Police and Army: Not Protecting and Not Serving Ordinary People
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-21 15:54:26 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-21 15:54:26 UTC
Summary: Domestic and foreign abuses of power; examples from recent weeks for police and from the past 24 hours for the army/secret agencies
Police
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Neighbors say Mary Musselman has been feeding backyard animals as long as they can remember.
"She fed the squirrels, the birds, strays and that was in the community. She's just always been that kind of soul," says neighbor Patty Palmer.
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For absolutely no reason other than “because they could”, cops in Pinal County, Arizona executed a suspect who was standing there, not near any of the officers, with his hands in the air, offering no threat whatsoever. Without trial, judge, or jury, they simply assassinated the man, as his family looked on in horror. Warning: There is some graphic violence in the video below.
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Stacey Feigel’s husband, Sheldon, is facing multiple felony counts related to an alleged scam involving filing fraudulently for adverse possession on abandoned homes. While arriving in court for a hearing, Stacey collapsed from a “cardiac event” (according to the coroner) and died. Attorney Mark Coleman suggested stress from the raid and arrest could have led to her death.
Panic
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I've never seen a real study, but my guess is that it's a reflection of fear and desperation. It's a very frightened country. The United States is an unusually frightened country. And in such circumstances, people concoct either for escape or maybe out of relief, fears that terrible things happen.
Foreign Policy
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The U.S. may be forced to withdraw troops completely from Afghanistan by the end of the year. That’s bad news if you’re the CIA and your lethal drone flights over neighboring Pakistan rely on the close proximity of Afghan airstrips.
Not surprisingly, the defense industry has already produced a solution: a new jet-powered drone that can range 1,800 miles from the nearest base.
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As Spencer Ackerman, National security reporter, said “it’s just so little transparency and so much opacity when it comes to Drones, belonged to CIA; if it were military then you could at least get the insight as how it works and debate about whether it should run this way”. With his comment on Drones dilemma, CIA is not required to give any information on any drone operations. They do not officially discuss drone programme, as Spencer Ackerman mentioned.
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Kareem Khan's son and brother died in a US drone strike. His lawsuit has made waves in Pakistan and overseas, and he was recently detained for nine days.
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A year ago, 8-year-old Nabeela ventured outside while her 68-year-old grandmother picked vegetables in their family garden. Moments later, the grandmother was blasted to pieces by two U.S. drone missiles. Nabeela and other nearby grandchildren were injured when the exploding missile lodged shrapnel in their bodies.
No one is alleging the grandmother did anything wrong. Her fatal “mistake” was living in North Waziristan, a region in Pakistan pummeled by U.S. drone strikes (Amnesty International, Nov. 13).
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A U.S. military drone strike in Yemen in December may have killed up to a dozen civilians on their way to a wedding and injured others, including the bride, a human rights group says. U.S. officials say only members of al-Qaida were killed, but they have refused to make public the details of two U.S. investigations into the incident.
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Last week I wrote about the news that the Obama administration is considering whether to assassinate another American citizen in a drone strike. The Associated Press reported the target is an American citizen and member of al-Qaeda, “and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.”
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The story told by the report is one of disputed identity. Anonymous US officials have said all of the twelve men killed were militants traveling with Shawqi Ali Ahmad al-Badani, allegedly a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the primary target of the strike. Officials say al-Badani was wounded, and escaped. Relatives of the dead say they didn't know him.
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Lithuanian prosecutors said on Thursday they have opened an investigation into claims that a Saudi terror suspect was held in an alleged secret CIA jail in the Baltic state, reports LETA/AFP.
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Sitcom and sadism mix uncomfortably in Luc Besson’s “3 Days to Kill,” starring Kevin Costner as a CIA hitman and absentee father.
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As the world’s biggest online retailer, Amazon wants a benevolent image to encourage trust from customers. Obtaining vast quantities of their personal information has been central to the firm’s business model. But Amazon is diversifying -- and a few months ago the company signed a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency to provide “cloud computing” services.
Amazon now has the means, motive and opportunity to provide huge amounts of customer information to its new business partner. An official statement from Amazon headquarters last fall declared: “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”
The Central Intelligence Agency has plenty of money to throw around. Thanks to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we know that the CIA’s annual budget is $14.7 billion; the NSA’s is $10.8 billion.
The founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is bullish on the company’s prospects for building on its initial contract with the CIA. As you might expect from a gung-ho capitalist with about $25 billion in personal wealth, Bezos figures he’s just getting started.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- IBM May Well Be Laying Off Over 13,500 and Up to 27,000 Staff This Week When It Says "Single-Digit Percentage of Our Global Workforce"
- It's not yet possible to know how many people IBM gets rid of
- Early Unverified Figures About Scale of Latest IBM Layoffs
- the real scale of the RAs will remain elusive
- How Techrights Search Works
- Hopefully bots won't use it
- Techrights Became a Lot More Productive as a Result of Attacks on It
- By default, it's safe to assume anything on the Web is garbage, especially in social control media
- Unverified Rumours: IBM Cuts Will Continue Another ~10 Days, Managers Will Invite Those Impacted for 1-on-1 Meetings
- Right now IBM likes diversity because with adoption of low-paid demographies it gets to pay workers less for the same work
- analytics.usa.gov: Vista 11 Scarcely Used, GNU/Linux Increasingly Dominant (Microsoft Loses "Goodwill", Depletes Cash Equivalents, and Debt Soars)
- "Total current assets" fell by more than 2 billion dollars in the past 3 months
- Not Only Mass Layoffs at IBM But Complete Shutdowns "Amid A.I. Boom"
- apparently about 10,000 layoffs, not counting those who got pushed out by PIPs and other means
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- Slopwatch: linuxbsdos.com, Linux Journal, LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and WebProNews
- Either Google doesn't care about the integrity of Google News or it deems slop to be acceptable
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
- Red Hat Staff Also Impacted by Latest IBM Layoffs With Focus on North America and Software, Infrastructure
- After the bluewashing never expect to see news about "Red Hat layoffs", just as "Tivoli layoffs" aren't to be expected
- Coming Soon: Part 4 About the EPO's Substance Abuse (Breaking Laws to Fake 'Production' and Profiting From Unlawful Monopolies)
- Notice how quiet the EPO's management has been lately
- For the Record: We Never Named Staff of the Law Firm That's Attacking Us, Except the One the Firm is Named After!
- Just to affirm and be sure, I've used our new search facility
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- Links for the day
- Techrights Search Will Come Early
- Maybe tomorrow
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- Seems like a very patriarchal, GAFAM-controlled Foundation
- "Last Day" as in "IBM Sacked Me" (Cruel Euphemisms)
- "The entire design and research technical leadership at IBM was laid off in the past year, including this round"
- Shadow Crew and Ads Disguised as Articles
- That The Register MS runs articles that are paid-for fluff isn't unprecedented
- Vista 11 "Market Share" Has Fallen This Month, Based on statCounter
- The US government's own data shows the same thing this month
- This is How Mainstream Media, Boosted or Parroted by Slopfarms, Spins IBM's Commercial Failure and Mass Layoffs as "AI"
- Some say "software focus", but most just resort to buzzwords and blame-shifting hype
- Resisting Misogynists
- Rianne has already added close to 100,000 pages to this site
- Starting November on a Strong Note
- All in all, this month started well for us as we have good, accurate publications with considerable impact
- Fake Retirements Help IBM Keep the Layoff Figures Down
- Yesterday we read that it was quite cruel how IBM (or Red Hat) compelled staff to pretend to be happily leaving or "retiring" when the reality was, they had been pushed out with some "package"
- Cocaine at the European Patent Office Now a Subject in YouTube, Media Will Revisit the Topic
- "The Cocaine Patent Office" is no joking matter
- Gemini Links 05/11/2025: "Wuthering Heights" and "Winter is Coming"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, November 04, 2025
- 2 Days Until Site Anniversary Party, Search Likely to Launch Same Day
- We're now just two days away from the nineteenth anniversary of the site
- Richard Stallman's 2005 Article on Why Patents on Software Should be Denied
- If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, says Richard Stallman
- "Last Day" at IBM and Red Hat as "Stealth Layoffs" (They Force People to Pretend It's Wilful)
- So the real extent of the layoffs is being kept 'undercover'
- Slopwatch: The WebProNews Slopfarm and the Serial Slopper
- The Web is ill
- Links 04/11/2025: Tensions Around Belarus Grow, Turkey’s Hype-inflation Continues
- Links for the day
- Corporate Media That Fails to Report Cocaine at EPO is Totally Failing to Report Mass Layoffs at IBM
- How come nobody anywhere writes about this week's RAs?
- Search @ Techrights: Almost There Now (Maybe an Anniversary Gift)
- Just to be very clear, search would not be unprecedented at Techrights
- At IBM, Layoffs Start at 1AM (at Night)
- not a single English-speaking site covers the news about the layoffs
- Links 04/11/2025: Google Cloud Account Engages in Censorship of the Innocent, arXiv Spammed by LLM Slop
- Links for the day
- EPO Cocaine Chronicles: Our Aim Will be to Ensure This Becomes a Mainstream Media Topic, Not a Suppressed Scandal (Which the German State Deems Embarrassing and Detrimental to Its Pan-European Patent Franchise)
- At the EPO, and perhaps in German media as well, people "fall upwards" (they get rewarded for bad things)
- Envy Makes People Do Self-Harming Things (and Harm to Others)
- Online communities that can be deemed successful are built around trust, mutual respect, and collective accomplishment
- Static Site Generators (SSGs) Made Techrights Better, Faster, Easier to Manage
- Consider adopting SSGs if you still use a CMS such as WordPress
- But he Was Born in Manchester! (Origin Stories)
- Borussia Dortmund does not exist!
- What Julian Darley Wrote About the Stallman Talk Regarding "AI" in Oxford (2025)
- From LinkedIn (Microsoft)
- GNU/Linux is American, Not Finnish
- It started in Boston, not in Helsinki
- 'Hacker' 'News' Makes Dumb Assertions Against Smart People
- A logical fallacy
- We Turned Down Every Settlement Offer Because Truths Aren't Determined in Bank Accounts
- Without free press, there won't be free society
- "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei
- This site is educational
- Why I'm Always Proud of the Site I've Devoted My Life to
- As a graffiti around the corner from our home says, "be a better person"
- Standing Up or Standing for What's True But Inconvenient
- Bad actors need to be called out
- Many People Have Said That They "Leave" IBM in Recent Days (Ahead of Mass Layoffs)
- So the real extent of layoffs is greater than what's publicly stated (there are silent layoffs) [...] Whatever IBM says about the scope, scale, or magnitude of the "RAs", it doesn't tell the full story
- Media Coverage Regarding IBM is Vapourware and LLM Slop
- With slop images, too
- statCounter Says GNU/Linux Rose to 4% in the Russian Federation
- Adoption of Vista 11 has been embarrassingly weak
- Corruption is Not a Joke
- we'll try to limit our use of humour to avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations
- The Slopfarm WebProNews is Overwhelming "linux" Results in Google News
- Google News is slop
- The Fall of IBM: What Happened?
- Just like the EPO continues riding some old reputation acquired in the 1970s IBM relies on old myths like, "nobody gets fired for buying IBM."
- IBM's CEO Already Has the Excuse for the Latest Wave of Mass Layoffs
- Only days ago the CEO told a bunch of nonsense
- Links 04/11/2025: Conflicts, Politics, and IPv6 at Home
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/11/2025: Entering WiFi Passwords and Programming Rambles
- Links for the day
- Arch Linux Seems Like the New Debian
- Arch users (btw!) are growing in relative and absolute share
- Analytics From US Government Affirm a Trend: Microsoft's "Market Share" in Search is Falling
- the data set is large
- Holding Institutions Such as the EPO Accountable Through Public Information
- Speaking truth to power is never easy
- Techrights Will Contact German Media About the EPO's Substance Abuse
- This scandal won't "go to waste"
- EPO Staff Losing Holidays, as Usual, as the Office Increases Profits by Illegally Granting Invalid Patents While Reducing Salaries
- How much more can the staff endure and generally tolerate?
- Free Software Does Not Always Speak for Itself, It Needs Advocates
- Legal matters that relate to sharing of code will be discussed
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, November 03, 2025
- The Register MS Continues Looking for Money in Promotion of the "AI" Ponzi Scheme
- That The Register MS participates in this deceit rather than tackle/debunk it says a lot about The Register MS
- IBM Layoffs in "Software", This Likely Impacts Red Hat as Well
- Many people say "software" people are impacted
- Escaping Proprietary Software, Not Just Escaping Microsoft
- To take control of your life adopt GNU/Linux
- A Lot of Fake News About Microsoft Headcount (Also: Microsoft's Debt Rose by About 24 Billion Dollars in Past 12 Months)
- If you see some headline about Microsoft's CEO making claims about hirings, look away
- Techrights Turns 19 in Three Days
- It would be nice to meet for a chat
- Akira Urushibata on How Grokipedia Fails to Work
- The Grokipedia article gives the wrong character for the "Ko" on "Koan"
- Links 03/11/2025: Data Breaches, Wars, and Digital Censorship
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Poetry, Old Androids and Small Shells
- Links for the day
- The Rumour Was True, Mass Layoffs at IBM Today
- How widespread the layoffs are (or how they're disguised, e.g. PIPs) is hard to assess
- Links 03/11/2025: Internet Anniversary
- Links for the day
- Two Years of Uptime
- Reboots are seldom involuntary
- Richard Stallman is Giving Another Talk in Less Than a Fortnight
- in two weeks' time (13 days from now)
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- Many people choose to leave Windows altogether
- Microsoft's Search Business Falls to Lowest Point in 2 Years, Based on statCounter
- what can Microsoft sell other than shares in Microsoft?
- Evidence Regarding Layoffs at Red Hat
- Seems like IBM layoffs
- Microsoft: Our "Goodwill" Value Grew More Than Tenfold Since 2011
- Hallmark of pseudo-economics
- GNU/Linux as a Boarding Pass
- being mostly analogue is still feasible
- Links 03/11/2025: Lack of Trust in LLMs and Windows TCO at Jaguar
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Books in October and Change
- Links for the day
- Mozilla Firefox Won't Survive and Many Sites Don't Work With It (Compatibility Abandoned)
- The Web has become monocultural
- Debian is Non-Free
- Devuan might be worth looking into
- Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli and LinuxSecurity
- This is a real problem and most certainly a big problem because when people try to find real information about security and GNU/Linux they instead read "word salads" made by bots
- Four Reasons to Party With Us in Four Days, Celebrating the Four Freedoms
- Today we expect to be back to a more-or-less regular publication pace
- Links 03/11/2025: The "Smartphone Panopticon" and Belarus' Hybrid Attacks on EU Intensify
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, November 02, 2025