Windows 10

What's it like? The newest greatest Windows ever?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Lots of media spin on this one, almost like the commentators had their words written for them before they even saw Windows 10.
I put in my request last week for the upgrade, it became available last night and was downloading at 7 am this morning. Completed about 11 am.
I went ahead with their suggestions to just let it start, and go back and change things later, even though a bit apprehensive at the first screen which it turned out to automatically send all my info to Microsoft via One Drive. It was like your phone that says it needs to share your friends, locations, history and about any other info they can think of. So before you can react, it accesses all your info and sends it to the Microsoft 'Cloud'. Don't know about you but my web polls show about 82% distrust in ANY so called Cloud storage. Google search 'cloud back door' if you don't believe me.

Really?

After working on it for a day now, I can say this must be the NSA version of Windows 10. It is more intrusive than your phone ever was. Some programs I had on my desktop just disappeared.
I had a simple password to sign into my computer before, which meant nothing to anyone but me. Now Microsoft considers that Windows belongs to them and you must sign into your 'Microsoft account' with an email account. I did. And later found that Windows 10 had ditched MY password and changed MY sign-in to that email account. Which is now open every minute that you are there. Leaving your private info open and vulnerable to onlookers and hackers. (and the dreaded Cloud)
The actual W10 screens are confusing and complicated. Sure you have a start button again, but I had that with W8, through Classic Shell and with 8.1. I tried to set up an old email account that I don't use to make it my sign-in account but now with Microsoft they want to know exactly who you are so you need to give them a picture and phone number to send you a code to access your own email! (I have already migrated 7 email accounts to other email programs because I think it is none of Microsoft's business if I am a real person with a phone number or not. (are those NSA cross-referencing requirements?) Microsoft even cancelled one of my email accounts because it said it didn't believe I was a real person! If your name is easily hackable Bill Smith, that's okay but Og14 is not. Sorry, digressing.

The program Microsoft One Drive is automated in Windows 10. So everything you do, search or say is added and sent to their Cloud, wherever that may be. It is my opinion that virtually ALL Cloud storage is monitored and not safe from prying eyes. (I eventually found that you can sign in with a 'local account') But it is too late, isn't it. So I went in and turned OFF anything I could see on One Drive. And there was a ton of (spy) things automatically set to ON. Laugh if you will, but this is healthy paranoia to me.

the cloud is watching

Whatever Cortana is didn't come with my edition of Windows 10, it said my region and language was not available. Hmm. Last I looked I was in North America and spoke American English. Canada is not on their list. Communist China sure, who has stolen more technology from the USA than anyone in history. They might want to tell Canadians there is no Cortana before they buy computers with W10. Not that anyone expects Cortana wont do exactly what Apple's SIRI does, that is to send every word you say to Her to an NSA earbud and digital recorder.
So I was able to get Cortana anyway. OMG! Under the 'guise' of getting to know you, Cortana asks you WAY more personal questions than the FBI asks serial killers! So I UNinstalled it. Guess what, it came back. I used Task Manager to turn it off and guess what? It keeps turning itself back on! I KNOW it is listening and recording my every keystroke! Is this an FBI App?

Mostly it seems that 10 is oriented to gamer kids who have XBoxes and War Games etc, because they expect that you'll want to coordinate your games with Edge. (the replacement for I.E.) And they keep asking you to go to the 'store' to buy more apps. And it isn't at all like Microsoft Internet Explorer, now you have advertising pointed at you. So you can only imagine what sites their search engine Bing is sending you to. (allowing you to go to?) W10 seems designed to have ALL your devices under one umbrella, to help YOU they say. Maybe easier for them to track you?  And it looks like you MUST use Bing for searching on Edge. No Google, private DuckDuckGo or Ixquick?  (I have kept I.E., even though I use Firefox. Which doesn't seem to exist in W10. They are driving people to the real safety of Tor.

Here's a FEW of the privacy options that were all automatically turned ON.

- Let apps use my adverting ID for experiences across apps. (whatever advertising ID is) So, someone somewhere has an ID for you that tells them exactly what you like? I expect they'll be sending me sexy ladies very soon, saves me searching for them!
- Location is already on which also includes your location history. GPS tracking? Then there is a long list of apps that also use your location and even use 'geofencing' to see where your going with each app. (geofencing establishes a GPS area and a radius around it, whenever you go in or out of that area, software sends that information to 'someone'. And yes, if you add your phone to the list of devices on Windows 10, you can bet they take your location history from that too! (My location GPS is turned OFF on my phone. I KNOW where I am.)

- Camera. It's not just you and your Skype friend anymore, another long list of apps can use your camera too! You might want to make one of these - - - 

hi-tech NSA cam deflector

- Same for Microphone. Remember that all this goes to One Drive too unless you also turn that off. So if your mic is on (or even off) you're sending your dialogue to the Cloud too. (even wife or secret GF remarks in BG. Do you have a dog? Is that him barking? What is his name?)
- Speech and inking is sort of like letting the computer learn your speech patterns and writing style. We are sure that the NSA considers this one as a great thing! Voice recognition you know and the rhythms of your penmanship.(if they could identify a Morse code operator on a battleship way back in 1943, they sure as hell can ID YOU!)
-  Let apps access my name, picture and other account info. Already on. Really? Do you keep banking info on your computer? Company plans for future operations? Chat memos?
- Let apps read or send messages, (text or MMS) OMG, let apps SEND messages? "Hey NSA, look what this guy is up to!"
- Usage data is set to FULL send to Microsoft. But you can change it to Basic.

If you are concerned about your privacy, you might want to study carefully the permissions and items turned on in Windows 10 that are watching, listening or recording everything you do and communicating with each other. And sending it all to the Microsoft Cloud because you implied they could.

So far for me, the first days with Windows 10 have been quite horrible and had I had a note like this before, I would have stayed with my Windows 8.1. Or the suggestion to go to Apple which everyone seems to think is impervious to snooping, until Siri, and then we knew that Steve Jobs was gotten to by TPTB just the same as Bill Gates.
And there will be no more updates to Windows except by Microsoft. You don't have the choice of choosing updates. I have Word 2007 and didn't need 2003 updates. Is that so THEY can decide what changes can be introduced to your puter?  Seems like sometimes you find an update that only made things worse, after installing it! No choice now.  I will keep working at it to see if I can make it acceptable, I liked XP, loved Vista, had no sweat with 8.0 and got used to 8.1. Maybe I'll find some redeeming factor yet. We'll see,  even though I judge my computer is at least 50% slower, I'm not giving up.

Microsoft wants you to coordinate everything you do under one set of programs, but doesn't consider that not everyone wants to have their computer life all out there, bare and shivering in the stark bright light from the built-in back door to the NSA.

Who knows who is there?

Windows 10, the best ever?
Not quite.

addenda:- Well I have decided Windows 10 has nothing to offer me, and am going to return to Windows 8.1 within my month. My computer has slowed so much it takes too long to start or access programs or blogs etc. My font has suddenly changed from a nice dark Times New Roman to something anemic and hard to read that I don't know what it is, but assumed it came on an update to W10 because I didn't change it.

   It seems like the people who comment on these new programs etc, are not actually using them, but only taking the Micrososft PR write and publishing that.

   We all know there was Classic Shell for W8 that installed your Start button, and 8.1 also had a start button but I have seen many columns that applaud W10 for bringing it back! And everyone tells us how important it is to have Cortana, so it can remind you to eat your dinner or something stupid like that, after asking you more personal questions that a police detective.

   And others say you just have to turn Cortana off, but they haven't checked to see that you CANNOT turn it off. It will just come back and resume telling Microsoft about what you are doing. Just too many spying things going on with W10, like Microsoft has been totally taken over by those who want to keep control of US!

You might like to know that the UNinstall went quite painlessly, about an hour, and only needed a few updates after 8.1 was back, and Windows did say I could try W10 again when I wanted. 

Just wasn't for me but we all know we won't be able to avoid it in the future.

XKEYSCORE

XKEYSCORE, What is it? - the secret program run by the NSA on the World Wide Web that converts all the data it can see into searchable events like web pages loaded, files downloaded, forms submitted, emails and attachments sent, porn videos watched, TV shows streamed, and advertisements loaded, which demonstrates how Internet traffic can be even more sensitive than phone calls.

What does it do? - It collects in bulk virtually all of our phone metadata.  If you call a suicide prevention hotline, it hears your call, and converts your voice call into readable language. HIV testing services, phone sex services, advocacy groups for gun rights and for abortion rights, all recorded and noted. Calling your girlfriend while out of the house for a secret tryst?
Schedule a job interview without letting your current employer know? Long Distance calls? Most of us, at one point or another, have spent hours on the phone discussing the most intimate details about our lives. There isn’t anyone alive today who didn’t grow up with at least some access to a telephone, we understand them well.

But we don't quite get the internet, do we? We don't actually realize what we are telling that listener in a darkened room. Bulk collection of phone metadata is, without a doubt, a violation of your privacy, but bulk surveillance of internet traffic is orders of magnitude more invasive!
We inadvertently share even more intimate details through online searches. The NSA’s programs tap the Internet directly and collect data, illegally violating your right to privacy. If government wants to search or seize your data, they must have a warrant. The warrant can only be issued if they have probable cause, and the warrant must be specific. Meaning the searchers who want to go through your data, literally all of it, need to suspect you of something before being allowed to. That is the law. But as it stands right now, the government can simply gather everything you do on the internet, then look for a violation of some law, or just wait until you do commit a crime, or until they need to suspect you of one. We are talking about a different law here.

How does Xkeyscore and other surveillance programs do it? All internet traffic travels through an international lacy maze of routes throughout the world.
For instance, an email message sent from Abbotsford, BC to Vancouver begins in British Columbia and ends in Canada, yet is routed through San Jose, San Francisco, Kansas City and Chicago. An email sent from Moscow, Russia, passes off to Frankfurt, Germany then Stockholm, Sweden before reaching its destination a few miles away in Yaroslavl, Russia.
A message from Mexico to Washington might be hijacked and sent through London and Moscow before being read in Washington. After having been captured en route!
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany is still pissed at the USA over them spying on her, as are most other European countries. Many are accusing the US of using their spying abilities to give private American companies the advantage on international contracts! Dilma Rouseff, President of Brazil, was so infuriated by NSA spying that she is laying her own TransAtlantic cable to Europe!

There can be intercept points anywhere. And in some cases, so called splitters are implanted along those electronic routes that siphon off copies of everything along the line. Just like a wire tap might do. Better because Xkeyscore doesn't get distracted. But wiretaps are medieval science compared to what happens today. The NSA is capable of collecting and storing all information traveling electronically from anywhere to anywhere every second of every day and stored in the new NSA facility in Utah. Where everything you have ever typed, and everything anyone else has ever typed about you, can be cross-referenced. The NSA can profile you better than your own mother.

And many other government agencies in the USA and your country too, are using these kinds of surveillance and collecting systems. PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort. It collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google. your internet history! Documents indicate that PRISM is the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports, and it accounts for 91% of the NSA's internet traffic acquired! Finfisher is another that infiltrates your computer. And the Hacking Team sounds like someone who would hack government computers like Anonymous, but it is exactly the opposite, a private company selling software that that hacks YOU under a government's control. Any despotic regime who will buy it!  (do we still hate WikiLeaks when they recently hacked the Hacking Team and revealed flaws in that architecture and their nefarious deals?) And there are likely hundreds more electronics watching you now, in service of various government agencies. With enough cross-referencing to reveal your toe fungus!
Do a search, get collected. Even if your shaky fingers get the search wrong and you end up at Madame Meralda's House of Chains and Pains, that is now part of YOUR intimate internet history. The faulty-fingered keystroke will be remembered. Forever.

And quit that old dog about, "I have nothing to fear because I'm not doing anything wrong." You don't know who is defining 'wrong'! Apple said years ago it had never heard of Prism.  Sure, believe an Apple IT guy didn't KNOW? Unlikely. President Ronald Reagan in 1981 authorized foreign intelligence investigations. Every one knew. And didn't these corporate execs pay any attention to the Snowden revelations?

But it is not just Google. AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. Undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides those copies to the NSA.
But that is not new, General David Sarnoff, in 1941 as President of the Radio Corporation of America, agreed to illegally pass on all Japanese Consulate cable messages to Naval Intelligence.

A FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) order demands Verizon turn over all customer phone records including who is talking to whom, when and for how long to the NSA. This metadata, especially when collected in bulk and aggregated, allows the government to track the associations of various political and religious organizations. Praise the Lord? Maybe not. Vote for who? Dangerous.
FISA courts are held in complete secret. You do NOT get a lawyer. You do NOT question witnesses. You cannot cross-examine. You cannot verify the evidence against you. And you do not face your accuser.

The world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007/ Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype etc.  Collectively, these companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.

Think a new US president would be different? The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under President Obama in December 2012. Who can you trust?


And do you still believe these government snoops are keeping you safe? The standard buzz-phrase for all this finaglery. The chief of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, after being pressed by the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA gathering of every single phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two. (after others glibly told us there were 54) So after gathering possibly trillions of bytes about what we are doing, all that stolen info translated into only two plots?
(They are now gathering info in Exabytes, which is a 1, followed by 18 zeros. And amounts to all words ever spoken by human beings!)


Remember those movies about Moscow or East Berlin during the Cold War? Where you went out to a park and whispered to your friend to avoid bugs planted in your own apartment by the Stasi?
It is almost here folks, and you're not the handsome third-man Orson Wells disappearing into the murky black shadows in Vienna. Nothing glamorous about losing your freedom. Now the shadowy figure in your movie hiding in between the cracks on your keyboard is called Xkeyscore. And it is looking out at you through your own webcam and listening to what you say and recording where you go on the electronic media.

You're the victim. Don't meet under trees or on park benches, they're probably already there.



Source of some info: Micah Lee, The Intercept. 


The Intercept    The news service of investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Citizen Four streaming   Laura Poitras'  academy award winning documentary about Edward Snowden.
thoughtmaybe  Plenty of browsing here.

From Blacklisted News

 Posted by Blacklisted News, July 10, 2015. 

Document shows CIA reaction to finding no WMDs in Iraq.

The National Security Archive has posted several newly available documents, one of them an account by Charles Duelfer of the search he led in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, with a staff of 1,700 and the resources of the U.S. military.
Duelfer was appointed by CIA Director George Tenet to lead a massive search after an earlier massive search led by David Kay had determined that there were no WMD stockpiles in Iraq. Duelfer went to work in January 2004, to find nothing for a second time, on behalf of people who had launched a war knowing full well that their own statements about WMDs were not true.
The fact that Duelfer states quite clearly that he found none of the alleged WMD stockpiles cannot be repeated enough, with 42% of Americans (and 51 percent of Republicans) still believing the opposite.
A New York Times story last October about the remnants of a long-abandoned chemical weapons program has been misused and abused to advance misunderstanding. A search of Iraq today would find U.S. cluster bombs that were dropped a decade back, without of course finding evidence of a current operation.
Duelfer is also clear that Saddam Hussein’s government had accurately denied having WMD, contrary to a popular U.S. myth that Hussein had pretended to have what he did not.
The fact that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their team knowingly lied cannot be overemphasized. This group took the testimony of Hussein Kamel regarding weapons he’d said had been destroyed years ago, and used it as if he’d said they currently existed. This team used forged documents to allege a uranium purchase. They used claims about aluminum tubes that had been rejected by all of their own usual experts. They “summarized” a National Intelligence Estimate that said Iraq was unlikely to attack unless attacked to say nearly the opposite in a “white paper” released to the public. Colin Powell took claims to the U.N. that had been rejected by his own staff, and touched them up with fabricated dialogue.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller concluded that, “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent.”
On January 31, 2003, Bush suggested to Blair that they could paint an airplane with U.N. colors, fly it low to get it shot at, and thereby start the war. Then the two of them walked out to a press conference at which they said they would avoid war if at all possible. Troop deployments and bombing missions were already underway.
When Diane Sawyer asked Bush on television why he had made the claims he had about Iraq’s

George always did need hand holding.

supposed weapons of mass destruction, he replied: “What’s the difference? The possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons, if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.”
Duelfer’s newly released internal report on his hunt, and that of Kay before him, for the figments of propagandists’ imagination refers to “Saddam Hussein’s WMD program,” which Duelfer treats as an on-again, off-again institution, as if the 2003 invasion had just caught it in one of its naturally cyclical low tides of non-existence. Duelfer also describes the nonexistent program as “an international security problem that vexed the world for three decades,” — except perhaps for the part of the world engaged in the largest public demonstrations in history, which rejected the U.S. case for war.
Duelfer openly states that his goal was to rebuild “confidence in intelligence projections of threat.” Of course, having found no WMDs, he can’t alter the inaccuracy of the “projections of threat.” Or can he? What Duelfer did publicly at the time and does again here is to claim, without providing any evidence for it, that “Saddam was directing resources to sustain the capacity to recommence producing WMD once U.N. sanctions and international scrutiny collapsed.”
Duelfer claims that former Saddam yes men, rigorously conditioned to say whatever would most please their questioner, had assured him that Saddam harbored these secret intentions to start rebuilding WMD someday. But, Duelfer admits, “there is no documentation of this objective. And analysts should not expect to find any.”
So, in Duelfer’s rehabilitation of the “intelligence community” that may soon be trying to sell you another “projection of threat” (a phrase that perfectly fits what a Freudian would say they were doing), the U.S. government invaded Iraq, devastated a society, killed upwards of a million people by best estimates, wounded, traumatized, and made homeless millions more, generated hatred for the United States, drained the U.S. economy, stripped away civil liberties back home, and laid the groundwork for the creation of ISIS, as a matter not of “preempting” an “imminent threat” but of preempting a secret plan to possibly begin constructing a future threat should circumstances totally change.
This conception of “preemptive defense” is identical to two other concepts. It’s identical to the justifications we’ve been offered recently for drone strikes. And it’s identical to aggression. Once “defense” has been stretched to include defense against theoretical future threats, it ceases to credibly distinguish itself from aggression.
And yet Duelfer seems to believe he succeeded in his assignment.

© Blacklisted News 2015

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

58% of us could see what was happening at the time between George Bush and Saddam Hussein, and without prompting, only reading and looking for ourselves, could pose the questions and filter out truth from the non-answers. It amounted to a coup of the United States Government and the future subjugation of the American people.


The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush

on October 26, 2001. Its title is a ten-letter backronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001".

The HSA (Homeland Security Act) was cosponsored by 118 members of Congress, it was signed into law by President George W. Bush in November 2002. HSA created the United States Department of Homeland Security and the new cabinet-level position of Secretary of Homeland Security. It is the largest federal government reorganization since the Department of Defense was created via the National Security Act of 1947. It also includes many of the organizations under which the powers of the USA Patriot Act are exercised.

Charles Duelfer

More 9/11 truths?

... Susan Lindhauer , a former CIA asset tells a fascinating story. From her book, Extreme Prejudice ... Watch at your own risk of possibly reassessing what you believe.

Ethics anyone?

So the State Department is going to release Hilary Rodham Clinton's emails in January of NEXT year.  They are going to release the emails left over from the critical ones she already deleted? What are they doing, rewriting them?  There are 55 THOUSAND pages!
The same State Department that doesn't see the ethics problem with a high government official using private servers and mixing personal email with United States of America business? A person traveling everywhere in the world bringing American policy to so many countries? Was there any oversight at all on this? One would think the CIA, FBI the Secret Service, the Post Office and anyone else charged with protecting the American public would be all over someone in government hiding emails from scrutiny.

Wouldn't that be the perfect formula for someone within the government to plan a coup d'tat of your own government? Get up to whatever hanky-panky you like without your own security people knowing about any of it. Dangerous precedent.
But did Bush and Cheney set the precedent already by placing themselves above the law of the land?

Didn't someone somewhere twig to this deception? Didn't someone say, "Hilary, this is not a private corporation, you cannot hide communications, you are doing the people's work. This has to go on record somewhere. Everything you do, write or send has to be vetted by someone."
Didn't someone say to President Obama, "We have no knowledge of what she is doing?"

Didn't one single Senator, at least in the opposition Republican party ask why they had no information on Hilary's goings on? Didn't one single CIA or FBI officer say it was unacceptable to bypass the security of government controls? Especially with the furor over Benghazi on her watch where an American Ambassador was killed!

How did the USA get so far away from the management of it's own officials? Was it George HW Bush, when he was Director of the CIA, who established separate cells within the CIA to begin a shadow government?

Did they carefully build it under HW's presidency and continued until George W Bush stole the election from Al Gore and with Dick Cheney as the implementer and watchdog put more pieces together until the American people were so befuddled with terrorists under every bed that they ignored the phoney wars and the stealthy coup taking place right before their eyes?

What is happening to what used to be the standard of democracy around the world? Where we now have corporations in charge of the government? Where laws are now being usurped by trade deals and sovereignty is dwindling with the water supply. And the militarized police are now the military charged with keeping the piece while fomenting unrest themselves with hot war tactics?

Homeland Security and the Patriot Act has started it's intended purpose, to subjugate the people of America into a basic slavery? The liberty and freedoms are going fast, while people stare at you with disbelief when you tell them. They don't want to face it. No one asks where the money comes from for the new massive HQ of the NSA in Utah. Or even what is it's purpose? Surely they have enough metadata now to keep analysts busy for decades.
It is the nature of Americans to be trustworthy, loyal, hard working and honest. They simply cannot believe the track their own elected people are speeding down. There is just too much fifties style memories flooding through their minds when the world was right and proper.

So we have Hilary running for the top job. And so many Americans keep the faith, in spite of the mounting evidence of unethical conduct. She doesn't come off a wonderful record in the State Department, she is trying to emerge through allegations of wrong doing, secret email accounts, distrust, and lies about her record in office. The fact is no one knows what she did there. And a mounting army of disbelievers are questioning her purpose, including a house committee on Banghazi. As President of the  United States where would Hilary Clinton take the country?

50 years ago President Dwight Eisenhour warned against 'unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.'  That phrase entered the political lexicon, signifying the notion that a permanent ruling class, encompassing the Pentagon and its corporate suppliers, was on the verge of controlling the American government, even in peacetime.

 The problems of course, is that the preferred political plan in these times, is just keep smiling and never answer any questions.
And it may work, many elected politicians have no idea where Bengazi is. Or Baghdad, or hundreds of other world centers, because those places simply don't matter to them. Getting re-elected is paramount. And many more believe that no matter what party takes power in the White House, the direction of America will not change.


It has come true folks, your elected officials and the wannabes chasing them have with impunity undermined the integrity of the Unites States. And no one had the courage to say to Hilary,  "You cannot do business on behalf of America in secrecy."

If Hilary's political ambitions are not finished now, one could expect that in January they will be. Maybe. There might be much more to come, even if Hilary utters no words in her defense.
But that's a long way ahead. Lots of time to fix those emails, start a few more wars and invent a few more bogeymen to distract the people.
Besides, America doesn't really need the people's votes anymore, that shadow government, that permanent ruling class, can elect anyone they want, the people are just there to make it look real.

Whoever is elected will do just as they are told, like all the recent presidents in either party. It is now the American way. The Powers That Be need only to suppress the few remaining free voices.

Hilary Rodham Clinton's credibility problem notwithstanding, she could end up presiding over the dismantling of America.

Without a protest.



Vote early and often.

Baltimore - lots of WHYs.

On the death of Freddy Gray in Baltimore. See if you arrive at a conclusion by the timeline?
Have a look by the Google Earth map so you can see exactly where the events happened ....

 

This will be simplified here ...7 points in all, one not included in the initial police report but discovered on private surveillance video later.

Starting with,

 #1, 8:39 am. where officers, Lt. Brian W. Rice and Officers Edward M. Nero and Garrett E. Miller were on bike patrol near the corner of North Avenue and Mount Street. Lieutenant Rice made eye contact with Gray, who takes off running from W. North Avenue. He is chased and is caught by Officers Miller and Nero at,

 #2,  8:?? am  Presbury St. and N. Mount St. This is where the TV video taken by bystanders shows him being put into the police van by several officers with hands cuffed. He is never belted in.

Then the police van drives only a block before stopping at, 

#3, 8:46 am. Baker and N. Mount St. Where Officers Miller and Nero and Lieutenant Rice called Goodson to stop,  removed Mr. Gray from the van and placed him in leg restraints. Mr. Gray was loaded head first onto the floor of the van. Still not belting him in.

Q. were they actually planning to give Gray a so-called 'rough-ride' and wanted to put on the leg cuffs without the people one block away seeing them do it and taking more video? In that position it could be an extremely rough ride if the driver sped up and then jammed on his brakes several times, and from Gray's position, would result in him slamming helplessly into the bulkhead in his compartment, quite possibly breaking his neck?

Instead of going straight ahead for only another 4 blocks, to the police station, driver Officer Goodson instead travels southeast for about 10 blocks, maybe a half mile away to,

Q. Why did he drive far away from the police station if it wasn't to do a rough ride?

 #4, 8:54 am. N. Freemont Ave and Mosher St. Where the truck stops again for the driver to 'check on him'. Gray still unsecured by a seatbelt.

 Q. Was driver Goodson only looking to see what damage may have been inflicted on Gray at this time? He was supposed to continue to Central Booking with his prisoner who had said he needed a medic! Was Goodson in communication with other police and what were they instructing him to do?

But then he proceeds even farther away to stop at,

 #5, 8:59 am. Dolphn and Druid Avenues. Officer Goodson radios for help to 'check his prisoner'. 

Q. Did Goodson become worried after his previous check and saw that Gray was comatose, about to die, and needed help right away?

Officer William G. Porter arrived and he and Goodson went to the back of the van. Mr. Gray at that time requested help and indicated that he could not breathe and needed a medic. Porter helped sit Gray up on a bench but still never belted him in. 

Q. Might a sudden hard braking while Gray was propped up on the bench in shackles result in even a harder fall? A spinal breaking fall?

Then a call came to pick up another man arrested way back at the original scene on North Avenue and N. Mount St. So Goodson drove there instead of to Central Booking even though it was obvious that Gray needed medical attention?.

#6, 9:?? am. Officers Nero, Miller and Porter. Sgt. Alicia D. White and Officers Porter and Goodson all observed Gray who was now unresponsive. No medical assistance was called for in spite of Gray's condition. The other prisoner is loaded into the left compartment of the police van.

#7, 9:24 am. Western District police station. A medic was called as Gray was not breathing, he was rushed to the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center, where he died a week later.

The questions pile on. Why move Gray a block away out of sight of the gathering crowd with cameras to restrain him, but not belt him in? Why drive him so far away from the Police station when it was only a couple of minutes and a few blocks away? Then when the driver did check his passenger, Why continue driving away from his destination?  Then even again, Goodson went back to the original scene and the other officers were there with one passenger? Why did that passenger say he heard Gray thrashing and kicking when we now know he was not even breathing and was unable to kick or bang around? 

Was that suggestion put into the 2nd prisoner's head by the now worried officers?

Did the 'rough ride' plan go terribly wrong and the police were then trying to cover the consequences of their actions?

Unfortunately, there is limited CCTV footage, some video from a private owner at a small grocery store that the police evidently copied, was stolen when the store was later torched during the riots.  Coincidence? Happenstance? Or enemy action?

Hmm? One might expect that there is much more private video out there, if and when it will turn up is anyone's guess.

It will unfold of course, but seems hard to change from the original time-line or the actions as already stated by the police who were involved. 

You can use Google Earth yourself to actually follow the chain of events from Google Street View to get a feeling for the area and the environment of the people who live there. It is a sad event for all.

We expect there will be lots more WHYs to come.

addenda - May 23/2016 - Baltimore police officer Edward Nero found NOT guilty for his part leading to the death of Freddie Gray.

Government oil slick

This is what Prime Minister Harper said in the summer of 2012 when he dictated that our BC Coast Guard base on Kitsilano Point be closed - "the closing of a Vancouver coast guard station is in keeping with this government’s emphasis on public safety."  Is that a real comment? We are closing a public safety station help public safety? Is our Prime Minister living in a real world?

And they closed it in Feb 2013. The former base possessed a conventional vessel capable of responding to an oil spill, but the vessel was stripped for parts and sold after the base shuttered its operations. This reallocation is 'best for the public', they said.
The Coast Guard station would be moved to Richmond and serviced by one lumbering Hovercraft that takes over 30 minutes to get around Point Grey to be of any good to distress calls from English Bay. (in actuality it took over 3 hours!)
And there is another Station in Stanley Park that has an inflatable and would have the same response time going into Burrard Inlet, around Stanley Park and through Lions Gate before getting to English Bay. The very idea that the False Creek Station was closed indicates a lack of understanding about the Vancouver area geographics. Have the Feds ever even looked at a chart of this area? Their plan was “to put as many of the resources as we can into actually having rescue boats in the water. That’s where we put our investments going forward.” - Stephen Harper. Really?

In summer, and indeed, most of the year, we have hundreds of boats in English Bay, including these world traveling freighters. We are not the frozen port of Montreal or Halifax where people keep their boats moored for 10 months. Vancouver Coast Guard Kitsilano Station was the busiest base in Canada responding to more than 350 calls per year! And we have yet again seen the reaction from a Federal Government in Ottawa that has no idea what lies across the Rockies. And if they do know there is a thriving port here they choose to ignore us. Yet again. We wonder if they know there is an actual province out here! But then our BC votes don't actually count in Federal elections, do they? We think we needn't vote for Federal Conservatives in BC at all!

Cutting costs has resulted in a delayed response to our oil spill. If the Kitsilano Station was still open at the entrance of False Creek it might have taken 6 minutes to have a boat checking out that spill. As it was in fact, no one was active for 6 hours after the spill was detected. And the City of Vancouver was not told that our precious waters were fouled for 13 HOURS! And then when the Richmond Coast Guard was contacted they responded that 'we don't do oil spills!'

So now Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robertson is telling that the response was inadequate and shows lack of leadership with the Federal and Provincial governments. We think he should be screaming bloody murder!  Christy Clark, our beloved Premier, covering her own ample ass, and stuttering away when asked what her government has done so far, says Mayor Robertson 'doesn't understand how the 'unified command works'.  How much do you need to know about a toxic oil leak contamination in our pristine waters?

Federal Industry Minister, James Moore, commenting from the high towers of Ottawa, says the spill is 80% cleaned up, but from aerial film, it looks like it is all over the English Bay, from Kitsilano to West Van beaches. Even into Georgia Straight. And it seems like 80% is the standard figure for media consumption. Moore says the West Coast people are making political jabs without having the facts. Nice deflection Moore, trying to make your critics seem political. We wonder what you can see of our waters from 3000 miles away? Does he forget he is an MP from BC?
Later a plane was flown over English Bay and it was announced that of 2700 liters of oil, there was only 6 liters left on the water! Yes, we all laughed at that audacity!

So we have people saving ducks on our shores.  We have agencies warning us not to swim in our water. Don't even touch it! Recently we had Orcas in English Bay, thrilling people everywhere. Humpbacks are nearby, our water is so clear and fresh. Now we have it spoiled. And the worst is yet to come when Prime Minister Harper pushes through the Northern Gateway oil pipeline and the Kinder-Morgan double pipeline to Burrard Inlet. And already those oil corporations have spun us with crap about how responsible they are. And how there is no danger to Vancouver area or our whole western coast.
And keep in mind folks, that bunker fuel oil, does evaporate. The Tars Sands Bitumen that Enbridge and Kinder-Morgan will be pipe-lining to tankers in BC, does not. Bitumen sinks to the bottom and can contaminate our waters for years, even decades! (Google Kalamazoo spill)

What'll happen now? Minister Moore is telling us the ship owners based in bankrupt Greece will pay for it all. Sure. You cannot sweep oil spills under the rug, because they tend to seep through. We bet the taxpayer will be on the hook for this one for lack of Federal leadership and the guts to enforce the paying of the bill. Business trumps everything in Conservative governments. And did you know that Exxon has still not paid the fines from the Valdez spill? Twenty-six years ago! Tied up in court while they fight it.
One other point - This was a brand new ship on its maiden voyage! The Matrathassa. And Enbridge is telling us about their tankers, they will be new too! Not reassuring is it?

What will it do to Vancouver's image? Do tourists want to come to a place where people are warned not to go near the water?  Do they want to sit on a beach with oil rings around the rocks? Or dead oily birds washed up?  Or black oil rings around the white yachts.  Or toxic smells wafting through the outdoor cafes? What does this do to the economy of the area?

What about the provincial government? Clark's stammering response tells you a lot, she just wants out of here, maybe another trade trip to India. Deferring to Mary Polak who is not sure about anything except who controls her paycheck.

Whatever happens in the next while, we need to pay attention. And see if the promises get followed through. We think Stephen Harper will simply tell media to stop reporting. And they will.
We think that appropriate action would be to refuse to elect toadies in the BC Federal Conservative Party that turn against British Columbians on the first plane to Ottawa. We need to punish them gravely. And what difference would it make to send other MPs to Ottawa? It doesn't make any difference now who goes there, why would we reward more Conservatives for incompetence?

And trusting Christy Clark and her BC Liberals with our beautiful city and coast is a non-starter, it is she who doesn't understand. The 'unified command' may be the people of BC. What can we expect from a Federal government that needs a Freedom of Information Act to reveal anything and a Provincial government that meets in secret parks and keeps no records?

This spill is only a starter and could be an omen of things to come. Does anyone still believe shipping companies can respond to a spill of bitumen in Burrard Inlet or the distant Douglas Channel from Kitimat?
You can take action, but you must have a memory of things when you go into that voting booth. That is where your power begins. Vancouver is a treasured jewel in Canada, and most of the people here think that way.  Get rid of those who don't understand.

And there is nothing political about asking you to toss out politicians who care little about anything but themselves.

They don't represent you at all.

Coming soon, to an inlet near you.

tar-sands-again

Ottawa fired a spill expert

Addenda: of the 2700 liters of bunker oil leaked, (somebody;s estimate) the Coast Guard is now telling us ONE day later that there is only 6 (SIX) liters left in English Bay.  Who is coming up with these ridiculous figures? Can we trust the Coast Guard to represent the truth? Something smells like fish oil to me!

Addenda #2 - The man on his boat who discovered the oil slick, called it in at about 5 PM The police helped get him through to the Richmond Station of the Coast Guard. He told them exactly what it was and how big the oil slick was and stayed in English Bay. When nothing happened he called them back at 5:30 and they told him the Coast Guard was already there. He waited. Called them back and said no Coast Guard, and was told they were 'on route'. He stayed and circled the area. The Coast Guard took over THREE HOURS before a boat appeared at about 9 PM.
So now we KNOW how long it take from Richmond to English Bay, 3 hours! The Kitsilano Station was minutes away had it still been there!
Time to toss out the indifferent Conservative MPs who are Harper Toadies and only represent the government TO YOU instead of representing you! 
This is way too important to just vote these guys in again.

Addenda #3 - Secreted among the information in a desperately balanced Federal budget, was the information that they have now closed a SECOND Coast Guard Station at Ucluelet. Vancouver's marine communications and traffic centre is also slated to close on May 6 and the Comox station will close sometime next winter or spring. Vancouver traffic will be monitored via radar from Victoria, while Ucluelet will be monitored from a communications centre in Prince Rupert. The Federal Conservatives don't seem to even realize we are a coastal nation.

Russians emerging as the new good guys?

This article by F. William Engdahl is not pro or anti Russian, only telling you about how Russia is handling the overwhelming onslaught of American propaganda and manipulation, emerging as a modern, progressive and independent society while leaving it's past safely tucked away but not forgotten.
Read it and get an important insight into that part of the world and what its future might bring. Posted on Facebook by Jim Marrs so you know it is good.

Is Russia emerging as a counterfoil to all the NWO and American intrigues coming out of Washington?


http://journal-neo.org/Russia's Remarkable Renaissance

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.

Mistaken Identity?

 

 I'm Abe Lincoln you assholes, not Napolean!

Pentagon - 9/11

So here we go again. 

Just wondering. Look at this . . .  You see, there is this an aircraft boneyard out on the Mohave desert. They say it is like a space research facility, but none of this inventory is going into space anytime soon.

This relatively unknown location in California is the largest airplane graveyard for commercial jets in the United States. And has been in operation since the '70s. Sometimes they filmed here for movies. But they closed it to public scrutiny in 2004. It is said to be used for spare parts. 
One could only wonder if those parts are carefully documented. Who keeps control of them and what records there may be about who took what and when?

Wonder what it would be like to discover if any parts were taken sometime in 2001? 

Because this piece appears to match an American Airlines 757 and yet does not show obvious abrasion or shearing damage and was photographed more than a hundred feet to the left of the flightpath, some researchers have speculated that it was planted. What was under that huge blue tarp carried away by several men? Why was it covered at all?

photographer unknown

  

Who can collect parts from here? Who controls the area? What authority is needed? What paperwork would there be about aircraft parts taken away from here? Hmm. Would there be a record of anything removed from this site anytime in the first part of 2001? Interesting? Maybe.

Just wondering.

A Tortured Future?

You can't hide from justice forever - not even for war crimes committed decades in the past, and not even when you're 93.  
That message resounded loudly in May, 2013 as Germany announced the arrest of Hans Lipschis, age 93, for complicity in mass murders that took place at the notorious Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he served as a guard in 1941-1945. And over 50 years later these war criminals are still being dug out of their spider holes by tenacious seekers of justice ....torture is never forgettable.

Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon,  so named for personally having horribly tortured French prisoners as the local chief of the Gestapo in Lyon. He was hunted down and caught by Nazi Hunters from France. He died in 1991 during his life imprisonment in a Lyon prison since 1987.  

Dr. Joseph Mengele, the Angel of Death, who tortured men, women and children and did medical experiments of unspeakable horror to them. He was sought by Nazi Hunters of the Israeli Mossad and was still on the run until his drowning death in Brazil in 1979.

Adolf Eichmann, Organizer of much of the holocaust and the extermination camps was caught by the Mossad in Argentina and put on trial in Israel. Found guilty of War Crimes, he was hanged in  1962.

Rudolph Hess, who spent the last 20 years of his life as the lone inmate of ancient Spandau Prison in Berlin.

The list of the 'most wanted' war criminals continues, the top 6, designated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center shows every one of them to be 93 or older! The relentless search for the guilty in these grotesque instances of death and torture never ends. Even 64 years after that war there are those who are still resolute in their direction. Many others on the Wiesenthal lists are known but are deemed suffering dementia or near death and so cannot be put on trial. But the gathering of evidence doesn't stop. And torture is never forgiven.

In the latest go around in the CIA torture revelations, the only person who has been prosecuted so far is the whistleblower who told us about it. No American soldier who hung a detainee by shackles in a cold dark room, or kept one naked and awake for days with pain and loud music, or beat one or put the dogs on him, or raped him or force-fed him through the rectum, has been prosecuted. And we are aware that the orders for this extraordinary rendition came from very high up, even Dick Cheney saying he would do it again, which implies he did it in the first instance. And Dick is now at odds with Dubya, his president, saying he also knew. And we now know the CIA has secret prisons all around the world for the express process of torture.

But the above mentioned Nazis and hundreds of others from WWII considered themselves soldiers too. And they were found out. The only thing constant is change, and someone will tell on you.
 
One only wonders who will apply the pressure to bring present day war criminals accused of torture and death to justice? Will they be allowed to fade into history or to blatantly defend their actions vociferously until we stop talking about them? Offense being the best defense? The strategy of the guilty to deaden the people's senses with sensory overload? It seems that many of those Nazi war criminals feared for their lives up until death. Why should today's counterparts be granted any measure of mercy?

So the resolve of men and women to chase down and catch modern day torturers should never fade into a silent dementia. No matter how aged the perpetrators become. These injustices to humanity must never disappear from our consciousness. Even if the rationale is that they did it to us.
We are supposed to be better than them.

And most secret agency spy chiefs today in all countries agree and understand that torture does NOT work. It is not a strategic necessity. Which only leaves the raison d'etre for using torture, as that certain people within those agencies find a distorted pleasure in the power to maim. As those Nazis mentioned above have proven. Absolute power corrupts.

Sane and honorable men need to keep up the pressure, the pursuit, dig them out, accumulate the facts and prosecute them, even if it takes another 64 years. Let it be known, they can't hide from justice forever.


Even if they try to hide in plain sight.


Torture 1940s same as 2000s?

afghanistan-pakistan-torture-psychologists 

CIA torture program