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Rape culture: Whistle-blower cop fired after reporting supervisor's predatory sexual behavior

John Vibes
The Free Thought Project
Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC
new hampshire cop rapability scale
Lt. Michael Masella, on right, is accused in a lawsuit of harassing former New Boston Police officer Alexandra Drake, second from right, and making lewd comments about women, including rating them on a “rapability” scale. On the far left is New Boston Police Chief James Brace. Second to the left is Officer Stephen Case. In the middle is Governor Maggie Hassan.
After she was fired for exposing the predatory behavior of one of her superior officers, a female cop has gone public with her case and filed a lawsuit against her former employer. According to the former officer, Alexandra Drake, her supervisor, Michael Masella, a lieutenant with the New Boston Police Department, was sexually threatening multiple female officers and would brag about he preyed on women at traffic stops.

Drake blew the whistle about her superior's behavior and filed a report along with another employee who witnessed his behavior. However, instead of looking into the allegations, the department fired Drake and accused her of lying.

According to a recent lawsuit, Drake noticed Masella's disturbing behavior while she was training under him at the New Boston Police department. The department alleges that she was fired for incorrectly filling out a police report, but she says she filed the report exactly as she was ordered to, by her superior, Masella.

According to the lawsuit, "After completing the stop, he told Drake that he wanted to just take them out and 'rape' them rather than issue a citation. Masella would routinely make comments about female drivers whom he thought found him attractive or good looking. He has apparently developed a 'rapability' scale about female drivers and would test Drake whether a particular driver was 'rapable.' "
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Quenelle - Golden

Why DAPL protests matter: The far-reaching consequences for the environment and social justice


GreenMedInfo
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 13:45 UTC
DAPL protest
"You can live without money. You can live without oil. But you can't live without water." - Standing Rock Youth [1]
In May of 2016, a multi-billion dollar corporation, Energy Transfer Partners, began construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) project, despite long standing opposition from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota. The DAPL, also known as the Bakken Oil Pipeline, is designed to extend 1,168 miles across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, crossing through communities, farms, tribal lands, sensitive natural areas and wildlife habitat. It is intended to carry crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois where it will link with another pipeline that will transport the oil to terminals and refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. [2]

If construction is completed, the pipeline is expected to carry approximately 500,000 barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois, crossing underneath Lake Oahe and the Missouri River a half-mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation. [3] The Missouri River is the main source of drinking and irrigation water for the 8,200 residents of the Standing Rock reservation. The pipeline would pump an estimated 17,000 gallons of oil per minute underneath this water source, which would be devastated by a spill or leak. [4] This project poses serious environmental threats and will disturb burial grounds and sacred sites on the Tribe's ancestral Treaty lands. [5] On July 26, 2016 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave its approval to run the DAPL underneath Lake Oahe, in violation of federal law. One day later, on July 27th, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a complaint in federal courtseeking an injunction to halt construction. [6] The Tribe's legal action has been followed by a rapidly growing movement of peaceful support. A timeline and collection of articles chronicling events is available here.
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Magnify

US special forces 'impatient' with SAS 'double checking orders' over war crimes fears


RT
Mon, 31 Oct 2016 14:34 UTC
Special forces soldier
© UK MOD
Special forces operations in Iraq and Syria are reportedly hamstrung by fears over war crimes prosecutions being brought against them retrospectively.

The elite soldiers are fearful of legal reprisals in what critics of full legal oversight are framing as a climate of litigation.

The UK is currently embroiled in a row over attempts to hold troops to account in relation to allegations of abuse and even murder from recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Attention

Indiana officials are trying to shut down almost 45,000 black citizens from voting

Kira Lerner
Think Progress
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 11:59 UTC
Black voters
© AP Photo/Darron CummingsVoters line-up to register and cast their early votes at the City-County Building Monday, Nov. 5, 2012, in Indianapolis.
Roughly 45,000 newly registered voters in Indiana — almost all of whom are black — may not be allowed to vote next month after state police targeted the state's largest voter registration drive, forcing it to shut down its operation.

Police raided the Indiana Voter Registration Project (IVRP) offices on October 4, seizing documents and equipment and forcing the group to cease its get-out-the-vote efforts one week before the end of the state's registration period. Bill Buck, a spokesperson for the liberal nonprofit Patriot Majority USA which runs the IVRP, told ThinkProgress that IVRP could have registered about 5,000 more voters in that additional week.

The IVRP is still unsure whether the 45,000 people it registered will be permitted to vote this year, or how the state will handle their applications while the police investigation is ongoing. Bill Bursten, chief public information officer for the Indiana State Police, told ThinkProgress that law enforcement is investigating whether IVRP is violating fraud and forgery laws.

"It will be up to each prosecutor to review the completed investigation and take whatever action they, as the local prosecuting authority, deem appropriate," Bursten said. "Investigations of this nature are complicated and can take an extended period of time to complete."
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Dominoes

The secret forces that could lead to a Trump victory: apathy and revolt

Michael Walsh
New York Post
Sun, 30 Oct 2016 11:58 UTC
trump victory
Driving across the country last week, it seemed hard to believe an American presidential election is happening a week from Tuesday. Few campaign signs sprout from urban lawns; partisan billboards along the highways are scarce. Away from the coasts, the talk on the radio is largely of football and Jesus, not politics. It takes a moment, hearing a spot in North Carolina for a US Senate candidate, to realize the voice belongs to President Obama, interrupting some country music.

Oh, there's plenty of chatter about it in the raging echo chambers of talk radio and TV cable news, and in the cocksure journalists' fun house known as Twitter, where in-the-tank reporters and dispossessed campaign consultants, smarting over their collective defeat in the primaries, smugly assure each other that Donald Trump will lose in a landslide.

But what if the widely swinging polls, turnout models and forecasting mechanisms are all wrong? What if the unique historical circumstances of this election — pitting the female half of a likely criminal family dynasty against a thin-skinned bull-in-a-china-shop businessman — have invalidated conventional wisdom? What if the ranks of shy voters storm the polls and, in the words of Michael Moore, deliver the biggest rebuke in history to the establishments of both parties?
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Fire

Huge explosion at oil refinery in northeast Venezuela


RT
Sun, 30 Oct 2016 20:51 UTC
Explosion at oil refinery in Venezuela
© TwitterA huge explosion has rocked an oil refinery in Venezuela
A hospital in the northeastern state of Anzoategui, Venezuela, has been evacuated following an explosion and a fire that engulfed an oil refinery located nearby, local media have reported.

The IVSS Hospital, located near the Guaraguao oil refinery, which is operated by PDVSA (Petroleum of Venezuela), suffered an explosion which led to a huge fire visible from miles around, the El Tiempo newspaper reported.

The patients were transferred to other healthcare institutions and an unspecified number of residents were evacuated to safe areas.

There has so far been no official version of what caused the explosion. An investigation into the incident has been ordered, a general manager of the refinery said, according to the Globovision news outlet.


Comment: Earlier this month a powerful blast ripped through an oil refinery in Nanjing, eastern China.

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Fire

Explosion near Malta International Airport


RT
Sun, 30 Oct 2016 16:18 UTC
Explosion near Malta airport
© instastapes / Instagram
An explosion has left bystanders shaken near Malta International Airport and a nearby village.

The blast took place at about 4:20pm local time, just outside the airport and is thought to have come from a fireworks factory in the vicinity of Gudja, a nearby village. Gudja is currently celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Consolation, or Tac-Cintura, which takes place on the last Sunday of October.

"It was a powerful explosion followed by a number of smaller ones, the big one felt like an earthquake," a local resident told the Times of Malta.

"We were passing by in my car with all the windows closed and the blast literally shook my car heavily," another local told the Times.

The investigation is still ongoing, but the blast appears to have come from a container full of fireworks.


Comment: Last week five French military officials were killed en-route to Libya in an aircraft crash outside Malta airport. Subsequent reports in the French media, confirmed that at least three of the five French passengers who perished in the crash were officers of the General Directorate for External Security, France's external intelligence agency, which goes by the initials DGSE.

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Propaganda

Media company posts wanted ad for sales exec with 'psychopathic qualities'

Zlata Rodionova
The Independent
Wed, 19 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC
hiring psychopath
Research conducted by Bond University found around one in five corporate bosses are psychopaths - a proportion similar to that among prisoners

A broadcast and media agency is looking for a sales executive with psychopathic tendencies.

Existing studies on psychopaths have made the startling claim that many top corporate executives exhibit psychopathic behaviours such as narcissism, superficial charm, lack of concern for others, and selfishness.

But this has not prevented Radio Relations to advertise for a "Psychopathic new business media sales executive" with "some of the positive qualities" that psychopaths have.
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Pirates

Forced to flee, an Aleppo resident's ordeal in 'Death Corridor'


Sputnik
Sun, 30 Oct 2016 10:34 UTC
Aleppo Bustan al Qasr
© REUTERS/ ABDALRHMAN ISMAIL The way out of Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr, Syria
Khaled Kadura, a small business owner, and his family were forced to flee eastern Aleppo, leaving everything they had behind, because Ahrar al-Sham rebels turned their life into a "tragedy," terrorizing those who could not fight back and spreading lies about Damascus, he told Sputnik.

This is his story:
For Khaled, who hired out furniture for weddings, and other Aleppo residents the war came as a surprise. No one could have said that their lives would change so dramatically in an instant, but this is exactly what happened on July 26, 2012.
"Everything was peaceful when we fell asleep on the fifth day of Ramadan in 2012. When we woke up, the rebels were there. Initially they took control of the police station, killing law enforcement officers and imposed a curfew," he recalled. "Then they started terrorizing those who could not fight back."
The rebels showered locals with promises of a better life and threats of what Damascus and its forces would do to them, but those were empty words. The militants turned schools and hospitals into command centers. As a result, Khaled's eight-year-old son and others children could no longer go to school.

Comment: Given a voice, there will be millions of stories revealing the depth of horror and tragedy suffered by the innocent for absolutely NOTHING.

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Dollars

NYPD sells stolen goods at local store and blames owner under 'nuisance eviction ordinance'

Carey Wedler
The Anti Media
Fri, 28 Oct 2016 17:56 UTC
Sung Cho
© Michael Schwartz/NY Daily NewsSung Cho
A business owner in Manhattan is suing the city after being forced to waive his fourth amendment rights and potentially forfeit his business because an NYPD officer sold illegal goods at his store.

You read that right.

According to a lawsuit filed this month by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian legal advocacy group, an undercover NYPD detective attempted to sell stolen electronics to customers at Sung Cho's laundromat in Inwood, which located near the northern tip of Manhattan, in 2013. After the officer successfully sold stolen goods to two people — one inside the store and one outside — the city threatened Cho with eviction "merely because a 'stolen property' offense had happened at his business," the legal organization's website explained.

Institute for Justice (IJ), which takes on cases involving the suppression of free speech, eminent domain, and civil asset forfeiture, among other government encroachments, detailed Cho's case:

Comment: See also:

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