Our [so-called] “Free Press”: The Influence of Money and Politics on Editorial Content

4th Media

There are many reasons not to trust the mainstream media (MSM). Most, if not all those reasons, have been analyzed by independent news outlets. The MSM is owned by private companies and financed by advertising, both of which have a clear influence on its editorial content and the overall agenda setting.

It has also been proven in the past, during the Church Committee, that the CIA, like other intelligence agencies, uses the mainstream media for propaganda purposes by planting stories and using journalism as a cover for agents. The mainstream media’s complaisance towards governments has also been exposed, namely with the New York Times’ yearlong silence on wiretapping under the Bush administration.

Recently, however, several stories from mainstream journalists have emerged, exposing the corrupt nature of the MSM, thus weighing in on the growing mistrust it inspires.

The influence of money and politics on editorial content

Former chief political commentator of the Telegraph Peter Oborne resigned from the newspaper because it would not publish articles on HSBC for fear of losing advertising revenues. The bank is well-known for its money-laundering for Mexican drug cartels as well as its involvement in tax evasion schemes.

In an opinion piece called “Why I Resigned From the Telegraph” he wrote:

“The coverage of HSBC in Britain’s Telegraph is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril…

From the start of 2013 onwards stories critical of HSBC were discouraged. HSBC suspended its advertising with the Telegraph. Its account, I have been told by an extremely well informed insider, was extremely valuable. HSBC, as one former Telegraph executive told me, is “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”…

Winning back the HSBC advertising account became an urgent priority. It was eventually restored after approximately 12 months. Executives say that Murdoch MacLennan [the chief executive] was determined not to allow any criticism of the international bank. “He would express concern about headlines even on minor stories,” says one former Telegraph journalist.

“Anything that mentioned money-laundering was just banned, even though the bank was on a final warning from the US authorities. This interference was happening on an industrial scale.” Peter Oborne, “Why I Resigned From the Telegraph,” Open Democracy, February 17, 2015)

When it comes to powerful lobbies’ influence on media content, the Zionist lobby is very well known for accusing journalists and editors of anti-Semitism and imposing its own propaganda. Even so-called progressive newspapers such as The Guardian are subject to Zionist propaganda. David Cronin writes about his experience:

I submitted an exposé of how the pro Israel lobby operates in Brussels. While waiting to find out if the piece would be used, I phoned Matt Seaton, who had taken over as comment editor. We had a pleasant conversation but Seaton stressed that he regarded the subject as sensitive.

I, then, modified the piece to make its tone less polemical. Still, it was not published…

Cronin decided to write about his experience when he realized that The Guardian was offering platforms to Israeli politicians and their propaganda:

“Daniel Taub, Israel’s ambassador to the UK … uses a quote attributed to Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister from 1969 to 1974, to hit back at aid agencies who accuse Israel of impeding Gaza’s reconstruction: “We will only have peace when our enemies love their children more than they hate ours.”

The inference that Palestinians hate Israelis more than they love their children is a racist caricature…

Taub’s article was the second one published by The Guardian in as many months from a senior Israeli political or diplomatic figure. In February, the paper gave Yair Lapid, until recently Israel’s finance minister, a platform to describe calls for a cultural boycott of Israel as “shallow and lacking in coherence.” (David Cronin, “How The Guardian Told Me to Steer Clear of Palestine,” Electronic Intifada, 11 March 2015)

Cronin’s experience is only one of countless stories about the infamous pro-Israeli bias of the mainstream media. As someone working for the Canadian public broadcaster CBC-Radio-Canada once told me: “The journalists are not the ones who are biased. They know exactly what’s going on in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s the big bosses who are scared of the Zionist lobby.”

“Non-official cover”: Journalists working for the CIA and the Mossad

What is non-official cover?

“Non-official cover” occurs when a journalist is essentially working for the CIA, but it’s not in an official capacity. This allows both parties to reap the rewards of the partnership, while at the same time giving both sides plausible deniability.

The CIA will find young journalists and mentor them. Suddenly doors will open up, rewards will be given, and before you know it, you owe your entire career to them. That’s essentially how it works. (Michael Krieger, “‘Non-Official Cover’ -Respected German Journalist Blows Whistle on How the CIA Controls the Media,” Liberty Blitzkrieg 8 October 2014)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s former editor Udo Ulfkotte recently published a book called Bought Journalists. How Politicians, Secret Services and High Finance Control the Mass Media (Gekaufte Journalisten), in which he explains how journalists manipulate the masses for powerful interests:

Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany’s largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.

Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short. (“Ralph Lopez, Editor of Major German Newspaper Says He Planted Stories for the CIA,” Reader Supported News, February 04, 2015)

Ulfkotte’s book is a bestseller in Germany, yet mainstream journalists are not allowed to report on it. (Watch Ulfkotte’s interview on RT)

He says “the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.” In turn, when a CIA officer leaks to the press important documents showing how the agency tried to manipulate the public with fake intelligence, probably aimed at justifying another war, he’s sent to jail for “breaching public trust.”

In late January “a former CIA employee, Jeffrey Sterling, was convicted of giving classified information to a New York Times reporter”:

Sterling is accused of telling [New York Times Reporter James] Risen about a CIA operation that had provided flawed nuclear weapon blueprints to Iran in 2000. The charges are unproven.

But no one disputes that Sterling told Senate Intelligence Committee staffers about the CIA action, dubbed “Operation Merlin,” which Risen’s book later exposed and brought to light as dumb and dangerous.

While ostensibly aiming to prevent nuclear proliferation, the CIA risked advancing it. (Norman Solomon, “America’s Fake Intelligence on Iran: Why Jeffrey Sterling Deserves Support as a CIA Whistleblower,” Global Research, January 05, 2015)

“Operation Merlin” was actually a CIA-Mossad plot. Gordon Prather asked back in 2008:

“What if CIA-Mossad hoped that the Iranians would at least put the “Operation Merlin” stuff into their files, perhaps even correcting the errors and building working prototypes, to be found by the IAEA at a later date, providing “evidence” that the Russians were helping the Iranians develop nuclear weapons? (Gordon Prather, “Operation Merlin II,” Antiwar.com, March 8, 2008)

When Sterling was convicted, US Attorney General Eric Holder claimed: “The disclosures placed lives at risk and they constituted an egregious breach of the public trust by someone who had sworn to uphold it.”

So the chief lawyer of the US, the man who represents the “justice system”, is clearly saying that those who disclose plots of fake evidence to justify war “breach public trust,” while the plotters who want to fool the public and international officials are the ones who “uphold it.” Absurdity is not strong enough a word to describe this.

Another book stirred some controversy recently, Au service de la République, (Serving the Republic) Roger Auque’s memoirs published posthumously.

Auque, a well-known journalist who worked for major French magazines as well as the French Canadian public network Radio-Canada, admitted: “I was paid by the Israeli secret services to lead operations in Syria, using reporting as a cover.”

Le Figaro, one of France’s leading magazines for which he worked, writes that “he also offered his services to the DGSE, (the French CIA) before becoming an object of interest for the CIA.”

Contrary to Ulfkotte who’s filled with remorse, the French reporter was “not at all ashamed of this revelation.”

These few examples show once again the importance of independent media and how the corporate mainstream media is nothing but a mouthpiece for powerful interests who do not want you to be informed but rather want to manufacture consent and keep you in the dark about important issues.

Colorado Eyewitness Identification Bill May Help Reduce Wrongful Convictions

In an op-ed published yesterday in the Denver Post, Innocence Project State Policy Advocate Amshula Jayaram and Executive Director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council Tom Raynes write in support of a bill that would require Colorado police to implement best practice eyewitness identification procedures. Senate Bill 58, which recently passed the Senate, will be taken up by the House Judiciary Committee this week.

The bill reflects what began as a year-long partnership and dialogue between the Office of the Attorney General, the Colorado District Attorneys Council, the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, and the Innocence Project. This partnership focused on creating a collaborative effort to minimize error in eyewitness identification practices and to ultimately reduce the rate of wrongful convictions due to current identification procedures.

Jayaram and Raynes write:

Eyewitness misidentification is much more common than people might think. According to research on archival cases, 35 percent of eyewitnesses make identifications that are wrong. Roughly 72 percent of DNA exonerations resulted from a wrongful conviction that involved misidentification, including cases wherein as many as eight witnesses misidentified the same individual.

Wrongful convictions not only harm the innocent, they also pose a serious threat to public safety. If investigators are focused on an innocent person, the real perpetrator remains free to harm others. Real perpetrators were found in 92 of the nation's 233 DNA exonerations that stemmed from a wrongful conviction involving misidentification. Those individuals went on to commit 102 additional violent crimes, many of which were rapes and murders. [MORE]

Make cop cameras automated [or identify and fire all racist cops]

Aljazeera

Starbucks will stop writing 'Race Together' on cups

Aljazeera

Starbucks baristas will no longer write "Race Together" on customers' cups starting Sunday, ending the most visible component of a diversity and racial inequality campaign that sparked widespread criticism in the week since it took effect.

The coffee chain's initiative will continue without the handwritten messages, Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson said.

The cups were always "just the catalyst" for a larger conversation, and Starbucks will still hold discussion sessions, co-produce special sections in USA TODAY and put more stores in minority communities as part of the Race Together initiative, according to a company memo from CEO Howard Schultz.

The campaign has been criticized as opportunistic and inappropriate, coming in the wake of national protests over several recent police killings of unarmed black men. On social media, some questioned whether Starbucks workers could spark productive conversations about race while serving coffee.

“Does the #RaceTogether conversation include #Starbucks discussing its own racial diversity?” tweeted Colorlines, a news site focused on racial justice issues. It reported that 86 percent of the Starbucks corporate board is white, while 40 percent of its workers are black.

Other users tweeted that they didn't have time “to explain 400 years of oppression to you and still make my train,” and made puns on adding “extra whip” to their lattes.

In his memo, Schultz said he expected skepticism. “I know this hasn’t been easy for any of you — let me assure you that we didn’t expect universal praise,” Schultz wrote in a letter to staff and released by the company on Sunday. “We leaned in because we believed that starting this dialogue is what matters most.”

He said the campaign hopes to make sure that "the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few."

Schultz said Starbucks plans more “Race Together” activities, including efforts to expand into urban neighborhoods and hire 10,000 “opportunity youth” over the next three years.

Prisons Are Making America's Drug Problem Worse

Politico 

Today, Gordon Goodwin is in federal prison in Atlanta.  Not too many years ago, he was a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, on track for law school. He enjoyed tennis and mountain biking. Today, his future looks bleak—failed by prison drug treatment policies that even the Bureau of Prisons admits don’t work, policies opposed by science and medical professionals, including groups like the World Health Organization.

As criminal justice reform becomes a major topic of conversation in Washington, Goodwin’s journey from would-be law student to prison addict is a cautionary tale of how inmates in the bureaucratic federal system are set up to fail—and how those failures ripple through the prison system and waste taxpayers’ dollars at a time when both states and the federal government are looking to rein in spending.

Because, unfortunately, Gordon’s story—while remarkable—isn’t necessarily an outlier.

In 2009, as a 20-year-old history major at UNC-Chapel Hill, he had a bout of kidney stones and became addicted to oxycodone and other opioid painkillers after taking them as prescribed for only one week. By 2011, in an all-too-common transition, Gordon began using its cheaper, more accessible relative: heroin. He went in and out of treatment programs and tried to keep up with his coursework, but his life went into a downward spiral. He started to gamble compulsively, and with debts to repay and a heroin habit to support, he committed three bank robberies between November 2011 and May 2012. After the final incident, Gordon was arrested, pled guilty and received a sentence of 47 months in federal prison for bank robbery.

Gordon’s addiction did not disappear once he entered the Federal Correctional Institution in Beckley, West Virginia, a medium-security prison, in March of 2013. In an effort to end his worsening cravings, he completed a prison treatment program and drug education classes. Gordon and his mother, Diana, pleaded with federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials in writing and in person to give him a medication called Suboxone, a form of buprenorphine that his doctor had prescribed before he entered federal custody to block his craving for drugs. The officials refused. As a matter of policy, the BOP does not provide buprenorphine, methadone or other medication-assisted therapies (MAT) for opioid addiction—a policy that has had disastrous consequences for Gordon and the roughly 15 percent of all U.S. inmates that have a history of heroin addiction.

It’s a policy that even the Bureau of Prisons admits doesn’t work—and one with an obvious negative outcome.

Opioid dependence is a chronic, relapsing disease, and Gordon eventually found narcotics in prison. Drug-related incidents followed, including a failed urine test result that sent him to solitary confinement for 45 days and led to the loss of visiting privileges, including visits with his family, for one year. Gordon appealed those sanctions; “I have done everything I can to get better,” he said. The appeal was denied and because of his drug use he was transferred to a high security prison. Over the Christmas holidays, Gordon was stabbed by another prisoner and is now awaiting transfer to another unit, his future uncertain.  

After two decades of rapidly rising incarceration rates—rates that continued to rise even as crime sat at record historic lows—America today has nearly 2.2 million adult inmates in local, state and federal jails and prisons, including about 300,000 who have a history of heroin addiction. The BOP spends $110 million annually on drug treatment programs for approximately 80,000 inmates identified as dependent on narcotics. But for the 10,000 or so federal inmates dependent on heroin or other opioids, millions of those dollars are currently spent on outdated, ineffective approaches that wrongly prohibit medication-assisted therapies—approaches that, in other words,fail to help prisoners addicted to opioids during their sentence and ultimately return them afterwards to society as addicted as they were when they went into jail. [MORE]

Thai Farm Hands Worked to Death in Israel -[all day, 30 days a month for $500]

Pardons Elude Black Men Freed After Decades in North Carolina Prison

NY Times

In the days leading up to the one last summer when Henry L. McCollum left North Carolina’s death row, it seemed that inmates and staff members could not stop talking about what awaited him beyond Central Prison.

The man who had spent almost his entire adult life awaiting execution would be able to go out for fried chicken, his favorite. Maybe he could strike a movie deal. At the very least, Mr. McCollum remembers, people told him that he would be a man of considerable wealth once the state paid him the $750,000 he could seek under North Carolina law because he had been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for decades.

Mr. McCollum, 50, was released from prison last September after DNA evidence showed that he did not rape and murder a young girl in 1983. But since then, he and his half brother, Leon Brown, who was also exonerated and freed in the same case, have led anything but glamorous post-prison lives. Instead, because of legal decisions made to help accelerate their release, as well as Gov. Pat McCrory’s deliberate approach to granting what is known here as a pardon of innocence, both men have clung to a minimal existence, absent substantive remuneration, counseling or public aid in transitioning back to society.

“If the governor called me, I would tell him the reason why I need his pardon: I would tell him I deserve this pardon,” Mr. McCollum said. “I did 31 years in prison for a crime I did not commit. I could have given up a long time ago and told the state to kill me.”

So far, though, Mr. McCrory has not acted on the pardon applications of Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown, whose I.Q. scores were previously recorded in the 50s.

Because of the approach lawyers used to secure swifter releases for the two men, neither is entitled to wrongful conviction compensation until he gets a pardon.

The men were teenagers — Mr. McCollum was 19 and Mr. Brown, 15 — when they were arrested in Red Springs in September 1983 in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, Sabrina Buie. They were convicted about a year later.

But Judge Douglas B. Sasser of Robeson County Superior Court concluded last year that “no physical evidence, either at the time of their arrest or at any time since, linked Mr. McCollum or Mr. Brown to the scene or the commission of this crime.” Judge Sasser also found that the case against the men, who are black, was built “almost entirely” on the inconsistent confessions that they quickly recanted.

DNA recovered from the crime scene was linked decades later to Roscoe Artis, who is serving a life sentence for another 1983 rape and murder in Red Springs. (Mr. Artis has not been charged in the death of Sabrina Buie.)

Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown each received $45 when they left prison and have lived on charity since. They lived for a time at a home here, where Mr. Brown slept on a couch in one room and Mr. McCollum’s mattress and box spring were on the floor in another.

Without money for a car or any knowledge about how to drive one, the men walked to a grocery to buy subsistence fare like canned potatoes and pork and beans. Mr. McCollum, who was a janitor in prison, said he wanted to apply for a job but was reluctant until he had a pardon.

Mr. Brown, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, is far more reticent than Mr. McCollum, but he talked of starting a church or a radio ministry.

Both say that until Mr. McCrory issues them pardons, they cannot fully set aside what happened over about 31 years.

Theresa A. Newman, a co-director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at Duke University Law School, said such sentiments were common among men who had been cleared by judges but not by governors. She said the mostly closed nature of the lengthy process could prove demoralizing.

“Just having some information would be very, very powerful, and I think it would hold these men up slightly,” said Ms. Newman, who is not involved in the McCollum or Brown case. “Why would they trust the state to do the right thing?” [MORE]

Federal judge orders prosecutors to detail D.C. police evidence problems

Washington Post

A federal judge in the District ordered prosecutors on Thursday to turn over more information to defense lawyers about a recently disclosed D.C. police computer problem that may have caused information to be withheld from attorneys in thousands of criminal cases.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan set a March 27 deadline for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to report on “the government’s understanding of the extent” to which the problem could affect any of about two dozen federal criminal cases pending before him and filed since 2011. Prosecutors were also told to explain decisions to disclose or not to disclose any piece of information that is found to have been withheld.

The orders apparently are the first by a judge of the U.S. District Court or D.C. Superior Court that address the issue. Federal prosecutors and D.C. police routinely appear before these courts.

Sullivan, a 1994 Clinton appointee to the District Court, did not elaborate on his reasoning in his orders, but he has led efforts in the D.C. federal court and the federal judiciary nationwide to ensure that prosecutors meet their constitutional obligation to turn over potentially helpful information to defendants.

In recent months, Sullivan similarly prodded prosecutors to detail the impact of the discovery that an FBI agent, Matthew Lowry, working on a Washington narcotics task force allegedly had stolen heroin from evidence bags, forcing the dismissal of cases against 28 defendants.

Cases covered under Sullivan’s new orders include some previously flagged by prosecutors because of Lowry’s involvement, including a 33-defendant alleged drug conspiracy.

Since 2009, Sullivan — who presided over the Justice Department’s botched prosecution of former Alaska senator Ted Stevens (R), in which attorneys from Justice’s Public Integrity Section concealed evidence — has pressed unsuccessfully for judicial rule changes that would require prosecutors to turn over all information favorable to defendants, not just what they decide at their discretion to be relevant.

Bill Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’ s Office, said, “We are reviewing the orders and have no further comment at this time.”

The court’s action came after U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. on Monday wrote to the heads of the Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association and the D.C. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, as well as of the federal and local public defender services of the District, explaining that his office had recently been notified that some information recorded by D.C. police during criminal investigations was inadvertently omitted from final police reports.

Those reports, which may include witness accounts or evidence forms, are given to defense attorneys.

Prosecutors indicated that they had uncovered “a significant issue . . . regarding the preservation of police reports in the data management system presently maintained by the Metropolitan Police Department.”

The letter added that in “all cases, at whatever stage, all necessary disclosures will be made, and where a nondisclosure in a past case was sufficiently material, the USAO will review the disposition of that case.” 

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine has announced that his office will examine all its cases closed since Jan. 1, 2012, for problems related to the D.C. police computer program, called I/Leads, which has been in use since September 2012.After a police officer in one case insisted that he had included certain details that went undisclosed, Racine’s office discovered that some information filled out by police failed to download into final versions.

Utah considers resuming firing squad executions - that is, White People in Utah consider resuming firing squad executions

BBC

Lawmakers in Utah have proposed resuming the use of firing squads to carry out the death penalty if lethal injections drugs are not available.

US states such as Texas are struggling to obtain lethal injection drugs amid a nationwide shortage.

Other states are considering alternative methods after several inmates who received lethal injections took hours to die.

It is not clear if Utah Governor Gary Herbert will sign the measure into law.

The bill that passed the state senate on Tuesday night would reinstate the use of firing squads more than a decade after the state abandoned the practice.

The bill's sponsor, Republican lawmaker Paul Ray, said using a firing squad would be faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections.

But opponents call firing squads a cruel practice from the state's Wild West days. If approved, Utah would become the only US states to execute inmates by firing squad.

Florida: Life Sentences for Juveniles Thrown Out - all must be re-sentenced

NY Times

The State Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that all of Florida’s juvenile offenders who received automatic sentences of life in prison must be resentenced under a law passed in 2014. The long-awaited ruling answers the question of whether the United States Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama, which effectively banned automatic life sentences for juvenile killers, applies retroactively. An estimated 250 state prisoners, 17 of them from Lee and Collier Counties, are serving life sentences for murders committed before they turned 18. Under Florida’s 2014 law, passed to conform with the Supreme Court decision, only juveniles who committed homicides after July 2014 were subject to a revised sentencing structure, which required a judge to consider several factors before determining a prison term. For about 20 years before the law’s passage, Florida mandated a life sentence for juveniles convicted of first-degree murder. After the law passed, Florida trial and appeal courts have grappled with whether juveniles who killed before July 2014 and received automatic life sentences should receive the same consideration. The state’s five appeals courts gave conflicting opinions. Justice Barbara J. Pariente wrote in the opinion handed down Thursday, “The patent unfairness of depriving indistinguishable juvenile offenders of their liberty for the rest of their lives, based solely on when their cases were decided, weighs heavily in favor of applying the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller retroactively.”

Man with Vagina (pharrell) Caught Stealing from Marvin Gaye to Enrich White Folks

Neely Fuller on the Radio: "There is No Such thing as Part White. You're either white or you're not."

Farrakhan: ‘Israelis and Zionist Jews’ played key roles in 9/11 attacks

[MORE]

Greg Palast: From White Sheets to Spreadsheets

GregPalast.com

I hate to spoil a happy ending.

The movie “Selma,” like this week’s commemorations of Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma, Ala., 50 years ago, celebrates America’s giant leap from apartheid.

Half a century ago Alabama state troopers and a mob of racist thugs beat African-Americans and others as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, demanding no more than the right to vote. By the time King led 25,000 demonstrators singing “We Shall Overcome” into Montgomery, the state capital, on March 24, the president of the United States had introduced the Voting Rights Act. Free at last—to vote. Roll credits.

Yet, just a few months ago, Martin Luther King asked me, “How long until African-American citizens of Alabama—and Mississippi and Georgia—get the unimpeded right to vote?”

Obviously I was not speaking with King Jr.—a bullet stole him from us in 1968. The question was posed by his son, Martin Luther King III. I spent an afternoon at his home in Atlanta, where we pored over the latest evidence that Americans of color were blocked at the doors to the polls in the 2014 midterm elections—by the hundreds of thousands.

As King’s 6-year-old daughter serenaded us with her toy drum set, we dived into a massive, secretive database used by elections officials—almost all of them Republicans—in 28 states. The scheme, called “Interstate Crosscheck,” threatens to disqualify the ballots of over a million voters, overwhelmingly citizens of color.

It took six months for my investigations team, in coordination with Al-Jazeera America, to get its hands on the names of those tagged for the voting rights slaughter.

According to the GOP officials, these citizens had voted twice in the same election, in two different states—a federal crime. As punishment, their mail-in ballots would be junked and their registrations annulled. But no reporters had seen (or, for that matter, asked for) the lists. State officials, the modern-day equivalents of Bull Connor, refused our requests on grounds that these Americans were all suspects in a criminal investigation and therefore the files were confidential.

Nevertheless, we managed to get hunks of the lists—2.1 million names of a total 3.5 million “suspected double voters.”

Who are these criminal voters? A typical example: Kevin Antonio Hayes of Durham, N.C., allegedly voted a second time in Virginia as Kevin Thomas Hayes. The Durham Hayes, however, swears to me that he has never used the alias Thomas or set foot in Virginia. Another: James Elmer Barnes Jr. of Georgia allegedly voted a second time as James Cross Barnes III of Arlington, VA.

The lists go on like that: huge numbers accused solely on the basis of sharing a first and last name with a voter in another state.

It is clear what attracts Republican Katherine Harris wannabes to this absurd method of

identifying fraudulent voters. The prevalence of name-sharing among black Americans is a legacy of slavery. The “Crosscheck” name-match game is also a darn good way of knocking off Hispanic voters. (According to the national census, at least 91.5 percent of Americans named Aguirre are Hispanic and, according to Gallup, two out of three vote Democratic).

I was suspicious—if Kevin Hayes really voted twice, authorities should have arrested him. They should have arrested 589,393 “criminal double voters” in North Carolina alone. But they busted none. Nevertheless, the officials got what they wanted: For example, enough voters of color were blocked, purged and disqualified to help knock a Democrat out of the U.S. Senate this past November.

This situation deeply concerns Martin Luther King III, founder of the Realizing the Dream Foundation. Fifty years after Bloody Sunday and the Voting Rights Act, he said, “The irony is that when you look at Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, where you have significant African-American populations—Mississippi close to 50 percent—those states still have leadership that is totally Republican.”

The black vote should have turned those states solid Democratic blue. What happened?

Meet the New Jim Crow. Fifty years ago, African-Americans were kept from the polls by the threat of beatings and lynchings. Today, Jim Crow has traded in his white sheets for spreadsheets. He’s Dr. James Crow, systems analyst. His method is lynching by laptop.

At the end of the film “Selma” we are told that the brutal, racist county sheriff was tossed out of office by newly enfranchised black voters. True. But today, Dr. James Crow has a magic machine that can reverse the Voting Rights Act.

Here’s one example uncovered by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: On the night of Nov. 5, 2002, it appeared that Democrat Gov. Don Siegelman, the favorite of the African-American voters, had won re-election. But at 11 p.m., the white, Republican elections officials of Baldwin County declared they needed to recount the ballots. The county courthouse doors were locked. No press (or black Democrats) were allowed inside. By dawn, the white officials announced they had corrected a “glitch” in the count. Upon recounting, the tally for Siegelman dropped miraculously by 6,334 votes, handing the race to his opponent.

Could we see the ballots? Of course not; they were simply tallies on computer files. The files had been “corrected”—and Siegelman, the choice of the black voter, was gone.

(Siegelman was warned not to complain. He did—and before long he was imprisoned on corruption charges that Kennedy dismisses as “laughable, ginned up by a cast of crooked GOP attorneys.”)

Purging phantasmagorical “double voters” and finding thousands of votes in magical computer systems are but two of the methods at Dr. James Crow’s disposal. Working with Kennedy, I’ve counted nine sophisticated, racially dubious methods for blocking the black vote, costing—by a conservative estimate—5.9 million Americans their voting rights.

Despite the glorious story of the Selma march, the truth is that the USA and Old Dixie in particular are marching backward over the bridge. Disenfranchisement—a fancy word for ballot-box apartheid—is worsening, especially since June 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court nullified key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

It would be wrong and demeaning to the memories of those who gave their lives to this cause—including the fathers of King and Kennedy—to say that we’ve won no voting rights victories. This weekend we can congratulate ourselves on America’s great strides against racism at the ballot box. But let’s remember that Dr. King had to lead a dangerous march from Selma for voting rights that were supposedly guaranteed a century earlier by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution—rights won after 600,000 Americans fought to their deaths between Bull Run and Gettysburg.

The struggle for civil and human rights did not begin 50 years ago, and it will not end in another 50. It is a centuries-long story of advance and retreat.

And that’s the lesson. The movie’s over, but not The Movement. It is left to us to march over the bridge again. And again. And again.

New Ezell Ford wrongful-death suit Against LAPD alleges race as a motivation

From [HERE] and [HERE] Relatives of a mentally ill Black man shot and killed by police in South L.A. have filed a new wrongful death lawsuit in state court. Ezell Ford’s parents allege police in August killed him while he was unarmed and lying on the ground.

They’re seeking unspecified damages. It’s unclear if this new lawsuit will replace the first complaint the family filed in September in federal court.

The allegations outlined in Friday's lawsuit mirror those Edsell and Tritobia Ford made in a federal lawsuit they filed last fall in connection with the Aug. 11 death of their son, Ezell Ford. The state suit, however, also alleges that the actions of the two officers who shot Ford were "motivated" by the fact that Ford was black and by their "prejudice, disdain and contempt for African Americans or persons of black skin tone."

The federal suit alleges the Los Angeles Police Department maintained policies and practices that allowed racial profiling and the use of excessive force against African Americans. Attorneys representing the two officers denied those claims in a response filed with the court, as did lawyers for the city of Los Angeles.

The attorneys for the officers — identified by the LAPD as Sharlton Wampler, who is Asian American, and Antonio Villegas, who is Latino — did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Ford's death came amid a wave of nationwide protests over the high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of police and was frequently invoked during local demonstrations that stemmed from the killings. Ford died only two days after a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

The state lawsuit filed Friday alleges that the two officers involved in Ford's death used excessive force, were negligent and violated his civil rights when they shot and killed him. Like the federal suit, the state case also names the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD, alleging that the department was also negligent in "hiring, training or failing to supervise" the officers.

Attorney Steven Lerman, who is representing Ford's family, said the goal of filing both lawsuits was "covering all the bases" and allowing a jury to consider several potential violations by the officers. For example, he said, jurors could decide whether the officers intentionally violated Ford's civil rights, as alleged in the federal lawsuit, or that they were negligent, as alleged in the state case.

Ford, 25, was walking to the family's home on West 65th Street shortly after 8 p.m. on Aug. 11, when the two LAPD gang officers got out of their car to speak with him, according to the LAPD's account of the incident. He looked at the officers, walked away and attempted to conceal his hands, police said.

The officers followed Ford to a driveway, where, police said, Ford crouched between a car and a row of bushes. As one of the officers reached for him, Ford forced him to the ground and grabbed his gun, according to police.

The officer yelled to his partner that Ford had his gun, and the partner fired two rounds at Ford, police said. The first officer used a backup weapon to reach around Ford's body and shoot him in the back, leaving a muzzle imprint.

One woman, who said she was a friend of Ford's family, told The Times that she witnessed part of the encounter and saw no struggle between Ford and the officers.

Labor Leader To Immigrants In Selma: ‘Organize Against Racist Laws’

Think Progress

Among the tens of thousands of people who converged on Selma this week to honor the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday were hundreds of immigrants from across the country marching to advocate for their own civil rights.

Dolores Huerta, who organized farmworkers with Cesar Chavez in the 1960s, told a crowd of activists Sunday morning that they must continue to fight.

“Organize, organize, organize,” she said. “We’ve got to be sure we get people elected who will get rid of some of these racist laws they’ve passed and pass laws that will actually support our community.”

In 2011, Alabama passed the one of the harshest immigration enforcement laws in the nation — making everything from seeking work to renting an apartment a crime for undocumented people. It also required the state to publish the names and private information of immigrants unable to prove their legal status. Most of these measures were found to encourage racial profiling and violate constitutional rights.

Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who helped lead the voting rights march 50 years ago and was beaten and tear gassed in Selma, also cited immigrants’ rights as an area that still needs serious work today.

“It is a major civil rights issue to have millions of people living in the shadows,” he told NBC this weekend. “They come here and are called illegal, but there is no such thing as an illegal human being.”

On Sunday, switching between English and Spanish, Huerta praised local activists for organizing against the law and defeating most of it in court, but told them to keep fighting against anti-immigrant proposals and for comprehensive reform.

“Many people may say, ‘I’m not a citizen so I can’t vote.’ But you don’t have to be a citizen to knock on doors, to pass up leaflets, to call people and remind them that not only do they have the right to vote, they have the responsibility to vote, because the people we elect will decide whether our tax dollars go to build more jails or more schools,” she said. “We’re here remembering that people died just because they were registering people to vote. They marched with everything against them and didn’t give up.”

Wearing a shirt showing the Selma march 50 years ago emblazoned with the words “Black and Brown Unity,” Alabama organizer Cornelio Reyes told the crowd that while the community is grateful for the President’s executive action to protect some parents from deportation, millions of people including himself do not qualify.

“It’s time to re-take the path our African American brothers and sisters have taken,” he said. “We know the path is not easy, but if all our communities organize, victory will be certain. As we commemorate 50 years since Bloody Sunday, we are going to cross that bridge too. ” [MORE]

Supreme Court to rule in Florida death penalty case

[JURIST]

The US Supreme Court [official website] on Monday granted certiorari [order list, PDF] in Hurst v. Florida [docket; cert. petition, PDF ] to determine "whether Florida's death sentencing scheme violated the Sixth ... or Eighth Amendment." This court granted certiorari in light of its decision in Ring v. Arizona [opinion], in which it held that a sentencing judge, sitting without a jury, may not "find an aggravating circumstance necessary for imposition of the death penalty." In the case at hand, Timothy Hurst was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for one count of first degree murder. It was found that the murder was "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel," and thus justified the sentence. Although it was found that Hurst suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and thus was of "limited intellectual capacity," the court did not consider this as mitigation, and thus did not assign it any weight.

US declares Oil Rich Venezuela a ‘security threat’ after failed coup attempt

Non-Aligned Media

Reuters reports that on Monday the regime in Washington “declared Venezuela a national security threat and ordered sanctions against seven officials in the worst diplomatic dispute with the oil-rich country.”

Washington’s sanctions come just on the heels of an attempted coup against the revolutionary government in Caracas led by Hugo Chavez’s successor Nicolas Maduro. In late February of this year Maduro expelled three US officials from the country for allegedly plotting with the US-backed opposition to oust him.

In a televised broadcast, Diosdado Cabello, the president of Venezuela’s national assembly, presented evidence of the right-wing coup plot. Computers seized by Venezuelan authorities revealed plans by the opposition to carry out attacks on the Miraflores presidential palace and the headquarters of the news channel teleSUR. [MORE]

Poverty, Not the ‘Teenage Brain’ Account for High Rates of Teen Crime

4th Media

While many blame the “teenage brain” for high rates of teen crime, violence, and driving incidents, an important factor has been ignored: teenagers as a group suffer much higher average poverty rates than do older adults.

A new study out today in SAGE Open finds that teenagers are no more naturally crime-prone than any other group with high poverty rates.

“Within every race and community, adolescents suffer poverty rates two to three times higher than older adults do,” stated study author Mike Males, Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, San Francisco.

“It is astonishing that researchers have compiled decades of theories and claims about teenagers’ supposed risk-taking, impulsiveness, brain deficiencies, and crime-proneness without examining whether these are due to young people’s low socioeconomic status, not young age.” [MORE]

You’re 55 Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist [stats not broken down by race]

BlackListedNews

We previously reported that Americans are 9 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist.

But it turns out that our numbers were incorrect …

This isn’t surprising, given that:

“Reliable estimates of the number of justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States do not exist.” A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included (in Florida) only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media.

The Guardian reports today:

An average of 545 people killed by local and state law enforcement officers in the US went uncounted in the country’s most authoritative crime statistics every year for almost a decade, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The first-ever attempt by US record-keepers to estimate the number of uncounted “law enforcement homicides” exposed previous official tallies as capturing less than half of the real picture. The new estimate – an average of 928 people killed by police annually over eight recent years, compared to 383 in published FBI data – amounted to a more glaring admission than ever before of the government’s failure to track how many people police kill.

The revelation called into particular question the FBI practice of publishing annual totals of “justifiable homicides by law enforcement” – tallies that are widely cited in the media and elsewhere as the most accurate official count of police homicides.

As shown below, that means that you’re 55 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist.

YOU’RE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BE KILLED BY BRAIN-EATING PARASITES, TEXTING WHILE DRIVING, TODDLERS, LIGHTNING, FALLING OUT OF BED, ALCOHOLISM, FOOD POISONING, CHOKING ON FOOD, A FINANCIAL CRASH, OBESITY, MEDICAL ERRORS OR “AUTOEROTIC ASPHYXIATION” THAN BY TERRORISTS

Daniel Benjamin – the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the United States Department of State from 2009 to 2012 – noted last month (at 10:22):

The total number of deaths from terrorism in recent years has been extremely small in the West. And the threat itself has been considerably reduced. Given all the headlines people don’t have that perception; but if you look at the statistics that is the case.

Time Magazine noted in 2013 that the chance of dying in a terrorist attack in the United States from 2007 to 2011, according to Richard Barrett – coordinator of the United Nations al Qaeda/Taliban Monitoring Team – was 1 in 20 million.

Let’s look at specific numbers …

The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011.* That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war.

In contrast, the American agency which tracks health-related issues – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States: