Georgia Man Killed by Police in Hostage Stand Off
April 11, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Americas
All over the news in ATL – This took about an hour to wrap up. We do NOT endorse any action that harms our Firemen! BUT, could this have been handled without killing a man that had an obvious stress blowout? YES!
Firefighter hostage situation ends with suspect’s death
Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5
Breaking: Explosions Heard in Neighborhood Where Firefighters Held Hostage –Police: The man who held firefighters hostage is dead after authorities stormed the home in an Atlanta suburb. –One police officer wounded, but wounds not life-threatening –Gunman holds 4 firefighters hostage in Georgia home 10 Apr 2013 A gunman barricaded himself in a home in suburban Atlanta and was holding four firefighters hostage Wednesday afternoon, authorities in northeast Georgia said. Five firefighters responded to a medical call in Suwanee and were eventually taken hostage by an unidentified suspect inside the house, Gwinnett County Police Cpl. Edwin Ritter said. The gunman released one of the firefighters from the house to move a fire truck. A SWAT team and negotiator had made contact with the suspect Wednesday evening. Ritter said the immediate area around the house has been evacuated and residents were not being allowed into the neighborhood. (CNN, Fox News)
(Smiths Singer) Morrissey: “Margaret Thatcher was barbaric and a terror”
April 9, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Music/Book/Film/Art
Singer Morrissey has described Margaret Thatcher as ‘a terror without an atom of humanity’ in a lengthy statement attacking the former prime minister, who died yesterday aged 87.
London Telegraph
Morrissey has released a statement attacking the personality and political beliefs of the late Margaret Thatcher.
The singer, 53, said that Baroness Thatcher, who died yesterday from a stroke aged 87, was “barbaric”, “hated the arts” and “hated the English poor”.
The statement said:
“Thatcher is remembered as The Iron Lady only because she possessed completely negative traits such as persistent stubbornness and a determined refusal to listen to others.
“Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish Freedom Fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the Ivory Trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own Cabinet booted her out.”
He went on to criticise Lady Thatcher’s role in the British invasion of the Falklands in 1982, and claim that she had impeded the progress of women in politics.
“She gave the order to blow up the Belgrano even though it was outside of the Malvinas Exclusion Zone – and was sailing away from the islands.
“When the young Argentinian boys aboard The Belgrano had suffered a most appalling and unjust death, Thatcher gave the thumbs up sign for the British press. Iron? No. Barbaric? Yes.
“She hated feminists even though it was largely due to the progression of the women’s movement that the British people allowed themselves to accept that a Prime Minister could actually be female. But because of Thatcher, there will never again be another woman in power in British politics, and rather than opening that particular door for other women, she closed it.”
Margaret Thatcher, who yesterday died from a stroke aged 87.
He concluded: “Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death.
“As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity.”
Lady Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party in 1975, and was elected as the first ever female British Prime Minister in 1979. She led the country until she resigned in 1990.
Morrissey has been a long-standing critic of Lady Thatcher and the Conservative party. In 1988 he released the song Margaret on the Guillotine, which featured the lyrics “Margaret on the guillotine / Cause people like you / Make me feel so tired / When will you die?”
RELATED:
David Bowie refuses to let Morrissey use his image on new release
Activist / Comedian Dick Gregory on the Martin Luther King Assassination + (RIP Rev)
April 4, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
Many folk have heard that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. made the comment that the U.S. government [was/is] “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. This was in context to a speech delivered on April 4, 1967 (which became his Death day) at Riverside Church in New York City – exactly one year before his untimely death. Though not as well-known as his other speeches, this is one of the ones that speak deeply to my soul. Because of a few “blips” in the audio, I tried to include include the entire speech to be read along with the speech. It was, however, longer that what is allowed here.
William Pepper details the responsibility of the US government for the assassination of Martin Luther King after more than 30 years’ investigation. Altho there were 2 snipers and their spotters in place, employed by the US, a 3rd shooter in bushes, a hired off-duty Memphis policeman, fired the fatal shot. Introduced by Rev. Frank Morales. Camera: Joe Friendly
Pepper seeks to keep alive King’s dream of millions coming to Washington to rescue democracy with a Constitutional Convention.
ASSASSINATION? Indigenous Truther, artist, and activist “Splitting the Sky” died from a head injury? Push for Truth!
March 19, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Featured
* Please – If someone tells you that I died from a slip and fall – don’t “fall” for it! Long Live my Friend and yours, Splitting the Sky! See you in the next life Mon Ami! ~ jack Blood (Listen to our tribute to STS in our archives March 19th 2013)
A political activist was found dead in his home on March 12, the B.C. Coroners Service confirmed on Monday.
The coroner’s service is continuing to investigate what caused the death of John Boncore, 61, although foul play has been ruled out. (ahem!!!)
An initial account indicated that Boncore died after falling on a path on the Adams Lake reserve near Chase, but that was not the case, said Barb McLintock with the coroner’s office in Victoria.
“We have a very close description of where he was found and there is no question,” McLintock said, adding that someone may have seen him earlier on the trail. “He was unequivocally in his house.”
Boncore’s friends in Alberta were concerned that his sudden death should be thoroughly investigated because his activism could have made him a target for violence. He was a carpenter and actor, but worked for decades on the front lines of activism, most recently in opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Larry McKillop, one of those friends, indicated that they hoped for an inquiry or an independent autopsy. He was told that neither one is a possibility, but that the coroner’s autopsy and toxicology results should be known in a month’s time, not four months as originally stated.
He felt it was premature to dismiss Boncore’s death as simply an accident or possibly due to alcohol. (smear campaign!)
“I’d hate for this to be swept under the rug if something had happened,” he said.
McKillop said he was told that Boncore fell on concrete in his bedroom, where his body was found. He is believed to have died the previous day.
“Somebody dropped him off on Monday night,” McKillop said. “That was the last person who saw him. He was found dead on Wednesday morning.”
Both cops involved in shooting death of Kimani Gray, 16, in Brooklyn NY, named in previous federal lawsuits
March 18, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Police State
Sgt. Mourad Mourad racked up three suits while he was a plainclothes cop on Staten Island, and Officer Jovaniel Cordova racked up two at Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct — all alleging various civil rights violations including illegal stop and search and false arrest.
The NYPD sergeant and cop involved in the fatal shooting of Brooklyn 16-year-old Kimani Gray have been named in five federal lawsuits — which cost the city a total of $215,000 in settlements, court records show.
Prosecutors later dismissed all but one of the arrests against the six plaintiffs, and the criminal cases were sealed.
Mourad and Cordova had been placed on desk duty while the NYPD and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the March 9 shooting in East Flatbush that has since sparked riots. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said Gray was shot after he pointed a .38-caliber revolver at the sergeant and cop, who had approached a group of youths on the street.
A woman who told the Daily News she witnessed the shooting from her apartment window said Gray did not have a gun in his hand. But she previously told Internal Affairs investigators she couldn’t see what the kids were doing “from the angle I was at.”
The settlements in the prior cases ranged from $20,000 to $92,500, with no admission of wrongdoing by the city.
“Our clients’ interactions with Sgt. Mourad and Officer Cordova expose a disturbing pattern of unconstitutional and aggressive stop-and-frisk practices,” said lawyer Brett Klein, who filed four of the five suits.
“In each case, Mourad and Cordova attempted to cover up their misconduct by falsifying and fabricating evidence.”
The suits are:
• Derek Franks received a $92,500 settlement for a suit against Mourad and other unidentified cops, alleging he was illegally stopped and frisked on May 7, 2007. He spent four months in Rikers Island until charges were dropped.
• Andre Maraj and Dary Harville each received $22,500 settlements, which alleged they were falsely arrested by Mourad and others. Harville claimed he was “slammed” into a car.
• Jontel Sebbern received $20,000 stemming from his arrest after a car stop. He was ordered out of the car by Mourad and others, who frisked him and pulled his pants and underwear.
“You can take me to the precinct but you’re not going in my underwear here,” Sebbern told the cops, says the complaint.
• Peter Owusu pocketed $22,500 for the “emotional distress” he suffered as a result of a car stop and arrest by Cordova. Owusu claims he was placed facedown in a puddle and handcuffed. He later pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
• Steve Morency got $35,000 after accusing Cordova of an illegal stop inside an E. 17th St. building. Morency claimed he was punched in the face and needed three stitches to close a cut above his eye.
Klein said Mourad racked up the suits when he was assigned to an aggressive anti-crime unit.
Both Mourad and Cordova had each been involved in a previous shooting, which were deemed to be within department guidelines.
“None of these civil claims were tried, and the officers were not found to have engaged in any wrongdoing. The decision to settle should not be held against them. The settlements were not large by legal standards, as they included attorney’s fees,” said city lawyer Muriel Goode-Trufant.
The Jack Blood Show – March 15 2013
3.15.13 – Jack Blood and BBC invetsigative Reporter / Best selling author GREG PALAST connnect the death of Hugo Chavez to the new Pope from South America – Pope Frankie One Lung. (globalization) Greg talks about his great article (just out on www.gregpalast.com – with FREE video) aka: Hugo vs the Network! Greg was friends with Pres Chavez and knows where many of the bodies are buried. Makes the ultimate connection between banker poverty in S America and the reformers. Before you make up your mind about what happened to Chavez and the timing of the new S american Pope – Hear YE this! Jack Blood also celebrates St Pats day with Irish protest punk rock!
3.14.13 – JACK BLOOD RUNS DOWN THE NEW POPE – (Frankie One Lung) A simple ploy to unify South America into the FTAA and so much more
March 14, 2013 by Kristen
Filed under Archive, The Jack Blood Show
Jack Throws down on the new papal selection. The 1st Jesuit pope? The Pope’s collusion with right wing death squad dictator Pinochet? Money laundering at the Vatican? Who are Opus Dei? How do the Rothschilds fit in? The ADL supports Pope Francis 1? South America and regional Rockefeller Govt? Nazis? and the numeralogical significance of #266. (also – not in this archive, the “god” particle discovered the same day as the new Pope announced 3-1-3-1-3 ……) Enjoy and share at will! Support the Jack Blood show by donating NOW! jackblood@hotmail.com
IRAN: Bankers Get Death Penalty After $2.6B Scandal
March 7, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under World
Albeit – Middle Managers and patsies… Maybe this is just another way to eliminate the Competition? This could give Goldman Sachs (whom are parked in Tehran) pause. We ask, could THIS be the reason why Israel, the EU, and the USA are threatening Iran? Follow the money right?
By Pete Papaherakles
The outcome of the biggest banking fraud case in Iran’s history was made official on February 18. According to Associated Press, four bankers have been sentenced to death in Iran for their role in a $2.6B scandal, while two more bankers were given life sentences, and 33 more accomplices will spend up to 25 years in jail, the chief prosecutor was quoted as saying. This is the biggest banking fraud in Iran’s history, and the stiff decision reveals that the bankers in Iran don’t run the country.
Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the sentence passed at the trial last summer. Attorney General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei told reporters that the four bankers were guilty of corruption and “disrupting the country’s economic system.” The scandal involved the use of forged documents in order to receive credit from banks, which enabled them to purchase state-owned companies.
Iran’s PressTV said that, according to the indictment, the owners of Aria Investment Development Company, which has 35 offshoots active in diverse business activities, had bribed bank managers to get loans and letters of credit.
The four people sentenced to death include Aria President Mahafarid Amir-Khosravi, his legal adviser, Behdad Behzadi, his financial solicitor, Iraj Shoja and the head of the Ahvaz branch of Saderat Bank, Saeed Kiani Rezazadeh. The president of the Bank Melli branch in the city of Kish was sent to prison for life. Former Deputy Minister Khodamorad Ahmadi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Several others involved have also been slapped with heavy fines and many have also been prohibited from holding public office.
These sentences should send a strong message to bankers across the globe, who have been engaged in massive fraud and corruption. Political leaders spend a lot of time debating over how to deal with our crumbling economy. Ending systemic abuse would undoubtedly have a positive ripple effect. But no central bankers have been arrested in light of the recent financial debacle.
It is of interest to note that Iceland, a country that successfully resisted a targeted takeover by the bankers, has also found the political will to prosecute bankers and high-ranking government officials involved in that country’s banking scandal, including Iceland’s ex-prime minister.
In contrast, the United States has refused to sentence its own bankers, who are responsible for the current economic crisis, or even fine them, although overwhelming evidence exists of their guilt. Both Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase got a pass for having deliberately defrauded the American public of many billions of dollars. Instead they got rewarded with a $700B taxpayer bailout package in 2008 and also received trillions of dollars’ worth of interest-free handouts from the Federal Reserve.
The U.S. government is being hypocritical when it declares Iran’s central bank a criminal organization. In truth, Iran is executing and jailing corrupt bankers, while our government is rewarding them with trillions of dollars in bailouts, sweetheart deals and interest-free loans.
Hugo Chavez, passionate but polarizing Venezuelan president, dead at 58
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who went from a young conspiratorial soldier who dreamed of revolution to the fiery anti-U.S. leader of one of the world’s great oil powers, died March 5 in Caracas of complications from an unspecified cancer in his pelvic area.
He was 58 and had been president since 1999, longer than any other democratically elected leader in the Americas. Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced the death.
Mr. Chavez first revealed in a brief, dramatic television address in June 2011 that he had undergone two surgical procedures in Cuba. He would go under the knife two more times, greatly weakening the once robust leader. Mr. Chavez had been elected in October 2012 to a third six-year term. But he missed his swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 10 while lying gravely ill in a Havana hospital after undergoing what his aides had called a complex operation a month before.
VENEZUELA DEPLOYS ITS ARMY AND POLICE...
Accuses USA of giving Chavez cancer...
Demise Deepens Crisis in Divided Country...
Uncertainty Awaits...
Venezuela Expels American Diplomats...
CLAIM: Chavez Had Amassed Private Fortune of $2 Billion...
By Greg Palast
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
For BBC Television, Palast met several times with Hugo Chàvez, who passed away today.
Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him. My dear Hugo: It’s the oil. And it’s the Koch Brothers – and it’s the ketchup.
Reverend Pat Robertson said,
“Hugo Chavez thinks we’re trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.”
It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush’s State Department. Despite Bush’s providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we’ll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular.
But why the Bush regime’s hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela?
Reverend Pat wasn’t coy about the answer: It’s the oil.
“This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil.”
A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia.
If we didn’t kill Chavez, we’d have to do an “Iraq” on his nation. So the Reverend suggests,
“We don’t need another $200 billion war….It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”
Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush’s attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton.
So what made Chavez suddenly “a dangerous enemy”? Here’s the answer you won’t find in The New York Times:
Just after Bush’s inauguration in 2001, Chavez’ congress voted in a new “Law of Hydrocarbons.” Henceforth, Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Chevron would get to keep 70% of the sales revenues from the crude they sucked out of Venezuela. Not bad, considering the price of oil was rising toward $100 a barrel.
But to the oil companies, which had bitch-slapped Venezeula’s prior government into giving them 84% of the sales price, a cut to 70% was “no bueno.” Worse, Venezuela had been charging a joke of a royalty – just one percent – on “heavy” crude from the Orinoco Basin. Chavez told Exxon and friends they’d now have to pay 16.6%.
Clearly, Chavez had to be taught a lesson about the etiquette of dealings with Big Oil.
On April 11, 2002, President Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint and flown to an island prison in the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, Pedro Carmona, a business partner of the US oil companies and president of the nation’s Chamber of Commerce, declared himself President of Venezuela – giving a whole new meaning to the term, “corporate takeover.”
U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro immediately rushed down from his hilltop embassy to have his picture taken grinning with the self-proclaimed “President” and the leaders of the coup d’état.
Bush’s White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, “democratically elected,” but, he added, “Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters.” I see.
With an armed and angry citizenry marching on the Presidential Palace in Caracas ready to string up the coup plotters, Carmona, the Pretend President from Exxon returned his captive Chavez back to his desk within 48 hours. (How? Get The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, the film, expanding on my reports for BBC Television. You can download it for free for the next few days.)
Chavez had provoked the coup not just by clawing back some of the bloated royalties of the oil companies. It’s what he did with that oil money that drove Venezuela’s One Percent to violence.
In Caracas, I ran into the reporter for a TV station whose owner is generally credited with plotting the coup against the president. While doing a publicity photo shoot, leaning back against a tree, showing her wide-open legs nearly up to where they met, the reporter pointed down the hill to the “ranchos,” the slums above Caracas, where shacks, once made of cardboard and tin, where quickly transforming into homes of cinder blocks and cement.
“He [Chavez] gives them bread and bricks, so they vote for him, of course.” She was disgusted by “them,” the 80% of Venezuelans who are negro e indio (Black and Indian)—and poor. Chavez, himself negro e indio, had, for the first time in Venezuela’s history, shifted the oil wealth from the privileged class that called themselves “Spanish,” to the dark-skinned masses.
While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,
“Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The ‘oil boom’ we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn’t see it.”
But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, “get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how to sign their own papers.”
Chavez’ Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the US. But Chavez, who told me, “We are no longer an oil colony,” went further…too much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite.
Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions – and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted. Chavez’ congress passed in a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela’s politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his “Alliance for Progress.”
Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn’t like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized Heinz’ plant and put the workers back on the job. Chavez didn’t realize that he’d just squeezed the tomatoes of America’s powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz’ husband, Senator John Kerry, now U.S. Secretary of State.
Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn’t give a damn.
Chavez could survive the ketchup coup, the Exxon “presidency,” even his taking back a piece of the windfall of oil company profits, but he dangerously tried the patience of America’s least forgiving billionaires: The Koch Brothers.
How? Well, that’s another story for another day. [Watch this space. Or read about it in the book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Go to BallotBandits.org).
Elected presidents who annoy Big Oil have ended up in exile—or coffins: Mossadegh of Iran after he nationalized BP’s fields (1953), Elchibey, President of Azerbaijan, after he refused demands of BP for his Caspian fields (1993), President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador after he terminated Occidental’s drilling concession (2005).
“It’s a chess game, Mr. Palast,” Chavez told me. He was showing me a very long, and very sharp sword once owned by Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator. “And I am,” Chavez said, “a very good chess player.”
In the film The Seventh Seal, a medieval knight bets his life on a game of chess with the Grim Reaper. Death cheats, of course, and takes the knight. No mortal can indefinitely outplay Death who, this week, Chavez must know, will checkmate the new Bolivar of Venezuela.
But in one last move, the Bolivarian grandmaster played a brilliant endgame, naming
Chavez sent Maduro to meet me in my downtown New York office back in 2004. In our run-down detective digs on Second Avenue, Maduro and I traded information on assassination plots and oil policy.
Even then, Chavez was carefully preparing for the day when Venezuela’s negros e indios would lose their king—but still stay in the game.
Class war on a chessboard. Even in death, I wouldn’t bet against Hugo Chavez.
Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures’ Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.
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S. Africa cops charged with murder after death of man dragged by police van
Eight South African police officers have been charged with murder amid outrage over the death of a taxi driver who was dragged along the ground while tied to a police van.
The incident in the Johannesburg area of Daveyton on Tuesday was caught on video by a bystander and the film has since gone viral on YouTube.
Mido Macia, 27, originally from Mozambique, did not die while he was dragged down the street, but was later found dead in his police cell.
Moses Dlamini, of the police investigation unit, said the officers were charged with murder late Friday, The Associated Press reported.
