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
- Unverified Claim: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft to Start Around Week 3 (or 4) of This Month
- Let's wait and see if the claim above is from an insider who has inside knowledge
- Workers Fly Away From IBM's Red Hat (This Year a Lot of Red Hat Staff is "IBM")
- The stock (share price) of IBM says nothing about what actually goes on
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- Links 03/01/2026: Twitter Turns From Disinformation Powerhouse to Production and Dissemination of Child Pr0n, "New China Cybersecurity Law Becomes A Reality In 2026"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/01/2026: Formatting Text for Gopher and Text-only Websites
- Links for the day
- Firefox Fell Below 1% in Asia
- less than 1 in 100 Web users is detected/assumed to be using Firefox
- Links 03/01/2026: Ryanair Fines and Facebook Misleads Regulators
- Links for the day
- New Record High for GNU/Linux in Benelux in 2026
- If the above trends stand (throughout the year), then we can begin talking more seriously about a post-GAFAM Europe
- In the Search Engine Market, Microsoft is Falling Behind Russia's Yandex
- The so-called 'AI industry' is a boy that cries wolf
- A Year of Relaxation, But Also of Hardcore Whistleblowing
- Expect industrial action some time soon
- The More Influential Richard Stallman (RMS) Becomes, the More Aggressive Attacks on Him (and the FSF) Will Get
- We've meanwhile noticed disinformation being spread in social control media
- GNU/Linux Reaches All-Time High of 5% in Indonesia (Not Counting Chromebooks and Android)
- There are also related events in Indonesia and SUSE in particular seems to have been popularised there
- EPO People Power - Part XXIII - António Campinos Knows He's Extremely Vulnerable at This Time
- Campinos should never have been put in charge
- Gemini Links 03/01/2026: New Organisation System (Notebooks) and "2026 Already Off to an Amazing Start"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, January 02, 2026
- The More Buzzwords a Corporation Resorts To...
- buzzwords are a fool's way to compensate for or disguise a lack of knowledge
- So You Should Definitely Call it "Slop" and Stop Saying "AI"
- with more XBox/gaming layoffs being imminent the blowback will be fun to watch
- Why Are We Still Using Voting Machines?
- Voting machines still seem to me like an infantile cargo cult and an act of salesmanship (like various security theatre rituals at airports)
- "Works for Me!"
- Who knows best?
- Why IBM Workers Like Techrights (Same Reason EPO Workers Do)
- IBM will likely be a daily theme (high rate of recurrence)
- In 2025 We Contributed to the Headlessness of the OSI, But It's Not Over Yet
- By airing some 'dirty laundry' about the OSI last year we contributed to its current state
- Africa's Largest Population Sees Diminishing Impact of Windows
- less than 1 in 10 Web requests in Nigeria comes from Windows
- Russia Cuts Finnish Cables ("Hybrid War"), Finland Cuts Off Microsoft
- the birthplace of Linux
- Links 02/01/2026: Science, Patent Maximalism, and Public Domain Day
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 02/02/2026: Books, Scams, and mkscript (a Script to Make Scripts)
- Links for the day
- Free Software is More Naturally Inclusive
- large, intolerant, violent companies get painted as a glorious example of United Colours of Benetton
- Strong Start for GNU/Linux This Year
- based on statCounter
- More Tools, Factorising Code
- If some things in the site of Gemini capsules don't behave as expected, then that's likely due to a bug
- Europe in 2026: Over 5% GNU/Linux, Not Counting Chromebooks
- 2026 has started strongly
- State of Tech Journalism in 2026: Follow the Money
- in order to understand what motivates an opinion piece one must follow the money
- Slopfarm Says Microsoft's "Biggest Business" is the 'Business' Where It Loses Tens of Billions of Dollars
- TOI still pretends to have a lot of output
- At the Start of January 2025 Microsoft President Said Microsoft Would Spend 80 Billion Dollars on "AI" Data Centres. That Didn't Happen. Microsoft Laid Off 30,000 Workers, Debt Surged.
- Maybe this coming Monday Microsoft will come up with more false promises and vapourware
- Links 02/01/2026: Insurrectionist Attacks Musicians Critical of Him With Lawfare, Project Gutenberg Now Has Over 75,000 Books
- Links for the day
- Decline in LLM Slop About "Linux" is a Good Start for 2026
- When the only remaining proponents of slop are slop, which is pretty much what's happening right now, the bubble is popping
- EPO People Power - Part XXII - Contact Officials and Inform Your National Representatives (Delegates) of the EPO's Cocainegate
- Europe's largest media intentionally covers up serious scandals in Europe's second-largest institution
- Slopwatch Still Dead, Not Enough LLM Slop About "Linux"
- this is the desirable thing
- LibXML2 Will Carry on (Without or With the Name "LibXML2")
- The proprietary software boosters are projecting
- Gemini Links 02/01/2026: ThinkPad, SHARP Zaurus, Lagrange Handheld Support
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 01, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, January 01, 2026
- Links 01/01/2026: "Biophobia" and Renewed Effort to Locate MH370
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 01/01/2026: Bot Accounts Online and Reading in 2025
- Links for the day
- IBM’s and Red Hat’s "Operation Evolution initiative" Just Long, Fancy Term for Bluewashing, Redundancies, Layoffs
- Gerstner is still alive, but he's shorter and more arrogant
- Designing a Better Mousetrap or Tools for the SSG
- Static Site Generators (SSGs) - unlike all modern Content Management Systems (CMSs) - are so simple that extending them is easy
- Links 01/01/2026: 1930 Works in the Public Domain, Electricity Pricing 'a Mystery'
- Links for the day
- Firefox is Toast Because It Got Toasted by Mozilla
- Firefox cannot keep above 2% and hasn't been able to for quite some time
- Ignore the LLM Slop and the Noise, Microsoft is in a Death Spiral
- So what does Microsoft have left to sell?
- Red Hat is Vanishing Before Our Eyes
- With some Red Hat staff "transitioning" we wonder if it's an HR hack, wherein they "reset the clock" on employment duration so as to lessen severance obligations
- In 2025 Microsoft Lost Palau
- Palau now has GNU/Linux at steadily high levels
- Microsoft Mocked UNIX/Linux for Not Handling Dates After 2038, Microsoft Breaks Down on 2026!
- Only a truly moronic company would design it that way
- Another New Year's Resolution: Public Domain Sources, Credits
- In addition to our first one
- Combatting Slop Images (and ClownFlare)
- we won't use or reuse slop images
- The End of Red Hat
- expect many more layoffs soon
- A New Year's Resolution: Maximal Transparency
- We'll do our very best to be transparent about everything that's going on, even legal matters
- Gemini Links 01/01/2026: 2025 Comes to a Close and Capsular Gemlog Manager
- Links for the day
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.3 Million Dollars in the Past Couple of Months!
- the FSF's Board now has 10 people in it
- 2026 IBM Phaseout of Red Hat
- Red Hat won't fare any better than most IBM acquisitions
- Microsoft Budget Issues, XBox Thrown Under the Bus
- They're cutting budget. Soon they'll cut the staff.
- Only Hours Into the New Year People Already Discuss the Next Round of Layoffs at Red Hat/IBM
- 2026 will be another tough year for Red Hat and IBM
- EPO People Power - Part XXI - Europe's Second-Largest Institution Became a Corrupt For-Profit Company Run by Drug Addicts
- it'll be the demise of the Rule of Law in Europe and maybe a death blow to the EU (eventually), not just the EPO
- Another Very Productive Year Commences
- "a total of over 17,000 pages in a year"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 31, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, December 31, 2025