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
- Wikipedia - Funded by Slop-pushing Companies and 'Broligarchs' - Gave Benefit of the Doubt to Slop, Then Regretted It
- Wikipedia sucks. Without slop it'll suck a little less.
- Passage of Wealth Upwards, Blaming the Victims
- Tim Sweeney's net worth is 5.1 billion USD according to Forbes
- EPO Strike Begins Today and It's the Longest One Yet (Can Last a Year)
- Where's the media?
-
- Links 30/03/2026: South Korea Next to Curb Social Control Media Addiction and Manipulation, Notorious Patents in the US Challenged
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Going Back to Wrist Watches and Why LLMs in Programming Suck
- Links for the day
- Did IBM Pay thestreet.com for Puff Pieces? (Like It Did With Forbes)
- If so, there is no disclosure
- Payoffs of Lifelong Commitments
- "The Lifelong Activist"
- Links 30/03/2026: "We Can’t Income-Tax Ultra-Elites"; "The Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrent Turned 22"
- Links for the day
- Today, Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) Goes on Strike That Can Last Until 2027. Nobody in the Media Covers This!
- "We stand with the protesters"
- When the Cost (or Time) of Maintenance Exceeds the Value
- In recent years it seems like more people learn to remove things from their lives, not add more things
- More Media Needs to Tell the Public Slop is a Giant Bubble, It Should Stop Taking "Sponsorship" Money to Inflate This Bubble
- If enough of (what's left of) the media changes its tune and quits being a parrot of GAFAM, then we can debate slop like grown-ups
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 29, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, March 29, 2026
- Trying to Hide One's Abuses by Imposing Silence on Critics ("My Profile Was Private")
- With enough daylight, sooner or later everyone knows you are a vampire
- Fedora Badges System Shows the Demise of Fedora Under IBM
- IBM isn't good at keeping what it buys
- IBM is Sunsetting Red Hat, It Only Uses the Brand and the Shell
- IBM buys or spins off companies as containers for "toxic assets" and debt
- Cisco Systems is a Still Weak Spot With Bug Doors
- nothing to offer except storytelling
- Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Approaching April and Arvelie Calendar
- Links for the day
- No Daylight Saved
- Is there still any practical reason for this ritual?
- Microsoft Azure Does Not Have "Hiring Freezes", It Has Had Mass Layoffs Every Year Since 2020
- Things are always a lot worse than Microsoft formally or publicly acknowledges
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 27 Out of 200: Using the Tor Network to Hide From Consequences
- Only 1-2 weeks after the countersuit the Canadian attempted to deplatform several Web sites
- The Limits of Inclusion
- Inclusion with caution isn't "opinionated"; it's a defence mechanism, sometimes a survival instinct
- Almost 20 Years After Microsoft/Novell
- The mission has not changed, but the priorities evolve all the time
- People Discuss Rumours of Mass Layoffs at IBM Becoming Public in 1-2 Weeks
- IBM is killing its brand or its "goodwill"
- LLM Slop Kills Sites, as Sites That Adopt Slop Are Doomed
- People won't subscribe to such sites and visit them if they recognise it's just slop
- Links 29/03/2026: Indonesia Cracks Down on Social Control Media Addiction, China Becomes World’s Scientific Superpower
- Links for the day
- Fedora at the Mercy of Microsoft Because of Back-Doored Kick-Switch Boot
- We'll soon revisit the defamation attacks on Torvalds
- Links 29/03/2026: Water Shortages and No Kings Rallies
- Links for the day
- The Old Days
- In the early days of this site (2006) it was mostly just a couple of people, plus comments
- Gemini Links 29/03/2026: Return to Gopherspace, "Zen of Marking Playing Cards"
- Links for the day
- The Real XBox is Dead, So Microsoft is Calling Everything "XBox" Now
- It even wanted to run a campaign to convince everybody that XBox is not actually a console
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 28, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, March 28, 2026
- Open Web Destroyed by Centibillionaires, Says Anil Dash of Blogging Fame
- Blogging was going through its 'prime years' about 20 years ago
- "Linux" Slop Going Away, Microsoft et al Pay 'Linux' Foundation to Promote Slop
- It's a timely reminder that the Linux Foundation exists to promote whoever pays the Linux Foundation, even pedophiles and companies that attack the GPL
- Links 28/03/2026: Microsoft's LinkedIn a National Security Risk, Microsoft's Slop "Ambitions Face Investor Scrutiny Amid Soaring Costs"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 28/03/2026: "Finding My Base Tone", "Astrobotany", and BugoutBack/OFFLFIRSOCH
- Links for the day
- Links 28/03/2026: More Worldwide Bans on Social Control Media (Harms to Adolescents), Protests in US Against Dictatorship
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 26 Out of 200: Asking for Documents and Information You Already Have, Even Letters and E-mails That You Yourself Sent!
- barristers are expensive
- Gemini Links 28/03/2026: Echo Delay and 0x0.st
- Links for the day
- Rumours of More IBM Mass Layoffs at Beginning of April
- IBM is not doing well
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 27, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, March 27, 2026