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Class-action suit alleges discrimination by sheriff's deputies against LGBT inmates at a San Bernardino County jail: http://lat.ms/1yodrd3
Tan Bernardino County sheriff's deputies called gay, bisexual and transgender inmates "sisses" and "freak shows" and denied them access to services given to other inmates, civil rights attorneys alleged in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
OKLAHOMA CITY – Federal authorities have detained a man who they say admitted to driving a car into a disputed Ten Commandments monument outside the Oklahoma Capitol building, smashing it to pieces.
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Other groups have asked to erect their own statues, including a satanic group that wants to put up a 7-foot-tall statue of Satan.
A Nazi operator such as von Bolschwing, who recommended propaganda to inculcate Germans with anti-Semitism, might have wound up before an international tribunal. But instead, von Bolschwing, who was later characterized as “guilty of acts more heinous than anyone else currently under investigation,” got a job with the CIA as a Cold War spy. Then he was awarded American citizenship due to his work’s “caliber,” became vice president of a Sacramento computer company, and died in 1982 at a Carmichael, Calif., nursing home.
“U.S. agencies directly or indirectly hired numerous ex-Nazi police officials and East European collaborators who were manifestly guilty of war crimes,” University of Florida professor Norman Goda told Times reporter Eric Lichtblau. “Information was readily available that these were compromised men.”
The decision came from the top, the BBC reported. Records show Hoover signed off on the use of ex-Nazis and paid little attention to past crimes. One accused war criminal, Aleksandras Lileikis, had an alleged role in the extermination of thousands of Jews, but was nonetheless recruited to work as a spy in East Germany and eventually lived in Boston. “All of us were collaborators,” with Nazis, Lileikis once said. “The whole nation, since it was acting according to Nazi laws. … So I made mistakes — mistakes, or let’s say the ‘crimes’ which I am accused of.”
All the more there is no love for Jews/Israel by the American elite, Israel is protected to gaurd the holy lands from falling to the Islamics and a grand mosque built in Bethlehem, Jerusalem Temple mound etc. without the west admitting that it is nothing but anther crusade.
US Senate's forthcoming 'Torture Report' will 'deeply shock' people
Ian Johnston
Sunday 07 September 2014
At least two al-Qaeda suspects were brought to the “point of death” during “real torture” by CIA officials following the 9/11 attacks, a security source has claimed.
The insider said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, and at least one other person were not simply waterboarded, which is designed to simulate the sensation of drowning.
“They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” the source told The Daily Telegraph.
“They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.”
The US Senate is planning to publish a 3,600-page document – dubbed the Torture Report – spelling out what happened to al-Qaeda suspects in US custody. Another source said the report would “deeply shock” people in the US.
Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said the report will reveal “brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation”.
A third source told the Telegraph that tactics used during questioning were more savage than had been admitted to date, saying “they got medieval on his ass” about the treatment of Mohammed and another detainee.
Amrit Singh, a lawyer and author of Administration of Torture, which details the George W Bush administration’s torture policy, said: “Given the lengths that Bush-era CIA officials went to cover up the truth, including destroying videotapes depicting waterboarding of prisoners, it comes as no surprise that the torture was more brutal than previously revealed.
“It is, however, something that the American public has a right to know about, and an obligation to reckon with, and these revelations only underscore the urgent need for release of the Senate intelligence committee report.”
Actually not positive at all as it was to resupply the Intl.Space Stn. Why couldn't the US use its ultra-secret mini space shuttle which landed a few days ago after a 2yr. holiday in space?
A cultural war in the biggest city of Texas: FAQ about a cultural brawl.
How the city fought back to subpoena sermons of pastors and how the mayor was flooded with hundreds of bibles.
The country is facing a retirement crisis as its citizens live longer, which will result in greater demands on their assets. Yet many workers are failing to save enough -- or anything at all -- for their golden years, according to a new study from investment firm BlackRock.
Autopsy reveals man armed with costume sword was shot in the back by police http://usat.ly/1wC0An9 (Rick Bowmer, AP)
The state autopsy documents six gunshot wounds on the body of 22-year-old Darrien Hunt and finds at least four of the shots entered his body from behind.
That generally confirms the results of an independent autopsy released by his family, who said Hunt was treated differently because he was black.
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An attorney for the Hunt family, Robert Sykes, disputed the officers' account, saying a picture taken by a bystander shows Hunt smiling as he talked to two officers.
Tim Taylor, chief deputy at the Utah County Attorney's Office, said Tuesday that Hunt talked to officers after they arrived, asking them for a ride.
Officers then dragged Mr Hall's body along the ground trying to handcuff him
Lizzie Dearden
Wednesday 29 October 2014
Graphic footage has emerged showing a homeless man being shot and killed by police in the US who fired a barrage of 46 bullets as he held a penknife.
Milton Hall, who was mentally ill, was surrounded by eight officers training their guns in a shopping centre car park in Saginaw, Michigan, in July 2012.
The 49-year-old had been arguing with police after an alleged altercation with a shop assistant for several minutes and the video shows him refusing an officer’s demand to put down the knife.
After a tense stand-off, he appeared to step forward and police opened fire. The footage, taken by a bystander, shows Mr Hall fall down almost immediately and lie unmoving on the ground.
He had been shot 14 times.
As he lies bleeding, the officers are seen attempting to handcuff his lifeless arms and dragging his body along the ground, with one officer appearing to kick his back.
Police officers attempting to handcuff Mr Hall after shooting him Police officers attempting to handcuff Mr Hall after shooting him Shocked onlookers can be heard shouting at police after the shooting, with one asking: “Why did they have to shoot him so many times?”.
The death of Mr Hall, who was black, at the hands of white police officers sparked protests and calls for the police who shot him to face criminal charges.
But the county prosecutor and Department of Justice declined to bring charges against them, accepting the that the action was justified in the face of what they felt was a threat.
Mr Hall was “known” to authorities for committing previous offences, a police spokesperson said at the time, but his family said he had only committed minor, non-violent crimes.
His mother, Jewel Hall, described her son’s death as “an assassination”, by a “firing squad dressed in uniforms”.
Milton Hall's mother, Jewel Hall Milton Hall's mother, Jewel Hall In an interview with the American Civil Liberties Union, who released the latest footage, she said Mr Hall fought for equal rights and worked with Rosa Parks, the famous civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her seat for a white bus passenger in 1955 was one of the key events in the civil rights movement.
“His blood [was] running down the street like water,” Mrs Hall said. “And he wasn't a threat, I mean, he had a little pen knife.
“He had no idea that those policemen would do that to him…justice still has not been served.”
Mrs Hall is now working with other families bereaved by police shootings and campaigning for changes to laws governing the police use of “deadly force”.
Ted Cruz's response to Tim Cook's coming out is every bit as gross as you'd expect http://slnm.us/PxFcr9A
Cruz, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, has established himself as one of the GOP’s most strident opponents of LGBT equality. When the Supreme Court let stand a series of lower court rulings in favor of marriage equality earlier this month, the senator denounced the decision as “tragic and indefensible” and “judicial activism at its worst.” Cruz has also inserted himself into controversies over “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson’s homophobic views and Houston’s LGBT non-discrimination ordinance. The Tea Party favorite hasn’t restricted his anti-gay advocacy to rhetorical bombast; earlier this year, he and Utah Sen. Mike Lee introduced a bill that would codify states’ rights to ban marriage equality and to refuse to recognize same-sex nuptials performed in other states.
Huffington Post @HuffingtonPost 16m16 minutes ago
Cardinal Burke: Catholic Church under Pope Francis is like 'Ship without a rudder' http://huff.to/1tvvyxE
VATICAN CITY (RNS) American Cardinal Raymond Burke, the feisty former archbishop of St. Louis who has emerged as the face of the opposition to Pope Francis’ reformist agenda, likened the Roman Catholic Church to “a ship without a rudder” in a fresh attack on the pope’s leadership.
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Burke has expressed an uncompromising stance on keeping the ban on Communion for Catholics who divorce and remarry without an annulment
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Burke had previously said that Catholic families should not expose children to the “evil” of homosexuality by inviting a gay son home for Christmas with his partner.
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“The acts must be judged; I do not think that the pope thinks differently. They are sinful and unnatural. The pope never said we can find positive elements in them. It is impossible to find positive elements in an evil act.”
Ninety-year-old man faces jail for giving food to homeless people
A 90-year-old man is facing up to 60 days in jail for feeding the needy due to a new law that bans people in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from meal-sharing with the public.
Arnold Abbott risks being fined $500 and spending time in prison after police officers apprehended him while he was handing out meals to homeless people in a park on Sunday.
He was arrested and charged along with two ministers from the Sanctuary Church, which prepares hundreds of meals to dish out every week in their kitchen, while onlookers shouted to officers "shame on you!"
Mr Abbott said: "One of police officers came over and said ‘Drop that plate right now,’ as if I was carrying a weapon."
He added: "These are the poorest of the poor, they have nothing, they don't have a roof over their heads. How do you turn them away?"
Republicans romped their way across America’s electoral map last night, quickly seizing control of the United States Senate and consolidating their grip on the House of Representatives in a significant shift to the right that will spell a tumultuous twilight to President Barack Obama’s second term.
An ill-humoured midterm election that saw unprecedented sums of money spent on torrents of negative advertising, it nonetheless culminated in an unmistakable rebuke for President Obama who found himself largely constrained from campaigning for his party’s candidates by dint of his own unpopularity.
And when votes started to be tallied, every possible scenario for redemption for Democrats fell away. The party watched as Republicans took Senate seats not just in states that were always deemed dicey but also in those where they had hope of holding on, from Colorado to North Carolina, Iowa and Arkansas.
In Iowa, a seat long been held by Senator Tom Harkin turned red as Joni Ernst, a Republican military veteran who had cut an early ad vowing to “cut pork” in Washington while recalling castrating pigs on her family firm, defeated Democrat Bruce Braley. She will be the first female veteran in the Senate.
There was disappointment also in the gamut of races for governor, notably in Florida, which will inevitably play a pivotal part in the 2016 race for the White House, where Republican incumbent Rick Scott narrowly fended off a hard-fought challenge by Charlie Crist, a former governor of the state who in the last three years had transitioned from Republican to independent to Democrat.
Scott Walker, the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, defied those who thought him vulnerable and handily staved off Democrat Mary Burke, a victory that is likely to put him in the frame for possible contenders for the 2016 Republican nomination. And in Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder also won re-election. The Democratic governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, was also ousted.
Unquestionably, however, the Democrats losing control of the Senate was the headline of the night. It means that in January, Senator Harry Reid, the current Majority Leader and staunch Obama ally, will hand the chamber’s leadership to Senator Mitch McConnell who last night was also savouring his own victory in Kentucky over challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.
“Friends, this experiment in big government has lasted long enough. It's time to go in a new direction,“ Mr McConnell told supporters at a post-election party in Louisville. “But we do have an obligation to work together on issues where we can agree. I think we have a duty to do that.”
The thumping taken by Democrats will very likely create pressure on Hillary Clinton to stop deliberating about whether or not to seek the presidency in 2016 and declare her intention to do so – if that is indeed the case – on an accelerated schedule. It is possible that not only she but also several Republican presidential aspirants will declare in the coming weeks, thus firing the starting pistol on the 2016 race.
The spotlight will also turn on President Obama, whose first move will be to summon all the leaders of Congress to the White House this Friday to begin discussions on how the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue might try to meet and work together now. When Mr Obama took office in 2009, Democrats controlled by the sides of Congress. They lost the House in 2010. Now they’ll have neither chamber.
As the Republicans plot, as they surely will, to create bills aimed at furthering their agenda of smaller government, lower taxes and lighter regulation, including of Wall Street – certainly they will attempt above all to chip away at his healthcare reforms if not do away with them entirely – the president for his own part will doubtless be forced to defend his own agenda by use of the veto pen.
On a brighter note for Democrats, Senator Jeanne Shaheen appeared by the slimmest of margins to have defeated Scott Brown, her Republican rival, who had trespassed onto her territory in New Hampshire after serving as a junior senator in Massachusetts. A loss by Ms Shaheen would have been considered disastrous for Democrats, not least because the pivotal part that New Hampshire will also play in 2106.
Among the big survivors of the night was Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, who until just a few weeks ago looked seriously endangered by an upstart campaign launched by businessman Greg Orman who declared himself an independent. In the end, however, Mr Orman fell short.
While the scores of outside donors to Republicans across the land – some of whose identities have yet to be revealed – will revel in the fruits of their investments (unlike in 2014 when Mr Obama’s re-election left many big-spending Republicans wondering why they had bothered) – donors on the losing side will be bitterly disappointed as will some of those big party names who spent the campaign darting about the land hoping to help vulnerable Democrats. Count among those Michelle Obama and Mrs Clinton.
He now vows to perform another 15 years of hard labor, according to a release issued Friday by the U.S. officials in Louisville. He will also continue to pay the expenses of the 12 unidentified benefectors who previously benefitted from his services. His efforts have easily eclipsed the canonized work of Ariel Castro in Cleveland who only housed three women for several years.
USA is a developed country where the benefits system attracts millions of undocumented migrants every year. However,there are hardly a case or two every weekof large scale generosity.
Does this really make it a problem? I mean whats 1% of the population here or there? There are more people in jails. Pffft, some people scare-mongering.
Nuclear commander lost job after being caught playing fake poker chips
Downfall of Vice-Admiral Timothy Giardina is latest embarrassment for America's missile men, amid low morale and a string of public scandals
By Rob Crilly, New York
23 Nov 2014
By day, Vice-Admiral Timothy Giardina was one of the US Navy’s most senior figures – as deputy head of US Strategic Command, he was number two in command of America’s nuclear arsenal.
But by night, at the Horseshoe casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he was known as Navy Tim, a heavy gambler who was accused of making his own $500 poker chips and eventually banned.
His removal from his role in the uppermost tier of America’s defence establishment was carried out last year, but the reasons behind his downfall are only now becoming clear.
Documents unveiled under a Freedom of Information Act request depict him as an habitual poker player, spending more than 1,000 hours – or 15 hours per week – at the Horseshoe’s tables in the 18 months before being caught playing three phoney chips in June 2013.
However, one man’s ruin may be a symptom of a wider malaise at the heart of America’s nuclear deterrent.
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Earlier this year, other details emerged of a force in crisis. An ageing stock of missiles, corroded launch silos and an uncertain role in a post-Cold War world have sent morale plunging among the men and women who call themselves Missileers.
The result, according to several studies, has been a string of leadership, training and disciplinary problems, which prompted a $10 billion root-and-branch overhaul announced a little over a week ago.
No one at the Horseshoe Casino would have known any of that or that the man at the tables was a three-star admiral.
After graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1979, Mr Giardina worked his way up the ranks as a career submarine officer. Among his commands were fast attack subs and vessels carrying ballistic nuclear weapons.
Yet his career began to unravel last year, when the Horseshoe discovered three homemade $500 chips. Surveillance video revealed Mr Giardina as the source.
Interviewed two days later, Mr Giardina claimed to be an innocent victim.
He said he had bought $2,000 in chips for a little under their face value from a person in a casino lavatory.
"It’s not worth risking your whole career over,” he told casino security, but later admitted misleading investigators.
The state investigator’s report said a review of surveillance footage revealed other “odd behaviours” by Giardina at the Horseshoe.
"Giardina was observed taking cigarette butts out of public ashtrays and smoking them,” it said.
Gambling is not banned in the services, even among those with sensitive roles – despite the risk that anyone accumulating substantial debts could be vulnerable to bribery or blackmail.
Mr Giardina was banned temporarily from two casinos but returned to play more, eventually earning a lifetime ban from the Horseshoe’s owners.
An Army lab revealed that a $500 chip had been scanned and printed on to stickers, which were then applied to a genuine $1 chip. The cheap chips were painted in the colour scheme of the more expensive counters.
However, the amateur job covered up secret security features only visible under UV light, and Mr Giardina’s DNA was found on the underside of a sticker.
He was fired from his post at Strategic Command last year, and reduced from three-star to two-star admiral. Earlier this year he was found guilty of two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer – lying to an investigator and passing fake gambling chips. He was given a written reprimand and ordered to forfeit $4,000 in pay. He has declined to comment on the case.
Details of Mr Giardina’s gambling habits were revealed by the Associated Press, which filed the Freedom of Information request. It is not the only example of misconduct among senior officers with responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal.
Last year Maj Gen Michael Carey was removed as head of the 20th Air Force, the command responsible for 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles, for what was initially described as "personal misbehaviour" during an overseas trip. The Air Force Inspector General later described late-night drinking sessions at a hotel in Russia with foreign women, including the "cigar shop lady".
In March, nine midlevel nuclear commanders were sacked after it emerged that more than 90 crew members responsible for missile launches were swapping the answers of proficiency tests.
The string of embarrassments has painted a picture of a service in crisis.
This month, Chuck Hagel, the US defence secretary, admitted the country's nuclear arsenal had fallen into disrepair and needed billions of dollars of upgrades.
Among the most serious findings were blast doors over silos that no longer sealed and that units responsible for America's intercontinental ballistic missiles had been forced to share a single spanner to tighten bolts on Minuteman 3 warheads, FedExing the tool between three bases.
So while Kelli M Knutson, 24, and Logan P Jackson, 33, had sex in their car, passing motorists even slowed down to watch the “shameless” couple in action. Their passion even caused a traffic jam. Officers were called to the scene and they found the couple “actively engaged” in the car, which was rocking back and forth.
The couple told officers they were too “caught up in the moment” to realise that their activity had caused a traffic jam outside the Springfield Jail. The couple was then arrested on charges of indecent exposure and disorderly conduct. Charboneau said the police were forced to act because someone complained about the traffic. - See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/us-coup ... Bd6E4.dpuf