SANDRA BLAND CRIES FOR JUSTICE FROM THE GRAVE; MEDIA HAS FORGOTTEN

SANDRA BLAND CRIES FOR JUSTICE FROM THE GRAVE:

THE MEDIA HAS FORGOTTEN.

Following a simple Traffic stop, Sandra Bland (young BLACK woman from Chicago) was found hanging Dead July 13, 2015, in a Waller County, Texas jail cell.

Texas Jail employees claimed Sandra was "SUICIDAL" and had Marijuana in her system.

An Autopsy was performed on her body and a Federal investigation has been conducted.

However five months later her Murder remains a Mystery and no one has been held Accountable or Prosecuted for her Death.

Will Sandra's Murder be used as a POLITICAL Weapon just as Laquan McDonald's Murder is being used, to help DEMOCRATS win another general election via angry BLACK voters??

~ An American Tragedy

Five months after Sandra Bland was found hanging in a Texas jail cell, her family still searches for resolution. An intimate look at a life interrupted.

The stretch of boulevard just outside the campus of Prairie View A&M University in Texas lay lonely and quiet one early morning this past November when a woman emerged from her rental car and stepped toward a towering tree, her form shrouded in gray drizzle. She was dressed somberly, in heels and a black-and-white-striped skirt, a string of pearls dangling from her neck. In her left hand, she clutched an umbrella; in her right, a cellophane-wrapped spray of yellow tea roses that she’d bought at a nearby supermarket that morning.

Sharon Cooper had passed this site before. She’d certainly seen enough of it on the jerky cell phone video that circulated on the Internet: the haunting, murky silhouette of a state trooper hovering over her sister as she lay face-down, arms handcuffed behind her. 

He had pulled her over here for failing to signal a lane change. But things escalated.

He arrested her.

Three days later, Sandra Bland would be found hanging in her jail cell.

Such was the media frenzy in the immediate aftermath—as speculation swirled about foul play in the 28-year-old Chicago native’s death—that there had been no time for Sharon, her three surviving sisters, or their mother to steal away to simply, quietly reflect at the spot where everything had gone awry.

Merely coming to town—to retrieve Bland’s body, to pick up her personal effects, to address legal matters—had been a trial for the family each time they made the trip from Chicago. “There is a seismic shift in every individual’s demeanor when we land in Texas,” Sharon says. “And the seismic shift is just a ripping of the Band-Aid.”

There are too many memories. Like of the first time Sharon saw her sister’s lifeless body at the funeral home in nearby Hempstead. “My heart stopped. Time froze,” Sharon recalls. “She was on a table and they had a sheet on her. It was all the way up to her neck. I could not see the [ligature] mark, though I knew it was there from pictures I had seen. They hadn’t put any makeup on her or anything, but she still looked good, which is what gave me some solace.

She looked like herself.”

There were no news cameras on this day, as Sharon stepped gingerly off the sidewalk onto the wet grass, where a makeshift memorial had sprung up. She stooped to place the roses. Then she began playing one of her sister’s favorite songs, Tye Tribbett’s “What Can I Do,” on her phone and tidying up the collection of stuffed animals, candles, T-shirts, and ribbons as the gray rain fell.

The national press has largely moved on from the Sandra Bland story, but a family’s grief remains. 

Fully understanding the depth of their pain—and of the tragedy itself—requires far more than digesting a few sound bites on CNN. It requires a nuanced look at the real woman behind the headlines and at how a heartbreaking combination of factors years in the making—racial, cultural, intimately personal—collided devastatingly in the waning light of a late afternoon on what was once an unremarkable stretch of road in Texas.

Credits: NBC News, Chicago mag, YouTube

Is Tea Party Right Arm Of GOP? Political Terrorism (Decision 2012)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is no way to run a government

Just because a drag race doesn't end with someone getting killed, it doesn't mean that drag racing is a safe thing to do.

Even though it looks like Congress will raise the debt ceiling, this is no way to run a government.

Many pundits have pointed to the crisis over the debt ceiling as further evidence that Washington is dysfunctional. They say the inability of President Obama and congressional Democrats and Republicans to reach a deal is another example of how partisan polarization, political incivility and 24-hour media have left our nation's leaders unable to make deals. In their minds, we should not be surprised about what has happened. This was virtually inevitable.

While placing battles in historical perspective, it is also important to recognize when we are seeing something new. The "Washington is dysfunctional" argument has confused chronic institutional problems with the partisan strategy that has been used by the GOP.

The trigger to this crisis, which threatens the health of the nation's economy, was an aggressive move by tea party Republicans -- hesitantly supported by the House leadership -- to hold routine debt ceiling legislation hostage until they received exactly the spending cuts they demanded. Lacking the votes they need for a clean vote on them through the budget process, they have instead forced everyone's hand. Obama has little leverage to do anything but agree to their cuts.

In 1994, Republicans who were elected also arrived to Washington sounding like renegades. They insisted that they would do whatever was necessary to change the status quo, and they refused to compromise with Democrats for the sake of appearing reasonable. South Carolina Congressman Lindsey Graham said, "Ain't nothing was off limits, buddy. You could feed us, wash us and comb us, but we'd still bite."

Most famously, in 1995 and 1996, they were willing to shut down the federal government in their pursuit of deep spending cuts. Eventually, most of the class of 1994 mellowed, realizing that governance required compromise, as did political survival.

What we are seeing with tea party Republicans is something even more dramatic. The new Republicans have been the driving force behind the decision to prevent a routine vote on the debt ceiling -- a routine vote with potentially devastating financial consequences -- to obtain massive cuts in federal spending.

When Obama and many Democrats moved toward their position, they were also unwilling to compromise on how to reduce the deficit. When the president proposed that revenue-raising measures should be part of the package, they refused to budge. House Speaker John Boehner barely received the number of votes he needed for his legislation late last week.

To be sure, this is not the first time the political parties have used the debt ceiling to make a point. In 1966, for example, every House Republican but one (former Speaker Joseph Martin) voted against raising the debt ceiling because, they charged, President Lyndon Johnson was lying about the size of the deficit.

"I think the president probably in a couple of months will come up and say that to win the war in Vietnam, we need a tax increase," warned Missouri Republican Thomas Curtis. "I would much prefer to increase taxes to place a further burden on the national debt." More recently, some Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, spoke against raising the debt ceiling to protest President George W. Bush's policies.

The difference is that this time around, tea party Republicans have been willing to follow through on the threat, and they have control of the House. This is what has made the situation so dangerous. Previous opposition to raising the debt ceiling has been primarily symbolic.

Usually, the politicians making the argument knew the vote would happen anyway, or they were prepared to change their mind in the end. Tea party Republicans are not kidding. They forced their own leadership to bring the nation to the brink of disaster. They are not doing this through the normal budget process, and they are taking no prisoners.

More than ever, it is incumbent on the Republican leadership to push back against its own members who use these tactics. Even Boehner has seemed to be aware of the economic and political dangers that loom. One can see throughout this debate that he was at pains trying to contain the right wing of his party.

The consequences of default would be potentially disastrous for all Americans, red and blue, and recovery would take a long time. There are other ways Republicans can push for their objectives. In the future, they must do so.

Sources: CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, Youtube

Betty Ford: First Lady, Mother, Activist, Feminist & Pioneer Dead At 93! (R.I.P.)

Betty Ford, Former First Lady, Dies at 93


Betty Ford, the outspoken and much-admired wife of President Gerald R. Ford who overcame alcoholism and an addiction to pills and helped found one of the best-known rehabilitation centers in the nation, died Friday in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 93.

Her death was confirmed by Chris Chase, Mrs. Ford’s biographer.

The news of her death at Eisenhower Medical Center brought statements of condolence from President Obama, former Presidents George Bush, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, and Nancy Reagan, the former first lady.

“She was Jerry Ford’s strength through some very difficult days in our country’s history,” Mrs. Reagan said, “and I admired her courage in facing and sharing her personal struggles with all of us.”

Few first ladies have been as popular as Betty Ford, and it was her frankness and lack of pretense that made her so. She spoke often in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, endorsed legalized abortion, discussed premarital sex and revealed that she intended to share a bed with her husband in the White House.

When her husband’s voice failed him the morning after he was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976, it was she who read the official concession statement with smiling grace. And when Mr. Ford died in December 2006, it was Mrs. Ford who announced his death. The six days of national mourning returned her to a spotlight she had tried to avoid in her later years, living in Rancho Mirage, Calif., a golf community southeast of Palm Springs, and tending to her clinic there, the Betty Ford Center.

The country’s affection for Betty Ford transcended party lines. It began in earnest slightly more than two months after Gerald Ford became president in August 1974, following President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation over Watergate. Mr. Ford had been vice president for less than 10 months, named by Nixon to succeed Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned in disgrace over accusations of bribery and tax evasion. On Sept. 28, 1974, Mrs. Ford had a radical mastectomy after doctors discovered cancer in her right breast.

Courage Against Cancer

Within days, 10,000 letters, more than 500 telephone calls, more than 200 telegrams and scores of floral arrangements poured into the White House and into her suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital. In the months that followed, tens of thousands of American women, inspired by Mrs. Ford’s forthrightness and courage in facing her illness, crowded into doctors’ offices and clinics for breast-cancer examinations.

After leaving the hospital, Mrs. Ford underwent chemotherapy treatment for two years. In November 1976, her physician announced that she had made a complete recovery.

Mrs. Ford was once asked if she felt sorry for herself during the trauma of losing her breast.

“No! Oh, no — heavens, no,” she replied. “I’ve heard women say they’d rather lose their right arm, and I can’t imagine it. It’s so stupid. I can even wear my evening clothes.”

She advised women facing such an operation to “go as quickly as possible and get it done.”

“Once it’s done,” she said, “put it behind you and go on with your life.”

Breast cancer was only one of the medical battles Mrs. Ford won.

Confronting Addiction

Her dependency on pills began in 1964 with a medical prescription to relieve constant pain from a neck injury and a pinched nerve. Her drinking, which became troublesome as she was faced with her husband’s frequent absences on political business, grew increasingly serious as Mr. Ford’s Congressional career advanced. Her loneliness was compounded by low self-esteem and a debilitating self-consciousness about things like her lack of a college degree.

“Now I know that some of the pain I was trying to wipe out was emotional,” she recalled in “Betty: A Glad Awakening” (1987), the second volume of her autobiography written with Ms. Chase. Going back to the days when her husband was a Michigan congressman and minority leader in the House of Representatives, she remembered that “on one hand, I loved being ‘the wife of’; on the other hand, I was convinced that the more important Jerry became, the less important I became.”

In 1978, the year after leaving the White House, her husband, children, doctors and several friends confronted her about her drinking and her abuse of pills. She refused to acknowledge that a problem existed, calling her family “a bunch of monsters,” but she eventually entered the Long Beach Naval Hospital in California for treatment.

The Betty Ford Center, dedicated on Oct. 3, 1982, was a direct result of Mrs. Ford’s victory over her alcoholism and addiction. Set on 14 acres on the campus of the Eisenhower Medical Center 11 miles southeast of Palm Springs, the center was a nonprofit venture spearheaded by Mrs. Ford and Leonard K. Firestone, an industrialist and former ambassador to Belgium who raised a major part of the money.

The center’s philosophy, drawn from the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, is based on peer interaction and learning to identify and express feelings. Many celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Mary Tyler Moore, Mickey Mantle and Darryl Strawberry, spent time there.

“It’s hard to make anyone understand what it’s like to have your name on something, to be given credit for things you haven’t done,” Mrs. Ford wrote. “I’ve been at meetings where someone turned and thanked me, and I hugged the person and said, ‘Don’t thank me, thank yourself, you’re the one who did it, with God’s help.’ From the beginning, we have wanted every patient at the center to feel, ‘I’m important here, I have some dignity.’ ”

Betty Ford was good at doing the things that every first lady does: accompanying her husband on tours and public ceremonies and holding dinners and parties. Her parties usually lasted past midnight as she danced from one partner to another.

But unlike many other wives of presidents, Mrs. Ford rarely hesitated to make public her views on touchy subjects. She held a White House news conference announcing her support of the Equal Rights Amendment; the mail response ran three to one against her. In 1975, appearing on “60 Minutes,” she said she “wouldn’t be surprised” if her daughter, Susan, had a premarital affair; the mail was four to one against her. Her husband jokingly told her later that the comment had cost him 20 million votes in the 1976 election, she said.

A decade later, reminiscing with Margaret Truman for Ms. Truman’s book “First Ladies,” she voiced regret over that television appearance. Later that year, despite her advocacy for abortion rights, she reined herself in. She said nothing about the Republican platform that called for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.

She also told Ms. Truman that she had warned her husband not to pardon Nixon, a more definitive statement than one she made in “The Times of My Life” (1978), the first volume of Mrs. Ford’s autobiography. In that book she said she had known that a pardon would be unpopular but that she had supported it anyway.

“I think it had to be done,” she wrote. Nevertheless, she said, she believed it cost her husband the election.

Mrs. Ford said she had been influential in President Ford’s appointments of Carla Hills as secretary of housing and urban development and Anne Armstrong as ambassador to Britain. She was unsuccessful, however, in urging him to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court.

She was, in her own words, “more of a hawk” than her children on the war in Vietnam. Although she said she believed men and women should give two years of service to the country, she confessed she was “very relieved” when her sons drew high draft-lottery numbers.

A Relaxed White House

Mrs. Ford brought a relaxed touch to the White House within days of moving in. She asked why the staff never returned a greeting and was told that President Nixon and the first lady, Pat Nixon, had preferred them to be as silent and invisible as possible. An immediate change went into effect, to the degree that during family meals the president and the butler compared golf scores. And when Mrs. Ford returned from her mastectomy, the staff lined up with signs reading, “We love you, Betty.”

She disliked other manifestations of Mrs. Nixon’s formal tastes, particularly the choice of stiff furniture, which had replaced the more comfortable Kennedy ambience from the early ’60s. Although she left the décor as it was, she could not resist a bit of deviltry. A ceramic bowl in the Yellow Oval Room was supported by two Greek goddesses, one of them with her hands out. “Every time I went through,” Mrs. Ford said, “I used to put a cigarette between her fingers.” Her mischievous side also surfaced after her husband complained that she was too thin. Borrowing a skeleton from a hospital, she dressed it in her hat and coat and sat it in a bedroom chair to welcome him.

Later, when she was no longer first lady, she was criticized in some circles for having a facelift almost immediately after overcoming her addictions. She wanted, she said, a fresh new face for her new life. She later thought that some of the resentment stemmed from the fact that she could no longer be perceived as a victim — of cancer, drugs and drink. “It was easier to be sorry for me, to feel superior to me, and therefore to root for me,” she said. “We all like to cheer an underdog. But I’d stopped being an underdog; I’d gotten myself in hand.”

Elizabeth Anne Bloomer was born on April 8, 1918, in Chicago to William S. Bloomer and the former Hortense Neahr. She always wanted to be called Elizabeth but ended up with Betty, Bet or Bets. She was the youngest child and the only girl in a family of three children. Her father was a traveling salesman in conveyor belts for factories. The family moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., when she was 2.

The Bloomers were financially comfortable, lived in a fashionable area and spent summers at Whitefish Lake. She began dancing lessons when she was 8, and for two summers after graduation from high school she attended Bennington School of the Dance at Bennington College in Vermont. At 14, she was confirmed as an Episcopalian (her mother’s religion; her father was a Christian Scientist) and began working on Saturdays, for $3, as a model for Herpolsheimer’s department store.

At 20, she was in New York, living on the fringes of Greenwich Village and attending dance classes with Martha Graham. She also joined her troupe.

Dance was always a major interest, and Mrs. Ford said many times that she was disappointed that she had never been quite good enough to be a first-rate dancer. When she went to China with her husband in 1975, however, she enchanted the Chinese by kicking off her shoes and dancing in her stocking feet at a Beijing school.

Her mother persuaded her to return to Grand Rapids in 1941, but not before she had modeled on Seventh Avenue and for the John Robert Powers modeling agency. Back home, she became a fashion coordinator for the store in which she had been a teenage model. In her spare time, she taught dance to underprivileged and disabled children.

The following year, she married William C. Warren, a furniture dealer. The marriage ended in divorce in 1947, and she did not ask for alimony. When Mr. Ford became vice president and his wife’s first marriage was disclosed, Mrs. Ford was asked why she had kept it a secret. She hadn’t, she said: “No one ever bothered to ask.”

Some months after her divorce, she began dating Gerald R. Ford, a lawyer with political ambitions and a man she described as “probably the most eligible bachelor in Grand Rapids.” He proposed in February 1948. “He’s a very shy man and he really didn’t tell me he loved me,” she wrote. “He just told me he’d like to marry me — I took him up on it immediately.”

They were married on Oct. 15, 1948, while he was running his first race for a seat in the House. The ceremony took place on a Friday so that Mr. Ford’s plans to go to a Northwestern-Michigan football game the following day would not be disrupted. (He had played center for Michigan.) The groom was 35; the bride, 30. They spent their two-day honeymoon at Republican Party rallies.

Mr. Ford won the election. “We came to Washington for 2 years and stayed for 28,” Mrs. Ford said. Their first son, Michael, was born in 1950 while the Fords lived in an apartment in Georgetown. By 1952, when John, known as Jack, was born, they had moved to an apartment in suburban Northern Virginia. Steven was born in 1956, a year after the Fords’ split-level house in Alexandria, Va., was completed. Susan, their only daughter, came along the next year.

“From the outside, our life looked like a Norman Rockwell illustration,” Mrs. Ford said at one point. Nevertheless, by 1962, she was seeing a psychiatrist twice a week because, as she put it, “I’d lost my feeling of self-worth.”

“I think a lot of women go through this,” she said. “Their husbands have fascinating jobs, their children start to turn into independent people and the women begin to feel useless, empty.”

Later, when she accompanied her husband on campaign trips more frequently, she acknowledged that that, too, was not all fun. At one point, she recalled, she was in an airport and “through clenched teeth said: ‘I don’t want anyone to come over and talk to me. I just want to sit here all alone and finish this cigarette.’ ”

Shortly after leaving the White House, the Fords built a 15-room house bordering the 13th fairway of the Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage. The couple also acquired a second home, an elaborate ski lodge in Vail, Colo. Mrs. Ford remained active in the Betty Ford Center and in feminist causes.

In addition to her four children, she is also survived by seven grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

“I am an ordinary woman who was called onstage at an extraordinary time,” she wrote in the prologue to her first autobiography. “I was no different once I became first lady than I had been before. But through an accident of history, I had become interesting to people.”


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Sources: CNN, NY Times, Wikipedia, Google Maps

F.B.I. Wants To Search Your Trash & Track Your Car!

Under George W. Bush's Administration F.B.I. Agents Were Given More Legal Leeway To Invade The Privacy Of American Citizens.

More Leeway To Search Databases, Your Household Trash, Use Surveillance Teams, etc., Without Court Orders Or Motive.

Pres. Obama Concurred With That Same Policy By Giving F.B.I. Agents Even MORE Legal Leeway To Conduct Such Searches.

Considering The High Level Of Terrorists Threats Both Homegrown & International, Along With Multiple Racist Hate Crime Threats Made Against Pres. Obama's Life, I Agree With Him On This Policy.

As They Say: Keep Your Friends Close & Enemies Even Closer.




F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

“Claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse,” Mr. German said, pointing to complaints about the bureau’s surveillance of domestic political advocacy groups and mosques and to an inspector general’s findings in 2007 that the F.B.I. had frequently misused “national security letters,” which allow agents to obtain information like phone records without a court order.

Valerie E. Caproni, the F.B.I. general counsel, said the bureau had fixed the problems with the national security letters and had taken steps to make sure they would not recur. She also said the bureau, which does not need permission to alter its manual so long as the rules fit within broad guidelines issued by the attorney general, had carefully weighed the risks and the benefits of each change.

“Every one of these has been carefully looked at and considered against the backdrop of why do the employees need to be able to do it, what are the possible risks and what are the controls,” she said, portraying the modifications to the rules as “more like fine-tuning than major changes.”

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

Mr. German said the change would make it harder to detect and deter inappropriate use of databases for personal purposes. But Ms. Caproni said it was too cumbersome to require agents to open formal inquiries before running quick checks. She also said agents could not put information uncovered from such searches into F.B.I. files unless they later opened an assessment.

The new rules will also relax a restriction on administering lie-detector tests and searching people’s trash. Under current rules, agents cannot use such techniques until they open a “preliminary investigation,” which — unlike an assessment — requires a factual basis for suspecting someone of wrongdoing. But soon agents will be allowed to use those techniques for one kind of assessment, too: when they are evaluating a target as a potential informant.

Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others. But Ms. Caproni said information gathered that way could also be useful for other reasons, like determining whether the subject might pose a threat to agents.

The new manual will also remove a limitation on the use of surveillance squads, which are trained to surreptitiously follow targets. Under current rules, the squads can be used only once during an assessment, but the new rules will allow agents to use them repeatedly. Ms. Caproni said restrictions on the duration of physical surveillance would still apply, and argued that because of limited resources, supervisors would use the squads only rarely during such a low-level investigation.

The revisions also clarify what constitutes “undisclosed participation” in an organization by an F.B.I. agent or informant, which is subject to special rules — most of which have not been made public. The new manual says an agent or an informant may surreptitiously attend up to five meetings of a group before those rules would apply — unless the goal is to join the group, in which case the rules apply immediately.

At least one change would tighten, rather than relax, the rules. Currently, a special agent in charge of a field office can delegate the authority to approve sending an informant to a religious service. The new manual will require such officials to handle those decisions personally.

In addition, the manual clarifies a description of what qualifies as a “sensitive investigative matter” — investigations, at any level, that require greater oversight from supervisors because they involve public officials, members of the news media or academic scholars.

The new rules make clear, for example, that if the person with such a role is a victim or a witness rather than a target of an investigation, extra supervision is not necessary. Also excluded from extra supervision will be investigations of low- and midlevel officials for activities unrelated to their position — like drug cases as opposed to corruption, for example.

The manual clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs. And it will limit academic protections only to scholars who work for institutions based in the United States.

Since the release of the 2008 manual, the assessment category has drawn scrutiny because it sets a low bar to examine a person or a group. The F.B.I. has opened thousands of such low-level investigations each month, and a vast majority has not generated information that justified opening more intensive investigations.

Ms. Caproni said the new manual would adjust the definition of assessments to make clear that they must be based on leads. But she rejected arguments that the F.B.I. should focus only on investigations that begin with a firm reason for suspecting wrongdoing.


Sources: MSNBC, NY Times, Russian Times, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

"Operation Payback" Net Freedom Of Speech Advocates Rally: 5 Recent Attacks ("Hacktivists")

Hackers Rally To Support WikiLeaks: Top 5 Recent Attacks

In an effort nicknamed "Operation Payback," a loose association of hackers called "Anonymous" has been targeting the websites of companies and organizations that have cut ties with WikiLeaks by overwhelming their sites with traffic, prompting them to shut down. Twitter and Facebook have blocked accounts for Anonymous, citing the illegality of their attacks as a terms-of-service violation. WikiLeaks' Facebook and Twitter accounts remain up and running.

“Of course, Anonymous is expected to keep creating new accounts as quickly as Facebook and Twitter squash them; it’s a bit like Whack-a-Mole or doing battle with a hydra, in that sense,” said social media news website Mashable. "Fighting Anonymous is a task we wouldn’t wish on anyone."

Below are some of the most notable attacks:


1.) Mastercard and Visa

Mastercard was the first credit-card company to come under attack by hackers, and attacks on Visa soon followed – both launched in retaliation for the companies’ refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks. At various points Wednesday, parts or all of their websites were down, MSNBC reported.

NPR reported Thursday that WikiLeaks’ payment processor, Iceland's DataCell ehf, is preparing to sue both companies for their decision to block the funds, which it claimed is costing the company money.

"It's difficult to believe that such a large company as Visa can make a political decision," [CEO Andreas] Fink said in a telephone interview from Switzerland. In an earlier statement, his company had defended the WikiLeaks, saying that "it is simply ridiculous to think WikiLeaks has done anything criminal."


2.) Paypal

Paypal, which stopped accepting payments for donations to WikiLeaks, was another one of the early victims of hacker attacks. Its blog was down earlier in the week and its main website was inaccessible for several hours Wednesday, according to Computer World. Access was sporadic into Thursday morning. Because Paypal relies on people being able to log in to its site, the company is taking a financial hit from the attacks.

According to Reuters, a spokesman for the group of hackers confirmed that it was executing attacks on Paypal, among others.


3.) Swiss bank Postfinance

The Swiss bank Postfinance, a financial branch of the Swiss postal system, has been struggling to stay online as well after it shut down one of the key WikiLeaks bank accounts.

According to Fox News, Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty said the website “buckled under a barrage of traffic” on Tuesday but that the attacks have eased up. "It was very, very difficult, then things improved overnight," he told the AP. "But it's still not entirely back to normal."


4.) Swedish government

Reuters reported that the Swedish government’s website was down overnight Wednesday. Sweden has issued an arrest warrant for Assange.

The New York Times also reported that the websites of the Swedish prosecutor’s office and the lawyer representing the women involved in the charges against Assange were down at various points.


5.) Sarah Palin

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been a vocal critic of WikiLeaks, and hackers are fighting back. Computer World UK reported that her personal website was down Thursday morning local time and in an email to ABC news, said that her and her husband’s credit card information had been hacked.

The attacks come only a week after Palin … said the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, should be hunted down in the way armed forces target the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

In an outburst on Facebook, Palin had branded Assange “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands”.

After the attack on her site, Palin wrote: “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against [Assange’s] sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

Hackers have also hit websites belonging to WikiLeaks critics such as US Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, according to Computer World.





WikiLeaks: Who Are The Hackers Behind Operation Payback?


The MasterCard website was forced offline for several hours today, following an online assault led by a shadowy group of hackers protesting against the card issuer's decision to block payments made to the WikiLeaks website.

The "distributed denial of service" attack was apparently orchestrated by a "hacktivist" group calling itself Anonymous, which has in recent days temporarily paralysed the websites of Post Finance, the Swiss bank which closed WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange's account, and the website of the Swedish prosecution office.

Twitter is next in its sights, following allegations that the social networking site is "censoring" visibility of the breadth of discussion of WikiLeaks by preventing it from appearing in Twitter's "trends". Twitter has denied that it is doing this, saying its systems identify topics that are "being talked about more right now than they were previously" – which doesn't include WikiLeaks.

But who, or what, is – or are – Anonymous?

A 22-year-old spokesman, who wished to be known only as "Coldblood", told the Guardian that the group – which is about a thousand strong – is "quite a loose band of people who share the same kind of ideals" and wish to be a force for "chaotic good".

There is no real command structure in the group, the London-based spokesman said, while most of its members are teenagers who are "trying to make an impact on what happens with the limited knowledge they have". But others are parents, IT professionals and people who happen to have time – and resources – on their hands.

The group has gained notoriety for its attacks on copyright-enforcement agencies and organisations such as the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous was born out of the influential internet messageboard 4chan, a forum popular with hackers and gamers, in 2003. The group's name is a tribute to 4chan's early days, when any posting to its forums where no name was given was ascribed to "Anonymous". But the ephemeral group, which picks up causes "whenever it feels like it", has now "gone beyond 4Chan into something bigger", its spokesman said.

The membership of Anonymous is impossible to pin down; it has been described as being like a flock of birds – the only way you can identify members is by what they're doing together. Essentially, once enough people on the 4chan message boards decide that an issue is worth pursuing in large enough numbers, it becomes an "Anonymous" cause.

The group counts the current campaign in support of WikiLeaks as "probably one of [its] most high profile yet". The group gained notoriety more recently for a number of sustained assaults against the sites of US music industry body RIAA, Kiss musician Gene Simmons, and solicitors' firms involved in lawsuits against people suspected of illegal filesharing. In early 2008, Anonymous launched a campaign against the Church of Scientology, bringing down related websites and promising to "expel" the religion from the internet.

"We're against corporations and government interfering on the internet," Coldblood added. "We believe it should be open and free for everyone. Governments shouldn't try to censor because they don't agree with it.

"Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with."

The spokesman said Anonymous plans to "move away" from DDoS attacks and instead focus on "methods to support" WikiLeaks, such as mirroring the site. "There's no doubt in [Anonymous members'] mind that they are breaking [the] law," he said of the latest attacks. "But they feel that there's safety in numbers."

Anonymous refused to say whether it would target government-owned websites next, but warned: "anything goes."


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Sources: Amazon, Christian Science Monitor, Guardian.co.uk, Mastercard, MSNBC, Paypal, RT, Youtube, Google Maps

Aung San Suu Kyi: Myanmar's Human Rights Champion

Suu Kyi's Freedom: A Catalyst For Change Or Not?


Nyi Nyi Aung learned the news just before sunrise Saturday: The woman who has inspired him in his two-decade-long struggle was free.

Myanmar's military rulers released democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest Saturday, and across the globe, hope stirred again in the hearts of those who have been advocating for change in the authoritarian nation.

"She is the only one who has the patience, the ideas on how to solve the problem in Burma," Nyi Nyi said, refusing to use the name for his country favored by the junta.

But amid the joy, Nyi Nyi, a resident of the Washington area, voiced the same cautious optimism that rang from all corners.

Was Suu Kyi's release conditional? What will she be able to accomplish under the thumb of a hardline dictatorship that has stamped out voices of opposition and just held an election that has been widely criticized as a sham?

This was the third time the regime has released Suu Kyi from house arrest. Benjamin Zawacki, Myanmar expert for Amnesty International, noted that her last release had been unconditional and then she was thrown again into house arrest.

He said conditions could be rolled out as events on the ground unfold, and the government could interpret a given event or act as a justification to make an arrest.

Zawacki also labeled the move as a political calculation.

The regime is trying to reinvent itself as democratic, he said, first with the elections last Sunday and now with Suu Kyi's release.

There is concern, he said, that other countries will take the regime's bait and lessen their resolve to continue to take tough actions in the sanctions and human rights arenas.

Among those concerned is Nyi Nyi, who appealed on behalf of the Burmese people for nations like the United States to maintain pressure on Myanmar's regime to implement change.

"We are planning to stand by [Suu Kyi]," he said. "But we need everyone to keep up the pressure."

Michael Green, a Center for Strategic and International Studies expert on Asia and a senior Asia adviser to former President George W. Bush, said the move was calculated precisely to forestall international isolation punishment, including a possible U.N. commission that would probe human rights abuses.

It was not at all a sign, he said, that the regime is trying to patch things up with its internal rivals.

"I think the starting premise for this is the incredible loathing and fear that this regime has for Aung San Suu Kyi," Green said. "It knows almost no bounds. You can discount that this is a gesture at international reconciliation."

The audience for the move, he said, was external, a conscious effort to "drive a wedge" between countries that are inclined to support Myanmar, such as India and China, and countries such as the United States, Japan, Australia and European nations, which want tough action.

The hardline military junta took power in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in 1962. It's difficult to predict what will transpire in the days and weeks ahead, but most agree that Suu Kyi's release is not likely to spur change right away.

"This is, at best, a single step forward on the proverbial thousand-mile journey," said Jared Genser, one of Suu Kyi's lawyers who is based in the United States.

"We should recall she's been out on numerous occasions before over the last 21 years, and nothing has changed in the country. And indeed, in the last several years, the military regime in Burma has not taken even a single step to try to demonstrate its willingness to compromise," he said.

Still, Nyo Ohn Myint, a committee leader in Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, said there is no doubt that Saturday's release is a key moment in modern Myanmar history.

The regime is at a political crossroads, he said. It could be that Myanmar's generals are feeling overly confident after the election, an issue Myint said is a priority on Suu Kyi's agenda. Her release again puts momentum on the side of the opposition.

"She has tremendous political power," Myint said about his friend of two decades. "This is not the end of the story, only the beginning of the struggle."

Meanwhile, human rights activists as well as global leaders -- including President Obama -- reminded the world that there is a long struggle ahead to secure basic freedoms for the people of Myanmar.

Despite Suu Kyi's release, more than 2,200 other political prisoners were still sitting behind bars in Myanmar jails.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. human rights commissioner, called Suu Kyi's release a "positive signal" that the Myanmar authorities are willing to move forward with the serious challenge of democratic transition.

"Clearly, Aung San Suu Kyi can make a major contribution to this process," Pillay said, adding her disappointment that Suu Kyi was not allowed to participate in the elections.

She urged the authorities to release the other political prisoners as "a clear sign that the new government intends to respect human rights and forge a new future for the country."

For Nyi Nyi, the matter is highly personal.

He himself spent time in jail in Myanmar for his activism, and his mother, Sann Sann Tin, has been imprisoned since she was arrested in protests in 2007. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think of his 63-year-old mother's plight.

That's why the joy of seeing the images of Suu Kyi again addressing her supporters was marred.

"That's why we don't think of it as freedom for Burma," he said.


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Sources: CNN, Google Maps

Florida Activists Exposes Banking Industry Foreclosure Docs Scam

Florida Activists Read Between The Lines On Foreclosure Paperwork

Nearly a year before the national furor over foreclosures began, Lisa Epstein, a nurse, ran into three other amateur sleuths who separately were investigating shoddy practices at mortgage companies.

While meeting for the first time in November at an old one-story law office in this city, the four strangers compared notes and began to piece together the scope of the problem: All over the United States, big financial firms might have been using fraudulent paperwork to evict struggling borrowers from their homes.

Now tight-knit, the group is largely responsible for setting off the growing firestorm over foreclosures.

Epstein, a Fairfax County native who became an activist after she lost her job and became unable to pay her mortgage, launched a grass-roots movement against the country's largest banks, which are facing the prospects of billions of dollars in soured loans and legal expenses.

Joining her were Michael Redman, whose foreclosure blog drew the White House into the controversy, and Thomas and Ariane Ice, who run a boutique law firm that was the first to depose "robo-signer" Jeffrey Stephan of Ally Financial's GMAC mortgage unit in December.

In addition to trying to educate the public about the issue, the group had also been quietly passing along stacks of problematic documents to state and federal regulators, lawmakers, judges and law enforcement officials.

They pointed out that document processors such as Stephan had admitted in sworn depositions that they had signed off on up to 10,000 foreclosure documents a month, even though they had not reviewed them as legally required. They also shed light on foreclosure cases in which the paperwork appeared to have been backdated, forged or improperly notarized.

Now, at least five major mortgage companies have frozen some foreclosures. Attorneys general from each state have joined forces to investigate, and a federal task force is considering criminal charges in the matter. Some bank stocks have fallen on concerns that the issue of flawed paperwork could be a coverup for something even more serious. And economists worry that the fragile housing market, where one in four houses on sale is in foreclosure, could take a devastating hit.

Although the uproar over foreclosures might seem sudden, for the activists, it was a long time coming.

Epstein, 45, a George Mason University graduate who moved from the Washington area to Florida for the sunshine 13 years ago, first began to suspect something was wrong in February 2009 after she was served foreclosure papers without any acknowledgment that she had applied for a loan modification.

Redman, 35, said he knew there was a problem as early as January 2008, when he was trying to help his fiancee fight foreclosure and noticed that one of the key documents that proved ownership of the loan had suspicious signatures.

The Ices' eureka moment came late one night in early 2009 when Ariane was looking at the 700 cases in their database and noticed that a lot of the problematic paperwork had been signed by the same people.

As the four of them continued to investigate the issue, the months became filled with self-doubt.

"Plaintiffs' attorneys were scoffing at us; judges were laughing. You get to the point where you think, 'Maybe I'm the crazy one,' " said Thomas Ice, 50.

The group members, who are on the east coast of Florida, where nearly half of the homes on the market are in foreclosure, was soon joined by like-minded lawyers, homeowners and activists on the west coast. Together, the growing movement began to organize events at bar association meetings, host happy hours for distressed homeowners, and follow prominent public officials wherever they were speaking to get their attention. They launched Web sites to get the word out to homeowners' attorneys around the country.

Larry Schwartztol, a New York-based staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, has been working with Epstein's group to investigate whether Florida courts violated due process by short-circuiting normal procedures in foreclosure cases. He said the research the group is doing is "extremely impressive" and "indispensable."

Although there was no formal organization behind their effort, each of the activists took on distinct roles.

The Ices and seven other lawyers at their firm began deposing "robo-signers" at major mortgage companies, and, in an unusual move in the competitive legal industry, they began distributing the transcripts online.

Homeowners' lawyers nationwide began using the documents to defend their clients. Thomas Cox, a lawyer in Maine, saw Ice Legal's deposition of Stephan, the Ally robo-signer, and decided to depose him again for a case in his state in June. Cox was able to get his client's foreclosure judgment vacated.

Redman, who had been working in marketing for the online department of a local car dealership, set up a Web site, 4closurefraud.org, where he aggregated and analyzed key court documents related to faulty foreclosures. It was an instant hit - the Huffington Post of foreclosures - with Redman's snarky commentary, use of large pictures and graphics to explain complex subjects and his apparent glee - signified by an animated laughing "Jerry"- when he discovered a new way to attack the banks.

It was Redman's Web site, which is now being funded by a local lawyer, Carol C. Asbury, that took the lead in drawing President Obama into the foreclosure controversy this month by making a major issue out of a little-known notary bill, several lawyers around the United States said. Redman said that a reader had e-mailed him about the bill that had sailed through the Senate and was sitting on Obama's desk. The bill would make it easier to foreclose because notary signatures would be valid across state lines.

Epstein, a single mom who once worked as a cancer nurse, became the group's liaison to homeowners, setting up an online discussion site for them to vent their frustrations and debate strategies.

For months, she fired off up to five letters a night to officials, judges or anyone she could think of after her daughter went to sleep. Her letters were prone to hyperbole, but her explanations of the potential for fraud in various steps of the foreclosure process were laid out. In one, she wrote to the Florida Supreme Court: "I am outraged by the perfidious harvest poisoning the financial and emotional well being of individuals worldwide due to the appalling opportunism of Wall Street's historic, unrequited love affair with mortgage backed securities."

The first major lender to take corrective action on foreclosures - Ally Financial, which is majority-owned by the U.S. Treasury - has declined to comment about what prompted it to freeze foreclosures Sept. 20, but Epstein, Redman and the Ices say they and others who are defending homeowners applied so much pressure on the company that it would have been difficult for it not to act.

On April 28, one week after the four activists had staged a rally at the courthouse in the state capital, they had their first major breakthrough: The Florida attorney general's office announced an investigation into a "foreclosure mill" law firm called the Florida Default Law Group for allegedly presenting misleading or false documents to courts.

Knowing that the law firm had been hired by some of the nation's largest lenders, Epstein and Redman went to the local courthouse and began delving into its filings.

It wasn't until last month that their work began to draw national attention. The Florida Default Law Group confirmed in court filings Sept. 7 that the foreclosure documents that had been signed by Stephan, the robo-signer, "may not have been properly verified."

Redman posted the news on his Web site on Sept. 14. "ALL OF THESE AFFIDAVITS FROM THESE CHARACTERS ARE INVALID IF CHALLENGED!!!," he wrote, predicting it would affect "HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF CASES!!!"

One week later, Ally Financial announced that it would halt foreclosure sales in nearly two dozen states. At least four other major mortgage companies followed suit.


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Sources: Fox News, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Tea Party Express Fires Up Voters Prior To 2010 Nov. Elections

Tea Party Express Fires Up Army Of Supporters In Kick-Off Of Fourth National Tour


Some two weeks before the midterm elections, Tea Party Activists are set to fire up their army of supporters to forge ahead in, what they see as, a political war.

Their prime tactic: crisscross the country urging voters to oust Democrats from office and purge the Republican Party of members deemed "RINOS," or "Republicans in Name Only" considered not conservative enough.

On Monday, that tactic is on full display in Reno, Nevada as the Tea Party Express kicked off its fourth national tour. The group's "Liberty at the Ballot Box" tour is their fourth since 2009 and their last of the 2010 election cycle.

It will make 30 stops over 15 days, ending in Concord, New Hampshire one day before the critical midterm elections.

The Reno kickoff is being headlined by none other than Sarah Palin. Hours before she was set to appear, fans of the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee streamed onto the site of the rally. Many in the crowd and on stage were enthusiastic to hear from Palin.
However, the crowd was considerably smaller than the last rally Palin kicked off for the Tea Party Express, in Searchlight, Nevada in March.

Palin has lent political star power and considerable time helping to spread the message of Tea Party movement: smaller government, less taxes, deflating a bloated federal deficit and urging lawmakers toward more faithful adherence to the Constitution.

Palin, and other supporters of the movement, staunchly support Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle as she tries to unseat the most powerful Democrat in the Senate: Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Polls show the race between the two candidates to be essentially deadlocked.

Tea Party activists hope to help Angle surge ahead in the Nevada race as well in other races with Tea Party-backed candidates such as Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Rand Paul in Kentucky and others.

Democrats continue to push their own strategy to smack back the bids of Tea Party candidates. Vice President Joe Biden will also campaign in Reno, on Wednesday, for Reid. President Obama will appear at fundraisers on Reid's behalf on Friday from Vegas. This is in addition to campaigning for Democratic Senate candidate Chris Coons in Delaware, last week.


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Sources: CNN, Tea Party Express, Youtube, Google Maps

Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani To Be Stoned In Iran For Adultery

Iranian Mother Of Two To Be Stoned To Death



An Iranian Human Rights Activist warns Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, a mother of two, could be stoned to death at any moment under the terms of a death sentence handed down by Iranian authorities.

Only an international campaign designed to pressure the regime in Tehran can save her life, according to Mina Ahadi, head of the International Committee Against Stoning and the Death Penalty.

"Legally it's all over," Ahadi said Sunday. "It's a done deal. Sakineh can be stoned at any minute."

"That is why we have decided to start a very broad, international public movement. Only that can help."

Ashtiani, 42, will be buried up to her chest, according to an Amnesty International report citing the Iranian penal code. The stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately.

Ashtiani, who is from the northern city of Tabriz, was convicted of adultery in 2006.

She was forced to confess after being subjected to 99 lashes, human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei said Thursday in a telephone interview from Tehran.

She later retracted that confession and has denied wrongdoing. Her conviction was based not on evidence but on the determination of three out of five judges, Mostafaei said. She has asked forgiveness from the court but the judges refused to grant clemency.

Iran's supreme court upheld the conviction in 2007.

Mostafaei believes a language barrier prevented his client from fully comprehending court proceedings. Ashtiani is of Azerbaijani descent and speaks Turkish, not Farsi.

The circumstances of Ashtiani's case make it not an exception but the rule in Iran, according to Amnesty International, which tracks death penalty cases around the world.

"The majority of those sentenced to death by stoning are women, who suffer disproportionately from such punishment," the human rights group said in a 2008 report.

On Wednesday, Amnesty made a new call to the Iranian government to immediately halt all executions and commute all death sentences. The group has recorded 126 executions in Iran from the start of this year to June 6.

"The organization is also urging the authorities to review and repeal death penalty laws, to disclose full details of all death sentences and executions and to join the growing international trend towards abolition," the statement said.

Ahadi, who fled Iran in the early 1980s, told CNN that pressure from Amnesty and other organizations and individuals is likely the only way to save Ashtiani.

"Experience shows (that) ... when the pressure gets very high, the Islamic government starts to say something different," she said.

In Washington, the State Department has criticized the scheduled stoning, saying it raised serious concerns about human rights violations by the Iranian government.

"We have grave concerns that the punishment does not fit the alleged crime, " Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley said Thursday. "For a modern society such as Iran, we think this raises significant human rights concerns."

Calling Iran's judicial system "disproportionate" in its treatment of women, Crowley said, "From the United States' standpoint, we don't think putting women to death for adultery is an appropriate punishment."

Human rights activists have been pushing the Islamic government to abolish stoning, arguing that women are not treated equally before the law in Iran and are especially vulnerable in the judicial system. A woman's testimony is worth half that of a man, they say.

Article 74 of the Iranian penal code requires at least four witnesses -- four men or three men and two women -- for an adulterer to receive a stoning sentence, said Ahadi, of the International Committee Against Stoning. But there were no witnesses in Ashtiani's case. Often, said Ahadi, husbands turn wives in to get out of a marriage.

Mostafaei said he could not understand how such a savage method of death could exist in the year 2010 or how an innocent woman could be taken from her son and daughter, who have written to the court pleading for their mother's life.

The public won't be allowed to witness the stoning, Mostafaei said, for fear of condemnation of such a brutal method. He is hoping there won't be an execution.

Mostafaei, who himself did jail time in the aftermath of the disputed presidential elections in June 2009, said he realizes the risk of speaking out for Ashtiani, for fighting for human rights. But he doesn't let that deter him.

He last saw Ashtiani five months ago behind bars in Tabriz. Since then, he said, he has been searching for a way to save her from the stones.


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Sources: CNN, Google Maps