Conspiracy News Now

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Maryland Cop Caught On Video Hitting Handcuffed Man

By David Edwards

A police officer in Laurel, Maryland is under investigation after a witness came forward with video of him repeatedly striking a handcuffed man in the head.

Craig Reddix provided NBC Washington with video he shot outside the Laurel Station Bar and Grill, where police were responding to reports of a fight on Sunday.

The video shows two white officers escorting a handcuffed African-American man. One officer can be seen holding the suspect?s arms while the other strikes his head at least three times. It?s wasn?t clear from the video if the officer stuck the man with an open or closed hand.

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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Rand Paul Tries to Get Journalist Fired and Arrested

by Michael Suede

An RT reporter was threatened by capitol police and the Senate Relations Committee after asking Rand Paul about his endorsement of Mitt Romney. ?The police threatened to remove all of RT?s press passes for all of their reporters and arrest the journalist in question.

Luke Rudkowski talks with Abby Martin of MediaRoots.org and RT about U.S. Senator Rand Paul's attempt to get her arrested and stripped of her press credentials for asking him tough questions in the Capitol building. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtO5INu-VY4

A week after our video with Abby Martin came out on YouTube, the RT office, where Abby works, got an ominous phone call from the Senate Media Relations Committee. The Committee was acting on behalf of Rand Paul and threatened both Abby and the entire RT news organization. The threats included ambiguous "charges" for violating the rules of the Committee floor, Abby's possible arrest and the termination of her and the entire office's press credentials.

After a month of meetings and deliberation, the Senate Media Relations office backed down and did not make good on any of their threats.

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But .. Isn't Rand Paul your Libertarian Hero ??? Luke Rudkowski from We Are Change is Great!
His videos on the YouTubes are fantastic.
The Carlie Rose/Bildeberger chase down is a classic.

P.S.
Abby Martin is really easy on the eyes!

@Peter, since when was Rand Paul supposedly a Libertarian? Besides, even if he was, what's up with this very telling story? Shouldn't the truth be known, no matter what false paradigm some politician falls under?

View the original article here

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Bill O'Reilly Says Not Enough Jailed Over Drugs

Chris | InformationLiberation

The U.S. having the highest prison population in the world is not enough for Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. He says we're not jailing people enough, we need longer prison sentences and mandatory minimums for anyone caught dealing drugs.

Watch:

Be sure to note the hilarious part where Bill says "lets take this out of the 'theoretical realm,'" then proceeds to concoct the most ridiculous theoretical argument possible, gets called on it, then yells at his guest for pointing out his mistake.

Latest Politics/Corruption
- Neocon Attack Ad Says Ron Paul Supports Slavery, Segregation, Discrimination, And Yes, Adolf Hitler
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View the original article here

Monday, September 3, 2012

Now They're Trying to Ban... Kratom?

by Phillip Smith

The prohibitionist impulse is strong. When confronted with a newly encountered psychoactive substance, there are always special pleaders to sound the alarm and politicians willing to reflexively resort to the power of the ban. Whether it is something with serious potential dangers, like the "bath salts" drugs, or something much more innocuous, like khat, the mild stimulant from the Horn of Africa, doesn't seem to matter; the prohibitionist impulse is strong.

Kratom is a substance that falls on the more innocuous side of the psychoactive spectrum. It is the leaves of the kratom tree, mitragyna speciosa, which is native to Thailand and Indonesia, where the leaves have been chewed or brewed into a tea and used for therapeutic and social purposes for years. According to the online repository of psychoactive knowledge, the Vaults of Erowid, kratom acts as both a mild stimulant and a mild sedative, creates feelings of empathy and euphoria, is useful for labor, and is relatively short-acting.

Of course, any psychoactive substance has its good and its bad sides, but kratom's downside doesn't seem very severe. Erowid lists its negatives as including a bitter taste, dizziness and nausea at higher doses, mild depression coming down, feeling hot and sweaty, and hangovers similar to alcohol. There is no mention of potential for addiction, and while fatal overdoses are theoretically possible, especially with its methanol and alkaloid extracts, in the real world, ODing on kratom doesn't appear to be an issue. No fatal overdoses are known to have actually occurred.

On the other hand, some of kratom's alkaloids bind to opioid receptors in the brain, making it an opioid agonist, and it is now being sold in the West and used to treat pain, depression, anxiety, and opiate withdrawal. Sold in smoke shops, herbal supplement emporia, and on the Internet, it is now apparently being lumped in with synthetic cannabinoids and the "bath salts" drugs by treatment professionals, law enforcement, and others who make a habit of searching for scary new drugs.

Kratom is not listed as a banned substance in the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs or its successor treaty, and has been banned in only a handful of countries, most ironically in Thailand itself. It was banned there in 1943, when then Thai government was taxing the opium trade and opium users were switching to kratom to aid in withdrawals and as a substitute.

Arrests for kratom possession have jumped in recent years, from more than 1,200 in 2005 to more than 7,000 in 2009, even though the Thai Office of the Narcotics Control Board recommended to the Justice Department in 2010 that it be decriminalized because of the lack of any perceivable social harms.

In the US, the DEA added kratom to its list of drugs of concern in 2010, although that doesn't mean that a federal ban is necessarily imminent. Salvia divinorum, for example, has been a drug of concern for more than a decade now, with no action taken. But while the feds haven't acted, there were efforts to ban kratom in several states in the US this year, although only Indiana actually succeeding in outlawing it. In Louisiana, age restrictions were placed on its purchase.

The experience of Iowa, where legislation to ban kratom is still pending, is illustrative of how bans are created. The Iowa effort happened after state Rep. Clel Baudler (R) heard about kratom on a radio program. Within two hours, he was moving to ban it.

"Kratom is a hallucinogen, addictive, and can be life threatening," he said at the time, in complete contradiction of all that is actually known about kratom.

It's not just states that are considering bans on kratom. Pinellas County, Florida, was about to enact one this week, but the prohibitionist bandwagon hit a bump in the road in the form of perennial drug war gadfly Randy Heine, owner of Rockin' Cards and Gifts in Pinellas Park, who told the Chronicle he had been selling kratom in his store since 1981.

Seeing what was coming down the pike, Heine alerted the Kratom Association, a group of users, producers, and vendors dedicated to keeping kratom legal, who flooded county commissioners with emails. He also addressed the commission itself.

"I have been selling kratom for over 30 years out of my store on Park Blvd. I challenge anyone to find any problem originating from my store selling kratom," he wrote in a letter made available to the Chronicle. "Do not lump in synthetic chemicals with an organic plant material. This is like comparing apples to oranges. I would like to see kratom be sold only to persons over the age of 18, similar to the proposal being made in our sister state of Louisiana."

In the conservative county, Heine also appealed to the ghost of Ronald Reagan in his letter to commissioners. What riles up the Reagan in him, Heine wrote, is "growing the bureaucracy by creating another board to regulate what I and others do in privacy of our own homes."

"I got letters back from two of the commissioners," said Heine. "They read my Ronald Reagan letter out loud, and one of the GOP commissioners thanked me for sharing my thoughts. The commission has now deferred this item so we can take a closer look at the issues involved."

Many of his kratom customers are using it as an opiate substitute, he said.

"We have a drug rehab place here, and my feeling is that a lot of their clients are purchasing kratom instead of methadone. It's competition; I'm taking away money," he said. "Some of my customers say methadone is worse than heroin and keeps you addicted. Kratom weans them off heroin. A lot of them say they just do less and less kratom until the craving stops. I have a couple of senior women who say they're tired of taking prescription pills, that they make them nutty, and kratom works for them."

Chronicle readers may recall that Pinellas County is where a drug reform-minded upstart Democratic candidate for sheriff is taking on either the scandal-plagued Republican incumbent sheriff or his challenger and predecessor, former Sheriff Everett Rice (the GOP primary is next week), whose supporters on the council were pushing the kratom ban. That Democrat, Scott Swope, is so good on drug policy that his candidacy persuaded Heine to drop his own bid for the sheriff's office.

"This looks like another unconstitutional intrusion into the lives of Pinellas citizens who aren't harming anyone," Swope said. "I've researched kratom and although there doesn't seem to be as much research available as cannabis, it appears to me to be a plant product that should not be banned. I think the purchase or possession of any of these things (cannabis, kratom, bath salts) by minors should not be allowed. Adults, however, should be free to do what they want as long as they aren't harming anyone else."

While Heine is currently bedeviled by the effort to ban kratom, as well as an associated effort to force smoke shops to put large signs on their doors saying they sell drug paraphernalia, the Swope candidacy has him hoping for better times ahead.

"Swope can win," he exulted. "We finally have a candidate who is talking about marijuana. Even the Republican candidates are now saying they wouldn't bust people for marijuana. When I was still a candidate, I went to many forums to talk about pot, and the media started asking these guys about it. Scott won't arrest people for personal use."

Whether it's relatively unknown substances like kratom or now familiar substances like marijuana, the battle lines are drawn in what is ultimately a culture war. On one hand, the forces of fear and authoritarianism; on the other, the forces of free inquiry and personal liberty. It's been a long war, and it isn't going to end anytime soon, but perhaps now there are hints that the correlation of forces is changing.

Stopping unnecessary prohibitions before they get started is part of the struggle; undoing entrenched prohibitions with powerful interests behind them is another part of the struggle, but even though the substances are different, it's the same struggle.

View the original article here

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia (Another Smashing Success Of U.S. Interventionism)

Chris | InformationLiberation

"The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia" is a pretty insane film by VICE. It's a journey through war-torn Liberia, showing the extreme poverty the people suffer under in this one time proxy colonialist U.S. state.

All I could think watching this documentary is look at how the U.S. government "helped" these people. Of course, the same goes for the U.N. who are portrayed somewhat as good guys in this film, as the U.N. is pretty much just another U.S. proxy. It's amazing to witness the destructive effects of the U.N./U.S.'s welfare, everyone in this film is begging for handouts, they have the capacity for seemingly zero capital accumulation and they all think the government or the U.N. "needs to help them." Drugs are illegal in Liberia, yet they're everywhere and children are smoking heroin in plain sight. If you take one boy in this film's account for it, he paid for his heroin by robbing a pregnant woman, whom he also raped. The place is a socialist hell hole, yet it's not a "failed state," it's the state in all it's glory, they modeled their government off the U.S. and our constitution, a lot of good that did them!

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I hope the best for this place. I wonder what it would be like if no European ever set foot in Africa. Probably a let fewer animals would be on the endangerd list, and it would be a HELL of a lot cleaner. All Europe ever did after Rome, is mess up everything it touched. How is Liberia socialist in any way? Come on man.

View the original article here

Saturday, September 1, 2012

FBI: Constitution Stands In Way of Government Thwarting "Extremist"* Groups

Kurt Nimmo

According to Homeland Security News Wire, the federal government considers "extremist domestic organizations" as dangerous, if not more so, than foreign terrorist organizations. The FBI and federal law enforcement are stymied in detecting these groups by the First Amendment and political opposition "suspicious of the government's motives," the website reports.

The portrayal of military veteran and suspected Sikh temple shooter Wade Michael Page as a white supremacist has given new credence to the Department of Homeland Security?s debunked report on "rightwing extremism." The 2009 report, initiated during the Bush regime, characterizes returning veterans as fodder for hate groups supposedly below the government?s radar.

"What is clear from the FBI surveillance and analysis of extremist groups in the United States, surveillance which intensified after 9/11, is that the U.S. government has considered neo-Nazi and white supremacists as genuine threats for many years," the Homeland Security News Wire reports. Declassified FBI documents released through FOIA requests show that the government considers "these groups as threats for decades -- so long in fact, that it has been lost on many that white supremacists, in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, pioneered modern homegrown terrorism."

Left unmentioned is the well documented fact the FBI has established and run many of these racist organizations. On August 6, we posted a story detailing the connections between the FBI (and the Southern Poverty Law Center) and a number of white supremacist groups. During the trial of Hal Turner, supposedly a noted racist, it was revealed he worked for the government and was regarded as a "National Security Intelligence" asset.

The FBI has controlled racist and white supremacist groups since the 1960s. Under COINTELPRO, the FBI "subsidized, armed, directed and protected the Ku Klux Klan and other right-wing groups," Brian Glick writes. Racist groups were used to create a strategy of tension by attacking groups on the so-called left, including anti-war, Chicano and Puerto Rican activists and nationalists.

Reuters quotes government officialdom as stating that federal law enforcement is unable to effectively deal with "lone wolf" shooters like Wade Michael Page because the First Amendment stands in the way. ?We can?t launch investigations based on free speech,? a federal law enforcement official told Reuters. If federal investigators did investigate an individual for merely expressing "extremist views" (anti-government views), the official said, ?they could get into trouble.?

In February, the FBI described "anti-government extremists" as groups and individuals opposed to taxes and oppressive government regulations. The FBI specifically concentrated on so-called "sovereign citizens" who are said to pose a threat to local law enforcement.

Reuters notes that European governments have criminalized political speech. In contrast to constitutional protections afforded to individuals and groups in the United States,

laws in some European nations proscribe and even criminalize various forms of ?hate speech.? German law bans ?incitement of popular hatred.?
In Britain, the former captain of England?s national soccer team was recently put on trial for allegedly hurling a racist taunt at a rival player. He was subsequently acquitted.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson admitted that the First Amendment stands in the way of criminalizing political speech deemed extremist by the government.

?No matter how offensive to some, we are keenly aware that expressing views by itself is not a crime and the protections afforded under the Constitution cannot be compromised,? he told Reuters.

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View the original article here

FBI's Facial Recognition is Coming to a State Near You

BY JENNIFER LYNCH

Recently-released documents show that the FBI has been working since late 2011 with four states--Michigan, Hawaii, Maryland, and possibly Oregon--to ramp up the Next Generation Identification (NGI) Facial Recognition Program. When the program is fully deployed in 2014, the FBI expects its facial recognition database will contain at least 12 million "searchable frontal photos." (p. 6)

The documents, which the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) obtained from a recent meeting of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board,? shed new light on the FBI's plans for NGI--the Bureau's massive biometrics database that combines fingerprints, iris scans, palm prints, facial recognition and extensive biographical data collected from over 100 million Americans.

The Advisory Board documents show that FBI's database of facial images will provide search results automatically (the system won't need to rely on a human to check the results before forwarding them to the state or local agency) and that the FBI is developing "Universal Face Workstation software" to allow states that don't have their own "Face/Photo search capabilities"? to search through the FBI's images.

After we read through the Advisory Board documents, we quickly sent Open Records requests to several of the states involved in the pilot program. The documents we received from Maryland and Hawaii further flesh out the story. For example, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Hawaii and the FBI shows that the government is building NGI to "permit photo submissions independent of arrests." This is a problem because, the FBI has stated it wants to use its facial recognition system to "identify[] subjects in public datasets" and "conduct[] automated surveillance at lookout locations" (p.5). This suggests the FBI wants to be able to search and identify people in photos of crowds and in pictures posted on social media sites--even if the people in those photos haven't been arrested for or even suspected of a crime. The FBI may also want to incorporate those crowd or social media photos into its face recognition database.

And an MOU between Maryland and the FBI will allow Maryland to submit photos in bulk to the database--something that Maryland described in an email as a "photo data dump." This kind of an agreement could be used in the future to incorporate the same kind of facial identifying information already collected by 32 of 50 state DMVs solely to prevent fraud and identity theft.

The Advisory Board documents contain other concerning information. For example, one document discusses the FBI's plans to combine civil and criminal biometrics records by giving them a single searchable "master name" or unique identifying number. As we've noted, criminal and civil records have always been kept separate in the past. While this may be a function of the differences in how each type of print is collected and stored, it has effectively meant that civil prints--collected for employment verification, for background checks, for federal jobs, and even to become a lawyer in California--have not been automatically searched every time criminal prints are checked against the database. That will all change once FBI implements its unique identity system. Although FBI states that "the criminal and civil files will remain logically separated...[to] ensure that retained civil submissions remain untainted by criminal submissions" it's hard to see how this is functionally true, given that civil files will be searched at the same time as criminal files.

Another document discusses the federal government's extensive biometrics sharing relationships with other countries. It notes that the FBI's Global Initiatives Unit has already collected over 990,000 records from foreign partners, with over 600,000 of those coming from Afghanistan. The FBI already has information sharing relationships with 77 countries, (p.2), but CJIS is now trying to partner with "Visa Waiver Program countries" like Ireland, Spain and Australia to allow automatic access to each other's biometric databases on a "hit/no hit basis." This kind of access has already been set up to connect the German and US biometric databases.

And finally, as NDLON has discussed in greater detail, the documents show just how far the FBI and DHS partnership has progressed to maximize datasharing as part of the Secure Communities program. For example, NDLON notes that FBI has mobile devices that permit searches of the entire IDENT database in the field. These mobile devices may subject individuals to immigration background checks without ever being arrested or booked.

The FBI has not updated the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for its photo database since 2008--well before signing MOUs with the states to share face recognition data and before the development and deployment of NGI's facial recognition capabilities. As EFF recently testified during a Senate Subcommittee hearing on facial recognition, Americans should be very concerned about the government's plans to build up its facial recognition capabilities:

Facial recognition takes the risks inherent in other biometrics to a new level...[it] allows for covert, remote, and mass capture and identification of images, and the photos that may end up in a database include not just a person's face but also what she is wearing, what she might be carrying, and who she is associated with.

Without an updated PIA, it is impossible to tell exactly how the FBI plans to acquire and use facial recognition data now and in the future. However, given the information in these new documents and the FBI's broad goals for face recognition data, the time is right for laws that limit face recognition data collection.

To see all the documents, go to our landing page for NGI and click on "Documents" in the middle toolbar.

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Total enslavement with a touch of glamour for the cattle! "and so with gods and men the sheep remain inside their pen, so many times they've seen the way to leave"

-Peter Gabriel

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