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Man from Pickens

Man from Pickens's Journal
Man from Pickens's Journal
July 10, 2015

Waco cop to head grand jury likely to hear biker cases

District Judge Ralph Strother on Wednesday chose veteran policeman James Head to serve as foreman of the randomly selected 12-member panel that will meet for the next three months.

"We have lawmen who get on jury panels all the time. Who is better qualified in criminal law than somebody who practices it all the time?" Strother told the Waco Tribune-Herald (http://bit.ly/1eKAmup ).

When asked if he had any involvement in the investigation, Head told the newspaper, "Not really." He referred additional questions to the Waco City Attorney's office.

The move comes amid allegations from bikers and their lawyers that authorities have acted unfairly during the investigation. One biker has sued and others have claimed in interviews with The Associated Press that they were wrongfully arrested.

The grand jury created Wednesday is the first to be formed of randomly selected jurors in McClennan County since Texas lawmakers eliminated a controversial statewide "pick-a-pal" system. Under that system, judge-appointed commissioners nominated prospective jurors.

MORE: http://www.sfgate.com/news/texas/article/Waco-cop-to-head-grand-jury-likely-to-hear-biker-6376335.php



"Not really" = "Yes", for those not used to the practice of testilying. If the true answer was "no", the answer given would have been categorical, not wishy-washy.

And yes, this is what it appears to be, a blatant rigging of the jury by the PD so they can get away with a massacre.

April 2, 2015

Yet another unarmed black man brutally killed by NJ cops

"They punched him, stomped him, kicked him and then they let the dog out of the car," said Ricardo Garcia. "The dog bit him on his face and around his body. There's no call for that. Once a man is handcuffed and unconscious, you should have stuck him in the patrol car and take him to the police station. Instead they decided to beat him right here."


http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Vineland-Man-Dies-After-Being-Taken-Into-Custody-298188581.html

Officially, this is the 290th person killed by cops in the US this year (span of 90 days).
March 30, 2015

If they don't have a plan to deal with this problem they've no business running on the Democrat line



"Land of the Free", my ass.

I don't even want to hear from any candidate who can't see there's an obvious problem here and doesn't make a solution to it a major part of their agenda. If fixing this isn't a priority for a candidate, then that person does not deserve to call themselves a Democrat.

Even if this weren't even further compounded by shocking racial disparities between the prison population and the general population, it should still be absolutely unacceptable to any thinking, feeling human being.

Most of the incarcerated aren't even violent and aren't there for fraud or theft. They're there because of the insane Puritan War on Drugs and the prison-industrial complex that pours millions into politicians' coffers to keep things this way.

March 22, 2015

“They made it crystal clear that the ask was from Hillary”

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/21/they_made_it_crystal_clear_that_the_ask_was_from_hillary_inside_the_clinton_fundraising_machine_as_secretary_of_state/

Exactly as I suspected - Clinton leveraged her position as Secretary of State to extort money for the Clinton Foundation, Salon just blew it wide open. Put a fork in it, she's done.
March 3, 2015

Bad lieutenant: American police brutality, exported from Chicago to Guantánamo

When the Chicago detective Richard Zuley arrived at Guantánamo Bay late in 2002, US military commanders touted him as the hero they had been looking for.

Here was a Navy reserve lieutenant who had spent the last 25 years as a distinguished detective on the mean streets of Chicago, closing case after case – often due to his knack for getting confessions.

But while Zuley’s brutal interrogation techniques – prolonged shackling, family threats, demands on suspects to implicate themselves and others – would get supercharged at Guantánamo for the war on terrorism, a Guardian investigation has uncovered that Zuley used similar tactics for years, behind closed police-station doors, on Chicago’s poor and non-white citizens. Multiple people in prison in Illinois insist they have been wrongly convicted on the basis of coerced confessions extracted by Zuley and his colleagues.

The Guardian examined thousands of court documents from Chicago and interviewed two dozen people with experience at Guantánamo and in the Chicago criminal-justice system. The results of its investigation suggests a continuum between Guantánamo interrogation rooms and Chicago police precincts. Zuley’s detective work, particularly when visited on Chicago’s minority communities, contains a dark foreshadowing of the United States’ post-9/11 descent into torture.

+@ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chicago-guantanamo

March 1, 2015

‘Shut Down Homan Square’: Anonymous, Black Lives Matter swarm Chicago police ‘black site’

The Chicago police facility Homan Square was becoming the focus of an organized protest movement this weekend, as the hacktivist collective Anonymous and organizers associated with the Black Lives Matter movement seized on allegations of unconstitutional abuse at the secretive warehouse.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top adviser to Barack Obama suddenly facing a runoff for re-election, remained at the political fulcrum of a mounting campaign both on social media and the streets of Chicago, where demonstrations were planned for Saturday outside what coordinated campaigners described as mirroring a CIA “black site”.

Organizer Travis McDermott said Saturday’s “Shut Down Homan Square” protest was one of several being planned as far away as Los Angeles.

“Hopefully with the presence we expect to have, that will put a little bit of pressure to say, ‘Hey, look – this isn’t going to go away,” he said.

On Friday night, campaigners associated with the Occupy and Anonymous collectives took to Twitter , Instagram and other social-media platforms with the hashtag #Gitmo2Chicago to decry allegations of what users alternatively labeled as a “secret prison” and “torture soon coming to a city near you” .

Six people and multiple Chicago attorneys came forward to the Guardian this week with detailed accounts of police holding suspects and witnesses for sustained periods of detention inside Homan Square, without public records, access to attorneys or being read their most basic rights – involving what they said included shackling, physical abuse and being “disappeared” from legal counsel and family. The Guardian’s recent investigation into Chicago police brutality began the week before, with a two-part account of the tactics of Detective Richard Zuley, who went from Chicago homicide investigator to Guantánamo Bay torturer .


more at source:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/shut-down-homan-square-anonymous-black-lives-matter-swarm-chicago-police-black-site/
February 11, 2015

Obama Sends Congress Request for Military Force Against ISIS

Source: Associated Press

President Barack Obama asked Congress on Wednesday to authorize military force to "degrade and defeat" Islamic State forces in the Middle East without sustained, large-scale U.S. ground combat operations, setting lawmakers on a path toward their first war powers vote in 13 years.

The initial reaction was bipartisan skepticism. Republicans expressed unhappiness that Obama chose to exclude any long-term commitment of ground forces, while some Democrats voiced dismay that he had opened the door to deployment at all.

In a letter accompanying draft legislation, Obama said approval of his request would "show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat" posed by fighters seeking establishment of an Islamic State..


Under Obama's proposal, the use of military force would be authorized for three years, unbounded by national borders. The fight could be extended to any "closely-related successor entity" to the Islamic State organization that has overrun parts of Iraq and Syria, imposed a stern form of Sharia law and executed several hostages it has taken, Americans among them.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/obama-hopes-finesse-controversy-ground-troops-28881794

January 16, 2015

Pentagon to deploy 400 troops to train Syrian rebels

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military is planning to deploy more than 400 troops to help train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State, along with hundreds of U.S. support personnel, a Pentagon spokesman told Reuters on Thursday.


http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-deploy-400-troops-train-syrian-rebels-061310008.html

Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result

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