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Are Police Inherently Less Competent Than Citizens?

Qualified immunity says some people should be held to a lower legal standard than everyone else under Anglo-American common law, mostly government officials in their formal duties—but also stock holders for decisions made by their companies. The idea behind it is that stockholders and government officials generally don’t have management control over policy decisions and usually shouldn’t be held responsible for those general policies.

Qualified immunity for police is fundamentally different. It says that police aren’t responsible enough to be held to the high legal standard which we hold other citizen-amateurs in the exact same situations.

Consider the duel case of a police officer and a citizen with a concealed-carry license coming upon a woman being raped in an alley. Qualified immunity holds the police officer to a lower legal standard than the citizen in any intervention to stop the ongoing rape.

The argument for granting police qualified immunity from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits is that they have to face deadly situations often, sometimes on a daily basis, whereas other citizens may only face the same split-second, life-threatening decision once or twice in a lifetime.

I’ve always found this to be a strange argument. Why is it that the more experience they have, the less competent a policeman becomes? In what other profession does a person become less competent as they gain more experience? Do carpenters become less competent with experience? Engineers? Doctors? Politicians?

Okay, you’ve got me there on that last one.

But it seems only when dealing with government employees does someone in a profession become less efficient and less competent as they obtain more experience.

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Both Parties Always Serve the Military-Industrial Complex

In 2023, despite skyrocketing inflation, debt, as well as rising sociopolitical divisions, leadership among both the Republicans and Democrats will always agree that substantially more US taxpayer money, never less, should be poured into the military industrial complex, according to an analysis by Judd Legum.

Case in point, the debt ceiling agreement established between the Joe Biden administration and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy caps military spending at a record $886 billion, exactly matching Biden’s mammoth budget request.

The GOP was seeking large increases in military spending and would only entertain cuts in non-military expenditures. The agreed upon war budget represents a 3.3% increase over the current year. The tentative deal still needs to make its way through Congress, where hawks will fiercely oppose any and all military spending caps.

Half of this money will go to defense contractors with Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics receiving the lion’s share. Some of these arms industry giants are currently ensnared in a massive “price gouging” scandal, with a bipartisan group of Senators demanding an investigation be opened at the Pentagon’s highest levels.

Legum highlights the lack of any “peace dividend.” after the disastrous 20 year war and occupation in Afghanistan. “This military spending increase has occurred even as Biden ended the war in Afghanistan, the military’s longest-running and most costly foreign intervention… Each year, the costs go up dramatically,” Legum writes.

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The Leader of the Gun Church That Worships With AR-15s Is Now a MAGA Rapper

The leader of a controversial religious sect that worships with AR-15s has been taking notes from the niche but growing music subgenre dubbed “MAGA Rap.” 

Pastor Hyung-Jin “Sean” Moon, the flamboyant figurehead of the Rod of Iron Ministries (also known as The Sanctuary Church) has a YouTube channel where he’s spinning his far-right sermons into rap videos. (YouTube removed the channel shortly after VICE News reached out for comment). 

Moon’s rap name is “King Bullethead,” and like others in the genre, he’s looking to spread far-right ideological positions through questionable rhymes and low-budget, bombastic music videos, often while taking aim at the LGBTQ community. 

In “Eggplant Emoji,” Moon appears in a rural setting, clad in camouflage, wearing reflective Oakley-esque sunglasses, a crown of gold bullets balanced atop his bald head. He wears skeleton gloves and waves around a gold-plated AR-15. 

A group of heavily-armed church members dressed in patriotic colors stand behind Moon, as he fast-raps about how children are being brainwashed into joining the LGBTQ community and praises conservative women who discriminate against trans women. “They got no shlong, ding dong, hot dog, johnny eggplant emoji/ they got no thang swinging between their legs and making them horny,” he raps. “Conservative women knows that only God can make ‘em man and women/ Love Jesus, family, guns, USA they be lovin’.”

In “Big MAGA 20,” Moon appears at the same desk where he usually delivers his rambling hours-long sermons (these days, they’re uploaded to Rumble since the church was kicked off YouTube years ago for spreading election and COVID-19 disinformation). 

“They can’t stop us so they silence, censor and act like Communists,” he raps. “Politicians lie to get their power and form their little cliques/Politics is a combination of the words ‘poly’ and ‘ticks’/‘Poly’ means more than one, a few, a group of cliques, and ticks are parasites that suck your blood until the very last drip.”

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More vaccines, more infections: Devastating Cleveland study passes peer review

The devastating Cleveland study that found the more COVID vaccines individuals receive, the more likely they are to be infected with COVID — has passed peer review. 

Researchers included over 50,000 participants in their study, all who were employees at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

“The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with higher numbers of prior vaccine doses in our study, was unexpected,” researchers stated.

In January, prior to the study passing peer review, several vaccine skeptics disseminated the alarming “pre-print” study. Twitter tagged posts about the pre-print with “Community Notes” to inform social media users that it hadn’t yet passed peer review.

But now that the study has been peer reviewed, it’s officially a scientific finding that vaccines not only don’t help prevent infection, but they make getting infected more likely — an astonishing hit to the so-called effective vaccines that’s known as “negative efficacy.” 

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Taiwan Receives Stinger Missiles as Part of Free Military Aid Package from US

Taiwanese media has reported that Taiwan received delivery of Raytheon-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from the US as part of a $500 million package of free military aid that Washington has been preparing for Taipei.

According to Taipei Times, the Stingers arrived in a Boeing 747 on Thursday night. So far, the US and Taiwanese governments have not confirmed the delivery, but both sides said recently that the $500 million in weapons would be sent soon.

The $500 million in free weapons is being pulled from US military stockpiles using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), the primary way the Biden administration has been arming Ukraine. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes $1 billion in PDA for Taiwan.

The military aid for Taiwan is unprecedented as the US has sold weapons to the island since severing relations with Taipei in 1979 to open up with China but hasn’t provided arms free of charge.

The NDAA also included $2 billion for Taiwan under the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program, which gives foreign governments money to purchase US arms. But the FMF funds did not make it past the appropriations committee.

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U.S. Faces Massive Shortage Of Prescription Drugs

Record drug shortages across the United States are delaying potentially lifesaving treatments for thousands of patients around the country.

Congress and the White House are scrambling to address a shortfall in prescription drugs — everything from painkillers to cancer treatments. 

“Hospitals all across the country, on a regular basis –sometimes weekly — have to review which drugs are in short supply or not available that week.” Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) said in an interview with MSNBC.

The shortage is being most acutely felt in the generic drug market, which accounts for nearly 90% of U.S. prescriptions. The exact number of drugs being affected depends on who you ask — according to a Senate report at the end of last year, the U.S. reached a peak level of 295 active drug shortages, although as of March, the FDA claims there are 130. The American Society of Health reports 301 drug shortages as of the first quarter of 2023.

According to the FDA, the average drug shortage lasts for about 18 months, but some shortages have stretched on for over 15 years.

Some of the medicines that have been in short supply include Adderall, Tylenol, various antibiotics including amoxicillin, saline mixtures used in IVs, and almost two dozen kinds of anti-cancer drugs.

That last group is especially troubling because, unlike some other drugs in short supply, patients don’t have a lot of alternate options for treatment. Chemotherapies for breast cancers, ovarian cancers, lung cancers, bladder cancers, and some forms of leukemia have been delayed or disrupted, sometimes with fatal consequences.

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Admitted Child Predator Cop Has Conviction Thrown Out Only to Be Busted AGAIN, Hit with 50 Charges

In a damning revelation that unearths the shocking depths of institutional corruption and an absolute travesty of justice, a former police officer, Alexander Salterio, with a history of heinous crimes against children, finds himself embroiled in fresh legal trouble. Salterio previously admitted to a slew of horrific crimes, pleaded guilty, and was mandated to register as a sex offender in 2019. After receiving an insidious amount of blue privilege — despite his disgusting admissions — he is now facing a fresh wave of 50 new counts, this time for posing as a child online to solicit children and for raping his 10-year-old foster child.

In 2019, Salterio, then aged 33, stood before the Douglas County Circuit Court and confessed to a series of monstrous acts. His charges ranged from deploying a child in the display of explicit sexual content, inciting child sex abuse, sexual abuse, and aggravated identity theft. His nefarious scheme involved adopting the guise of a teenage boy on Facebook to solicit explicit photographs from underage girls, in addition to the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl.

His reprehensible acts only came to light after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tipped off the Oregon Justice Department regarding child pornography circulating on Facebook. Once the investigation was initiated, the net of guilt quickly closed around Salterio. He was arrested on February 8, 2019, and subsequently resigned from his position as a Myrtle Creek police officer the next day, a position he had held since August 2017.

This story raises severe questions about the vetting procedures for individuals who are trusted with the responsibility of caring for vulnerable children. A lawsuit of $2.5 million was filed on behalf of the 10-year-old victim, accusing the Department of Human Services and the City of Myrtle Creek of negligence and violation of the child’s constitutional rights. The suit alleged that as a police officer, Salterio was not properly vetted for his eligibility as a foster parent. Worse, even when the child welfare agency discovered Salterio was under criminal investigation, they shockingly continued to let the child remain in his care until his arrest.

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WHO Group Co-Chair Calls For “Prioritizing Actions That May Restrict Individual Liberties”

During a meeting last week, a co-chair of a World Health Organization (WHO) working group that’s focused on international law amendments that would increase the WHO’s powers, took the power grab a step further by urging members to prioritize “actions that may restrict individual liberties.”

The co-chair of the WHO’s working group on amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005), Dr. Abdullah Assiri, made the comments during a strategic roundtable at the seventy-sixth World World Health Assembly (an annual meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body).

During the strategic roundtable, WHO members discussed the international pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations — two instruments that will collectively expand the WHO’s powers to target “misinformation,” increase its surveillance powers, and push global vaccine passports.

Assiri provided an update on the WHO’s progress with the IHR amendments before suggesting that individual liberties should be curtailed by this unelected health agency.

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Alleged Russian ‘Spy’ Whale Reappears Off Sweden’s Coast

A harness-wearing Beluga whale discovered in Norway’s far northern region of Finnmark in 2019 has reappeared off Sweden’s coast. It’s believed the Russian military trained the whale. 

Sebastian Strand, a marine biologist with the OneWhale organization, a group that tracks the beluga whale named “Hvaldimir,” said he was recently spotted in Hunnebostrand, off Sweden’s southwestern coast. 

“We don’t know why he has sped up so fast right now,” especially since he is moving “very quickly away from his natural environment,” Strand told AFP News. 

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CIA Officers Admit the Agency Ran Drug Trafficking Operations

In 1991, during the 1st Persian Gulf War, investigative journalist Douglas Valentine traveled to Thailand and interviewed a group of legendary CIA officers who had helped run the secret war in Laos and other clandestine operations in the Indochina Wars.

Among them was Anthony Poshepny (aka Tony Poe), the prototype for Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic 1979 film Apocalypse Now—a covert warrior who went off the deep end and established a secret jungle enclave where enemy body parts were displayed.[1]

Now 66, Poshepny lived at the time in a big, beautiful home in a fancy neighborhood in Udon Thani, Thailand, home of a major U.S. air base during the Indochina Wars used for carrying out secret bombing missions over Laos.

Poshepny owned a lumber and security consultant business and a sugar and tapioca farm; he was considered around town to be a friendly guy but a belligerent drunk.

Poshepny’s father had been a naval officer and he had become desensitized to violence serving with the Marines in the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.

During a meeting with Poshepny, who suffered from diabetes and cirrhosis from years of heavy drinking, Valentine noticed that he was missing two middle fingers. Poshepny also liked to tell obscene jokes.

He told Valentine that he was proud of things he had done with political implications, notably his involvement in a failed CIA coup against Indonesian socialist leader Sukarno in 1958, where he and CIA officer “Pat” Landry supplied mutinous military forces in oil-rich Sumatra with M16s and thousands of rounds of ammunition. “It was an adventure,” Poshepny said.

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