Inmate who was stabbed was left to die in prison yard by correctional officers, lawsuit says – CNN
sigh……
Mueller Exposes Erik Prince’s Lies About His Seychelles Rendezvous with Top Russian Kirill Dmitriev
Erik Prince, the Trumpworld associate and founder of the private military firm Blackwater, told Congress all sorts of things about his rendezvous with a powerful Moscow financial titan.
Many of those things weren’t true, Special Counsel Robert Mueller confirmed in his report, released on Thursday.
…Prince was interviewed by the Special Counsel under a proffer agreement, according to the Mueller report. The terms of that agreement have not been made public. But during a recent interview with Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hassan—an interview in which Prince did a fair amount of fibbing—he said that he was not worried about possible punitive action from the special counsel’s office. Lawmakers have previously asserted that they believed Prince lied to them during his testimony and have discussed the possibility of bringing Prince back in for questioning.
..There were two separate meetings in the Seychelles (though Prince said there was only one). The initial meeting lasted about 45 minutes, according to the report. And although Prince told lawmakers that the talks were mostly about minerals, oil, and gas, at least one of those conversations included an extensive discussion about U.S.-Russia relations.
…Mueller’s description of Dmitriev and his interaction with Trumpworld paints the clearest picture to date of how members of the Russian government—beyond Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak’s conversations with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn—attempted to gain inroads with the Trump administration.
…“Dmitriev reported directly to Putin and frequently referred to Putin as his ’boss,’ ” the report said.
…It is unclear if Dmitriev or his fund are still in intimate contact with the administration. The RDIF is currently subject to sectoral sanctions by the U.S. Treasury. Since his Seychelles meeting, Prince has spent time peddling a plan for the war in Afghanistan to Trump administration officials. There’s no evidence to suggest that plan has moved forward.
Mueller Exposes Erik Prince’s Lies About His Seychelles Rendezvous with Top Russian Kirill Dmitriev
hmmm
2020: The logic of Bernie Sanders’s continuing war against Clintonworld
“They all know each other; they all make sure each other is being taken care of financially,” Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said. “We use the word establishment because people can grasp what it is. It’s not the establishment versus non-establishment. It’s everyone in the Beltway and everyone not in the Beltway.”
…There are clear ideological divides between Sanders and Clintonworld. Take health care policy: CAP proposes Medicare Extra For All, which, despite having a similar name to Sanders’s Medicare for All, firmly rejects abolishing private insurance. Instead, it proposes a Medicare-based public option. And Sanders’s health care policy team and CAP’s health care policy team do not get along.
The same goes for trade, where the Sanders ethos is much more restrictionist, and on foreign policy, where it is more anti-interventionist.
…Sanders’s rallying cry is that together, the American people will take on pharmaceutical companies, big banks, political party bosses, and despotic world leaders. But for Sanders, the “them” in his “us against them” rhetoric used to be a lot bigger than it is today. He’s less of an outsider in the halls of Congress than he was even three years ago.
2020: The logic of Bernie Sanders’s continuing war against Clintonworld – Vox
hmmm
We’re Emptying the Oceans of Fish and Filling Them With Plastic
By 2050, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight.
…32 percent of all plastics we produce escape any collection system—finding their way into rivers, lakes, and the ocean—while only 14 percent of plastic is collected for recycling even once.
We’re Emptying the Oceans of Fish and Filling Them With Plastic
Sigh…
Civil asset forfeiture has quietly expanded across Pa., led by Berks County
When forfeiture is used as a cash cow, everything can look like drug money. Everything can look like a prize.
And as other counties have scaled up the practice — as Daisilee Cruz’s case and others uncovered through our investigation show — seemingly innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire.
…“As long as forfeiture money is being used to self-fund law enforcement agencies, there is always going to be an abuse of forfeiture practices,” said Darpana Sheth with the Washington-based Institute of Justice, which has been litigating civil asset forfeiture cases for years.
“Law enforcement has a direct financial incentive to not only seize property but pursue forfeiture even when there is a very tangential relationship to criminal activity,” she said.
…Investigators didn’t find any drugs in their sweep, but they did find something else — $3,000 that Smith says she had just cashed from a tax refund. It was days away from her son’s senior prom, and she had hoped to use the money to pay for his suit and rent a limousine.
But, to investigators, the stack of cash was probable drug money.
“They were like, ‘Well, I need to prove it’s not illegal gains,’ and I said, ‘Well, you’re not proving that it is illegal gains. You’re not proving that,’” Smith recalled saying to police, at the time. “I was really, really angry that they took my money.”
…A review of several months of court filings from 2018 shows that small amounts of cash are routinely taken from people never charged with crimes.
…Adams conceded that cases like these do occur, but referred to the money as “abandoned property,” because the individuals didn’t show up to court hearings to contest the takings.
…Police confiscated a piggy bank containing about $98 of birthday money belonging to a suspect drug dealer’s youngest daughter. Neither the target nor the daughter were ever charged with criminal wrongdoing. Still, the process of getting the piggy bank back was arduous.
“It took us over a year to get that $98 back,” he said.
Civil asset forfeiture has quietly expanded across Pa., led by Berks County
sigh…
U.K. Construction Finds Neolithic Skeletons in Oxfordshire
Why do people go straight for explanations like human sacrifice? With, as far as the peanut gallery can tell, literally nothing to back that fantasy up? It’s just stupid.
Charlotte NC police release Danquirs Franklin shooting video
The male officer shouts to Franklin: “Sir, put the gun down.” Kerl yells, “Put the gun down!”
The last command Kerl yells before firing is, “Put it on the ground!”
Franklin reached his right hand toward a pocket and pulled out a gun by the barrel. He appeared to be lowering the weapon when Kerl fired two shots, the video shows.
Moments after being shot, Franklin turns his face toward the officers and can be heard saying: “You told me to…”
The video cuts off seconds later, after he slumps over.
…“There is no way” the shooting was justified, she said. “He was sitting there in the most non-threatening way possible. His two choices were get killed for complying with them or get killed for not complying. He was going to get killed no matter what.”
…“In hindsight, the officers probably could have said, ‘Put your hands up. Don’t move. Don’t reach toward the gun. And if you move toward your gun, we’ll shoot you.’ ”
Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, said he believes the video “raises some serious questions about the officers’ tactics.
“In this case, one of the officers was standing less than a car-length away from an armed subject with nothing but air between them for more than 30 seconds,” he wrote in an email to the Observer. “If, for example, the officers had taken positions of relative safety, they might have been more comfortable waiting to see if Mr. Franklin was going to put the gun on the ground the way that they had commanded him to, rather than shooting him at the moment they did.”
Charlotte NC police release Danquirs Franklin shooting video | Rock Hill Herald
Fuck, “objectively reasonable” excuses.
If an officer cannot keep their head under stress and make split second assessments (like, is he putting the gun down?) and then act on them (like, maybe I shouldn’t shoot him because he is not a threat and it would be murder to do so) then they have no business in that line of work. Period. It’s too dangerous for them and everyone around them.
Alan Garcia, former Peru president, dies from self-inflicted gunshot wound – CNN
Former Peruvian president Alan Garcia died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head as police were preparing to arrest him on Wednesday morning.
…Garcia, who served as president from 1985 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2011, was under investigation for money laundering and taking bribes in connection with a massive corruption scandal that has engulfed a number of former Latin American leaders.
….Garcia was accused of receiving kickbacks from one of Latin America’s largest construction firms — the Brazil-based company Odebrecht — during the building of an electric train for the Lima metro while he was president during his second term. He has denied the claims.
Alan Garcia, former Peru president, dies from self-inflicted gunshot wound – CNN
hmmm
Attorney general’s ruling expands indefinite detention for asylum seekers
Attorney general’s ruling expands indefinite detention for asylum seekers – AOL News
Because, Fuck your tired, poor, huddles masses yearning to breathe free…
Mueller report reveals Sarah Sanders lied for Trump
Page 284 of the Mueller report reads: “In the afternoon of May 10, 2017, deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders spoke to the President about his decision to fire Comey and then spoke to reporters in a televised press conference…Sanders said, ‘Look, we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things’…Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from ‘countless members of the FBI’ was a ‘slip of the tongue.’ She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made ‘in the heat of the moment’ that was not founded on anything.”
…In other words, the chief spokesperson for the president of the United States admitted to Mueller’s team that she had invented interactions with members of the FBI to validate her boss’s decision to terminate James Comey. In the process, she knowingly advanced a narrative designed to undermine the credibility of the person who had been running the nation’s premier law enforcement investigative organization.
…Sanders isn’t the White House press secretary as much as she is America’s main minister of propaganda. Make no mistake about it, Sanders isn’t a “complicit” bystander to the “porn star presidency,”she is a partner in it.
Mueller report reveals Sarah Sanders lied for Trump. It’s time for her to resign.
The woman lies like a rug. Not sure why this is news to anyone.
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