#lisa; who's been operating under threat of death from day one: ...

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

This exchange between Antares and Tattletale in 13.6 perfectly encapsulates how Victoria's entire attitude towards capes comes from a point of privilege and why, in turn, she's so goddamn annoying to me so much of the time.

For a person whose entire life was crafted around capes, Victoria was remarkably untouched by the damages of being a parahuman, up until Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse Nine. From the moment she triggered, she had the support of a nuclear and extended family (ignoring the fucked up dynamics therein since they didn't become fully apparent until S9 anyway). She went to school and had friends and a boyfriend. She joined the Wards, a government-regulated institution that was basically a parahuman work-study program for kids. Her earliest encounters with villains were hand-picked to be age- and ability-appropriate. Caping, to her, was equal parts performance and intellectual exercise.

And then you have Lisa: teen runaway, whose career - for lack of a better word - as a cape began when an underground criminal mastermind decided to use her and a group of other equally struggling teens as pawns in his long-running game. Lisa didn't get to choose who she fought against; when she met Taylor, the Undersiders were being pitted against Lung, for fuck's sake. If she decided she wanted to step back from being a cape for any reason, Coil would've had her thrown out on the street at best and straight up killed at worst.

During that pause after the "wriggling pieces" comment, was she thinking about Dinah, kidnapped and drugged and kept as a pet precog? Was she thinking about Alec and the rest of the Heartbroken, the horrible things they had done to them and were forced to do simply because of the circumstances of their birth? Was she thinking about the schoolkids forced to join the ABB? Was she thinking about Noelle? Was she thinking about Bonesaw, who was drafted into the Slaughterhouse Nine when she was six fucking years old?

To Victoria, kids being chopped into wriggling pieces was something reserved for only the most heinous S-class threats, while to Lisa, it's not too far removed from the grim realities of being a cape that she's been immersed in from day 1. And to Victoria, who had the blinders on for so long and has been so conditioned to care about the squeaky clean image, bringing up those grim realities is a bitchy, underhanded move and not just like an acknowledgment of how fucked up the world is.

Victoria is so accustomed to being on the high road that she thinks viewing things from anyone else's perspective means she's lowering and debasing herself, and that anyone operating on a different level from her is dealing low blows on purpose and not because they were forced to by external circumstances.

[corbettcas]

i just saw like six posts about why dean’s death was bad in a row so time for me to crack open the rant i’ve been building up for almost a year now !

okay. so. the first thing to understand about dean’s death (other than homophobia which we will be avoiding discussing in this post) is that he’s been written to have a “hero’s journey”. it’s blatantly stated in the show (i wanna say 15x10?), where they write out that he and sam have more luck than everyone else in the series, because they are chuck’s creation they are his purpose they are, essentially, his heroes. and beyond that, that’s what they are to the real-world show, too.

so dean is written into the archetype character of the hero. ignoring the ways he immediately breaks out of that character, because - again - this post isn’t about homophobia, we see him grow slowly into his own person. with the purgatory arc and the mark of cain and all the other things we wouldn’t expect from your traditional hero’s journey story, he becomes his own person. he’s not just a hero, anymore, he’s Dean. he’s himself.

but the way the hero’s arc works is that it has to end in tragedy, and this is where i call bullshit.

stories are traditionally split into two main groups - happy endings, and tragedies. there’s more depth to it than that, for sure, but that’s the most basic way to put it. either your story has a happy ending, or it doesn’t. either your characters live, or they don’t. a story about a hero, in order to come to a “true end”, needs to end with a tragedy, because if it doesn’t, we can always add more, to the point that the creators would never be able to let the story rest.

with supernatural, this explains... kind of a lot. we’ve seen, throughout the show, that sam and dean don’t know how to retire. they want to, sure, but they’ve never been able to actually do it, to the point that it’s a reoccuring theme - first with jess, then lisa, then amelia,,,, every time they try to step back, they always end up returning to hunting. they genuinely don’t know how to not hunt, no matter how much they want to leave the life.

part of that is because it’s pretty much all they’ve ever known, but a larger part is that they feel responsible for the rest of the world. in what is and what should never be (2x20, i think?) is when you really see that element come into play - dean has everything he could ever want in that dream world, but he knows he’s letting people down by staying there. he’s willing to sacrifice not only his life, but also the contented peace he’s craved since he was four years old just to save people who probably won’t even know his real name. he sees himself as the only defense between the vulnerable masses of the world and the monsters he knows how to kill, and there’s no way he’s going to let people die when he could be helping.

this is also why an ending in, say, season six would feel so incomplete. sure, they could have spun it to say “oh, they’re still hunting, but all the Big Bads are gone now so there’s no more story to tell” but even then we’d still know that they were still living their imaginary, monster filled lives, and there would still be, to some extent, no satisfaction.

so that brings me back to tragedy. if the only way to give the story an end is to make dean feel like he can’t help anymore, then, in the eyes of the creators, there are only two options:

a) all the monsters go away, or

b) dean dies.

they couldn’t figure out how to make all the monsters go away, so they took option b. they gave him the shittiest ending they could think of, and slapped a smile on his face in the finale to try and make us think he would now be content to stay in heaven for the rest of forever.

but what most creators (of mainstream media, i mean, not fic authors or anything) don’t understand is that stories don’t have to be happy-ending-or-tragedy. this is something we work on a lot in the theater world - at the most basic, simplest level, stories are black and white good or bad. but the way you create a good, satisfying story, is you go deeper than that. instead of trying to choose between killing off the main character or emptying the world of threats, you look at what else the defender can do to help the world. you ease him out of, in this case, the world of hunting - maybe he helps jody and donna train the next generation of hunters, or he starts up a new branch of the men of letters, or he does a million other things that make him less superhero and more humanhero.

because being a hero doesn’t have to be all in or all out. he doesn’t need to dedicate every day of his life to hunting, and he doesn’t need to put down the gun and never pick it up again. he can be just a person - he can live in the bunker, if he wants, and have friends and be a father figure and cook some fucking burgers when he wants to, and he can go out for hunts on the odd weekend when he gets a little restless. there are so many paths he could have taken, if he’d just had the chance. and maybe, by the end, he wouldn’t have been the perfect hero archetype. but is that a bad thing? doesn’t he deserve to be happy, or at the very least content, without having to worry about sacrificing himself and the people around him to protect the world from a never-ending threat?

the hero’s arc operates under the assumption that happiness and contentedness only come when either everyone is safe, or the hero doesn’t have the ability to worry about others anymore. literature is, to some extent, fundamentally flawed in that it needs to have an “end” in order to be considered “good” - without a clear ending that ties everything into a neat little bow, the audience is left dissatisfied and the creators lose revenue. the solution they come up with to avoid that is to just leave no one for the audience to be dissatisfied with.

tl;dr dean dies in the end because literature needs to have an “end”, and since he’s written as the hero of this journey, this particular literature needs to end in tragedy, which is bullshit because he deserves to get gay married and have a dog and stuff.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: September 2020

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of September 2020 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Remember how proven liar Boris Johnson said he had a world-beating oven-ready Britait deal, which was also the basis of his election slogan campaign of “Get Britait done” and the lack of support for the deal is the reason he sacked 21 of his own MPs?  Just asking, because he tore the whole thing up and said it was unworkable - which also led to Brandon Lewis saying in Parliament, so it is now forever enshrined in the Hansard, that De Pfeffel merely broke international law “in a very specific and limited way” - you know, sort of like how the Manson Family broke the law in a very specific and limited way

The bold vision of a new BBC shared by Tim Davie was revealed when he threatened comedy shows with the axe if they kept making jokes about Britait, the Tory Party or Donald Trump on his first day on the job, because as we all know the best form of comedy comes from punching down rather than up, which is why Little Britain definitely hasn’t aged appallingly

Master of decorum Donald Trump couldn’t even wait a few short hours after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death before he started rallying the foot soldiers about cramming somebody more fitting with what he wanted into the Supreme Court

Mayor of Amity Island governor of Florida Ron DeSantis continued his bid to be recognised for having the worst response to the Covid pandemic in the congress of having the worst possible response to the Covid pandemic by deciding that, actually, the state of Florida needs to lessen its Covid restrictions at a time when cases of Covid have begun to rise alarmingly in the state

It’s no surprise that proven liar Boris Johnson lied in Parliament by referring to Serco’s failing test & trace app as “NHS Test & Trace” - however the biggest issue is that the BBC had been using the exact same phrase for at least two weeks before that

Nobody was surprised to hear smirking cretin��Priti Patel personally using the term “activist lawyers” that the Home Office (headed by P. Patel) had previously used to dehumanise and demean people upholding those pesky immigration laws that the Tory Party really don’t like getting in the way

Tax dodging orange goblin Donald Trump was asked a simple question: Do you think that white supremacists are a problem?  We are still waiting for an answer to that question...

Okay, so now the Conservative Party are cracking down on people breaking lockdown, with threats of a £10,000 fine - rather than circling the wagons around them and throwing out one cock and bull excuse after another like they did when Dominic Cummings broke lockdown to nip off to Durham after testing positive for Covid on what just so happened to be his wife’s birthday

You know that Matt Hancock is good at his job when, having been sent out in front of the cameras to defend The Tory Party appointing ex-Australian PM and all-around arsehole Tony Abbott as a trade advisor in spite his history of misogynistic, homophobic and “Let’s kill the elderly so we can survive Covid” comments the best he could do was say he was a good negotiator...which promptly led to all manner of comments about Harold Shipman being a good GP and Fred West laying one hell of a patio 

According to Jacob Rees Mogg the public having a legitimate complaint about it being damn near impossible to have a Covid test is nothing more than “endless carping” and not, say, legitimate criticism of a woefully underprepared government trying to coast by on the bare minimum who have the gall to try and blame the public for their long list of catestrophic fuckups

It was no surprise to hear proven liar Boris Johnson hand-wringing about “the freedom of the press” after Extinction Rebellion finally realised that being annoying idiots is far more likely to gain support if you’re being annoying idiots with a purpose - just as it was no surprise to hear that proven liar Boris Johnson had no opinion whatsoever of Tim Davie telling BBC newsreaders to fall in line with the corporation (read: Tory) line or they’d be sacked

Once again there was a chance for Keir Starmer to show that his talk of being “true Opposition” is more than a soundbite and, once again, he wimped out on it when ordering Labour MPs to abstain from voting on the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill for fear of being accused of being “anti-British” by voting for a bill created to stop prosecution of British troops for using torture instead of voting against it - and then sacking Nadia Whittome, Beth Winter, and Olivia Blake from their junior ministerial positions when they were three of the 18 Labour MPs who voted against it

It clearly never occurred to Marsha Blackburn when she was browbeating people about the Constitution of the US never being rewritten that the Constitution of the US has been rewritten several times already.  There’s a reason they’re called “Amendments” and not “Footnotes” you know...

Smirking cretin Priti Patel proudly stated that, if she saw her neighbours, she’d gladly call the police due to them breaking the law.  This was around 14 hours after she’d voted to break international law in the Commons, or a few short years after she broke ministerial code by nipping over to Israel to have undisclosed meetings with israeli officials, which begs the question about whether her neighbours are just as willing, doesn’t it?

Judging by Alan Sugar tweeting out conspiracy theories about Covid being created in a Wuhan lab, I think it's safe to say that no Apprentice game show host is capable of not acting like a complete arse on Twitter.  Luckily for the UK, Sugar isn’t Prime Minister - he’s merely a member of the House of Lords...

It’s been a while since WWE acted like totalitarian dicks to the wrestlers employed independently contracted to them but they managed to find one by telling every single one of their employees independent contractors that they could no longer use Twitch or Cameo as it was decided this was being “detrimental” to the company...you know, the bunch of carnies who sign billion dollar deals with our journalist-murdering, woman-oppressing, Yemeni-slaughtering, 9/11-planning “allies” Saudi Arabia, don’t have any for of healthcare for their employees independent contractors, continued a pay per view even though one of their employees independent contractors died due to a stunt going wrong that was linked to the company cheaping out on a safety harness, and apparently not knowing that the term “independent contractor” doesn’t mean the company can sign them to five year deals but sack them at any point - and then prevent them from working anywhere else for 90 days

We had confirmation of Alison Pearson possessing a terrifying combination of pig ignorance and outright sociopathy when she began a Telegraph article with the following: “My son has Covid-19.  Good.”

Sour grapes from Lisa Nandy over people forgetting she was in the Labour leadership race judging by how she apparently didn’t listen to a party pledge to tax corporations and instead spout off a bunch of nonsensical gibberish that sounded uncannily like Britain First rhetoric under the belief that sounding like Britain First is guaranteed to win back working class Northern voters

Litigious TERF JK Rowling revealed her latest book is about a man who murders people while dressed as a woman, which definitely hasn’t drawn any form of comment whatsoever...

You would like to believe that reports of Limestone Games not only effectively stealing the game Aeon Must Die! from the actual dev team who were forced out of the company by a culture of abuse and harassment by a shady cabal who took over the studio would have eld to the game’s release being postponed, especially after it emerged that assets used in the game’s trailer were infringing on various copyrights - but instead Focus Home Entertainment responded by twiddling their thumbs and doing nothing

I’m sure there’s no connection between Alan Sugar demanding people go back to work as if the number of Covid cases has been rising to an alarming degree and how Alan Sugar is bemoaning that his commercial property portfolio is not making him “enough” money due to people staying at home.  None whatsoever...

The fact that those moron parents in California started a wildfire after setting off fireworks for their baby’s gender reveal party that led to over 20,000 people having to evacuate their homes is dickheaded enough - but the fact that it’s not the first case of this happening, as a similar incident happened in Arizona back in 2018, makes them look even more dickheaded

If you want to say you put Britain before anything else, like Andrea Jenkyns did in her latest Twitter tsunami of childishness and spite, it doesn't look good when you say you're pro-Trump before pre-De Pfeffel as it defeats your own argument almost as fast as being Andrea Jenkyns - or, you know, failing to spell the word “British” correctly when accusing people of being anti-British

It would have been wise if West Ham announced that manager David Moyes and two players had tested positive for Covid before their match with Hull - not after the match had kicked off, leading to Moyes legging it out of the stadium

Whatever it is in the mind of DeAnna Lorraine that snapped and had her babbling insane nonsense that The Masked Singer is part of a covert plot to have people wearing masks probably can’t be repaired, and appears to have also caused her to accuse anyone who thinks she does sound insane of being acolytes of George Soros

Professional victim Laurence Fox somehow believed that posting a chat log of a conversation between himself and Rebecca Front and then howling about being “cancelled” - and then a few hours later had to very publicly backtrack, no doubt because his agent had several dozen words with him

I have no idea why David Cameron convinced himself that showing himself helping out in the Chipping Norton food bank was a good idea, considering he’s the reason why food banks exist in the first place

How nice of Manchester Metropolitan University to tell the students who were confined to accomodation so unable to go out and buy food, who were paying £9000 tuition fees for face-to-face tutoring that was done via Zoom that makes such good value of the hundreds of pounds of rent they have to pay per month when they could have had those same lectures from home, that they’re not allowed to protest about this situation and had to take any signs posted on their windows critical of the government down immediately

In normal circumstances Mason Greenwood and Phil Foden sneaking girls into the England team hotel would look pretty stupid, especially in Foden’s case considering the odds of his live-in girlfriend not finding out about this are practically nil, but during a global pandemic it looked so incredibly boneheaded it’s lucky they play for the Manchester clubs otherwise the front pages would be calling them ignorant traitors or some such bullshit

Nothing sums up Premier League referees quite like them clearly not understanding the current definition of the handball rule, but rather than actually look it up they make it up as they go alone leading to more penalties being awarded for handball in the first four rounds of Premier League fixtures than in entire seasons - not helped by Premier League referees also operating VAR, where they seem to have a policy of “If you ignore my cock up, I’ll ignore yours”

And finally, inventing yet another terror atrocity, is Donald Trump and his batshit insane proclamations about cans of soup being a much bigger threat to American lives than, say, and AR-15.  But then again, it’s not like his support base has a habit of throwing cans of soup at crowds of people

[thirtysomethingloser92]

Comfortably Numb.

Author’s Note: Welcome to my new Luke Alvez x Reader story. It’s going to be a long one-shot. So I hope you all enjoy! Warnings: Angst, Death, Small amounts of smut.

You suppose your life changed for the worst when you willingly chose to swap the DEA for the BAU. You knew the DEA, you did your job well and you knew your crew like the back of your hands. They treated you like one of them, you were one of the boys and you made sure they knew that you had just as much of a right to be there than any of them did. And then you all had a joint operation with the Behavioural Analysis Unit, you impressed their unit chief Aaron Hotchner with your quick and logical thinking skills, and he offered you a place on their team. Of course, it needed to get the approval of the higher ups, but he said he didn’t see much of an issue with that. And you stupidly said yes.

Over the years, the team became your family. David Rossi’s house- yes that David Rossi- became like your second home, Spencer Reid became the annoying little brother you scolded for his constant need to sacrifice himself for his friends, Derek Morgan had a terrible habit of calling you babyface- you weren’t sure if that was aimed at your age or the fact that you were an adult who still hadn’t outgrown her acne yet-, Penelope Garcia was your best friend, that’s all there was to that one, she was amazing, you loved the same things and she was easy to get along with; she was the first one to make you feel truly welcomed at the BAU. Jennifer Jereau was a mother figure to you; she held you when you cried, she reminded you how strong you were after the events that changed your life, she was the one who kept you grounded when you needed grounding the most. Emily Prentiss was your friend, she was the one you sat with until the early hours of the morning drinking wine and wondering how you ended up at that stage of your life. But it was Luke Alvez who truly made an impact on your life. At first, you didn’t want him around; you didn’t need him around. His cocky and at times flirtatious attitude made you want to slap the smirk from his face; you were civil with him in the field, and when you were at work, but outside of work you were to complete polar opposites. Two completely different people. He never gave up though, he never gave up trying to win you over to be his friend. He brought you Roxy- that stupid dog of his never ceased to make you smile- on days that you found yourself having a bad day, on days when you had both lost too many people. He would joke that he can only get you to talk to him if he had his dog around and it was entirely true. You loved that frigging dog.

Still though, Luke always had your back, just like you always had his. Because despite you not liking him on a personal level, on a professional level he was a worthy partner to have. He wasn’t Derek Morgan worthy, but he was worthy enough. He was worthy enough that you trusted him to be your partner.

Anything outside of work, however how hard he tried, you would push him away. He would try to ‘bond’ with you as partners, he would make jokes, invite you out; but you weren’t interested in becoming his friend outside of work. You had your family, and he wasn’t it. 

But still, he persisted. He would come in every morning with a large coffee with one sugar for you, he would place it on your desk with a good morning and a smile. Sometimes you would smile back, but most of the time you would tell him that this was something he didn’t have to do. You felt like he was sucking up to you. Things changed between you one night after a particularly bad case. Twelve full months after him joining the BAU. Luke found you crying. He found you in your hotel room with tears falling down your face. You didn’t want him to be there, you didn’t want him to see you at one of your lowest points, but when you tried to hide your face from him he turned you to face him and just held you while you cried. He sat with you on the floral bedsheets while you placed your face in the cook of his neck and cried. After that night the pair of you had almost become inseparable. You found him to be one of your confidants when you needed him to be, and vice versa. You would both talk until the early hours of the mornings before he would offer you his couch and the throw blanket over the back of the couch. ”Roxy will keep you warm” He would joke. When Lisa came along you had felt like your friendship with Luke had taken a back seat, no longer were you staying on his couch, no longer were you both staying up all night talking. She had become somewhat of a wedge in your friendship. He would always try and brush off your concerns, he would call you his favorite best friend, tell you that he wasn’t leaving you and that was that. Lisa tried to be friendly, but you could tell she was somewhat standoff-ish towards you. You wondered if she thought that you were going to come between the pair of them. At the time you would tell yourself no. But then you found yourself in his arms, stripping off his clothes with your mouths attached after a long night at Rossi’s house and a few too many drinks. It became a common occurrence, you would find yourself longing for Luke’s touches in the night when he wasn’t there and soaking them up when he was. Lisa was never really spoken between the pair of you, but the guilt in his eyes after each rendezvous would tell you what he felt. As you fell in love with him, you wondered if he ever felt the same. If your smile affected him the way his did for you; if, despite everything, there was a glimmer of something between you. Then the bomber happened. The man who was creating bombs, attaching them to people, then sending them into government buildings to blow them up. Five people had died so far. You didn’t know how it happened, in fact, you weren’t even sure if you were hit from behind or the front. All you remember was being forced into the local congressman’s office with the threat of the bomb being detonated from a different location. The weight of the explosives attached to your chest stayed as a constant reminder of what you needed to do. Your breathing was steady, your arms were held out either side of you as not to touch the pressure pads that were sitting under just under your armpits.

A backup, the men had told you. You touched them, you died. It was as simple as that. As soon as you walked into the reception area, the frightened receptionist called security; you told them all to evacuate the building. You didn’t want any more casualties. You could see the police cars surrounding the building, making an exclusion zone. Your family at the BAU were there standing behind the black SUV’s, even behind their sunglassed eyes, you could see their face’s contorted with distress. And then your asshole partner argued something with Emily and made his way under the tape and towards the building. Your shoulders slumped, your head shaking. He came to a standstill in front of you, his hands on either side of his hips; trying to look somewhat casual to keep you calm. “The bomb squad’s thirty-five minutes away” You saw the look of pain in your colleague’s face as he told you these words. The pain that there was a high chance that today you were going to die, the pain that there was nothing he could do to help you. A lump rose in your throat as you continued to hold your arms out either side of you, any movement and you were positive that you would die. Your arms were getting tired and sore, everything in your body screamed at you to drop them, but the surviving part of you demanded that you keep your arms up, don’t let them drop. “What can I do?” He asked he was almost pleading with you. Despite how you treated him, he stayed by your side. When the guards and even your colleagues evacuated the building, he pulled out his earpiece and stayed by your side, his brown eyes telling you that he wasn’t going anywhere without you. “You can get the hell out of here Luke” You choked back a sob as he shook his head, a sad smile crossing his face. “I told you a long time ago, you can’t get rid of me that easily” You begged him again, you didn’t want him to die if you couldn’t keep your arms up. Two stray tears fell down your cheeks as you let out a shaky breath, you apologized to him. You apologized to him for how you treated him when he first arrived, for the words spoken; you tell him that you loved him. His face contorted as his eyes started to glaze over; he swallowed and shook his head. Promising you that he was going to get you out of here, and when you got out you were both going to sit down and have a proper chat. You smiled a watery smile and nodded slowly, agreeing to that. Time seemed to move painfully slow as Luke placed his earpiece back in and examined your vest; he was describing it to your colleagues and you were silently begging for someone to know something about this. You begged for Spencer’s brain to work faster. You asked Luke how long it had been, your arms were sore, you could feel them shaking, dropping a fraction before you caught yourself and rose them back up. He tells you that the squad is ten minutes out and you wonder if you were able to do this for ten more minutes. He made jokes, trying to distract you; trying to remind you of the times you had together. When you got out he promised you pizza from that pizza place down the block you liked so much, your shout of course. You tried to laugh but it instead came out as a sob. You looked behind him through the glass windows as a man in a large suit, his face covered by a large helmet, came towards you. The bomb squad was here. You let out a small sigh of relief, your heart still beating out of your chest, but there was more of a chance that you were going to make it out of this alive. Luke had the same look of relief as he moved to the side, allowing the man access to your vest. The suited man demanded Luke leave, too much could go wrong, too much could happen and he needed to leave. Of course, he was hotheaded, of course, Luke wasn’t going to leave you. You could hear the suited man talk, his name was Alex he told you, his fingers looked at the wires carefully before opening up his tool kit. He looked over at Luke again and shook his head, demanding that either he leaves willingly, or he’ll be forcibly removed. And that was what happened, another suited man came in, placed his arms behind his back, and marched Luke back outside roughly; much to the FBI agents protests. Alex apologized to you, but you knew it had to happen. You knew that it was safer that he was outside, and you breathed a bit better knowing that if anything was to go wrong, he wouldn’t be caught in the midst of it. The suited man pulled out a pair of pliers, telling you that soon he was going to cut two wires, then he was going to gently lift the vest over your head and you were to walk with your hands up out those doors. You were excited to say the least, excited to see the end of this situation. Excited to see where your talk with Luke would lead. You felt yourself nod. The suited man cut the two dark wires.

Luke Alvez was barely listening as his superior was chewing him out. Something about being rash and stupid in his decision making. He didn’t care though, he knew that his partner was going to make it out of there okay, he knew that she loved him the same way he had loved her from the first day they met. He knew the next few weeks between them would be rough while he ended his relationship with Lisa and started to see where they would lead; but if he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t wait. He turned around from Emily and faced the building, his eyes met yours through the window as the suited man picked up something from the toolbox beside him. Then a fireball erupted from inside the building making everyone duck behind the cars. In a split second, everything changed.

[bountyofbeads]

Filth and Crammed Cells at Border Centers, Federal Report Finds https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/us/politics/border-center-migrant-detention.html

I dare anyone to tell me these #TrumpCamps are not #ConcentrationCamps. WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THESE DETENTION CAMPS?

#NeverAgainIsNow

“There seems to be open contempt for the rule of law and for basic human decency,” Mr. Cummings said. “The committee needs to hear directly from the heads of these agencies as soon as possible in light of the almost daily reports of abuse and defiance.”

“This baby had been given a new onesie and given a plastic blanket, and despite her best efforts, her little newborn’s fingers and toes were still blue,” said Dr. Lisa Ayoub-Rodriguez, a pediatrician in El Paso.

Squalid Conditions at Border Detention Centers, Government Report Finds

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs | Published July 2, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 3, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Overcrowded, squalid conditions are more widespread at migrant centers along the southern border than initially revealed, the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog said Tuesday. Its report describes standing-room-only cells, children without showers and hot meals, and detainees clamoring desperately for release.

The findings by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General were released as House Democrats detailed their own findings at migrant holding centers and pressed the agency to answer for the mistreatment not only of migrants but also of their own colleagues, who have been threatened on social media.

[Read the report from inspector general’s office.]

In June, inspectors from the department visited five facilities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and found children had few spare clothes and no laundry facilities. Many migrants were given only wet wipes to clean themselves and bologna sandwiches to eat, causing constipation and other health problems, according to the report. Children at two of the five facilities in the area were not given hot meals until inspectors arrived.

Overcrowding was so severe that when the agency’s internal inspectors visited some of the facilities, migrants banged on cells and pressed notes to windows begging for help.

“At one facility, some single adults were held in standing-room-only conditions for a week, and at another, some single adults were held more than a month in overcrowded cells,” according to the report, which built off an initial inquiry by the inspector general in May that described similar conditions in facilities in El Paso.

The report fueled Democratic lawmakers’ resolve to press for answers from the Customs and Border Protection agency even as they continued to fight among themselves over an emergency spending bill that passed last weekwithout the strict conditions that liberals and Hispanic members had demanded. Their sense of urgency was stoked further after  ProPublica unearthed a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents that featured jokes about migrant deaths and threats to members of Congress.

On Wednesday morning, Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, cited “disturbing & inexcusable social media activity that allegedly includes active Border Patrol personnel.”

Acting Sec. Kevin McAleenan

✔@DHSMcAleenan

Reporting this week highlighted disturbing & inexcusable social media activity that allegedly includes active Border Patrol personnel. These statements are completely unacceptable, especially if made by those sworn to uphold the @DHSgov mission, our values & standards of conduct.

8:41 AM - Jul 3, 2019

Acting Sec. Kevin McAleenan ✔

Reporting this week highlighted disturbing & inexcusable social media activity that allegedly includes active Border Patrol personnel. These statements are completely unacceptable, especially if made by those sworn to uphold the @DHSgov mission, our values & standards of conduct.

Acting Sec. Kevin McAleenan

✔@DHSMcAleenan

I have directed an immediate investigation, and as the @USBPChief has made clear, any employee found to have compromised the public’s trust in our law enforcement mission will be held accountable. They do not represent the men and women of the Border Patrol or @DHSgov.

8:41 AM - Jul 3, 2019

In a statement on Tuesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the “inspector general’s report provides a shocking window into the dangerous and dehumanizing conditions that the Trump administration is inflicting on children and families at the border.”

“This report is even more troubling after the discovery of the vile, crude comments made on social media by some of those in C.B.P. responsible for caring for migrant families and children,” she said. “The inhumanity at the border is a challenge to the conscience of America.”

After touring a facility in Clint, Tex., where a group of lawyers had reported that children had gone unfed and unwashed, Democratic lawmakers said they had met migrants who were not given fresh water and were forced to drink from toilets.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, one of the Democrats, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who was the target of some of the more offensive posts in the Facebook group, described Customs and Border Protection as a “rogue agency.”

Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, demanded on Tuesday Mr. McAleenan, and the newly appointed acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, come to Capitol Hill to discuss the Facebook group and the allegations in the report.

“There seems to be open contempt for the rule of law and for basic human decency,” Mr. Cummings said. “The committee needs to hear directly from the heads of these agencies as soon as possible in light of the almost daily reports of abuse and defiance.”

The House Judiciary and Oversight Committees both announced hearings next week into the conditions at detention centers.

According to the report, details of which were first reported by BuzzFeed News, 826 of the 2,669 children detained at the facilities were held longer than 72 hours, in violation of a federal court settlement and Customs and Border Protection policy. Senior managers raised security concerns at the facilities, calling the situation “a ticking time bomb,” according to the report. Images published in the report show crowds of migrants packed into cells pressing their hands onto the windows. One migrant held a cardboard sign up reading, “Help.”

Some migrants clogged their toilets with blankets and socks in order to be released from the crowded cells. When some refused to return, Border Patrol brought in a special operations team “to use force if necessary.”

“Additionally, detainees have attempted to escape while removed from their cells during maintenance,” according to the report.

While senior Department of Homeland Security officials have for months sounded the alarm over a record number of Central American families crossing the southwestern border, officials in recent weeks have disputed the descriptions of the conditions of detained migrants. Mr. McAleenan last week described the allegations at the Clint facility as “unsubstantiated” and called it “clean and well managed.”

But the government’s own report backed up the Democrats’ descriptions. The facilities were built for the short-term stay of adults expected to be quickly deported. Central American children, who under immigration law cannot be immediately deported back to their origin country, are supposed to be moved to facilities managed by the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours. Single adults are supposed to be moved to facilities built for longer-term detention managed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“These are not facilities that are designed to hold people for more than three days,” said Representative Will Hurd of Texas, the only Republican representing a border district. “You shouldn’t be holding anybody in these facilities for more than that.”

But Department of Homeland Security officials have said other facilities are full as well. To deter migration to the border, the department recently threatened to start nationwide raids to deport undocumented families, which President Trump said will begin after July 4.

An ICE spokesman also said on Tuesday that the agency was issuing fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars to unauthorized immigrants who refused to comply with deportation orders.

The agency began sending out the notices, with fines up to $799 per day, in December. On Tuesday, NPR reported that one woman was sent a fine for nearly $500,000.

Among border sectors, the Rio Grande Valley has seen some of the largest surges of migration, according to senior department officials. The agency has built tent camps in the area to hold hundreds of the asylum seekers and this year began flying unprocessed migrants to facilities with more space in San Diego.

Last week, Customs and Border Protection gave reporters a rare tour of a detention facility in McAllen, Tex., where migrants of all ages were being held inside chain-link fences, lying on worn gym mats and snacking on sandwiches.

Stacked on shelves inside “la hielera,” or the icebox, as migrants commonly call the facility for its frigid temperatures, were diapers, baby wipes, formulas and other materials the authorities use to care for the migrants. Two medical teams operate out of the facility, and screen the migrants when they arrive after being apprehended by Border Patrol agents.

“This is kind of ground zero for us,” said Carmen Qualia, the acting executive officer for law enforcement operational programs of the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector.

But the inspector general’s report questioned whether the department was doing enough for the children.

At a news conference on Tuesday, doctors in Texas who care for children released from the facilities said they were surprised more had not died. At least six migrant children have died in federal custody or shortly after they were released since September.

They described children having lifesaving medication taken away, or released with serious ailments but without any medical records from the time they were detained. One doctor related the story of a young mother who described how hard it was to keep her newborn baby warm while in custody.

“This baby had been given a new onesie and given a plastic blanket, and despite her best efforts, her little newborn’s fingers and toes were still blue,” said Dr. Lisa Ayoub-Rodriguez, a pediatrician in El Paso.

Robert E. Perez, the deputy commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, said he was “very confident” his agents were providing fresh water, food and hygiene products to migrants in Border Patrol custody. His agents are overwhelmed, he said, because of a record number of families crossing the border, which has filled facilities built for short-term detention.

“We take any and every allegation of misconduct incredibly seriously,” Mr. Perez said on CNN. “And there will be consequences to those who do not adhere to our standards of conduct.”

Emily Cochrane and Simon Romero contributed reporting from El Paso, and Mitchell Ferman from McAllen, Tex.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Minneapolis Police Injured Protesters With Rubber Bullets. The City Has Taken Little Action.

(Editor’s note: This is a follow-up to last year’s joint investigation by KHN and USA Today finding that police in several cities violated their own crowd-control policies during protests over racial injustice and police brutality.)

As police in riot gear approached the demonstrators, Soren Stevenson raised his hands like scores of others and called out, “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

This story also ran on USA Today. It can be republished for free.

Suddenly, tear gas canisters and rubber bullets rained down.

The demonstrators had gathered for a sixth straight day to decry Minneapolis police officers’ use-of-force practices after the slaying of an unarmed Black man named George Floyd.

On May 31, 2020, the protesters were under fire.

Stevenson, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs, lost his left eye after an officer fired a plastic-tipped round at him — even though Minneapolis Police Department policy bans the use of those munitions against nonviolent people.

According to a federal court complaint that cites video of the incident and witness accounts, Stevenson was unarmed, had committed no crime, posed no threat and was not in a chaotic crowd.

It wasn’t an isolated event. Dozens of people were seriously injured during the protests last summer, leading to lawsuits, promises of reform and calls to ban the use of rubber bullets for crowd control.

“This is a moment in time where we can totally change the way our Police Department operates,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said when the City Council banned chokeholds soon after Floyd’s death. “We can quite literally lead the way in our nation enacting more police reform than any other city in the entire country, and we cannot fail.”

Nearly a year later, there is scant evidence that Minneapolis has changed how its police officers use less-lethal weapons or strengthened its oversight. Instead, the city may be a study in stymied reform, unenforced policies and a lack of transparency.

The Minneapolis Police Department still has not given the public or the City Council a full accounting of how it responded to last summer’s demonstrations. The department has failed to disclose basic facts such as the number of protesters arrested or wounded.

No officers have been disciplined for their actions during the protests. The only discipline related to the protests was meted out to an officer who described the department’s toxic culture in a GQ story, despite not being authorized to talk to the media.

“I’m appalled by the behavior of our police during the protests,” City Council President Lisa Bender said. “For this to be the department in our city with the least amount of transparency is the opposite of what it should be.”

From New York to Portland, an investigation by USA Today and KHN last year found that police violated their own crowd-control policies during protests over racial injustice and police brutality.

Michelle Gross, co-founder of the nonprofit Communities United Against Police Brutality, said she’s seen no reform or accountability regarding Minneapolis officers’ conduct, including their use of rubber bullets. “I call it ‘cop exceptionalism,’” she said. “They do what they want.”

The Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution last month calling for an end to the use of rubber bullets, tear gas and other less-lethal rounds. It was merely a “statement of values” with no legal force.

Police Chief Medaria Arradondo rejected the resolution as “unhelpful and uninformed,” according to the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, saying if officers can’t use less-lethal weapons they would have only guns and batons to combat demonstrators “who are here to strike harm and chaos and destroy our city.”

Council Member Says Police Escalated Tensions

Floyd was killed May 25, 2020, by police during an arrest that was captured on video and seen worldwide.

In a city raw from complaints of officer abuses, outrage exploded into street demonstrations. Police responded with riot squads armed with tear gas and less-lethal firearms that launch 40-millimeter projectiles tipped with hard foam or plastic, commonly called rubber bullets.

For six days and nights, some peaceful demonstrations escalated into arson, looting and chaos, making it difficult for outsiders to sort out whether protesters or police triggered violence.

Steve Fletcher and other City Council members contended officers inflamed crowds with tear gas and rubber bullets. “The community gathered Tuesday night to mourn and express their outrage, peacefully,” he tweeted May 28 amid the violence.

“It was bad choices by Minneapolis police officers that escalated the situation to the point that it turned into a prolonged week of action,” he said later, according to the Star Tribune.

Officers used about 5,200 less-lethal munitions over six days, according to records provided to USA Today.

Frey told USA Today that officers faced unprecedented conditions in which violent provocateurs mixed with peaceful protesters. “Distinguishing between those two became increasingly difficult,” he said.

At least 57 people were injured so severely by less-lethal projectiles that they required urgent care during protests in Minneapolis from May 26 to June 15, 2020, according to the University of Minnesota’s medical school.

Of those, 23 were hit in the face or head. Ten were blinded or suffered severe eye trauma. Sixteen suffered traumatic brain injuries.

Minneapolis policy defines a less-lethal weapon as one that “does not have a reasonable likelihood of causing or creating a substantial risk of death or great bodily harm.”

The policy says officers may use less-lethal weapons against individuals posing a threat but “shall not deploy 40mm launchers for crowd management purposes.” It says shots to the head or neck are potentially deadly and should be avoided.

The study concluded, “Projectiles are not appropriate for crowd control.” Years ago, other researchers reached a similar conclusion. But the devices have been marketed for crowd control and, last summer, that’s how police across the country used them.

Frey acknowledged seeing videos of officers shooting nonviolent civilians and journalists — sometimes appearing to target the head. Though such conduct is “unacceptable,” he said, efforts to enforce policies have been thwarted by procedural requirements, union resistance and litigation.

Asked whether any Minneapolis officer has been disciplined for violating use-of-force policies during the protests, Frey said in April “quite a few cases” were under investigation, but he declined to say how many.

Mychal Vlatkovich, a spokesperson for Frey, said Saturday no discipline has been finalized, and the city can’t comment on open investigations.

‘We’re Getting Hit’

Terry Hempfling, 39, an artist who was raised by activist parents, said protesting injustice is a patriotic duty.

On May 29, she and her friend Rachel Clark joined a crowd near the 3rd Precinct police station. Around 11:30 p.m., police ordered protesters to disperse. Hempfling said she and Clark walked away and were unlocking their bikes when tear gas swirled in the darkness. They were trapped between two lines of police.

Hempfling said she was disoriented, eyes and throat stinging, as Clark blurted out, “We’re getting hit.” They climbed a fence to escape but not before Hempfling was shot in the back, breast and leg, leaving an expansive bruise that is still discolored.

Hempfling and Clark, who was hit by three projectiles, are among hundreds of plaintiffs in an American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota lawsuit alleging Minneapolis and state police have “a custom or policy authorizing the deployment of crowd-control weapons and/or less-lethal munitions in an unconstitutional manner.”

The ACLU complaint contends departmental restrictions on the use of rubber bullets are not enforced, so officers ignore them with impunity. At least a dozen other lawsuits contain similar allegations.

Stevenson, who seeks $55 million in damages plus court-ordered policing reforms, claims in his suit that a rubber bullet fired by a Minneapolis police officer fractured facial bones, ruptured an eye and caused brain damage. As blood streamed from the wound, at least a half-dozen officers allegedly did nothing to render aid — behavior his lawsuit says was not just a violation of policies but inhumane.

“MPD has allowed its officers to get away with policy and constitutional violations without fear of repercussion for decades,” the complaint says.

Ethan Marks alleged he was at a demonstration May 28 with his mother when he was “shot in the eye with a tear gas canister from several feet away.” It hit him so hard he was knocked out of his shoes.

Andrew Noel, an attorney who represents Stevenson and Marks, said police have yet to identify the officers who shot his clients, even though they tracked down suspected rioters with video and social media. “If you can locate those folks, you’d better be able to identify the officers involved,” Noel said.

Hempfling said she has taken part in more than 100 demonstrations and thought she understood how to exercise her First Amendment rights safely.

“I left feeling like I had no clue what a police officer might do to me, regardless of whether I’m being peaceful,” she said.

Attorneys for the city sought to dismiss the ACLU case based in part on a claim that officers faced a “rapidly evolving, violent, and dangerous situation” that required less-lethal force to repel and disperse “unruly individuals.”

A federal judge rejected the motion in March, ruling that plaintiffs plausibly allege city officials tacitly authorized police abuses or were indifferent to them.

ACLU attorney Isabella Salomão Nascimento said the Police Department remains in dire need of reform.

“We really hope this litigation will serve as a vehicle for that,” she said. “This was an outrageous use of force.”

Limited Reforms

In early June 2020, Minnesota’s Department of Human Rights filed an emergency action accusing the Minneapolis Police Department of discriminating against people of color.

The city promptly agreed to a restraining order. As part of that deal, the use of rubber bullets against demonstrators is prohibited unless authorized by the police chief or someone he designates.

Vlatkovich, the mayor’s spokesperson, said Arradondo authorized use of less-lethal weapons during demonstrations in August.

The court agreement included a provision requiring timely and transparent discipline for officers who violate use-of-force policies. Despite repeated requests from USA Today, neither police nor Frey identified any officer punished for misuse of less-lethal munitions.

Citizen complaints of misconduct and abuse by Minneapolis police nearly tripled during the second quarter of 2020, when the demonstrations took place, according to the Minneapolis Office of Police Conduct Review.

Gross, the community activist, said the data is almost meaningless because residents don’t believe police officers are held accountable and seldom bother to report wrongdoing. She serves on an advisory council with the Minnesota Peace Officer Standards and Training agency.

She said she witnessed an officer shoot a nonviolent protester in the face with a tear gas canister during last year’s demonstrations, but there was no point in lodging a complaint.

A nurse by profession, Gross referred to the conduct review office as “the place where complaints go to die.”

The city has an appointed Police Conduct Oversight Commission, described on the municipal website as an “independent body which assures police services are delivered in a lawful and nondiscriminatory manner.” The commission conducts audits but has no power over citizen complaints, officer discipline or law enforcement policies.

An analysis by the Minnesota Reformer, a nonprofit news site, found that fewer than 3% of the commission’s cases from 2013 to 2019 resulted in significant discipline of officers. It took an average of 18 months to resolve each case.

The news outlet concluded that the Minneapolis Police Department “is notoriously ineffective at removing bad cops from its ranks” due to a “pattern of mismanagement.”

A City Council bid to reorganize the roughly 800-officer Police Department is caught in a power struggle. The council and activists are pressing to let voters decide whether the department should be replaced by a public safety agency under council control.

Frey opposes those efforts and insists he is changing police customs and rules from within.

For example, he said, one new policy says only SWAT units can use rubber bullets for crowd control. It makes an exception if no tactical squad is available.

Frey said he made “overture after overture” to City Council members, asking for suggestions on what to change without receiving any.

Bender, the council president, said she’s seen no significant reforms under Frey’s leadership. “There is public debate about the use of less-lethal force for crowd control,” she said, “but no public decision-making. The mayor and chief make those decisions behind closed doors.”

City Won’t Say Whether Officers Followed Reporting Policies

The Minneapolis Police Department’s policy manual requires officers to file a report each time they discharge a less-lethal projectile. If someone is injured, an officer is required to notify a supervisor, which prompts an inquiry that must be documented.

It is unclear whether officers complied with those policies during May and June 2020. In response to a public records request from USA Today, the department supplied no records other than a spreadsheet summarizing how many munitions were discharged.

Frey said Arradondo compiled “a whole lot of data” about enforcement efforts during the protests. Asked in early April where that information has been disseminated, he said, “I am trying to get it right now, and we’re expediting the requests.”

Attorneys for shooting victims said the city has turned over few documents in response to their lawsuits, and it has secured protective orders to keep disclosures about police behavior out of public view. Among the records that Minneapolis lawyers want sealed: bodycam videos, internal investigative reports, misconduct reviews and personnel files.

Police agencies commonly seek independent reports that evaluate performance and tactics after major events. Minneapolis did not commission an after-action review of the George Floyd demonstrations until February.

In an email, city spokesperson Casper Hill said the review was delayed because there wasn’t money in the budget. The $250,000 study will not be completed until later this year.

Police Officers Nationwide Fired on Protesters

A nationwide survey by the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights counted 115 demonstrators who suffered head wounds from less-lethal projectiles during last summer’s demonstrations. That tally, based on news and social media reports, is believed to be a fraction of the total.

The organization concluded that rubber bullets “are not an appropriate weapon for crowd management” and recommended cities ban such use.

Minneapolis police were particularly aggressive, according to the study, firing more neck and head shots than officers in any other city except Los Angeles, which has roughly 10 times the population.

Though laws and regulations are important, policing experts stress that culture is crucial.

Mike Tusken, chief of police in Duluth and an executive board member with the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said crowd control is difficult because civil disturbances are dynamic and there’s no playbook on how to respond.

Though policies set a framework, Tusken said, proper decision-making requires a “culture of discipline” that emanates from training and leadership.

As he watched news across the country last summer, Tusken said, he saw some officers de-escalate tensions, even showing kindness to protesters. A small minority fired on nonviolent protesters.

“Why are they still in policing? Why are they not being held accountable?” Tusken asked. “I’m outraged to see it. The narrative becomes ‘All cops: bad.’”

State Rep. John Thompson said the cycle never seems to end.

In 2016, a close friend, Philando Castile, was pulled over by an officer in a Minneapolis suburb and shot five times as his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter looked on. The officer was acquitted.

At Castile’s memorial viewing, Thompson said, he vowed to change things. Four years later, as an elected official, he witnessed officers firing less-lethal projectiles at protesters outside the 3rd Precinct station.

“There were peaceful people there exercising their rights,” Thompson said. “There’s this big bang from a canister, and rubber bullets are flying everywhere.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

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[newstfionline]

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Online Schools Are Here to Stay, Even After the Pandemic (NYT) Rory Levin, a sixth grader in Bloomington, Minnesota, used to hate going to school. He has a health condition that often makes him feel apprehensive around other students. Taking special-education classes did little to ease his anxiety. So when his district created a stand-alone digital-only program, Bloomington Online School, last year for the pandemic, Rory opted to try it. Now the 11-year-old is enjoying school for the first time, said his mother, Lisa Levin. He loves the live video classes and has made friends with other online students, she said. A year after the coronavirus set off a seismic disruption in public education, some of the remote programs that districts intended to be temporary are poised to outlast the pandemic. Even as students flock back to classrooms, a subset of families who have come to prefer online learning are pushing to keep it going—and school systems are rushing to accommodate them. At least several hundred of the nation’s 13,000 school districts have established virtual schools this academic year, with an eye to operating them for years to come, education researchers said. Unlike many makeshift pandemic school programs, these stand-alone virtual schools have their own teachers, who work only with remote students and use curricula designed for online learning.

U.S. Signals Support for Ukraine and Will Add Troops in Germany (NYT) The United States and NATO, anxious about a major Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border, signaled strong support for the Kyiv government on Tuesday. And in what was considered another message to Moscow, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said on Tuesday that the United States would increase its military presence in Germany by about 500 personnel and that it was scuttling plans introduced under President Donald J. Trump for a large troop reduction in Europe. The moves come as American and European officials have grown increasingly concerned about Moscow’s deployment of additional troops near the Ukraine border.

Biden to Withdraw All Combat Troops From Afghanistan by Sept. 11 (NYT/Washington Post) President Biden will withdraw American combat troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, declaring an end to the nation’s longest war and overruling warnings from his military advisers that the departure could prompt a resurgence of the same terrorist threats that sent hundreds of thousands of troops into combat over the past 20 years. In rejecting the Pentagon’s push to remain until Afghan security forces can assert themselves against the Taliban, Mr. Biden forcibly stamped his views on a policy he has long debated but never controlled. Now, after years of arguing against an extended American military presence in Afghanistan, the president is doing things his way, with the deadline set for the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. A senior Biden administration official said the president had come to believe that a “conditions-based approach” would mean that American troops would never leave the country. The war has cost trillions of dollars in addition to the lives of more than 2,000 U.S. service members and at least 100,000 Afghan civilians.

St. Vincent seeks water, funds as volcano keeps erupting (AP) Leaders of volcano-wracked St. Vincent said Tuesday that water is running short as heavy ash contaminates supplies, and they estimated that the eastern Caribbean island will need hundreds of millions of dollars to recover from the eruption of La Soufriere. Between 16,000 to 20,000 people have been evacuated from the island’s northern region, where the exploding volcano is located, with more than 3,000 of them staying at more than 80 government shelters. Dozens of people stood in lines on Tuesday for water or to retrieve money sent by friends and family abroad. Among those standing in one crowd was retired police officer Paul Smart. “The volcano caught us with our pants down, and it’s very devastating,” he said. “No water, lots of dust in our home. We thank God we are alive, but we need more help at this moment.”

Mumbai imposes strict virus restrictions as infections surge (AP) The teeming metropolis of Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra, the Indian state worst hit by the pandemic, face stricter restrictions for 15 days starting Wednesday in an effort to stem the surge of coronavirus infections. Top state officials stressed that the closure of most industries, businesses, public places and limits on the movement of people didn’t constitute a lockdown. Last year, a sudden, harsh, nationwide lockdown left millions jobless overnight. Stranded in cities with no income or food, thousands of migrant workers walked on highways to get home. Since then, state leaders have repeatedly stressed that another lockdown wasn’t on the cards. The distinction did little to allay Ramachal Yadav’s anxieties. On Wednesday morning, he joined thousands of others at a Mumbai railway station getting on a train back home. “There is no work,” said the 45-year-old. India has detected over 180,000 new infections in the past 24 hours, about a third in Maharashtra state. India has so far confirmed over 13.9 million cases and 172,000 dead in what is likely an undercount.

Beijing’s All For Collectivism, Until It’s Organized Labor (NPR) 31-year-old Chen Guojiang, better known as Mengzhua, was delivering hundreds of take-out food orders a day, zipping along Beijing’s streets on an electric scooter at death-defying speeds. Along the way, he filmed short videos documenting the viciously competitive conditions for China’s estimated 3 million workers who use digital platforms for delivery jobs. He also called for collective action against powerful e-commerce companies to demand better pay. Mengzhua disappeared in February. In March, news emerged that he was being held in detention for picking quarrels and provoking trouble—a catch-all charge commonly used to detain both petty criminals and political activists. After police confirmed Mengzhu would be tried on criminal charges, friends and supporters began collecting donations to cover his lawyer fees. Within days, they had raised about $20,000 and attracted the attention of China’s state security forces, who then contacted each of the donation campaign organizers to warn them not to help Mengzhu. An academic who studies Chinese labor activism said “Anything that coheres collective power for workers is seen as a threat to state power. [Authorities] cannot accept ... anything that looks a little bit like an independent trade union. That is a red line for the Chinese government.” Mengzhu’s social media accounts have been deleted, and he faces up to five years in prison.

Tensions Mount Over Taiwan (Foreign Policy) Twenty-five Chinese jets breached Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Monday, China’s largest incursion into Taiwanese airspace in a year. The maneuver is part of a long-standing Chinese harassment campaign that intensified last year, when Taiwan saw a record 380 incursions. Intended to wear down Taiwanese morale, the constant intrusions force risky and costly scrambling by its fighters in response. Taiwan has said it will no longer respond by dispatching jets and, instead, by tracking the flights with missile defense systems. The intensified campaign in part results from increasing nationalism within the Chinese system.  It is also a response to signals that the United States is growing closer to Taiwan. Last week, the Biden administration loosened restraints on U.S. officials meeting with their Taiwanese counterparts and dispatched a team of retired politicians to Taipei in what a White House official called a “personal signal” of his commitment. These gestures are all symbolic, but it’s hard to overstate how much they matter in generating anger inside the Chinese political system. Hatred of the idea of an independent Taiwan is drummed into Chinese kids from kindergarten.      The chance of actual Chinese invasion still remains small, despite recent warnings from U.S. admirals. To assemble the forces required for even a chance of success would take China weeks at best and be visible well in advance. Rationally, an invasion would be a very high-risk move from a largely risk-averse leadership. The question is: Is the Chinese leadership acting rationally? In the last year, the tone of its rhetoric has intensified in a way that alarms even seasoned readers of Beijing’s language. Chinese diplomats’ aggressive posturing and state media’s violent rhetoric seem off—it could mean Beijing is capable of making dumb mistakes. In a system where backing down from conflict could leave military leaders or provincial officials politically exposed, a small clash in the ocean or in the air could very easily spin out of control.

Trump-era spike in Israeli settlement growth has only begun (AP) An aggressive Israeli settlement spree during the Trump era pushed deeper than ever into the occupied West Bank, territory the Palestinians seek for a state, with more than 9,000 homes built and thousands more in the pipeline, according to an AP investigation. Satellite images and data obtained by The Associated Press document for the first time the full impact of the policies of then-President Donald Trump, who abandoned decades-long U.S. opposition to the settlements and proposed a Mideast plan that would have allowed Israel to keep them all—even those deep inside the West Bank. Although the Trump plan has been scrapped, the lasting legacy of construction will make it even harder to create a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. President Joe Biden’s administration has embraced the two-state solution—which is still widely seen as the only solution to the decades-old conflict—but given no indication on how it plans to promote it.

Biden backs UAE arms sale (Foreign Policy) The Biden administration has decided to follow through on the sale of $23 billion worth of military equipment to the United Arab Emirates, HuffPost reported on Tuesday. The sale—which includes 50 F-35 fighter jets—had been finalized in the final hours of the Trump administration and was paused for review in the first weeks of Biden’s term. An attempt to block the sale in the Senate was defeated by a 49-47 vote in December. A White House review of U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia is still ongoing.

Study finds people want more than watchdogs for journalists (AP) A study of the public’s attitude toward the press reveals that distrust goes deeper than partisanship and down to how journalists define their very mission. The study defines five core principles or beliefs that drive most journalists: keep watch on public officials and the powerful; amplify voices that often go unheard; society works better with information out in the open; the more facts people have the closer they will get to the truth; and it’s necessary to spotlight a community’s problems to solve them. Yet the survey, which asked non-journalists a series of questions designed to measure support for each of those ideas, found unqualified majority support for only one of them. Two-thirds of those surveyed fully supported the fact-finding mission. Half of the public embraced the principle that it’s important for the media to give a voice to the less powerful, according to the survey, and slightly less than half fully supported the roles of oversight and promoting transparency. Less than a third of the respondents agreed completely with the idea that it’s important to aggressively point out problems. Only 11% of the public, most of them liberals, offered full support to all five ideas.

TP Victory (WSJ) We’ve done it: Americans have enough toilet paper. In January, sales of toilet paper were down 4.3 percent compared to January 2020, as a nation worked through a glut of toilet tissue accumulated in linen closets over the course of months. Following the domestic onset of the pandemic, Americans resorted to the Smaug strategy of bathroom tissue management, which was to hoard it and avariciously seek more out despite ample reserves. At the time, companies had difficulties expanding capacity to make more of it to keep pace, because toilet paper requires an enormous unique machine to make. It’s also very clear from the data it’s just a toilet paper stockpile America is working through; sales of paper towels were up 10 percent in January, and household cleaners were up 75 percent.

[aion-rsa]

Line of Duty Series 6 Episode 4: Davidson, DNA, Buckells’ Codes & All Our Questions & Theories

https://ift.tt/3a37RHS

Warning: contains spoilers for Line of Duty series 6 episode 4.

After all the excitement of episode four (read our spoiler-filled review here), fans could be forgiven for taking a recovery day before putting their minds to work and trying to figure out series six’s many mysteries. But did Steve and Chloe take a rest after that shoot-out? No, so in their honour, neither will we. After all, as Kate told Ted in that piss-stinking underpass make-up scene, we’ve got a case to solve.

Jargon of the week: Nominal

Anybody convicted, cautioned, reprimanded, warned or arrested of a recordable offence has a “nominal record” on the Police National Computer, and is therefore a nominal. In the show, it seems to mean the chief individual/suspect in an investigation. In the series five opener, AC-12 referred to both Lisa McQueen and John ‘Clayton’ (before they knew he was an undercover officer) as “the nominal.”

Who is Jo Davidson’s “nominal” blood relative?

Episode four’s cliffhanger was that Jo Davidson is related to a mystery nominal previously known to AC-12. The forensics search at Farida Jatri’s house found DNA deposits matching Jo Davidson (supporting Farida’s account of having been in a relationship with and framed by Davidson). When Davidson’s deposits were checked against the various police DNA databases, they also came up with a match for another individual – thereby a blood relative of Davidson. It has to be somebody of significance to AC-12’s previous investigations into the OCG and corrupt police officers. Tommy Hunter? Fellow Scots ACC Derek Hilton or DCC Mike Dryden? We ponder the potential suspects in more detail here. 

Who is Jimmy Lakewell again?

Think of him as the male Gill Biggeloe, a defence solicitor who, at some stage in his career, crossed paths with a member of the OCG and from that point onwards accepted bribes to act as their corrupt brief in legal situations. In series four, when the OCG needed an innocent man to frame for the murders of Leonie Collersdale and Baswinder Kaur and the attempted abduction of Hana Reznikova, Jimmy delivered them Michael Farmer. Lakewell had met Farmer years earlier when he defended him against a sexual assault charge. Because of Farmer’s learning disability and police record, Lakewell knew he’d be easy to frame – which he would have been if Roz Huntley, Tim Ifield and AC-12 hadn’t got involved. 

Lakewell also colluded with bent copper ACC Hilton to have Steve Arnott attacked by one of the OCG’s ‘Balaclava Men’ when he was getting too close to the cover-up, and generally did all kinds of underhand business in exchange for OCG bribes to support his lavish lifestyle. He was arrested by Roz Huntley, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice, and was serving time in HMP Blackthorn before he made contact with Gail Vella, and Steve’s plan to get him into witness protection led to Jimmy’s murder by the OCG. 

Who leaked the transport route from HMP Blackthorn?

Steve’s plan to spirit Jimmy Lakewell away from prison and into witness protection was compromised by somebody who knew the exact route the transport convoy was planning to take. The OCG knew where to stop the van carrying Jimmy and open fire. It’s likely that one of the corrupt prison guards at Blackthorn (the same one who facilitated Jimmy’s murder by Lee Banks, witnessed by Ian Buckells, and closed the door on the cell while Jimmy was being killed perhaps) was the leak. Chloe suggests that the leak could have come from inside AC-12, an idea batted away by Ted Hastings as not happening under his watch, who clearly has a short memory for dodgy corrupt coppers like the Caddy and Jamie Desford operating under his watch.

Did Jimmy Lakewell talk?

Interesting. Back at the station, after the ambush on the transport, Hastings, Bishop and Arnott interview Lakewell, who has been scared into not giving evidence and refused cooperation. Trying to persuade him to talk, Steve questions how safe Lakewell will be back in prison and Jimmy tells him “They’ll know I didn’t talk. That’s right, isn’t it DI Arnott? I didn’t talk.” After a pause, Steve gives him a slight nod. 

If you go back to the moment just before the convoy came under attack, after Steve asks Lakewell what Vella was investigating, there’s a cut to Chloe. In that time just before the attack, it’s possible that Lakewell did tell Steve something, knowing that whatever he said could never be traced back to him because the context would make the evidence inadmissible. With nothing to lose then, could Jimmy have pointed Steve in the right direction in that brief time? What Lakewell was asking Steve in that interview room was ‘Are you going to tell them that I talked?’ and Steve, being a straight-up guy, nodded that he would keep quiet. For all the good it did Lakewell in the end. 

Read more

TV

Line of Duty Series 6 Episode 4 Review: Mother of God!

By Louisa Mellor

TV

Line of Duty: the Jo Davidson Family Mystery

By Louisa Mellor

What did Buckells’ initialisms mean? 

You won’t find these in an official police lexicon. The initialisms next to which Ian Buckells saved the phone numbers of female suspects in his mobile are surely a little gag, poking fun both at Line of Duty’s taste for jargon and acronyms, and at Buckells’ coarse blokey persona. Use your imagination, really: RGT could be ‘really great tits’, FAF could be ‘fit as f**k, NA ‘nice arse’, BJL, well, you get the idea. Jo was right about one thing, Buckells really is a twat. 

So, Buckells was bent then?

He was certainly abusing his position as a police officer to coerce female suspects into giving him sexual favours in exchange for dropping charges. Was he though, working for the OCG? The fact that they had him witness Lakewell’s murder to show him ‘what happens to a rat’ suggests so, although that could equally have been done to shut him up and stop him from saying he’d been framed, just like they did to Farida. Kate says the bellend persona is all an act, but you can make up your own mind. Even if Buckells didn’t know he was a pawn of the OCG, by promoting an idiot like him so far above his ability, ‘H’ could pull the wool over a senior officer’s eyes multiple times without even having to bribe or blackmail him. 

Will Kate ultimately side with Jo?

You can take the girl out of AC-12, but you can’t take the AC-12 out of the girl. It’s pretty much certain now that Kate is not deep undercover, as suspected early on. She’s genuinely moved on from anti-corruption, but happens to have found herself in to a unit swimming with bent coppers. The question is: does Kate really believe that Davidson is innocent? Or does she suspect the truth – that Davidson’s bent but being coerced into it? This episode, Kate wanted to give the ‘Osman warning’ (issued by police to prospective victims of death threats) to Davidson, but was overruled by Hastings. She did, however, tip Jo off that Ryan was following her, which ultimately led to Kate’s job being threatened by Jo when Ryan showed his true colours. As a stand-up officer, Kate’s priority is the preservation of life. What steps might she take to preserve Davidson’s? And will it put her own life in danger?

Is this the end of AC-12?

Unless they can uncover H (who, at this stage, all signs point to being CC Osborne) before the end of the month, that’s it. Rohan Sindwhani and CC Osborne are redistributing funding away from internal investigations and to frontline services (always a PR-friendly move), and planning to merge ACs 3, 9 and 12 into one department. Staff will have the opportunity to apply to join the merged department or transfer to others, but 90% will go. The clock is ticking, Ted. The clock is ticking.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Line of Duty continues next Sunday the 18th of April at 9pm on BBC One. 

The post Line of Duty Series 6 Episode 4: Davidson, DNA, Buckells’ Codes & All Our Questions & Theories appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[denisehil0]

Ontario moves to next phase and Jays given green light; In The News for July 17

In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of July 17 …

What we are watching in Canada … 

TORONTO — A large swath of Ontario will be moving on to the next phase of the provincial government’s COVID-19 recovery plan today.

Stage 3 of the reopening effort takes effect across 24 out of 34 public health units, though the jurisdictions that will keep operating under Stage 2 rules are among the busiest in the province.

Earlier this week, the government announced Stage 3 rules would allow restaurants to resume indoor service, as well as businesses such as bars, gyms and theatres to start welcoming patrons again.

The rules also raise the limits on the size of indoor gatherings to a maximum of 50 people, while as many as 100 people are allowed to congregate outdoors.

The new rules don’t yet apply in the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas, the Niagara region and Windsor-Essex, all of which are still trying to reduce the numbers of local COVID-19 cases.

But Premier Doug Ford says the next phase of economic recovery suggests the province is turning a corner after feeling the ravages of the global pandemic.

—

Also this …

OTTAWA — A man accused of threatening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and carrying guns illegally on the grounds of Rideau Hall is expected to have his bail hearing postponed later today.

Corey Hurren’s case is due in court this morning but it is now expected the hearing will be brief, just to set a new date.

Hurren has been in custody in Ottawa since July 2, when police say they arrested him after he crashed a truck through the gates of the property where Trudeau, his family and the Governor General live.

None of them was on the grounds at the time.

Hurren, a Manitoba reservist and sausage-maker, faces 21 charges related to the weapons he was allegedly carrying and one of uttering threats against Trudeau.

Before the incident, he had posted online about the financial and other stresses he was under because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

—

What we are watching in the U.S. …

A convicted killer from Iowa whose five victims included two young girls is scheduled Friday to become the third federal inmate to be executed this week, following a 17-year pause in federal executions.

Dustin Honken, 52, was sentenced to death for killing government informants and children in his effort to thwart his drug trafficking prosecution in 1993.

Honken is set to die by a lethal injection of the powerful sedative pentobarbital at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where he’s been on death row since 2005.

 His chances for a last-minute reprieve seem remote after the Supreme Court allowed the other two executions.

—

What we are watching elsewhere in the world …

Fresh coronavirus outbreaks, even in places as far flung as China’s western Xinjiang region, are prompting moves to guard against the pandemic, as the number of cases approaches 14 million.

India surpassed one million cases, third only to the United States and Brazil.

That followed Brazil passing two million cases and 76,000 deaths. It has had 1,000 fatalities a day, on average, since late May.

After the new case was reported in Xinjiang, health officials were monitoring three other people and flights to and from the regional capital reportedly were being restricted.

Indonesia is set to extend restrictions in its capital due to a continued rise in cases.—

Today in 1976 …

Canada’s first Olympic Games opened in Montreal. Canada won five silver and six bronze medals, becoming the first host country of the Summer Games not to win a gold medal.

—

In sports news …

TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he’s looking forward to the Toronto Blue Jays playing at Rogers Centre this season after a member of his government said the Major League Baseball team has been given the green light to play games at home.

The federal government, however, has not yet said whether it has approved of the plan.

Ontario’s Minister of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries Lisa MacLeod told Ottawa’s TSN Radio 1200 on Thursday that the Blue Jays have clearance to play in Toronto and travel to the United States for road games during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said teams visiting Toronto will stay inside a quarantine bubble, which would include Rogers Centre and a hotel. MacLeod said the agreement will be rescinded if the protocols put in place are broken.

Because the plan would involve multiple crossings of the Canada-U.S. border both by the Blue Jays and by visiting teams, the final say on whether the plan can go ahead rests with the federal government. Canada currently requires individuals to quarantine for 14 days after crossing the international border.

The federal government did not immediately respond for comment.

—

Arts and entertainment …

MONTREAL — Cirque du Soleil’s creditors are in a position to take control of the insolvent entertainment business after their purchase offer that precludes any contribution from Quebec taxpayers has been accepted.

The agreement will be presented Friday to the Superior Court of Quebec for approval to become the new so-called stalking horse bid for any rival offers that may be presented next month.

A lawyer representing Quebecor suggested last week that the media conglomerate intended to make a bid.

The managing director of Cirque’s largest creditor, Catalyst Capital Group, says the co-operation from creditors has been extraordinary to achieve the goal of recapitalizing the acrobatic company.

The lenders, who hold Cirque’s about $1 billion of secured debt, would inject up to $375 million, create a fund to retain employees and pay ex-workers and artisans, and maintain the company’s head office in Montreal, according to a source familiar with the matter, but who is not allowed to speak publicly.

—

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2020.

The Canadian Press

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[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

China Virus Death Toll Passes 100 as U.S., Canada Issue Travel Warning

The United States warned against travel to China on Monday and Canada issued a more narrow travel warning as the death toll from the spreading coronavirus passed 100, with tens of millions stranded during the biggest holiday of the year and global markets rattled.

Global stocks fell, oil prices hit three-month lows, and China’s yuan dipped to its weakest level in 2020 as investors fretted about damage to the world’s second-biggest economy from travel bans and the Lunar New Year holiday, which China extended in a bid to keep people at home.

The health commission of China’s Hubei province said on Tuesday that 100 people had died from the virus as of Jan. 27, according to an online statement, up from the previous toll of 76, with the number of confirmed cases in the province rose to 2,714.

Other fatalities have been reported elsewhere in China, including the first in Beijing, bringing the deal toll to 106 so far, according to the People’s Daily. The state newspaper put the total number of confirmed cases in China at 4,193, though some experts suspect a much higher number.

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump offered China whatever help it needed, while the State Department said Americans should “reconsider” visiting all of China due to the virus.

Canada, which has two confirmed cases of the virus and is investigating 19 more potential cases, warned its citizens to avoid travel to China’s Hubei province, at the heart of the outbreak.

Authorities in Hubei province are taking increasing flak from the public over their initial response to the virus. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited the city of Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak, to encourage medical workers and promise reinforcements.

Visiting Wuhan in blue protective suit and mask, Li praised medics, said 2,500 more workers would join them in the next two days, and visited the site of a new hospital to be built in days.

The most senior leader to visit Wuhan since the outbreak, Li was shown on state TV leading medical workers in chants of “Wuhan jiayou!” – an exhortation to keep their strength up.

China’s ambassador to the United Nations, following a meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, said “the Chinese government attaches paramount importance to prevention and control of the epidemic, and President Xi Jinping has given important instructions. …

“China has been working with the international community in the spirit of openness, transparency and scientific coordination,” he said.

Guterres said in a statement, “The UN appreciates China’s effort, has full confidence in China’s ability of controlling the outbreak, and stands ready to provide any support and assistance.”

MOUNTING ANGER

On China’s heavily censored social media, officials have faced mounting anger over the virus, which is thought to have originated from a market where wildlife was sold illegally.

Some criticized the governor of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, after he corrected himself twice during a news conference over the number of face masks being produced.

“If he can mess up the data multiple times, no wonder the disease has spread so severely,” said one user of the Weibo social media platform.

In rare public self-criticism, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang said the city’s management of the crisis was “not good enough” and indicated he was willing to resign.

The central Chinese city of 11 million people is in virtual lockdown and much of Hubei, home to nearly 60 million people, is under travel curbs.

Elsewhere in China, people from the region faced questioning about their movements. “Hubei people are getting discriminated against,” a Wuhan resident complained on Weibo.

Cases linked to people who traveled from Wuhan have been confirmed in a dozen countries, from Japan to the United States, where authorities said they had 110 people under investigation in 26 states. Sri Lanka was the latest to confirm a case.

INVESTORS WORRIED

Investors are worried about the impact. The consensus is that in the short term, economic output will be hit as authorities limit travel and extend the week-long New Year holiday – when millions traditionally travel by rail, road and plane – by three days to limit spread of the virus.

Asian and European shares tumbled, with Japan’s Nikkei average sliding 2%, its biggest one-day fall in five months. Demand spiked for safe-haven assets such as the Japanese yen and Treasury notes. European stocks fell more than 2%.

The U.S. S&P 500 closed down nearly 1.6%.

“China is the biggest driver of global growth so this couldn’t have started in a worse place,” said Alec Young, FTSE Russell’s managing director of global markets research.

During the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally, air passenger demand in Asia plunged 45%. The travel industry is more reliant on Chinese travelers now.

Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, which has had eight cases, banned entry to people who had visited Hubei recently.

Some European tour operators canceled trips to China, while governments around the world worked on repatriating nationals.

Officially known as 2019-nCoV, the newly identified coronavirus can cause pneumonia, but it is still too early to know just how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads.

“What we know about this virus it that transmission occurs through human contact but we are speaking of close contact, i.e. less than a meter,” said Jerome Salomon, a senior official with France’s health ministry.

“Crossing someone (infected) in the street poses no threat,” he said. “The risk is low when you spend a little time near that person and becomes higher when you spend a lot of time near that person.”

(Reporting by Winni Zhou, Sun Yilei, Cheng Leng and Josh Horwitz in Shanghai; Cate Cadell, Gabriel Crossley and Yawen Chen in Beijing; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo, Lidia Kelly in Sydney, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Kate Kelland in London, Ben Blanchard in Tapei, Waruna Karunatilake in Colombo, Matthias Blamont in Paris; Writing by Tony Munroe, Nick Macfie, Andrew Cawthorne, Lisa Shumaker and Leslie Adler; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Stephen Coates)

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[seekandfindgod-blog]

Trump hails death of ‘depraved’ Islamic State leader Baghdadi in U.S. raid

October 28, 2019

By Steve Holland and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fugitive Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died “whimpering and crying” in a raid by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday, fulfilling what he called his top national security goal.

Baghdadi, who had led the jihadist group since 2010, killed himself by detonating a suicide vest after fleeing into a dead-end tunnel as U.S. forces closed in, Trump said in a televised address from the White House.

He was positively identified by DNA tests 15 minutes later, the president said.

“He was a sick and depraved man and now he’s gone,” said Trump, adding that capturing or killing Baghdadi had been his administration’s top national security priority.

Hours later, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said Islamic State spokesman Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, described as Baghdadi’s right-hand man, had also been killed in a separate joint raid by Kurdish-led and U.S. forces in northern Syria.

The death of Baghdadi is a severe blow to Islamic State, which has been in disarray and has no declared successor as leader yet. But the group has in the past proved resilient, continuing to mount or inspire attacks in the region and beyond despite losing most of its territory in recent years.

Baghdadi had long been sought by the United States – which offered a $25 million reward for his capture – as leader of a jihadist group that at one point controlled large areas of Syria and Iraq, where it declared a caliphate.

Islamic State has carried out atrocities against religious minorities and attacks on five continents in the name of an ultra-fanatic version of Islam that horrified mainstream Muslims.

“Baghdadi’s death represents a huge blow to the organization’s capacity to swell its ranks, mobilize its existing supporters and develop the momentum that could restore it to its past glories,” said Ranj Alaaldin, a fellow at Brookings Institution in Doha focused on Iraq.

“That said, ISIS (Islamic State) will still be a potent, under-ground terrorist threat.”

Trump said “many” of Baghdadi’s people were killed in the raid and added that in blowing himself up, Baghdadi also killed three of his children.

U.S. forces suffered no personnel losses, he said. He also thanked Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq for their support.

Turkey said it was proud to have helped “bring a notorious terrorist to justice”, but Russia’s response was skeptical, with the defense ministry in Moscow saying that it had no reliable information on the U.S. raid and observing there had been previous attempts to kill Baghdadi.

Trump said Baghdadi “reached the end of the tunnel as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and his three children”.

“He died … whimpering and crying and screaming.”

U.S. PULLBACK

The raid comes weeks after Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, which permitted Turkey to attack America’s Kurdish allies as it sought to set up a “safe zone”.

The move drew withering criticism from fellow Republicans and Democrats, who expressed concern both at the abandoning of the Kurdish fighters who were instrumental in defeating Islamic State forces in Syria, and that the move might allow the group to regain strength and pose a threat to U.S. interests.

Trump said the raid would not change his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

But the successful targeting of Baghdadi could help blunt those concerns, as well as boosting Trump domestically at a time when he is facing an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Regional allies welcomed the operation, with Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan saying it marked “a turning point in our joint fight against terrorism” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praising an “impressive achievement”.

But some, such as French President Emmanuel Macron, also warned Islamic State was not finished. “Al-Baghdadi’s death is a hard blow against Islamic State, but it is just a stage,” he said. France’s interior minister called for increased vigilance in case of acts of revenge by extremists.

Longtime U.S. foe Iran, which accuses the United States and its allies of creating Islamic State, was dismissive. Information Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi, tweeted: “Not a big deal, You just killed your creature”.

Iraqi analyst Hisham al-Hashemi, an expert on jihadist groups, said Baghdadi’s death was likely to lead to a split within Islamic State.

“The split in IS is inevitable, it always happens when any radical religious group loses a charismatic leader,” he said.

NIGHT-TIME RAID

In the hours before Trump’s announcement, sources in the region had described the raid on a compound in the village of Barisha, in Idlib province bordering Turkey, in the early hours of Sunday.

Iraqi state television broadcast night-time footage of an explosion and daytime images of a crater in the ground and what it said was the aftermath of the raid, including torn and blood-stained clothes.

Iraq’s military said later in a statement that its intelligence services had located Baghdadi’s whereabouts and had passed the information to the United States.

Trump said eight helicopters carried the U.S. special forces troops to the compound where Baghdadi was hiding, where they were met with gunfire before blasting their way in through the walls to avoid a booby-trapped main door.

The U.S. forces spent around two hours in the compound, he said, adding that they had taken away “highly sensitive material and information”.

Russia “treated us great” by opening up airspace it controlled for the raid and Kurdish allies gave some helpful information, according to Trump. The Russian defense ministry, however, said it was not aware of any assistance to U.S. forces.

The president said he watched the operation unfold in the Situation Room of the White House.

The military named the operation against Baghdadi after U.S. aid worker and hostage Kayla Mueller, U.S. national security adviser Robert O’Brien told NBC’s “Meet the Press”. In 2015, U.S. officials told Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-hostage-mueller/u-s-woman-hostage-raped-by-islamic-state-leader-before-death-u-s-officials-idUSKCN0QJ2AV20150814 Mueller had been repeatedly raped by Baghdadi himself before she died in Islamic State custody earlier that year.

RELIEF FOR A GRIEVING FATHER

At the height of its power, Islamic State ruled over millions of people in territory running from northern Syria through towns and villages along the Tigris and Euphrates valleys to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Thousands of civilians were killed by the group as it mounted what the United Nations called a genocidal campaign against Iraq’s Yazidi minority. It also caused worldwide revulsion by beheading foreign nationals from countries including the United States, Britain and Japan.

In one notorious incident, referred to by Trump in his TV address, a captured Jordanian air force pilot was burned alive in a cage.

On Sunday the pilot’s father, Safi Al-Kasaesbeh, told Reuters TV he was relieved by news of Baghdadi’s death.

“I am proud and happy on this day, after hearing of the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, this corrupt man, this insect, this virus that spread throughout the body of not only the Arab nation but also the Muslim nation, who distorted the image of Muslims and Islam,” he said.

The group has claimed responsibility for or inspired attacks in dozens of cities including Paris, Nice, Orlando, Manchester, London and Berlin, and in nearby Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

But in 2017 Islamic State lost control of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, and quickly thereafter almost all of its territory, turning Baghdadi into a fugitive.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Khalil Ashawi in Syria, Katanga Johnson in Washington, Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Ahmed Rasheed and Ahmed Aboulenein in Baghdad, Samia Nakhoul, Ellen Francis and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Orhan Coskun in Ankara and Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul and Reuters TV; Writing by Jason Neely and Alex Richardson; Editing by Frances Kerry)

source https://www.oann.com/trump-to-make-a-major-statement-on-sunday-white-house/

[gyrlversion]

White House Threatens To Veto Aid Bill For Migrant Families At Border

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is threatening to veto a $4.5 billion House bill aimed at improving the treatment of migrant families detained after crossing the U.S. southern border, saying the measure would hamstring the administration’s border security efforts and raising fresh questions about the legislation’s fate.

The warning came as Hispanic and liberal Democrats press House leaders to add provisions to the legislation strengthening protections for migrant children, changes that might make the measure even less palatable to President Donald Trump. Though revisions are possible, House leaders are still hoping for approval as early as Tuesday.

The Senate planned to vote this week on similar legislation that has bipartisan backing, but many House Democrats say the Senate version’s provisions aimed at helping migrant children are not strong enough. House Democrats seeking changes met late Monday with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“Right now, the goal is really to stop — one death is just too much,” said Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., as he left that meeting.

Many children detained entering the U.S. from Mexico have been held under harsh conditions, and Customs and Border Protection Chief Operating Officer John Sanders told The Associated Press last week that children have died after being in the agency’s care. He said Border Patrol stations are holding 15,000 people — more than triple their maximum capacity of 4,000.

Congress plans to leave Washington in a few days for a weeklong July 4 recess. While lawmakers don’t want to depart without acting on the legislation for fear of being accused of not responding to humanitarian problems at the border, it seems unlikely that Congress would have time to send a House-Senate compromise to Trump by week’s end.

In a letter Monday threatening the veto, White House officials told lawmakers they objected that the House package lacked money for beds the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency needs to let it detain more migrants. Officials also complained in the letter that the bill had no money to toughen border security, including funds for building Trump’s proposed border wall.

“Because this bill does not provide adequate funding to meet the current crisis, and because it contains partisan provisions designed to hamstring the Administration’s border enforcement efforts, the Administration opposes its passage,” the letter said.

Several Democrats said some language they were seeking could end up in separate legislation. Several said changes might include provisions aimed at ensuring that detained children are treated humanely.

“We’ve got lives at stake,” said Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif. He said the U.S. has been “the gold standard” for treating refugees fleeing dangerous countries, “and I don’t think we should compromise that at all.”

The meeting may have helped ease Democratic complaints. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters before the meeting that she would oppose the bill but left the door open afterward, saying, “I oppose the situation we’re in, but my main goal is to keep kids from dying.”

Much of the legislation’s money would help care for migrants at a time when federal officials say their agencies have been overwhelmed by the influx of migrants and are running out of funds.

The back-and-forth on the spending measure came as Congress’ top Democrats criticized Trump for threatening coast-to-coast deportations of migrants.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that he would give Congress two weeks to solve “the Asylum and Loopholes problems” along the border with Mexico. “If not, Deportations start!” he tweeted.

The president had earlier warned that there would soon be a nationwide sweep aimed at “millions” of people living illegally in the U.S., including families. The sweeps were supposed to begin Sunday, but Trump said he postponed them.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said the threatened raids were “appalling” when she was asked about them at an immigration event Monday in Queens, New York.

“It is outside the circle of civilized human behavior, just kicking down doors, splitting up families and the rest of that in addition to the injustices that are happening at the border,” she said.

On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., described Trump’s “chilling, nasty, obnoxious threats” and said the president “seems far more comfortable terrorizing immigrant families” than addressing immigration problems.

“I mean, my God, to threaten separating children from their parents as a bargaining chip? That’s the very definition of callousness,” Schumer said.

It is not clear exactly what Trump, who has started his 2020 re-election bid, means regarding asylum and loophole changes. He’s long been trying to restrict the numbers of people being allowed to enter the U.S. after claiming asylum and impose other restrictions, a path he’s followed since he began his quest for president years ago. His threatened deportations came as authorities have been overwhelmed by a huge increase of migrants crossing the border into the U.S. in recent months.

For years, Democrats and Republicans have unable to find middle ground on immigration that can pass Congress. It seems unlikely they will suddenly find a solution within two weeks.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writer Colleen Long contributed to this report.

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We are in uncharted territory now. Are we prepared for that?

By Lisa Monaco | Published January 06 at 10:49 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 6, 2020 |

Lisa Monaco is a former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama.

Qasem Soleimani was pure evil. He had the blood of innocents the world over on his hands, including hundreds of our troops due to a murderous campaign of improvised explosive devices that he masterminded during the Iraq War. A terrorist mastermind is dead, and for that we should be grateful.

But whether we are safer is just one of the many questions unleashed in the wake of Friday’s drone strike at the Baghdad airport, along with profound implications for the security of Americans abroad and here at home.

As the shadowy leader of the Quds Force — the external operations wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — Soleimani was behind mayhem from the Middle East to Asia and Latin America. The Quds Force also brazenly targeted our nation’s capital. As the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, I oversaw the investigation of the 2011 plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in a Washington restaurant designed at the behest of Soleimani’s Quds Force officers. And as President Barack Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser from 2013 to 2017, I chaired weekly national security meetings to assess threats to embassies and the U.S. response posture around the world — including threats from terrorists such as Iranian proxy forces that had been directed by Soleimani. The administration has said Friday’s strike was designed to deter threats to our personnel in the region. The administration should explain in greater detail what led to the strike, as an escalation of the threats we faced a few days ago is now all but certain. At least three steps require our immediate focus:

First, we should be preparing for a magnified threat to our people in Baghdad and across the Middle East. It will become increasingly hard to secure and sustain the diplomats and military personnel whose job is to work with the Iraqi government and our dwindling number of partners in the region. While Baghdad presents an immediate and obvious concern given the legions of pro-Iranian militia members (some of whom breached our embassy before the U.S. military targeted Soleimani), the threat to our personnel and American interests is much broader.

The Quds Force is a clandestine proxy force for Iran abroad — we should be stepping up protections for our embassies and American interests beyond the Middle East. Threats to our personnel warranted regular assessments of global hot spots and response force posture before Soleimani’s death. If the National Security Council wasn’t conducting those assessments on a regular basis before last week, it should be doing so today. And Congress should be getting briefed on those efforts.

Second, the most immediate threat here at home is from Iranian cyber forces who have targeted our financial sector and energy infrastructure. The intelligence community has told us that Iran has been positioning itself for future operations against the United States, including against critical infrastructure. We should anticipate more of the same and be prepared for Iran to dial it up this time. The Department of Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity official, Christopher Krebs, rightly took to Twitter following the strike to warn private-sector partners of the potential for Iranian retaliation. The cyberthreat from nation-states — including Iran — calls for a new mode of collaboration with the private companies that are now on the front lines in a game of geopolitical one-upmanship. But DHS is without key confirmed personnel, and the job of NSC cyber-coordinator — the quarterback of government-wide responses to global cyberthreats — was eliminated in 2018.

Finally, in a scenario such as this, chaos is the starring player across the entire region. The strike on Soleimani makes even more fraught the position of U.S. troops in Iraq, where the parliament has now voted in favor of a non-binding resolution for the eviction of U.S. forces. The loss of U.S. presence in Iraq would strengthen Iran’s hand there and compound the damage to our fight against the Islamic State from our abandonment of Kurdish partners last fall. While the Islamic State has been pushed out of much of the territory it once held, it has melted back into the population and seeks to capitalize on ungoverned space with insurgent attacks. Ungoverned space was oxygen for the Islamic State’s rise in 2014. Whatever else Soleimani’s death means, it is sure to add to chaos within Iraq and Syria, and that benefits the Islamic State.

We should be thankful that the world is rid of Soleimani. But, be careful what you wish for. We are in uncharted territory. The biggest question is whether we are prepared for whatever reaction this action will unleash.

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The Soleimani killing heightens the risk of war — but also opens doors to diplomacy

By Stephen Hadley | Published January 05 at 8:48 PM EST | Washington Post |

Posted January 6, 2020 |

Stephen Hadley served as national security adviser during the George W. Bush administration.

The U.S. drone strike that killed the Iranian Quds Force commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was a bold move with potentially far-reaching consequences. It unquestionably heightens the risk of war; it could also open the door to diplomacy.

But the Trump administration’s immediate challenge is to contain the action’s impact on Iraq.

Soleimani’s killing by U.S. forces outside the Baghdad airport on Friday was a nightmarish development for Iraq, which fears becoming the central battleground in the increasingly military confrontation between Iran and the United States. Iraq has struggled to balance its American patron and its Iranian neighbor while preserving its sovereignty. Iranian-backed militia units — Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMFs — played an important role in defeating the Islamic State in Iraq. But since then the Iraqi government has struggled, largely unsuccessfully, to bring the units under its control.

Violent demonstrations in Iraq over the past several months presented an unexpected opportunity. While protesters challenged the corruption, sectarianism and ineffectiveness of the Iraqi government, they also railed against Iranian influence. That could have strengthened the Iraqi government’s hand in dealing with the PMFs. Unfortunately, Soleimani’s death has diverted attention instead to the presence of U.S. forces.

The Iraqi parliament on Sunday passed a nonbinding resolution asking the Iraqi government to expel foreign troops from the country, targeting the approximately 5,000 U.S. forces in Iraq. But that does not necessarily end the matter. Whether the caretaker government of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has the power or desire to eject U.S. and coalition forces is uncertain.

What is clear is that one of the PMFs, Kataib Hezbollah, has been behind the escalating violence over the past several months as part of a campaign (assuredly with Iranian approval) to force out U.S. troops. The campaign culminated in the Dec. 31 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. (The head of Kataib Hezbollah, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed with Soleimani.)

By expelling U.S. forces, the Iraqi government would be falling into Kataib Hezbollah’s trap: rewarding the militia’s violent campaign, strengthening the Iranian-backed PMFs, weakening the Iraqi government and state sovereignty, and jeopardizing the fight against the Islamic State. Forcing out U.S. troops would not sit well with the Kurdish and Sunni populations in Iraq, nor with the Sunni Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose support Iraq needs to balance Iran.

The United States can help. Too often it has viewed Iraq exclusively through the prism of U.S. policy toward Iran. The Trump administration should publicly state that it is committed to the sovereignty of Iraq, that the mission of U.S. and coalition troops is to train Iraqi security forces and help them protect the Iraqi people against a resurgent Islamic State, and that the United States will coordinate with the Iraqi government on matters involving U.S. troops.

While doing what’s necessary to protect U.S. military and civilian personnel in the region, the United States should pursue its fight with Iran outside of Iraqi territory. The administration should treat any fresh attacks by Iran or its militias on U.S. forces in Iraq as an opportunity to shift the focus back on Iran as the true threat to Iraqi sovereignty.

Beyond focusing immediately on shoring up U.S.-Iraqi relations, the Trump administration, of course, must contend with the possibility of the conflict with Iran escalating. One can only hope that President Trump succeeds in deterring Iran from its threatened retaliation for Soleimani’s death. But the threat of greater violence is likely to continue unless interrupted by a resumption of diplomacy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin can be expected to mount a diplomatic initiative similar to the one he undertook in 2013 to remove chemical weapons from Syria. President Barack Obama welcomed that development, and Trump is likely to be similarly enthusiastic. Putin may conclude that it is time to bail out his erstwhile Iranian ally from a potential military confrontation with the United States that Iran simply could not win and that could threaten Russian interests in the Middle East.

The European countries that backed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the nuclear deal between the United States and Iran — may rekindle their interest in promoting peace between the two countries. And America’s regional Arab allies have been privately pushing for a negotiation that would include them and address Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile and regional activities.

Tehran should embrace a diplomatic solution when it surfaces. The country faces increasing economic hardship that risks reigniting the massive public demonstrations that the regime was able to put down last fall only by a brutal use of force. Iran’s leaders have shown that they can be pragmatic when the regime is threatened. Continued conflict with the United States would almost certainly mean harsher and more-destabilizing economic sanctions.

Trump, like Obama before him, has tried mightily to withdraw U.S. troops from the Middle East. Both failed. The United States remains engaged there because it continues to have vital interests in the region: forestalling terrorist threats; supporting and protecting friends and allies; checking Iran’s nuclear ambitions and malign influence. The killing of Soleimani may result in even deeper U.S. involvement, but it doesn’t have to if the parties choose diplomacy.

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The disturbing history behind Trump’s threat to target Iranian cultural sites

By Rick Noack | Published January 06 at 10:42 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 6, 2020 |

Throughout his presidency, President Trump has repeatedly attempted to distinguish between the “wonderful Iranian people” and their “hostile,” “brutal and corrupt” leadership.

But as he suggested the possibility of retaliatory strikes against Iran on Saturday, he resorted to a threat that — in prior conflicts — has deliberately blurred the distinction between countries’ regimes and their people.

By suggesting strikes on “52 Iranian sites,” including some that are important to “the Iranian culture,” Trump threatened a way of waging war that has drawn growing outrage in recent decades, critics argued Monday.

Such attacks have been condemned as “cultural cleansing” by Irina Bokova, a former director general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime,” she told the U.N. Security Council in 2017, adding that “it has become a tactic of war to tear societies over the long term.”

Bokova was primarily referring to the destruction of cultural sites by militant groups at the time, but to some, her words now appear eerily relevant for Iran, which has 22 cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the ancient ruins of Persepolis with its palatial buildings and terraces.

“A nation that willfully destroys another country’s heritage would be no better than the criminals who have destroyed irreplaceable sites in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in recent years,” Sara C. Bronin, a lawyer and specialist in historic preservation, wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times in response to Trump’s threats to target cultural sites in Iran.

“Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It’s a war crime,” tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In Britain, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson cautioned that “there are international conventions in place which prevent the destruction of cultural heritage.”

In a statement, UNESCO said its director general, Audrey Azoulay, received the Iranian ambassador, Ahmad Jalali, on Monday to discuss the protection of cultural heritage. “Ms. Azoulay stressed the universality of cultural and natural heritage as vectors of peace and dialogue between peoples, which the international community has a duty to protect and preserve for future generations,” the statement said.

In response to the mounting criticism, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday that “Iran has many military, strategic military sites” that could also be considered cultural sites, even though she later clarified that she was not saying Iran was camouflaging military targets within cultural sites.

The United States for decades helped shape what some believed to be a new consensus on the destruction of cultural heritage: that this form of war and destruction is not only a crime against another warring party but also a crime against humanity that endangers civilian lives and dignity.

In March 2017 — only weeks after Trump’s inauguration — the U.N. Security Council, with the United States as a permanent member, unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the “unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, inter alia destruction of religious sites and artefacts” in armed conflicts.

Attacks on cultural heritage sites have been a frequent feature of armed conflicts throughout the history of civilization. In 149 B.C., for example, the Romans began their siege of Carthage, a North African city in what is now Tunisia. The assault ended in the destruction of the city in what some researchers argue was an attempt by the Romans to eradicate their enemies’ culture.

Much later, the 20th century’s brutality reinforced calls for attacks on heritage sites to be more forcefully condemned. World War II not only put a spotlight on the Nazis’ attempts to attack opponents’ dignity and national identity; it also raised questions about some Allied attacks. The Allied forces’ bombardment of the eastern German city of Dresden — which came late in the war and surprised many who had not previously perceived the historic city to be a key military target — triggered a debate that continues to this day.

The international community appeared determined to take international treaties more seriously going forward.

According to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, warring parties should take all possible steps “to protect cultural property,” which includes “monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular,” among other examples. (Under certain circumstances, the convention allows for cultural property’s special protection to be withdrawn in case of “unavoidable military necessity.”)

Those commitments were also codified in the differently worded Geneva Conventions, which protect “historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples” from acts of hostility.

In the 1990s, the wars that broke up Yugoslavia became a brutal reminder of why such treaties had been drafted — and how they were ignored. Starting in 1991, Yugoslav People’s Army forces besieged the historic city of Dubrovnik in Croatia, leading to the destruction of parts of its center. In the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia, the Vijećnica city hall was set on fire in 1992, destroying its sizable library.

In the aftermath, former prosecutors and researchers with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia assessed more broadly that during conflicts, “it is increasingly evident that cultural property is not simply at risk from incidental harm, but is being intentionally attacked as part of cultural cleansing campaigns.”

They specifically referred to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq that were underway by the time of their assessment’s publication in 2016. Militants in those countries — including Islamic State fighters — had waged a campaign against historic cultural artifacts and buildings that reverberated across the region.

As a result, the international community moved closer to ostracizing such acts.

In 2016, North African militant Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi was convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of “intentionally directing attacks against historic monuments and/or buildings dedicated to religion” in the ICC’s first such trial, focusing on the destruction or damaging of cultural property. Mahdi was sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in attacking nine mausoleums and one mosque in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012.

The ICC’s message to the world at the time appeared to be: Attacks on cultural heritage will no longer go unpunished.

But with a U.S. president now threatening to attack cultural sites in Iran, the narrative that the United States helped to advance now appears in doubt.

“They’re allowed to kill our people,” Trump told reporters Sunday, attempting to justify his threat. “They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

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If deescalation with Iran is the goal, Trump is actively thwarting it

By Editorial Board | Published January 06 at 3:03 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 6, 2020 |

THE FIRST results of the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani have not been positive for the United States. On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel U.S. troops from the country. In Tehran, the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced it would no longer observe controls on its uranium enrichment. Millions of Iranians meanwhile took to the streets to mourn Soleimani, providing the regime with a nationalist boost and setting the stage for likely acts of retaliation.

These consequences could be mitigated or even reversed, if President Trump and his administration act wisely. Yet Mr. Trump has so far done the reverse, issuing bombastic threats, hinting at a desire to commit war crimes and mocking congressional powers. If “deescalation” is actually the administration’s aim, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists, then the president is actively thwarting it.

Tehran’s first reponses to the killing of its most powerful military figure appeared carefully tempered. In announcing it would enrich uranium without restriction, the regime said it could return to controls if U.S. sanctions were lifted. So far, it has not broken relations with the U.N. inspectors who monitor its nuclear activities, meaning that whatever it does will be subject to reporting.

Similarly, the vote by Iraq’s parliament on ejecting the 5,000 U.S. troops in the country was non-binding, and Sunni and Kurdish deputies who may oppose a break did not participate. Acting Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi appeared supportive of the measure, but he resigned from his post weeks ago and may not be able to implement it.

Preserving the U.S. position in Iraq will require skillful diplomacy. Yet Mr. Trump’s response to the parliamentary vote was to crudely threaten “very big sanctions” on Iraq if “they do anything we think is inappropriate.” That will only make it difficult for potential defenders of the U.S. deployment to resist what will surely be strong pressure from Iran to follow through on the expulsion.

Similarly, it ought to be a primary aim to coax the Khameini regime toward diplomacy, rather than further escalation. Yet Mr. Trump is provocatively promising to target 52 sites inside Iran, including some “important . . . to Iranian culture,” in the event of any retaliatory attacks on Americans. When critics pointed out that strikes on cultural sites would be war crimes, the president doubled down. Meanwhile he informed Congress that his tweets would serve as notice under the War Powers Act that he would respond to any Iranian acts “perhaps in a disproportionate manner” — a claim that ought to make Republicans as well as Democrats bridle.

Mr. Trump may believe this bluster will deter Iranian action. It almost certainly won’t. But it may end up ensnaring the United States in the full-scale war with the Islamic republic that the president says he does not want. Iran meanwhile may return to the dangerous course of uranium enrichment that was restrained by the 2015 nuclear deal that Mr. Trump rashly discarded. If Iran succeeds in expelling the United States from Iraq, its strategic position in the Middle East will be stronger than ever.

The way to avoid these outcomes is to work with allies and other intermediaries to offer Iran a diplomatic solution, before the slide toward war becomes irreversible. In short, what’s needed is Mr. Pompeo’s “deescalation,” not Mr. Trump’s reckless threats.

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Don’t believe Iranian propaganda about the mourning for Soleimani

By Masih Alinejad | Published January 06 at 2:09 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 6, 2020 |

Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, author and women’s rights campaigner.

Over the next few days, it will be hard to escape footage of huge crowds gathering in Iranian cities to mourn the death of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed by a U.S. drone strike. For anyone watching, I have one piece of advice: Don’t take what you’re seeing at face value.

This past November, thousands of Iranians took to the streets across the country to protest against the regime, in the biggest challenge to the clerical rule in 40 years. According to Reuters, more than 1,500 people were killed by security forces, including units of Soleimani’s Revolutionary Guard, and at least 7,000 have been arrested. The Internet was shut down for five days. Tehran has yet to release official figures of its own, which suggests the death toll may have been even higher.

The protesters had harsh words for Soleimani and his foreign adventures, chanting against Iran’s involvement in Syria and its support of Hezbollah. That came as a shock to the regime, which portrays Soleimani as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s adopted son.

Of course, people across the political divide are concerned about war. Nobody wants President Trump to bomb Iran’s cultural or historical sites as he threatened in a tweet on Saturday. I myself denounced the tweet on Fox News on Sunday.

But what to make of the crowds of flag-waving mourners streaming across TV screens? Without doubt, Soleimani had support among hard-liners and regime loyalists. The regime is not taking any chances, though. In the city of Ahvaz, where large numbers of people turned out to mourn Soleimani, the government has forced students and officials to attend. It provided free transport and ordered shops to shut down. According to videos sent to me by people inside the country, the authorities are making little kids write essays praising the fallen commander. First-graders who didn’t know how to write were encouraged to cry for Soleimani.

Some Iranians have compared the funeral services for Soleimani to those held for the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, killed by Allied agents during World War II.

Soleimani was not a benign official. In 1999, he was among the Revolutionary Guard leaders who demanded that then-President Mohammad Khatami crush university student demonstrations or face the consequences. Current Supreme Leader Khamenei praised Soleimani for his staunch defense of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who has killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. Few Syrians are mourning him.

The media in the Islamic Republic is heavily controlled. Public gatherings are allowed only if they are pro-regime. Critics are jailed or shot. (Even I, living outside the country, have received a death threat on Iranian national TV for my coverage of Soleimani’s killing.) So it’s not hard to use all the tools and resources of the state to stage a funeral procession.

I have more than 4 million followers on various social media networks, and I have received thousands of messages, voice mails and videos from Iranians in cities such as Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran and even Ahvaz, who are happy about Soleimani’s death. Some complain of the pressure to attend services for him.

There are many Iranian voices who think Soleimani was a war criminal, but Western journalists rarely reach out to them. Ironically, the Western media is more skeptical of such state-organized events in other countries, such as Russia or North Korea, but seems to leave its critical sense at the border when it comes to the Islamic Republic. While it’s true that Western correspondents face daunting conditions when it comes to reporting the truth from Iran, that shouldn’t excuse the many times they’ve shown unwarranted gullibility toward the official version of events.

Remember all the articles that predicted how Iranians were going to unite in resistance to President Trump’s sanctions? The same analysts who missed November’s protests are now predicting Iranians will rally around the flag.

This sorely underestimates the anger and resentment over the crackdown. The authorities forced many families to pay blood money in order to receive the body of their loved ones from the morgue. Some even had to sign official forms waiving the right to hold a public funeral as a condition of getting bodies returned.

Two weeks ago, the parents and nine other family members of Pouya Bakhtiari, a 27-year-old engineer who was killed during the protests, were arrested to stop them from having funeral services. Two days later, on Dec. 26, thousands of security forces using armored cars, water cannons and even helicopters were deployed to stop mourning ceremonies for some of the victims.

These families of those killed are not mourning Soleimani. In 2009, the Revolutionary Guards led the crackdown on the so-called Green Movement protests against the disputed presidential election. Many of the mothers of those killed in 2009, in 2017 and in 2019 are rejoicing about Soleimani’s death. How do I know? Because they’ve sent me videos of themselves, speaking to the camera, dancing, or even sharing cakes and sweets.

I and others have been saying for years that the current repressive conditions in the country are not tenable and that more protests would break out. We were right. And I’ll say it again: Don’t be fooled. Iran will see more anti-regime protests.

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Soleimani’s death shouldn’t come as a surprise. We should be questioning the timing.

By Kathleen Parker | Published January 03 at 5:49 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 6, 2020 |

It did have a wag-the-dog feel to it, a cynic might say.

With the Senate discussing plans for President Trump’s (albeit uncertain) impeachment trial, the U.S. commander in chief ordered the killing of Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at Baghdad International Airport.

By most accounts, he deserved to die. He had American blood on his hands and was behind Iran’s deadly clandestine operations abroad. “However . . . ,” said nearly every so-called expert snagged by American news programs to comment on a variety of hypotheticals related to Iran.

Speculation was wild as a spring break: What would happen next? Would Iran, which promised revenge, attack Israel? Would Iranian citizens feel emboldened and demand regime change? Does the United States remove a sitting president so soon after what some have called an act of war?

In the 1997 movie “ Wag the Dog ,” the U.S. president manufactured a faux war in Albania to distract from a sex scandal just two weeks before his likely reelection. A spin doctor engaged to help manage the mess accurately predicted that the media would focus entirely on the war, forgetting all about that other inconvenience. And, voila .

Coincidentally, the comedy appeared in theaters just months before then-President Bill Clinton, enmeshed in a sex scandal of his own, sent 14 cruise missiles to pulverize the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on a day when Monica Lewinsky testified before a grand jury. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Or, rather, should I say, nature imitating art? Clinton’s attack reportedly was in response to al-Qaeda’s bombing of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Needless to say, there’s nothing humorous about what transpired last week in Baghdad. According to Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Soleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Intelligence sources helped pinpoint Soleimani’s location. As military actions go, the killing of Soleimani was one for the textbooks. One may also find consolation in the fact that American intelligence gathering has apparently improved dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was based on bad, if widely believed, information.

What’s clear is that Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, had been instrumental in attacks against Americans and our allies for years. Given such, why wouldn’t U.S. policy be to remove him as soon as possible? Removal of bad actors is often folded into policies, such as the stated goal adopted during the Clinton administration of ousting Saddam Hussein.

Certainly, decisions of when and where are tethered to legalities and congressional oversight, depending on circumstances, as well as international considerations. The attacks of 9/11 provided an excuse to invade Iraq, to put it bluntly, under the umbrella of President George W. Bush’s fiat that our enemies thereafter would include any country that aided terrorism or sought weapons of mass destruction. The “axis of evil,” of course, included Iran.

Thus, given Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement — and his cage-rattling foreign policy — Soleimani’s death probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. A worthy speculation is: Why did it take so long?

It is disturbing, nonetheless, to consider that Trump might have been prompted to act for reasons other than the nation’s best interest — such as his being mocked by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On Wednesday, two days before the airstrike that killed Soleimani, Khamenei wrote this on Twitter:

“[Trump] has tweeted that we see Iran responsible for the events in Baghdad & we will respond to Iran. 1st: You can’t do anything. 2nd: If you were logical — which you’re not — you’d see that your crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan . . . have made nations hate you.”

First, Trump could do something, and he certainly did. Second, be that as it may, some would argue that religious statehood defies reason.

Reactions around the world will be interesting to observe, if not very surprising. More testosterone-venting; more pistol-cocking; more threats, taunts and, yes, probably, violence. Here at home, partisans brawled and bloviated as expected:

“[The] Trump Admin owes a full explanation of airstrike reports,” tweeted Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) chimed in, “To the Iranian government: if you want more, you will get more.”

Were we not entertaining the possibility of military mayhem, such Twitter posturing would send comedy writers scurrying to their keyboards. Then again, maybe first drafts have already arrived in agents’ inboxes. If America loves anything more than a good war, it’s a sequel — but preferably on the big screen, served with dark humor and a side of popcorn.

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Trump is sucking us into another war with lots of arrogance and little strategy

By Max Boot | Published January 06 at 1:38 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 6, 2020 |

"We took a bad guy off the battlefield. We made the right decision.” That is the sophomoric justification that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo provided for President Trump’s risky gambit of killing Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force.

If we have learned anything from the past 17 years, it is that killing a bad guy doesn’t necessarily make the situation any better. Saddam Hussein was as bad as a guy can get, but his ouster and execution only unleashed chaos. That’s why I regret my support for the Iraq War; Pompeo clearly does not. He and Trump (who supported the Iraq invasion before he opposed it) seem to have learned nothing from that fiasco. They are sucking the United States into another Middle East conflict with a surfeit of arrogance and a deficit of strategy.

It’s still possible that Soleimani’s demise in a U.S. drone strike will deter Iran from greater villainy, but so far, the fallout has been entirely negative. Iraqis and Iranians who just a few weeks ago were protesting the Iranian regime are now protesting the United States. The Iraqi parliament just voted to expel U.S. troops. So much for Pompeo’s vapid boast that Iraqis were “dancing in the street” because Soleimani is “no more.”

The Iraqi vote is nonbinding, but it makes it more likely that Soleimani might achieve in death what he could not achieve in life — a pullout of U.S. forces that would leave Iraq entirely at Iran’s mercy. Also since the strike, U.S. forces in Iraq have suspended their operations against the Islamic State to brace for Iranian retaliation. There is no point in deploying troops if their only mission is to protect themselves.

Trump seems determined to unify the whole region against the United States, because he just threatened to attack Iranian cultural sites and to blackmail Iraq into paying for a U.S. air base built after an invasion that Iraqis did not ask for. After Trump’s first ultimatum against cultural sites, Pompeo disingenuously denied that Trump had threatened to violate international law. Trump then made clear he meant it, telling reporters: “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.” Actually, it does work that way, because Iran is a rogue regime and the United States is a rule-of-law country. Or at least we were. It’s laughable to hear Pompeo say that “We have developed a strategy to attempt to convince the Iranian regime to behave like a normal nation.” Normal nations don’t threaten to blackmail other countries or destroy their cultural sites.

This whole crisis started in 2018 when Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal despite Iran’s compliance. One of his chief complaints was that the agreement’s expiration date was too short. Thanks to Trump’s rash act, the sunset period has gone from 15 years to zero: On Sunday, Iran announced that it would no longer comply with any of the limits in the agreement.

All of these consequences, which have occurred even before Iranian military retaliation, were entirely predictable. It is for such reasons that previous administrations refused to kill Soleimani. Did Trump realize what would happen? Did he hear from opponents of the decision and carefully weigh all of the ramifications? The questions are rhetorical; we all know the disturbing answers.

Naysayers such as former defense secretary Jim Mattis are long gone from Trump’s inner circle; if Mattis were still around, he probably would have blocked the strike on Soleimani. So Trump made what is perhaps the most important life-or-death decision of his presidency with his usual flippancy, in between golfing and campaign bull sessions. Normal people devote greater care and attention to buying a sofa, as David Brooks suggested in 2016, than Trump does to acts of war.

Pompeo, who is a primary advocate for a get-tough-on Iran strategy, then claimed that Trump had to act to stop an “imminent attack.” But the administration refuses to provide any public evidence, and members of Congress and Defense Department officials who have seen the intelligence are skeptical. Indeed, it’s hard to see how killing Soleimani would stop an attack that was already in motion. It is impossible to take on faith anything we are told by the most dishonest administration in U.S. history, and Pompeo’s smugness and truculence do not help its cause.

The administration has made no real effort to convince either domestic or international critics of the rightness of its cause. Trump didn’t bother to notify congressional leaders before acting, and now he pretends that he’s keeping Congress informed by tweeting blood-curdling threats. Trump continues to sabotage any attempts to gain bipartisan support by conflating his political opponents with the United States’ enemies, while Pompeo continues to wrongly blame the Obama administration for a crisis of Trump’s own making.

“Jesus, do we have to explain why we do these things?” an imperious State Department official demanded during an administration press briefing. Yes, you do, and you’re doing a terrible job so far.

*********

[itsbquick-blog]

Blake Quick

English Composition

Research Paper

12 December 2018

Time for a Change

“If you survive a mass shooting, life changes quickly. For me, at Virginia Tech almost 11 years ago, it changed the instant I heard the gunshots” (Lisa Hamp). Lisa Hump survived the Virginia Tech shooting of April 2007, she recounts dealing with this trauma, always living in fear. Hamp tells the struggles of her life after this shooting, constantly being paranoid at every turn; being scared to even shop for groceries. There are thousands of people living their lives like this always in constant fear because of the trauma that guns have inflicted onto their lives, whether it be through suicide or a mass shooting.  

For such a major problem in our country, we seem to disregard the issue. The fact that tens of thousands of people die every year to gun-related issues, and guns are still easy to obtain is bemusing.  This country needs to tighten up the laws regarding these weapons. With tightened regulations on semi-automatic rifles, or handguns rates of mass shootings would certainly decline. Taking away the product that is causing so much harm is the best way to stop such terrible events. Putting more guns into the hands of people is increasing the rates that deaths, injuries, suicides occur from guns. If a gun isn't there in the first place, then somebody cannot get hurt by one.

In the year 2016 according to BBC 33,594 people had died in the United States due to gun-related issues. This cannot become normal, there needs to change something or more and more will continue to be hurt. One way we can try to limit these numbers is by making guns harder to obtain and cost more money to purchase. The sale and manufacturing of guns should be taxed more than it is, to make the manufacturing and selling of guns not as profitable. One of the main reasons these companies continue to make guns so accessible to people is because it is highly profitable. So if the profit is taken away from the scenario pushing guns onto people becomes less desirable, it makes the whole industry slow.

On top of jacking up the costs to obtain and manufacture guns, it needs to be harder to obtain a firearm. Too often has a dangerous weapon fallen into the hands of the wrong person.  There has to be a way to prevent this from happening or even make a system more rigorous when determining if someone should be able to purchase a gun. There should be a more thorough background check in place when purchasing a gun, along with a psychological evaluation. If the customer does not meet certain requirements they should not be able to finish their purchase. This would help lower the current 40% of Americans that own guns, with fewer people owning guns then the likelihood of gun violence will also decrease.

There are many people who should not own a gun, or at some point should have their guns taken away from them. This could fall under the same net as The Division of Child Protection and Permanency. If parents are not deemed fit to parent or raise a child they can be taken away from them at almost any given time. Why is this not the same for guns? A gun owner possesses the capability to shoot and kill anybody at almost any given time, what if they are not deemed fit to own a gun? There are certainly people in this country who are not fit, or mentally in a good enough place to own and operate a gun safely. Therefore there should be a policy put into place to remove guns from people who are like this. When somebody shows behavior that suggests they are not mentally sound or show good enough behavior the government should be able to take their guns away. Not only should their guns be taken but they should have their right to purchase or own a gun taken away until proven otherwise. For example, if an individual is showing signs of being suicidal they should have their gun rights temporarily stripped. According to BBC, most gun-related injuries are in fact suicides. This policy could potentially save many many lives, or even prevent mass shootings. There is an obvious link between mental illness and gun violence, there have been countless shooters who have been diagnosed with mental issues. If these issues were treated or even noticed the government could have stepped in and removed guns from the situation. Without guns, those that are mentally ill would have not been able to take their lives as easy, and certainly not been able to pull off a mass shooting.  

The United States has the leading amount of gun-related death and gun-related violence in the world. A study conducted by CBS states that a person aged 15-24 in America are 49 times more likely to be killed in a gun-related murder than any other wealthy country in the world. This is an unacceptable statistic, it makes this country look like a violence-ridden country. Stats like that should not be true for such a wealthy and powerful nation. Countries like Great Britain have very strict gun laws, and their gun-related deaths are astronomically lower than the United States. Gun ownership in the UK is also much lower, for every 100 people there are approximately 6.5 guns. While the United States for every 100 people there are roughly 101 guns, this stat is staggering. The amount of guns in America is absurd, there is no need for that many guns to be in circulation. The UK is a prime example of having fewer guns leads to less gun-related violence, the numbers show it clear as day.

The US could learn a thing or two about how to tighten up gun control from the UK as BBC states “ Every stage of the process is designed to reduce the likelihood of a gun falling into the wrong hands”. This is how the US should go about selling guns, instead of a small background check and low prices. In the UK someone would need to fill out an application stating their reason for wanting to purchase a gun if their reason is not deemed good enough to warrant them purchasing a gun they are immediately turned down. If someone's reason is deemed worthy enough of being able to purchase a gun then they have to answer questions about their mental state, attitude towards guns, and even home life. Next, they would get a thorough background check, the officer would then check with their doctor for evidence of drug or alcohol abuse. Finally, after all the questions, a senior officer will make sure that the future gun owner has a safe place to store the weapon, such as a gun cabinet to keep it locked away from people who should not get their hands on the firearm.

This is very secure compared to the US, it is very easy to obtain a firearm. There are a few different ways to go about purchasing a firearm, the first being a gun store that is licensed to buy and sell guns. As long as someone passes a simple background check and they are of the right age which is 18-21. It gets even easier for people if the firearm is purchased a weapon almost anywhere else. A major place people purchase guns is gun shows, there are gun shows all over America and are very uncommon in most areas. All someone needs to purchase a firearm from a gun show is proof that that person is of age too. There is almost never a background check in place, and these gun shows sell everything from small firearms to assault weapons, so high caliber pistols. Finally one of the last ways someone can purchase a gun in the US is between friends family and private collectors. A normal person can purchase a weapon off of their neighbor or private collector with absolutely no restrictions. If that collector or neighbor personally feels like they are alright to own a gun then they will sell the gun.

These two systems vary very much between the UK and the US, and the number prove which one is better. The UK has little to no gun violence while the US cannot seem to get theirs under control. Gun-violence is only rising in America according to BBC, shootings in recent years have become bigger and more deadly

.As this chart shows shootings are getting bigger and worse. The shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada was the worst shooting in US history, while the second most happened in Orlando, Florida in 2016. These stats show that the more recent shootings have been the biggest and is showing a pattern of getting bigger and bigger. So if this country doesn't start to do something about gun-violence then we will only see more deadly shootings. Who knows what this country can prevent by tightening up our gun laws.

The United States could see a decrease in its gun violence if they looked into a country-wide assault weapons ban. An assault weapon is considered to be a semi-automatic or automatic rifle, pistol or shotgun. An assault weapon also has a detachable clip that can hold 10 or more rounds of higher caliber ammunition, these weapons can be modified to become much more lethal. Attachments such as bump stocks, extended magazines, or things like a threaded barrel.  Researches have been shown that in mass shootings someone is more likely to die if the shooter is carrying an assault weapon, not only is it a higher power but there are more rounds to be fired off. With restrictions put in place, there could possibly be a decrease in injuries in crimes. There is a significant number of crimes such as robberies, murder, or assault performed with assault weapons. When you remove that threat from society it can save countless lives, spare thousands of life-changing injuries.

To get rid of these assault weapons there needs to be a ban put in place, get rid of the issue completely. There is no need for such powerful weapons to be in circulation to the general public. There is nobody hunting with AR-15s and assault-style handguns, they are rarely used for sports competitions, so what is the need for them? There is little to no downside to banning assault weapons, and it is necessary for dropping the 33,000 annual gun-related deaths in America.

One of the main arguments against gun control is that people believe it takes away from their right to own guns, and right to self-defense. This is a very solid and valid argument, but there are some flaws within it. Self-defense is absolutely a priority and everyone should feel safe in their home and their country. This is not the case though people in this country live their lives in constant fear of shooting. With so many households owning guns, so many guns in circulation it makes it too easy for someone to pull off a shooting. In most situations where there is a shooting, a civilian will not have their gun readily available. Good examples of this are the Las Vegas shooting, or any school shooting to date no civilian had their firearm readily available for self-defense. The majority of gun deaths is due to suicide, owning these guns and bringing them around the house opens the door to that possibility. Having a gun in someone's home for self-defense doubles the likelihood of death by a gun according to the website Everytown. Having that gun in someone's house brings an added threat to your family just by it being there. Accidents happen very often when someone who should not have a gun gets ahold of one, whether it be a child or someone in the wrong mental state. There is almost no good outcome in either of those situations, too many have been hurt in these circumstances.

There are many different ways to protect a home and family without the need for a firearm. Some may be even more effective than a firearm, for example, install a security system. There is a multitude of different security systems for a house that can keep a family safe, ranging from security cameras and locks all the way to constant monitoring by professionals through services such as the service from ADT. If a family cannot afford a security system and is genuinely concerned about their safety, they can set up community programs like a neighborhood watch to ensure safety.

If someone did not feel safe in public places and felt the need to carry a firearm on them to be safe, then wouldn't they feel safe knowing there are no other firearms out there? If we took away guns, or the assault weapons used by criminals there would be less of a reason to carry a firearm cause the risk factor would drop significantly. What if this country looked into having more armed guards around until these shootings stop. If there were armed guards trained and ready to deal with a mass shooting situation. Going to everyday activities such as school, the mall, or even sports venues is it time to start arming guards to deter shooters?  This, of course, would be a very radical way to solve the issue of these shootings, but is this country getting to a point where this is necessary? Most people would not like this change, nobody wants to see it happen but with the shootings getting more and more deadly while happening more often it seems time for a change. Especially since nobody wants to budge on any other aspect of gun rights.

Another way to curb the staggering 33,000 deaths from guns in 2016 is to change the guns and ammunition themselves. Most guns do have a safety installed on them, with the safety switch clicked than the gun will not fire at all. Maybe gun manufacturers should look into creating more modifications like this for their guns. Making a gun safer could really cut back on the number of accidental deaths and injuries that happen, according to ProCon.org 50% of unintentional shootings are fatal. The majority of those deaths are children playing with a loaded gun, maybe its time to start looking into a safety switch that a child cannot use. Find a way to make it so a child or someone who shouldn't be ahold of a gun cannot fire it unexpectedly. On top of the further childproofing of guns, there should be a better way to tell if a gun is primed. If a gun is ready to fire it should be obvious, or have a gun where the safety automatically turns back on after it is fired. It is easy to forget if the safety is on or off on a weapon so having one where the safety goes on by itself could prove pivotal in saving someone's life.

With all this gun violence the public opinion has seen a shift in recent years the public opinion is split pretty evenly with most of the younger generation opting to control gun ownership as seen on this graph below.

.

With a public opinion like this, it is difficult to change anything with gun control no matter how compelling the evidence is against it. People need to be more aware of the real statistics of gun violence, it is hard to think someone will be pro-gun after hearing how dangerous these weapons really are.

Banning guns completely is not the right way to go about solving the gun problem in our country. The public should learn about how devastating guns actually are to this country compared to how little gun violence there are in other wealthy countries. There need to be strides made against guns or else things will just keep getting worse and worse. Who knows what kind of shooting is going to happen in the years yet to come if things do not change right now. People do own the right to bear arms, it is in the constitution. People should own guns it is part of being free, however, there needs to be a limit to this. Just how there is a type of limit on free speech, someone cannot just yell out certain things in certain places. So there should be the same things with guns just to a higher degree, guns are clearly too dangerous. Let people own guns just not assault weapons, have a limit to how many guns people can own, and make it much much harder to obtain a firearm.

How many children are going to have to die, how many innocent people are going to get gunned down before enough is enough? Are the rights to own a fancy gun collection really worth the 20 children whose lives were cut short at Sandy Hook because of a gun? Countless lives have been cut short because of a gun in the wrong hands, countless lives have been changed forever because of a gun in the wrong hands. The time for change is now, enough is enough.

Work Cited

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/

“America's Gun Culture in 10 Charts.” BBC News, BBC, 27 Oct. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081.

Onyanga-Omara, Jane. “Gun Violence Rare in U.K. Compared to U.S.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 4 Oct. 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/06/16/gun-violence-united-kingdom-united-states/85994716/.

Onyanga-Omara, Jane. “Gun Violence Rare in U.K. Compared to U.S.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 4 Oct. 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/06/16/gun-violence-united-kingdom-united-states/85994716/.

“Gun Control - ProCon.org.” Gun Control - ProCon.org, gun-control.procon.org/.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/feds-response-to-denvers-safe-use-site-plan-weak-toothless-mega-stupid-westword/

Feds' Response to Denver's Safe-Use Site Plan: Weak, Toothless, Mega-Stupid - Westword

After the release was made public, Westword reached out several times to Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for recently named U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn, a former member of Denver’s powerful Brownstein Hyatt law firm, but we have not yet received a reply. So we’ll let the text of the feds’ statement about the Denver proposition (which needs approval from the Colorado Legislature before it can take effect) speak for itself — and then take on the points one by one.

The Introduction: The Denver City Council recently passed an ordinance that proposes establishing supervised use sites, where drug users would be allowed to lawfully inject heroin and other illegal drugs in a facility operated by a governmental organization or a nonprofit. This proposal still has a number of steps to go before it becomes a reality. In the meantime, there are a few things Coloradans should know.

Our take: Nothing inherently false yet. But get ready.

Attack one: Foremost, the operation of such sites is illegal under federal law. 21 U.S.C. Sec. 856 prohibits the maintaining of any premises for the purpose of using any controlled substance. Potential penalties include forfeiture of the property, criminal fines, civil monetary penalties up to $250,000, and imprisonment up to 20 years in jail for anyone that knowingly opens, leases, rents, maintains, or anyone that manages or controls and knowingly and intentionally makes available such premises for use (whether compensated or otherwise). Other federal laws likely apply as well.

Our take: You know what else is against federal law? The possession, use and sale of marijuana. And unless we’re very much mistaken, all of those things are happening in Colorado and a slew of other states across the country right now, despite nearly identical warnings from various law enforcers in the administration of President Donald Trump. As for the use of the word “likely” in the last sentence: Don’t you guys know for sure? Couldn’t you have had an intern look it up for you?

U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn, during his days at Denver’s Brownstein Hyatt law firm.

Attack two: Second, there is no evidence that such sites actually reduce the number of drug-related deaths or make it more likely that users will seek help for their addiction or mental health issues. Indeed, a recent review of one facility in Vancouver found that the overdose death rate in the immediate vicinity of the facility was actually the highest in the city. This may be due in part to the fact that while these facilities are touted as being “safe” because of the availability of opioid antagonists (e.g., Naloxone or Narcan), these facilities are not actually limited to opioid users. Those injecting methamphetamine, cocaine, or other drugs for which there is no counteragent are also welcome to use the facility. The Denver facility likewise would welcome users of any drug, not just opioids.

Our take: There are so many whoppers in this paragraph that Burger King should sue for copyright infringement. As National Public Radio acknowledged in a September analysis, proof that safe-use sites work isn’t overwhelming, in part because of the difficulties inherent in studying this particular population. But to say there’s no evidence at all is a flat-out falsehood. For starters, scope this snippet from a report by the Journal of the American Medical Association, complete with original links:

Dozens of cities around the world host SIFs [Safe Injection Facilities], and 2 are planned in Seattle. A SIF that opened Vancouver, Canada, in September 2003, has been extensively researched. Studies have found the Vancouver SIF and its use were associated with safer injection techniques and practices, reduced syringe reuse and sharing, fewer injections in public and publicly discarded syringes, increased entry into drug detoxification programs, no overdose deaths, and no evidence of increases in drug-related crime.

Not enough for you? Eyeball this summary of findings in a study by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, helpfully labeled “evidence:”

• One high-quality cohort study examined overdose mortality before and after an SIS opened in Vancouver, BC.

— Of persons living within 500 m of the SIS (70% of SIS users), overdose deaths decreased from 253 to 165 per 100 000 PYs and the absolute risk difference was 88 deaths per 100 000 PYs; 1 overdose death was prevented annually for every 1137 users.

— There was no change in mortality in the rest of city.

• Before the SIS opened, 35% of 598 intravenous drug users were admitted to hospital in a 3-year period, 15% for skin infections.

— After the SIS opened, of 1083 SIS users over 4 years, 3 9% were admitted with cutaneous injection-related infections (including osteomyelitis and endocarditis).

— While SIS nurse “referral” to hospital increased the likelihood of admission, the average length of stay decreased by 8 days (from 12 to 4).

— Indirect comparison of different cohorts is a limitation.

• Near one SIS, average monthly ambulance calls with naloxone treatment for suspected opioid overdose decreased from 27 to 9 (relative risk reduction of 67%).

• About 6 to 57 HIV infections per year are prevented by the SIS according to mathematical modeling.

— Limitations include assumptions made about drug use and injecting practices, and might include benefit from needle exchange programs.

Against this, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the DEA offer an unspecified “review” and a single vague negative reference. That’s really going the extra mile.

Denver City Council member Albus Brooks embraces Harm Reduction Action Center executive director Lisa Raville after the pilot program was approved.

Facebook

Attack three: Third, these facilities actually increase public safety risks. Just like so-called crack houses, these facilities will attract drug dealers, sexual predators, and other criminals, ultimately destroying the surrounding community. More importantly, the government-sanctioned operation of these facilities serves only to normalize serious drug usage — teaching adults and children alike that so-called “safe” drug usage is somehow appropriate or can actually be done ‘safely.’ The type of drug use contemplated here is always life-threatening behavior.

Our take: Speaking of evidence, not even the flimsiest sort is mentioned here. Instead, the authors fall back on fear-mongering tropes intended to reinforce dubious stereotypes rather than debunking them. Come on, guys! Try a little harder!

Attack four: Finally, we note that nothing in this statement should be read as casting aspersions on the laudable motives of those seeking to improve our communities and free Coloradans from the scourge of drug addiction. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Denver Field Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration support all methods of legal intervention to address the opioid and methamphetamine crisis in Colorado, and in fact work hard to facilitate them every day.

Our take: The feds believe that the opioid crisis is a bad thing — but they want to tie the hands of local authorities interested in addressing it in new and innovative ways. That’ll fix it!

The coda: But these efforts must comply with federal law. Efforts that do not comply with federal law risk action by the U.S. Attorney’s Office using any and all federal remedies available.

Our take: This falls well short of a crackdown promise; it’s more of a flimsy threat of the sort for which Denver officials have long been prepared. When we spoke to Denver City Council member Albus Brooks about his advocacy of supervised-use sites back in October, we pointed out that Trump administration officials had previously warned other cities about possible legal action should they open such facilities.

His response? “As you know, Colorado was the first state in the country to legalize [recreational] marijuana, which the federal government did not condone. There are many instances in our policies where we have had a different perspective than the federal government. So that’s not a concern.”

Brooks’s reply to the feds’ finger-wagging seems similarly unbothered; we’ve reproduced it below in its entirety. And Mayor Michael Hancock, who waited until Denver City Council had passed the safe-use bill to confirm that he plans to sign it, wasted no time standing up for the concept, as seen in this interview clip tweeted by Fox31 reporter Joe St. George:

Granted, such sites are controversial, as witnessed by the varied reactions to the measure’s passage from Westword readers. But both Brooks and Hancock will only enhance their reputations by standing up to the feds on this issue — and the tepid push-back from Trump’s minions has made doing so a snap.

Here’s the aforementioned statement from Brooks:

Assorted supplies available to participants at the Harm Reduction Action Center.

Photo by Michael Roberts

Ordinance 1292 to Create Supervised Use Sites will Help Prevent Overdose Deaths

The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado and the Denver Field Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a joint statement in response to the passage of ordinance 1292, sponsored by Councilman Albus Brooks. This ordinance creates a supervised use site pilot program in Denver. Supervised use sites provide a safe space for injection that is monitored by trained staff, helping prevent overdose deaths and the transfer of preventable diseases. These sites also help connect drug users with treatment and healthcare support.

Councilman Brooks provided the following response to the joint statement:

“Last year, more than 1,000 of our neighbors in Colorado died of an overdose. As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has continued to affirm, we are facing a national public health emergency, and cities are on the front lines. While we recognize the role of the federal government, we cannot wait for federal action while the death toll rises. These people are not simply addicts. They are our neighbors, friends, and family members who are experiencing addiction. As a designated local public health department, the city through the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment has the authority under law to address and regulate this type of emergency. Extensive research and global precedent demonstrate that supervised use sites save lives. Choosing not to save the lives of our neighbors is an injustice that threatens to destabilize the very foundation of our society. This is a piece of a larger plan to address this epidemic, and as leaders we know that saving lives takes precedent over politics. Now is the time to act.”

Cities across the nation are considering opening supervised use sites to combat the growing overdose epidemic. It is estimated that emergency services in the city are responding to almost three overdoses per day. Studies have shown that supervised use sites not only save lives, they do not increase crime in the areas where they are located, and save money by reducing the number of 911 calls, ambulance responses, hospital stays, and treatment for transferable diseases.

The ordinance designates one pilot supervised use site in the city that would be monitored for two years. In order to implement the supervised use site pilot program, a bill will also have to pass through the state legislature in the 2019 session.

Source: https://www.westword.com/news/feds-response-to-denvers-safe-use-site-plan-weak-toothless-mega-stupid-11044976

[madjohndriverlvbrx]

THE PROSECUTION OF JOHN MACHINE LOBER. A summary report of the FUCKERY. I was investigated by my past employer for revenge that he has a little dick and an ambiguous relationship with a female 19 years younger than he is, while she works at the bank and supports his cowboy lifestyle of a REPO MAN. This shit is intense... and real as a heart attack. On May 6, 2018 at 11am, a neighbor surrounded and confronted me in my driveway in a surprise attack on me. This neighbor is a professional harassment MOB, consisting of hundreds of associates and family members on the western United States. The neighbor made a fake 9-1-1 call that day, and perjured himself to the officer, who fell, for the lies, and charged me with a Felony and a strike, DEATH THREAT. I have been under surveillance by this MOB since 2009 when I was laid off by the female partner of the repossession company. I was denied unemployment, but knew secrets of their dishonest business practices, which included CALOSHA, and NO BUSINESS LICENSE from the city. I made a few FREE ADS FOR A PARAKEET on Craigslist with MOB's phone number, a benign gag. Not until 2016, when an unknown individual ambushed me and the female I had met on POF in her driveway in Menifee, did I research who exactly broke in and burglarized my apartment in 2009 while I was in Ireland. PUBLIC RECORDS and a comprehensive personal report from a licensed PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR are everything I needed to solve this shit-show harassment. I have survive 50 cold winters, yah, 50 cold winters. Those winters always gave way to spring. Every time spring arrived I thanked GOD, always believing I may just expire on my 50th birthday. And, observing in absolute astonishment that society became a fighter culture. I still do not want to believe that the word LOVE can be frivolously riddled of the end of a Lovers tongue without any substantial honor or understanding of the definition. Reposessors use a tactic called the DATE SCAM to fix the location of delinquent vehicles, because they really gotta get that money for exploiting your bad luck and inability to pay for the security contract with the bank. Real scum bags. Like a Bail Bondsman. Enter the PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. or, GATORS, as I call them. Real low life mutherfuc&ers, that have never accomplished a single achievement that is noteworthy, unless drugs and guns distribution count. My mind was blown at the boldness of the neighbor as he stalked, harassed, mocked me, and use proximity of our front doors to enlist local law enforcement contact on a daily schedule until one of them finally decided his campaign was legit. The neighbor used a civil harassment restraining order in Lieu of an arrest, and he was relentless. Cops are not bad guys at all, and many individuals just need an external force with the green light to impose deadly force for their immature and often ignorant actions, to remain civil. I am not as crazy as others actually perceive the 12 foot tall people eating MACHINE-MAN from Huntington Beach to be. Maybe, half is a fair assessment, but I am definitely not GUILTY of any crimes. An associate who claims to be a 1% outlaw motorcycle stunt man, also pulled of a sinister betrayal of intimate information to revenge me in 2007 with the restraining order. The kangaroo courts in the Badlands of Egypt, Inland Empire, are a good old boys club, with secret files that consist of a lie at every level, when prosecuting a TARGET. There is NO defense by a Civilian against Police Academy trained tactics, that include planting evidence, storytelling, and burglary, trespassing. All under the guise of a SECRET, and as they walk the THIN BLUE LINE, the malicious outcome of the crime leaves absolutely no evidence. I've been a TARGET since I exited the cage in Tulsa, Oklahoma in October 1996, because Ken, my coach, said, " John. You have a great big target on your back now." I've been under investigation since 8th grade, because I would go home for lunch with my best friend, and bully, Steve. My Dad told me. I had no idea, and still hadn't grasped what it meant, until recently. I've only been to jail for fighting, something I have done for 50 years. It's not a crime if it's mutual self defense. I have had so many toxic relationships with females that lie to themselves and believe I am a submissive, just because I am being considerate of their feelings. Every single one of them has been awarded a restraining order against me, and yet, I have NEVER BEEN in violation of any COURT ORDERED document. I have the utmost respect for authorities. I'm gonna change my middle name to "COMPLY." Here is where it gets crazy. It's difficult to sink my teeth into what I'm gonna explain, because MORAL TURPITUDE is a term I only recently discovered because of my research. The full-time haters, used a SKIP TRACER, and, information from my bitter wife, 5 states away, to FIND me in Menifee, California. I was dating, and single, and ended up with Lisa, at her home part time. Unknowing to me, the last three, for sure, women I had been pole vaulting the cup at midnight with, were plants from CYBERDATING. TINDER, FACEBOOK, AND PLENTY OF FISH. My dildo ex UDT Navy buddy, and associate, finally convinced me to log on, and basically lay my fresh pink hairy ballsack on the chopping block, and my hands were in still in my pocket. Hell, the First Lady I met, and picked up, with in the first three hours, was an off duty undercover LAPD Detective. 5 foot tall, double D's, and a dick hunger at 2:30am, that constituted a lewd act in the car, at the Queen Mary parking lot. She said, "don't worry." As she pulled her badge out. Yah. I'm only giving you the information that is visible to MY naked eye. As an over abundance of bizarre happenings begin to occur around me, on an increasing frequency, I begin to believe society has lost their shit, and MMA has brain fucked you all into a more aggressive, illogical little bitchness. Occurring on the daily, I'm driving UBER, and having a blast, selling my books, and then a douschbag will pick a fight with me at the car wash, or on the freeway. You name it. Set up accidents. Pursuits. Wild stuff. I started a YouTube channel with the footage because I didn't know exactly how it could be so well orchestrated and connected. It was eventually terminated because these full time haters were analyzing it forensically. They must of been furious, when normally they would be stoked to see the,selves get away with a crime right under the nose of authority. I was using green screen to put objects into their orifices and, well, humiliated them. When I was a Reposessor, I was able to cut keys, and literally steal your car without a trace. Standard operating procedure as an agent, required me to contact the records department of the local police station, prior to that, in case the owner called 9-1-1. A heads up, so no one was shot and killed. I could have abused that, and used it to be a criminal, in retrospect of these malicious haters. The harassment was so intense, as I would enter AM/PM to buy a drink, the vibe was like electricity on my body, as a large group of strangers, turning their heads toward me in synchronicity, like Crows on a power line, or a pack of teenage boys, BIRD DOGGING chicks, was so obvious, yet, but even easier to RATIONALIZE away, until the frequency has reached over two hundred days of this. When I discovered that the U.S. Navy enrolls every cadet in a HACKING class, so they can know when they are being SURVEILLANCED, did I realize that, they found me alright, then attempted to rope me in, set me up, and FIX me with an arrest, or better, get to put a bullet in my head, claiming self defense from a lethal weapon, because the day the neighbor finally made contact with me, normally, I would have annihilated his ass for his aggressive and disrespectful behavior. I recognized right away that he was baiting me, as if he was the Mayor, or the Supervisor of the County, or an Ex Undercover specially trained narcotics Deputy, fired from LAPD for planting drugs on other TARGETS in the past. (I found only one documented case, spelling it all out in an appeal for RAUL RODRIQUEZ V THE PEOPLE in 2005) He was convicted of a third strike, because this master blaster god damn punk actor planted a meth pipe on the guy. Okay, maybe he wasn't an outstanding citizen. But, So, The Office of the Community Policing Services(COPS.GOV), a DOJ newsletter has given the green light for innovative policing strategies, that in essence, VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS of the individual, and, is the birth of a new phenomenon, " GANGSTALKING, OR GANG STALK, OR, ORGANIZED MOB HARASSMENT, to just list a few." It's an occurrence defined by targeted individuals, without the knowledge of how the authorities operate, and how the HENCHMEN, that operate in the grey, marionette the puppets, in SECRET. A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, different from a Detective, does not possess the power to arrest. He requires a police officer, an officer of the court, aka the MINCER, or, a KANGAROO COURT, to witness the violation as it occurs, or has been given probable cause to issue a citation. Oh man, because once they finally obtain the citation, a mountain side of steps follow that up with vengeance. I was able to survive this campaign, free and at large, because of my ability to adapt, change up my conduct, and literally disengage, in my mind I was "invisible." It worked until judge Moss dissolved my restraining order against the neighbor. The only thing protecting me on the daily. Then a landslide of violations for proximity, having my headlights on at 2am when I got back to Lisa's house, and then, I was cited for speeding three times in twelve months. I haven't had a ticket in over ten years before that. I didn't know at first he owned three residences on her her all of a sudden, with ultra high def cyber security cameras, with a direct cell phone link to the warrior at the skip trace office, and in the palm of his hand. I suspect he also employed a DDI utility app for $70. All you need is the number of the device and the GPS signal s, well, you know the accuracy of GPS these days. They had to be bugging Lisa's house. When Marie from Santa Monica, a TINDER BINDER booty call, lost her temper with me and screamed out, "it's a DATE SCAM, you idiot," did I recognized the affiliation to the US Navy Special Warfare Department, and that they were actually activating my cell phone, and eating popcorn in the break room, mocking the size of my Penis, (I don't know... seems humiliating), how ugly, and fat Lisa is,(morbidly obese, not ugly) and.... Shit! Okay, this asshole neighbor activated an empty-shelled llc, SPUNK SPIRIT LOVE FORCE, and used his home address. Three doors from Lisa. So, in conclusion, and without boring everyone with the details of how I discovered the connections to the perpetrators, who are elite, and very highly skilled, and proficient at FUCKERY, I will just say this, "Even when you believe that you are finished with your past, it does not necessarily mean that YOUR past is finished with you. And, as a martial artist, you must walk with honor to grow in character daily, to battle the inevitable decay of legacy with the March of time, that only makes you a burden to others, fueling RESENTMENT, in their pathetic perception of you. So, good luck with your lifestyle. I will not make it any of my business, but, everyone of you soul suckers I helped out for no money, and are talking to an INQUIRY behind my back, and not letting me know, and, to the individuals that are in LOVE, believing a lie will never surface, or, that my own narcissistic behavior will get me two more strikes and an "L" in prison before that time, well, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but, I know better than to beat the Wookie." Thank you for your time. John Lober