Billy_T wrote:

I’ve now completed the first two seasons, and am well into Season Three. The ability to watch back to back episodes is addictive — and really bad for my time management.

Just finished an episode with one of the best dialogues between Littlefinger and Varys. Video of scene follows. Trigger warning, just in case: One of the images especially is very graphic and unsettling:

For those who don’t know, Varys (no hair) and Littlefinger aka Baelish (mustache) are members of the council advising the king, who is a young monster. Both Varys and Baelish employ spies and informants. What Baelish reveals here is that the young monster king wanted to use his new crossbow on a whore…that’s the “daring” thing being referred to…and the whore Baelish supplies is a spy in the service of Varys. That’s a deliberate move on Baelish’s part. Basically, Baelish is taunting Varys with this revelation, saying, see this time I outmaneuvered you.

bnw wrote:

Of course the person in question was racist. Do you think either the black or asian policemen didn’t already know that? Of course not. The act itself of refusing assistance was an asshole move. Therefore I did state it accurately.

Where did anyone say anything about “refusing assistance”? That’s not in the article.

And my point was, if you acknowledge the real problem—saying RACISTS are everywhere, not assholes are everywhere—then it looks different. It’s less of a cover up to put it that way. Because after a while you eventually have to recognize, the racists have no excuse and ought to change…being racist is on them. Recognizing that means we move away from the position of being white while telling minorities the “proper” way to handle racism when that’s simple arrogance…we don’t encounter racism like that. So who are we to tell anyone how to handle it.

..

bnw wrote:

zn wrote:

<span class=”d4pbbc-font-size” style=”font-size: 18px”>JARED & TODD LIKE TO JUST HANG OUT & ENJOY THE GENTILE & CIVILIZED ART OF “AIR TEA.” </span>

Should be GENTEEL not GENTILE.

Yer right. Changed by edit.

Alton Sterling Witness: Cops Took My Phone, My Surveillance Video, Locked Me Up

Abdullah Muhlafi says the Baton Rouge officer who killed a man selling CDs immediately ordered him to be detained and then stole footage of the slaying.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/11/alton-sterling-witness-cops-took-my-phone-my-surveillance-video-locked-me-up.html

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — The owner of the convenience store where Alton Sterling was killed last week by cops alleges in a lawsuit that police stole surveillance video from his shop, confiscated his cell phone, and locked him inside a car for the next four hours.
Abdullah Muhlafi, proprietor of the Triple S Mart, saw police confront and kill Sterling who was selling CDs with his permission in the front parking lot last Tuesday night. Muhlafi recorded part of the incident in footage he gave The Daily Beast last week that shows Sterling did not have a weapon in his hand when Officer Howie Lake shouted “gun!” and Officer Blane Salamoni fired six shots into his chest.
Muflahi claims in a lawsuit filed Monday in Baton Rouge district court that after Salamoni killed Sterling, he immediately told responding officers Lt. Robert Cook and Officer Timothy Ballard to confiscate the “entire store security system” and detain him.
“I told them I would like to be in the store when [they took it],” Muflahi told The Daily Beast, adding that he also demanded they get a warrant for the seizure of his private property.
Officers didn’t even file an application for a search warrant, The Daily Beast found last week. Nor did Muflahi sign a “Voluntary Consent to Search Form” with the Baton Rouge police.
After taking away Muhlafi’s cellphone — and the damning video on it — Lt. Robert Cook and Officer Timothy Ballard locked the him in the back of a police car for the next four hours, the lawsuit claims. The only time Muhlafi was let out was when he had to use the restroom.
“The officers would not allow Mr. Muflahi to use the restroom inside of his business establishment and he was escorted to the side of his building and forced to relieve himself right there within arm distance of a BPRD officer and in full view of the public,” the lawsuit states.
During the four hours inside a cop car and another two hours at police headquarters, Muhlafi was allegedly prevented from making a phone call to his family or an attorney.
Muhlafi is suing Salamoni, Lake, Cook, and Ballard as well as the City of Baton Rouge and police chief Carl Dabadi. The lawsuit seeks damages for “false arrest, false imprisonment, the illegal taking and seizing of his security system, illegally commandeering his business,” attorney Joel Porter told The Daily Beast on Monday.
Hours after Muflahi’s lawsuit was filed, it was revealed that police had filed the search warrant and the affidavit with a court clerk on Monday morning–six days after Sterling was killed.
The warrant suggests that Cook waited five hours after he began his investigation at the Triple S Mart before applying for a warrant to search for the video. Cook submitted an affidavit to Commissioner Quintillis Lawrence at 5:23 a.m. and Lawrence authorized the warrant that very same minute, court papers show. At 5:50 a.m. Cook began his search and finished by 7 a.m., according to the warrant’s return.
“The timeline definitely doesn’t add up,” Porter told The Daily Beast.
Muflahi claimed in his lawsuit that police detained him and took the hard drive around 1 a.m. So either police waited five hours to get a warrant and seize the hard drive or they grabbed the hard drive and got a warrant after the fact to make the seizure appear legal.
The only way to know which scenario is true is to see the security camera footage, which would show if it was terminated before or after the warrant was authorized. However, police don’t have just the video but the hard drive itself, making it impossible to challenge their timeline of events unless and until they give up the video.
And Sterling’s family wants it released.

“The family would like the release of the video survillence tapes,” the attorney for Sterling’s son said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “If we are searching for the truth, it starts here.”
Porter claims police exceeded the warrant’s authority by seizing the hard drive.
“The warrant gives the Baton Rouge Police Department the authority to search the surveillance video on recording device, it doesn’t give them the authority to seize the device,” he said.
The warrant states that “the purpose and reason for the search is to find and seize the item(s) listed above,” referring to “Video Surveillance from the Digital Video Recorder.” It continues, “You are hearby ordered to search the aforesaid Revo Digital Video Recorder …and if the thing(s) specified are found there, to seize them and hold them in safe custody pending further orders from the court.”
How did the police know the brand of recorder without already searching the back room where it was kept? Porter asked.
“They lied in the warrant,” he said, calling it “laughable.”
In response to questions surrounding the investigation, Gov. John Bel Edwards “believes all evidence should be collected in accordance with the law,” said spokesman Richard Carbo, although he wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the case, and again deferred to law enforcement on details.
Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond told The Daily Beast, “I think the public has a right to know under what authority the tapes were seized.”
Protests over Sterling’s killing have been escalating over the past few days, with 48 people arrested on Sunday and more than 100 arrested on Saturday. More protests are planned for Monday with no signs of letting up.

bnw wrote:

I’d say buck up theres assholes everywhere.

Which means you;re white.

No one has or ever will do that to you.

So how relevant, really, are OUR thoughts on this? The truth is, we don’t know. We have no idea. We might as well be discussing what childbirth feels like.

.

bnw wrote:

The decider’s justification for invading Iraq.

Were you saying all that at the time? Not challenging you, just curious.

I will say this. This board, or its original version, grew out of an interest by many in getting beyond mainstream media stuff on the build up to the war. We pretty much pieced together the fact that on every single level, there was no justification for it. It was a very involved, multi-faceted discussion.

SO, ALTON STERLING WAS THE WRONG GUY? STORE OWNER SAYS POLICE TOOK SURVEILLANCE VIDEO WITHOUT WARRANT AND AGAINST HIS PERMISSION

ANTONIO J. NEWELL

So, Alton Sterling Was The Wrong Guy? Store Owner Says Police Took Surveillance Video Without Warrant And Against His Permission

Reportedly, Alton Sterling may have been the wrong guy altogether. The store owner gives his account of the shooting.

After the Alton Sterling shooting, the Triple S Food Mart store owner came forth with his anguish regarding the Baton Rouge police officers’ actions.

According to The Daily Beast, Abdullah Muflahti, the store’s owner, called Sterling his friend. He wasn’t the enemy officers painted him to be.

In fact, as the store owner elaborates, Alton Sterling was the wrong guy.

Earlier, there had been a 911 call placed by an unnamed man. He claimed that a man was brandishing a gun and taunting customers within the parking lot.

However, the store owner said that he had not seen anyone at all waving a gun in the store’s parking lot, and it especially wasn’t Alton.

According to the owner, Sterling had only been doing what he normally does at the establishment — selling his CDs.

As you know, a second video has surfaced regarding the Alton Sterling shooting. Well, it was the store owner who recorded the second angle.

The Daily Beast notes that Muflahti walked out to tell the officers that there had been no altercation or trouble at the store. However, police took action on Sterling anyway.

You could see in the original video where the Baton Rouge police officers tasered and tackled Sterling.

That’s where the store owner mentions he took out his phone to record the shooting as well — after he advised the police that Alton Sterling was the wrong guy, and furthermore that there was no “guy” at all.

But “he was reaching for his gun,” right?

According to reports, Alton Sterling was still being tasered while on the ground. While being tasered, most people’s bodies go into involuntary convulsions. How could Sterling obey the “don’t move” command if they were still tasering him?

A recent report from the University of Georgia states that tasers are quite deadly. In the report, it notes as follows.

“…tasers inflict jolting electrical shocks on the victim, who screams with unbearable pain, collapses, goes into convulsions and writhes on the ground while the officer watches…”
The report also mentioned that between 2011 and 2013, 179 people were killed by cops via taser (but we didn’t hear about those cases, did we?).

Concerning the Baton Rouge man, the owner mentions that Alton Sterling wasn’t the type of person to threaten people in that way.

Likewise, he says that if Alton had pulled out his gun, it would’ve been for a very big problem.

After the Alton Sterling shooting, everyone who had been seen recording the incident was taken to Baton Rouge Police Department for interviews.

During the store owner’s interview, police requested the surveillance video from the store. However, Muflahti refused to give it to them, says the source.

First, Muflahti told them that they would have to give him a warrant in order to confiscate the Alton Sterling video footage.

Yet — again, disregarding total protocol — Baton Rouge police officers went over the store owner’s head and confiscated the facility’s video footage without a warrant.

According to the source, the store owner says that police told him that they didn’t want him to see the video.

Why?

Something is happening in America. People can choose to look the other way or choose to see the situation for what it is in reality.

However, the United States’ Justice Department has some serious flaws which are continually revealing themselves.

What are your thoughts about the Alton Sterling shooting? Why are officers keeping to the “shoot first, ask questions later” custom — as mentioned by retired officer Frank Serpico to New York Daily News — when it comes to “Black America”? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Philando Castile Stopped 52 times by police: Was it racial profiling?

Associated Press Sat

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stopped-52-times-police-racial-profiling-052139197.html

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — When Philando Castile saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror the night he got shot, it wasn’t unusual. He had been pulled over at least 52 times in recent years in and around the Twin Cities and given citations for minor offenses including speeding, driving without a muffler and not wearing a seat belt.

He was assessed at least $6,588 in fines and fees, although more than half of the total 86 violations were dismissed, court records show.

Was Castile an especially bad driver or just unlucky? Or was he targeted by officers who single out black motorists like him for such stops, as several of his family members have alleged?

The answer may never be known, but Castile’s stop for a broken tail light Wednesday ended with him fatally shot by a suburban St. Paul police officer, and Castile’s girlfriend livestreaming the chilling aftermath.

The shooting has added a new impetus to a national debate on racial profiling; a day after Castile died, a black Army veteran killed five officers in Dallas at a demonstration over Castile’s killing and another fatal police shooting, in Louisiana.

The Castile video “is pretty horrific,” said Gavin Kearney, who in 2003 co-authored a report to the Minnesota Legislature on racial profiling in the state. “There are things we don’t know about it. But we know there are certain assumptions and biases — whether explicit or implicit — about black men that affect how police officers interpret their actions. And we know white drivers are less likely to be pulled over.”

Court records dating to 2002 show Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor, averaged more than three traffic stops per year and received citations for misdemeanors or petty misdemeanors.

Many charges were dismissed, but Castile pleaded guilty to some, mostly for driving after his license was revoked and driving with no proof of insurance. However, those two charges also were the most frequently dismissed, along with failing to wear a seat belt.

The records show no convictions for more serious crimes.

No recent information is available on the racial breakdown of drivers stopped or ticketed by police in Falcon Heights, the mostly white suburb where the shooting occurred, or in other Minnesota towns. Minnesota is not among the handful of states that require police to keep such data.

But in 2001, the Legislature asked for a racial profiling study and it fell to Kearney, then at the Institute on Race & Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School, to conduct it. His study, using information supplied voluntarily by 65 law enforcement jurisdictions in the state, found a strong likelihood that racial and ethnic bias played a role in traffic stop policies and practices. Overall, officers stopped minority drivers at greater rates than whites and searched them at greater rates, but found contraband in those searches at lower rates than whites.

The analysis found the pattern was more pronounced in suburban areas. In Fridley, New Hope, Plymouth, Sauk Rapids and Savage combined, blacks were stopped about 310 percent more often than expected.

The St. Anthony Police Department, which employs the officer who shot Castile, did not participate in the study. St. Anthony officials have not commented on Castile’s stop since shortly after the shooting.

It was not immediately clear how much money governments in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area generate from traffic violations. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation following the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri, found law enforcement efforts were focused on generating revenue for that city. Most of the tickets and fines were going to blacks.

Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, a passenger in the car, said the two officers who stopped them said the vehicle had a broken tail light. She said one of the officers shot him “for no apparent reason” after he reached for his ID.

Valerie Castile said she thinks her son “was just black in the wrong place.” Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said he did not believe it would have happened to a white motorist.

The officer who shot Castile, Jeronimo Yanez, is Latino. His lawyer, Thomas Kelly, said Saturday that his client reacted to the fact that Castile had a gun, not his race, though Kelly would not discuss what led Yanez to initiate the traffic stop.

“Police understand the concerns about choices made about who gets stopped and what happens when they get stopped,” said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

But the statistics can’t simply be attributed to racial bias among police.

“When people call the police, they provide a description of somebody engaged in a crime. The police respond to those descriptions,” said Stephens, a former Charlotte, North Carolina, police chief. “That counts for part of the disproportionality that we see in those numbers.”

Last year, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended police departments collect and analyze demographic data on all stops, searches and seizures.

Nationally, 13 percent of black drivers were pulled over at least once in 2011, compared with 10 percent of the white drivers, according to a survey by the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The survey shows 68 percent of black drivers considered the stops legitimate compared with 84 percent of white drivers.

The precise reasons why certain motorists are pulled over more than others are difficult to identify, said Lorie Fridell, an associate professor of criminology at the University of South Florida, who trains police departments through a program called Fair and Impartial Policing.

“Our implicit biases are most likely to impact us when we’re facing ambiguous situations,” Fridell said. “A person reaching into a pocket is ambiguous. If I, as a white, middle-aged woman, reach into my pocket most people aren’t going to experience fear. For a black male with dreadlocks, that ambiguous action would produce fear in many people.”

Iraq War, Based on Lies, Rages On

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/7/http_wwwtruthdigcom_report_item_the_iraq

A devastating report on the U.K.’s eager participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq was released this week, as corpses are still being pulled from the rubble in the aftermath of Baghdad’s largest suicide truck bombing since that ill-fated 2003 invasion began. The document is known as “The Chilcot Report,” after its principal investigator and author, Sir John Chilcot. The inquiry was commissioned in 2009 by Britain’s then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Chilcot released the 6,000-page report Wednesday morning, seven years after the work began. It offers a litany of critiques against former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet, exposing the exaggeration of the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and Blair’s unwavering fealty to President George W. Bush. “It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. … They were not challenged,” Chilcot writes in his statement that accompanied the report’s release.

One memo included in the report, from Blair to Bush in July 2002, months before the invasion, opens with Blair’s pledge to Bush, “I will be with you, whatever.” Many, including Parliament members from his own Labour Party, are calling for Blair to be tried for war crimes. As the United Kingdom, still consumed by political chaos in the wake of the Brexit vote, reacts to the Chilcot report, people in Baghdad are reeling from Saturday’s bombing. The death toll from the attack has climbed to 250. George W. Bush, unapologetically, said through a spokesman that he “continues to believe the whole world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.” He was said to be hosting wounded veterans on his ranch in Texas.

The British military suffered far fewer casualties than the Americans, with 179 killed, compared with 4,502 from U.S. forces (seven of whom were killed in 2016). Trillions of dollars have been spent on the invasion and occupation, and trillions more will be spent on the lifetime of care for the wounded and emotionally damaged veterans. But by far the largest, the most incalculable toll has been paid by the Iraqi people. As this most recent, incredibly massive bombing attests, the war in Iraq has not ended. Several efforts have been made to count the number of war dead, with the low end of those estimates at 160,000-180,000 killed. Some studies have put the number at several times that. The exact number is impossible to determine, but the effect on the people of Iraq has been devastating, and the damage will be felt for generations.

The British pronouncement was clear: “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.” This was not in 2003, though. It was 1917. War raged across Europe, and the British Navy was heavily dependent on oil from Iraq and the Persian Gulf. As the detailed historical annex attached to the Chilcot Report reads, “To secure this oil for Britain, in the spring of 1914 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, acquired for the British Government a 51 percent share in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.” And thus has the past century of occupation, exploitation, repression, violence and grief been seared into the lives of Iraqis and into the history of Iraq.

This is more than history to Sami Ramadani. He is an Iraqi-born, London-based exile from the Saddam Hussein regime, who has long organized against not only the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but also against the devastating sanctions that preceded it. “Iraq, as a society, as a state, was destroyed in the cruelest of fashions—shock and awe, mass crimes on an untold scale since World War II and the Vietnam War,” he told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, shortly after the report was released. “It wasn’t removing the dictator that was the real objective, but really controlling Iraq. And failing to control it, they eventually destroyed it, just like they are doing in Libya, they are doing in Syria and so on. It fits in within that scale. But the biggest tragedy of all is the loss of life.”

Just one year after the invasion, at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association annual dinner in Washington, D.C., President Bush joked to the hundreds of journalists at the gathering, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.” Slides of Bush crouched on the floor of the Oval Office, looking for WMDs under the furniture, accompanied his comedy routine. As dead U.S. service members were brought back to Dover Air Force Base, where photographing the body bags was banned, and while Iraqi corpses piled up in streets and morgues, Bush’s behavior was unfathomable. War is no joke. In the wake of the Chilcot Report, there should be a serious effort to hold those, like Bush and Blair, accountable for the ongoing death and destruction in Iraq, and beyond.

Baton Rouge Cops Throw Protesters Into Street, Arrest Them for Being There

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/07/10/baton-rouge-cops-contain-and-threaten-to-arrest-press.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Hundreds of people peacefully protesting on private property Sunday evening were thrown into the street by police, and then several were then arrested for being on the street.

Approximately 500 people had gathered at France and East in downtown Baton Rouge after first coming together at a nearby Methodist church to protest the police killing of Alton Sterling. Meeting the protesters were about 100 officers in riot gear. A homeowner gave the protesters safe refuge on her front lawn so they would not be arrested for being in the street.

“No justice, no peace!” they yelled.

After 90 minutes of peaceful assembly, police charged the crowd for no clear reason. Protesters scattered, many running down a side street. Those protesters were then arrested for obstruction of a highway.

"This is private property.” Video by @lizzkatherine_ shows police detaining protesters in Baton Rouge pic.twitter.com/6ZVHAasgDS

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) July 11, 2016

A wall of riot police then pushed the scattered protesters further away, block by block, and arrested some at the front of the crowd. “Clear the streets and leave the area!” one officer shouted through a bullhorn. “This is an unlawful assembly!”

Several protesters threw water bottles and rocks at cops as they retreated.

The homeowner told CBS News she was “stunned” by police behavior.

“I kept telling them: ‘This is my property, please do not do that, I live here,'” she said. “They just looked at me and ignored the things I was saying.”

Lt. Jonny Dunham of the Baton Rouge Police Department said the protesters were arrested for previously breaking the law by obstructing a public passage by trying to get on an interstate on-ramp. “Once you’ve broken the law, there is no safe space.”

Throughout the confrontation, police threatened to arrest all journalists without credentials.

“We’re giving you an official direction,” one officer told The Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast and several other media outlets were forced into a 10-foot wide zone by police. Then they ordered all reporters without credentials out of the zone and threatened to arrest any who put a foot in the street. Arianna Triggs, a production assistant for NBC 33, told The Daily Beast she was also threatened with arrest and forced to move.

On Saturday, at least three journalists were arrested, including a radio reporter with WWNO and a credentialed news director with WAFB. Both were booked on one count of obstructing a highway, which was the same charge leveled against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist. More than 100 people in total were arrested.