Wednesday, April 19, 2017

I have a real thing about false charges and degree of crime.

I don't make this analogy because of their common first name. I make this analogy because I think police work in the USA is a horror and the prosecutors just as bad.

March 30, 2014
By Marcella Bombardier

...“There is some speculation (click here) that this might have been an MIT student experimenting with a robot,” one MIT employee noted in an e-mail after a second breach by Swartz was discovered. But another pointed out that “sinister foreigners’’ may have stolen credentials or compromised a computer.

MIT’s efforts to track down Swartz, while under intense pressure from JSTOR, the not-for-profit that ran the journal database, eventually would lead to felony computer crimes charges that might have brought years in jail. Swartz, 26, was under indictment when he committed suicide in January 2013.

Critics, both on campus and around the world, have accused MIT of abandoning its values celebrating inventive risk-taking by helping to doom a young man whose project — likely an act of civil disobedience to make information freely available — didn’t in the end cause serious harm....

Why is it over bearing applications of the law does not result in prosecution of those that apply it?

Suicides occur because of complete helplessness in the face of the future. The first step to ending deaths of those facing prosecution and those occurring while in custody begins with responsible applications of the law and not viciousness to protect the image of enormous institutions, such as the NFL and MIT.
For the third consecutive year, (click here) the number of inmates who died while in custody of local jails or state prisons increased. A total of 4,446 inmates died in 2003, an increase of 131 deaths since 2012. The number of deaths in local jails and prison decreased an annual average of 2 percent between 2008 and 2010.

By Margaret Noonan, BJS Statistician, Harley Rohloff and Scott Ginder, RTI International

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Bureau of Justice Statistics

9 July 2013
By James Nye

...Police (click here) have said they still do not have a motive for the murder of Lloyd.

The Boston Globe reported last month that Lloyd was believed to have known about Hernandez's alleged involvement in the 2012 double murder of Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado and Hernandez reportedly killed Lloyd to keep him quiet....

I didn't look at Aaron Hernandez criminal file so I don't know everything that went into his sentencing. But, first time murderers aren't usually life sentences unless there are heinous circumstances. I am not advocating allowing dangerous people roam free, but, this seems like mental cruelty in a way that should never be tolerated. I think the entire circumstances surrounding Aaron Hernandez conviction and death needs to be investigated. There is something wrong with the way this all ended. I think Aaron left us all a message.

Considering the escalating deaths in our jails and prisons, there needs to be hearings to determine the reasons AND something be done about it. If there was improvement during the years 2008 and 2010, what were we doing right? Was there a change in funding?


April 14, 2017
By Chris Villani and Laurel J. Sweet

In this still image from video, Aaron Hernandez, center, is hugged by defense attorney Ronald Sullivan Friday, April 14, 2017, in court in Boston, after being found not guilty of murder in the 2012 shootings of two men in a drive-by shooting in Boston


Former New England Patriots (click here) tight end Aaron Hernandez cried today as a jury returned a stunning verdict clearing him of two murder charges in a 2012 drive-by shooting in the South End.

Hernandez, who is already serving a life sentence for a murder he committed in 2013, was found not guilty of all charges, except for unlawfully carrying a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. He was sentenced to 4 to 5 years in prison for that offense. 

"The jury spoke with one voice and we are delighted," said defense attorney Ron Sullivan, who called his client a "happy-go-lucky young man" who was wrongly accused....

Democracy Lost!

April 18, 2017
By Richard Gonzales

A young man (click here) brought to this country by his parents and granted protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is back in his native Mexico after being deported by U.S. officials in February, according to the National Immigration Law Center.

The center has released a statement saying Juan Manuel Montes  is suing the U.S. government for documents explaining why he was deported. "Juan Manuel was funneled across the border without so much as a piece of paper to explain why or how," said attorney Nora A. Preciado.

Montes, 23, is believed to be the first DACA recipient to be deported despite suggestions by President Trump that he would show compassion to the so-called DREAMers and had backed away from campaign promises to end the program initiated under President Barack Obama.

Established in 2012, DACA covers some 750,000 young people brought to the U.S. as children. It grants them renewable two-year periods to stay, during which time they can study and work if they keep out of trouble....

...Montes said he had left his California identification card and his employment authorization document in a friend's car. Unable to verify that he was covered by DACA, Montes was detained, questioned and asked to sign certain documents. Within three hours he was escorted to the border and left in Mexicali, Mexico....

What's the hurry?

The government is not only oppressive, but, completely remiss in providing the information any person is entitled to about their legal status in the USA.

This isn't one of Trump's "dangerous illegal immigrants."

April 18, 2017
Alan Gomez and David Agren

...A group of attorneys (click here) filed a lawsuit in federal court in California on Tuesday requesting that a judge force Customs and Border Protection to release details of the agent's encounter with Montes.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, part of Montes' legal team, said it has requested information for months but has gotten no response.

"Even in this administration, because of Trump's comments about loving these people, the integrity of the government's promises are at stake," Hincapié said. "How does an immigrant family today know that this is not going to happen to them?"...

If the Undocumented are to be protected, those that commit crime without a conscience need to be identified, arrested and either tried or deported. Not every undocumented is a criminal and that needs to be realized to protect them. 

Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. (click here) All across the country, Americans are having their lives forever changed by criminal aliens. 

For more than 35 years,(click here) FAIR has been leading the call for immigration reform by offering and advocating solutions that help reduce the harmful impact of uncontrolled immigration on national security, jobs, education, health care, and our environment.

Mr. Trump's congratulation is premature.

The ? new ? constitution for Turkey moves the majority of power to the President. The legislature is subject to the President's review.

The idea the constitution can be changed by a mere majority is not conducive to legitimacy.


In order to congratulate such a drastic change in a country's constitution is to know and understand and consent to all it intends. I sincerely don't believe Mr. Trump understands what occurred here.


April 19, 2017
Rachael Revesz

Official cited inadequate legal framework and late changes in ballot counting (click here)

The referendum in Turkey did not live up to standards set by the Council of Europe, according to a representative from the European human rights organisation’s observer mission.

Officials pointed to an inadequate legal framework and last-minute changes in counting the ballots, as well as a "skewed pre-vote campaign" in favour of the "yes" vote and intimidation of the opposition.

The remark followed 51.4 per cent of Turks voting in favour of changing their constitution and granting President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers, including re-introducing the death penalty and personally appointing ministers and half of the judicial body...

It is so ironic. Turkey's history paints an interesting picture, from one Sultan to another. (click here)

Turkey fears it's diversity and the possibility of power falling into the hands of those who would remove the democracy. I think that is why Erogan is being crowned with this new constitution. The process is flawed and the vote is flawed, the new constitution (which Mr. Trump probably admires) is dangerously unstable.

Turkish nationalists (click here)  insist everyone in their country is a Turk whether they like it and admit it or not. The Kurds, according to them, are not a separate people. Rather, they are “mountain Turks who lost their language.” But Turkish nationalism, like Arab nationalism, scarcely existed until the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, which expired at the end of World War I. And the truth is that Turkey, as the rump state of that multi-ethnic empire, is a mélange of different identities. With its Kurdish, Arab, Zaza, and Alevi minorities, it’s no more homogeneous than the rump state of the Soviet empire with the Tatars, Ingush, Sakha, Chechens, and other large numbers of non-Russian peoples on its periphery.

When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic in the ashes of World War I, Turkish nationalists attempted to unite everybody under a single identity for the sake of national unity and to prevent any more territorial loss, but the Kurds refused to join up because the Western powers had promised them a state of their own. To this day, they remain the largest stateless people on earth. Many feel far more kinship with their fellow Kurds in Iran, Iraq, and Syria than with their nominal countrymen in Turkey....

The Ottoman Empire was loosely confederated, with a space for the Kurds, but modern Turkey was founded as a strong Western-style republic with a powerful center, and the Kurds were forcibly conquered, colonized, and integrated.

The government’s response to Kurdish nationalism was tantamount to attempted cultural genocide. Ethnic Kurds were forcibly relocated from the eastern parts of the country, while European Turks were moved to the Kurdish region in the farthest reaches of Anatolia. Even speaking the Kurdish language was forbidden in schools, government offices, and in public places until 1991. Simply saying “I am a Kurd” in Kurdish was a crime, and it’s still considered scandalous in official settings. In 2009, a Kurdish politician created a huge controversy by speaking just a few words of Kurdish in the nation’s Parliament building.

Despite the fervor of this repression, Turkey’s problem with its Kurdish minority is more political than ethnic....

...Most of the dead are Kurdish. The Turkish military dished out unspeakable punishment in the east of the country. Nine years ago, I drove from Istanbul to northern Iraq and was shocked to discover that Iraqi Kurdistan is a vastly more prosperous and pleasant place than bombed-out and repressed Turkish Kurdistan....

From mid-2013 to mid-2015, the Turkish state and the PKK enjoyed a period of relative calm under a cease-fire, but in late July the army bombed PKK positions in northern Iraq, and the PKK in Turkey declared the cease-fire void....
.
...The Turkish establishment has been alarmed by the existence of an autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq since the day it was founded and has repeatedly threatened to invade if it declares independence from Baghdad. (That may be the only reason the Iraqi Kurds haven’t yet done it.) And it’s doubly alarmed now that the Kurds of Syria have cobbled together their own autonomous region, which they call Rojava, while the Arabs of Syria fight a devastating civil war with each other....

...Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—like most of his ethnic Turkish countrymen—is terrified that an independent Syrian Kurdistan will help Turkish Kurdistan wage a revolutionary war against Ankara...

5, 14 and 15 were defeated before the vote in Turkey.

Description of proposed amendments
Proposal #ArticleDescription of change
1Article 9The judiciary is required to act on condition of impartiality.
2Article 75The number of seats in the Parliament is raised from 550 to 600.
3Article 76The age requirement to stand as a candidate in an election to be lowered from 25 to 18, while the condition of having to complete compulsory military service is to be removed. Individuals with relations to the military would be ineligible to run for election.
4Article 77Parliamentary terms are extended from four to five years. Parliamentary and presidential elections will be held on the same day every five years, with presidential elections going to a run-off if no candidate wins a simple majority in the first round.
5Article 87


5Article 89To overcome a presidential veto, the Parliament needs to adopt the same bill with an absolute majority (301).
6Article 98Parliament now detects cabinet and Vice President with Parliamentary ResearchParliamentary InvestigationGeneral Discussion and Written Question. Interpellation is abolished and replaced with Parliamentary Investigation. Vice President needs to answer Written Questions within 15 days.
7Article 101In order to stand as a presidential candidate, an individual requires the endorsement of one or more parties that won 5% or more in the preceding parliamentary elections and 100,000 voters. The elected president no longer needs to terminate their party membership if they have one.
8Article 104The President becomes both the head of state and head of government, with the power to appoint and sack ministers and Vice President. The president can issue decrees about executive. If legislation makes a law about the same topic that President issued an executive order, decree will become invalid and parliamentary law become valid.
9Article 105Parliament can open parliamentary investigation with an absolute majority (301). Parliament discusses proposal in 1 month. Following the completion of Discussion, Parliamentary investigation can begin in Parliament with a hidden three-fifths (360) vote in favor. Following the completion of investigations, the parliament can vote to indict the President with a hidden two-thirds (400) vote in favor.
10Article 106The President can appoint one or more Vice Presidents. If the Presidency falls vacant, then fresh presidential elections must be held within 45 days. If parliamentary elections are due within less than a year, then they too are held on the same day as early presidential elections. If the parliament has over a year left before its term expires, then the newly elected president serves until the end of the parliamentary term, after which both presidential and parliamentary elections are held. This does not count towards the President's two-term limit. Parliamentary investigations into possible crimes committed by Vice Presidents and ministers can begin in Parliament with a three-fifths vote in favor. Following the completion of investigations, the parliament can vote to indict Vice Presidents or ministers with a two-thirds vote in favor. If found guilty, the Vice President or minister in question is only removed from office if their crime is one that bars them from running for election. If a sitting MP is appointed as a minister or Vice President, their parliamentary membership will be terminated.
11Article 116The President and three-fifths of the Parliament can decide to renew elections. In this case, the enactor also dissolves itself until elections.
12Article 119The President's ability to declare state of emergency is now subject to parliamentary approval to take effect. The Parliament can extend, remove or shorten it. States of emergency can be extended for up to four months at a time except during war, where no such limitation will be required. Every presidential decree issues during a state of emergency will need an approval of Parliament.
13Article 125The acts of the President are now subject to judicial review.
13Article 142Military courts are abolished unless they are erected to investigate actions of soldiers under conditions of war.
13Article 146The President used to appoint one Justice from High Military Court of Appeals, and one from the High Military Administrative Court. As military courts are abolished, the number of Justices in the Constitutional Court reduced to 15 from 17. Consequently, presidential appointees reduced to 12 from 14, while the Parliament continues to appoint three.
14Article 15
15Article 161[note 1]  This increment ratio is defined by Ministry of Finance and determines changes on absolute-valued taxes and fines.
16Several articlesAdaptation of several articles of the constitution with other changes, mainly transferring executive powers of cabinet to President
16Article 123President gets power to create States.
17Temporary Article 21Next presidential and General elections will be held on 3 November 2019. If Grand Assembly decides early elections, both will be held at the same day. Board of Judges and Prosecutors elections will be made within 30 days of approval of this law. Military courts will be abolished once the law comes into force.
18Applicability of amendments 1-17The amendments (2, 4 and 7) will come into force after new elections, other amendments (except temporary article) will come into force once newly elected president is sworn in. Annulled the article which elected Presidents forfeit membership in a political party. This constitutional amendment will be voted in a referendum as a whole.

Lies. Propaganda. PRETENDING a nuclear war was imminent for the sake of ratings, because Trump brings no benefit.


'Powerful' USS Carl Vinson steams toward North Korea (FOX News on April 14, 2017 By Rebecca Kesten)

Amazing.

It would seem as though coverage from inside the White House as a staff member hasn't helped a bit. That carrier group is owned and operated by the American people. FOX News should be sued for false reporting that endangers the USA's national security. 

Are the lies going to end soon, or will FOX consider this an 'oops' just a few days early?

FOX News is an illegitimate reporting agency.

April 17, 2017
By Christopher P. Cavas

Washington — For more than a week, (click here) media reports in the U.S. and around Asia routinely have mentioned the approach of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson's carrier strike group, seemingly implying an attack on North Korea could be imminent. But a week after the U.S. announced the carrier and its escorts would leave Singapore, forego port calls in Australia and instead return to Korean waters, the carrier and its group had yet to head north.

Rather, the ships were actually operating several hundred miles south of Singapore, taking part in scheduled exercises with Australian forces in the Indian Ocean.

On Saturday — according to photographs released by the U.S. Navy — the carrier passed north through the Sunda Strait, the passage between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java. It's about 3,500 miles from Korea.

U.S. Navy officials in Pearl Harbor and Washington declined to comment on the ship’s movements, other than to confirm the April 15 movement through the Sunda Strait. Off the record, several officials expressed wonderment at the persistent reports that the Vinson was already nearing Korea. “We’ve made no such statement,” said one official....        

This is interesting.

If it were for Mr. Chaffetz harassment of Secretary Clinton, Donald Trump might not have been elected. I have to wonder if he harassed Comey, too.

April 19, 2017
By Emmarie Huetteman and Matt Elegenheimer

Washington — Representative Jason Chaffetz, (click here) the powerful chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told supporters on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election to Congress — or for any office — in 2018.

Mr. Chaffetz, 50, a Utah Republican who plainly relished his oversight role more under a Democratic administration, said he was ready to return to the private sector after more than 13 years in public service, calling his decision a “personal” one.

“I have long advocated public service should be for a limited time and not a lifetime or full career,” he said in a statement posted on Facebook. “After more than 1,500 nights away from my home, it is time.”

He said his decision was not based on either health or political concerns, adding that he was “confident” of his re-election should he have pursued it and retained support from Speaker Paul D. Ryan for his committee chairmanship....