February 10, 2016

Former Texas prosecutor disbarred for sending innocent man to death row

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas legal panel voted on Monday to disbar a former prosecutor for sending an innocent man to death row by presenting tainted testimony and making false statements that undermined the defendant's alibi.

The Board of Disciplinary Appeals appointed by the Texas Supreme Court upheld a state licensing board's decision to disbar Charles Sebesta for his conduct in convicting Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years in prison on charges of setting a fire that killed six people before being freed.

Graves, who spent 12 of those years on death row, had sought to have Sebesta disbarred.

Sebesta had convicted Robert Carter for the murders and tried to get Carter to say Graves was an accomplice. But the day before he was to testify, Carter told Sebesta he acted alone and Graves was not involved, the board said.

"Sebesta never disclosed this information to the defense," the board said.

Sebesta then presented false testimony implicating Graves, crucial in a conviction since there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, it said.

Before Graves' attorney was to present the alibi witness, Sebesta falsely stated in court that the witness was a suspect in the murders and could be indicted. The witness refused to testify and left the court, it said.

http://news.yahoo.com/former-texas-prosecutor-disbarred-sending-innocent-man-death-225026879.html?nf=1

February 8, 2016

How Julian Assange Is Destroying WikiLeaks

Hamburg, Germany — LAST week a United Nations panel ruled that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who has been living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, had been arbitrarily detained, and called for his immediate release. Though Mr. Assange says he will remain in the embassy, the ruling was hailed by his legions of supporters, who saw it as a rare instance of justice for a man they believe has been persecuted for exposing government secrets.

There’s no doubt that WikiLeaks, which Mr. Assange founded in 2006, has been a boon for global civil liberties. The problem is that the project is inseparable from the man. Mr. Assange has made little secret about his skepticism toward Western democracy and his willingness to work with autocratic governments like Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. His personal politics undermines WikiLeaks’ neutrality — and the noble cause for which WikiLeaks used to stand. What we need is a WikiLeaks without the founder of WikiLeaks.

The idea behind WikiLeaks is simple, and ingenious: an online drop box that provides maximum security for whistle-blowers in the digital age. Anyone determined to disclose corporate or government misbehavior — from tax fraud to war crimes — can be sure that the heavily protected WikiLeaks’s submission system ensures their emails and uploads cannot be traced.

The idea to unmask lies and reveal illegitimate secrets has worked well. Whistle-blowers submitted material that proved corruption of the former Kenyan president, tax-avoidance strategies employed by big European banks, and indiscriminate killings of civilians by an American attack helicopter in Iraq. News outlets, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times, helped Mr. Assange spread the scoops.

Yet, even back then, observers and media partners felt that Mr. Assange had more in mind than transparency, that there was an ideology behind his idea. Over time, that ideology has become increasingly apparent, through his regular public statements and his stint as a host for a Russian state-controlled TV network...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/opinion/how-julian-assange-is-destroying-wikileaks.html?_r=0


Been pointing this stuff out for a long time now...

February 5, 2016

Is there a thread for discussion of "The Expanse"?

Because I can't find one...

And don't tell me you all aren't watching...

February 5, 2016

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, 85, dies in West Palm Beach

Source: Palm Beach Post

Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, who was part of the Apollo 14 space crew that flew to the moon in 1971, died late Thursday in West Palm Beach, according to his family.

Mitchell, 85, lived in suburban Lake Worth and died at a local hospice at about 10 p.m. Thursday, his daughter, former West Palm Beach City Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell told The Palm Beach Post.

Mitchell was the sixth man to walk on the moon. He was part of a three-man crew, with Alan Shepard Jr. and Stuart Roosa, who took part in the Apollo 14 space mission. It was the eighth manned mission in the United States Apollo program and they became the third ever to land on the moon. Mitchell was the lunar module pilot on the mission.

Apollo 14 launched just over 45 years ago, on Jan. 31, 1971. The nine-day mission ended Feb. 9 when the crew landed in the South Pacific Ocean.

Read more: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/local/apollo-14-astronaut-edgar-mitchell-85-dies-in-west/nqKdg/

February 5, 2016

Never forget...

Trayvon Martin

February 5, 1995 - February 26, 2012

This remains a very touchy subject for me, so I will comment no further.

February 3, 2016

Doesn't work like that chief, and you damn well know it

And that's the exact fucking mindset which justifies them staying home... If morons could only be moved to get off their asses when a candidate really "excites" them (which I guess would be once every 6-8 years), then they have dishonored what it means to have the right to vote, and their respective constituency deserves exactly what it fucking gets...

No, gubernatorial/state house and off-year congressional races are rarely sexy, but they need voter turnout nonetheless... In case nobody noticed, this is why almost every statehouse is filled to the brim with brain-dead yokel rednecks or religious fanatics who are barely literate...

The future belongs to those who show up for it.

February 2, 2016

Fearless and Adversarial: "Intercept Reporter Faked Dylann Roof Story"

Reporter Fabricated Quotes, Invented Sources at The Intercept

The Intercept disclosed today that a former reporter for the national-security focused website fabricated quotes and invented sources for a number of stories published last year. According to a post published on Tuesday afternoon by editor-in-chief Betsy Reed, that reporter, Juan Thompson, went so far as to register fake email addresses, including one in Reed’s own name, to deceive his editors about the extent of his fabrications:

An investigation into Thompson’s reporting turned up three instances in which quotes were attributed to people who said they had not been interviewed. In other instances, quotes were attributed to individuals we could not reach, who could not remember speaking with him, or whose identities could not be confirmed. In his reporting Thompson also used quotes that we cannot verify from unnamed people whom he claimed to have encountered at public events. Thompson went to great lengths to deceive his editors, creating an email account to impersonate a source and lying about his reporting methods.
Shortly before Reed’s post, The Intercept prepended lengthy editor’s notes to five of Thompson’s prior articles. Four of the notes amount to severe corrections; the fifth, attached to an article containing quotes attributed to a cousin of the white supremacist Dylann Roof, indicates a total retraction: “After speaking with two members of Dylann Roof’s family, The Intercept can no longer stand by the premise of this story. Both individuals said that they do not know of a cousin named Scott Roof.”

In the now-retracted article, Thompson had claimed that “Scott Roof” had speculated during a phone conversation that Dylann Roof may been driven to murder nine black churchgoers at a Charleston, South Carolina church because “he kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked starting dating a black guy two years back.” Thompson’s report was picked up by dozens of other news outlets.

Thompson was hired by The Intercept’s founding editor-in-chief, John Cook, in November 2014. Reed replaced Cook, a former editor of Gawker.com and the current executive editor of Gawker Media, in December 2014. Prior to The Intercept, Thompson had reported in Chicago for DNAInfo and interned at the local NPR affiliate, WBEZ.*

Based on his Twitter account, Thompson appears to be invested in the outcomes of other journalism controversies. In several tweets from last year, for example, he argued that former BuzzFeed editor Benny Johnson, who was fired for committing widespread plagiarism in the summer of 2014, would not have been been able to bounce back so quickly (to editor positions at National Review and the Independent Journal Review) if he were not white:


http://gawker.com/reporter-fabricated-quotes-invented-sources-at-the-int-1756672849

(Greenwald was unavailable for comment)

February 1, 2016

MEANWHILE, in Italy.....

Bidet hurled from window in attempted murder over children's football game

It came to symbolise Italian pride over other cultures supposedly lesser attentive to hygiene but a bidet was spectacularly misused in an alleged attempted murder near Naples. Police have arrested 45-year-old Domenico Cammarota on suspicion he threw the bathroom fixture out of a window, hitting another man on the head during a brawl over a children's football game.

The bizarre incident took place in the usually quiet coastal town of Pozzuoli, just outside Naples. A group of local children were playing football on a pitch overlooking the sea when a dirty foul sparked a heated argument.


Families soon got involved and parents of one of the children decided to protest outside their son's rival's house. As tensions and shouting escalated, neighbours called police who arrived at the scene just in time to witness Cammarota hurling a bidet out of the first-floor flat.

The porcelain hit one of the protesters below to the head. The man fell unconscious and was taken to a local hospital. Cammarota, who was known to authorities, has been taken into custody and is facing attempted murder charges.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/italy-bidet-hurled-window-attempted-murder-over-chidrens-football-game-1541276

January 29, 2016

Chicago Cop Suing Family Of 19-Year-Old Black College Student He Killed

Officer Robert Rialmo, the Chicago cop who shot and killed a 19-year-old victim alongside a mother of five the day after Christmas, is suing the teen’s estate. A lawyer for Rialmo confirmed that he will file a civil lawsuit against the family of Quintonio LeGrier within the next couple of weeks.

LeGrier was killed after cops arrived to the apartment on a domestic violence call involving the college student, who was home for the holidays, and his father. LeGrier was described as being “combative” when police arrived, even though he was the one who initially called them.

Rialmo claims to have been assaulted by LeGrier. The alleged assault and emotional distress, will be cited in his lawsuit. LeGrier’s family sued the city of Chicago this month. “This guy came after my client with a baseball bat trying to kill him,” Rialmo’s attorney Joel Brodsky said. “As a result of that, an innocent person was killed, and my client is very broken up about that.”

Instead of de-escalating the situation cops shot LeGrier six times. A 55-year-old neighbor, Bettie Jones, was “accidentally struck, and tragically killed” as she opened the door. LeGrier and Jones died near the building’s entrance. According to the Medical Examiner’s report, cops opened fire in the hallway, but attornies representing LeGrier’s family suggest officers fired from the curb.

Despite being painted as the aggressor, LeGrier called cops to his father’s apartment three separate times, in the early morning hours of Dec. 26. On the first call, LeGrier can be heard asking for an office at “4710 West Erie Street,” without giving further detail. “No, I don’t work like that,” the dispatcher replied. “What’s your emergency?”

LeGrier would go on to tell a third dispatcher that someone was “threatening” his life. That final call lasted more than a minute. “Are you going to send the police or not?” LeGrier says to an irritated dispatcher. “Are you going to answer my question?” the dispatcher counters. “I’m talking to you. If you can’t answer the questions, how do you expect me to assist you?”

Officers didn’t arrive until after a fourth call placed by LaGrier’s father, Antonio, who said his son had a “baseball bat in his hand.”

“For them to hang up on him, we want to know what that call taker was thinking,” said Larry Rogers, the attorney representing Jones’s family. “How could she possibly think that was the proper way to handle someone who was in need of police assistance?”


- See more at: http://hiphopwired.com/2016/01/29/chicago-cop-suing-family-of-19-year-old-black-college-student-he-killed/#sthash.kFRhxh0j.Lt31zJF9.dpuf

January 28, 2016

Stalin 'used secret laboratory to analyse Mao's excrement'

According to Russian newspaper reports, in the 1940s Stalin's secret police had set up a special department to get its hands on people's faeces. The ambitious aim: to analyse samples of foreign leaders' stools. In other words, espionage via excrement.


It is former Soviet agent Igor Atamanenko who claims to have uncovered this unusual project, while doing research in the archives of the Russian secret services.

"In those days the Soviets didn't have the kind of listening devices which secret services do today," he told the paper.

"That's why our specialists came up with the most extravagant ways of extracting information about a person."

Mr Atamanenko says it was Stalin's henchman Lavrenti Beria who was put in charge of the secret laboratory. When I contacted Mr Atamanenko, he told me what the Soviet scientists had been looking for in faeces.

"For example, if they detected high levels of amino acid Tryptophan," he explained, "they concluded that person was calm and approachable.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926

Wait....WHAT?!?