Best of the Web:


Cell Phone

Best of the Web: Ring, Ring - This is a Police State

T.F. Stern
The Moral Liberal
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC
police, cell phone
Yesterday my attention was drawn to an article written by Buck Sexton which appeared on The Blaze, "Calif. Appeals Court Approves Cell Phone Searches During Traffic Stops". I didn't know cell phones were that big a deal; okay, maybe we shouldn't text while shifting and most of us would agree that hands free is better than having half your field of view blocked.
"In a case explicitly decided to set a precedent, the California Appellate court has determined police officers can rifle through your cellphone during a traffic violation stop."
There is a problem with granting police powers which extend beyond protections built into a citizen's God given right as covered under the 4th Amendment.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
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People

Best of the Web: US: New York City Students Stage Walkouts in Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street

Rebecca Nathanson
Voice Blog
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:52 UTC
protest
© Unknown

​Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, students from around New York will walk out of their classes and march down to City Hall this afternoon.

Once at City Hall, the students will join the larger Community/Labor March to Wall Street, which already has almost 3,000 people attending on Facebook.

A few months ago, New York Students Rising, a "statewide network of students and campus-organizations dedicated to defending public higher education and empowering students in New York State," according to its website, started organizing around budget cuts in the CUNY and SUNY systems and began to plan for a fall protest. Now, thanks to a chance scheduling overlap with Occupy Wall Street, it has morphed into a solidarity march, and other universities are joining in as well.

Students from Columbia, The New School, and NYU have been organizing for the walkouts, scheduled at 3:30 p.m. (for Columbia) and 4 p.m. (for NYU and the New School), in time to get to the 4:30 march. In addition, students and teachers at CUNY and SUNY schools will be holding teach-ins prior to walking out.
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People

Best of the Web: US: Wall Street protest grows as unions swell ranks

Ray Sanchez
Reuters
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:15 UTC
wall street
© REUTERS/Mike Segar An Occupy Wall Street protester demonstrates in Foley Square in New York City, October 5, 2011. Protesters, who have staged demonstrations about the power of the financial industry and other issues and who have camped in Zuccotti Park near Wall street for nearly three weeks were joined by hundreds of Union members in a march and demonstration through lower Manhattan.

* Protests in New York number at least 5,000

* Workers, the unemployed bolster protest numbers

Thousands of anti-Wall Street demonstrators converged on New York's financial district on Wednesday, their ranks swelled by nurses, transit workers and other union members joining the protest over economic inequality and the power of U.S. financial institutions.

The Occupy Wall Street march, estimated at about 5,000 people, was mostly orderly and the largest so far, while smaller protests were staged in cities and on college campuses across the country.

A dozen people were arrested in New York, including one who was charged with assault on a police officer who was knocked from his scooter, according to police spokesman Paul Browne. Others who were arrested had tried to break through a police barricade, Browne said.
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Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Tens of thousands strike in Greece as military threatens to intervene against anti-austerity protests

Robert Stevens
World Socialist Web Site
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:31 UTC
Image
October 5, 2011: Kanellos the legendary riot dog marshals his troops as they hold the line against the authoritarian enforcers
Tens of thousands of workers, pensioners and youth protested throughout Greece Wednesday in a 24-hour public sector strike called by the ADEDY civil service trade union federation and the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE).

The strike is the first since the social democratic PASOK government announced further austerity measures, including thousands of public sector sackings and a 40 percent pay cut for 30,000 civil servants. Last month, parliament approved a property tax, added to utility bills, that will force 80 percent of households to pay between 1,000 euros and 1,500 euros extra a year. Failure to pay the tax will result in the shutoff of electricity.

Workers employed in public transport, local government, tax and insurance offices struck nationwide. State hospitals ran with emergency staff only and some state schools were forced to close. Also striking for the first time were air traffic controllers, leading to the cancellation of more than 400 international and domestic flights. Ferry services were also disrupted and major tourist sites were closed, although the Athens Metro ran normally.
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Dollar

Best of the Web: Is Hang a Banker Day coming to a Theater near You?

Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors
Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:31 UTC
pig bankers
© unknown
Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

Watch it happen in front of your eyes. The Occupy Wall Street phenom is going viral, diversifying like a stock portfolio and popping up all over the US and in other countries as well. Look at the media not covering it. Look at the media giving out false information concerning the motivation, even to the extent of saying the protestors are protesting against people making 40 to 50 thousand dollars a year, as well as global warming. Understand that the media is owned and operated by the same people who operate at and influence Wall Street. Look at the important names that are appearing in the mix and the American Marines showing up on behalf of the protest as well. In its genesis and presentations, it is about as authentic and threatening to go nova as it can get. This is the real deal.

The traders and bankers are celebrating their imagined invulnerability. In the delusion of their fevered hubris, they are drinking champagne and talking about pouring it on the protestors, in emulation of the bankers and traders at The City of London, who waved banknotes out of their windows as they jeered the protestors. Does this look like they may and should have their heads chopped off and put on display? Does this give you the impression that Hang a Banker Day might be coming to a neighborhood near you soon? This is not an argument in favor or against this. This is an observation of the anger of the vast majority coming up against the defiance, indifference and ridicule of the minority of those causing the conditions for the anger in the first place.
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Vader

Best of the Web: Police use dirty tricks to round up hundreds of peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters as Wall Street criminals bribe NYPD

Madison Ruppert
Activist Post
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:19 UTC
occupy wall strett
© Joshua Paul

Roughly 500 peaceful protesters marching in opposition to the corporatist takeover of America and the robbery of the United States by the banking and Wall Street elite were rounded up and arrested thanks to suspect tactics employed by the NYPD.

While many argue against the Occupy Wall Street protests based on partisan politics, the heavy union involvement, and the role Marxist organizations have played in the demonstrations, I think this is seeing the forest for the trees.

Regardless of what you think about those who organized the protest and the involvement of SEIU and other unions, you must realize that we are all being robbed and oppressed by the same people.

Furthermore, everyone must take notice of the tactics the NYPD has been using to attempt to shut down these protests. Even if you disagree with the Occupy Wall Street message, would you like to experience these same oppressive and highly questionable tactics when you demonstrate for your cause of choice?
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Propaganda

Best of the Web: New York Times Covers for Police Dirty Tricks!


What Really Happened
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 10:57 UTC
new york times, propaganda
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Cult

Best of the Web: France puts itself on suicide watch: MIVILUDES vilifying 'cults' to justify its own existence

Emma Teitel
macleans.ca
Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:58 UTC
Image
© Parrot-Ruet/Sygma/Corbis16 people including 3 children are shot dead, then burned with a flame thrower on December 23, 1995, on the Vercors Plateau, near Saint-Pierre-de-Cherennes in France
A government agency is taking on superstitious cults with unusual zeal

No other nation in recent history appears to have taken so fervently to apocalyptic prophesies as France has, reports the London Times. Then again, not many nations have a government agency specifically responsible for investigating "cults and suspicious spiritual activities." Indeed, the French agency - known as MIVILUDES - delivered a mass-suicide warning last week, apparently worried about a possible suicide frenzy come Dec. 21, 2012, the day the 5,000-year-old Mayan calendar ends. MIVILUDES contends that the Internet age, natural disasters, and economic turmoil - combined with the ancient Mayan prophecy - have inspired widespread belief in a coming Armageddon (there has been a recent migration of people to the hilltop village of Bugarach, said to be a place immune to apocalypse).

The agency's concern is not entirely outlandish: in the 1990s, 74 people belonging to a cult called the Order of the Solar Temple - 16 of them in France and eight in Quebec - died in murder-suicides to avoid an Armageddon. But cult expert Susan Palmer of Concordia University says that "MIVILUDES is creating artificial emergencies to support the state-sponsored anti-cult movement." Palmer, whose upcoming book The New Heretics of France, about the French anti-cult movement, believes MIVILUDES spends more time vilifying cults than actually researching them - "obviously trying to justify its own existence."

Comment: The 16 mentioned above who were killed in France (well, it appears that 14 of them were killed by the other 2) were connected to the Order of the Solar Temple suicides in Switzerland and Quebec over a year previously. It seems that the very suspicious deaths which took place in France were deliberately conflated with the OST deaths in order to justify the beginning of the French state's witch hunt of people it considers to be subversive.

The suspicious deaths in Vercors, France on 23rd December 1995, took place just one day after a report of the Parliamentary Commission on Cults listing 172 'cultic movements' was ratified unanimously and published in just 50 minutes by only 7 MPs in the French National Assembly. Thus began France's witch hunt.

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Arrow Up

Best of the Web: France: Three policemen kill themselves on same day


The Local
Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:53 UTC

Comment: Glorious country: Epidemic of suicides in the police; France, number one in the consumption of anti-depressants; an oppressive educational system which breaks children, sometimes even driving them to suicide at ages as young as FIVE; and the MIVILUDES' anti-cultists are worrying about "cults" committing mass suicides in 2012???


Image
Three police officers in the Paris area committed suicide on Thursday, all within a few hours of each other.

Daily newspaper Libération reported that the first of the three officers was found dead some time around 8am on Thursday. The 29-year-old had killed himself "with the help of his service weapon in an unmarked car" in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, according to a source quoted by the newspaper.

The second police officer shot himself about one hour later, at 9am, after shooting and killing his ex-wife.

Reports said the woman had just returned home from taking her two children, aged 5 and 7, to school in Chevilly-Larue, south of Paris.
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Handcuffs

Best of the Web: Corruption in high places is rampant in France: French 'supercop' arrested on suspicion of colluding with drugs barons

Angelique Chrisafis
The Guardian
Sat, 01 Oct 2011 01:44 UTC
Image
© Philippe Merle/AFPCorruption in high places: Michel Neyret of the Lyon Police force.
Lyon's deputy police chief suspected of compensating informants with batches of confiscated drugs and working with criminals

The French police force has been shaken by what could become its biggest corruption scandal in decades after Lyon's deputy police chief, nicknamed "Supercop" for his fight against drugs, was arrested on suspicion of colluding with international drugs barons.

Michel Neyret, 55, the bouffant-haired and charismatic Lyon detective, was arrested at home along with his wife and is being held in custody.

He is suspected of having compensated informants with batches of confiscated drugs; police claim that Nyret then worked with the criminals to resell the products. He is being questioned about corruption, international drugs trafficking and money-laundering.

Neyret, however, is regarded as a hero for his success in cutting drug crime and stopping jewellery heists in the Lyon area. He had appeared regularly in the media to talk about Lyon's success in busting crime; he was also a script adviser on a recent feature film about Lyon gang crime.

Comment: This is the kind of police force that is "investigating" SOTT/QFG?

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