Sorry yall, I could not help but copy this from the Sheppard Road Neighborhood group that I am a member of.
The FresnoBee: “Congress cannot simply rewrite history and strip the Confederate flag from existence,” Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss.
What really happened in flag debate in Congress
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/article27002098.html
National Park Service, House Dems say GOP change meshed with Obama policy
Several Democrats wanted tougher stance on flag than White House’s
House majority leader, Rep. John Lewis talk behind closed doors
In this photo combination, the Confederate battle flag is raised in front of the South Carolina State House in Columbia, S.C., on July 1, 2000, left, and the same flag is taken down on July 10, 2015, right, ending its presence on the Capitol grounds. The flag’s removal seemed unthinkable before the June 17 massacre of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church during a Bible study. Dylann Roof, a white man who was photographed with the Confederate flag, is charged in the shooting deaths, and authorities have called the killings a hate crime.
PAULA ILLINGWORTH, JOHN BAZEMORE AP
BY WILLIAM DOUGLAS
wdouglas@mcclatchydc.com
WASHINGTON
The head of the Democratic Party said they were among the darkest hours in the history of the House of Representatives. The White House said Republicans were strikingly eager to defend the Confederate flag.
Republicans said they were merely proposing to enforce existing policies about the sale and display of the flag in national cemeteries set by the Obama administration itself in the wake of the massacre at a Charleston, S.C., church.
The bottom line: The Republicans were correct that they were moving to maintain Obama policies.
But that’s only part of the story. Also true: House Democrats wanted to go farther than Obama and ban most Confederate flags from national cemeteries. And in the furor, they failed to note that Obama could have already done what the House Democrats want.
Here’s what happened.
On Tuesday, Democrats proposed three amendments to a bill financing the Interior Department. They would ban the sale of Confederate flags at vendors or the display or Confederate flags at gravesites in national cemeteries.
The House approved them by voice vote.
“The language of the amendments were clear,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., one of the authors. “Everybody knew what we were doing.”
He added that Democrats didn’t seek roll call votes on the amendments because it would have put some Republicans uncomfortably on the record and “we did expect that a few of them would probably vote against these amendments if there was a roll call.”
Less than 24 hours after the Democratic amendments passed, several Republican House members from Southern states complained to their party’s leadership about the recently passed amendments, according to several lawmakers.
“Congress cannot simply rewrite history and strip the Confederate flag from existence,” Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., said in a statement. “Members of Congress from New York and California cannot wipe away 150 years of Southern history with sleight-of-hand tactics. I will fight to ensure that this language is not included in any bill signed into law.”
Late Wednesday night, Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee for Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, introduced a one-paragraph amendment that didn’t specifically mention Confederate flags.
Instead, it stated that “none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to prohibit the display of the flag of the United States or the POW/MIA flag or the decoration of graves with flags in the National Park Service national cemeteries as provided in the National Park Service Director’s Order No. 61 or to contravene the National Park Service memorandum dates June 24, 2015 . . . with respect to sale items.”
That affirmed the Obama administration policies set in 2010 and updated last month after the Charleston shootings.
But in so doing, it also reversed Huffman’s amendments, which had been agreed to Tuesday.
The White House slammed the GOP amendment.
“When you hear me say that congressional Republicans have an agenda that is out of step with the vast majority of Americans, this record at least in part is what I’m referring to,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said, “The last 24 hours in the House of Representatives are some of the darkest I have witnessed as a member of Congress.”
But Calvert said all his amendment would do is codify current National Park Service policy regarding Confederate flags set by the Obama administration.
That policy prohibits the sale of items with Confederate flag imagery but allows the Confederate flags to be flown in “specific circumstances where the flags provide historical context, for instance to signify troop location or movement or as part of a historical re-enactment or living history program.”
Current policy allows visitors to place small Confederate flags at the graves of rebel soldiers buried in federal cemeteries on Confederate Memorial Days in Southern states that mark the day. The flags must be removed by the end of that day.
“The intent of the leadership amendment was to clear up any confusion and maintain the Obama administration’s policies with respect to those historical and educational exceptions,” Calvert said in a statement.
National Park Service officials and House Democrats involved in the flag debate agreed Friday that the Republican amendment would have continued the exemptions allowed by the administration.
“It would revert to the status quo,” said Huffman.
A Park Service official concurred that the amendment would have meant “a continuation” of current administration policy.
The White House declined to say why the administration, which changed the policy on its own in 2010 and again on June 24, is not changing it again to accommodate the requests from House Democrats.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, pulled the Interior appropriations bill Thursday to avoid the flag vote and called for an “adult conversation” among members about what to do about issues involving Confederate flags and symbols.
On Friday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights-era icon, walked off the House floor together to a nearby room. A Republican aide shuttered the blinds to the room’s glass doors.
“We had a friendly conversation,” is all Lewis would say afterward.
William Douglas: 202-383-6026, @williamgdouglas
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/article27002098.html#storylink=cpy
Michelle’s Latest Scam
The Fatal Soybean
Figures that placese like Argentina will ban the killer herbicide, America sure as hell won’t!
The Fatal Soybean
Press TV (2013)
Film Review
Recently 30,000 Argentinean doctors signed a petition requesting their government ban the use of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. The Fatal Soybean is a documentary about the large cluster of miscarriages, birth defects, cancer and autoimmune disease in villages adjacent to Argentina’s immense “soy desert.” The filmmakers interview local doctors, environmentalists and grassroots activists. They focus in on one particular activist group, the Ituzainga Mothers Club. These women mobilized after numerous family members died or developed chronic illness following repeated exposure to the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on soybean crops.
As depicted in the documentary, Silence of the Pandas, a massive swathe of Argentina’s natural forest and grassland has been cleared to plant Monsanto’s Roundup-ready soy. The latter is a genetically engineered plant specifically designed to withstand spraying with the Monsanto herbicide Roundup. Owing to the emergence of Roundup resistant super weeds, most…
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Thankful Thursdays – The Golden Rule
Stop the hate and unite for troubled times…
OBAMA USES CHURCH SHOOTING TO PRESS GUN CONTROL
Ever Wonder Why You Did Not Get Justice? Check and see who is invested in What, that might answer your questions.
For the Scorecard for Georgia Courts, visit: http://www.freelanceparalegal.us/ and go to the bottom of the page.
Now:
(Image Courtesy of Center for Public Integrity)
Justice Obscured
http://www.publicintegrity.org/politics/consider-source/justice-obscured
The Center for Public Integrity’s Justice Obscured project has sought to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding the financial holdings and activities of the nation’s most powerful judges. In “Corporations, pro-business nonprofits foot bill for judicial seminars” we looked at the top corporate sponsors and right-wing think tanks that sponsored seminars for some of the nation’s most powerful judges. We evaluated the disclosure rules for judges in state supreme courts and found them sadly lacking. We then looked at U.S. appellate court judges and found more than two-dozen instances of financial conflicts of interest.
Latest stories
Supreme court justices earn quarter-million in cash on the side
By Reity O’Brien June 20, 2014
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/20/14981/supreme-court-justices-earn-quarter-million-cash-side
Fourth case reopened after Center uncovers judicial conflict of interest
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Just In From the Daily Report!!! “Judicial Ethics Chief Resigns After Daily Report Probes Billing Deal”
Damn, we cannot even trust the Judicial Ethics Chief to Not Cheat in Order to Get Extra Compensation!
Things are really bad when those who are in place to investigate Judges who have complaints filed against them, are themselves dishonest as hell. Does none of the judicial system and their investigators, not have to adhere to the laws that we are expected to adhere to?
Is that what it is all about? There are the citizens who are expected to follow rules and laws, then there are the judicial system that the same rules and laws don’t apply to?
Judicial Ethics Chief Resigns After Daily Report Probes Billing Deal
R. Robin McDonald, Daily Report
April 27, 2015 | 0 Comments
http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202724678640/JQC-Director-Resigns?kw=JQC%20Director%20Resigns&et=editorial&bu=Daily%20Report&cn=20150427&src=EMC-Email&pt=Afternoon%20News&slreturn=20150327165110
Ronnie Joe Lane
File photo
The director of the state judicial watchdog agency has resigned following revelations that he was being paid full-time wages of $120,000 a year for what he reported was part-time work to avoid having to defer his retirement benefits.
Lester Tate, chairman of the state Judicial Qualifications Commission, said director Ronnie Joe Lane resigned Monday, the same day the Daily Report published details of Lane’s billing arrangement with the commission. The JQC polices the state’s judges and can recommend disciplinary action, including removal from office, if they stray from the state Code of Judicial Conduct.
“He has decided he wants to step down,” Tate said Monday afternoon. “Ronnie Joe does not want any cloud whatsoever … over the commission and over him. He served honorably in the military and honorably on the bench, and I think he did on the commission as well. He doesn’t want to be a distraction from the work we do.”
Tate said that Lane also asked—and Tate agreed—to waive the 60-day written notification required in order to terminate his JQC contract.
Tate said that he also is “taking every step to make sure that [ethics] cases are continuing to be moved, whatever their stage … and taking every step to make sure they are processed appropriately.”
Reached by telephone, Lane said he had no comment.
Lane retired as a Superior Court Judge in the Pataula Circuit last summer when JQC director Jeff Davis left the agency to become the executive director of the State Bar of Georgia.
In order to remain eligible to collect his judicial retirement—an estimated $84,000 a year—Lane told the Daily Report he billed the JQC $120 an hour for an estimated 20 hours per week of work, even though he was working at least 40 hours a week. State law (O.C.G.A. § 47-23-109) allows a state retiree who goes back to work for the state as either an employee or a contractor to collect retirement pay only if the retiree “performs no more than 1,040 hours of such service in any calendar year”—or about 20 hours a week.
Lane contended that any work he performed beyond 20 hours a week was donated to the state and therefore did not violate the 1,040-hour rule.
The executive director of the Judicial Retirement System told the Daily Report last week that the question of whether a retiree can write off as volunteer work any hours that exceed the 1,040-hour annual cap is “getting into a gray area” and that a state agency that hires a retired judge is supposed to report the hours he or she works. Neither the JQC nor Lane formally notified the employee retirement system in writing of Lane’s arrangement or the hours he anticipated working, another requirement of the state pension law.
In interviews with the Daily Report last week, the chairman of the Georgia House Judiciary Committee, a former JQC chairman and an Emory University ethics professor expressed serious reservations about Lane’s arrangement.
Lane’s resignation followed a commission meeting on Friday. Afterward, Tate wrote a letter asking James Potvin, the head of the state employee retirement system, for guidance as to whether the JQC’s contract with Lane was appropriate.
Tate told Potvin the JQC had only recently become aware of the state law setting the 1,040-hour cap. “Judge Lane is of the opinion that this limitation only relates to the number of hours of service for which he is paid,” Tate wrote. “Realizing that the job of director may require more than 1,040 hours of service in a calendar year, it was Judge Lane’s belief that he could donate, pro bono, any additional hours of service needed to perform his duties so long as he was only compensated for 1,040 hours.”
Tate did not mention in his letter that Lane was being paid the previous director’s full-time salary for what was, at least on paper, part-time hours.
“Is Judge Lane still entitled to collect his pension under this agreement?” Tate asked. “Are there any implications to the commission and its budget for employing Judge Lane in this manner?”
The Daily Report also made inquiries about Lane’s expenses before his departure on Monday. In five of his first nine months on the job, Lane sought more than $7,000 in reimbursements, more than double the $6,205 that Davis billed for all of fiscal year 2014. Those expenses included reimbursements for his 520-mile round-trip commute from his Donalsonville home to the JQC’s office in Monroe. Tate told the newspaper that if Lane billed the JQC to commute “just to get to the office,” he did not believe it was an appropriate expense.
On Monday, Tate said that whether Lane should have billed the commission remains “a point of disagreement.”
“It was not the intent of the commission to pay round trip for what I call a pure commute,” he said. He would not comment on whether Lane was asked to repay the JQC for the reimbursed mileage.
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Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles: ISIS Camp a Few Miles from Texas, Mexican Authorities Confirm
ISIS Camp a Few Miles from Texas, Mexican Authorities Confirm
APRIL 14, 2015
ISISpic2ISISpic1
ISIS Camp a Few Miles from Texas, Mexican Authorities Confirm
ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, according to Judicial Watch sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector.
The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States, the same knowledgeable sources confirm.
During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.
Law enforcement and intelligence sources report the area around Anapra is dominated by the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Cartel (“Juárez Cartel”), La Línea (the enforcement arm of the cartel) and the Barrio Azteca (a gang originally formed in the jails of El Paso). Cartel control of the Anapra area make it an extremely dangerous and hostile operating environment for Mexican Army and Federal Police operations.
According to these same sources, “coyotes” engaged in human smuggling – and working for Juárez Cartel – help move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border between Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New Mexico. To the east of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, cartel-backed “coyotes” are also smuggling ISIS terrorists through the porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. These specific areas were targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already ongoing.
Mexican intelligence sources report that ISIS intends to exploit the railways and airport facilities in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, NM (a US port-of-entry). The sources also say that ISIS has “spotters” located in the East Potrillo Mountains of New Mexico (largely managed by the Bureau of Land Management) to assist with terrorist border crossing operations. ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities; the White Sands Missile Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM; Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near Anapra and Chaparral, NM.
From GOPUSA, OneNewsNow.com: “When Barack Obama signed the U.N. gun ban treaty last year, he invited global gun banners to carve up our constitutional freedom,”
Obama continues to cozy up to U.N. gun ban treaty
By Michael F. Haverluck, OneNewsNow.com January 23, 2015 6:55 am
http://www.gopusa.com/freshink/2015/01/23/obama-continues-to-cozy-up-to-u-n-gun-ban-treaty/
President Barack Obama is continuing his push to disarm Americans as he arms himself with the United Nation’s Arms Trade Treaty – a treaty the NRA says would undermine the constitutional protection under the Second Amendment that guarantees U.S. citizens the right to bear arms.
The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) is alerting Americans of the commander-in-chief’s latest attempt to disarm Americans and their fundamental right to protect themselves.
“When Barack Obama signed the U.N. gun ban treaty last year, he invited global gun banners to carve up our constitutional freedom,” NRA-ILA’s Dan Weber warns. “Now, Obama is using the full force of the international community to pressure our U.S. senators into replacing our Second Amendment rights with U.N.-style gun control.”
Working with socialist-leaning European leaders this month to spur an international movement empowering governments to disarm citizens, Obama is looking to join a global push for gun control.
“Earlier this year, Obama conspired with the European Union to issue an international declaration demanding immediate ‘disarmament and arms control’ under the United Nations gun ban treaty,” Weber reports. “Obama and his anti-gun European allies vowed to ensure every nation’s ‘entry into force of the Arms Trade Treaty.'”
Obama bypassing senators … again?
After seeing potential obstacles ahead, Obama has again set his eyes on fast-tracking his agenda by reportedly bypassing the checks and balances by which he vowed to uphold as president.
“And that’s not all,” Weber continued. “In a meeting of non-governmental organizations and U.N. officials, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State declared that the White House is ‘already implementing the treaty’ without Senate ratification!”
NRA-ILA executive director Chris Cox warns Americans that this latest straight-arm by the president to push past the democratic process once again is no ruse.
“Make no mistake,” Cox exhorts Americans. “If the U.S. Senate fails to stand strong against the U.N. gun ban treaty and fight back against every backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to implement it, we will lose our gun rights and effectively lose our national sovereignty.”
Weber explains why he considers this latest move by the White House so dangerous to Americans who understand the importance of the fundamental right to bear arms and the dire nature of the government’s move to render its citizens defenseless.
“That’s because the U.N. gun ban treaty would establish a permanent international gun control bureaucracy within the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs to oversee and influence gun policy in all nations,” Weber points out.
In addition to stripping away Americans’ right to protect themselves, he believes the international treaty would invade the privacy of the remaining citizens who manage to still possess firearms.
“It would also set the stage for an international gun registration system which in turn could pave the way for the eventual banning and confiscation of firearms,” Weber informs. “In fact, under the treaty’s guidelines, the United States government could be required, as a condition of importing firearms from other countries, to provide the exporting countries with the most sensitive, personal information of American gun owners.”
Point of no return?
Cox insists that if Americans stand blindly by as Obama attempts this move, they will see their constitutional rights swept out from under their feet … again.
“Gun owners and freedom-loving Americans need to remind their senators that they work for us, NOT Barack Obama and NOT international gun ban zealots,” says Cox. “And the best way we can do that is by signing NRA’s official petition to the U.S. Senate.”
According to Cox, the NRA has battled for more than 15 years against the adoption of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty so that it won’t trample the Bill of Rights that have been upheld in America for centuries.
“In all of that time [the past 15 years], we’ve never faced a president as dangerous as Barack Obama who is willing to lock arms with international tyrants against you, me and our constitutional freedom,” the NRA-ILA spokesman contends.
Cox insists that Americans’ national sovereignty and Second Amendment freedom have never been more in jeopardy than now. He stresses that if the Senate isn’t persuaded to stand up to the president against his push for the U.N. treaty, America could hit the point of no return.
“If the U.N. gun ban treaty is ever ratified into law, or implemented by Obama behind the scenes, we may never get a second chance to save the Second Amendment,” Cox concludes.
At Least One Other Faces the Truth!: Doug Micheal: “Fukushima: The Extinction-Level Event That No One Is Talking About”
“Fukushima: The Extinction-Level Event That No One Is Talking About”
Saturday, April 4, 2015 14:25
http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-liberal/2015/04/fukushima-the-extinction-level-event-that-no-one-is-talking-about-2503300.html?currentSplittedPage=0
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“Fukushima: The Extinction-Level Event That No One Is Talking About”
by Doug Michael
“March 11, 2011: A massive earthquake of 9.0 magnitude struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a devastating tsunami, which left parts of the country in utter shambles. Official reports claim that 15,891 people lost their lives, 6,152 were injured and 2,584 were reported missing. This was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded to have struck Japan, and the fourth most powerful in the world, since modern record keeping began in 1900. This earthquake was so intense in magnitude, that it shifted Honshu, the main island of Japan by an estimated eight feet and actually shifted the Earth’s axis by between four and ten inches!
Japan is a nation containing many nuclear reactors which produce roughly 30% of the nation’s electricity. The majority of operable nuclear reactors are right along the coast, in one of the most seismically active areas on the entire planet!
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Map which shows the locations of Japan’s, active reactor sights. Notice how they are along the coast, in perhaps the most seismically active location on the entire planet.
The powerful tsunami caused complete devastation of three of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi facility, the cores of which melted within the first three days. In November 2011, the Japanese Science Ministry reported that radioactive cesium had contaminated 11,580 square miles of the land surface of Japan, with an additional 4,500 square miles contaminated.
The destroyed reactor sites have been dumping hundreds of tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean, every single day for the past four years and the devastating results are now becoming plainly obvious. Radioactive cesium (an alkali metal) rapidly contaminates an ecosystem and poisons the entire food chain, and this waste offshoot has been detected in Japanese foodstuffs over a 200 mile radius of the Daiichi facility. Cesium and other radioactive waste products are bioaccumulative, meaning that they accumulate in an organism at a rate faster than the organism can eliminate it. Of course the Japanese government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) have blatantly lied about the amount of radioactive waste that has been leaking into the Pacific, however, the devastating results have been impossible to ignore.
I’ve wondered since the beginning of this disaster-which has already shown to be far worse that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine, in 1986-why the world’s top, leading scientists have not come together to figure out how to stop the leaking radiation. The reason is because no one knows how to deal with this catastrophe.
In March of 2015, it was reported in the Times of London, that Akira Ono, the chief of the Fukushima power station admitted that the technology needed to decommission the three melted-down reactors does not exist, and he has no idea how it will be developed. More recently, Naohiro Masuda, the decommissioning chief of the Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning Company, also stated that the technology does not exist to remove the highly radioactive debris from the damaged reactors: “Ono also claimed that decommissioning the plant by 2051 may be impossible without huge leaps in technological advancement.” It’s also been estimated that plutonium fallout has been 70,000 times greater than atomic bomb fallout in Japan!
Japan has also seen a skyrocketing of childhood Cancer rates, particularly, thyroid Cancer. As of August, 2013, TEPCO admitted that between “20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium may have leaked into the sea since the disaster.” Since it’s been shown over and again, that TEPCO repeatedly lied and covered up the true extent of the disaster, that number is most likely far greater.
While official sources keep claiming that there is no danger from the leaking radiation, sea life all along the west coast of the US has been dying in alarming numbers, and many fish and sea creatures tested off the west coast have shown extremely high amounts of radioactivity, that far exceeds safe limits. In actuality though, there really are no “safe” limits of radiation.
The Japan Times reported on Feb 25th, 2015, that cesium and other radioactive waste was pouring from the reactor one site, directly into the ocean. TEPCO did nothing to prevent the leak and simply ignored the problem for close to a year!
There has been a massive die-off of marine life along the west coast of the US, which has scientists “baffled.” Do you mean to tell me that scientists studying this death of the Pacific haven’t taken into account the possibility that it could be caused by the hundreds of tons of nuclear waste that has been pouring into the Pacific each day for the last four years? So few dare to admit the extent of damage caused by this disaster or the fact that it is forcing us to face the possibility of our own extinction. What happens when the planet’s largest body of water is rendered lifeless on a planet made up mostly of water? What happens when the radiation accumulates in the atmosphere and is spread throughout the world by the jet stream?
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Massive die-off of sea lions along the west coast has left scientists “baffled.” Might it have something to do with the hundreds of tons of radioactive waste that has been pouring into the Pacific for four years?
In 2013, the Huffington Post reported that massive amounts of krill washed up along the west coast in a 250 mile stretch from Oregon to California. Krill is an essential part of the ocean’s food chain. When marine life on the low end of the food chain dies off, the larger animals that feed on that marine life starve to death. Carcasses of dead sea lions and seals that were examined revealed high doses of radiation, and yet, mainstream scientists remain “baffled.”
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This dead sea lion showed extremely high levels of radiation near its heart and liver.
The Pacific Ocean is dying at an alarming rate, and no one seems to notice it,
or, they simply put on the blinders and embrace abject denial.
It has also been widely reported that massive amounts of starfish have appeared along the west coast that have literally turned to mush. USA Today reported on this, and of course they claim that no one knows why; it’s a mystery. Might it have something to do with the fact that the Pacific has become a toxic, nuclear waste dump? Of course not, that’s just crazy, paranoid, tin-foil-hat talk. The level of cognitive dissonance that ensnares the minds of most people is truly staggering to me.
It’s also been reported that 98% of the sea floor of the Pacific is covered with dead sea life. Not surprisingly, mainstream scientists blame this massive death of the Pacific on global warming. “In the 24 years of this study, the past two years have been the biggest amounts of this detritus by far,” said marine biologist Christine Huffard, who works at the research station off of California. “Multiple other stations throughout the Pacific have seen similarly alarming increases.”
The feeble efforts of TEPCO and the Japanese government to stop the radioactive leaks, with ice walls, dams, and other paltry, makeshift remedies have been in vain. Nobody knows how to contain the radioactive leaks, so the Japanese govt. and TEPCO do the next best thing; they lie about it and downplay the dangers. Business as usual!
The head of the National Cancer Research Center in Japan, reported in Feb, 2015, that Cancer rates have skyrocketed by 6,000% and that it was being “swept under the rug.” It must be global warming causing this unprecedented rise in Cancer rates, eh? In Jan, 2015, Japan’s nuclear regulator approved TEPCO’s ingenious plan to simply drain waste-water into the ocean.
In Nov, 2014, Ken Buesseler, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution claimed: “My biggest concern is what’s going on in Japan today, and how that might make its way across to our coast. We know it’s still leaking because we’re measuring higher levels off Japan to this day. Even just the basic question, ‘How much radioactivity was released at Fukushima?’ I can’t answer that today. We may never be able to because of the lack of sampling, particularly in the ocean.”
An experienced, veteran sailor by the name of Ivan Macfadyen, who has sailed the Pacific taking part in races, stated in an interview that: “It’s dead…for thousands of miles there was nothing [between US and Japan] like sailing in a dead sea…everything’s all gone. Just talking about it makes me feel like I want to cry. No birds, no fish, no sharks, no dolphins, no turtles, nothing.”
This is the legacy that humanity is leaving for their posterity; a dead world. Humanity has allowed itself to be ruled by a ruthless, psychopathic gang of parasites whose greed and insatiable lust for power knows no bounds. There really is no one to blame but ourselves. The information in this article is not even a scratch in the surface of the true magnitude of this nuclear disaster. The radiation will bioaccumulate in the ocean and atmosphere for centuries to come.
Mankind is staring our very extinction in the face. This is an opportunity for humanity to face the force of our own destructiveness, and to come together as one family. Unfortunately, the average person’s thoughts seem to be firmly fixated on the sports scores, who’s blowing who in the latest, celebrity scandal or the latest pop culture fad. Unfortunately, the world’s masses suffer from a serious condition known as, Rectal-Cranial Inversion!
What happens when radiation spreads throughout the ocean currents of the Pacific? Roughly 72% of the Earth is made up of water, and if you look at a global map, you can see that all of the world’s oceans are connected; it’s essentially one ocean. So what happens when two of the planet’s large bodies of water are rendered lifeless? Since roughly 90% of Earth’s life is contained in the oceans, and two-thirds of the planet is water, what happens when the oceans die? What happens when we can no longer fish the oceans for food? The answer is simple: When the planet’s oceans die, all life on Earth will follow, but who cares? There’s a game on tonight, or some stupid shitcom that insults the intelligence.
What level of cognitive dissonance is adhered to that causes people to look away from painful truths? How is it that people can convince themselves that everything is just fine when we are staring our very extinction in the face? How many actually give a shit? Far too few unfortunately. The fact that the world’s top scientists have no idea how to contain the radiation at Fukushima speaks volumes about what happens when a species develops technologically yet does not operate with wisdom. They destroy themselves.
Has humanity made its decision that it will simply bow down and allow the few, through psychopathy and corporate greed to drive the planet into its very extinction? Is it game over for life on planet Earth? We are certainly headed in that direction, but why would I want to face this painful truth and find my center when Miley Cyrus is on TV sucking off a blow up doll in her latest piece of shit video? Most people focus on the most irrelevant and ridiculous distractions while the world falls dead all around them.
The time for humanity to collectively wake up and come together is here and now! We can no longer put off the mess for future generations to mop up because at the rate we are going, the planet will be unable to support life and very may well become a dead rock resembling Mars. This is where we stand as a species. Does this sound paranoid? Maybe, but that does not negate the fact that it’s true! So as we bow our heads in quiet approval, our home is being destroyed and your children’s futures are being stolen right from under them. Sleep on, everything is OK, and raise your glass to the extinction of humanity!”
– https://dougmichaeltruth.wordpress.com/
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You’re not so astonishingly naive, or stupid, to believe that the radiation stops at the beach, are you?Do a “Search” of this little blog for “Fukushima.” It’s all here, and has been since day one of this nightmare. Believe what you will, it won’t matter anyway… – CP
Bobby1’s Blog: Why use sewage sludge as an indicator of fission?
Not only is fission still occuring in the 260 tonnes of missing nuclear fuel, it has increased since the meltdown began!
http://optimalprediction.com/wp/iodine-131-rises-in-chiba-prefecture/
http://enenews.com/govt-report-1000000-bqm3-plutonium-detected-ocean-fukushima-contaminated-waters-transported-rapidly-east-across-pacific-fukushima-crisis-important-direct-liquid-release-artificial-radioactivity?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-
Dc0sz3lG5EE/VG9STIx4JAI/AAAAAAAADs0/NcEiXoxjDQQ/s1600/iodine%2Btokyo%2Bsewage%2B2014.GIF
I’d sure like to see the latest iteration of this graph!
Why do I (always) use this particular graph to make this point?
Iodine-131 has a half life of 8 days.
Iodine-131 is only made during nuclear fission.
So, Iodine-131 is a great indicator of recent fission.
On a graph like this, over time, you can see the fussion events wax and wane.
You can see from this graph that not only is fission still occuring, but that fission events are increasing in intensity over time.
Why use sewage sludge as an indicator of fission?
And why Tokyo, when the data is available for a number of towns?
Because sewage sludge is what is left after drinking water passes through people.
The Iodine-131 from the 3 missing cores is in the drinking water.
People drink it, cook with it, shower in it, and excrete it.
That is how Iodine-131 ends up as “sewage sludge”.
Any why Tokyo?
Because 35,000,000 Japanese live there still, and are being poisoned by Fukushima radiation every day, more and more as the years go on.
If you are a resident of Tokyo, get out now, any way you can.
If you want to live a normal life, don’t even visit Tokyo.
Tokyo is a city that is no longer fit for human life. 😦
Iodine-131 rises in Chiba prefecture.
Posted on December 19, 2013
The most recent measurements of iodine-131 in sewage sludge from Chiba prefecture indicate the highest amount of I-131 since August. The last measurement was actually made on Dec. 3. It is the third highest measurement since May 2011.
Iodine-131 from Gunma prefecture remained relatively low, as of Nov. 26.
Iodine measurements are affected by wind patterns and rainfall, as well as Fukushima emissions. Chiba is south of Fukushima, and a north wind would blow this way more often in the winter. Gunma is west or southwest of the plant. East winds prevail more often in spring and summer.
Iodine-131 is associated with criticalities. Fukushima Diary has a story about groundwater rising at the plant, and appearing at ground level. Water slows neutrons down and makes criticalities more likely, for any corium on or near ground level.
————–
UPDATE: I have added Tokyo measurements below. These are the maximum concentrations of I-131 in sludge incineration ash detected in all Tokyo facilities at each reporting period. A value of zero means the amount was less than the minimum detectable amount.
Seeking The Truth Of The Numbers Of Citizens “Killed By Police”
The Counted: Inside The Search For The Real Number Of Police Killings In The US
” If a police officer fatally shoots an unarmed citizen in the United States – and it was happening on average more than twice a day even before the killing of Michael Brown seven months ago in Ferguson, Missouri – most people find out about it not from law enforcement but from the 24-hour news cycle.
The best counts America currently has of killings by police are the work of activists and journalists – online databases like Fatal Encounters, Facebook compilations like Killed By Police, or Operation Ghetto Storm, which estimates that one African American is killed by police, security guards or vigilantes at least “every 28 hours”.
Citizen activists keep the best national counts. But there are corners of the country where the police track use-of-force more closely than…
View original post 505 more words
A Case that Can Set Precedent For Police Treatment Of The Mentally Ill
The Supreme Court for the United States takes case involving the San Francisco Police Department’s shooting of a mentally disabled woman.
We have read the headlines and tweets about members of law enforcement using excessive force, even killing, people who are mentally ill. Yesterday, I volunteered for a research project. I’m retired but now realize even more why I enjoy taking on these projects — not only does it help professionals who help others, but I always learn from them.
While conducting the research, I discovered the following. It’s good news in the sense that organizations across America are now seeking a decision from the highest court in the nation involving police and the mentally ill. It’s San Francisco vs. Sheehan, case number 13-1412.
Teresa Sheehan at Christmas dinner in 2014. (Courtesy of Frances Sheehan)
Theresa Sheehan lived in a group home in the Mission district and suffers from schizophrenia…
View original post 1,004 more words
ENENews: Govt Expert: Significant concern on the safety of the population and environment worldwide
(Image Courtesy Fox News)
UCLA Researchers: Fukushima “not only affecting that local area, but also worldwide” — Gov’t Expert: “Immediately the Iodine-131 plume moved eastward reaching US West Coast [then] covering entire northern hemisphere… Significant concern on the safety of the population and environment worldwide” (VIDEO)
Published: March 6th, 2015 at 9:32 am ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/ucla-researchers-fukushima-only-affecting-local-area-worldwide-govt-expert-immediately-iodine-131-plume-moved-eastward-reaching-west-coast-covering-entire-northern-hemisphere-early-april-posing-sig
In the Fukushima Disaster Zone with UCLA researchers, Mar 3, 2015: Four years after Fukushima disaster, some areas remain untouched, clocks recording the exact time that the tsunami swept through. Access is highly restricted but two UCLA researchers were recently given permission to document the disaster zone. — at 3:45 in — “With this study I think that’s what we’re trying to explore — is that once a nuclear catastrophe strikes, it’s not only affecting that local area, but also worldwide.”
(Image Courtesy Japan Times)
Atmospheric dispersion of Iodine-131 released after the Fukushima event, by Giuseppe A. Marzo, ENEA (Italian National agency for new technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development), 2014: From March 12, 2011, a significant amount of radioactive material… discharged into the atmosphere… Total emission of 131I has been estimated in [128** petabecquerels (PBq)], while 133Xe, and 137Cs total emissions have been estimated in [15,300 PBq and 36.6 PBq], respectively. In this work the global atmospheric dispersion of 131I released by the Fukushima accident is carried out, focusing on this specific radionuclide due to its radiological relevance in terms of consequences on the human health… Figure 1 summarizes the simulation results.
(Image by Giuseppe A. Marzo, ENEA (Italian National agency for new technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development)).
It illustrates the radioactivity concentration due to 131I released into the atmosphere at specific times and integrated over the total atmospheric column. Immediately after the initial release on March 12, the plume moved eastward reaching the United States west coast on [March 15 at 10:00p PST]… In early April the plume extended over the entire northern hemisphere… A significant accidental event occurred at the Fukushima NPPs… volatile radionuclides such as 131I were transported away from the source posing significant concern on the safety of the population and the environment worldwide… the atmospheric dispersion of 131I [was] covering the entire northern hemisphere by early April…
**According to a document released by TEPCO, “Our result shows a higher I-131 amount (500PBq) compared to the result obtained from a thirdparty organization (120-200PBq).”
ENENews: Report: Fukushima fallout detected in U.S. fish — Dose equal to samples caught 100 miles from plant —
FINALLY, THEY WARN AGAINST THE FISH, AFTER ALLOWING YOU TO EAT IT WITHOUT ALERTING YOU TO THE RADIATION CONTAMINATION, BUT THEY CAN NO LONGER KEEP IT QUIET!!!
Report: Fukushima fallout detected in U.S. fish — Dose equal to samples caught 100 miles from plant — Persistently high levels detected in marine life offshore “not anticipated… orders of magnitude” more than expected — “Measurements needed… along predicted plume trajectory”
Published: March 2nd, 2015 at 8:18 pm ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/report-fallout-japan-reactors-detected-freshwater-fish-radioactive-dose-equivalent-fish-caught-100-miles-fukushima-reactors-ongoing-measurements-needed-along-predicted-plume-trajectory
Excerpts from ‘Radiological Dose Rates to Marine Fish from the Fukushima Daiichi Accident: The First Three Years Across the North Pacific’, includes authors from Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences and Oregon St. Univ., 2015 (emphasis added):
A more complete record is emerging of radionuclide measurements in fish [from] across the Pacific… Fish 100–200 km east of [Fukushima], coastal fish in the Aleutian Islands… and trans-Pacific migratory species, all had increased dose rates as a consequence of the FDNPP accident.
FDNPP produced the largest single-event influx of radioactive cesium isotopes into the Pacific [137Cs up to 90 PBq; Chernobyl total: 70-85 PBq].
Dose rates to the most impacted fish species near the FDNPP have remained above benchmark levels for potential dose effects at least three years longer than was indicated by previous, data-limited, evaluations.
[Strontium-90] was estimated to contribute up to approximately one-half of the total 2013 dose rate to fish near the FDNPP.
Evaluations… suggested that the dose rates to fish near the FDNPP… only briefly remained above the benchmark levels for potential harmful effects… However, subsequent data have indicated highly elevated and persistent accumulation of Cs.
Maximally exposed fish near the FDNPP [had] an increase of more than six orders of magnitude… The elevated activity concentrations were not isolated to one sample, or one species. In 2013, activity concentrations of 134,137Cs exceeding [100,000 Bq] kg were measured in more than 100 fish from ten species sampled from FDNPP port… concentrations in [some species] are orders of magnitude higher than predicted.
Some of the released radionuclides are being carried long distances…
At Amchitka Island [in Alaska] the 134,137Cs dose rates to [greenling and rockfish] were only slightly higher than pre-event levels… The increase… appears to be due to atmospheric transport from Fukushima as 134Cs was measured… in freshwater fish [11 Bq/kg in trout].
Detections of 134Cs in California water samples gathered in August 2014… suggest incremental dose rate increases to resident fish.
Fish at 100–200 km east of the FDNPP, coastal fish in the Aleutian Islands, and trans-Pacific migratory species all had increased dose rates.
Persistence of the radionuclides in fish was not anticipated by existing models… ongoing measurements are needed at locations near the FDNPP and further along the predicted plume trajectory… Some areas that have experienced air deposition in 2011 (e.g. Aleutian Islands), should continue monitoring as they may experience a second arrival of 134,137Cs in subsequent years via an oceanic plume.
This study was in collaboration with the… IAEA
See also: Gov’t: Alaska island “appears to show impacts from Fukushima” — “Significant cesium signature” — Scientists anticipate further impact as ocean plume arrives (VIDEO)
ENENews: US Gov’t: Radioactive material from reactors is 2 billion times more toxic than industrial poisons
US Gov’t: Radioactive material from reactors is 2 billion times more toxic than industrial poisons — Harm caused by nuclear disaster “greater than for any work of man” other than atomic bomb — Top Expert: Radiation “like explosions going off in cell… blows hole in DNA” (VIDEO)
Published: February 28th, 2015 at 9:05 pm ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/govt-document-radioactive-materials-reactors-2-billion-times-toxic-common-industrial-poison-harm-nuclear-disaster-greater-work-man-other-atomic-bomb-top-expert-radiation-like-explosions-going-ce
Dr. Bill McBride, UCLA School of Medicine Vice Chair for Research in Radiation, Principle Investigator of UCLA’s Center for Medical Countermeasures Against Radiation — National Institutes of Health, Jan 27, 2014 (emphasis added):
19:45 – There are some unique things about ionizing radiation when it comes to the interaction with biological systems… Energy is deposited ubiquitously in cells and in tissues… in little packets of energy… These [are] like many explosions going off in the cell… If you can think of these little explosions going off all over a cell, if it happens to take place in DNA, there’s really quite a high chance this will blow a hole in the DNA. Ionizing radiation is a very powerful cytotoxic agent… You get these lesions which are formed within DNA which are really quite complex lesions… We’re talking 0.0000000000000001 seconds for the ionization to take place… Cell cycle arrest, cell death by apoptosis or mitotic catastrophe… take place very rapidly after exposure.
37:30 – What’s happening following ionizing radiation? You get these little explosions going off very rapidly… But mitochondria get hit as well… With time, you actually get these mitochondria leaking more free radicals than [the] ionizing radiation, by orders of magnitude… This concept is one which is growing very strongly in radiation biology now. The effects are not all over in 24 hours… you initiate a cascade of biological responses which can go on for a long period of time, even years.
46:00 – You get long-term immune dysfunction… If you inject flu virus into mice [it] will eventually kill the [irradiated] animals… in normal animals this isn’t the case. So the immune system is compromised for long periods of time after radiation exposure.
51:00 – The concept is that we’re generating damage which is cascading forward to mitochondria and other cellular structures, in addition to DNA… Radiation is not just a powerful cytotoxin, it initiates signaling cascades that are taking place against a radiation damage background… Radiation damage is often remembered within the cells. We’ve shown, at least in brain and lung and other tissues, you get these kind of pro-inflammatory responses… This is underlying a lot of effects in radiation exposure.
52:00 (appears to be on verge of crying) – At UCLA we have over 100 people who are in our center… They’re interested in radiation now — they never were before. I think that we’re kind of moving animal models slowly forward to things which are really kind of very precise and very accurate and I think do reflect a lot of things that we will see in humans… who’ve been exposed to radiation.
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (pdf), 1968: The total amount of debris released during routine atomic processes and conceived as possible from accidents is minuscule when compared with the amount of pollutants produced throughout the world by combustion. The extraordinarily poisonous nature of the radioactive materials involved, however, dictates that even small quantities be treated with respect. For instance, it has been estimated that some of the radioactive materials found in a reactor are 3 million to 2 billion times as toxic as chlorine, the most common poison used by industry… if it were possible for all the many controls and safety features in a large power reactor to fail so as to produce a disastrous release of radioactivity, this release could conceivably kill thousands… Although, in actual practice, such an accident is made to have a vanishingly small probability of occurring, the theoretical potential for such an accident is probably greater than for any work of man other than the explosion of a fission or fusion weapon.
The Television Commercial About The National Debt That Is Being Banned By Major Networks
The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’ Exclusive: Secret interrogation facility reveals aspects of war on terror in US ‘They disappeared us
From the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site
The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’
Exclusive: Secret interrogation facility reveals aspects of war on terror in US
‘They disappeared us’: protester details 17-hour shackling without basic rights
Accounts describe police brutality, missing 15-year-old and one man’s death
Latest: Follow the Guardian’s investigation into Chicago’s Homan Square
https://embed.theguardian.com/embed/video/us-news/video/2015/feb/24/homan-square-chicago-black-site-video
While US military and intelligence interrogation impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles and even a cage – focuses on American citizens, most often poor, black and brown. ‘When you go in,’ Brian Jacob Church told the Guardian, ‘nobody knows what happened to you.’ Video: Phil Batta for the Guardian; editing: Mae Ryan
Spencer Ackerman in Chicago
@attackerman
Tuesday 24 February 2015 16.43 EST Last modified on Friday 27 February 2015 17.48 EST
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:
Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
Shackling for prolonged periods.
Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.
Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.
Chicago’s Homan Square ‘black site’: surveillance, military-style vehicles and a metal cage
“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”
The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.
Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.
“This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”
Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the facility. But after the Guardian published this story, the department provided a statement insisting, without specifics, that there is nothing untoward taking place at what it called the “sensitive” location, home to undercover units.
“CPD [Chicago police department] abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility. If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them. It also houses CPD’s Evidence Recovered Property Section, where the public is able to claim inventoried property,” the statement said, something numerous attorneys and one Homan Square arrestee have denied.
“There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square,” it continued.
The Chicago police statement did not address how long into an arrest or detention those records are generated or their availability to the public. A department spokesperson did not respond to a detailed request for clarification.
When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions. “This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here,” said the man, who refused to give his name.
A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out of the warehouse until the late 1990s.
But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of Homan Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.
“They just disappear,” said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”
‘Never going to see the light of day’: the search for the Nato Three, the head wound, the worried mom and the dead man
‘They were held incommunicado for much longer than I think should be permitted in this country – anywhere – but particularly given the strong constitutional rights afforded to people who are being charged with crimes,” said Sarah Gelsomino, the lawyer for Brian Jacob Church. Photograph: Phil Batta/Guardian
Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On May 16 2012, he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest against the Nato summit. Church says officers cuffed him to a bench for an estimated 17 hours, intermittently interrogating him without reading his Miranda rights to remain silent. It would take another three hours – and an unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage – before he was finally charged with terrorism-related offenses at the nearby 11th district station, where he was made to sign papers, fingerprinted and photographed.
In preparation for the Nato protest, Church, who is from Florida, had written a phone number for the National Lawyers Guild on his arm as a precautionary measure. Once taken to Homan Square, Church asked explicitly to call his lawyers, and said he was denied.
“Essentially, I wasn’t allowed to make any contact with anybody,” Church told the Guardian, in contradiction of a police guidance on permitting phone calls and legal counsel to arrestees.
Church’s left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in windowless cinderblock cell, with his ankles cuffed together. He remained in those restraints for about 17 hours.
“I had essentially figured, ‘All right, well, they disappeared us and so we’re probably never going to see the light of day again,’” Church said.
Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Vincent Betterly, known as the ‘Nato Three’
Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase and Brent Vincent Betterly, known as the ‘Nato Three’. Photograph: AP/Cook County sheriff’s office
Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could not find Church through 12 hours of “active searching”, Sarah Gelsomino, Church’s lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and others made a “major stink” with contacts in the offices of the corporation counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.
They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to a nearby police station for booking.
After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of terrorism-related offenses but guilty of lesser charges of possessing an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of “mob action”.
It’s almost like they throw a black bag over your head and make you disappear for a day or two
Brian Jacob Church
The access that Nato Three attorneys received to Homan Square was an exception to the rule, even if Jacob Church’s experience there was not.
Three attorneys interviewed by the Guardian report being personally turned away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access to their clients. Two more lawyers who hadn’t been physically denied described it as a place where police withheld information about their clients’ whereabouts. Church was the only person who had been detained at the facility who agreed to talk with the Guardian: their lawyers say others fear police retaliation.
One man in January 2013 had his name changed in the Chicago central bookings database and then taken to Homan Square without a record of his transfer being kept, according to Eliza Solowiej of Chicago’s First Defense Legal Aid. (The man, the Guardian understands, wishes to be anonymous; his current attorney declined to confirm Solowiej’s account.) She found out where he was after he was taken to the hospital with a head injury.
“He said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation room at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,” Solowiej said. “He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan Square without any.”
Bartmes, another Chicago attorney, said that in September 2013 she got a call from a mother worried that her 15-year-old son had been picked up by police before dawn. A sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to say her son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a shooting and would be released soon. When hours passed, Bartmes traveled to Homan Square, only to be refused entry for nearly an hour.
An officer told her, “Well, you can’t just stand here taking notes, this is a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you’re making people very nervous,” Bartmes recalled. Told to leave, she said she would return in an hour if the boy was not released. He was home, and not charged, after “12, maybe 13” hours in custody.
On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found “unresponsive inside an interview room”, and pronounced dead. After publication, the Cook County medical examiner told the Guardian that the cause of death was determined to be heroin intoxication.
Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several special units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces. If police “want money, guns, drugs”, or information on the flow of any of them onto Chicago’s streets, “they bring them there and use it as a place of interrogation off the books,” Hill said.
‘That scares the hell out of me’: a throwback to Chicago police abuse with a post-9/11 feel
Homan Square Facebook Twitter Pinterest
‘The real danger in allowing practices like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,’ criminologist Tracy Siska told the Guardian. Photograph: Chandler West/Guardian
A former Chicago detective and current private investigator, Bill Dorsch, said he had not heard of the police abuses described by Church and lawyers for other suspects who had been taken to Homan Square. He has been permitted access to the facility to visit one of its main features, an evidence locker for the police department. (“I just showed my retirement star and passed through,” Dorsch said.)
Transferring detainees through police custody to deny them access to legal counsel, would be “a career-ender,” Dorsch said. “To move just for the purpose of hiding them, I can’t see that happening,” he told the Guardian.
Richard Brzeczek, Chicago’s police superintendent from 1980 to 1983, who also said he had no first-hand knowledge of abuses at Homan Square, said it was “never justified” to deny access to attorneys.
“Homan Square should be on the same list as every other facility where you can call central booking and say: ‘Can you tell me if this person is in custody and where,’” Brzeczek said.
“If you’re going to be doing this, then you have to include Homan Square on the list of facilities that prisoners are taken into and a record made. It can’t be an exempt facility.”
Indeed, Chicago police guidelines appear to ban the sorts of practices Church and the lawyers said occur at Homan Square.
A directive titled “Processing Persons Under Department Control” instructs that “investigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not delay the booking process,” and arrestees must be allowed “a reasonable number of telephone calls” to attorneys swiftly “after their arrival at the first place of custody.” Another directive, “Arrestee and In-Custody Communications,” says police supervisors must “allow visitation by attorneys.”
Attorney Scott Finger said that the Chicago police tightened the latter directive in 2012 after quiet complaints from lawyers about their lack of access to Homan Square. Without those changes, Church’s attorneys might not have gained entry at all. But that tightening – about a week before Church’s arrest – did not prevent Church’s prolonged detention without a lawyer, nor the later cases where lawyers were unable to enter.
The combination of holding clients for long periods, while concealing their whereabouts and denying access to a lawyer, struck legal experts as a throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11 feel to it.
On a smaller scale, Homan Square is “analogous to the CIA’s black sites,” said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, she said, “police used the term ‘shadow site’” to refer to the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.
I’ve never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and hold somebody before booking for hours and hours
James Trainum, former detective, Washington DC
“Back when I first started working on torture cases and started representing criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they’d been taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where they were tortured,” said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge. “And in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions from them.”
Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police held people incommunicado for extended periods.
“I’ve never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and just hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the hell out of me that that even exists or might exist,” said Trainum, who now studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.
Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at Chicago’s secretive interrogation and holding facility: “It’s very, very rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police custody, and even more so at Homan Square,” Solowiej said.
Church said that one of his more striking memories of Homan Square was the “big, big vehicles” police had inside the complex that “look like very large MRAPs that they use in the Middle East.”
Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military gear to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a local ABC News report.
Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley, showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas military operations.
“The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,” Siska said.
“They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That’s how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.”
Read more: Guantánamo torturer led brutal Chicago regime of shackling and confession
Bad lieutenant: American police brutality, exported from Chicago to Guantánamo
Plus: How Chicago police condemned the innocent – a trail of coerced confessions
Latest: ‘Gestapo’ tactics alarm from Chicago to DC as second protester speaks
A Real Heartbreaker Story, Ya Think California Might Actually Begin to Believe the Truth About the Pacific Now? What About the Rest of the Sleepers, Will They Now Awaken?
Thanks Fukushima, for the death of all sea life in the Pacific!
FOX L.A.: “Dead sea lions litter Malibu beaches, families shocked… WARNING: Graphic Images” — Babies being eaten by birds — So many 911 calls about dying animals it’s “bogging down system” — “Scientists say this year is worst in history” — Tells us “major changes are going on out in the ocean” (VIDEO)
Published: February 24th, 2015 at 10:11 am ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/fox-dozens-dead-sea-lions-litter-la-beaches-families-shocked-many-calls-911-about-dying-animals-bogging-down-system-scientists-year-worst-history-devastating-scene-horrifying-video
FOX 11 News, Feb 23, 2015 (emphasis added): Dozens of dead Sea Lions litter Malibu beaches; families shocked — A family stumbled upon nearly 10 dead sea lions on a Malibu beach Sunday (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES IN THIS STORY AND VIDEO) “We just came down the stairs and little sea lions are being washed on to shore dying,” Neda Soderqvist says… “It was devastating to see a bunch of sea lions just lying dead. It wasn’t one or two it was six or eight,” Soderqvist said to FOX 11′s Christine O’Donnell. The sight was especially difficult for her seven-year-old… “They came up and just died right in front of us,” Isabella said… Earlier in the week, Kristin Thames says stumbled across the same devastating scene… “They’re only allowed to take three sea lion pups because there’s not enough space at the rescue centers for more,” Thames said, “it’s really sad.”
Marin Independent Journal, Feb 21, 2015: “First time in our history that we have had sea lion pups here this early” [said] Shawn Johnson, director of veterinary science at the mammal center… sea lions are a sentinel species, a canary in the coal mine. “They can tell us what is happening in the ocean and if it’s unhealthy.”
Fox News, Feb 23, 2015: A heartbreaking and troubling mystery for the third year in a row… Johnson: “They’re so thin, they’re like 15-16 pounds… they should be 30-40″… Scientists say this year is the worst in history – 10 times the normal number of strandings… Johnson: “It’s obvious that the ocean is changing, and the sea lions are sentinels of the seas. They’re telling us that there are major changes going on out there in the oceans today.”
OC Register, Feb 18, 2015: Nearly 1,000 sea lion pups have been found stranded on the Southern California beaches this year, about five times higher than what caused experts to panic two years ago… Wednesday, centers reported 940 for the year… 196 sea lions were reported stranded along Southern California beaches in by the end of February 2013, the year NOAA declared an unusual mortality event…
La Jolla Light, Feb 17, 2015: Concerned citizens and visitors to La Jolla’s beaches have been excessively calling 911 to report malnourished and dehydrated sea lion pups, reports San Diego lifeguard Lt. Rich Stropky, which is “bogging down the system.”
Geoffrey Melendres, Feb 23, 2015: “I tried to save this one the day before yesterday … but when I looked for it yesterday I found it dead with its grieving momma.”
Unaired footage shows seagulls eating baby sea lions, Feb 15, 2015: “The seagull’s eating it!”
Please help me share this video ~ I was able to get FOX 11 news to air it, Feb 23, 2015: “Please help me spread awareness ~ our sea lions are dying by the dozens daily. Wildlife can only help rescue three a day due to nowhere to place them. I’m so sad and hopeless for these poor sea animals. The more noise we make the faster we can help.”
Source video for clips seen on FOX 11 News here
Published: February 24th, 2015 at 10:11 am ET
By ENENews
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FOX San Diego: Sardines, crayfish “disappeared from Pacific Ocean… they’ve just vanished” — Marine mammals starving, struggling to survive on West Coast — Strandings in past 5 weeks already exceed what’s normally seen for an entire year — “Much larger” than anything on record (VIDEOS) February 10, 2015
NBC: Record level of sick or injured California seals and sea lions turning up — “The numbers are extraordinary” — “Scientists worried… The worst kind of perfect storm” — Pups should be weighing 2 or 3 times as much, “severely malnourished” (VIDEO) April 18, 2014
Gov’t Data: US hit with worst fallout the year AFTER Fukushima began — Radioactive cesium spiked to highest levels ever recorded in history of EPA’s radiation network October 1, 2014
‘Marine Mystery’ in California: “Toxic outbreak threatening marine life” — Birds falling from sky, sea lions convulsing — “Worst they’ve ever seen” — Toxin hits record level, almost 1,000% above gov’t limit — Heart lesions, severe shrinking in part of brain, nervous system failure (VIDEO) May 3, 2014
TV: “Animals basically dying on our beaches” along West Coast — “New, worse calamity seems to be unfolding” — Experts: “Like walking skeletons”; “So hungry they gnaw on rocks”; “Skin hanging off”; “Extremely unusual… maybe the fish have all left”; “Prepare for the worst” (VIDEOS) February 1, 2015
February 24th, 2015 | Category: Audio/Video Clips, California, US, West Coast
ENENews: “Cement not stopping highly contaminated nuclear waste from flowing out of reactor buildings”; IAEA: Radioactive releases from plant into ocean “a challenging issue”; Tepco officials say “they’re already 2 weeks to a month behind schedule on that work.” I Say Tepco, and All Nuclear Regulatory Agencies World Wide, Are Close to 4 Years Behind!!!
Japan TV: Failure at Fukushima — Cement not stopping highly contaminated nuclear waste from flowing out of reactor buildings — IAEA: Radioactive releases from plant into ocean “a challenging issue” — Officials: Don’t know what to do next, or how this will affect whole ‘decommissioning’ project (VIDEO)
Published: February 11th, 2015 at 1:14 am ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/japan-tv-failure-fukushima-cement-stopping-highly-contaminated-nuclear-waste-flowing-reactor-buildings-iaea-radioactive-releases-plant-ocean-challenging-issue-officials-dont-next-will-affect
NHK World transcript excerpts, Feb. 9, 2015: Managers of Japan’s damaged nuclear plant are facing another delay in dealing with a major source of contamination. They’re working on blocking the flow of radioactive water from reactor buildings to underground tunnels. TEPCO officials met with members of the Nuclear Regulation Authority [which] approved a plan to delay the project… Workers were supposed to remove the highly radioactive water… and after that they would have filled in the tunnels with cement. However, efforts to block the flow of water failed. Engineers need to fill in some gaps that may be left in the area where the tunnels and reactor buildings meet. The setback will likely affect a second project to build an ice wall around the 4 damaged reactor buildings. Tepco officials say they’re already 2 weeks to a month behind schedule on that work.
NHK, Feb. 9, 2015: The workers poured cement into the tunnels while draining contaminated water. But blocking the water was not successful as it continued to flow through the buildings… They say they do not yet know how the latest delay will affect the whole decommissioning project. They are still studying the next steps they need to take.
Kyodo News, Feb 2, 2015: … the project to build a huge underground ice wall — a key measure to prevent radioactive water from further building up at the site — and other operations will likely be delayed by up to a month, it added… TEPCO initially planned to finish constructing the 1.5-kilometer frozen wall around the buildings housing the Nos. 1 to 4 reactors…by the end of next month.
Al Jazeera, Feb 9, 2015: The UN’s nuclear watchdog* says contaminated water leaking from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is still “a challenging issue”. The IAEA is reviewing work to decommission the plant… Tepco is criticized with its handling of radioactive water leaks into the Pacific Ocean.
* IAEA the “UN’s nuclear watchdog”? CNN, ABC, Harvard researchers, and even the UN itself, say yes. Perhaps they should consult with the head of the IAEA on the matter: “I have tried to address some widespread misconceptions in the media about the IAEA’s role in nuclear safety… we are not a ‘nuclear safety watchdog’.” A Bloomberg report on the IAEA notes, “The agency’s safety division garnered little respect in US diplomatic cables that described the department as a marketing channel for countries seeking to sell atomic technology… The IAEA’s own mission [is] to promote atomic power.”
FIRST WAVE OF FORECLOSURE FRAUD COMPLAINANTS HEAD TO OSCEOLA COUNTY, FLORIDA SHERIFF’S OFFICE!
If all counties, in all states, would do the same thing, maybe people would not continue to believe that the banks can break the law for free
Take the Time to Read the US Supreme Court Ruling on JESINOSKI ET UX. v. COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC., ET AL.
(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2014 1
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as isbeing done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has beenprepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
JESINOSKI ET UX. v. COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC., ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
No. 13–684. Argued November 4, 2014 — Decided January 13, 2015
Exactly three years after borrowing money from respondent Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., to refinance their home mortgage, petitionersLarry and Cheryle Jesinoski sent Countrywide and respondent Bank of America Home Loans, which had acquired Countrywide, a letterpurporting to rescind the transaction. Bank of America replied, refusing to acknowledge the rescission’s validity. One year and one daylater, the Jesinoskis filed suit in federal court, seeking a declarationof rescission and damages. The District Court entered judgment onthe pleadings for respondents, concluding that a borrower can exercise the Truth in Lending Act’s right to rescind a loan, see 15 U. S. C. §1635(a), (f), only by filing a lawsuit within three years of the datethe loan was consummated. The Jesinoskis’ complaint, filed four years and one day after the loan’s consummation, was ineffective. The Eighth Circuit affirmed.
Held: A borrower exercising his right to rescind under the Act need only provide written notice to his lender within the 3-year period, not filesuit within that period. Section 1635(a)’s unequivocal terms—a borrower “shall have the right to rescind . . . by notifying the creditor . . . of his intention to do so” (emphasis added)—leave no doubt that rescission is effected when the borrower notifies the creditor of his intention to rescind. This conclusion is not altered by §1635(f), which states when the right to rescind must be exercised, but says nothing about how that right is exercised. Nor does §1635(g)—which states that “in addition to rescission the court may award relief . . . not relating to the right to rescind”—support respondents’ view that rescission is necessarily a consequence of judicial action. And the fact that the Act modified the common-law condition precedent to rescission at law, see §1635(b), hardly implies that the Act thereby codified rescission in equity. Pp. 2–5. 729 F. 3d 1092, reversed and remanded. SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
_________________
_________________
Cite as: 574 U. S. ____ (2015) 1
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in thepreliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested tonotify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in orderthat corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 13–684
LARRY D. JESINOSKI, ET UX., PETITIONERS v. COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC., ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[January 13, 2015]
JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Truth in Lending Act gives borrowers the right to rescind certain loans for up to three years after the transaction is consummated. The question presented is whether a borrower exercises this right by providing written no- tice to his lender, or whether he must also file a lawsuit before the 3-year period elapses.
On February 23, 2007, petitioners Larry and CheryleJesinoski refinanced the mortgage on their home by borrowing $611,000 from respondent Countrywide HomeLoans, Inc. Exactly three years later, on February 23,2010, the Jesinoskis mailed respondents a letter purporting to rescind the loan. Respondent Bank of America Home Loans replied on March 12, 2010, refusing to acknowledge the validity of the rescission. On February24, 2011, the Jesinoskis filed suit in Federal District Court seeking a declaration of rescission and damages.
Respondents moved for judgment on the pleadings, which the District Court granted. The court concluded that the Act requires a borrower seeking rescission to filea lawsuit within three years of the transaction’s consummation. Although the Jesinoskis notified respondents of their intention to rescind within that time, they did not file their first complaint until four years and one day after the loan’s consummation. 2012 WL 1365751, *3 (D Minn., Apr. 19, 2012). The Eighth Circuit affirmed. 729 F. 3d 1092, 1093 (2013) (per curiam).
Congress passed the Truth in Lending Act, 82 Stat. 146,as amended, to help consumers “avoid the uninformed useof credit, and to protect the consumer against inaccurate and unfair credit billing.” 15 U. S. C. §1601(a). To this end, the Act grants borrowers the right to rescind a loan “until midnight of the third business day following the consummation of the transaction or the delivery of the [disclosures required by the Act], whichever is later, bynotifying the creditor, in accordance with regulations of the [Federal Reserve] Board, of his intention to do so.” §1635(a) (2006 ed.).* This regime grants borrowers anunconditional right to rescind for three days, after which they may rescind only if the lender failed to satisfy the Act’s disclosure requirements. But this conditional right to rescind does not last forever. Even if a lender never makes the required disclosures, the “right of rescission shall expire three years after the date of consummation of the transaction or upon the sale of the property, whichever comes first.” §1635(f). The Eighth Circuit’s affirmance in the present case rested upon its holding in Keiran v. Home Capital, Inc., 720 F. 3d 721, 727–728 (2013) that, unless aborrower has filed a suit for rescission within three years of the transaction’s consummation, §1635(f) extinguishesthe right to rescind and bars relief.
*Following the events in this case, Congress transferred the authotity to promulgate rules implementing the Act to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. See Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, §§1061(b)(1), 1100A(2), 1100H, 124 Stat. 2036, 2107,2113.
That was error. Section 1635(a) explains in unequivocal ——————terms how the right to rescind is to be exercised: It provides that a borrower “shall have the right to rescind . . .by notifying the creditor, in accordance with regulations of the Board, of his intention to do so” (emphasis added). The language leaves no doubt that rescission is effected when the borrower notifies the creditor of his intention to rescind. It follows that, so long as the borrower notifies within three years after the transaction is consummated, his rescission is timely. The statute does not also requirehim to sue within three years.
Nothing in §1635(f) changes this conclusion. Although §1635(f) tells us when the right to rescind must be exercised, it says nothing about how that right is exercised. Our observation in Beach v. Ocwen Fed. Bank, 523 U. S. 410, 417 (1998), that §1635(f) “govern[s] the life of the underlying right” is beside the point. That case concerned a borrower’s attempt to rescind in the course of a foreclosure proceeding initiated six years after the loan’s consummation. We concluded only that there was “no federal right to rescind, defensively or otherwise, after the 3-yearperiod of §1635(f) has run,” id., at 419, not that there was no rescission until a suit is filed.
Respondents do not dispute that §1635(a) requires only written notice of rescission. Indeed, they concede that written notice suffices to rescind a loan within the first three days after the transaction is consummated. Theyfurther concede that written notice suffices after that period if the parties agree that the lender failed to makethe required disclosures. Respondents argue, however,that if the parties dispute the adequacy of the disclosures—and thus the continued availability of the right torescind—then written notice does not suffice.
Section 1635(a) nowhere suggests a distinction betweendisputed and undisputed rescissions, much less that a lawsuit would be required for the latter. In an effort to sidestep this problem, respondents point to a neighboring provision, §1635(g), which they believe provides supportfor their interpretation of the Act. Section 1635(g) states merely that, “[i]n any action in which it is determined thata creditor has violated this section, in addition to rescission the court may award relief under section 1640 of thistitle for violations of this subchapter not relating to the right to rescind.” Respondents argue that the phrase “award relief ” “in addition to rescission” confirms that rescission is a consequence of judicial action. But the fact that it can be a consequence of judicial action when §1635(g) is triggered in no way suggests that it can onlyfollow from such action. The Act contemplates various situations in which the question of a lender’s compliance with the Act’s disclosure requirements may arise in alawsuit—for example, a lender’s foreclosure action in which the borrower raises inadequate disclosure as anaffirmative defense. Section 1635(g) makes clear that acourt may not only award rescission and thereby relievethe borrower of his financial obligation to the lender, but may also grant any of the remedies available under §1640 (including statutory damages). It has no bearing upon whether and how borrower-rescission under §1635(a) may occur.
Finally, respondents invoke the common law. It is true that rescission traditionally required either that the rescinding party return what he received before a rescission could be effected (rescission at law), or else that a court affirmatively decree rescission (rescission in equity). 2 D. Dobbs, Law of Remedies §9.3(3), pp. 585–586 (2d ed. 1993). It is also true that the Act disclaims the common-law condition precedent to rescission at law that the borrower tender the proceeds received under the transaction. 15 U. S. C. §1635(b). But the negation of rescission-atlaw’s tender requirement hardly implies that the Act codifies rescission in equity. Nothing in our jurisprudence,and no tool of statutory interpretation, requires that a congressional Act must be construed as implementing itsclosest common-law analogue. Cf. Astoria Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U. S. 104, 108–109 (1991). The clear import of §1635(a) is that a borrower need onlyprovide written notice to a lender in order to exercise his right to rescind. To the extent §1635(b) alters the traditional process for unwinding such a unilaterally rescinded transaction, this is simply a case in which statutory lawmodifies common-law practice.
* * *
The Jesinoskis mailed respondents written notice oftheir intention to rescind within three years of their loan’s consummation. Because this is all that a borrower must do in order to exercise his right to rescind under the Act,the court below erred in dismissing the complaint. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Eighth Circuit andremand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Rotherham Rape Scandal Destroys ‘White Privilege” Myth
Airline whistleblower solves 9/11, Posted by Kevin Barrett on January 31, 2015 @ Veterans Today
Airline whistleblower solves 9/11
Posted by Kevin Barrett on January 31, 2015
Veterans Today:
A review of “Methodical Illusion” by Rebekah Roth
By Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor
The truth-seeking community – and the airline industry – are abuzz over Rebekah Roth’s new book Methodical Illusion. It’s poised to break into the top 1,000 worldwide, selling so fast that Amazon may even have tried to stop its rise to bestseller status by falsely claiming “sorry, out of stock.”
We’ve seen this situation before…such as on September 8th, 2013, when the RT documentary 9/11 and Operation Gladio started to go viral and suddenly disappeared from search engines – as emails containing its url began falling into a big black hole in cyberspace.
So what’s all the excitement about? Why would the people whose job is to “disable the purveyors of conspiracy theories” try to limit sales of a potboiler novel by a former stewardess?
hqdefaultHint: It isn’t literary quality they’re afraid of. If you want a 9/11 truth novel by a literary genius, read Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge. Pynchon’s book has lots of great writing and a modest amount of 9/11 truth, packaged in such a way as not to offend the Tribe that dominates American media.
But if you want a rough-hewn page-turner with more 9/11 truth than anything you’re likely to read this side of David Ray Griffin or Christopher Bollyn (or Veterans Today for that matter) check out Methodical Illusion. Roth boldly goes where no stewardess or novelist has gone before, pinning 9/11 squarely on the Israelis and their American assets, and providing a convincing explanation of how the planes were “hijacked,” by whom, where they went, and what happened to the passengers.
Roth’s book has set off a stampede by her former colleagues in the aviation industry, who are rushing to provide details supporting her revelations. They are confirming the installation of FTS (Flight Termination System) equipment on the models “hijacked” on 9/11, which allowed those planes to be taken over remotely and flown from the ground. When FTS takes over a plane, it completely shuts down that plane’s communications with the outside world. That explains why not one of the four pilots on any of the 9/11 planes managed to flip a toggle switch and squawk the hijack code. Had the aircraft been hijacked in a normal manner, the pilots, who are trained to instantly squawk “hijack” in such an emergency, all would have done so.
The failure of any of the 9/11 planes to squawk the “we are hijacked” message is absolute, conclusive proof that the official story of hijackings by Arabs armed with box cutters is false.
According to the author’s hypothesis, the FTS-captured-and-silenced planes landed at a nearby Air Force base with gigantic hangars, which Roth identifies and a colleague who was there confirms happened, less than 20 minutes after takeoff. Once on the ground, selected flight attendants and passengers were guided (or forced) to place cell phone calls, during which they read from scripts prepared by the perpetrators.
This scenario is very similar to one planned by the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962: the infamous Operation Northwoods. And it is entirely plausible. The main counter-argument – that the FAA tracked the two Boston aircraft from takeoff to crashes – has been disproven, since we now know that the 9/11 perpetrators were inserting false blips onto FAA controllers screens and thereby controlling what they saw.
According to this scenario, the Twin Towers would have been hit by military aircraft and/or missiles, not passenger jets.
Roth’s hypothesis is compelling, for several reasons. First, it explains why the perpetrators would invent such a ridiculously implausible scenario as “hijacked suicide attack planes fly all over the Eastern half of the USA before finally hitting their targets or being taken down by heroic passengers.” They needed this palpably absurd scheme to allow for time to covertly land the planes and stage the dramas via scripted cell phone calls. And the dramas – which would brainwash Americans into hating Israel’s Muslim enemies and killing them by the millions – were (alongside the horrific images broadcast from New York) the key part of the psy-op. Without the “cell phone calls,” nobody would have “known” what happened on those planes.
Were there such a thing as al-Qaeda suicide hijackers, they would take over the plane immediately after takeoff and fly straight for their targets, thereby minimizing the possibility of things going wrong, such as FTS being activated by the good guys or NORAD interceptors showing up in around 10 minutes – the normal procedure every time a plane deviates significantly from course.
But since there have been no successful hijackings in the USA since the 1970s, the whole idea that even one plane would be successfully hijacked on 9/11 is ludicrous. The preposterous claim that four planes with military-trained pilots were commandeered by 130 pound “muscle hijackers” with box cutters and flown with consummate skill and impossible speed by pilots who couldn’t even fly Cessnas is one of history’s most bizarre delusions.
Roth’s hypothesis also explains why so many of the people who received phone calls from the “hijacked passengers” insisted that the calls came from the person’s cell phone, positively identified through caller ID. In 2001, cell phones did not work at altitude. The calls must have been made from the ground.
Additionally, this scenario explains why many of the cell phone calls went on so long; were often placed to improbable recipients; had none of the correct background sounds; and were full of bizarre glitches revealing that they were scripted and/or coerced, not actual emergency calls from in-flight aircraft.
Roth’s explanation sheds light on the role of Rabbi Dov Zakheim, a US-Israeli dual citizen who served as Comptroller of the Pentagon on 9/11 and managed to abscond with $2.3 trillion dollars, as Rumsfeld announced the day before.
Roth writes:
“Remember the comptroller of the Pentagon (Dov Zakheim), who owned the company that manufactured the flight termination system? He also owned a company that refurbished commercial 767s and sold them as military refueling tankers. He just got some free airplanes to add to his inventory. They could have easily kept those planes hidden in the hangers (at the Air Force Base) and flown them out after dark”. (251)
According to former NSA officer Wayne Madsen, one or more of those planes may now be parked at the “Boneyard” (the Marana Air Field) in Arizona. Madsen spent several days on-site investigating the murder of former CIA pilot and 9/11 truth author Philip Marshall – a crime which, like the recent assassination of Gray State filmmaker David Crowley, was a professional hit disguised as a murder-suicide. Madsen believes Marshall may have been killed because he discovered one or more 9/11 planes stored at Marana. The quickest way to shed light on this, I suspect, would be to waterboard Rabbi Zakheim.
But the larcenous and murderous Rabbi was not the only key Israeli-American player in the plane-capture operation. Another was Daniel Lewin, the “hijacker in seat 9B” on Flight 11. Lewin was (and may still be) a topnotch Mossad assassin. Roth suggests Daniel Lewin may have been one of the agents tasked with overseeing the FTS plane-takeovers, controlling the passengers and crew, coercing cell-phone-callers, and ultimately killing the “9/11 plane crash victims” whose DNA samples would then be sent to a military laboratory for identification. (Though there is no documentation of any discovery of passenger remains at Shanksville or the Pentagon – indeed, there is not one shred of evidence that Fight 93 was ever excavated from the ten-by-fifteen-foot hole in the ground it allegedly disappeared into, or that airliner or passenger remains were ever removed from the Pentagon – the government claims that all of the passengers and crew from those two sites, but none of the alleged hijackers, have been DNA-identified from crash site remains!)
Among the airline industry whistleblowers who have contacted Roth is one who still possesses the original passenger manifests for the “hijacked flights.” There are no Arab names on those manifests. That would explain why the public versions also contain no Arab names; why no remains of any alleged hijackers were ever DNA-identified; why the US government has repeatedly refused pleas from the alleged hijackers’ family members to accept DNA samples and try to identify their falsely-accused loved ones; why several of the alleged hijackers were identity theft victims with Mossad dopplegangers; why not a single authentic security camera image shows any of the alleged hijackers en route to boarding any of the four alleged attack aircraft; why no airline industry employees have ever testified about ticketing or boarding any of the 19 Arabs; why no passenger stubs have ever been produced for the 19 Arabs; and why ten of the alleged hijackers turned up alive after 9/11.
Digital StillCameraMethodical Illusion, unlike previous 9/11 truth novels, isn’t afraid to tell us who did it: “…A political leader of one of our most trusted allies in the Middle East.” I think we know who she means: The one who has just been invited by traitors to address Congress, over the objections of the President.
“…Because they have been such a trusted ally of our nation, they have infiltrated our media, the Federal Reserve, the banking system and they control most of the lobbyists that manipulate far too many of our politicians. They also control most of the campaign contributions as well as both political parties…their complete control over the media is going to be very problematic for us.”
It may be a novel, but truer words have never been spoken.
WND EXCLUSIVE: MEDIA BLACK OUT 200,000 MARCHING AMERICANS – Where’s This Information in Mainstream Media? It Would Be Hard to Keep 200,000 Marchers Quiet I Would Think!!!
WND EXCLUSIVE
MEDIA BLACK OUT 200,000 MARCHING AMERICANS
News outlets slammed for ignoring massive pro-life event
Published: 21 hours ago
image: http://www.wnd.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-print/images/print.png
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/01/march_for_life_2015.jpg
march_for_life_2015
An estimated 200,000 people joined in a March for Life in Washington, D.C., bringing to the streets in front of Congress their plea for protection of the unborn.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2014/05/Watchword160.jpg
It was double the number of people that go to even the biggest football games or indoor concerts.
Yet the establishment media was virtually absent.
WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah has joined with Media Research Center and more than 20 pro-life groups in denouncing the establishment TV networks for failing to cover this year’s March for Life, held last week.
According to MRC, CBS was the only major broadcast network that covered the march – and the coverage was limited to 15 seconds during a discussion of moderate Republican opposition to the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
In the meantime, NBC, ABC and Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo did not mention the march at all.
“It’s not surprising when the big media ignore large gatherings in Washington – year after year – of hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists, but it is unprofessional and betrays their absolute bias,” Farah said.
Other organizations that have joined MRC in condemning the establishment media include the Catholic League, Liberty Council, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, Concerned Women for America and Human Life International.
Troy Newman, co-author of “Abortion Free: Your Manual for Building a Pro-Life America One Community at a Time,” said he thinks the media are trying to protect a certain narrative about abortion.
“The March for Life is the largest annual civil rights march in the world,” Newman told WND. “For the national media to acknowledge this fact would contradict their premise that 1) abortion is a good thing; 2) the country is firmly pro-abortion; and 3) the pro-lifers are a small, insignificant group of religious extremists.”
Newman is president of Operation Rescue and a member of the MRC coalition, continued.
“In my humble opinion, the media is an extension of the far left – it reports only the approved propaganda and ignores the obvious truths. George Orwell’s ’1984′ has come to life in 2015 – the national media is the ‘Ministry of Truth.’”
Farah agreed that the media are becoming Orwellian.
“As a journalist, senior newspaper executive and media entrepreneur for more than 35 years, I’m genuinely ashamed at what my industry has become,” Farah said. “Not only do they avoid debate and discussion of the sanctity of life, they seek to distort the issue by hiding gatherings with the vigor one would expect only in a totalitarian, closed society with a government-controlled media.”
MRC President Brent Bozell did not hold back, blasting the media for their lack of coverage.
“If these were a few dozen hipsters protesting corporate profits while taking selfies with iPhones, the networks would have wall-to-wall coverage,” Bozell said. “The media cannot be bothered to cover 200,000 pro-lifers who came to Washington in the middle of winter to march for the unborn.
“It’s shameful. If you’re throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, the media will provide sympathetic coverage to your cause,” he said. “If you’re standing up for the most vulnerable in our society, the media turn a deaf ear. With each passing day, the media continue to hemorrhage their credibility.”
Instead of covering the march, the major TV networks devoted time to the New England Patriots’ “Deflategate” controversy, sidecar dogs in America and Prince Andrew’s sex scandal, according to MRC.
David Kupelian, WND’s managing editor and the driving force behind the monthly news magazine “Whistleblower,” said: “The big media have been shunning pro-lifers for decades. I remember reporting back in 1989 how the Washington Post devoted a dozen stories to a major pro-choice demonstration in D.C., even providing a map and directions to the upcoming rally. But a year later, the gargantuan ‘Rally for Life ’90,’ which attracted approximately 350,000 according to aerial photos, was graced with one 13-inch story and one photo on page B3.”
At the time, Richard Harwood, the Post’s ombudsman, wrote about the non-coverage this way:
[The pro-life event] stirred no juices at the Post. Many editors were unaware it was taking place … Journalists here, [managing editor Leonard] Downie thinks, not only are not part of the anti-abortion movement, but don’t know anyone who is. The movement is seen as one of those “fundamentalist,” “fringe” things somewhere out there in Middle America or Dixie. Those are not the circles in which we travel or from which we draw intellectual nourishment. As one of last weekend’s editors put it: ‘I didn’t even know this was anything important.
Kupelian is author of “The Marketing of Evil” and “How Evil Works.”
image: http://www.wnd.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-print/images/print.png
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/media-black-out-200000-marching-americans/#MwRgcOzBGfESPZ2v.99
From Current Argus: “WIPP discovers fallen roof”
WIPP discovers fallen roof during inspection
http://www.currentargus.com/carlsbad-news/ci_27374646/wipp-discovers-fallen-roof-during-inspection
By Sarah Matott
smatott@currentargus.com @SarahMatott224 on Twitter
POSTED: 01/22/2015 05:40:43 PM MST
CARLSBAD >> Mining and Ground Control engineers discovered on Jan. 15 that a portion of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ceiling in Panel 3 had fallen, officials said Wednesday.
The roof damage was found during a routine ground control and bulkhead inspection by the WIPP geotechnical staff and was estimated to be 8 feet long and 8 feet wide, with a thickness of 24 inches, WIPP officials said in a release.
“The roof had already fallen before the geotechnical staff found it,” said Tim Runyon, WIPP recovery communications manager.
The fallen piece of ceiling was found in the Panel 3 access drift of the WIPP underground, an area that is already labeled as restricted due to low levels of radiation contamination in the area, the release said.
Runyon said that problems in the restricted areas of the underground were anticipated after geotechnical inspections in November.
According to the news release, during these inspections, seven areas in the underground were identified as restricted areas due to significant bolt loss. All bolting activities at WIPP were halted since the February 2014 incidents until this past November.
“This event highlights the need to continue prioritizing roof bolting and ground control in both the contaminated and uncontaminated areas of the WIPP underground facility in order to ensure safety and habitability in the underground,” a WIPP news release said.
Jim Blankenhorn said at the January town hall that crews have removed over 300 damaged bolts and installed about 280 new bolts since bolting began in mid-November 2014.
Roof bolting in the underground started in mid-November, and WIPP officials have stated that bolting is a priority in the recovery process to ensure safety in the underground.
“Engineers have indicated that the area where the roof fall occurred can be re-bolted and recovered,” the news release said.
Sarah Matott can be reached at 575-628-5546.
ENENews: “It’s completely unsafe… impossible to remove 100s of radioactive materials” — 1,200 radionuclides, only 62 reduced”
TV: Gov’t approves plan to ‘drain’ Fukushima nuclear waste into ocean — Professor: Monitoring necessary to detect ‘worrisome signals’ — Expert: “It’s completely unsafe… impossible to remove 100s of radioactive materials” — 1,200 radionuclides, only 62 reduced — Fisherman: “We can’t trust Tepco” (VIDEO)
Published: January 21st, 2015 at 10:43 pm ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/tv-govt-approves-plant-drain-fukushima-nuclear-waste-ocean-fisherman-trust-tepco-expert-completely-unsafe-impossible-remove-all-hundreds-radioactive-materials-video
NHK, Jan 21, 2015 (emphasis added): Japan’s nuclear regulator has approved a plan by Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, to drain filtered wastewater from the firm’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant into the sea.
TEPCO officials plan to pump up contaminated groundwater through wells built around structures housing the plant’s damaged reactors. The firm also plans to reduce the level of radioactive material in the water before releasing it into the nearby Pacific.
On Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulation Authority approved TEPCO’s plan to install drainpipes and a pumping system and to reduce the level of radioactive cesium-137 to less than one becquerel per liter. It also agreed with the firm’s policy of starting the drainage system gradually.
The regulator asked the utility to ensure that no wastewater leaks and to fully disclose measurements for radioactive material.
Tokyo Electric said it will not drain filtered wastewater until local residents agree to the plan.
The timing of such agreement is unclear, as local fishermen are worried that rumors of tainted seawater would affect their business.
NHK Transcript, Jan 21, 2015: Japanese regulators have approved a controversial plan by [TEPCO]. They say TEPCO officials can flush filtered waste water into the ocean… Fisherman: “We can’t trust Tepco… If they proceed with their plan the situation will surely go back to how it was before. I’m worried the government and Tepco will act to suit themselves.”
Wall St Journal, Jan 21, 2015:
Japan’s nuclear regulator has officially called on [Tepco] to work toward discharging low-level contaminated water… just two days after a worker fell into [a tank] used to store contaminated water… Tepco is using a processing system [that] is unable to take out the tritium [and] is reluctant to release it into the ocean to avoid… criticism from neighboring countries and some nations with a Pacific Ocean coastline… there is no detailed study about tritium’s long-time effect on animal genes. Mamoru Takata, a Kyoto University professor and expert on radiation’s long-term effects, said monitoring would be necessary to detect any worrisome signals.
Japan’s nuclear regulator has officially called on Tokyo Electric Power Co.9501.TO +0.42% to work toward discharging low-level contaminated water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The call on Wednesday comes just two days after a worker fell into one of the hundreds of tanks used to store contaminated water at the plant during an inspection, a fatal accident that has refocused attention on the need for improved safety measures and a longer term solution for the huge amounts of water in storage.
“Tokyo Electric Power must consider whether it (storing the water) is really necessary,” said Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, at a regular board meeting Wednesday. “It is surely harmful if it leads to the death of workers.”
The regulator discussed Wednesday a draft timetable for action by Tepco to address risks at the plant that sets out a 2017 start for discharging the water. The draft is likely to be approved next week.
The International Atomic Energy Agency already recommended more than a year ago that Tepco consider releasing water with low level tritium contamination in a controlled way so that it could focus on other issues.
A Tepco spokesman, speaking after Mr. Tanaka’s remarks, said the company wasn’t currently considering releasing the water into the ocean.
Contaminated water has been a constant headache for the operator of the plant since the triple meltdowns in March 2011. A large amount of groundwater is flowing into the site, adding 300 to 400 tons to the amount of highly contaminated water at the plant on a daily basis.
Tepco is using a processing system to remove radioactive material from the highly contaminated water, but the system is unable to take out the tritium. Tepco has been storing the tritium-contaminated water in about 1,000 tanks, but is reluctant to release it into the ocean to avoid adding to tension with local communities and criticism from neighboring countries and some nations with a Pacific Ocean coastline.
But the power company is close to running out of space to build new tanks at the plant and workers are increasingly under pressure to juggle their other duties with the ever-increasing workload of tank management, prompting the IAEA call in late 2013.
Tritium is considered one of the least harmful radioactive materials at nuclear plants. Water contaminated with tritium is discharged from plants elsewhere in the world after dilution.
However, there is no detailed study about tritium’s long-time effect on animal genes. Mamoru Takata, a Kyoto University professor and expert on radiation’s long-term effects, said monitoring would be necessary to detect any worrisome signals.
For the latest news and analysis, follow @WSJAsia
TEPCO: [ALPS] is designed to remove most remaining radioactive contaminants
TEPCO (pdf): (ALPS) — Removal capacity: Reduce 62 nuclides below the density limit
Asahi Shimbun in Jan. 2012: “To prevent a further contamination of the sea [Tepco] plans to remove about 1,000 kinds of radioactive materials from water”
Japan Atomic Energy Agency (pdf), Feb 2014: TOPICS Fukushima — [W]e carried out detailed calculations… for 1,200 radionuclides, and the results were incorporated into a database.
Dr. Gordon Edwards, court-certified nuclear expert, Aug 8, 2014 (50:00 in): It can’t be dumped into the ocean, because it’s completely unsafe because of these fission products. They have built over 1,000 large tanks, huge tanks… that contain this very, very radioactively contaminated water. At the moment they’re trying to filter out these fission products… It’s impossible for them to remove all those hundreds of radioactive materials. They know how to remove about 62 of them, but there’s other ones that they cannot.
The BlackRobed Mafia 
