Cryptogon Reader Sent $20
May 11th, 2013MW sent $20 back in April. Thank you.
Police Practice for Gunbattle with… ‘Angry Parents at a School’
May 11th, 2013[???]
Via: KOMO Repost by MoxNews:
Former Dictator Efraín Ríos Montt Convicted of Genocide in Guatemala
May 11th, 2013“President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. … I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”
—U.S. President Ronald Regan, 1982
Via: Independent:
Former dictator Efrain Rios Montt’s conviction of genocide is a historic moment in a country still healing from a brutal, three-decade civil war and his trial offered Guatemala’s oppressed indigenous communities their first chance to be heard, human rights activists said.
Relatives of those killed and activists celebrated the 80-year sentence handed down by a tribunal to Rios Montt on Friday, a sweet moment in their long struggle to punish the former dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest chapters of a war that killed some 200,000 people, mainly indigenous Mayans.
During the trial Ixil Mayans, who have long suffered discrimination, stood up and testified about mass rapes, the killings of women and children, and other atrocities that authorities had often denied took place.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
FBI Documents Suggest Feds Read Emails Without a Warrant
May 11th, 2013Via: ACLU:
New documents from the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ offices paint a troubling picture of the government’s email surveillance practices. Not only does the FBI claim it can read emails and other electronic communications without a warrant—even after a federal appeals court ruled that doing so violates the Fourth Amendment—but the documents strongly suggest that different U.S. Attorneys’ offices around the country are applying conflicting standards to access communications content (you can see the documents here).
Last month, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU received IRS documents indicating that the agency’s criminal investigative arm doesn’t always get a warrant to read Americans’ emails. Today we are releasing these additional documents from other federal law enforcement agencies, reinforcing the urgent need for Congress to protect our privacy by updating the laws that cover electronic communications.
Research Credit: ottilie
Dad Who Died During Arrest ‘Begged for His Life’; Witness Videos Seized
May 11th, 2013Via: The Bakersfield Californian:
Blood stains are still visible on the sidewalk at the corner of Flower Street and Palm Drive, where a Bakersfield man struggled with as many as nine officers and later died this week.
David Sal Silva, 33 and the father of four young children, died early Wednesday morning after deputies say he fought with them and CHP officers who’d responded to a report of a possibly intoxicated man outside Kern Medical Center.
The Kern County Sheriff’s Office says Silva resisted, a canine was deployed, more law enforcement arrived, batons were used and the man later had trouble breathing. He was taken to KMC, where he died. An autopsy was slated for Thursday, but no results have been released.
Some witnesses apparently took cellphone video of the incident but deputies moved quickly to seize the phones. The Sheriff’s Office, after releasing a statement Wednesday and naming its officers Thursday, declined all further comment.
People who say they witnessed the incident as well as Silva’s family members described a scene in which deputies essentially were beating a helpless man to death. They were indignant that cellphone video had been taken away by deputies.
Research Credit: pookie
Mysterious Aircraft Puzzles Quincy Residents
May 11th, 2013Via: Patriot Ledger:
The Federal Aviation Administration knows what’s up there but it’s not telling the public.
A slew of Quincy residents have been complaining and calling police and the city about an aircraft that appeared about two weeks ago and has been taking wide, repeated loops in the air, between about 7 p.m. and 4 a.m.
Residents from Wollaston to West Quincy describe a low-pitch humming sound coming from the aircraft. Some have said it’s reminiscent of a drone, which is an unmanned aircraft operated by remote control.
“It’s not a drone,” FAA spokesman Jim Peters said. “It’s an authorized flight and we are aware of it.”
Peters declined to make any further comment.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
Pentagon Wants ‘Human Surrogate’ for Directed Energy Weapons Testing
May 10th, 2013If the pain ray just affects the skin, as the military has said for years, why do the “Human Surrogate” systems need simulated organs?
The spokesperson mentioned in the piece below said that the surrogate will be, “A common test target that can be used across the spectrum of non-lethal stimuli.”
That’s fine, nothing to see here, obviously. But don’t be surprised if the pain ray has some other modes that .mil hasn’t mentioned yet.
Via: Wired:
The Pentagon’s electromagnetic pain weapons are about to make a new friend. It’s an anthropomorphic test dummy that’s gonna get blasted by everything the Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons agency can throw at it.
In its latest round of small business research proposals, the Navy announced it’s seeking a sensor-outfitted “human surrogate” for use in an array of non-lethal weapon tests. That includes ”electromagnetic radiation in the L, S, and W-bands,” noted the request for proposal. Even further, there are plans to subject the luckless mannequin to everything from noise, blast pressure, electrical currents, thermal energy, and light from flashbang grenades.
Eventually, the goal is to “quickly collect data to understand injury potential by detecting, presumably via sensor systems, the effects of various non-lethal stimuli on different parts of the human body,” Alicia Owsiak, deputy chief of the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate Technology Division, tells Danger Room in a statement. The JNWLD, which manages the Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons program, is coordinating the tests. “Given that the risk of injury for a non-lethal stimuli is often influenced by hit location, the test target is envisioned to be a human surrogate with respect to internal and external anatomy.”
That means these dummy people will have dummy organs.
The agency didn’t comment on the specifics of how electromagnetic weapons like the military’s Active Denial System could be used against a dummy or how its organs could be designed to react. Kelly Hughes, a spokesperson for the directorate, tells Danger Room the surrogate will be “a common test target that can be used across the spectrum of non-lethal stimuli.”
Afghanistan: ‘U.S. Kicks Drug-War Habit, Makes Peace With Afghan Poppies’
May 10th, 2013You’ll love this one.
Via: Wired:
Because of the poppies, the raw material for most of the world’s heroin, the list of things 1st Lt. Christopher Gackstatter and his 2nd Platoon can’t do in Sartok is far longer than the list of things they can.
Marching into the mud-walled village in this sun-baked district of southern Afghanistan on an April 24 intelligence-gathering mission, the boyish 25-year-old lieutenant and his roughly dozen riflemen and machine gunners are mindful of the many poppy-related prohibitions, developed over 12 painful years of war, that have been passed down to their Bravo Company by the higher unit, 3-41 Infantry, part of the Texas-based 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division.
They’re not allowed to actually step foot in Sartok’s many acres of poppy fields or damage the fields in any way.
They can’t even threaten to destroy the fields or send in Afghan troops to burn, plow under or poison the delicate, pastel-colored flowers.
Nor can they discourage poppy farmers, however gently, from growing their illicit crop, which is hardier and commands a higher price than alternatives such as wheat. Poppy cultivation has been illegal in Afghanistan since 2001 but still represents a full quarter of the country’s gross domestic product and a major source of revenue for the Taliban, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Many of the middlemen who buy up raw poppy paste for onward sale to heroin-producers hail from the insurgent group.
The rules are fairly new and reflect a subtle but profound shift in the way the U.S. Army thinks about Afghanistan, its people and culture and conflict. Having furtively experimented with every possible approach to Afghan poppies since 2001 — from blissfully ignoring them to actively destroying them and everything in between — today the ground-combat branch has made peace with poppies, viewing them as a potential good thing for Afghanistan and the Army.
Granddaughter of Mao Zedong Has Net Worth Over $800 Million
May 10th, 2013“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
— Animal Farm by George Orwell
Via: AFP:
The appearance of a grand-daughter of Mao Zedong, founding father of Communist China, on a list of the country’s richest citizens prompted online accusations of hypocrisy Thursday.
Kong Dongmei, now in her early 40s, and husband Chen Dongsheng ranked 242th with personal wealth estimated at five billion yuan ($815 million) on a rich list released this month by New Fortune, a Chinese financial magazine.
Kong is the grand-daughter of Mao and his third wife He Zizhen. In 2001 she founded a book store in Beijing selling publications about Mao and promoting “Red Culture” after studying at the University of Pennsylvania in the US.
In 2011, Kong married Chen, who controls an insurance company, an auction house and a courier firm, after they had maintained an extramarital relationship for 15 years, according to the magazine, which cited other Chinese media reports.
The couple have two daughters and a son, said New Fortune — likely to be a violation of China’s one-child policy.
Kong’s inclusion on the rich list triggered hot debate on China’s Twitter-like weibos, with some accusing her of betraying her grandfather’s status as the “great teacher of proletariat revolution”.
“The offspring of Chairman Mao, who led us to eradicate private ownership, married a capitalist and violated the family planning policy to give birth to three illegal children,” wrote Luo Chongmin, a government advisor in southwest China.
More for Fans of Maoism: Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine by Jasper Becker
Research Credit: conceptualdecay
Special Inspector General Claims Obama Regime Applying Pressure Over ‘Damning Audits’
May 10th, 2013Via: Politico:
The watchdog who tracks the billions of taxpayer dollars spent to rebuild Afghanistan says government officials have tried to silence him because they think he’s embarrassing the White House and Afghan President Hamid Karzai by pointing out the waste and fraud.
John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, used a speech at the New America Foundation on Wednesday to blast government “bureaucrats”’ who have told him to stop publicizing damning audits that detail case after case of waste, corruption and mismanagement of rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. Some government officials have even complained that they aren’t allowed to pre-screen or edit his reports, he said.
…
“Over the last 10 months, I have been criticized by some bureaucrats for not pre-clearing my press releases with them, for not letting them edit the titles of my audits, for talking too much to Congress, for talking too much to the press … and, basically, for not being a ‘team player’ and undermining ‘our country’s mission in Afghanistan,’” he said.
“Many in our government, even some surprisingly senior officials you think would know better, seem to believe that an inspector general should be their partner — or, more correctly, their silent partner,” he said. “In their opinion, my reports should be slipped in a sealed envelope in the dead of night under the door — never to see the light of day — because those reports could embarrass the administration, embarrass President Karzai, embarrass Afghanistan.”
