NOTE: This is not an easy video to watch. It’s brutal. That’s why everyone needs to watch it. Please post this video to your Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or wherever else you can.
You can use this shortened URL: http://bit.ly/ccGfdm Don’t credit me–just spread it out wide.
A full military SWAT assault in the middle of the night. Shoot two dogs. All in the presence of a 7-year old child. And for what? A tiny bag of marijuana?
What a joke our “war on drugs” has become. What was the financial cost of this raid? What will be the long-term cost of this raid for the police and the community of Columbia when the inevitable lawsuits arrive? What will be the human cost to this poor family for using a drug that’s arguably less harmful than alcohol (when’s the last time you heard of someone beating up their spouse after smoking a joint)?
It’s 1920-1933 all over again. Prohibition of alcohol was proven by history to an unmitigated disaster and complete waste of everyone’s collected time. How many people died and had their lives ruined because some religious fools decided that it was ‘immoral’ or ‘criminal’ for us?
New boss, same as the old boss.
Stop using the “War on Drugs” against regular people. The US government from the birth of Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs has created the modern gang problems and wholesale destruction of families as surely as religious groups (and the US officials who failed to heed the facts of separation of church and state) literally handed the bullets to Al Capone and other mobsters for the deaths they caused during Prohibition. Target the crystal meth dealers. The crack cocaine dealers. The parasites that destroy and consume entire communities whole, ripping the living flesh from them.
Spare the regular people.
End the damn Second Prohibition, already, so that we can stop destroying families and move past our failed history.
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
The video, Wikileaks says, was taken from a US Apache helicopter on July 2, 2007, in Baghdad, which shows the killing of civilians and Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying since then to get the video released without luck, but Wikileaks had it leaked to them in an encrypted format, and had it decrypted. Now it’s literally all over the Internet.
Let’s see how long it takes the national US news media to really chase this down. Or, if they do… and how long until the Wikileaks staff are targeted now?
I just received an email from Wikileaks editor Julian Assange that’s pretty wild. It accuses the U.S. government of deliberately trying to take down the whistle-blower site PDF two years ago.
As proof, Wikileaks has posted a 32-page classified document PDF from the Department of Defense Intelligence Analysis program, dated March 2008, which details “the counterintelligence threat posed to the US Army by the Wikileaks.org Web site.” It reads:
“The possibility that a current employee or mole within DoD or elsewhere in the US government is providing sensitive information or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out. Wikileaks.org claims that the ‘leakers’ or ‘whistleblowers’ of sensitive or classified DoD documents are former US government employees.”
The document, attributed to the Army Counterintelligence Center and titled “Wikileaks.org — An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?”, cited the leaking of classified Army materials as the chief reason Wikileaks is harmful to national security.
Basically, Wikileaks–I used to read it sometimes, but couldn’t make heads or tails of half the things I was looking at–became a massive clearinghouse of all sorts of leaked, useful information. It got a foreign bank to sue them in the United States for some nonsense of impeding trade, which was finally thrown out in court after the the bank was humiliated. If I recall right, Wikileaks just kept leaking their stuff right out during trial, so they gave up. With this, the government under Bush’s administration actually looked into ways to take them down. Well, tonight it looks like, on top of the above mentioned news, they’ve apparently really pissed off the US intel orginization this time–I’ve never seen commentary like this from them before. From their twitter:
WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation. Following/photographing/filming/detaining. about 1 hours ago
If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible. about 1 hours ago
Two under State Dep diplomatic cover followed our editor from Iceland to http://skup.no on Thursday. about 1 hours ago
One related person was detained for 22 hours. Computer’s seized.That’s http://www.skup.no 44 minutes ago
We know our possession of the decrypted airstrike video is now being discussed at the highest levels of US command. 32 minutes ago
If you know more about the operations against us, contact https://secure.wikileaks.org/ 31 minutes ago
We have been shown secret photos of our production meetings and been asked specific questions during detention related to the airstrike. 27 minutes ago
We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don’t think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks. 23 minutes ago
Even when the heat is on, someone leaks them CIA airline records from the investigation? Yes, someone will call bullshit, but they do I think have a reputation for being bullshit-free. Looks like the Internet has finally caught up with the Old World of governments, and the governments are pissed they can’t control the Internet. Too bad.
It looks like Wikileaks may have evidence of some sort of murder carried out by the US military or possibly the CIA (sorry for the bad translation):
On April 5 to Wikileaks at a meeting of the National Press Club in Washington a video showing an attack by the U.S. Air Force. It would involve a murder carried out by the Pentagon. The staff of the site also draw on information from CIA aircraft have as supporting evidence.
If that’s true, it implies that the airstrike–I have no idea what airstrike this is about–violated either domestic or international law and/or was an outright murder versus a legal military action. If their claims of being detained and followed overseas by United States officials and the CIA are true, then they’ve definitely got their hands on something the State Department, Pentagon or CIA don’t want out there. I wonder what?
Is this about the Kunduz airstrike in Afghanistan from September 4, 2009, when a US F-15 caused the deaths of dozens of civilians? Or is it about, as rumored online, an assassination of journalists by the military that was recorded–which Wikileaks alluded to on February 20th, 2010?
Finally cracked the encryption to US military video in which journalists, among others, are shot. Thanks to all who donated $/CPUs.
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Only took 32 years and a civil rights movement happening to coincide with it, but some of my work is finally in print, sorta. The Stranger used three of my photos November 20, 2008 edition, on the “Anatomy of a Protest” (click for the online version) article on page 16. It’s in the free news boxes now all over the Seattle metro area, and the photos are from my Prop 8 Seattle protest photos. Silly little thing, but it made me happy.
“It shows me that public opinion is really changing,” said Robin Levine-Ritterman, the first in line at City Hall in New Haven to get a marriage license with her partner of 17 years, Barbara, who already shares the same last name as a result of their prior civil union, as she clutched red roses.
The official start of gay weddings, a month after the state’s top court struck down a gay-marriage ban, underscores a steady expansion of gay rights in the U.S. Northeast in sharp contrast to California’s November 4 vote to ban such marriages, which sparked weekend protests by thousands.
Government by proposition, referendum, and initiative is great up to a point–but sometimes you need a neutral and bipartisan judiciary to tell the people crafting illegal and unconstitutional laws, well, when they’re crafting illegal and unconstitutional laws.
How does this work? The Church moved to import millions (tens of millions?) of advertising dollars across state lines from Utah to California to ensure Proposition 8 and the banning of marriage rights for same-sex couples passed, and they’re upset now that others are using their free speech rights to protest the free speech that the Church used. That’s only extremely hypocritical, boys. Did the Churches honestly think they were exempt from scrutiny and criticism here…?
It is disturbing that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is being singled out for speaking up as part of its democratic right in a free election.
Members of the Church in California and millions of others from every faith, ethnicity and political affiliation who voted for Proposition 8 exercised the most sacrosanct and individual rights in the United States – that of free expression and voting.
While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.
The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
This is lovely. I can see the value of not naming to the general public which banks are receiving the money–it would be an invitation to have runs begin on those banks. But to refuse to name them to lawmakers, who need to know these things? And to refuse to name non-banking institutions that received the public money? Uh uh, no way. The Bush administration again oversteps it’s bounds, and provides further demonstration of how they run America as a tinpot dictatorship.
In case you somehow haven’t heard this yet, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was convicted today on seven counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in improper gifts. The reporting oversight was blamed on a series of tubes getting clogged.
As an addendum to this post, about Wikipedia’s secret harassment mail lists, it looks like the genie is well and truly out of the bottle now. It’s getting posted on blogs non-stop, and that means that there is a good 50/50 shot that it will hit the mainstream media. Once that happens, its going to get a bit ugly for Lise Diane Broer, Jimmy Wales, and Wikipedia in the press spin department.
On top of all that, it gets better. Read this. It appears that Lise Diane Broer, who can be seen in this YouTube interview about Wikipedia, leaked the name of a Congressional staffer that edited Wikipedia, and the man was fired. Lise Diane Broer, aka Durova, is the admin that was part of the secret list that was used to harass and cyber-stalk real people, and was the main admin in the Register story that blew this latest stupid scandal into the public eye.
If you want to see the “secret evidence” that was used to ban a user, go look here. It’s awfully sad and pathetic, for supposedly a person who primped herself up as some Sherlock Holmes of Wikipedia, who was able to ferret out evildoers out to destroy the encyclopedia or some nonsense. For people that have never followed the comedy that is the behind-the-scenes or making-of Wikipedia, it’s a pretty funny ongoing thing to watch. I detached myself from that nonsense ages ago, and don’t regret it. Its too funny not to watch, though. Its almost as good as John Bunnell’s Wildest Police Chases for Nerds.
To read up on this behind the scenes comedy (or tragedy, as people in Real Life Get Hurt By Wikipedia Editors), the best places are:
“On-Wiki” they are already in spin control. The best thing about the secret mail list is that it is hosted on Wikia.com servers, the private for-profit company owned by Jimbo Wales, which is legally supposed to be seperate from registered charity the Wikimedia Foundation. Various people have already informed the IRS.
Direct link to The Register article is here. If nothing else, read this news article.
From Digg. Why are we in Iraq, again? Oh, that’s right: Because Saddam wanted to take a potshot at Georgie’s dad when H.W. was President. Let’s get ‘im, he tried to whack my pappy. Meanwhile… we’re in the wrong country ‘fighting back’: “Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed. The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about.”
In response to being sued and humiliated on the internet over their “secret website,” Best Buy has added a disclaimer that warns customers that the in-store kiosk doesn’t display the same prices as the public website. Best Buy was caught using a duplicate website to fool customers who tried to compare internet prices with in-store prices.
From Digg. Yessir, they’re all about them family values… “Moreover, when Thompson married his first wife, Sarah Lindsey, at Lawrenceburg Methodist Church in 1959, she was already two months pregnant with their first child.”
