NYPD Arrest Man for Video Recording Cops during Traffic Stop, Claiming Phone Could have been Gun

by Carlos Miller

New York City police arrested a man for video recording them with an iPhone, using the laughable old lie that the phone could have been a gun, even going as far as claiming an NYPD cop had been shot by a kid with his phone.

Not only has there never been a single reported instance of a phone being used as a gun in the United States, the only evidence that it ever existed appears in a Youtube video out of Europe using a bulky, outdated phone large enough to contain four bullets.

Nevertheless, Will Paybarah ended up spending 13 hours in jail on charges of ?resisting arrest, obstruction of justice, and criminal mischief.

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Minor Cuts to Defense Budget Could Lead to War: Top US Military Official

Chris | InformationLiberation

With minor defense budget cuts scheduled to kick in next year, the Pentagon is going into fear-mongering overdrive to prevent such a scenario from taking place.

According to a top U.S. General, slight reductions to the Pentagon's defense budget will pretty much lead to WW3.

(Please ignore the chart to the right, as acknowledging the U.S.'s insanely bloated military budget only gives aid to our enemies.)

Via Fox News

The top U.S. military official suggested Wednesday that scheduled Pentagon budget cuts could lead to war.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before a Senate committee Wednesday alongside Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Both offered dire warnings about the potential impact of the automatic budget cuts, known as sequestration, which will go into effect starting next January unless Congress intervenes.

Dempsey said the cutbacks could lead to the cancellation of weapons systems and disrupt "global operations." In turn, he warned, the U.S. could lose global standing -- opening the door for enemies to test American military might.

"We can't yet say precisely how bad the damage would be, but it is clear that sequestration would risk hollowing out our force and reducing its military options available to the nation," Dempsey told the senators. "We would go from being unquestionably powerful everywhere to being less visibly globally and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries, and that would translate into a different deterrent calculus and potentially, therefore, increase the likelihood of conflict."

Panetta made a similar argument last year when he said the sweeping cuts could weaken the military substantially, and invite "aggression" abroad.

Yet so far, Congress has not averted the planned cuts, which were set in place after lawmakers failed to reach a broader deficit-reduction deal.

The Pentagon would face cuts of about $500 billion in projected spending over 10 years on top of the $492 billion that President Obama and congressional Republicans already agreed to in last summer's deficit-cutting budget.

Dempsey said the cuts would mean fewer troops, the possible cancellation of major weapons and the disruption of operations around the world.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, called the description "candid but frightening."

While these government parasites whine about how they couldn't handle even the slightest reduction in taxpayer loot, the public in the meantime lost conservatively 40% of their net worth in the time period between 2007 and 2010. That study does not accurately factor in the rising cost of living, so it's likely even worse. During that same time period, defense spending rose 23%.

Boy, they sure must be struggling!

The truth is if the military had less money we'd be infinitely less likely to face conflict, as the U.S. government would have less money to spend on killing random foreigners (in order to justify their huge budgets), we'd be less likely to face blowback from their foreign policy.

Of course, this is all a pipe dream as they're not actually going to reduce any spending, there is too many pigs at the trough for anyone to cut the gravy train off. That said, the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money. With the U.S. now completely bankrupt, a Greece-style collapse is just on the horizon.

I'm looking forward to it.

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The United States needs a massive military. Their armed forces are so badly disciplined that only by applying over-whelming fire-power can they hope to win (see Vietnam, Somalia).

It is a very sad state of affairs.

pigs at the trough. The problem is our pols can't let the other side appear stronger on defense. So the race to the end goes on and on and on and on and on and with borrowed money.

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U.N. could tax U.S.-based Web sites, leaked docs show

by Declan McCullagh and Larry Downes

The United Nations is considering a new Internet tax targeting the largest Web content providers, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Netflix, that could cripple their ability to reach users in developing nations.

The European proposal, offered for debate at a December meeting of a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, would amend an existing telecommunications treaty by imposing heavy costs on popular Web sites and their network providers for the privilege of serving non-U.S. users, according to newly leaked documents.

The documents (No. 1 No. 2) punctuate warnings that the Obama administration and Republican members of Congress raised last week about how secret negotiations at the ITU over an international communications treaty could result in a radical re-engineering of the Internet ecosystem and allow governments to monitor or restrict their citizens' online activities.

"It's extremely worrisome," Sally Shipman Wentworth, senior manager for public policy at the Internet Society, says about the proposed Internet taxes. "It could create an enormous amount of legal uncertainty and commercial uncertainty."

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Protectionism Could Lead To American Poverty

By Gary Gibson

To hear the latest batch of political salesmen tell it, China is a drug pusher in a schoolyard full of American schoolkids. The cheap goods the Chinese export market provides the American consumers may feel good, initially, but they are surely destroying America?causing manufacturers to shut down in the U.S. or relocate to China. Americans are, supposedly, trading jobs and long-term economic health to get their consumer goods at a great price.

The insidious method of this undercutting the competition? Underpricing of the currency. More accurately, however, the Chinese central bank is just matching the monetary inflation of the U.S. central bank. If China?s government underprices their currency, it?s only because they are trying to keep up with the U.S. government underpricing its currency.

Politicians are calling for China to knock it off. Or else. They want China to let their currency appreciate against the dollar, instead of losing value as quickly as the dollar.

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Ron Paul: US could target journalists for killing

By Philip Elliott

WASHINGTON?Republican presidential contender Ron Paul on Wednesday suggested that the United States could assassinate journalists the same way it targeted Americans with ties to al-Qaida.

The Texas congressman again criticized President Barack Obama for approving last week's drone strikes in Yemen against a U.S. citizen who was tracked and executed based on secret intelligence that linked him to two failed terrorist attacks against the U.S. An American-born propagandist also died in the bombing. Escalating his criticism, Paul told a National Press Club luncheon that if citizens do not protest the deaths, the country will start adding reporters to its list of threats that must be taken out.

"Can you imagine being put on a list because you're a threat? What's going to happen when they come to the media? What if the media becomes a threat? ... This is the way this works. It's incrementalism," Paul said.

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Fast And Furious: 22 Shocking Facts About The Scandal That Could Bring Down The Obama Administration

by Michael Snyder

Could Fast and Furious be the scandal that brings down the Obama administration?? With the full knowledge of the Department of Justice, ATF agents facilitated the sale of thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and dropped all surveillance of those weapons once they crossed the border.? Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been used to shoot U.S. border control agents.? Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been found at dozens of crime scenes in Mexico.? Nobody has been held accountable for this scandal yet.? U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been stonewalling all efforts by members of Congress to look into Fast and Furious.? A CBS reporter that has been aggressively investigating this story was recently screamed at and cussed at by a high ranking official that works in the White House.? It has become abundantly clear that the Obama administration desperately wants to hide what went on during Operation Fast and Furious.? So will they succeed or will we eventually find out the truth?

What you are about to read should shock the living daylights out of you.? The U.S. government purposely armed Mexican drug cartels with thousands of guns and then ordered agents not to follow the weapons across the border.

This should be a story that the mainstream media is pounding on every single day.

But they aren't.

In fact, they are mostly ignoring it.

However, if the truth starts getting out and the American people start grasping what really happened this thing could become absolutely huge.

In fact, this could end up being Obama's Watergate.

The following are 22 shocking facts about the scandal that could bring down the Obama administration....

#1 During Operation Fast and Furious, ATF agents purposely allowed thousands of guns to be sold to individuals that they believed would get them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

#2 ATF agents were specifically ordered not to intercept the guns before they crossed the border.? The following is a brief excerpt from a CBS News report that detailed the fierce objections that many ATF agents expressed when they were ordered to stand down....

On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn't want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF's watchful eye. "The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That's how many guns were sold - including some 50-calibers they let walk."

50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: "Negative. Stand down."

CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. "It got ugly..." said one. There was "screaming and yelling" says another. A third warned: "this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed."

#3 Operation Fast and Furious remained a secret until the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.? Two guns that were sold during Operation Fast and Furious were found at the scene of the murder.

#4 ATF Special Agent John Dodson was one of the first to blow the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious.? Dodson explained to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011 that many ATF agents were becoming extremely frustrated when they were ordered to cut off surveillance on the weapons that were being sold because they knew "that just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico."

#5 It appears that Operation Fast and Furious began some time around September 2009.? At that time, the ATF began pressuring gun shops near the border with Mexico to participate in a new covert operation that was being set up.? The gun store owners were told to help the ATF get guns into the hands of people that would take them back to the Mexican drug cartels.

The following description of the mechanics of Operation Fast and Furious comes from a recent Los Angeles Times article....

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

#6 In some gun stores, cameras were set up so that top ATF officials could actually watch these transactions take place.? Back in June, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa stated the following....

"Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and himself watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47 variants."

#7 It has also come out that in some cases ATF agents were actually the ones buying the guns and getting them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.? The following is how author Michael A. Walsh recently explained this in an article in the New York Post....

This just might be the smoking gun we've been waiting for to break the festering "Fast and Furious" gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that "Fast and Furious" was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney's office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

#8 According to the Los Angeles Times, guns that were purchased during Operation Fast and Furious have "turned up at dozens of additional Mexican crime scenes, with an unconfirmed toll of at least 150 people killed or wounded."

#9 Mexican authorities were never informed that thousands upon thousands of guns were being allowed into Mexico.

#10 Authorities in Mexico have asked the U.S. government over and over to explain what in the world happened during Operation Fast and Furious but they have not been given an adequate answer.? In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration has not even responded to questions from the attorney general of Mexico....

Marisela Morales, Mexico's attorney general and a longtime favorite of American law enforcement agents in Mexico, told The Times that she first learned about Fast and Furious from news reports. And to this day, she said, U.S. officials have not briefed her on the operation gone awry, nor have they apologized.

#11 U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been withholding key documents about Fast and Furious from Congress and has been consistently stonewalling U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley and other members of Congress that have attempted to look into this matter.

#12 The acting director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, had been cooperating with the investigation.? At the end of August he was suddenly transferred to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy.

#13 Several other key officials that were heavily involved in Operation Fast and Furious actually got promoted.

#14 On May 3rd, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified under oath in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious.? During that testimony, Holder made the following statement....

"I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

#15 Since that time, a large amount of evidence has come out that Holder was not telling the truth.? For example, a recent Fox News article discussed some of the very revealing memos about Fast and Furious that have been discovered recently....

However, newly discovered memos suggest otherwise. For instance, one memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center "beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010,"

#16 Holder now claims that he simply misunderstood the question.? He now says that he had heard of Operation Fast and Furious previously but that he was not aware of the specific details.

#17 Emails exchanged between two Department of Justice officials last October make it abundantly clear that high level officials at the DOJ were very aware of what was going on...

Two Justice Department officials mulled it over in an email exchange Oct. 18, 2010. "It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but is a significant set of prosecutions," says Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty replies "I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.' It may be more like, "Finally they're going after people who sent guns down there."

#18 House Republicans are now asking for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate whether or not U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress during his recent testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious.

#19 U.S. Representative Darrell Issa believes that those involved in the Fast and Furious gun trafficking operation may have violated international arms trafficking agreements and could potentially face very serious criminal charges.

#20 U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is absolutely convinced that a major coverup is going on....

"But I can tell you this. They're doing everything they can, in a fast and furious way, to cover up all the evidence or stonewalling us. But here's the issue, if he didn't perjure himself and didn't know about it, the best way that they can help us, Congressman Issa and me, is to just issue all the documents that we ask for and those documents will prove one way or the other right or wrong."

#21 Did Barack Obama ever know about Operation Fast and Furious?? He says that he did not authorize the program.? On March 22, 2011 Obama made the following statement....

"I did not authorize [Fast and Furious]. Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that's the case, then we'll find -- find out and we'll hold somebody accountable."

#22 CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson claimed on the Laura Ingraham show the other day that officials in the Obama administration were literally screaming and yelling at her for aggressively investigating the Fast and Furious scandal....

Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you?

Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House."

Where there is smoke there is usually fire.

Something about this whole thing really stinks.

It would be a shame if Operation Fast and Furious is allowed to be swept under the rug.

The weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious are going to be used to kill a lot of people.? The legacy of this scandal will be felt on both sides of the border for years to come.

The Mexican government deserves some answers.

The American people deserve some answers.

Hopefully we will get some.

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People Realizing New Anti-Streaming Criminal Copyright Bill Could Mean Jail Time For Lip Synchers

by Mike Masnick, Techdirt

We recently wrote about the horrible bill introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons to extend criminal copyright law to include "public performances" as being potentially criminal. As we explained at the time, current copyright law is split into civil and criminal parts, with most violations being civil in nature. But this new bill -- unfortunately recommended by White House Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel -- would extend the criminal provisions to include "public performances." Supporters claim that the lack of a "public performances" provision in criminal copyright law was a "loophole" or an oversight. But that's incorrect. There are good reasons why public performances aren't covered by criminal copyright law, in that it rarely makes sense to consider them criminal issues.

Yet, because the entertainment industry is freaking out about sites that embed and stream infringing content, and want law enforcement to put people in jail over it, rather than filing civil lawsuits, this move was made to extend criminal copyright law. However, the idea and the suggestion were done with very little thought towards what this really means in an internet age, when almost everything you do online could be considered "a public performance." We already pointed to one possibility: that people embedding YouTube videos could face five years in jail. Now, others are pointing out that it could also put kids who lip sync to popular songs, and post the resulting videos on YouTube, in jail as well.

Now, of course, all of the supporters of this bill insist that's just crazy talk. After all, this bill is not intended for that purpose at all. It's solely intended to go after "criminals" who are doing these things for profit:

The new law will not target ?individuals or families streaming movies at home,? said a statement from Klobuchar. She said the bill will instead target ?criminals that are intentionally streaming thousands of dollars in stolen digital content and profiting from it.?

That's nice to say, and I'm sure she means it. But this shows a massive misunderstanding of how the internet works. After all, plenty of people doing these kinds of videos may put some ads around them, and plenty of them get to be really, really big. And, as we've seen with ICE's domain seizures, they consider any use of advertising, even if it makes a pittance, to be "profiting from infringement." These days, everything has ads on it, and it's easy for anyone to sign up for a simple ad account and make a few bucks here and there for your activities online.

And that's the problem. While I'm sure no one supporting this bill thinks it'll be used in this manner, and I'm sure law enforcement has no interest or intention to go after lip-syncing teens, we've all seen how laws like this get stretched and used to bring people up on charges, when no other law applies. Remember the Lori Drew case? That involved the feds stretching a "computer hacking" law to claim she "hacked" MySpace by creating a fake account on the service, allowing them to charge her with a felony. Similarly, we've seen officials charge people with wiretapping for merely wearing a helmet cam while riding a motorcycle.

The point is that when law enforcement wants to charge someone with a felony where there's no obvious match, they'll often stretch laws like this to find something they can use. And this extension of criminal copyright law to include a "public performance" seems ripe for misuse. If Klobuchar and the others are serious about this, they should go back to the drawing board and rewrite the bill so it's not nearly so broad and won't open up so many potential unintended consequences.

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The new Tenn. anti-terrorism bill has a smiler problem. The bill is worded so PC, it can be used against any group they want, Teapartiers, Ron Paul supporters, anyone who disagrees with official policy. It amazes me how quickly they give up liberty for (false) security. The power you give to those you like in government, can also be used by those you fear in government. If your child is a teapartier (called terrorist by HS), feeding them could land you in jail. Donating to Ron Paul, the Libertarian party, Pro life, (just using Homeland Security watch list), Anti-war, NRA, etc, could make you a criminal. Freedom is asleep in Tenn.

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