Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bank of america, big banks, bill clinton, cartels, caught, clinton, clintons, cocaine, cocaine smuggling, compliance department, crime, crime family, criminal, despotism, Dictatorship, drug, Empire, funding, gangsters, government crimes, Hillary Clinton, justice system, mafia, Mena, mexican, money laundering, prison industrial complex, smugglers, U.S. banks, wachovia, wall street, war on drugs, wells fargo
Bank of America Caught Funding Mexican Drug Smugglers AND GET AWAY WITH IT!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aerosol, anthrax, Bio Weapons, biological warfare, cancer, chemical warfare, chemtrail, chemtrails, connecticut, dengue fever, Dictatorship, doctors, Empire, epidemic, Eugenics, fascism, federal crimes, flu virus, fort detrick, Genocide, government crimes, guatemala, health and environment, Human Experiments, human ginuea pigs, influenza pandemic, malaria, man made disease, man made diseases, maryland, military, military experiment, military experiments, military industrial complex, Mosquito virus, nazi, outbreak, pandemic, Pandemic Influenza, Pentagon, plague, prison industrial complex, secretary of defense, state sponsored terrorism, super weapons, syphilis, toxicity, tuskegee, victimization, war crimes, War On Terror, whitecoats
Biological Weapons Sprayed on U.S. Soldiers
U.S. infected its own citizens with virus
Infect and observe: An army doctor watches as malaria-carrying mosquitoes bite the stomach of inmate Richard Knickerbockers, serving 10 to 14 years, in Stateville in 1945
Daily Mail
February 28, 2011
Pictures have emerged providing the shocking proof that U.S. government doctors once experimented on disabled American citizens and prison inmates.
Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.
Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission.
The meeting was triggered by the government’s apology last year for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.
U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in America – studies that often involved making healthy people sick.
A review by the Associated Press of medical journal reports and decades-old press clippings found more than 40 such studies.
At best, these were a search for lifesaving treatments – at worst, some amounted to curiosity-satisfying experiments that hurt people but provided no useful results.
It echoes the deadly and meritless experiments conducted on Jewish concentration camp detainees at the hands of Nazi doctors.
And it will undoubtedly be compared to the Tuskegee syphilis study, where U.S. health officials tracked 600 black men in Alabama who already had syphilis – but didn’t give them adequate treatment even after penicillin became available.
Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics, said: ‘When you give somebody a disease – even by the standards of their time – you really cross the key ethical norm of the profession.’
Most of the recently revealed studies, from the 1940s to the 1960s, apparently were never covered by news media. Others were reported at the time but the focus was on the promise of enduring new cures, while glossing over how test subjects were treated.
Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society – people like prisoners, mental patients or the poor blacks.
Laura Stark, a Wesleyan University assistant professor of science in society – who is writing a book about past federal medical experiments – said: ‘There was definitely a sense – that we don’t have today – that sacrifice for the nation was important.’
Though people in the studies were usually described as volunteers, historians and ethicists have questioned how well these people understood what was to be done to them and why, or whether they were coerced.
Prisoners have long been victimised for the sake of science. In 1915, the U.S. government’s Dr Joseph Goldberger – today remembered as a public health hero – recruited Mississippi inmates to go on special rations to prove his theory that the painful illness pellagra was caused by a dietary deficiency (The men were offered pardons for their participation).
CIA Released Dengue-Infected Mosquitoes on U.S. Population
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, agriculture, big brother, camera ban, corruption, Dictatorship, Empire, farm, farming, fascism, felony, florida, Jim Norman, justice system, nanny state, orwell, PETA, photograph, photographing, Police State, prison industrial complex, SB 1246, Senate, stupid laws, us constitution, Washington D.C.
Photographing cows or other farm scenery could land you in jail under Senate bill
Florida Tribune
February 23, 2011
Taking photographs from the roadside of a sunrise over hay bales near the Suwannee River, horses grazing near Ocala or sunset over citrus groves along the Indian River could land you in jail under a Senate bill filed Monday.
SB 1246 by Sen. Jim Norman, R-Tampa, would make it a first-degree felony to photograph a farm without first obtaining written permission from the owner. A farm is defined as any land “cultivated for the purpose of agricultural production, the raising and breeding of domestic animals or the storage of a commodity.”
Media law experts say the ban would violate freedoms protected in the U. S. Constitution. But Wilton Simpson, a farmer who lives in Norman’s district, said the bill is needed to protect the property rights of farmers and the “intellectual property” involving farm operations.
Simpson, president of Simpson Farms near Dade City, said the law would prevent people from posing as farmworkers so that they can secretly film agricultural operations.
He said he could not name an instance in which that happened. But animal rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Animal Freedom display undercover videos on their web sites to make their case that livestock farming and meat consumption are cruel.
Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, said the state should be ashamed that such a bill would be introduced.
“Mr. Norman should be filing bills to throw the doors of animal producers wide open to show the public where their food comes from rather than criminalizing those who would show animal cruelty,” he said.
Simpson agreed the bill would make it illegal to photograph a farm from a roadside without written permission. Norman could not be reached for comment.
Judy Dalglish, executive director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said shooting property from a roadside or from the air is legal. The bill “is just flat-out unconstitutional not to mention stupid,” she said.
And she said there are laws already to prosecute trespassing onto property without permission. And if someone poses as a farm employee to shoot undercover video, they can be fired and possibly sued.
“Why pass a law you know will not stand constitutional muster?” Dalglish said.
Simpson said he doesn’t think that “innocent” roadside photography would be prosecuted even if the bill is passed as introduced.
“Farmers are a common-sense people,” he said. “A tourist who stops and takes a picture of cows — I would not imagine any farmer in the state of Florida that cares about that at all.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: australia, Cannabis, criminalization, criminalize, datura, Dictatorship, DMT, drug war, drugs, Empire, government bureaucracy, health and environment, justice system, mescaline, nanny state, permaculture, Police State, prison industrial complex, psilocybin, salvia, war on drugs
Australia to ban 1000s of plants including national flower
Garden Freedom
February 22, 2011
Legislation being proposed in Australia would criminalize most permaculturists, farmers, gardeners, nurseries and bush regenerators by banning any plant that contains DMT – a naturally-occurring hallucinogen. Five plants are currently criminalized, but the new list will include hundreds (possibly thousands) of other species that are common garden plants and include a significant number of common native plants including the national flower, the wattle. [Image: Australia’s National Flower, Acacia pycnantha]
Having any of these plants could get you charged with and convicted of a federal drugs violation. The list can be found here, comprising about four pages of the 41-page document.
The purpose of this new legislation is supposedly to stop major drug trafficking, yet many of the targeted plants have never been traded for drugs and have no value as drug plants, because they only contain traces of the compounds.
The proposed laws will make hundreds or possibly thousands of plants illegal. Many of these are common garden plants that honest, law abiding citizens have legally grown for as long as they remember. The laws will affect the commercial propagators, nurseries, farmers, collectors, botanic gardens, seed merchants, landcare groups and most gardeners.
- Farmers may need to change their pasture grasses and legumes.
- Gardeners, collectors, and botanic gardens will have to remove precious plants from their collections.
- Landcare and dunecare groups may no longer work with the species they are used to and that are native to their region.
- Nurseries may no longer propagate many of the plants they normally propagate.
- Botanists may no longer collect samples from many plants.
- Seedbanks will need to destroy many of their precious seeds.
DMT (dimethyltryptamine) is ubiquitous in nature and is likely to be present in thousands of species. If DMT is found in one species within a genus then it is likely to be found in other species of that genus. Some common plants include grasses, wattles, peas, nutmeg, screwpines, buckwheat, citrus trees, and violets. Also included are legumes, the Leopard tree, Honey Locust, wisteria and cattle forage plants like Desmodium, wetland plants such as the Common Rush (Phragmites), and common pasture grasses (Phalaris spp) — even the ice plants in your Granny’s rock garden would be effected by the legislation.
The existing schedule of criminalized plants include:
1. Any plant of the genus Cannabis
2. Enhanced cultivation of any plant of the genus Cannabis
3. Any plant of the genus Erythroxylum from which cocaine can be extracted […] incl E.coca & E.nova-granatense
4. Papaver bracteatum
5. Papaver somniferum
6. All fungi that contain PSILOCIN
7. All fungi that contain PSILOCYBIN
The proposed new schedule will include:
8. Any plant containing MESCALINE including any plant of the genus Lophophora
9. Any plant containing DMT including any plant of the species Piptadenia Peregrine
10. Salvia divinorum (Diviners Sage)
11. Mitragyna speciosa (Kratom)
12. Catha edulis (Khat)
13. Any species of the genus Ephedra which contains ephedrine
14. Any species of the genus Brugmansia
15. Any species of the genus Datura.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Cannabis, cannabis laws, corruption, drug raid, florida, human rights, justice system, marijuana laws, medical marijuana, oregon, police brutality, police crimes, Police State, prison industrial complex, utah, war on drugs, Weber-Morgan County Narcotics Strike Force
Video Outrage: Utah Police Kill Marijuana Smoker in Own Home
NORML
January 18, 2011
Huffington Post reports it as “Police Kill Man In Drug Raid Gone Wrong“. So what’s the “gone wrong” part?
The police had a no-knock warrant (though they forgot to bring it) to search for drugs. Busting down a citizen’s door quickly, loudly, and with overwhelming force is the standard. Sure, the guy they were looking for was a roommate who had already moved out (and they knew it), but it is so vitally important that we find and imprison people smoking weed at home that even a hastily-planned no-knock midnight raid without warrant paperwork is preferable to allowing one more joint to be smoked by a middle aged man in his own home. (Warning: Video is graphic in nature. Story continues after video.)
It is standard operating procedure to send the “Weber-Morgan County Narcotics Strike Force” in all-black full body armor, toting automatic weapons under the cover of night. If police are confronted by someone wielding arms, like, say, an average cannabis consumer with a former drug dealing roommate who grabs a golf club to defend himself when he’s suddenly awakened in the dead of night by armored ninjas toting machine guns, they are legally allowed to discharge their firearm to defend themselves and neutralize the suspect.
When you break down a man’s door in the middle of the night with guns drawn, somebody dying isn’t an unexpected outcome. This is a drug raid gone right. We send stormtroopers into American homes 100-150 times per day on the premise that finding their drugs justifies risking their lives.
Most of the time nobody dies (except the dog) and the few that are killed that you read about are the ones that shock everybody because they didn’t have large amounts of drugs or a firearm on them at the time. Yeah, mistakes were made, but you’ve got to expect some collateral damage in a War on Drugs, right?
Note how many times you read about a raid where “multiple firearms” are found and that is used to justify the excessive force of the raid. How many times do they tell you those multiple firearms are a collection of hunting weapons or sporting arms or handguns for self defense? How about when a “felony amount” of drugs are found, so they must be drug dealers! Have you ever looked at what constitutes a felony level of drugs in some states? It’s 3/4 of an ounce in Florida. It’s an ounce in Oregon (yes, hippie dippie, medical marijuana-lovin’, first-to-decrim Oregon!)
Cannabis is not cocaine. It’s not like we need to burst in quickly before the suspect flushes the evidence. If he’s got any amount large enough for you to think he’s a big time dealer invested in it enough to kill a cop, it’s more than can be flushed, burned, or hidden. And if we’ve been dipping into the stash, unlike cocaine we’re not going to go into some lunatic Tony Montana rage and spray cops with an Uzi. Damn, knock on the door and tell us you’re Domino’s and we’re likely to just let you in!
I know legalization might take awhile. Can we at least stop executing people in their homes over pot?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: california, cannabis laws, corruption, dea, justice system, marijuana laws, medical marijuana, Police State, prison industrial complex, san francisco, SF, SFPD, war on drugs
DEA agents mistakenly raid law prof’s house
SF Weekly
February 16, 2011
When narcotics officers appeared at a Castro home shortly after 7 a.m. on Jan. 11, they had permission from a judge to search for “proceeds” from an illegal marijuana grow.
The SFPD and DEA found no piles of marijuana money at 243 Diamond St., one of six addresses raided simultaneously in San Francisco that morning. Instead, they found Clark Freshman, who rents the penthouse at the two-unit building. Freshman, a UC Hastings law professor and the main consultant to the television show Lie to Me, was put into handcuffs while in his bathrobe as agents searched, despite Freshman’s insistence that they had the wrong place and were breaking the law. “I told them to call the judge and get their warrant updated,” he says. “They just laughed at me — I guess that’s why they’re called pigs.”
Soon they may be called defendants in a lawsuit. A furious Freshman has pledged to sue the DEA and the SFPD for unlawful search and seizure of his home.
In his search warrant, Officer Scott Biggs of the SFPD’s narcotics unit says that prior to the raid, he spent two days and two nights casing the address looking for Mahmoud Larizadeh, the property’s owner. Larizadeh also owns a 13th Street warehouse, a part of which he rents to Bruce Rossignol, a licensed medical cannabis patient who now faces three felony charges for growing pot there.
Biggs describes 243 Diamond as a “two-story, one-unit” building in the warrant. There’s no mention of Freshman or Larizadeh’s son-in-law or seven-months pregnant daughter who were detained in the downstairs unit that morning. But property records — and a quick visual scan of the property — reveal it to be a three-story, two-unit building. That mistake alone may be enough to invalidate the search warrant.
SFPD offered no comment other than reiterating they had a warrant from Judge Richard Kramer to search 243 Diamond. But Peter Keane, dean emeritus of Golden Gate University’s School of Law, says there appears to be a problem. “There’s been cases like this in the past where police have a warrant to search [a single residence], then they get there and it’s a multi-unit building and they search the whole building. In those cases, people have sued and collected substantial settlements. I think whomever is representing the government better get out his checkbook.”
“I’ve been on the fence for years about the legalization of drugs … and now I’m a victim of this crazy war on drugs,” says Freshman, who pledged to sue until “I see [the agents’] houses sold at auction and their kids’ college tuitions taken away from them. There will not be a better litigated case this century.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: corruption, justice system, prison industrial complex
Judge caught in ‘cash for kids’ scandal
Dailymail
February 21, 2011
A former judge has been convicted of taking a $1million kickback from the builder of a juvenile jail in the notorious ‘cash for kids’ scandal.
Mark Ciavarella sent hundreds of children and teenagers to the private prison for minor crimes after being given the money by the company which ran it.
Some of the children jailed were as young as 10 and at least one killed themselves because the excessive sentences ruined their lives.
Ciavarella, 61, left the bench in disgrace two years ago after the allegations came to light and is now expected to be jailed for at least 13 years.
But instead of being caged immediately he was allowed to walk out of court – right into a barrage of abuse from the mother of an all-star wrestler who committed suicide after he sent him to jail.
Edward Kenzakoski, 17 was never the same after being jailed for a first-time minor drug offence, his mother Sandy Fonzo raged.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: evan daniel emory, justice system, michigan, nanny state, Police State, prison industrial complex, Youtube
Man Could Face 20 Years for Fake YouTube Video
Maximum PC
February 16, 2011
Evan Daniel Emory, a 21-year-old from Muskegon, Michigan, may have the next 20 years to ponder what prompted him to edit a YouTube video that subsequently caused such an uproar. The video, which as since been removed from YouTube, makes it appear that Emory is singing provocative lyrics to a group of children in a first-grade classroom. He was actually singing Adam Sandler’s “Lunch Lady Land,” but later altered the video, earning him a lengthy felony charge, MLive.com reports.
Authorities say Emory “victimized” the entire first-grade classroom and was charged with manufacturing child sexual abusive material, which is a 20-year felony. Emory was granted access to the classroom after he “informed the teacher that he wanted to video himself singing to the class as a portion of his portfolio to help him gain admission to a Big Ten School of Education.” What he didn’t disclose is that he would later edit the video with raunchy lyrics that we won’t repost here. At one point, the video turns to the audience and shows the recognizable faces of the children smiling.
“I’m outraged that he’s taken a video and edited it to make it appear that he did those actions and said those things in front of students, which he did not. It’s absolutely ridiculous,” said John VanLoon, the school’s Superintendent. “We are currently working with law enforcement on the issue.”
Emory, who was arrested earlier today, admitted he deceived school officials in order to gain access to the classroom, but said he never intended “to hurt anybody, just wanted to make everyone laugh.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: criminal court, Dictatorship, Empire, justice system, nanny state, New York, Police State, prison industrial complex, school system
11 Year-Old Girl Sent to Criminal Court for Wearing Too Much Perfume in Class, $150 Fine!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1st amendment, bill of rights, california, carmen trutanich, Dictatorship, Empire, free speech, justice system, LA, liberty movement, Los Angeles, Oppression, patriot movement, Police State, political prisoners, prison industrial complex, truth movement, us constitution
LA trying to lock up protesters for up to a year
LA Times
February 12, 2011
For acts of political protest that his predecessor treated as mere infractions, Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is seeking jail time.
Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is throwing the book at dozens of people arrested during recent political demonstrations — a major shift in city policy that has him pressing for jail time in types of cases that previous prosecutors had treated as infractions.
Some of the activists arrested, including eight college students and one military veteran who took part in a Westwood rally last year in support of the DREAM Act, face up to one year in county jail.
Trutanich’s aggressive stance is the latest episode in the city’s decades-long legal struggle over the rights of protesters. The Los Angeles Police Department’s treatment of demonstrators at the 2000 Democratic National Convention and at a 2007 May Day rally at MacArthur Park led to lawsuits against the city.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1st amendment, Britain, domestic violence, england, free speech, hate speech, justice system, london, nanny state, Parliament, Police State, prison industrial complex, supreme court, taxpayers, United Kingdom
British High Court Expands ‘Domestic Violence’ to Include Shouting and Criticizing
Robert Franklin, Esq.
fathersandfamilies.org
January 27, 2011
It’s hard to overstate the reach of the British Supreme Court’s ruling in this case (Daily Mail, 1/27/11). It was decided on Thursday and from that date all aspects of domestic violence law have been completely changed.
Prior to the court’s ruling, the word “violence” in British law relating to domestic violence had been interpreted to mean physical assault. Thursday’s decision expands the definition of “violence” to include an astonishing and entirely unprecedented range of behaviors.
- Raising your voice at a husband or wife, or a boyfriend or girlfriend, now counts as domestic violence under the landmark Supreme Court judgment.
The decision also means that denying money to a partner or criticising them can count as violence and bring down draconian domestic violence penalties from the courts.
The case arose when a woman applied to a local council for housing separate from that of her husband. She did so based solely on her claim that he was violent toward her. But when the council learned that he had never been physically violent, it turned her down and she appealed.
The Supreme Court’s ruling means that British taxpayers will get to provide housing for the woman, not because she’s in any physical danger; no one, not even she, claims that. No, the reason she gets a new place to live is that she says her husband shouted at her, a claim he denies. She also said he didn’t give her money for household expenses.
Assuming that he did what she claims he did, he engaged in domestic violence according to the Supreme Court. And after Thursday, so does every other person in England.
Five judges on the court led by Lady Hale seem to have been feeling in the dark for a justification of their decision. On one hand they consulted a dictionary and found that its definition of “violence” includes both physical assault and “extreme fervor, passion or fury.”
That a court should base its opinion on a definition as loose as that beggars reason. A child could imagine a hundred instances to which the words “extreme fervor, passion or fury” would apply that couldn’t conceivably be called domestic violence (or could they?). Sexual passion, excitement about a football game, anger at the government apparently could all qualify.
Perhaps aware of the carte blanche they were giving to courts across the land in future cases, the judges groped for another reason for such a radical change in British law. And, contrary to their consulting the dictionary, they declared that whatever we may think a word’s meaning is, it changes over time and so, irrespective of what Parliament intended and irrespective of what people generally understand the word to mean, it now means something else. And that ’something else’ happens to be what the court said it meant on Thursday. Friday? That may be another matter.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, 4th amendment, big brother, Communism, cybercrime, department of justice, Dictatorship, DOJ, Empire, fascism, free speech, internet police, internet snooping, justice department, justice system, nanny state, nazi, Oppression, orwell, Police State, precrime, prison industrial complex, surveillance, War On Terror
Justice Department seeks to have all web surfing tracked
Raw Story
January 25, 2011
The US Justice Department wants Internet service providers and cell phone companies to be required to hold on to records for longer to help with criminal prosecutions.
“Data retention is fundamental to the department’s work in investigating and prosecuting almost every type of crime,” US deputy assistant attorney general Jason Weinstein told a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday.
“Some records are kept for weeks or months; others are stored very briefly before being purged,” Weinstein said in remarks prepared for delivery to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
He said Internet records are often “the only available evidence that allows us to investigate who committed crimes on the Internet.”
Internet and phone records can be “crucial evidence” in a wide array of cases, including child exploitation, violent crime, fraud, terrorism, public corruption, drug trafficking, online piracy and computer hacking, Weinstein said, but only if the data still exists when law enforcement needs it.
“In some ways, the problem of investigations being stymied by a lack of data retention is growing worse,” he told lawmakers.
Weinstein noted inconsistencies in data retention, with one mid-sized cell phone company not keeping records, a cable Internet provider not tracking the Internet protocol addresses it assigns to customers and another only keeping them for seven days.
Law enforcement is hampered by a “legal regime that does not require providers to retain non-content data for any period of time” while investigators must request records on a case-by-case basis through the courts, he said.
“The investigator must realize he needs the records before the provider deletes them, but providers are free to delete records after a short period of time, or to destroy them immediately,” Weinstein added.
The justice official said greater data retention requirements raise legitimate privacy concerns but “any privacy concerns about data retention should be balanced against the needs of law enforcement to keep the public safe.”
John Morris, general counsel at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology, said mandatory data retention “raises serious privacy and free speech concerns.”
“A key to protecting privacy is to minimize the amount of data collected and held by ISPs and online companies in the first place,” he said.
“Mandatory data retention laws would require companies to maintain large databases of subscribers’ personal information, which would be vulnerable to hackers, accidental disclosure, and government or other third party access.”
Kate Dean, executive director of the Internet Service Provider Association, said broad mandatory data retention requirements would be “fraught with legal, technical and practical challenges.”
Dean said they would require “an entire industry to retain billions of discrete electronic records due to the possibility that a tiny percentage of them might contain evidence related to a crime.”
“We think that it is important to weigh that potential value against the impact on the millions of innocent Internet users’ privacy,” she said.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: chicago, chicago police, christopher drew, Dictatorship, Empire, justice system, nanny state, prison industrial complex
15 Years in Prison for Taping Chicago Police
Daily Tech
January 24, 2011
Class 1 Felony of recording a conversation is just below the prison time you’d spend for murder
We’ve often written on the disconnect between current laws and the reality of the digital age. When a person gets charged over a million dollars for pirating and sharing a few songs, and a robber stealing a dozen CDs might have to a pay a few hundred in fines, the system can seem incredibly flawed at times.
Another example of this disconnect that has recently been brought into sharp focus include laws that police are using to try to prosecute those that digitally record their actions. We already covered how police in some areas can arrest you, if you videotape or photograph them in a public or private setting. Well, in some areas they can arrest you for even recording an audio conversation.
Illinois is one of the states with the toughest laws against audiotaping a conversation between you and another party without their knowledge. The law [text] states that you can face up to 15 years in prison for committing the offense.
Christopher Drew, a 60-year-old artist and teacher living in Chicago, is facing the charge after audio taping a conversation he had with the police. In an interview with The New York Times, he remarks on his potential 15 years of hard prison time, “That’s one step below attempted murder.”
He adds, “Before they arrested me for it. I didn’t even know there was a law about eavesdropping. I wasn’t trying to sue anybody. I just wanted somebody to know what had happened to me.”
He is not alone. Other Chicago residents, including Tiawanda Moore, a 20-year-old former stripper, face similar charges. They all have one thing in common — their charges follow audio taping conversations with police. The law is seldom applied in other situations – in fact, most don’t even know it exists. The law even makes it a lesser offense to tape a civilian once (a Class 4 felony) or twice (a Class 3 felony), versus taping a law enforcement officer (a Class 1 felony).
Ms. Moore’s story is among the most alarming. She is being charged with the Class 1 felony of eavesdropping using a digital device after recording on her Blackberry a conversation she had with two internal affairs officers. The conversation occurred during her attempt to report a separate police officer for sexual harassment. Now she’s set for a February 7 trial in Cook County Criminal Court and may spend more than a decade in prison.
Contrast this state of affairs with the fact that Chicago police officers have one of the most stained reputations for police brutality. According to a 2007 CNN report, 10,000 complaints — many of them involving brutality and assault — were filed between 2002 and 2004.
Along with laws against video taping police in public, the measures against video and audio taping police encounters seem like a concerted effort to chain the hands of the citizenry and prevent them from reporting misconduct and wrongdoing. Without direct evidence, claims are often discarded and laughed out of court.
The Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.) fought the law — it has sued the state of Illinois twice — but the law won. Its case, which asserted that the eavesdropping law violates the First Amendment and hinders citizens from monitoring the public behavior of police officers and other officials, has been thrown out of court twice.
Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his organization cheered the decision, stating that he “absolutely supports” throwing those who tape police officers behind bars.
He complains that citizens monitoring police activities for wrongdoing might “affect how an officer does his job on the street.”
As Ms. Moore and Mr. Drew contemplate on what their life might be like spending the next decade and a half on a prison cot, many in other states face similar situations. Massachusetts and Oregon both make it illegal to digitally record (i.e. “eavesdrop”) on an officer. And a number of states are considering similar legislation.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 2-party system, corporations, corporatism, corruption, court, court system, Dictatorship, Empire, fascism, federal crimes, federalism, government control, government crimes, judicial system, justice system, left right paradigm, Oppression, plutocracy, prison industrial complex, supreme court
Courts Becoming Extensions of Businesses
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, corruption, detainee, detention, DHS, Dictatorship, domestic terrorism, domestic terrorist, Empire, enemy belligerent, enemy of the state, extraordinary rendition, fascism, federal crimes, geneva convention, government crimes, homeland security, House, human rights, interrogation, Joe Lieberman, john mccain, judicial system, justice system, mccain, miranda rights, Oppression, prison industrial complex, S. 3081, scott brown, Senate, torture, us constitution, war crime, war crimes, War On Terror, Washington D.C.
McCain wants U.S. citizens imprisoned without trial
McCain introduced a bill that will allow the federal government to detain any U.S. citizen they consider a hostile ‘enemy belligerent’, held indefinitely and without trial
Examiner
March 12, 2010
Last week, John McCain introduced a bill into the U.S. Senate which, if passed, would actually allow U.S. citizens to be arrested and detained indefinitely, all without Miranda rights or ever being charged with a crime.
The stated purpose of S. 3081 (The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act) reads: “To provide for the interrogation and detention of enemy belligerents who commit hostile acts against the United States, to establish certain limitations on the prosecution of such belligerents for such acts, and for
other purposes.”
The bill has nine co-sponsors including Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).
Section 5 of S. 3081 states:
- “An individual, including a citizen of the United
States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent
under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article
5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of
Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal
charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities
against the United States or its coalition partners in which
the individual has engaged, or which the individual has
purposely and materially supported, consistent with the
law of war and any authorization for the use of military
force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.”
This bill, introduced by McCain, who despite overwhelming evidence, claims to be a “conservative,” would not only take away our right to a trial, but would also allow the federal government to arrest and imprison anyone the current administration deems hostile.
Of course, that would be the same administration whose Homeland Security Secretary has classified veterans, retired law enforcement, Ron Paul supporters, and conservatives as “terrorists.”
If it was not clear before, it should be now that John McCain has as little respect for the Constitution as he does for our borders.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Anthony Graber, camera ban, corrupt system, corruption, court system, criminalization, Dictatorship, Empire, filming cop, government bureaucracy, government regulation, jail, judicial system, justice system, LAPD, maryland, nanny state, national guard, Oppression, police corruption, police crimes, Police State, prison, prison industrial complex, prison system, scam, slavery, taping cop
Man Faces 16 Years in Prison For Filming Cop
Time Magazine
August 5, 2010
Anthony Graber, a Maryland Air National Guard staff sergeant, faces up to 16 years in prison. His crime? He videotaped his March encounter with a state trooper who pulled him over for speeding on a motorcycle. Then Graber put the video — which could put the officer in a bad light — up on YouTube.
It doesn’t sound like much. But Graber is not the only person being slapped down by the long arm of the law for the simple act of videotaping the police in a public place. Prosecutors across the U.S. claim the videotaping violates wiretap laws — a stretch, to put it mildly.
These days, it’s not hard to see why police are wary of being filmed. In 1991, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) beating of Rodney King was captured on video by a private citizen. It was shown repeatedly on television and caused a national uproar. As a result, four LAPD officers were put on trial, and when they were not convicted, riots broke out, leaving more than 50 people dead and thousands injured (two officers were later convicted on federal civil rights charges).
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noworldsystem.com 