Monday, February 29, 2016

U.N. Group Says U.S. Should Consider Reparations

The United States should think reparations to African-American descendants of slavery, a U.N. working group said Friday.

A terra-cotta statue of a child slave inside the main house at the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana © Edmund Fountain

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States should consider reparations to African-American descendants of slavery, establish a national human rights commission and publicly acknowledge that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity, a United Nations working group said Friday.
The U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent released its preliminary recommendations after more than a week of meetings with black Americans and others from around the country, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, the District of Columbia and Jackson, Mississippi.

© British Government for Jamaican postal service
After finishing their fact-finding mission, the working group was "extremely concerned about the human rights situation of African-Americans," chair Mireille Fanon Mendes-France of France said in the report. "The colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the U.S. remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent."



For example, Mendes-France compared the recent deaths of unarmed black men like Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police to the lynchings of black men in the South from the post-Civil War days through the Civil Rights era. Those deaths, and others, have inspired protests around the country under the Black Lives Matter moniker.
"Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are reminiscent of the racial terror lynchings in the past," she told reporters. "Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency."
Some of the working group's members, none of whom are from the United States, said they were shocked by some of the things they found and were told.
For example, "it's very easy in the United States for African-Americans to be imprisoned, and that was very concerning," said Sabelo Gumedze of South Africa.
Federal officials say 37 percent of the state and federal prison populations were black males in 2014. The working group suggests the U.S. implement several reforms, including reducing the use of mandatory minimum laws, ending racial profiling, ending excessive bail and banning solitary confinement.
"What stands out for me is the lack of acknowledgement of the slave trade," said Ricardo A. Sunga III, who lives in the Philippines.
The working group suggests monuments, markers and memorials be erected in the United States to facilitate dialogue, and "past injustices and crimes against African-Americans need to be addressed with reparatory justice."
The group will suggest several U.S. changes to improve human rights for African-Americans, which also include establishing a national human rights commission, ratifying international human rights treaties, asking Congress to study slavery and its aftereffects and considering reparations .

Of the 10.7 million African Slaves ever shipped to the New World only 388k went to America. That's only 3.6%


The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent was established in 2002 by the then-Commission on Human Rights, following the World Conference against Racism in 2001.
It also visited the United States in 2010, where its final report found similar problems, including blacks facing disproportionately high unemployment, lower income levels, less access to education, "problematic access to quality health-care services and the high incidence of certain health conditions, electoral disenfranchisement and structural issues in the administration of justice (in particular incarceration rates)."
The current panel will give its final findings to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva in September.

The Trump Tapes: Vol. 1





Sunday, February 28, 2016

The Clinton Legacy : Why Blacks Should Look To Another Elsewhere !!!



By the end of Clinton’s first term, the U.S. had added an additional 277,000 prisoners — that’s more than twice as many prisoners added during Republican hero Ronald Reagan’s first term (129,000). By January 2001, Clinton oversaw the addition of 673,000 new inmates to state and federal prisons. Reagan had only imprisoned 438,000. Nearly 60 percent of those imprisoned during Clinton’s first four years were behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses. The crime bill had a reverberating effect throughout black communities — as prison spending went up, funding for programs meant to help the disadvantaged declined, according to Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander:
Federal funding for public housing fell by $17 billion (a 61 percent reduction) under Bill Clinton’s tenure; federal funding for corrections rose by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to Michelle Alexander’s seminal work, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” The federal government’s new priorities redirected nearly $1 billion in state spending for higher education to prison construction. Clinton put a permanent eligibility ban for welfare or food stamps on anyone convicted of a felony drug offense (including marijuana possession).

Nas Talks About The Major Keys Of His Iconic Career With Dj Khaled

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Melissa Harris-Perry 'highly unlikely' to return to MSNBC

melissa harris-perry apollo theater

"Melissa Harris-Perry" the TV show ended not with a celebration or a cancellation, but with a tug of war over Beyoncé.

Copy Of MHP full Statement :
https://medium.com/@JamilSmith/melissa-harris-perry-s-email-to-her-nerdland-staff-11292bdc27cb#.n6t7c0tfh


It was Super Bowl Sunday. The previous afternoon, Beyoncé surprised her fans by releasing a politically charged new song, "Formation."
Conversations about race, gender and politics are a cornerstone of Harris-Perry's acclaimed talk show. But executives at MSNBC wanted her to just cover presidential politics that day — no time for "Formation."
"Her executive producer had to fight for it," according to a source who recounted the skirmish.
Harris-Perry won the Beyoncé battle but lost the war, which had been raging for months. She has not hosted since that day. On Friday, she spoke out publicly, saying she had been "silenced" by MSNBC and placed in a form of cable news purgatory.
"I love our show. I want it back," she said in a letter.
Now she is on strike, refusing to host until she can return to the "substantive, meaningful, and autonomous work" she used to do on MSNBC.
Her MSNBC contract expires in October. Two sources agreed it is "highly unlikely" she will ever be back on the show.
This fight — fundamentally about editorial control — comes at a time when MSNBC and its rivals are trying to squeeze higher ratings out of the chaotic primary season.
At the same time, MSNBC has been undergoing a radical brand transplant, replacing left-leaning opinion shows with more middle-of-the-road newscasts. Progressives feel like the liberal MSNBC they loved is fading away.
Harris-Perry's fans are firmly on her side; thousands of supporters tweeted about the stand-off with MSNBC on Friday and Saturday.
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards wrote that Harris-Perry "included such important issues and voices" on her show; "seriously hope she will be back."
Some commenters have accused MSNBC of repressing minority voices by minimizing the roles of black hosts like Harris-Perry and Al Sharpton.
Harris-Perry herself brought up race in her Friday letter, which was originally only sent to colleagues. After The New York Times reported on the standoff, she asked a friend to publish it on Medium. The letter noted a "dramatic change" in the "editorial tone and racial composition of MSNBC's on-air coverage."
MSNBC is in a bind. Now that Harris-Perry's letter has publicly shamed the channel, some TV observers believe chairman Andy Lack and president Phil Griffin will dismiss her for insubordination.
"That statement sounded like a door-closer to me," a former MSNBC executive producer said.
An MSNBC representative declined further comment on Saturday. On Friday, MSNBC said other shows had been pre-empted for election coverage too, so her reaction was "surprising, confusing and disappointing."
It is true that two weeks of pre-emptions would not typically be cause for concern. But "Melissa Harris-Perry" is not a typical show and she is not a typical host.
A professor and writer, Harris-Perry was called "America's foremost public intellectual" by Ta-Nehisi Coates. MSNBC's decision, back in 2012, to give her four hours of weekly air time was, to put it simply, a big deal. Her hiring was championed by prime time host Rachel Maddow, among others.
Harris-Perry's show "has made television smarter since its inception... and is one of only places to offer rigorous, thoughtful consideration of race and gender in politics," New York magazine writer Rebecca Traister tweeted.
In some ways "Melissa Harris-Perry" symbolized the Obama era of MSNBC -- diversified and proudly left-leaning, but also polarizing and not always popular. The show, like MSNBC as a whole, routinely ranked third in its time slots behind Fox News and CNN.
MSNBC began to move away from the liberal talk show approach more than a year ago. Harris-Perry's show remained a refuge of sorts, but the show came under increasing pressure to stay on top of the news cycle, according to people at the channel. What some would call smart programming decisions, others would call a dilution of what made Harris-Perry's show special.
On Sunday, January 31, she awkwardly co-hosted her own show from Iowa ahead of the caucuses there. The following week -- Super Bowl weekend -- her show's branding was stripped away and replaced by MSNBC's generic "Place for Politics" title.
In a brief phone conversation, Harris-Perry said the February pre-emptions were merely the most visible manifestation of the channel's marginalization of her show.
By the time she wrote her letter, it was evident -- through actions, not words -- that she'd been canceled.
MSNBC disputes this point of view.
Harris-Perry said she is not trying to direct any activism.
"I am so moved by, and humbled by, the response of not just my audience but people who weren't even my audience. It's very powerful and meaningful," she said. "But I'm also not looking to put myself at the center of some sort of civil rights narrative. I just wanted to be able to speak. I wanted to tell people what was going on."
Back on February 7, she covered the Beyoncé video in-depth and said "I will see you next Saturday." But she was bumped on February 13/14 and again February 20/21.
"Our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season," she wrote to staffers.
She said "no one on the third floor," where MSNBC's executives work at 30 Rockefeller Center, "has even returned an email, called me, or initiated or responded to any communication of any kind from me for nearly a month."
She said her name was put on the schedule for February 27/28, but "the purpose of this decision seems to be to provide cover for MSNBC, not to provide voice for MHP Show."
"I will not be used as a tool for their purposes," she wrote. "I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin, or MSNBC."
Now Harris-Perry is letting others — presumably lawyers or talent agents — communicate with the "third floor" for her.
Joy Ann Reid replaced Harris-Perry on the air Saturday morning. Reid, whose daytime show was canceled last year, has remained in the mix as a reporter and substitute host. She tweeted support for Harris-Perry: "Love my sister-friend... for her brains, her heart and her generosity of spirit."
Reid made no mention of the controversy on the air.
Another black woman who has filled in for Harris-Perry before, Tamron Hall, responded to critics on Twitter Saturday morning, saying the voices of all three women "will be heard."
"Jobs come and go," Hall wrote, "it's simple."
Usually, yes, but in this case it's much more complicated, both because of the racial component and curiosity about what MSNBC is becoming.
As one longtime friend of Harris-Perry's put it: "Is there room for a militant black professor on the new MSNBC?"
Harris-Perry herself telegraphed this moment during a discussion at The New School in 2013.
"I show up on TV and say words because, at the moment, I have the cover of a powerful white man," her boss at MSNBC, she said. "The moment that that powerful white man no longer wants me to sit on TV and say words, I will not be allowed to sit on TV and say words anymore."

Friday, February 26, 2016

Perfect Timing: Will Smith & Jay Z Partner To Create an Emmett Till MiniSeries For HBO



Will Smith and Jay are partnering to create a miniseries about Emmett Till. They are joined by Jay Brown, James Lassiter, and Aaron Kaplan as executive producers on the project.
As of today, the Emmett Till miniseries doesn’t have a name, but will be produced on HBO.
Till was just 14 years old at the time of his murder in 1955. He was originally from Chicago, but was visiting family in Mississippi. He was said to have whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, and was savagely beaten by her husband Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam.
[ADSENSE2]Despite bragging about the murder, an all white jury acquitted the killers of the crime. They later admitted their guilt publicly, but was never taken to task for their wrongdoings.
The Till family decided to have an open-casket funeral to show the savage nature of her their child’s murderers. The Chicago Defender and other publications were given the right to publish unedited photos of her son.
Spark of the Civil Rights movement? Spark of the Civil Rights movement? Spark of the Civil Rights movement?
The decision seemed to galvanize the civil rights movement and Emmett Till’s name has forever been remembered, but now his story will be told.
Currently, there are no writers attached to the project, but Roc Nation Overbrook, and Kapital Entertainment are the production companies.

EUROPE'S REFUGEE CRISIS IS ABOUT TO GO FROM TERRIBLE TO UNPRECEDENTED

People Crisis Europe Refugee

Refugees and migrants are heading to Europe at a rate three times greater than last year, according to a new report released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and are set to shatter a record number of new arrivals reached in 2015. By the end of 2015, more than 1 million people had made their way to the continent, mostly by crossing the Mediterranean on overcrowded boats, marking the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. But if the volume of new people arriving from war torn nations continues to grow, the refugee crisis is set to explode at a rate never before seen in Europe. There have been 102,547 arrivals in the Greek islands since the beginning of 2016. In 2015, the number of arrivals did not reach that threshold until June, according to IOM. 

The journey is also becoming increasingly more deadly as the numbers grow. More than 413 people have drowned in the Mediterranean during the first two months of 2016, with the eastern route between Turkey and Greece being the deadliest area for crossing. The growing scale of the crisis has forced a knee-jerk reaction in many countries along the migrant route, which are now imposing arbitrary quotas in order to cope with the influx and closing their borders. At Austria's southern border, officials have been closing the border if more than 80 people claim asylum in a day, or if more than 3,200 want to transit through to neighboring countries.

 The restrictions are having a ripple effect further down the route. At the Greek-Macedonia border, Macedonian authorities have been allowing only Syrians and Iraqis to cross the border, and turning back Afghans and others to Greece. The UN Refugee Agency UNHCR is especially concerned about the situation in the Balkan states, warning that Europe is "backing into an even greater refugee crisis by tightening border restrictions on the hundreds of thousands who have fled war and conflict in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries." 

UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, visited the Greek island of Lesbos on Tuesday and voiced serious concerns about the approach being taken in the Balkans. "We are worried that these closings are happening and that there are no corresponding openings through relocation and resettlement," said Grandi. "That will create further chaos and confusion and it will increase the burden on Greece which is already shouldering a big responsibility managing these people. On Tuesday along, at least 1,800 people made the dangerous crossing by rubber dinghy from Turkey to Lesbos. While on the island, Grandi also denounced "the tendency to classify people along the route by nationality," and singling out Syrians and Iraqis for preferential treatment while blocking Afghans, Somalis and Palestinians.

Grandi hopes a UNHCR conference to be held on March 30 will promote legal routes for Syrian refugees into Europe and further afield, which will reduce dependence on smuggler networks and make the crisis more manageable. He said both Europe and the world must commit to taking more Syrian refugees to ease the burden on the principal refugee-hosting countries of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and those on the front lines of the migration crisis. His ambitions are high. "But we're not going to tell them, take a few hundreds or a few thousands as is the case now. We're going to tell them to take hundreds of thousands," said Grandi. "In fact our hope would be 10 per cent of the whole Syrian refugee population, this is almost half a million people." 

READ MORE: http://www.disclose.tv/news/europes_refugee_crisis_is_about_to_go_from_terrible_to_unprecedented/128333

Flint Vs. Native water poisoning, Neocons occupying DC & Chelsea Manning




(01:06) MintPress News editor in chief and your host, Mnar Muhawesh, begins the show by exposing the water poisoning crisis that has been affecting Native American communities for decades that's far worse than Flint, Michigan's and how it's happening at the hands of the EPA, coal and fossil fuel industries. Natives. The mainstream media's silence on this issue while giving much coverage to Flint is only enabling this slow genocide of native communities. 

(06:38) Muhawesh continues the show with dissecting the illusion of the two party system and their addiction to war. From Bush to Obama, the US is ravaging the world leaving innocent lives murdered and millions as refugees in their own countries. Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity joins Mnar to talk about beyond the two neocon presidents, who are the "Neocons" working behind the scenes to push both Democrats and Republicans to encourage more war while bankrupting America. 

(19:20) Lastly, Kevin Gosztola joins Mnar to discuss Chelsea Manning's case and why human rights organizations like Amnesty International don't consider her a political prisoner. Gosztola goes on to answer why the media is choosing ad hominems when addressing whistleblowers. 

Follow us on Twitter! 
Mnar Muhawesh: https://twitter.com/MnarMuh
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The Original Writer of The Matrix and Terminator Wins 2.5 Billion Dollar Lawsuit

Picture


After a six year dispute, prolific writer and profound spiritualist, Sophia Stewart has received justice for copyright infringement and racketeering and will finally recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. Yes, you heard that correctly – the entire Matrix & Terminator franchises, and her suspected pay off is expected to be the highest in history – an estimated 2.5 billion.

Her case is a true landmark, and far too uncommon as countless creatives are exploited by the snake-like dealings of the movie industry. Here’s a recap of her triumphant journey.

“Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript, ‘The Third Eye,’ copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works.

According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The investigation also stated that ‘credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers.’ These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart’s original work and that it had been ‘often used during preparation of the motion pictures.’ The defendants tried, on several occasions, to have Stewart’s case dismissed, without success.

Stewart has confronted skepticism on all sides, much of which comes from Matrix fans, who are strangely loyal to the Wachowski Brothers. One on-line forum, entitled Matrix Explained has an entire section devoted to Stewart. Some who have researched her history and writings are open to her story.”

Although it’s long overdue, and buried in large part by the media machine, Stewart has finally received official credit (and hopefully financial settlement by 2009) for her prodigious contributions to both Hollywood, and the world for her ground breaking sagas, both the Matrix & Terminator franchises. Let us hope that this landmark ruling provides a measure of hope for other ripped off screenwriters seeking justice even if only by way of public recognition.

To echo her 2004 victorious press release:

‘The Matrix & Terminator movie franchises have made world history and have ultimately changed the way people view movies and how Hollywood does business, yet the real truth about the creator and creation of these films continue to elude the masses because the hidden secret of the matter is that these films were created and written by a Black woman…a Black woman named Sophia Stewart. But Hollywood does not want you to know this fact simply because it would change history.

We’d like to believe that the justice she received was not in name only, and she is able to reap the benefits of her enormous creative contributions. 

(Since the story was reported, it was stated that the information that she had already won was false. But the fact does remain it is an on-going case and she did win the right to proceed with her suit. So with the end of the world coming near "May 21, 2011 around 6pm" Judgment Day might be closer than we think....we will keep you posted I am sure there is a sequel in here somewhere.)

Link:  http://www.poptopictvonline.com/whats-popin/the-original-writer-of-the-matrix-and-terminator-wins-25-billion-dollar-lawsuit

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Sheriff David Clarke Blasts Beyonce For Getting Support From Minister Farrakhan! "If Lucifer Had A Son, It Would Be Louis Farrakhan!"



Sheriff David Clarke was asked if the recent offer by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to provide security for Beyoncé Knowles will improve things or make them worse. Clarke responds without hesitation, “It’ll make it worse. Look, I don’t care who she hires as private security as long as public resources in the form of police officers aren’t used.” He goes on to caution Knowles not to be too hasty in who she chooses, saying, “She’s got a good brand, she’d better be a little careful with it. I can’t believe that she would crawl in bed with the devil that I call Louis Farrakhan. If Lucifer had a son it would be Louis Farrakhan.



Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Media is Lying- Hillary Didn't Win Nevada



I spent the weekend listening to national media commentators (so called “experts”) gloat over Hillary's "decisive victory" in Nevada and how she is now on firm footing to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The media is committing fraud- you are being lied to.
Hillary’s razor thin Nevada victory wasn’t a “decisive victory.” It was an embarrassment that required spending millions of dollars to garner a pathetic 6,316 votesin an anemic turnout. 
“Decisive victory?” The national media is committing fraud. Hillary once led Bernie Sanders by 40 points in Nevada. She led by 25 points less than 30 days ago.She won by 5 points.
But more importantly, the turnout was embarrassing, especially considering the millions spent on TV advertising. Hillary not only spent millions to draw a measly 6000 votes, overall turnout wasdown one third from 2008
And she lost by 70 pointsamong voters who voted based on “honesty.” 
Hillary’s victory was more disaster than “decisive.” 
Shouldn’t the national media be reporting how Hillary’s weak, unimpressive, embarrassing victory was achieved? The American people have a right to know there was nothing fair, decisive or ethical about it.
Now let’s look closely at how she achieved her razor-thin, embarassing victory. This is the part where serious questions should be asked. But of course we no longer have a professional unbiased media. We are living in a "Banana Republic" where the media is bought, paid for and in the bag for Hillary Clinton.
Here’s the part missing from mainstream media reporting- Hillary scored her win in Nevada by changing the rules at the last minute and playing "dirty politics" to avoid a humiliating defeat that might have sunk her entire presidential campaign. 
Hillary was losing with days to go. Her team was in panic mode. Remember who this is- Hillary is the most famous woman in the history of politics. Yet she was going down to a humiliating defeat to unknown Vermont socialist kook Bernie Sanders. Her entire dream to win the presidency was in danger of imploding. Enter Nevada Senator Harry Reid.
Reid “fixed” the results for Hillary by twisting the arms of casino and union bosses
Why isn’t the national media reporting this? She needed pure corruption, intimidation and manipulation to squeak out an unimpressive win in Nevada. Reid saw Hillary about to lose Nevada and with it, her entire campaign. So in the days before the caucus he called casino bosses of every Vegas Strip casino and twisted their arms to get them to give union employees three hours off- with pay- to vote in the caucus.
This happened at the last second to deliver victory for Hillary. This was in full cooperation with union bosses who supported one candidate. Everyone understood clearly who this move benefited. It wasn’t Bernie. That got Hillary a few hundred extra votes and put her over the top in Nevada. That’s how she achieved her “decisive victory.”
After spending millions of dollars on TV ads, she needed union and casino bosses to basically order their union employees to take half their day off, and pay them to vote for Hillary.
A few hundred union votes at six Democratic caucus sites inside Strip casinos saved her entire run for the White House. Now the media says she is in a comfortable lead and in position to put away the nomination.
America’s voters have a right to know the truth. If Hillary's actions weren't illegal, they sure smell unethical. Why would casino bosses cave to pressure from Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton? Keep in mind, all of this happened at the last minute with Harry Reid twisting the arms of casino bosses. This was allreported publiclyby liberal journalists, like Jon Ralston, NBC News Analyst. What did Harry Reid and Hillary promise them? Isn’t this a case of “pay for play?”
I’d also ask if these actions violated SEC law. Most of the Vegas Strip hotels are publicly traded companies. Not only did they violate the trust of their paying hotel guests by providing less than optimal service (with so many employees off the job on a busy weekend in Vegas), but I believe a strong case could be made they committed fraud against their shareholders. If I own stock in a public company, casino bosses have no right to use shareholder money to pay employees to take the afternoon off to vote for the candidate supported by union bosses. That crosses into the area of theft of shareholder value. 
The real question is what could possibly be in it for the unions and casino bosses? Did Hillary agree to pay back this massive favor with favorable actions toward Las Vegas casinos once she’s president? Isn’t that a bribe? Hasn’t a crime been committed? Of course everyone involved will deny any deal was offered or accepted. 
Whether this is just unethical and “dirty-politics-as-usual,” or crosses the line into criminal behavior, one thing is clear- it smells bad. This is precisely why the American people are angry. Every non-union worker in America should be outraged. Every inconvenienced casino guest should be outraged. Every casino company shareholder should be outraged.
Do other companies provide paid time off to vote? Do other companies get caucus sites placed inside their building to enable employees to vote with ease? It’s sure not a privilege I’ve ever experienced. Why should union employees receive something of value that I don’t, in order to stuff the ballot box for Hillary Clinton? What did she agree to give to the union and the casino bosses in return for this favor?
The mainstream media doesn't understand the popularity of Donald Trump. This is precisely why voters like Trump. Because they are sick of
"business as usual." They are sick of backroom deals. They are sick of corruption and bribery dominating elections.
And this is why Trump is booed at GOP Presidential debates by donors, lobbyists and CEO’s. Because he can’t be bought or bribed. Because under future President Donald Trump America isn’t for sale. 
Unfortunately under President Hillary Clinton it’s already been sold. She sold her soul to the devil, Harry Reid and the Vegas Strip casinos for a lousy 6,316 votes.

NYPD wants access to ALL iPhones (with a warrant)

pandora

NYPD wants access to ALL iPhones (with a warrant)



The New York City Police Department says they'd like Apple to unlock every iPhone currently subject to a court-ordered search. Once the San Bernardino doors are broken down by the FBI, the NYPD has made clear: they want in, too. That'd mean every iPhone entered into evidence in a court case and subjected to a search ordered by a judge could be forced open by law enforcement, courtesy of a piece of software they've forced Apple to create. That software would be an entirely new version of iOS which the FBI (then the NYPD, and every other law enforcement agency in the USA) would then install on each iPhone, bypassing Apple's security measures, opening the locks to access data. You might be asking yourself, "why is that so bad?"
As you'll read below, Apple didn't always say "no" to requests for unlocking phones for evidence in court cases. It was only once Apple started to produce iPhones with A7 processors inside that the company made clear that they would no longer be turning over data with such ease. Not that they'd be able to get in if they wanted to.
Apple's software/hardware security is now so secure that not even they are able to get in if a user has set a password on their iPhone.
Apple's measures move the responsibility of access to this data away from themselves, placing the burden on law enforcement instead.
Instead of merely asking for access, as they had before, the FBI is demanding that Apple break in to a private user's phone. To do this, Apple would need to re-write iOS to circumvent their own security measures. Apple suggests that creating this OS would be forcing the company to do what they're not legally obligated to do. In addition, creating a whole new OS would be a massive amount of work.
Interviewer Charlie Rose spoke with Cyrus Vance Jr., district attorney for Manhattan, and John Miller, NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism about this case.
In said interview, Vance makes several admissions - one of which sheds light on why Apple is so staunchly opposed to committing what it feels is an act against its own best interests, legal or otherwise.
Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.: "Since Apple changed its operating system in the Fall of 2014, to re-engineer it so that phones could not be accessed even with a valid warrant, there've been 175 cases in our office - using the new operating system that we are not able to get in - to look at phones which need to be analyzed to build criminal cases, and indeed to make sure that we're prosecuting the right person."
"Those cases range from homicide to sex abuse, sex trafficking to cyber crime. So at the state and local level, where 95% of the cases in the country are handled, our inability to access data on cell phones, which are being used by criminals to communicate and to store data, is a real problem."
"The San Bernardino case presents one example of a case involving terrorism, where federal government believes that critical evidence may be on that phone. There are tens of thousands of other cases around the country in investigations relating to homicide, sex abuse, where data is going to be on smartphones, and prosecutors, police officers need to access - with a court order - in order to do the right thing and get the right result in each of those cases."
To visualize why Apple does not want to open this back door, we turn to political illustrator Stuart Carlson.
security
You'll notice the language Vance uses aims to sway the listener with guilt and fear. He uses the word "terrorism" - which should have no baring on the legal proceedings at hand, as well as "homicide" and "sex abuse." He even goes so far as to suggest that Apple giving law enforcement access to phones would be to "do the right thing."
Objectively speaking, this case should have nothing to do with any of those terms. No case of any unique kind of crime currently has any direct route to getting Apple to unlock an iPhone.
Why, you might ask?
Oddly it is Vance who answers this question with his own supposed confusion about the situation.
D.A. Vance: "In September of 2014 with iOS 7, Apple was able to respond to court-ordered search warrants, and there was never a complaint that iOS 7 was an operating system that was insecure. Or that my data on my phone was at risk of being stolen. I don't know what changed, between September 30 and October 1, when they introduced iOS 8..."
Charlie Rose: "What do you think changed - they probably had a better operating system."
D.A. Vance: "Well... I think they made a decision, obviously consciously, to engineer out of the phones their ability to open them. And I think Apple is a great company, phenomenal company - as is Google - but no company is above the law. And we have relied upon our 4th amendment principle where reasonable searches were permitted, if judges concluded based upon a presentation of the evidence that there's probable cause, that there's evidence of a crime."
Charlie Rose: "Well I assume the reason they did that is they didn't want that responsibility of having a door in the back end. And that they basically wanted to say, 'the best way for us to protect the data that is within a phone that we sell is simply to not even to give us [access], to encrypt is so well that we don't have access to it."
nclavea
Apple did create a better operating system, but even better yet, they started implementing hardware that encrypted data so well, even they, Apple, could not access it. This is called theSecure Enclave - standard in all Apple mobile devices with the Apple A7 processor and newer.
What Apple is contending is not that they should open up the back door and give these agents access to the iPhone in question. Apple is contending that they should not be forced to create an entirely new operating system to bypass the encryption they've implemented on the phone.
Encryption so strong that not even Apple can break it.

Hill on Tennessee: There's a serious conflict of interest

Classified Evidence: US Soldiers Raped Boys In Front Of Their Mothers



 According to a number of global mainstream media sources, the Pentagon is covering up a disturbing video that was never made public with the rest of the recent torture report.
According to various well respected journalists, including Seymour Hersh, the appalling video was recorded at Abu Ghraib, the notorious US torture dungeon in Iraq that made headlines roughly a decade ago, when the inhumane tactics being used at the prison were exposed.
Sadly, it seems that the evidence released years ago was only scratching the surface.
While the video has remained under wraps thus far, Hersh says it is only a matter of time before it comes out.
Giving a speech at the ACLU last week after the senate torture report was initially released, Hersh gave some insight into what was on the Pentagon’s secret tape.
“Debating about it, ummm … Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”
“It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there’s enough out there, they can’t (Applause). …. So it’s going to be an interesting election year.”
Put into context with another speech that Hersh gave earlier this year, it becomes clear that the women who witnessed these young boys being raped were actually their mothers.
At a speech in Chicago this past June Hersh was quoted as saying:
“You haven’t begun to see evil… horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.”
Other stories at the London Guardian also talked of young Iraqi detainees getting violently raped by US soldiers.
Ten years ago when the initial Abu Ghraib scandal was in the news, the Guardian published the testimony of an Abu Ghraib detainee who allegedly witnessed one of these brutal attacks.
“I saw [name blacked out] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass, I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures.”
Now, over a decade later the evidence of these events are beginning to surface, but the Department of Defense is still doing their best to keep it under the radar. That is why now more than ever, it is important to keep the pressure on and force the release of this evidence, while the torture report is fresh in the minds of the general population.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

NYPD Tried To Poison Man Who Filmed Police Killing Eric Garner, Now They Have Arrested Him Again

ramsey-orta


Ramsey Orta’s video of the chokehold death of Eric Garner shocked the world and put the spotlight on the New York Police Department and the problem of police brutality and murder.
But ever since he went public with the video of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo choking Eric Garner to death, Orta claims he’s been harassed by police.
Since that July 2014 encounter on Staten Island, the police have been targeting Orta and trumping up charges to repeatedly arrest him.
Watch the video below on the NYPD targeting Ramsey…



Just Friday the NYPD did it again. This time they claimed he “assaulted his wife” – but his wife says this is an absolutely lie.
Orta, 24, was in an argument with wife, Jessica Orta, 32, she explains. But the rest of the police story is a lie.
Jessica Orta and supporters of Ramsey Orta released a video today asking the public to support Ramsey as the NYPD has “escalated” a situation between the couple into an arrest.
This bail fund is being organized by El Grito de Sunset Park.
Jessica explains that “Ramsey has been the target of police harassment and has been arrested repeatedly by the police since his video of an NYPD detective fatally choking Eric Garner in Staten Island went viral two summers ago.”
She explains that “Ramsey was arrested just a few days ago and the media have used unnamed police sources to suggest that Ramsey has assaulted” her.
Both Jessica and Ramsey Orta “contend that the NYPD and the media’s version of events are inaccurate and have been misrepresented precisely because it involves Ramsey Orta.”
She adds that “the character assassination and criminalization of Ramsey must not be allowed to continue.”
Jessica notes that during Ramsey’s last arrest, police tried to poison Ramsey’s food with rat poison – prompting a hunger strike that was the only way he avoided dying. Now she’s worried that the NYPD may try to kill him once again.