferguson as ‘enemy forces’ and adversaries’ in briefings as they prepared to quell protests.

The internal briefing documents, secured under a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that the National Guard, called in to Ferguson under already tense circumstances, used heavily militarized language to describe protesters, many of whom were merely lawfully executing their First Amendment rights. Complete article

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List Of Pro Nuclear Physicists, Political Leaders, Actors Who Switched Sides And Became Anti Nuclear Activists And Whistleblowers; Russell–Einstein Manifesto

List Of Pro Nuclear Physicists, Political Leaders, Actors Who Switched Sides And Became Anti Nuclear Activists And Whistleblowers; Russell–Einstein Manifesto

All nuclear education programs for medical doctors, physicists, and nuclear workers of any kind ALWAYS teach that radiation is good for everyone, (hormesis theory) while avoiding any mention of the dangers of low dose radiation cumulative exposure, inhalation or ingestion hazards. This is why only a very few doctors, chemists, nuclear physicists go beyond this faux science 'programming' or propaganda to learn the truth about the real life dangers of low dose radiation. The public usually only hears from the pro nuclear industry experts on the mass media news, as anyone outside of the industry is mostly locked out.

In addition, as you will see from the following evidence, anyone inside the nuclear industry who speaks out, is fired quickly, loses their funding and is then blacklisted. There are hundreds, if not thousands of nuclear industry whistleblowers who all suffer the same fate, or worse.. Complete article

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Monsanto admits it has a whole department for smearing anti-GMO activists

by Sophie McAdam

Last Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report linking glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, to cancer. While this news might not surprise many of us, Monsanto are demanding a retraction of this damning verdict, claiming that the WHO ‘have something to explain’.

The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had reviewed scientific literature and decided to classify glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’. This is great news in the fight against Big-Ag, but it would be naive to expect Monsanto to lie down and take it on the chin. Complete article

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Walter Scott, the Million Moms March and Stop Mass Incarceration: A Call to Resistance

by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

The drumbeat of protest continues – as do the murderous predations of the police. “Capitalist America is dependent on these paid killers to maintain power, social order and white supremacy which forces the Black community to accept low wage jobs, poor schools, human rights abuses and cultural imperialism.”

Walter Scott, the Million Moms March and Stop Mass Incarceration: A Call to Resistance by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
“How do we create an infrastructure inside our communities to avoid and limit our exposure to police?”

The killing of black men in America appears to have reached epidemic proportions. The fact of the matter is that murder of black men has remained a closely held prerogative of white supremacy exercised by agents of the state since the arrival of Africans in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. These agents, purveyors of state-sponsored violence in African communities, discharge their lethal weapons with effectiveness and efficiency under the cover of law. These agents have been known by various titles throughout US history: slave patrols, Klu Klux Klan, plantation owners, White Citizens’ Council or police officers. Last week, National Coast Guard veteran Walter Scott, 50 joined the thousands of black boys, men and women whose blood has soaked the soil of America and who die alone, frightened and terrorized while their assassins laugh at their handiwork. Complete article

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The numbers are staggering: US is ‘world leader’ in child poverty

America’s wealth grew by 60 percent in the past six years, by over $30 trillion. In approximately the same time, the number of homeless children has also grown by 60 percent.

Financier and CEO Peter Schiff said, “People don’t go hungry in a capitalist economy.” The 16 million kids on food stamps know what it’s like to go hungry. Perhaps, some in Congress would say, those children should be working. “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” insisted Georgia Representative Jack Kingston, even for schoolkids, who should be required to “sweep the floor of the cafeteria” (as they actually do at a charter school in Texas). Complete article

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Twenty Years Later: Unreported Facts About the OKC Bombing

Next week will mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people including 19 children. The mainstream media will undoubtedly focus its attention on Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death in June 2001 for his part in the crime. They might also mention Terry Nichols, who was convicted of helping McVeigh plan the bombing and is serving a life sentence without parole.

There will be less discussion about how the FBI spent years hunting for a man who witnesses say accompanied McVeigh on the day of the bombing. They called this accomplice John Doe #2 and theories about his identity range from an Iraqi named Hussain Al-Hussaini, to a German national described below, to a neo-nazi bank robber named Richard Guthrie. The Justice Department finally gave up its search and said it was all a mistake— that there was never any credible evidence of a John Doe #2 being involved. Complete article

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Sunday Funnies, Denial of Service edition

Complete article

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U.S. Government Tracked Billions of American Phone Calls BEFORE 9/11

USA Today reports:

The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said.

***

The similarities between the NSA program and the DEA operation established a decade earlier are striking – too much so to have been a coincidence, people familiar with the programs said. Former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker said, “It’s very hard to see (the DEA operation) as anything other than the precursor” to the NSA’s terrorist surveillance. Complete article

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Tension in Madison: Role of Police

Chief Says Madison Not a Ferguson

The above is a recent interview (Apr/3/2015) in which I talk a bit about tension in Madison and that while there is tension in my old city, it is not a Ferguson. The shooting of a young black man by a Madison officer on March 13th initially sparked both grief and anger in the community. As I mention, my hop is that Madison can continue its role as a learning organization and teach others how best to respond to all-to-common incidents like these — and keep them from happening in the future.

The department stayed true to its decades-old “Madison Method” of properly responding to the protest that boiled over after the shooting that night. The department responded with tolerance and control during the many marches and demonstrations which occurred in the city in the aftermath.

Now the city is in an interim period in which an outside agency investigated the shooting; the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI). Complete article

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Pennsylvania's Top Lawyer Fights for Clearly Illegal Law Silencing Prisoners and Journalists Who Cover Them

Pennsylvania's Top Lawyer Fights for Clearly Illegal Law Silencing Prisoners and Journalists Who Cover Them 03/30/2015

In July 2013 Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane made a bold move when she refused to defend a Pennsylvania state law in federal court that banned same-sex marriage. Terming that ban “wholly unconstitutional,” Kane declared that ethical directives applicable to lawyers barred her from defending a "legally indefensible" law.

“If there is a law that I feel that does not conform with the Pennsylvania state constitution and the U.S. Constitution, then I ethically cannot do that as a lawyer,” Kane told a reporter in 2013 a year after her successful campaign to become the state's first female attorney general. (Kane endorsed gay marriage during her campaign.)

It looks like that self-imposed proscription of Kane's against acting unconstitutionally has a lot of flexibility built into it, though.

Today, two years after Kane’s bold refusal to defend the indefensible same-sex marriage ban, her office is in federal court defending a law hastily approved by Pennsylvania’s Republican controlled state legislature last fall that clearly does not conform with rights protections in either the Pennsylvania or U.S. constitutions. Complete article

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California Water Wars: Another Form of Asset Stripping?

California Water Wars: Another Form of Asset Stripping? 03/25/2015

In California's epic drought, wars over water rights continue, while innovative alternatives for increasing the available water supply go untapped.

Wars over California's limited water supply have been going on for at least a century. Water wars have been the subject of some vintage movies, including the 1958 hit The Big Country starring Gregory Peck, Clint Eastwood's 1985 Pale Rider, 1995's Waterworld with Kevin Costner, and the 2005 film Batman Begins. Most acclaimed was the 1975 Academy Award winner Chinatown with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, involving a plot between a corrupt Los Angeles politician and land speculators to fabricate the 1937 drought in order to force farmers to sell their land at low prices. The plot was rooted in historical fact, reflecting battles between Owens Valley farmers and Los Angeles urbanites over water rights.

Today the water wars continue on a larger scale with new players. It's no longer just the farmers against the ranchers or the urbanites. It's the people against the new "water barons" -- Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Monsanto, the Bush family, and their ilk -- who are buying up water all over the world at an unprecedented pace. Complete article

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A Warning to Our Nation’s Police

A Warning to Our Nation’s Police

Many of you know that I am a person who has put a number of years into the discipline of policing a free society — and I do say “discipline” because policing consists of the multiple disciplines of psychology, sociology, law, emergency medicine, rhetoric, martial arts, history, education, and philosophy (and a few other as well).

And since my retirement, I have been watching, analyzing, writing, and listening to and about police matters. I have recently come to a conclusion about what is going on and a prediction for the future — deep-down, I do hope I am wrong!

Since Ferguson, I have felt a sense of urgency in the nation — and I know that when I write and talk about that urgency has rubbed many of you the wrong way. Agitated or not, police need to look outside themselves and into the cities and communities they serve.

Here’s what I think is going on…

The future of American policing today rests on how well and how quickly its police can regain the trust and support of poor people and people of color.

Trust and support are essential in order to fairly and effectively police a multi-cultural, free society like America.

Without that trust and support, policing will have to use fear, force, and repression to maintain a semblance public order, not the consent and support of the people themselves. Complete article

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Philadelphia’s Killer Cops Prove the Necessity of Black Community Control of Police

Philadelphia’s Killer Cops Prove the Necessity of Black Community Control of Police 03/25/2015

In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the U.S. Justice Department has attempted to position itself on the side of “reform.” Its new report on the Philadelphia police is one example. However, their version of reform is designed to perfect the system of mass Black incarceration, and to derail the movement. “It is critical that the movement put forward its own proposals that would fundamentally alter the power relationships between the police and the Black community.”

“Integrated city halls and diversity in police hiring have not altered the core police mission in Philadelphia or anywhere else in the United States.”

The Black experience in Philadelphia shows, definitively, that conventional assumptions undergirding “reform” of policing have no basis in the racial realities of the United States. Over the past eight years, Philadelphia cops shot at “suspects” 390 times, a rate of once a week, killing 65 of them. Fifty-nine of the human targets were unarmed and 80 percent of them were Black, according to a newly-released report by the U.S. Justice Department.

Philadelphia cops are five times more likely than New York City police to use deadly force against citizens. Despite having agreed four years ago to federal court monitoring of its stop-and-frisk policies, Philly cops made 200,000 such stops last year – about twice as high as the rate recorded in New York before that city’s program was officially halted. Ninety percent of those frisked in Philadelphia are minorities. Yet, the majority Black and brown city boasts a Black district attorney, a Black police commissioner and a 35 percent Black police force, and has had a mayor-appointed Police Advisory Commission since 1993. (Its first such board was set up in 1958.) Complete article

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Beating Trial of LAPD Officer Begun, Then Delayed By “Peace Officer's Bill of Rights”

Beating Trial of LAPD Officer Begun, Then Delayed By “Peace Officer's Bill of Rights”

The case of People v. Mary O’Callaghan began in a Los Angeles courtroom last Wed., Feb. 25, but was halted and delayed till April 2 as the court moved to hear new evidence in the case. Approximately 50-60 perspective jurors who had been sworn in were dismissed.

Mary O’Callaghan is the LAPD officer who kicked/stomped 33-year old Alesia Thomas seven times in the groin/vaginal area in July of 2012. She was charged with Abuse Under Color of Authority by the L.A. County District Attorney’s office after a recommendation from an internal LAPD hearing. If convicted O’Callaghan could face a maximum of one year in county jail and/or a fine of $10,000 if convicted.

At issue appears to be statements made by an unidentified police officer to O’Callaghan on the night Alesia Thomas was arrested: that the officer told O’Callaghan to “stop it; cut it out.” Complete article

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Eight Great Reads at the Journal of 9/11 Studies

Eight Great Reads at the Journal of 9/11 Studies 03/22/2015

This summer will mark the ninth anniversary of the Journal of 9/11 Studies. In that time, my co-editors and I have published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and letters addressing various aspects of the 9/11 crimes. Although it can be hard, thankless work, the job of co-editor has also been rewarding and I’ve learned a great deal. Complete article

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Police: No More Excuses

Police: No More Excuses 03/21/2015

To Our Nation’s Police:

What are you going to do?

When are you going to do it?

Two important questions for them to answer as we go beyond our nation’s Fergusons.

Having been a member of the police for many years, and now a writer and commentator, I am intrigued by these questions. How will our police answer? Will Ferguson be their new norm? This would not be an unusual as “hunkering down,” protecting the status quo, and castigating detractors is what many police have done for decades when faced with change. And when the fire wains and the smoke settles, nothing has changed. Complete article

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Police Frame Innocent People

Police Frame Innocent People 03/18/2015

Police have been busted framing innocent people in numerous ways. For example:

A British judge found that British police framed four innocent men of carrying out an IRA bombing

Judges in India say that police in Dehli “tampered with and fabricated” evidence against many innocent people

A New York police investigation supervisor for criminal investigations in seven counties admits that he and another lieutenant faked fingerprint evidence so often that the New York Times called it an “almost routine fabrication of evidence in criminal case” Complete article

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Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror

Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror 03/18/2015

There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally or in writing:

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army ….” And see this. Complete article

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US Refuses To Seriously Tackle Police Brutality and Racism

US Refuses To Seriously Tackle Police Brutality and Racism 03/16/2015

The report released in early March by a panel President Obama appointed to examine serious shortcomings in police practices across America, including the shooting of unarmed people, mostly non-white, listed problems and proposed solutions that are hauntingly similar to those found in a report on police abuses released 47 years ago by another presidential panel.

The March 1968 report of the presidential panel popularly known as the Kerner Commission noted with dismay that many minorities nationwide regarded police as “an occupying force” – a presence that generated fear not feelings of security.

The March 2015 report from President Obama’s panel made a similar finding, noting that perceptions of police as an “occupying force coming in from the outside to rule and control the community” had sabotaged the ability of law enforcement to build trust in many communities. Complete article

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Germany Files War Crimes Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld And Other CIA Officials

Germany Files War Crimes Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld And Other CIA Officials 12/21/2014

If President Obama won’t do it, someone else will. Thankfully, a human rights group in Berlin, The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, has begun the process of indicting members of the Bush Administration by filing criminal complaints against the architects of the Admin’s torture program.

Calls for an immediate investigation by the German human rights group was started after outrage ensued on the case of a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who had been captured by CIA agents in 2004 because of a mistaken identity mix-up and was tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan. Complete article

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Margaret Thatcher turned a blind eye to politicians raping children—and the cover-up continues under David Cameron

Margaret Thatcher turned a blind eye to politicians raping children—and the cover-up continues under David Cameron 03/08/2015

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher knew about politicians sexually abusing children - but failed to act against them, an MP has told Sky News.

Simon Danczuk, who exposed Sir Cyril Smith as a prolific child abuser, said: "There is no doubt about it now, from what we know, that she turned a blind eye to people who were quite clearly paedophiles. That is absolutely clear.

"It is a real stain on Margaret Thatcher's legacy and I don't get any pleasure from saying that, but she turned a blind eye to it." Complete article

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Florida bans use of “climate change” and/or “global warming” by state officials

Florida bans use of “climate change” and/or “global warming” by state officials 03/10/2015

The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming in this country, according to scientists. Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years.

But you would not know that by talking to officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency on the front lines of studying and planning for these changes.

DEP officials have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

Complete article

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US government has LIED AND LIED about GMOs, new book reveals

US government has LIED AND LIED about GMOs, new book reveals

In an acclaimed new book being launched Wednesday in London, American public interest attorney Steven Druker reveals how the US government and leading scientific institutions have systematically misrepresented the facts about GMOs and the scientific research that casts doubt on their safety.

The book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, features a foreword by the renowned primatologist Dame Jane Goodall, hailing it as “without doubt one of the most important books of the last 50 years”. Complete article

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What’s Happening in Madison?

What’s Happening in Madison? 03/10/2015

From this morning’s Wisconsin State Journal:

“Students from throughout Madison left school and took their rage, sorrow and demands to the city’s power centers on Monday, rocking the state Capitol rotunda with chants of ‘Justice for Tony’ then demanding a meeting with Mayor Paul Soglin and Police Chief Mike Koval while massed outside the City-County Building.

“In loud, well-choreographed voices, they vowed to press public officials and police for consequences in the death last Friday night of Tony Robinson, an unarmed 19-year-old shot by a police officer after an altercation on the Near East Side. Complete article

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Federal Study: US Gov (police) Killing apprx. 1,000 of its Own People Per Year

Federal Study: US Gov (police) Killing apprx. 1,000 of its Own People Per Year 03/10/2015

The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that, on average, US police piled up the bodies of 928 US citizens per year between 2003-2009 and 2011.

And Tom Hall notes: “A list compiled on the website Killed by Police of every police killing mentioned in the American media includes more than 2,000 deaths since May 2013.”

Killings by police in the US “reached a record high last year [461 was the number thought to be a record before the new study was published], while the number of officers killed in the line of duty fell to its lowest level in decades [27].” (By comparison, police in the UK, Germany, Japan, and Australia killed under ten people each, and some years kill none.) Complete article

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