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
- Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constrains Freedom of Thought
- Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
- Debian Left Twitter (MElon "X"), We Think the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Should Do the Same
- What would the FSF really lose if it stopped posting there?
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- Links 07/02/2025: Amazon’s Stock Collapses and US Government Being Dismantled (Still)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/02/2025: Mid-level Details and Simple Code
- Links for the day
- Links 07/02/2025: US 'Demolition Crew', e-ID Loopholes, and Sanctions
- Links for the day
- Social Control Media is Narcissism
- Nowadays there's a lot more literature and even press coverage explaining the harms of Social Control Media
- statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Share Doubling in China Over the Past Year
- It'll be interesting to see what data in the coming months shows
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 06, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, February 06, 2025
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Confirms Next Week's Talk in Europe
- He gave at least 2 talks in Europe last month
- Nationalism As A Service (NaaS) by Microsoft Azure, Gutting the US Government for Profit
- Will Microsoft be receiving bailouts as a reward for all this?
- Rumours of IBM Layoffs Apparently Confirmed Yesterday, IBM Canada Consulting Impacted (as Rumoured)
- when IBM has layoffs we must also read it as Red Hat layoffs
- Tons of Anti-Linux 'Articles' Published by Bots (LLMs), Maybe Microsoft's
- Upon closer inspection, all this FUD turned out to be LLM garbage
- Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Voicemail Sucks and Night of Lights
- Links for the day
- Ubuntu Desktop Director of Engineering Has Only One Blog Post. It Promotes Microsoft Windows.
- Remember that even 15 years ago (more or less, maybe 16 years ago) Canonical appointed a a 'former' Microsoft manager (Spencer) to lead Ubuntu on the desktop
- Links 06/02/2025: YouTube Takedowns Out of Control, 'DOGE' Breaking Laws
- Links for the day
- IBM Red Hat on "era of cloud computing", pushing "hey hi" (AI) hype in Microsoft Azure
- LLM slop might actually be more benign than Microsoft promotion
- Corruption and Rule-Breaking Prevail at the European Patent Office (EPO), Europe's Second-Largest Institution
- The law does not really exist at the EPO; it can be perceived as merely a "recommendation"
- statCounter: More Countries Where Windows is Around 1% "Market Share" (People Have Moved to Android/Linux)
- in some nations Windows is already 1% or less
- 404 Media Says "Workers at NASA Told to Drop Everything to Scrub Mentions of Indigenous People, Women from Its Websites" But There's Also Accessibility in the Firing Line
- In the case of abandoning accessibility, everyone stands to be hurt and proprietary software can be brought in to replace standards
- When BetaNews Writes Real Articles About "Linux" They Promote Windows
- The Web is in a bad state. We need to at least try to correct this.
- Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Cynicism and "Real Magic on the C64"
- Links for the day
- Links 06/02/2025: New Sanctions, Layoffs, and Executive Orders
- Links for the day
- Distros and Desktop Environments, Devices
- GNU/Linux focused
- New Rumours of IBM Layoffs in 2025, IBM Consulting Still Struggles, Based on Management
- "Hey hi" (AI) has been a common excuse for business failure
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 05, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, February 05, 2025
- Links 05/02/2025: Kessler Syndrome and News Online
- Links for the day
- statCounter: Monaco Now 7% GNU/Linux ("Proper")
- GNU/Linux, not counting Chromebooks, is on the rise
- Many Parts of Google Lose Money
- It's quite apparent that many parts of Google - even some that rely on ad revenue or push ads - aren't profiting
- European Internet Forum (EIF) is Dominated by American Corporations and Microsoft Lobbyists, Staff Take the Lead
- Should the officials over here or the European Parliament pay attention to these people?
- Links 05/02/2025: Connection without Connectivity and Unionised Grocery Workers
- Links for the day
- Just Because People on Top of the Microsoft Pyramid Made a Lot of Money Doesn't Mean Microsoft is Wealthy
- The bigger they are the harder they fall
- Gemini Links 05/02/2025: Learning, Madman Ruling a Mad Country, Back in Geminispace
- Links for the day
- statCounter Shows "WIntel" Chasing a Dying Market
- Microsoft acts as if it's running out of money
- Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Still Raising Money, Richard Stallman Contributes
- total exceeding $430k
- A Lot of Stuff About "Linux" in Google News is LLM Slop, Fake 'Articles'
- It seems to be getting worse
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, February 04, 2025