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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.
-
Sitcom and sadism mix uncomfortably in Luc Besson’s “3 Days to Kill,” starring Kevin Costner as a CIA hitman and absentee father.
-
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
- Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
- Something isn't right at The Register
- Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
- Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
- Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
- The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
- The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
- The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
-
- Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
- It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
- Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
- Unlike systemd
- "New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
- We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
- When Silence Says So Much
- Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
- The Register in Trouble
- There is not much that can be done at this point
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
- Misinformation in Social Control Media
- Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
- Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
- throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles
- Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
- Links for the day
- Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
- Links for the day
- Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
- That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
- Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
- Unlike so many other sites
- The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
- I decided to check how they're doing as a business
- Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
- Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
- Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
- days ago they hired a new US editor
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
- For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
- I myself know, from personal experience
- Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
- Links for the day
- Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
- Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
- HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
- When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol
- New US Editor in The Register is 84% Microsoft/Windows Booster
- It'll be worrying if it carries on like this
- Links 25/07/2025: Slop Blunders and China Has Code of Conduct for Lawmakers in HK
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Some Books and Babies and Capital
- Links for the day
- Links 25/07/2025: NOAA Cuts Endanger Lives, "Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis"
- Links for the day
- They Try to Lecture Us on Ethics
- They even removed "master" from Microsoft GitHub
- The Future of the Web is One Rendering Engine or 'Flavours' of Chrome
- The future of the Web does not look bright at all
- Best Sites Are Not Optimised for Any Browser, They Work Equally Well With All of Them
- Red Hat (IBM) is making rubbish sites
- YouTube is a Spamfarm, Slopfarm, and Clickfarm (a Lot of Numbers There Are Fake)
- Those who don't fake look unpopular and unimportant
- We Don't Do JavaScript and Pages Are Small
- Thankfully Gemini Protocol has nothing like JavaScript
- 'Tech' is Not Technology
- Some people use terms like 'Old Tech'
- IBM's Debt Rose by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in the Past 6 Months Alone
- The "hey hi" circus is coming to an end
- Yes, Master
- Gaslighting by actual racists
- Microsoft Bribes and Buys Politicians to Tell Europe What to Do About Free Software (Which It's Attacking)
- Microsoft: we speak for the thing that we are attacking! Follow the money...
- Making Backups Quickly and Reliably
- Backups are imperative, more so in an age of uncertainty, unpredictable weather, and worsening standards (quality of products going down while prices go up)
- Techrights Investigation: Estimating the Point in Time LinuxIac Turned Into LLM Slop (Part of the Time)
- Bobby Borisov got lazy
- 10th Month, Ten Weeks From Now, at Ten AM
- In Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 24, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 24, 2025
- A Nadella Memo Distracts From Microsoft's Cheapening Of the Workforce
- Right now the "MSM" (mainstream media) is flooded/overwhelmed by garbage pieces that relay lies for Nadella
- Vanishing Faces of GNU/Linux
- Free software projects do not depend on any one person or company to still exist
- Microsoft Says It Lost 400 Million Windows Users, Now It's Waiting for GNU/Linux to Stop Booting on 'Old' PCs
- When it comes to Windows, Microsoft is fully aware of the issue and statements it made earlier this summer suggest it lost 400 million Windows users
- Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, LinuxIac, and More
- Also: The Register's Microsoft agenda (new editor)
- Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Gemtext Aware Titan Editor and Gemini Protocol Comeback
- Links for the day