When The S*** Hits the Fan

#CIA ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed 6,700 Page #Torture Report? #Snowden Calls Bullshit

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(ANTIMEDIA) The world’s most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden, took Twitter by storm when he created an account last year. Since, he has criticized everyone from the FBI to Google, so his latest post on the CIA should come as no surprise.

Commenting on revelations the CIA “inadvertently” destroyed a copy of the 6,700-page torture report, Snowden questioned the agency’s official story.

“I worked @CIA. I wrote the Emergency Destruction Plan for Geneva. When CIA destroys something, it’s never a mistake,” he tweeted Wednesday, openly challenging the CIA’s claim. He also shared an article detailing the news.

Snowden previously worked for the CIA and as an NSA contractor before leaking documents revealing the U.S. government’s extensive mass surveillance programs and subsequently fleeing the country. He has been an outspoken voice against government overreach and privacy issues ever since.

On Monday, Yahoo News reported on the CIA’s apparent fumble that inspired Snowden’s Wednesday tweet:

“The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it ‘mistakenly’ destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee was reportedly informed of the ‘mistake’ last summer, but it was never disclosed to the public, nor to the federal judge presiding over a Freedom of Information Act case seeking access to the lengthy document.

Douglas Cox, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law, who specializes in “tracking the preservation of federal records,” commented on the CIA’s self-described mistake. “It’s breathtaking that this could have happened, especially in the inspector general’s office — they’re the ones that are supposed to be providing accountability within the agency itself,” he said. “It makes you wonder what was going on over there.”

The clandestine organization came under fire for its use of torture after 9/11 (and before, though it’s lesser-known), as exposed by a Senate investigation in December 2014. Following embarrassing reports of everything from sexual assault and forced rectal feeding to beatings, sleep deprivation, and other degrading practices, the CIA has since tried to clean up its image. Amid presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s calls to implement waterboarding and more torture, in general, CIA Director John Brennan disavowed the agency’s infamous practice. “I will not agree to have any CIA officer carry out waterboarding again,” he said in April.

But the CIA has a track record of deception, and has had at least one issue with destroyed documents before — that time concerning records on the agency’s coup in Iran in 1953.

The 2014 Senate report “relied on the CIA’s own records to document a pattern of an agency consistently understating the brutality of the techniques used on detainees and overstating the value of the information they produced,” the Associated Press reported in 2014.

“This is a tremendous amount of CIA misrepresentation. It is difficult to read these pages and wonder whether a system of accountability can work,” Mother Jones observed, in a thorough article examining the many ways the CIA deceived lawmakers and multiple federal agencies about its torture program.

As Democratic Senator Mark Udall flatly said, “The CIA lied.”

No doubt, according to Snowden, the CIA continues to lie — and his tweet highlights growing mistrust of establishment narratives as Americans increasingly lose faith in government and other institutions.

Read Snowden’s recent article on political resistance here.

This article (CIA ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed 6,700 Page Torture Report? Snowden Calls Bullshit) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Woman’s #Obituary Says She Died So She Wouldn’t Have to Vote for #Trump or #Clinton

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(ANTIMEDIA) A popular question often arises in election years: “If you had to pick a candidate, who would it be?” Some might say, albeit in jest, that forced to choose between Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and a gun to their head, they’d probably choose the gun.

According to one satirical line in a real obituary, however, one woman actually did choose death.

“Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the age of 68,” reads an obituary for a Virginia woman who recently died of lung cancer.

Of course, the obituary was written to be comical, and as Jim Noland, her surviving husband said, “The line wasn’t meant as a parting shot at either presidential candidate,” local ABC affiliate WTVM reported. “Rather it was a joke and way for Mary Anne’s children to carry on her sense of humor.”

Either way — and regardless of how Mary Anne Norland felt about the current election — the obituary highlights the general sentiments of millions of Americans. According to polls, a majority of Americans dislike both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. A consistent majority of Americans views Clinton unfavorably while 65 percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump.

Independent of who wrote the obituary, the most striking part of it may not be the humor about the presidential race, but how Mary Anne Noland lived her life.

“A faithful child of God, Mary Anne devoted her life to sharing the love she received from Christ with all whose lives she touched as a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, friend and nurse,” her obituary reads.

She spent her life working as a wound nurse, “a job [Jim] Noland says many others wouldn’t do, but his wife enjoyed because it let her develop a relationship with her patients.” He called her “feisty, strong and compassionate.”

Her giving, loving nature presents a striking contrast to the current presidential race, which is all but locked between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Whereas the country faces deep divides and extreme animosity — both within the two major parties and between them — Noland’s memory offers a gentle reminder to be kind and selfless in service of others. Her husband says she never stopped being a caretaker, as she helped raise her ten grandchildren.

“Noland says his family is beyond sad at the passing of his wife, but hopes the obituary captures her spirit and celebrates her essence. He says Mary Anne is smiling down from heaven laughing along with them,” WMTV reported.

Surely, the obituary has brought laughs to undoubtedly more people than just her family, as it was quickly picked up by news outlets across the country — demonstrating how much the sentiment against the current system resonates with Americans. More meaningful, however, might be appreciation for her selfless life and efforts to share love — a virtue glaringly lacking from current affairs.

Indeed, in lieu of flowers, Noland’s obituary requested donations be made to CARITAS, a charity that helps care for the homeless and individuals suffering from addiction.

This article (Woman’s Obituary Says She Died So She Wouldn’t Have to Vote for Trump or Clinton) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

The #FBI Has 80,000 Documents on #Saudi Ties to 9/11 It Tried to Suppress

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(ANTIMEDIA) The classified 28-pages of the 9/11 report have made global headlines lately as a handful of lawmakers battle to release them to the public. Those pages are believed by activists and members of Congress — who have seen them — to expose the role of Saudi Arabia, including government officials, in the terrorist attacks.

But according to a new report based on years of investigative journalism, it turns out there are far more than 28 classified pages on Saudi Arabia and 9/11 — there are 80,000 kept secret by the FBI. And though not all 80,000 are expected to concern the Saudi family — and the FBI insists their investigation of the documents came up empty-handed — journalists, at least one lawmaker, and heavily-redacted documents suggest otherwise.

As the Daily Beast reported, the discovery of the 80,000 pages came when Irish investigative journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan were contacted by an unnamed counterterrorism official in 2011. The reporters were preparing to publish a book on the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks and were told  by the source that a Saudi family who had been living in Sarasota, Florida, prior to the attacks had connections to the attackers. Specifically, they were linked to Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian terrorist widely recognized as the ringleader of the attacks.

The unnamed official’s tip conflicted squarely with the FBI’s prior conclusions on that family. Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, his wife Anoud, and their three small children lived in an upscale Sarasota community, along with Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, who owned the home, and Ghazzawai’s American-born wife. The FBI had received multiple calls from the family’s neighbors expressing concerns over erratic behavior. Two weeks before 9/11, they left the house in a huge hurry, leaving dirty diapers and toys strewn about, a fully stocked refrigerator, and three cars in the driveway.

Though the FBI opened an investigation in April 2002, it still insists it never found any significant connection between the family and Atta. The agency acknowledged they had suspected a connection, but “not until after the Tampa field office opened an investigation that claimed to find ‘numerous connections’ between the family and the 9/11 hijackers,” the Daily Beast explained. The 80,000 classified pages in question stemmed from that investigation.

The FBI says “the bureau’s own agents did initially suspect the family was linked to some of the hijackers.” But “on further scrutiny, those connections proved unfounded, officials now say.”

But Summers and Swan contacted Dan Christensen, a veteran Florida reporter, and together they published an exposé on these connections in Sarasota in September 2011. As they reported, following the 9/11 attacks:

“[L]aw enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.”

They were also never revealed to lawmakers. The 2011 story caught the attention of Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who has since led the campaign to release the 28 pages on the Saudi connection, which are said to contain information showing Saudi government officials were involved in orchestrating the attack.

At the time, he said the journalists had “open[ed] the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.” Graham attempted to view some of the documents, and told the Daily Beast (for a forthcoming article) they did show a connection between the family and three hijackers. He was soon after confronted by then-deputy director of the FBI, Sean Joyce. According to Graham, he said, “Basically everything about 9/11 was known and I was wasting my time and I should get a life.”

Christensen filed a Freedom of Information Act request in the hopes of either confirming or refuting their original reporting. Thomas Julin, his lawyer, said the FBI initially denied having any records. When Graham said he was willing to testify he had seen some, the Department of Justice conveniently admitted to having 35 relevant pages. They released them, but they were heavily redacted. In spite of the overt censorship guarding that information, they reportedly still made clear the FBI had suspicions about the family — and that they had found several connections between them and the hijackers. The pages also include the FBI’s dismissals of those suspicions.

U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch, who presided over the Freedom of Information case, was unconvinced and demanded the FBI conduct another search of its records. This time,“the FBI found some additional responsive documents which it produced,” Juline told the Daily Beast. “But it also found 80,266 pages of material in the Tampa Field Office of the FBI which had been marked with the file number for the FBI’s PENTTBOM investigation.”

PENTTBOM was the FBI term for its investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Though the New York Post had previously reported on these 80,000 pages, the DoJ’s small release of documents clarified suspicions. Zloch ordered the FBI to hand over all the documents in May 2014 — and he is still going through them to determine which pages can be released. He has given no indication of when he will be finished.

The Daily Beast explained “Zloch’s task is made all the more painstaking by the strict security rules governing review of classified documents, even for a sitting judge. The files are kept in a secure facility, and he can only remove a portion at a time.”

It remains unclear how many of the 80,000 pages pertain directly to the Tampa FBI field office’s investigation of the family in Sarasota — and their ties to the attackers. Though Christensen says he’s ready to be proven wrong, he believes “those files will reveal the underlying reasons for the FBI’s early suspicions.”

As the Daily Beast laid out:

“The FBI, for instance, says that phone records searches showed no links to the house and the hijackers. Christensen’s confidential source says the opposite is true. If the FBI is right, Christensen asks, then why not just release the information and put the dispute to rest?”

The FBI has attempted to discredit the pages, claiming the agent who filed the first reports on the family and their potential connection to the hijackers was “not a good writer and should not be taken as the last word,” according to Graham. However, that agent was promoted shortly after 9/11, casting doubt on assertions they were incompetent.

In a similar evasion of accountability, President Obama vowed to block a legislative effort to release the 28 pages amid pressure from the Saudi Arabian government, which threatened to remove $750 billion in American assets should the legislation pass. The president cited concerns that allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue a foreign government could, in turn, open the United States government up to prosecution, itself. The White House has since indicated it intends to release part of the 28 pages.

Though Julin says the 28 pages likely aren’t linked to the Sarasota Saudi family, he hopes their eventual release “might help Judge Zloch see the wider significance of the events in Sarasota and persuade him that some or all of the records have not been properly classified.”

Last week, a former member of the 9/11 commission said he believes six Saudi officials supported the 9/11 hijackers. John F. Lehman said Wednesday, “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he said. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

The FBI’s trove of documents also requires further examination. Julin dismissed suspicions Judge Zloch is intentionally lagging in his investigation of the 80,000 pages. “I believe this is not a stalling tactic at all,” he said. “The judge is doing what he has to comply” with the stringent rules surrounding the release of the classified documents. “But I would urge him to speed it up,” he said.

This article (The FBI has 80,000 Documents on Saudi Ties to 9/11 It Tried to Suppress) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

5 Huge Stories the Media Ignored While Arguing Over Which #Bathroom to Use

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(ANTIMEDIA) Americans are prone to obsessing over seemingly frivolous headlines. Over the past year, we’ve seen the media drive emotional feeding frenzies on everything from the Starbucks red cup scandal or the superficial Confederate flag saga that ultimately glossed over the true foundations of racism in the U.S. Regardless of what the subjective opinion may be, the United States populace tends to feel inclined to indulge in heated, dramatic conversations about the morality of apparently inanimate objects.

But sometimes, they focus on more substantive issues.

One consistent subject that repeatedly riles up the masses is the subject of transgender rights. Last year, America (and the world) erupted in glee, rage, and overall chaos after Caitlyn Jenner debuted her new identity on the cover of Vanity Fair. More recently, many Americans have zeroed in on the ongoing controversy over transgender bathroom rights — sparked by North Carolina’s recent LGBT law. Some champion equal rights for all; others lament the destruction of American values. Headlines have detailed high-profile boycotts against North Carolina, the viral petition condemning Target for allowing transgender people to use whatever bathroom they prefer, and now, the topic is trending again amid news of President Obama’s call on Friday for public schools to respect transgender bathroom rights.

As important as these developments may be — no matter your views on the subject — as tends to happen, other highly important stories have fallen by the wayside. Though they have not been wholly blacked out by the corporate media, they have implications of equal, if not more , importance than America’s obsession with transgender issues — and most Americans will likely never hear about them.

Here are five stories you might want to review before diving back into the transgender imbroglio:

1. Hillary’s Conflicts of Interest Continue to Mount: As we reported, it was revealed this week that employees at the Department of Justice — one of the agencies tasked with investigating Clinton’s allegedly improper use of private email servers — gave $75,000 in donations to the presidential front-runner. “Hillary’s donations from the Department of Justice completely swamp those of the other candidates, in fact, as Sanders’ total from 51 donors was just $8,900 and Trump garnered an inconsequential $381,” we reported. David Bossie, president of watchdog group, Citizens United, argued “Attorney General Lynch must appoint a special counsel to determine if Hillary Clinton or her agents broke the law and compromised our national security. This investigation needs to be conducted free of political influence once and for all.”

As our own Claire Bernish explained, “Critics have previously pointed to Lynch personally donating over $10,000 to Democratic candidates as evidence of her lack of impartiality — and sufficient reason she should not be charged with overseeing the investigation of Clinton’s emails.” Further, Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed Russia has obtained some 20,000 emails from Hillary’s personal server — and is debating whether or not to leak them publicly. Ultimately, this conflict of interest represents deeply-rooted, systemic glitches in American democracy, where accountability is often flouted to protect the oligarchy. This reality does not mean the transgender conversation is unimportant — however, it does provide a sad commentary on whom Americans will accept as their ruler while they trade insults over bathroom rights. In this case, it’s a corrupt career politician whose misdeeds have thus far failed to thwart her designs on power.

2. Somebody was finally arrested for voter fraud, but it wasn’t the people committing it: This week, Anti-Media also reported on a Florida-based hacker, David Michael Levin, who exposed security flaws in the website of the Lee County Elections Office and the Division of Elections in Tallahassee. He shared them with authorities in the hopes of fixing the problem, but instead was arrested and charged. “According to the somewhat redacted police report, Levin’s associate, Daniel Sinclair, sent a security report about the SQL vulnerability — including details of the security flaw and a screenshot — to ‘an employee within the Department of State, Division of Elections,’” we reported. Shortly after, a special investigation was launched and Levin was arrested. “Levin’s foray into the elections data had not been undertaken with the appropriate permission — and because he didn’t alert the authorities as soon as he discovered vulnerabilities, law enforcement is required to be blind to his good intent,” we noted. He spent six hours in jail, even though he complied with all searches and confiscation of electronic devices.

Sinclair is running for a seat on the Lee County elections board, drawing some suspicion the hack was a publicity stunt, but as we noted, “with rather overt fraud disenfranchising voters across the country, arresting the one hacker who attempted to help secure elections seems oddly ironic.” Here’s a list of the many irregularities plaguing the electoral process this year.

3. Former Facebook employees revealed how the site censors news stories: Last week, Gizmodo published an in-depth story on how journalists working for the “Facebook Trends” feature of the social networking site were mistreated and quarantined from the rest of the staff. This week, Gizmodo published a follow-up piece documenting allegations from former employees that curators of the trending section excluded stories from conservative outlets and deliberately failed to include conservative topics from the IRS discrimination scandal to Rand Paul. Though these exclusions appeared to be unintentional displays of bias from individual employees, they dominated coverage of the story. But other manipulations of the feed were more deliberate. One official policy of the department included censoring stories about Facebook from trends.

“When it was a story about the company, we were told not to touch it. It had to be cleared through several channels, even if it was being shared quite a bit. We were told that we should not be putting it on the trending tool,” said one former employee. Further, in another official policy, employees were allowed to artificially inject stories into that trending pool, even if they were not trending on Facebook — as long as they were covered by mainstream outlets.

Though Republican lawmakers demanded answers from Facebook, perhaps the real story is Facebook’s complicity in perpetuating corporate media narratives; Facebook has long-partnered with corporate outlets (and the U.S. government), and has also been accused of censoring stories critical of Hillary Clinton, while blocking grassroots groups supporting Bernie Sanders. While Facebook is ultimately a private company that can make its own decisions, its users would do well to take the revelations as an opportunity to decide whether they trust the outlet to responsibly and equitably provide them with information.

No matter one’s view on Facebook’s rights as a private institution, the news of their practices runs in direct violation of their assertion the feed is comprised of “topics that have recently become popular.” The whistleblowers expressed hope that with the increased use of algorithms, Facebook Trends will be less subject to human bias and manipulation. In case that doesn’t happen, sign up for the weekly Anti-Media newsletter to get information unfiltered by Facebook.

4. Rat DNA, Human DNA, and Pathogenic Germs… in your hamburgers: According to an independent analysis conducted on over 250 burger brands in the United States — ranging from fast food to frozen food, and even vegetarian products — America’s love for burgers faces some snags. Though the report by Clear Labs, a California-based food industry researcher, praised overall improvements in the hamburger industry, they noted severe shortcomings, particularly with product labeling and the presence of germs. Rat DNA was found in three vegetarian burger samples while human DNA was found in one — but those were not the most concerning findings, the researchers noted, because though their presence is revolting, they are not necessarily considered dangerous to humans.

More worthy of alarm, they explained, was the mislabeling of vegetarian products, the presence of meat in some of those purportedly meatless burgers, and the total absence of black beans in a black bean burger. The report notes “23.6% of vegetarian products showed some form of discrepancy between product and label, compared to the 13.6% of all samples. We found pervasive issues in food quality and end-product consistency in these non-meat samples.”

Further, they found pathogens known to cause illness in 11 samples, four of which were found in vegetarian burgers. Though their tests could not determine whether the pathogens were alive or dead, their presence at all should raise eyebrows. Another top concern of analysts was the finding that “nearly 81 percent (38 of 47) of the fast food burgers tested contained more calories than reported in the product’s nutritional information,” and that“these discrepancies are potentially worrisome for customers who make decisions about what to order based on calorie counts and other available nutritional information.”

Though food contamination in the United States is nothing new, these findings are relevant not only because they document ongoing issues with food quality, but because they represent an attempt by a private organization to pick up the FDA’s slack. As Anti-Media pointed out, “Perhaps most telling is Clear Labs’ subtle, if not unintentional, commentary on the failures of the FDA to keep food safe for consumers; they stress their goal is to improve the safety and quality in hamburgers — ‘regardless of whether or not they are acceptable according to FDA guidelines,’” ultimately providing a silver lining to the unsettling report.

5. American foreign policy continues to have unintended ramifications: Americans have by and large accepted aggressive militarism as a linchpin of U.S. policy, and though the overwhelming civilian casualties and military failures are widely-known, this week Anti-Media reported on another consequence of the longest war in U.S. history: the war in Afghanistan has turned a generation of children into heroin addicts.

“The psychological damage of war, together with the flood of cheap heroin, has led to a doubling in addiction rates over the last five years. In the Channel 4 documentary, Unreported World, Ramita Naval explores a harrowing escalation in child addiction. In the ravaged country, where access to drug treatment is severely limited, she visits a rehabilitation centre where children as young as four or five — haunted by horrors they have witnessed — attempt to regain lost childhoods,” Anti-Media noted.

A Kabul-based doctor told Naval rates of addiction had jumped 60 percent in the last two years at the only treatment center in the city that helps children. Naval spoke to a thirteen-year-old boy whose parents were killed by shelling when he was eight. He ended up working as a guard for drug dealers, eventually becoming addicted to opium himself. He said he prostitutes himself to be able to maintain his habit.

Another young boy’s addiction began when, “after witnessing a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, he went to stay with relatives in the countryside. While he was there, U.S. forces bombed his village, killing dozens of people; he described seeing bodies scattered everywhere. The young boy and other villagers had to pick up the body parts and put them in plastic bags. Claiming the war breaks his heart — and making his descent into drug use more understandable — he said, ‘I’d rather not live, than live through this war.’”

“What’s happened in Afghanistan over the last 13 years has been the flourishing of a narco-state that is really without any parallel in history,” Kabul-based journalist Matthieu Aikins told Democracy Now back in 2014.

Afghanistan now produces 90 percent of the world’s opium, and even the CIA has been linked to key players in that trade. Clandestine operations aside, however, a generation of children lives in a country where opium is cheaper than food — and where unrelenting violence chronically traumatizes their young psyches, driving them deeper into addiction.

Of course, it is possible to care about transgender rights and political corruption, censorship, contaminated food, and the unintended victims of the Afghanistan War. As Facebook highlights transgender rights and Americans preach from the bully comment thread pulpits, however, it’s important to remember the broad view of current affairs.

This article (5 Huge Stories the Media Ignored While Arguing Over Which Bathroom to Use) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Anti-Mafia Prosecutor: Legalizing #Cannabis Would Help Defeat #Terrorism

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Carey Wedler
April 29, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) In recent years, calls to end the global war on drugs, particularly against cannabis, have grown louder — and show no signs of stopping. As evidence continues to mount showing the decriminalization of cannabis can have profound benefits, however, one potential side effect of ending the costly battle against the plant is only beginning to gain attention.

In recent years, governments and media outlets alike have highlighted the role drug trafficking plays in sustaining terrorist groups around the world. A brief report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes:

“Indeed drug trafficking has provided funding for insurgency and those who use terrorist violence in various regions throughout the world, including in transit regions. In some cases, drugs have even been the currency used in the commission of terrorist attacks, as was the case in the Madrid bombings.”

Similarly, as far back as 2003, the FBI observed the connection between terrorism and the drug trade. “Drug trafficking is a highly lucrative enterprise generating billions of dollars in profit that terrorist organizations can easily tap into,” said then-assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Intelligence, Steven McCraw, in a testimony before the Senate judiciary committee. “That is why all aspects of the terrorist enterprise including funding and support must be attacked.”

Of course, neither of these governmental observations considered decriminalizing cannabis, let alone all drugs. As a recent Reuters report details, however, cannabis plays a direct role in the way ISIS obtains its funding. In an interview with Italian prosecutor Franco Roberti, the nation’s top anti-terrorism and anti-mafia attorney, he discussed the way illicit hashish empowers the Islamic State.

He contends, as Reuters summarized, that “the main smuggling route for North African hash – compressed cannabis resin – now runs from Casablanca, Morocco, through Algeria, Tunisia to Tobruk in eastern Libya. Along that route is the seaside city of Sirte, which now serves as a Mediterranean base for the most powerful Islamic State (IS) branch outside Syria and Iraq.”

Citing investigations not yet made public, Roberti said police have found “evidence that Italian organized crime, which has long controlled most of the country’s illegal drug supplies, and ‘suspected terrorists’ in North Africa are trafficking hash together.” Though Italy has not experienced a terror attack by Islamic militants, ISIS has threatened Rome and the Vatican, making Roberti’s concerns about drug prohibition all the more valid.

In another example, Lebanese cannabis farmers — who have previously taken up arms to fight ISIS militants — continue to work with the terrorist group. One farmer, Imad, told the Daily Beast that though he “hates ISIS with a bitter passion” and still seeks revenge against them for killing one of his relatives, the war in Syria has blocked off their traditional trade routes to markets in Jordan and Turkey — leaving them desperate for business.  “Before the war in Syria we would cross the mountains with 200 kilos [of hash] each, get the cash and come back,” he said.

Amid sparse commercial opportunities, he began selling hashish to ISIS soldiers — both for their militants to smoke, themselves, and for the group to traffic. “Last month we sold one ton of hash to ISIS,” he said in April of last year. One of the biggest hash exporters in Lebanon, Abu Hussein, told the Daily Beast most of his product ends up in Egypt, Syria, the Gulf, and Saudi Arabia, though it has also made its way into Israel. He said he expected his 2015 crops to yield $200 million.

As hashish makes its way along ISIS-dominated trade routes — both as a drug for fighters and as a means to raise funds for their conquests — prohibition continues to fuel the illicit drug trade and its ties to terrorism.

“Decriminalization or even legalization would definitely be a weapon against traffickers, among whom there could be terrorists who make money off of it,” Roberti said. He further expounded on the problems with prohibition, noting, “We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking.”

Though he does not endorse legalizing or decriminalizing of all drugs — which would likely go a longer way in weakening ISIS’ hand in the illegal drug trade — he strongly questions increasingly archaic policies on cannabis. “Is it worth using investigative energy to fight street sales of soft drugs?” he asked rhetorically.

Reuters referenced a new report released this month by analysis company IHS, which concluded ISIS obtains just under 7 percent of its funding through the illicit narcotics trade. Other sources of revenue for terrorist groups come, as Roberti noted, from “smuggling commercial goods, smuggling oil, smuggling archaeological relics and art, kidnapping for ransom, and extortion.”

While governments contribute to the intersection of drug traffickers and terrorists, the U.S. government has, on multiple occasions, played an additional role.

Don Winslow, an expert on both drug trafficking and terrorism, explained in an article for the Daily Beast that during the Vietnam War, “American intelligence was helping heroin traffickers fly their product in order to assure their loyalty against the Communists.” He also discussed how the Reagan administration worked with Mexican cocaine traffickers to undermine a left-wing Nicaraguan government in the 1980s.

Evidence also suggests the CIA is at least somewhat involved in the illicit drug trade, notably, the opium trade in Afghanistan, which has largely funded terrorism operations.

Regardless of who is trafficking drugs, committing acts of terrorism — or both — it is increasingly clear the prohibition of cannabis and other drugs has contributed to the power and scope of terrorist organizations and drug rings.

“Terrorists and traffickers can easily connect because they inhabit the same spheres and in many cases share the same enemies: law enforcement and intelligence services,” Winslow said.

“Make no mistake, our drug policies have driven these groups into each other’s bloodstained arms.”

This article (Anti-Mafia Prosecutor: Legalizing Cannabis Would Help Defeat Terrorism) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Was #Prince’s Life Taken by America’s Prescription #Drug #Epidemic?

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Carey Wedler
April 28, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) According to new reports, Prince was in possession of painkillers at the time of his death. Law enforcement sources cautioned they could not yet determine whether or not the pills were related to the death of the beloved icon last week. Conflicting statements from those who knew him make the truth difficult to decipher, and frenzied coverage from tabloids and news outlets makes the developing story all the more convoluted. Regardless of what the ongoing investigation determines, however, the emerging reports highlight America’s ongoing struggle with widespread prescription drug abuse.

CBS News reported two law enforcement officials informed them the painkillers were “in his possession and at his home” when he died, though it was unclear whether they were on him or simply in his home. Other news outlets also reported receiving the same information from unnamed sources. A local ABC affiliate cited “multiple sources close to the investigation” who said painkillers were found at his home, but like CBS, they did not indicate where in the home they were found. Prince was found unconscious and alone in an elevator in his Paisley Park home. First responders who attempted to revive him did not administer any overdose drugs, according to Carver County Minnesota Sheriff Jim Olson.

Investigators have reportedly begun tracking Prince’s history of prescription pill use and are focusing at least part of their investigation on painkillers. The DEA has joined the investigation due to the discovery of pharmaceutical opioids.

However, even as narratives have begun swirling around the possibility that Prince — like so many other millions of Americans — fell victim to the powerful pills, it remains unclear whether or not he had a history of addiction, and, of course, whether or not that was the cause of his death. As Mother Jones noted, Hollywood’s top gossip outlet, TMZ, reported that less than a week before Prince’s death, his private jet was forced to make an emergency landing after he was found unresponsive. He had been battling the flu for several weeks, though TMZ linked the landing to a drug overdose. As Mother Jones summarized:

“The celebrity news site TMZ, which first broke the news of the pop icon’s death, reported that doctors reportedly injected the 57-year-old with a ‘save shot’ to counteract the damaging effects of an opiate overdose of Percocet, a prescription painkiller with a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen. Prince was treated and released from the hospital three hours after his arrival.”

Though flight records confirm a plane landing and Quad City airport officials confirmed an emergency medical landing, they did not provide details on who it concerned. It should be stressed TMZ provided no named sources.

Even so, an attorney close to Prince’s siblings said the musician battled an addiction to cocaine and Percocet, a painkiller, over a decade ago, fuelling speculation that painkillers took his life last week. In another development (that must be presented with a massive asterisk), an anonymous source allegedly told British tabloid, the Daily Mail, he was Prince’s drug dealer and sold him tens of thousands of dollars worth of drugs. It is necessary to keep in mind the sensational nature of Daily Mail, as well as the proclivity of figures seeking attention to crawl out of the woodworks following a celebrity death.

These caveats are all the more relevant considering others have insisted Prince was consistently sober and healthy. Robbie Paster, Prince’s valet and assistant from 1982 to 1992, said, “I never knew of any opiate or cocaine problem. There’s no way you can do both of those and be as driven as he was. I never saw it.”

Prince’s long-time attorney, L. Londell McMillan, said he was in great condition just days before he died, even after having suffered an ongoing flu. “He said he was doing perfect,” McMillan said of a conversation he had with Prince the Sunday before he died. He said that while Prince may have taken pain medication from time to time, he was “not on any drugs that would be any cause for concern.” Prince suffered from epilepsy throughout his life, and often experienced aches and pains from his many years performing on stage.

The conflicting stories surrounding his death make it effectively impossible, at this point, to know what actually happened. An autopsy was conducted last Friday, but the results will likely not be released for weeks. Regardless of what caused Prince’s death, however, the presence of painkillers at his home reflects the United States’ ongoing toxic relationship with legal opioids.

Countless other celebrities have struggled with prescription painkillers — as have millions in the United States and around the world. Whether or not it is concluded the painkillers were related to Prince’s death, however, their sheer presence in his home might — hopefully — further elevate the vital, ongoing conversation about dangerous, government-approved drugs in the United States, where the painkiller epidemic is most pronounced.

This article (Was Prince’s Life Taken by America’s Prescription Drug Epidemic?) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Man #Beaten Then Jailed 3 Days for NOT Stealing a Tomato from #Walmart

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Carey Wedler
April 26, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Atlanta, GA — An Atlanta, Georgia man has sued an off-duty officer who beat him viciously over the incorrect assumption he was stealing a tomato from Walmart. Though he says he was innocent, he was ultimately jailed for three days before the charges against him were dropped. He sustained permanent injuries from the beating.

Tyrone Carnegay was leaving Walmart in October of 2014 when an off-duty police officer working as a security guard approached. Video footage of the incident shows Carnegay attempting to exit the store when Atlanta police officer Trevor King begins questioning him. After no more than a few seconds, King begins beating Carnegay with his baton.

Carnegay says he was never told why he was being questioned, though according to court documents, a manager on duty at the time told the officer he had stolen the tomato.

“He’s giving me a verbal command. As he’s grabbing me, he’s beating me at the same time. ‘Get on the ground.’ Beating me at the same time,” Carnegay said as he re-watched surveillance video with WSB-Atlanta’s Craig Laurie. “My leg started giving out.”

King hit Carnegay at least seven times, ultimately cracking two bones in his leg and rupturing an artery. He now has a titanium rod in his leg and walks with a limp. Carnegay says he was never asked for the receipt — which he says he had. According to Carnegay, after he was on the ground in handcuffs, the officer reached into his pocket and found the receipt — along with his change from paying for the tomato.

Carnegay’s attorney, Craig Jones, said the entire incident could have been avoided with one question. “Somebody could have come up to him and said, ‘Excuse me sir, do you have [a] receipt for that tomato?’ and he would’ve shown him the receipt.”

Instead, Jones says, “The officer went into Robocop mode and beat the crap out of him.” Carnegay claims the cop “found the receipt and stood there like he hadn’t done nothing.”

In spite of this, Carnegay was still sent to jail and charged with simple battery against police, as well as willful obstruction of law enforcement officers. He was first taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he was chained to his bed, and then transferred to Fulton County Jail.

He was released after three days and the charges were dropped, but between the false accusations, brutal attack, and subsequent incarceration, Carnegay does not feel justice was served. According to his lawsuit, filed April 6 against Walmart, the manager on duty, and King, he is seeking damages for “pain and suffering, damage to his reputation and legal fees he incurred defending himself,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The lawsuit could take three years to complete, according to WSB-Atlanta.

Walmart offered a tepid statement on the incident and subsequent lawsuit. “We take the matter seriously. We will review the allegations and respond appropriately with the court,” a representative told WSB-Atlanta.

Atlanta police declined to comment — but the audacity their off-duty officer displayed by brutally attacking a man for not stealing a tomato speaks volumes.

This article (Man Beaten Then Jailed 3 Days for NOT Stealing a Tomato from Walmart) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Whistleblower Says #CIA Behind #PanamaPapers Leak

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Carey Wedler
April 12, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) A former Swiss banker-turned-whistleblower has accused the CIA of playing a key role the Panama Papers leak, which implicated numerous foreign leaders, companies, organizations and individuals in offshore tax evasion, among other offenses. Bradley Birkenfeld, a former American banker for Swiss firm UBS, told CNBC  “the CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” in an interview conducted Tuesday from Munich.

Birkenfeld originally blew the whistle on American tax evaders using Swiss bank accounts to divert their funds away from the reach of U.S. authorities. He served two-and-a-half years for his involvement and was released from prison in 2012. Pursuant to whistleblower policy, Birkenfeld was awarded $104 million of the $780 million settlement UBS was forced to pay as a result of his cooperation with authorities. Since his release from prison in 2012, he has said he wants “to force the government to explain why it was so aggressive in prosecuting him, but let nearly everyone else involved in the scam get off with light penalties or none at all.”

Focusing on the CIA on Tuesday, Birkenfeld was careful to note his comments were his “opinion,” but nonetheless offered strong observations on the scope of the data leak, which is the biggest in history.

“The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don’t see one U.S. name. Why is that?” Birkenfeld said. “Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation.”

Asked why a U.S. spy agency would release information that damages U.S. allies, like David Cameron, Birkenfeld said he was likely “collateral damage” in the purported overarching scheme to smear American adversaries.

He suggested the CIA had a calculated role in the way the leak was presented to the public:

truth-cancer-ad

“If you’ve got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this,” Birkenfeld said. “But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn’t hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That’s wrong. And there’s something seriously sinister here behind this.”

Birkenfeld’s comments seem even more perceptive considering German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Tuesday that “secret agents and their informants have made wide use of [Mossack Fonseca’s] services,”as translated by Raw Story. Sueddeutsche Zeitung originally received the leaked data from an anonymous whistleblower before handing it over to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

“Agents have opened shell companies to conceal their activities… Among them are close intermediaries of the CIA,” the German publication noted. Other individuals reportedly mentioned in the leaks included players in the infamous 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, in which the CIA was involved. The Iran-Contra scheme involved the U.S. selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages, then using the profits to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.

Though the CIA was not explicitly named in Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s report, their “intermediaries” were. Regardless, these revelations taken alongside Birkenfeld’s suspicions can mean one of two things: either Birkenfeld is wrong, or the CIA actually is involved with the Panama Papers and considered reports on their “intermediaries” to be “collateral damage,” as Birkenfeld suggested of Cameron.

Regardless, the Panama Papers leak has faced scrutiny beyond Birkenfeld’s. Wikileaks has called on the ICIJ to make all data from the 11,500 leaked pages available to the public.

Wikileaks also said, “If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism by definition.”

Gerard Ryle, Director of the ICIJ, has said, “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly,” and the ICIJ has noted it will not release all of the data. However, it will continue to release parts of the leak in the coming months.

Wikileaks also took to Twitter to accuse the ICIJ of being a “Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge” that “has a WikiLeaks problem.”

Further, the publishing organization accused ICIJ and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, with whom ICIJ shared the data, of launching an attack against Russian president Vladimir Putin:

“Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros,” Wikileaks tweeted. Another Twitter post later clarified the Panama Papers were not an “attack” against Putin, but that “DC organization [ICIJ] & USAID money tilt coverage.” USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, has been previously accused of corruption. Billionaire George Soros has been accused of influencing narratives in the mainstream media.

Regardless of who was behind the leak — and who may or may not be clandestinely pulling the strings on the flow of information — the CIA has faced similar accusations of media manipulation before. Otto Ulfkotte, the former editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, a large German publication, said he was bribed by the CIA to write pro-American stories.

“It is not right what I have done in the past. To manipulate people and make propaganda,” he said in 2014. “I was bribed by billionaires, I was bribed by the Americans not to report exactly the truth.” Explaining how this relationship began, he said:

“Germany is still kind of a colony of the United States… And being a colony it is very easy to approach young journalists from transatlantic organizations.”

Noting that “all journalists from really respected and recommended big German newspapers” tend to be members of such transatlantic organizations, he said:

“They invite you [to see] the U.S. They pay for that, they pay all your expenses and everything, so you are bribed, you get more and more corrupt, because they make you good contacts. You won’t know that those good contacts are, let’s say, ‘non-official’ covers or officially people working for Central Intelligence Agency or other American intelligence agencies… so you make friends, you think you are friends, and you cooperate with them. They ask you, ‘Well, could you do me this favor? Could you do me that favor?’ And so your brain is more and more brainwashed.”

He said many reporters in countries around the world “play the [role of] respected journalists but if you look behind them you’ll find they are puppets on the string of the CIA.”

Though some may discount Ulfkotte’s account because it was not corroborated by a third party — and the interview aired on Russia Today, Russia’s state-funded news agency — the CIA has been known to work with other newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, to manipulate news stories in their favor.

Regardless of whether or not Birkenfeld is correct in his assessment of the CIA’s role in the leaks, his statements on CNBC provide, at the very least, cause for continued skepticism among the many interests and motivations driving the ongoing leak.

This article (Whistleblower Says CIA Behind Panama Papers Leak) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

Jailed #Bankers Freed Early as #Icelandic Government Implodes Over #PanamaPapers

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Carey Wedler
April 7, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Iceland — The world watched in admiration last year when over two dozen Icelandic bankers who played a role in causing the 2008 financial crisis were sentenced to prison. Less than a year later, three of those bankers have been released — years earlier than expected. Their release was predicated on a change to current law regarding maximum penalties, but at least one lawmaker has suggested those who pushed the change through “handcrafted” it precisely to help bankers. News of their highly reduced sentences coincides with an ongoing scandal revealed by the Panama Papers this week regarding the Icelandic prime minister’s previously secret, offshore holdings in banks implicated in the collapse.

Icelandic outlet Stundin reported Thursday, as translated to English by the Icelandic Review, that three bankers from the Kaupthing Bank who were sentenced last year have been released. Former Kaupthing Chairperson of the Board Sigurður Einarsson, former Kaupthing Luxembourg CEO Magnús Guðmundsson, and former investor and 10% owner of Kaupthing Ólafur Ólafsson were convicted last year for their role in market manipulation and fraud. As the Reykjavík Grapevine summarized, “they artificially inflated the value of the bank, deliberately deceiving investors and depositors alike, and contributed significantly to the late 2008 collapse of the Icelandic banking system.”

They have each served roughly a year of their prison sentences, which ranged between four and five years, but because of a change to the law made March 16 regarding maximum penalties, they were released Thursday.

The Icelandic Review explained:

“The main part of the law change is to allow prisoners to double the amount of their sentence they serve at home, under electronic surveillance (i.e. tagged). The parliamentary bill was changed in committee to allow five days of electronic monitoring for every month of a prisoner’s sentence, instead of 2.5 days as it has been. This means that a prisoner sentenced to one year in prison can now spend the last 60 days electronically tagged and in the community, instead of 30 days. The rule change means criminals can now be released earlier from prison.”

Stundin reported they will be able to finish out their sentences at a “halfway house,” where they will be expected to spend every evening but will otherwise be free. After they have completed this phase — Stundin did not specify the exact length — they will be allowed to finish their sentences via electronic surveillance as determined by the new five-day guideline established by changes to the law.

truth-cancer-ad

The change to the law was, according to Stundin’s sources, pushed through the legislature by Unnur Brá Konráðsdóttir, chair of the Alþingi (Parliament) General Committee and MP for the Independence Party.

But not all lawmakers viewed the decision in a positive light.

“I don’t think this is a good time for this legislative change, in light of the situation surrounding these particular prisoners,” Left-Green MP Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir said of the modification. “This seems to have been handcrafted for them. I generally support the increased use of electronic surveillance [as opposed to prison]. But we need to have a discussion about what crimes this new law would apply to.”

Though the world celebrated the sentences of the bankers last year, the financial convicts complained of unfair treatment at their low-security prison, in spite of, as the Grapevine noted, “all evidence of their wrongdoing, their lenient sentences, practically idyllic living conditions, and – most galling of all – their continued assertions that they did nothing wrong.”

In a televised interview with the bankers from prison conducted this January, they expressed disbelief they had ended up behind bars.

“We made a big mistake, our lawyers and us, in trusting the system. We trusted the courts, and put our trust in the Supreme Court to sentence according to the law. There is our mistake,” Ólafsson claimed. The ex-banker, who has been called a “corporate Viking,” also complained of the ongoing backlash against bankers. “The community is responding to a certain social group. They are subjecting a certain social group to bullying,” he said. Twenty-six bankers were sentenced last year, receiving a combined total sentence of 74 years — an average of slightly less than three years per banker.

Regardless, the Kaupthing bankers have been now released from jail. The news comes the same week Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson came under fire amid evidence of corruption highlighted in the Panama Papers leak; Gunnlaugsson was revealed to have holdings in an offshore company — one tied to the banks implicated in the financial collapse for which the bankers were convicted. He initially refused to officially resign, instead “step[ping] aside for an unspecified amount of time.” Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, deputy chair of the Progressive party Gunnlaugsson chairs, will now serve as Prime Minister. Gunnlaugsson will remain chair of the party.

The Panama Papers revelations inspired mass protests in Iceland as 22,000 gathered in the capital city of Reykjavík on Monday evening, many demanding new elections to wipe the slate clean after corruption reached the highest office. The protests have continued throughout the week, though the size of the crowd has grown smaller.

As the current government remains mired in scandal and attempts to salvage its image, news of the freed bankers highlights deep-rooted issues with accountability in Iceland prior to the Panama Papers scandal; Stundin also reported that last week, before they were released, the bankers were allowed to leave their confinement center to go out for ice cream.

This article (Jailed Bankers Freed Early as Icelandic Government Implodes Over Panama Papers) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

This Is What’s Happening to People Who Live near the Worst Gas Leak in US History

by

Carey Wedler
March 25, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Porter Ranch, CA — On February 18, SoCalGas and the national media declared the “worst methane gas leak in U.S. history” permanently sealed, but just over a month later, hundreds of Porter Ranch residents who evacuated — and are now returning home — are suffering the same symptoms they suffered when the gas leak was active. They are experiencing nausea, dizziness, fatigue, headaches, nosebleeds, and many, including children, are also experiencing a new ailment: irritated skin rashes across their bodies.

Neither SoCalGas, which owns the Aliso Canyon facility, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, nor any other government agency has provided a concrete explanation for these continued symptoms. In fact, one of Los Angeles County’s top medical officials recently told local physicians to refrain from performing tests to determine what is causing the symptoms. Late last week, preliminary lab tests from an independent UCLA study found evidence of benzene, a carcinogen, in at least two Porter Ranch homes. Benzene was reported to have been released in the 100 metric tons of methane that spewed into the Los Angeles basin for four months — a fact SoCalGas previously attempted to downplay and withhold.

Reemergence of Symptoms

On March 4, Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitchell Englander issued a press release reporting the Department of Public Health had received at least 150 complaints of reemerging symptoms, including nosebleeds, dizziness headaches, nausea, and skin rashes. Now, the Health Department says it has received 300 complaints since residents began moving home after SoCalGas told them it was safe to do so.

Many residents have said the rashes, which can be extensive, are new and did not occur during the initial, months-long gas leak from October to February. During that time, thousands of families were evacuated and the Department of Public Health received 700 health complaints. Others reported experiencing skin irritation before they relocated, though it appears to be more widespread now.

Residents who left Porter Ranch for temporary housing accommodations and recently moved home told Anti-Media about their symptoms (many still have not moved home, fearful it is still unsafe). Helen Ritenour, a Porter Ranch resident who left the area in December, said that within two days of returning to their home, she and her family began feeling sick.

“The main symptoms are headaches, difficulty breathing, watery eyes, coughing and general fatigue. It feels like I’m in a thick fog of sorts that’s oppressive,” she said. She and her husband were not eager to return home, still concerned about toxins in the area and the health of their newborn baby. But amid long delays receiving reimbursements from SoCalGas — and unable to charge more expenses on their credit card — they moved back to Porter Ranch. Ritenour told Anti-Media that like many other families, she and her husband have had to pay out-of-pocket for relocation services — and have experienced long delays receiving reimbursement checks.

Gabriel Khanlian, a resident who serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Save Porter Ranch, a group formed in 2014 to fight the massive, aging, and leaking facility before the blowout even happened, also said he and his family have suffered symptoms since moving home.

“My daughter Tatiana keeps getting large rashes, red welts and bumps all over her body. Her skin is dry and her behavior has changed significantly and she is very cranky. She has a loss of appetite and is sleeping a lot more,” he said. “My sons, Jayden and Mason, have been getting bloody noses, headaches, upset stomachs, burning eyes, runny nose, dry skin.”

gas leak

He described other troubles they’ve had, noting his sons are experiencing “anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, and stress from not having the ability to play. Their personalities have changed majorly.”

He said his wife, who experienced symptoms during the initial methane gas leak, is now experiencing them more severely than before.

Kyoko Habino, a Porter Ranch resident and co-founder of Save Porter Ranch, said:

“When I go home to pick up stuff or do a few things, within a few minutes, I start having a dull headache and coughing and having palpitations. Nosebleeds follow later on often. My partner has had headaches, fatigue, and a burning sensation in his chest at the same time I have. Our cat has had a nosebleed and vomited. When I am away from home, the headache goes away instantly. The cough and nosebleed stay for a while, and are gone after.”

Walter Arwood, a Porter Ranch resident, experienced nausea, among other symptoms:

“I am rolling over sick right now. My stomach has been so upset, I have gotten all the headaches back, my husband has had three nose bleeds in two days, and now a visiting relative was out of breath just walking up the stairs at my home. How is it safe?”

Arwood was evacuated during the methane gas leak and recently returned home. “Since we have moved back the symptoms have immediately returned,” he said. “Itchy skin is the only new thing.  We have all of our air purifiers on and the scrubber running and still it is happening.”

Residents in surrounding areas, including Chatsworth and Granada Hills, have also reported a reemergence of symptoms.

Sandy Crawford, a resident of Granada Hills, told CBS News in February — after the methane gas leak was sealed — that within a few hours of returning home, her youngest son had trouble breathing and suffered a nosebleed. Crawford moved her sons back to their hotel, and after trying again to move home and experiencing the same results, she returned to the hotel for a second time. She told Anti-Media they recently tried sleeping at home for a few nights and did not feel symptoms, but she remains afraid they could return. As a result, she is staying at the hotel.

“Avoid performing any toxicological tests”

Though these symptoms are pronounced, neither SoCalGas nor the Department of Public Health has offered a definitive explanation of what is causing them. In fact, Dr. Cyrus Rangan, Director of the Bureau of Toxicology and Environmental Assessment at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, recently issued a “Health Update” to “primary care, urgent care, internal medicine, and emergency medicine providers” in the area cautioning them against conducting tests on patients with symptoms.

The advisory, dated Tuesday, March 8, requested that healthcare professionals “look for alternate etiologies other than air contamination,” and “avoid performing any toxicological tests,” claiming “these are not recommended and are unlikely to provide useful data for clinical evaluation of patients.”

Rangan said in the notice that if no “alternative etiology” is found, doctors should consult with him. While it is an indisputable act of due diligence to recommend doctors check for other potential causes of symptoms, it is unclear why a top public health official would discourage doctors from performing tests to better understand illnesses among their patients.

“It’s not to steer the community away from thinking it’s not an environmental issue,” Rangan insisted to the Los Angeles Daily News, adding that, as the local paper summarized, “even when the gas was leaking he did not recommend that doctors perform toxicological tests because there is no test that can determine if a person was exposed to natural gas.”

However, residents are concerned not just with methane, but with other contaminants found in it, from mercaptans to benzene to other toxic emissions (mercaptans are odorants added to natural gas to make it detectable, and are believed to have caused symptoms when the gas leak was active). Many found Rangan’s explanation to be insufficient and an attempt to ask doctors to “look the other way.”

Further, his request that doctors refrain from conducting tests appears to contradict his own supplementary declaration provided for a hearing held last Friday to extend relocation benefits to residents, many of whom feel they were rushed out of temporary housing, evidently, before it was safe to return home.

In that statement, Rangan referred to the continued illnesses as “perplexing,” proceeding to offer potential explanations not previously disclosed to Anti-Media when he spoke with us:

“It could be that there are persistent levels of contaminants still present in the community, or there could be other exposures in areas of the community that were missed in the external environmental monitoring, or perhaps gases may have saturated the soil at the Aliso Canyon facility or other substrates and are being released now that the source has been sealed.”

In spite of Rangan’s multiple hypotheses, however, he has offered no definitive explanation, nor does it appear the Department of Public Health has seriously looked for one (meaning it could be helpful for physicians to run tests on their patients). Asked to investigate a persistent oily residue coating the outside of residents’ homes and the playground of at least one park, representatives sent from Public Health reported they found “no evidence of any oily residue and no health concern for residents or visitors.”

When residents complained to Councilman Englander, representatives from his office confirmed the playsets were coated in oil and SoCalGas agreed clean the park. Three other parks were also shut down amid concerns about the residue, which Rangan insists is safe, aside from causing skin irritation. Mandi Bane, a lab assistant in Rangan’s office, told Anti-Media they have no intentions to test the soil in the community.

Because of incidents like this — such as Dr. Rangan downplaying concerns about long-term side effects from mercaptans, though there is little research to support his assurances — some residents increasingly doubt Public Health’s commitment to helping the community. Many have complained they reported symptoms and received little more than packaged statements in response. Some received no response.

Rangan’s office did conduct door-to-door surveys of residents two weeks ago to gather information on what could be causing the symptoms, an effort reported to be joined by state officials. Bane told Anti-Media they recorded over 200 reports and it would take time to process them before they could comment.

Rangan’s office also requested outside assistance to conduct indoor air sampling, after it was  “determined that such a protocol is beyond the expertise of the Department of Public Health.”

Rangan first solicited the help of the EPA to conduct indoor air testing for contaminants, but it was expected to take until May to develop a protocol. Last week, however, Dr. Michael Jerrett, a professor and chairman of UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, shared preliminary test results from a small sample of homes with Public Health. The independent study raised concerns about the presence of benzene, a known carcinogen, as well as hexane, in two homes. As a result of these findings, UCLA has partnered with Public Health and Dr. Jerrett and his team will begin sampling 120 homes in the coming days to conduct further analysis. According to a press release from the Department of Public Health posted Saturday:

“As a continuation of Professor Jerrett’s independent study, an indoor dust swab sampling was completed in seven homes. Benzene and hexane were found in two of the homes. Benzene and hexane, at certain levels, have known toxic effects on humans, but it is unknown whether the levels found are high enough to be of health concern. Professor Jerrett is sharing these findings with the community and will continue to conduct independent scientific analyses.”

As the Daily News explained, Jerrett’s results showed “higher and more variable concentrations of particulate matter in the outdoor air at locations close to the leak site compared to those farther away, according to the Health Department. Particulate matter is described as tiny pieces of solids or liquids in the air, such as dust, dirt, soot, or drops which can irritate the skin, eyes, nose, throat, respiratory, and cardiovascular systems.”

SoCalGas, however, has failed to provide a conclusive explanation for residents’ illnesses. At a protest on Friday, March 4, which culminated outside the company’s Community Resource Center located in Porter Ranch’s main shopping center, SoCalGas spokeswoman Lisa Alexander spoke to Anti-Media about the reemergence of symptoms. She left the onus of responsibility on the Department of Public Health.

“You know, we recognize that people are saying that they have symptoms, and we hear that, we see the news stories, we’ve been in touch with Department of Public Health to inquire about that,” she said, adding that Public Health expected symptoms to decrease as the blowout’s emissions dissipated — and with them, the mercaptans.

gas leak

“Is there one house that has been tested that shows a harmful level at this time?”

SoCalGas, at the request of County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, agreed to conduct indoor air testing on a ‘random’ sample of 70 homes in Porter Ranch last week. Residents’ increasing distrust of the utility was further intensified when some residents reported they had received calls from the gas company to perform indoor testing on their homes, but were asked if they had legal counsel. If they said yes, multiple residents reported, they were told they were not eligible for the ‘random’ testing.

Nevertheless, SoCalGas shared these test results at a relocation hearing last Friday to assert air quality had returned to normal. SoCalGas’ attorney James Dragna also reportedly cited the Department of Public Health as an authority on the matter.

Matt Pakucko, president of Save Porter Ranch, spoke to local CBS radio station KNX shortly after the hearing:

“This is such propaganda by SoCalGas,” he said. “They used their indoor testing that they just performed over the last week as their main facts on the ground. But they have said themselves weeks ago, months ago, that the mercaptan and the methane — the only things they test for — would be long gone. So they went and tested what they knew would be long gone… I can’t believe the judge bought it.”

Judge Emilie H. Elias reportedly asked, “Is there one house that has been tested that shows a harmful level at this time?” However, Dr. Jerrett’s results, which showed two homes with potentially hazardous levels of benzene, were not presented.

Jerrett’s preliminary findings were shared with the county just before the hearing, and county attorney Deborah Fox expressed a desire to submit them to the court for an appeal this week.

Though the media reported the judge’s ruling as a tepid victory for residents, who will receive one more week of paid relocation services, county attorney Deborah Fox had originally sought two months. She then sought a 30-day injunction, ultimately settling for a single week extension.

Pakucko said of the ruling:

“Any sane person would say [the testing should be complete before a decision is made] … there are people reporting health issues, the cause of which has not yet been discovered.”

Save Porter Ranch and much of the community are campaigning to have the entire, 3,600-acre Aliso Canyon facility shut down.

SoCalGas had previously been ordered to extend relocation services as residents began reporting symptoms again after the gas leak, a decision the company fought. Residents have also complained they have not yet been reimbursed for the months they were relocated, citing long waits, convoluted customer service, and financial strain caused by SoCalGas’ reimbursement process.

On Tuesday, County Supervisor Michael Antonovich announced the court had suspended its Friday ruling, presumably in light of the county’s submission of Jerrett’s results. Los Angeles Times reporter Abby Sewell tweeted an update that residents now have until March 29 — an extra four days — pending further legal proceedings.

As the legal battle continues, the difficulties of obtaining comprehensive, reliable air tests remain complicated by the fact that humans can smell mercaptans at lower levels than equipment can detect them. Pakucko told Anti-Media residents have consistently been reporting the smell of mercaptans, though SoCalGas spokeswoman Melissa Bailey assured Anti-Media via email there were no current leaks.

Neither SoCalGas nor the regulatory South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCQAMD) offered an explanation to Anti-Media regarding elevations in methane emissions since the gas leak was sealed. They are not consistently high, but nevertheless contradict assurances from the gas company that air quality has returned to “normal.” For example, from March 17 to March 22, methane levels in the community exceeded 3 ppm (parts per million); SCAQMD, itself, says “Results greater than 3 ppm suggest some additional sources of methane.” A March 13 sampling of air at the site of the repaired well, SS-25, found methane levels at 46 ppm; according to SCAQMD, “results greater than 10 ppm suggest a considerable additional amount of methane is present.” Though SCAQMD cautions the levels of methane have been dropping since the methane gas leak was sealed in February, 46 ppm is still 43 ppm above ‘normal.’

Further, a recently published government survey, initiated after the Aliso Canyon blowout, found 229 leaks in natural gas storage fields across California. Though the leaks were deemed minor, 66 were found at Aliso Canyon.

As Porter Ranch residents continue to deal with the fallout from the months-long environmental disaster, communities around the country face similar battles. From the increasing number of communities plagued with unsafe levels of lead (among other chemicals) in their water and soil, to the radioactive leaks in New York, Florida, and elsewhere across the country, Americans face an increasingly apparent, non-partisan struggle against aging, dangerous infrastructure — and the apathetic, often negligent authorities and corporate hegemons responsible for maintaining it.

In Porter Ranch, SoCalGas and public officials have, at least, begun to acknowledge something is still amiss in the community. As Pakucko told Anti-Media:

“They’ve stopped saying everything’s fine. I’ve got two words for ‘everything’s fine’: Flint, Michigan.”

Editor’s Note: Carey Wedler is from Granada Hills and has two family members whose health was affected by the leak, one severely (his symptoms have intermittently returned in the last several weeks). She has experienced symptoms herself and felt them recently while reporting in Porter Ranch.

This article (This Is What’s Happening to People Who Live near Worst Gas Leak in US History) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org.  Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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7,827 Drug Cases Called into Question After Police Lab Tech Caught Faking Test Results

by

Carey Wedler
March 3, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Passaic County, NJ — A lab technician for the New Jersey State Police’s Office of Forensic Science has ‘retired’ early after being caught falsely identifying a substance as marijuana without conducting the proper tests. On Monday, Deputy Public Defender Judy Fallon issued a memo to Public Defender Joseph Krakora explaining Kamalkant Shah’s falsified report:

“Laboratory Technician II Kamalkant Shah of the New Jersey State Police Laboratory (in Little Falls) has been found to have ‘dry labbed’ suspected CDS specimens. Basically, he was observed writing ‘test results’ for suspected marijuana that was never tested.”

According to NJ Advance Media, “Ellie Honig, director of the Division of Criminal Justice of the Attorney general’s office, said in [a] Feb. 22 letter to county prosecutor’s offices that Shah ‘failed to appropriately conduct laboratory analyses in a drug case.’”

The letter, released from the Attorney General to the news outlet on Wednesday, disclosed that “Mr. Shah was observed in one case spending insufficient time analyzing a substance to determine if it was marijuana and recording an anticipated result without properly conducting the analysis.”

“The letter advised prosecutors to disclose this information to defense counsel,” NJ Advance Media reported.

The former technician’s indiscretion in that singular marijuana case has now called into question thousands of drug cases he conducted tests for, as the one in question was only the first observed instance of his dishonesty.

As Fallon noted, “Mr. Shah was employed with the lab from 2005 to 2015; obviously all his ‘results’ have been called into question.”

“In Passaic County alone, the universe of cases possibly implicated in this conduct is 2,100. The Prosecutor’s Office is still in the process of identifying them. Their plan is to submit for retesting specimens from open cases,” she said.

Shah’s fraudulent testing, overall, may have affected 7,827 drug cases on which he worked. Fallon also indicated the Little Falls crime lab provides testing for other law enforcement agencies across the state, not just the State Police.

Fallon wrote that the Prosecutor’s Office for Passaic County has not yet formulated a strategy to deal with the fallout of the falsified reports. She indicated the difficulty of identifying all the potential cases whose outcomes were influenced by the inaccurate, or downright absence, of testing:

“The larger, and unanswered, question is how this impacts already resolved cases, especially those where the specimens may have been destroyed.”

Assistant Public Defender Kevin Walker issued a statement saying there is not currently “a practical mechanism for identifying all the cases involving” Shah. According to Peter Aseltine, spokesman for the Attorney General, State Police are reportedly working with prosecutors to comb over cases that may be affected by Shah’s false reports.

“The prosecuting attorneys are going to have to do that, by reviewing the records from the Little Falls lab and cross-referencing them with their files,“ he said. “We assume the prosecutors will do that promptly. Pending that review, we are going to keep all our options on the table, including filing motions to vacate convictions in appropriate cases.“

Aseltine, like other officials, highlighted that only one case was observed to be fraudulent, but that “in an abundance of caution, we have identified every case that Shah worked on since he began working in the North Regional Lab Drug Unit in 2005, and we have notified the county prosecutors, advising them to alert defense attorneys in those cases.”

NJ Advance Media reported that “several attorneys who deal with criminal matters said Wednesday that it wouldn’t likely affect the large number of defendants who pleaded guilty to drug possession.” This assessment apparently does not consider the deep flaws of plea bargains in the American justice system, which make up 90% of court outcomes in the United States, and often result from defendants’ fears they cannot fight the power of the courts — leading even the innocent to take plea bargains. The Drug War, specifically, has led to astronomically high rates of plea deals and prison time, all for individuals who have not committed violence against others.

In spite of the great burden his actions have placed on individuals and the justice system, at large, Shah has not been charged with any crimes. Aseltine said Shah was suspended without pay on January 12, and is “believed to have retired.” Shah enjoyed a salary of over $100,000 per year for the ten years he worked for the State Police.

Unfortunately, his is not an isolated incident. Inaccurate and falsified reporting has plagued the justice system and its related appendages for decades. For example, as the Washington Post reported last year:

“The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a former prosecutor, commented on the FBI’s scandal last year, but his sentiments — barring his allusion to executions, which are rare for drug cases — could be easily applied to the current debacle in New Jersey:

“These findings are appalling and chilling in their indictment of our criminal justice system, not only for potentially innocent defendants who have been wrongly imprisoned, and even executed, but for prosecutors who have relied on fabricated and false evidence despite their intentions to faithfully enforce the law.”

This article (7,827 Drug Cases Called into Question After Police Lab Tech Caught Faking Test Results) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: Amitchell125. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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Over 60,000 People Want Bill Clinton Arrested for Violating Election Laws on Super Tuesday

by

Carey Wedler
March 2, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) More than 60,000 people are calling for the arrest and prosecution of former president Bill Clinton, alleging he violated election laws by entering multiple polling stations in Boston and other Massachusetts areas on Tuesday. A Change.org petition launched that same evening calls on the state’s attorney general, Maura Healey, to take action against Clinton, though the Secretary of State insists his behavior was lawful.

The petition says the Bill Clinton made a “clear, knowing and egregious violation of the campaign laws to swing an election in a significant way,” alluding to Massachusetts General Laws and procedures that prohibit “[c]ampaigning within 150 feet of a polling station, or in any way interfering with the right to vote.“ According to state voting procedures, “no person shall solicit votes for or against, or otherwise promote or oppose, any person or political party or position on a ballot question, to be voted on at the current election.”

Secretary of State William Galvin told the New York Times his office “had to remind some of our poll workers that even a president can’t go inside and work a polling place. He can go in, but he can’t approach voters.”

He continued: “We just took the extra precaution of telling them because this is not a usual occurrence. You don’t usually get a president doing this.”

WVBC, a local ABC affiliate, reported that Brian McNiff, a spokesperson for Galvin, “clarified that Clinton broke no laws during his visits to the interior of polling places because he was not handing out any flyers or voting materials for Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton also entered polling centers in West Roxbury and Newton, and attended an event outside a polling center in New Bedford. In West Roxbury, Clinton visibly spoke to a poll worker and agreed to take a picture with her, remarking, “As long as we’re not violating any election laws.” McNiffsaid of the New Bedford appearance that “No one was prevented from voting. The city and voters were notified well in advance of the event.”

He admitted that Galvin’s office notified Clinton’s campaign of possible violations. “We have heard about it, and the clerks have been instructed and the campaign has been instructed that 150 feet is the rule.”

Clinton supporter and mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, declined to acknowledge any illegal activity. Rather, he shook poll workers’ hands with the the former president in West Roxbury. “President Clinton joined Mayor Walsh to thank poll workers in West Roxbury this morning,” a spokesperson for his office said, adding that Clinton did not campaign inside the polling place.

The Massachusetts’ state brass is defending the Clintons in spite of unethical and likely illegal behavior, and the petition disputes the apparent free pass.

“Bill Clinton was not only electioneering within the boundary. Although the spokesperson for Bill Clinton denies that he was ever inside a polling place, photos and video show him clearly greeting and talking up election workers inside.”

The statement continues:

“After being told to refrain from this activity, which is a 3rd degree Voter Violation Felony, for which Clinton indeed must have known the law and chose to violate it, Bill Clinton does not vote in Massachusetts, and would have no other business in a polling station on election day besides campaigning for his wife.”

A spokesman for Clinton directed inquiring CNBC reporters to the WCVB article, where McNiff asserted Bill had committed no wrongdoing.

Bernie Sanders supporters and others have raised concerns throughout the campaign cycle regarding the integrity of the process, and the Clintons’ most recent apparent transgression has attracted a great deal of scrutiny. As of Wednesday afternoon, the Change petition calling for Clinton’s arrest and prosecution had attracted over nearly 60,000 signatures.

Though the Clintons have recently been accused of even more serious criminal conduct — including rape and war crimes — they have not faced prosecution.

This article (Over 60,000 People Want Bill Clinton Arrested for Violating Election Laws on Super Tuesday) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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Thanks to Court Ruling, Student Literally Can’t Attend School Because He’s Black

by

Carey Wedler
February 25, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) St. Louis, MO — An African-American third-grader in St. Louis, Missouri will be unable to continue attending his charter school due to a decades-old federal court decision intended to fight segregation. Edmund Lee, a high-performing student at Gateway Science Academy, will be forced to leave the school he has attended since kindergarten because he and his mother, La’Shieka White, are moving away from the district where the school is located. Though policy guidelines, pursuant to the court decision, allow students to stay if they move, a provision specifically states he cannot — because he is black.

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