Tag: ek Politics

How Cops Seize Billions of Dollars from Ordinary People Who Haven’t Even Been Charged With a Crime

By Allegra Kirkland, Alternet

September 9, 2014

Like many other aspects of policing in America, civil asset forfeiture morphed into an entirely new beast in the paranoid aftermath of 9/11. The program, which allows law enforcement to seize cash or property without charging people with a crime, has existed in the U.S. for hundreds of years, but picked up steam with the start of the war on drugs in the Reagan era. Yet as AlterNet and other outlets have reported, the program is rarely used to confiscate stacks of cash from suspected drug lords or money launderers. Instead, it has become a boon for local police departments, who have seized hundreds of millions of dollars from regular people, particularly motorists, who then have to fight prolonged legal battles with the federal government to get their property back. This week, the Washington Post published a thorough investigation into the rise of civil asset forfeiture, exposing the troubling flaws in this widespread practice.

After combing through hundreds of thousands of Justice Department seizure records and hundreds of federal court cases, and interviewing police officers and victims of asset forfeiture, the Post reporters found that police have seized an incredible $2.5 billion since 2001, all from people who were not charged with a crime. Most seizures follow a familiar script: police pull drivers over for minor violations like improper signaling, check the driver for signs of nervousness and the vehicle for signs of criminal activity, and act on thin pretenses to seize the individual’s assets after finding money in the car. People have had thousands of dollars taken from them en route to purchase homes and cars, pay off gambling debts or pay dental bills. Once the money is gone, it can take over a year and many thousands of dollars to prove in court that it legally belongs to its owners, many of whom do not have the resources to fight back.

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Here are four of the most disturbing facts from the Post’s investigation:

1. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of the $2.5 billion in cash seizures made since 2001.
2. Only one sixth of the seizures were challenged in court, thanks in part to the exorbitant costs of taking legal action against the government.
3. The program is a critical source of revenue for hundreds of state and local departments. Since 2008, 298 departments and 210 task forces have seized what amounts to 20% or more of their annual budgets.
4. Despite the fact that law enforcement officials in states like Kansas refuse to participate in the “highway interdiction” program because they worry it may not be legal, Justice and Homeland Security officials continue to use it.

Dept. Of Law Enforcement Investigates Notorious ‘Speed Trap’ Town Whose Seven Officers Wrote Up More Than 11,000 Tickets Last Year

by Tim Cushing, TechDirt

Wed, Sep 10th 2014

Law enforcement should not be viewed as a revenue generator. If a local police force is naturally self-sustaining, great. But if anyone starts thinking money first, all sorts of problems develop and the public becomes nothing more than wealth in search of extraction. Asset forfeiture is the most common abuse. People with too much cash in their possession will find it removed. If a cop (or a dog) thinks he smells drugs, vehicles are seized, bank accounts are frozen and homes go on the auction block.

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AAA itself has called out the town for its ridiculous speed limit changes and has even posted a billboard outside the town limits to warn drivers. Now, the state has stepped in to take control of Waldo’s traffic enforcement.

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The town appears to be finally righting years of wrongs, but only because the state is now involved. During the last several years when the police were contributing nearly half of the city’s $1 million budget through traffic enforcement, no one seemed to be making much noise. And the amount of tickets issued to keep the city half-afloat borders on inconceivable.

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That’s not law enforcement. That’s just a scam wearing a uniform. Six speed limit changes in two miles is ridiculous under any circumstances, but even more so when the fluctuations are clearly there to trap anyone who misses a single sign. The state Dept. of Transportation actually sets speed limits but notes that those responsible considered input from Waldo’s PD when putting these into force. According to a somewhat defensive statement from the Florida DOT, foot traffic to schools and a popular flea market justified the speed limit fluctuations. “But it’s up to [Waldo] to enforce the speed limits” lobs the ball back into the Waldo PD’s court, but it’s barely enough to clear the net. Yes, Waldo could issue more warnings or turn the run through town to a straight 35 mph, but it’s had no reason to do so until now, after years and years and hundreds of thousands of tickets.

It’s not clear how the town will make up this revenue “shortfall” in the future, but judging from the brief glimpses and curt “no comments” issued, it’s none too happy. Whatever pain this causes for it in the future, it’s earned. The city was perfectly fine with turning drivers into compelled donors for years. Now, it’s going to need to get by on half the budget and let its police officers return to being police officers rather than a revenue stream.

Unlike some I still have a thin shred of hope in the power of the ballot because I don’t think people are stupid as a whole, just slow to learn and easily influenced.

We’ve had 40 years at least to prove that neo-liberal, trickle-down, perfect market economics do not work.  They have demonstrated failure in tangible ways that show up at your dinner table every day as you CCPI substitute pet food for people food and wear out your cheap off shored rags in weeks and not years.  Your quality of life is declining and it’s harder to disguise.

This is not the inevitable increase of entropy, it’s the result of management decisions made by our government to enrich our elites at the expense of everyone else.

Fortunately conditions like this do not persist.  Whenever there are too many of us and not enough of them there is a revolution.  The propaganda becomes repetitive and unbelievable, the cognitive dissonance too much to overcome.

You are not alone.  Millions of people see the same things you do, think the same things you think.  Including the elites, that’s why they are worried and are investing so heavily in more propaganda and more coercive tools for the suppression of mass sentiment.  Submit to the charms of illusion or the iron boot of oppression, it matters not as long as you submit.

But ultimately they are dependent on your voluntary submission.  They make the calculation that they can distract you with bright and shiny objects or so disillusion you that apathy seems rebellion.

My cynicism is dark and deep, but not that deep.  Nope, I’m actually an optimistic sort of guy- not that it does any good.

I think that politicians, who remain at least nominally subject to a process of public approval, and pundits/media news people, who are more directly and immediately dependent on their audience, are open to influence from the populace and ignore it at their peril.

Ways to show that are by showing up at the polls and voting Third Party, changing your registration to a Third Party, or by voting for Third Party candidates like Teachout and Wu in major party primaries.  If nothing else you can make Chuck Todd’s head explode which is always fun.

I approach this incrementally and pragmatically.  If we continue to vote for the lesser of two evils, it is still evil.  If the current conditions persist more radical solutions than mine will gain urgency.

If I seem like a centrist, I AM!  My beliefs are rooted in the core of New Deal Democracy and Keynesian Economics.  It is Andrew Cuomo and his corrupt crony capitalism and double dealing ‘bi-partisanship’ that prop up the corpse of the New York Republican Party as a Boogieman too scary to dare deserting a Democratic Party that has abandoned every principle and promise.

I am not afraid.

I’d prefer that it not come to pitchforks and torches because I’m more comfortable not being poked and fire has a disturbing tendency to spread beyond your magical circle of intent, but you use the tools you have and if you doubt their efficacy in a modern environment I invite a closer study of recent developments where overwhelming power has not produced the desired results.  Humans are a recalcitrant and obstinate lot.

Should you live and vote in New York as a registered Democrat I invite you today to take positive action and indicate your disapproval of Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul.

Vote for Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu.

It is really the very least you can do.

David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling author whose recent work explores the causes and conditions of inequality in the United States. At the Syracuse University College of Law he’s a distinguished visiting lecturer, where he teaches the history of property, taxation, regulation, and commerce. He’s written a trilogy of books on our pro-corporate tax system; the most recent: The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind. He’s also editing the forthcoming book Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality and writes regular columns for Al Jazeera America, Tax Analysts, and a weekly piece for Newsweek.

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Jurors will begin deliberating this week in the murder and manslaughter trial of four former Blackwater operatives involved in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The suspects are charged for the deaths of 14 of the 17 Iraqi civilians who died when their Blackwater unit opened fire. The trial featured testimony from witnesses who survived the attack and saw loved ones gunned down. In closing arguments last week, prosecutors said Blackwater guards had shot fleeing civilians and boasted of taking their lives. Nisoor Square is the highest-profile deadly incident involving Blackwater – or any private war contractor – and many Iraqis are watching the upcoming verdict to see how seriously the United States intends to hold its private security companies accountable for their alleged crimes

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C’mon.  We’re so much more exceptional than the Islamic State Caliphate.  We would never torture people or murder innocent civilians and journalists.

Well, I mean not barbarically.

It would be a good, clean death administered remotely by rockets and bombs all the way from Langley.

Can’t you see how much more civilized that is?

In other cheerful news from the land of the Rising Sun-

No One Wants You to Know How Bad Fukushima Might Still Be

By Johnny Magdaleno, Vice

Aug 19 2014

Last month, when the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced it would move forward with its plan to construct an “ice wall” around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s failed reactors, it seemed like a step backwards.

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(I)ts initial attempt at installing a similar structure had flopped. Its pipes were apparently unable to freeze the ground, despite being filled with a -22°F chemical solution.

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Aside from TEPCO’s unwillingness to consider other engineering solutions, his main point of criticism about Japan’s largest utility company is rooted in one that countless others have voiced since the earthquake (and subsequent tsunami): a suspicious disregard for keeping the public informed.

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(I)t’s worth noting that TEPCO has been reprimanded by the Japanese government, international scientists, peace-keeping organizations, global media outlets, and both anti- and pro-nuclear advocates for its unwillingness to disclose key details at a time when they are desperately needed. Coupled with the unmitigated radiation still pouring into Pacific waters, this helps explain why a Japanese judicial panel announced in late July that it wants TEPCO executives to be indicted.

This negligence can be traced back to the Fukushima plant’s meltdown. Just three months after the plant was crippled, the Wall Street Journal came out with a report culled from a dozen interviews with senior TEPCO engineers saying its operators knew some reactors were incapable of withstanding a tsunami. Since the Daiichi plant’s construction in the late 1960s, engineers had approached higher-ups to discuss refortifying the at-risk reactors, but these requests were denied due to concerns over renovation costs and an overall lack of interest in upgrading what was, at the time, a functioning plant. In 2012, it came to light that one such cost-cutting measure was the use of duct tape to seal leaking pipes within the plant.

A year after the Wall Street Journal report, TEPCO announced that the Daiichi plant’s meltdown had released 2.5 times more radiation into the atmosphere than initially estimated.

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(A) year later, in June 2013, TEPCO admitted that almost 80,000 gallons of contaminated water had been leaking into the Pacific Ocean every day since the meltdown. As of today, that leak continues.

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In February, TEPCO revealed that groundwater sources near the Daiichi plant and 80 feet from the Pacific Ocean contained 20 million becquerels of the harmful radioactive element Strontium-90 per gallon (one becquerel equals one emission of radiation per second). Even though the internationally accepted limit for Strontium-90 contamination in water hovers around 120 becquerels per gallon, these measurements were hidden from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority for nearly four months.

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Last month, TEPCO told reporters that 14 different rice paddies outside Fukushima’s exclusion zone were contaminated in August 2013, after a large piece of debris was removed from one of the Daiichi plant’s crippled reactors. The readings were taken in March 2014, but TEPCO didn’t publicize their findings until four months later, at the start of July-meaning almost a year had passed since emissions had begun to accumulate at dangerous levels in Japan’s most sacred food.

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As of August 2014, we know that radiation levels around the Fukushima area continue to rise, even after three years of containment attempts. We know that doctors have found 89 cases of thyroid cancer in a study of less than 300,000 children from the Fukushima area-even though the normal incidence rate of this disease among youths is one or two for every million. We know that Japanese scientists are still reluctant to publicize their findings on Fukushima due to a fear of getting stigmatized by the national government.

We also know that US sailors who plotted a relief effort in Fukushima immediately after the disaster have reportedly been experiencing a well-up of different cancers, that monkeys living outside Fukushima’s restricted zone have lower blood cell counts than those living in other parts of northern Japan.

So, in summary, what we know today is that all three of the Daiichi reactors in operation at the time of the earthquake and tsunami experienced core meltdowns with the strong probability that every single one of their containment structures have been breached and the radioactive material sits merely buried but otherwise exposed to the elements.

That the entire site remains so radioactive that humans would face immediate sickness and inevitable death should they attempt to detoxify it themselves and the environment is so hostile that even specially hardened robots can only operate for hours at best before their electronics cease to function.

That there is a pile of used fuel rods larger than the cores of all three reactors in operation at the time of the disaster sitting on top of the fourth reactor building that was shut down for safety concerns.

And that all these structures have continued to deteriorate without any effective repair or maintenance in the past 3 years, the situation is measurably getting worse, and that TEPCO and the Japanese government continue to lie about it.

(h/t Naked Capitalism)

Video by KMOV

Transcript by  Lincoln Madison

I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

By Sunil Dutta, Washington Post

August 19 at 6:00 AM

Sunil Dutta, a professor of homeland security at Colorado Tech University, has been an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department for 17 years.

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

I know it is scary for people to be stopped by cops. I also understand the anger and frustration if people believe they have been stopped unjustly or without a reason. I am aware that corrupt and bully cops exist. When it comes to police misconduct, I side with the ACLU: Having worked as an internal affairs investigator, I know that some officers engage in unprofessional and arrogant behavior; sometimes they behave like criminals themselves.

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(Y)ou don’t have to submit to an illegal stop or search. You can refuse consent to search your car or home if there’s no warrant (though a pat-down is still allowed if there is cause for suspicion). Always ask the officer whether you are under detention or are free to leave. Unless the officer has a legal basis to stop and search you, he or she must let you go. Finally, cops are legally prohibited from using excessive force: The moment a suspect submits and stops resisting, the officers must cease use of force.

But if you believe (or know) that the cop stopping you is violating your rights or is acting like a bully, I guarantee that the situation will not become easier if you show your anger and resentment. Worse, initiating a physical confrontation is a sure recipe for getting hurt. Police are legally permitted to use deadly force when they assess a serious threat to their or someone else’s life.

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Later, you can ask for a supervisor, lodge a complaint or contact civil rights organizations if you believe your rights were violated. Feel free to sue the police! Just don’t challenge a cop during a stop.

Respect his authoritah. He’s not just a cop, but a “professor of homeland security at Colorado Tech University.”- Atrios, Eschaton

So, if you fk with me and my rights, and I respond by explaining to you that I am going to call a lawyer and sue you for abuse, you have the right to tase me, bro? I can’t tell you how glad I am that this guy is training the next generation of Homeland Security goons.-  Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

And not in a good way, last night the Police started rioting in Ferguson.

Again.

At 8:30, 3 and a half hours before curfew justified (supposedly) by reports of a Molotov Cocktail thrown that nobody can independently verify because the ‘free’ Press was penned up and corralled away from the scene and those who attempted to evade their Police ‘escorts’ (for their own safety and protection of course) were arrested.

Again.

What’s new is that they called in the National Guard and all the government spokespeople are blaming it on anarchists and outside agitators because the Police would never, ever lie.

Ever.

Missouri Governor to Deploy National Guard to Ferguson

By ALAN BLINDER and TANZINA VEGA, The New York Times

AUG. 18, 2014

Gov. Jay Nixon announced early Monday that he would deploy the Missouri National Guard to this St. Louis suburb, ratcheting up efforts to quell unrest that has paralyzed the city since an unarmed black teenager was killed by a white police officer.

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“Tonight, a day of hope, prayers and peaceful protests was marred by the violent criminal acts of an organized and growing number of individuals, many from outside the community and state, whose actions are putting the residents and businesses of Ferguson at risk,” Mr. Nixon said.

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On Sunday night, hours before the start of a second day of a mandatory curfew that the governor had ordered, police officers came under assault from gunfire and firebombs and responded with their largest show of force so far.

Using a barrage of tear gas and smoke canisters, and firing rubber bullets and deploying hundreds of officers in riot gear to sweep the streets of protesters, the law enforcement officials had the situation largely under control by the time the curfew began at midnight.

Protesters said that the police acted without provocation. But at a news conference about an hour into the curfew, Ronald S. Johnson, the Missouri State Highway Patrol captain brought in by the governor to take over security here, blamed “premeditated criminal acts” that were intended to provoke the police.

Missouri national guard to be deployed at Ferguson protests

Jon Swaine and Rory Carroll, The Guardian

Monday 18 August 2014 09.59 EDT

Police launched their first barrage of gas and smoke at about 9pm on Sunday after fearing an advance on their command post – in a mall parking lot just south of the centre of the clashes – by a largely peaceful protest march, according to Johnson. He said several molotov cocktails were thrown by those taking part in the march, which included children.

This was sharply disputed. “You need to pull these officers back,” Renita Lamkin, an episcopal pastor who has been trying to control the protests, told a police chief by phone, as teargas fell on the march. “There were no molotov cocktails,” she said.

An unrelated shooting about 20 minutes later outside a branch of McDonald’s prompted a stampede of people down West Florissant Avenue, the main road where conflict has flared since Brown was killed. Almost immediately, police deployed more gas and smoke grenades.

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Protesters said they had no intention of backing down. “This is a revo-fucking-lution,” said DeAndre Smith, a 30-year-old barber. “Plain and simple, this is the revolution. The one everybody was waiting on. It happened like this. It’s the gain in culture by a people who want respect. African American people in this country.

“I been out here since day one. I was on the frontline. Mike Brown was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That’s when we said this is enough. That’s it.”

Following a standoff at the petrol station, police sent remaining demonstrators scrambling into side streets by speeding at them in armoured Swat trucks, firing yet more gas and smoke at people running away. The trucks continued driving up and down the main street doing this until it was cleared. As some reached a branch of Domino’s pizza, there were two more bursts of gunshots.

In Dellwood, just north of Ferguson, several people were injured when a crowd fled in their cars from a grocery store that was apparently being looted when police arrived. The injured were taken to hospital. There were still more than 40 minutes to go before the second five-hour long nightly curfew ordered by Nixon came into effect.

In Ferguson the violence of the state created the violence of the street

Gary Younge, The Guardian

Monday 18 August 2014 09.30 ED

In 1966, Martin Luther King started to campaign against segregation in Chicago only to find his efforts thwarted by violent mobs and a scheming mayor. Marginalised by the city’s establishment, he could feel that non-violence both as a strategy and as a principle was eroding among his supporters. “I need some help in getting this method across,” he said. “A lot of people have lost faith in the establishment … They’ve lost faith in the democratic process. They’ve lost faith in non-violence … [T]hose who make this peaceful revolution impossible will make a violent revolution inevitable, and we’ve got to get this over, I need help. I need some victories, I need concessions.”

He never got them. The next year there were more than 150 riots across the country, from Minneapolis to Tampa.

As the situation escalates in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, where police recently shot an unarmed black man as he walked down the street, many are clearly losing faith. As the first day of curfew drew to a close, hundreds of police in riot gear swept through the streets, using tear gas, smoke canisters and rubber bullets against an increasingly agitated crowd. Earlier this morning the governor, Jay Nixon, deployed the national guard.

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As I wrote after the riots in London three years ago: “Insisting on the criminality of those involved, as though that alone explains their motivations and the context is irrelevant, is fatuous. To stress criminality does not deny the political nature of what took place, it simply chooses to only partially describe it. They were looting, not shoplifting, and challenging the police for control of the streets, not stealing [policemen’s] hubcaps. When a group of people join forces to flout both law and social convention, they are acting politically.”

For good reason, the nature of such rebellions troubles many. They attract opportunists, macho-men and thrill-seekers as well as the righteously indignant and politically militant. Resistance to occupation is often romanticised but never pretty. And Ferguson – a mostly black town under curfew in which the entire political power structure is white, with a militarised police force that killed a black child – was under occupation.

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People ask: what could violent protest possibly achieve? It is a good question. But it only has any validity if they also question the nature of the “peace” preceding it. Those who call for calm must question how calm anyone can be in the knowledge that their son, brother or lover could be shot in such a way.

People have a right to resist occupation, even if we don’t necessarily agree with every method they use to do so.

Tiger Beat on the Potomac gets it right.

Violence continues in Ferguson

By BYRON TAU, Politico

8/17/14 9:01 AM EDT

At least one male protester was critically injured in a shooting and was in the hospital fighting for his life, police said in a hastily arranged early Sunday morning press conference.

An additional seven people were arrested in the disorder and mayhem that followed. Police moved along West Florissant Street dressed in riot gear and driving military-style vehicles – a return to the cycle of violence seen earlier in the week.

Police fired tear gas and smoke canisters along the street – though they initially denied that tear gas was used. Under repeated questioning and when confronted with physical evidence of a tear-gas canister, police admitted that they’d used the chemical late in the operation.

Journalists were restricted to a small media pen at the far end of the street and were told they would be risk arrest if they left amid a blanket five-hour curfew declared by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Saturday.

Izvestia swings and… misses.

Police in Ferguson Arrest Protesters Who Defied Curfew

By JULIE BOSMAN and ALAN BLINDER, The New York Times

AUG. 17, 2014

A clash between the protesters and dozens of police officers in riot gear began less than 30 minutes after the curfew took effect and ended about 45 minutes later with the arrest of seven people, all charged with “failure to disperse,” officials said.

The protesters had moved toward the officers – some of whom rode in armored vehicles – and chanted: “We are Mike Brown! We have the right to assemble peacefully!” invoking the name of the 18-year-old who was shot and killed by the Ferguson officer.

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Despite an earlier pledge by Capt. Ronald S. Johnson, the state Highway Patrol commander who is overseeing security in Ferguson, the police eventually began firing smoke grenades and some tear gas.

At a news conference about 3 a.m. on Sunday, Captain Johnson explained that some tear gas had been used because the police had learned that armed men were inside a barbecue restaurant. One man with a gun had moved to the middle of the street, Captain Johnson said, but escaped. Another man, who was not identified, was shot by an unknown assailant and taken by companions to a hospital, where he was reported to be in critical condition. A police car was fired upon, the captain added, but it was not immediately clear if it was hit.

Pravda is much better.

One shot, seven arrested as chaos erupts after curfew in Ferguson

By DeNeen L. Brown, Manuel Roig-Franzia and Jerry Markon, Washington Post

August 17 at 6:11 AM

Gun violence, tear gas and armored vehicles marked the first night of a controversial curfew imposed in this St. Louis suburb where the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager has kicked over a cauldron of frustration and anger.

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Tear gas was fired, Johnson said, after officers spotted a man with a handgun in the middle of the street. (Lt. John Hotz, a highway patrol spokesman, initially said police used only smoke. Later, he told the Associated Press that police also used tear gas. “Obviously, we’re trying to give them every opportunity to comply with the curfew,” he said.)

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Hundreds of protesters stood in the middle of Ferguson’s main avenue under heavy rain early Sunday, minutes after the curfew went into effect.

The crowd chanted, “No justice, no curfew!” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!”

At 12:41 a.m., police shouted over a loudspeaker: “You are violating a state-imposed curfew. You must disperse or you will be subject to arrest or other actions.”

Some people in the crowd left. Others shouted at the police: “F— you.”

Then came disorder.

At 12:49 a.m., police fired tear gas canisters and devices that produced smoke. Protesters ran. Some were handcuffed. Shots were fired. Police sirens wailed.

By 1:30 a.m., a plume of smoke rose over West Florissant, the street where Brown took some of his final steps. The smell of smoke was in the air. Explosions erupted every 10 minutes or so – more canisters that made loud bangs.

Police in riot gear blocked the entrance to the main road. They held shields and pointed rifles, shouting for people to clear the road. Many dispersed.

Law enforcement officers in black gloves pushed television cameramen out of the street as they tried to capture images of a man with his hands restrained behind his back being led into an idling police van.

“You’re violating the law,” a law enforcement officer said over a loudspeaker.

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By 2:45 a.m., the police had succeeded in turning much of Ferguson into a ghost town. A heavy downpour puddled on streets emptied of inhabitants. Two officers ran down Florissant, shedding gas masks without breaking stride. The flashing lights of dozens of police vehicles reflected off of a rain-slicked pavement.

“This is not our community!” an onlooker said. She made a peace sign with her right hand, then talked of “revolution.” She wouldn’t say her name.

A lot of people in Ferguson won’t say their names these days. They’re scared or suspicious or both.

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Capt. Johnson said Saturday that the curfew would be enforced through communication, not physical force. “We will be telling people, ‘It’s time to go home,’ ” he said.

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Several blocks away, hundreds of officers waited in the shopping center parking lot, which has become their staging area.

Full coverage at The Guardian of course.

Missouri police fire teargas at Ferguson protesters defying curfew

Jon Swaine and Rory Carroll, The Guardian

Sunday 17 August 2014 05.38 EDT

Police in riot gear fired teargas at protesters who defied a Saturday night curfew imposed in the Missouri city of Ferguson, where an unarmed 18-year-old being shot dead by a police officer has been followed by a week of street clashes.

About 200 demonstrators ignored an order to return home at midnight made under a state of emergency declared earlier on Saturday by the state’s governor, Jay Nixon, after rioting and looting returned to the centre of the city on Friday night.

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The curfew did not mean a return to military-style policing, Johnson promised. “We won’t enforce it with tanks,” he said. “We won’t enforce it with teargas.”

Ferguson cop who walked middle of road finds critics coming both ways

Jon Swaine and Rory Carroll, The Guardian

Saturday 16 August 2014 22.20 EDT

He was the man who seemed to have pulled Ferguson back from the edge.

After nights of unrest, during which police fired teargas and rubber bullets at protesters who hurled abuse, rocks and occasionally worse, captain Ron Johnson signalled that things had changed by leading a peaceful march of demonstrators through the centre of the town on Thursday.

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But the euphoria faded fast. Late on Friday, pockets of rioting brought back the armoured trucks, riot gear and teargas. Later still, after police retreated, small crowds began looting shops, most notably one where Brown allegedly shoplifted cigars before he died.

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Some proved even more difficult to win over. As Johnson gave media interviews amid a crowd of protesters on Thursday night, Kesheara Ross, 26, listened to his remarks and snorted.

There would be no meaningful police reform, she predicted. “They’re not going to make any changes. I’ve heard all the same stuff after other shootings.” She gave the captain a withering look. “Uncle Tom-ass brothers.”

Missouri’s days of unrest expose the stark reality of a segregated society

Rory Carroll and Jon Swaine, The Observer

Saturday 16 August 2014 13.01 EDT

“The police don’t like coming here,” said Don Williams, 52, who moved to Vickie Place with his family in 2001. “It was majority white then. Now, almost all black.” The absence of street lighting made everything pitch dark after sunset, intimidating patrols, he said. “We have break-ins but the police barely investigate. They’re not worth nothing.” Opposite the Brown home lives one of the street’s last white residents, Doris McCann, who has lived here for 55 of her 86 years. “It’s a changed neighbourhood. Everyone that’s white moved out,” she lamented.

White flight is a familiar phenomenon in many countries but the use of armoured vehicles and sniper nests in the height of a Missouri summer has exposed the extent and consequences of segregation in America’s heartland.

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“I keep my sons shuttered at home because of situations like this. Young black men have targets painted on their backs,” said Kesheara Ross, 26, a protester. “I’ve had a cop call me nigger. This shit’s been going on for years.”

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Many critics focused on the military equipment. Under a federal programme the Pentagon has offloaded $4.3bn in surplus gear, much of it from Afghanistan and Iraq, to police the US. As Kara Dansky, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out, to a hammer everything looks like a nail.

Another factor was racial imbalance: only three of Ferguson’s 53 officers are black (94% white, in other words) and only one of six city councillors is black – a product of disenfranchisement and anaemic political mobilisation in a city where two-thirds of the population is black.

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The sense that the worst had passed, however, masked an enduring problem: most of those in uniform inhabit a different realm to the people they are supposed to serve. Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson alluded to this when he said there was “a community that is at odds with us now”. He added: “Apparently there is this undertow that has now bubbled to the surface.”

Ferguson’s mayor, James Knowles, who is also white, defended his police officers – the ones who waded in looking like Robocop on steroids. “I’m sure they’re under a great deal of stress, and though it does not make it OK, they are human, and I can understand their frustrations as well,” Knowles said.

…

The separation of races should in theory be a fading anachronism given that a black man occupies the White House and black artists suffuse mainstream culture. But half a century after the civil rights movement triumphed, the dream of an integrated multiracial society in this sprawl by the Mississippi is largely dead. As black families moved to nicer areas, exploiting newfound freedom, white neighbours fled. “It was gradual but they all packed up. You’ll find them now in St Charles, Chesterfield, Wildwood, Alton,” said McCann.

Keystone climate impact could be 4 times U.S. State Dept. estimate, study says

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Sunday, August 10, 2014 6:05PM EDT

“It didn’t appear that they looked at the market implications,” said co-author Peter Erickson. “If the Keystone pipeline were to enable a greater rate of extraction of the oilsands, would that not increase global fuel supplies, which might then decrease prices and therefore allow a little bit more global consumption?

“That’s the analysis that we did here and we found that it could be the greatest emissions impact of the pipeline.”

Erickson and co-author Michael Lazarus used figures from previous research and international agencies that mathematically describe how oil prices affect consumption. They found that a slightly lower price created by every barrel of increased oilsands production enabled by Keystone XL would increase global oil consumption by slightly more than half a barrel.

The capacity of the pipeline proposed by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. (TSX:TRP) would be about 820,000 barrels a day. If every barrel of that came from new production, the annual carbon impact of Keystone XL could be up to 110 million tonnes — four times the maximum State Department estimate of up to 27 million tonnes.

Keystone XL’s Climate Impact Could Be Four Times Greater Than State Department Claimed

by Emily Atkin, ThinkProgress

August 11, 2014 at 5:04 pm

Opponents of Keystone XL have often made the argument that the pipeline’s construction would increase production of Canadian tar sands crude oil, an unconventional type of oil that’s embedded in sand and mud. Separating the oil from the mud is complicated – scientists say the process produces three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventionally produced oil.

But the State Department and those who want to see the pipeline built say that’s not true. “At the end of the day, we are going to be consuming that oil,” former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has said. In other words, Keystone XL’s construction would not impact the climate because Alberta’s carbon-intensive tar sands would inevitably be developed, pipeline or not.

Erickson and Lazarus say the problem with the State Department’s assessment is that it didn’t even consider the possibility that production would increase. “There’s a lot of uncertainty that should be accounted for,” Lazarus said.

“If the pipeline doesn’t help oil sands production expand, if all the oil is gonna get out there otherwise, then there’s no increased [climate] impact. We don’t dispute that,” Erickson added. “But what we’re looking at is, to the extent that the pipeline does help oil sands expand more than it otherwise would, then there’s this climate effect and it looks to be big.”

There have been indications from both the oil industry and the federal government that Keystone XL would increase production of the Canadian tar sands. Indeed, even the top executive of the company contracted to build Keystone XL has admitted that the pipeline is essential for speedy tar sands development.

“Developing tar sands is an opportunity that’s going to be lost for decades to come if new pipelines do not immediately come online,” TransCanada CEO Ross Girling said in January. “If you miss an opportunity, you may lose it for decades and decades to come.”

The International Energy Agency has also stated that tar sands expansion “is contingent on the construction of major new pipelines,” and RBS Dominion Securities of Toronto warned that up to 450,000 barrels a day of tar sands production could be put on hold between 2015 and 2017 if the Keystone pipeline is not approved.

So why wouldn’t the State Department consider global carbon impacts in its assessment? The answer might be that there are still questions as to whether the U.S. government can legally consider worldwide impacts – whether Keystone’s potential impact on global consumption is within the State Department’s scope. It is a United States-based project, after all.

But Lazarus said that shouldn’t matter. “We need to consider, especially from a climate change stance, that emissions know no borders when it comes to greenhouse gases,” he said. “It seems imperative that wherever one is supposed to look at emissions implications of a policy, one must look at it from a global perspective.”

Burt (Wides) played a major role in the creation of both Congressional and White House oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. He headed the Church Committee investigation of the CIA, the first ever Congressional investigation of its questionable activities. He then helped create the Senate and House Intelligence Committees; ran the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board for Jimmy Carter; and investigated Dick Cheney’s War on Terror, including torture and extraordinary rendition for Congressman John Conyers. He has served as chief of staff or senior counsel to three U.S. Senators and two congressional committees.

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Nixon’s Treason Now Acknowledged

By: David Swanson, Firedog Lake

Thursday August 7, 2014 11:02 am

A George Will column this week, reviewing a book by Ken Hughes called Chasing Shadows, mentions almost in passing that presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon secretly sabotaged peace talks that appeared likely to end the war on Vietnam until he intervened.  As a result, the war raged on and Nixon won election promising to end the war.

…

You’d almost have to already know what Will was referring to if you were going to pick up on the fact that Nixon secretly prevented peace while publicly pretending he had a peace plan.  And you’d have to be independently aware that once Nixon got elected, he continued the war for years, the total carnage coming to include the deaths of 4 million Vietnamese plus hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and Laotians, with the deaths from bombs not previously exploded continuing on a major scale to this day, and, of course, the 58,000 Americans killed in the war who are listed on a wall in D.C. as if somehow more worthy than all the others.

…

Will is not the only one to acknowledge what Nixon did.  The Smithsonian reported on Nixon’s treason last year, on the occasion of new tapes of Lyndon Johnson being released.  But the Smithsonian didn’t call it treason; it treated the matter more as hard-nosed election strategizing.  Ken Hughes himself published an article on the History News Network two years ago saying almost exactly what Will’s column said this week. But the publication used the headline “LBJ Thought Nixon Committed Treason to Win the 1968 Election.”

…

Will’s focus is on Hughes’ theory that Nixon’s plan to break into or even firebomb the Brookings Institution was driven by his desire to recover evidence of his own treasonous sabotaging of peace, and that Watergate grew from Nixon’s desire to coverup that horrendous crime.  This differs from various theories as to what Nixon was so desperate to steal from Brookings (that he was after evidence that Kennedy murdered Diem, or evidence that LBJ halted the bombing of Vietnam just before the election to help Humphrey win, etc.) It certainly seems that Nixon had reasons for wanting files from Brookings that his staff did not share his views on the importance of. And covering up his own crimes was always a bigger motivation for Nixon than exposing someone else’s.  Nixon was after Daniel Ellsberg, not because Ellsberg had exposed Nixon’s predecessors’ high crimes and misdemeanors, but because Nixon feared what Ellsberg might have on him.

But Nixon’s sabotaging of peace in 1968 has been known for many years.  And that explanation of the Brookings incident has been written about for years, and written about in a context that doesn’t bury the significance of the story.

…

It’s almost universally maintained by those who have expressed any opinion on the matter that if the public had known about Nixon’s treason while he was president, all hell would have broken loose.  Are we really such idiots that we’ve now slipped into routinely acknowledging the truth of the matter but raising no hell whatsoever?  Do we really care so much about personalities and vengeance that Nixon’s crime means nothing if Nixon is dead?  Isn’t the need to end wars and spying and government secrets, to make diplomacy public and nonviolent, a need that presses itself fiercely upon us regardless of how many decades it will take before we learn every offensive thing our current top officials are up to?

HE WAS A CROOK

by Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone via The Atlantic

June 16, 1994

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern — but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man — evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him — except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

…

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments — most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H. P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. “He will dwarf FDR and Truman,” according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

(h/t Jeralyn @ Talk Left)