Blog

San Francisco reparations panel pitches $5M — each — to black residents

A San Francisco panel studying reparations has proposed a one-time payment of $5 million to each black resident of the city deemed eligible as recompense for the “decades of harm they have experienced,” according to a report on Monday.

“A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population … and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that​ ​Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and​ ​unintended harms perpetuated by City policy​,” the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee said in a draft report issued last month, Fox News Digital reported. ​

The proposal could cost the city, which has a 2022-2023 budget of $14 billion, roughly $50 billion, the Daily Mail reported.

The committee also proposed wiping out all debts associated with educational, personal, credit card and payday loans for black households.

The 15-member pan​el was established by San Francisco supervisors in May 2021. A separate task force created by California’s legislature is also studying reparations.

The city group’s report says: “Reparation​ ​must be adequate, effective, prompt, and should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered.​”​

Keep reading

Police Officers, Including the Chief, Protected Sex Trafficking Ring In Exchange for Sex With Victims—Lawsuit

Police officers in America, we are told, are here to protect the public and put people in jail who cause harm to others. All too often, however, as the following case illustrates, police officers become the ones from which society needs protection. The Fairfax County Police department is the perfect example. Instead of protecting women from dangerous sex traffickers, officers were actually participating in the trafficking and protecting the bad guys while preying on the young women.

According to a federal lawsuit by prominent civil rights attorney Victor Glasberg, the corruption within the department ran all the way up to the department’s chief, Ed Roessler. Officers were allowed to have their way with the sex trafficking victims in exchange for protecting the modern-day slave owners.

Glasberg filed the suit on behalf of a woman who was ensnared in the sex trafficking ring, who had been taken from Costa Rica and trafficked by the group.

The trial for the lawsuit is underway this week and the victim, known only as Jane Doe, has given dramatic testimony — forced to describe the injuries she suffered while held captive in a Virginia-based sex trafficking ring.

“They are with the force of the law. They’re here to protect us. They have to not be clients,” Doe said Thursday, according to the AP.

The woman was lured from her home in Costa Rica with promises of a job that did not involve sex. However, when she arrived in the US, the traffickers took her passport and she was forced into commercial sex.

Keep reading

The United States Thinks It’s the Exception to the Rules of War

Let me start with a confession: I no longer read all the way through newspaper stories about the war in Ukraine. After years of writing about war and torture, I’ve reached my limit. These days, I just can’t pore through the details of the ongoing nightmare there. It’s shameful, but I don’t want to know the names of the dead or examine images caught by brave photographers of half-exploded buildings, exposing details—a shoe, a chair, a doll, some half-destroyed possessions—of lives lost, while I remain safe and warm in San Francisco. Increasingly, I find that I just can’t bear it.

And so I scan the headlines and the opening paragraphs, picking up just enough to grasp the shape of Vladimir Putin’s horrific military strategy: the bombing of civilian targets like markets and apartment buildings, the attacks on the civilian power grid, and the outright murder of the residents of cities and towns occupied by Russian troops. And these aren’t aberrations in an otherwise lawfully conducted war. No, they represent an intentional strategy of terror, designed to demoralize civilians rather than to defeat an enemy military. This means, of course, that they’re also war crimes: violations of the laws and customs of war as summarized in 2005 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The first rule of war, as laid out by the ICRC, requires combatant countries to distinguish between (permitted) military and (prohibited) civilian targets. The second states that “acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population”—an all-too-on-target summary of Russia’s war-making these last 10 months—“are prohibited.” Violating that prohibition is a crime.

Keep reading

‘Dark Side Of Davos’ Revealed As Global Elite Bookings For Sex Workers Soar

This week, global elites who are supposedly tackling the world’s problems, such as ‘climate change,’ at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, will also be partying. 

Demand for sex workers by business tycoons and world leaders surges during the five-day summit. 

One escort named “Liana” told the German newspaper Bild that she dresses in business attire to blend into the crowd of elites while at the summit. She said her client is an American who attends the meeting. She charges 700 euros per hour and 2,300 euros for the whole night. 

She sheds light on the ‘dark side of Davos’, telling Bild that demand for prostitutes skyrockets during the meeting. An escort service also confirmed sex workers would be very busy this week:

“Bosses book escorts in the hotel suite for themselves and their employees,” a manager of an escort service told the Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten. The manager told the sex workers that their services would be in high demand for the next several days. 

Keep reading

A Sheriff in Louisiana Has Been Destroying Records of Deputies’ Alleged Misconduct for Years

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana has been unlawfully destroying its deputies’ disciplinary records for at least 10 years, according to records provided by state officials responsible for overseeing the retention of records by state, parish and local agencies.

The finding comes at a time when the sheriff’s office is facing multiple lawsuits involving allegations of excessive force, racial discrimination and wrongful death at the hands of Jefferson Parish deputies. Attorneys have accused Sheriff Joe Lopinto of failing to discipline deputies and a lack of transparency when it comes to releasing records that might shed light on their history of complaints and disciplinary action.

Keep reading

“Distasteful Masterclass In Hypocrisy”: Elites Swarm Davos In Private Jets To Discuss Climate Crisis

The annual conference of the World Economic Forum begins today in Davos, Switzerland. Global elites landed in luxurious private jets over the last few days in airports around Davos to discuss important global challenges, such as climate change, behind closed doors. 

“The rich and powerful are swarming to Davos to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors using the most unequal and polluting form of transport: private jets,” Klara Maria Schenk, transport campaigner for Greenpeace’s European mobility campaign, told news website Politics.co.uk. 

Greenpeace International published a new report that showed 1,040 private jets flew in and out of airports around Davos for last year’s meeting, causing CO2 emissions from private jets to increase four times more versus a weekly average.

“Given that 80% of the world’s population has never even flown, but suffers from the consequences of climate-damaging aviation emissions, and that the WEF claims to be committed to the 1.5°C Paris Climate Target, this annual private jet bonanza is a distasteful masterclass in hypocrisy. Private jets must be consigned to history if we are to have a green, just and safe future for all. So-called world leaders must lead by example and ban private jets and useless short-haul flights,” added Schenk.

Keep reading

MLK Assassination Exposed as Conspiracy of ‘Governmental Agencies & Others’ in Court Victory

As the world remembers the life, and death, of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., one little-known fact regarding his assassination is that in 1999 the family of Dr. King won a civil lawsuit against Loyd Jowers and others, including governmental agencies, for the wrongful death of King in the case of the King Family versus Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators.

According to a New York Times report from 1999:

A jury in a civil suit brought by the family of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. decided today that a retired Memphis cafe owner was part of a conspiracy in the 1968 killing of Dr. King.

The jury’s decision means it did not believe that James Earl Ray, who was convicted of the crime, fired the shot that killed Dr. King.

After four weeks of testimony and one hour of deliberation, the jury in the wrongful-death case found that Loyd Jowers as well as ”others, including governmental agencies” had been part of a conspiracy. The jury awarded the King family the damages they had sought: $100, which the family says it will donate to charity.

The family has long questioned Mr. Ray’s conviction and hoped the suit would change the legal and historical record of the assassination.

”This is a vindication for us,” said Dexter King, the youngest son of Dr. King.

He said he hoped history books would be rewritten to reflect this version of the assassination.

The 1999 civil court trial is the only trial ever conducted regarding the assassination of Dr. King, and provides unique insights that had, for decades, been kept from the public. While a civil court trial uses a preponderance of evidence standard, rather than a reasonable doubt standard, there is no mistaking the dark picture painted by the evidence over the course of the trial.

King family friend and attorney William F. Pepper won the civil trial, which found ‘US governmental agencies’ guilty of being part of a conspiracy that resulted in the wrongful death/assassination of Dr. King.

Keep reading

BIDEN USED CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ACCUSATION AGAINST CARTER CIA NOMINEE

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN and his supporters have sought to downplay the significance of the improperly handled and stored classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank where Biden maintained an office. The documents are believed to relate to his time as vice president under Barack Obama. But then it emerged that another batch of classified documents was recovered from Biden’s personal garage at his home in Delaware. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter.

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters have defended his transfer of classified materials to his resort at Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the president had authority to declassify the materials. That case is also the subject of a federal investigation.

It is a barely concealed secret in Washington, D.C., that for decades, elite politicians have engaged in some form of bending or breaking the rules on classified documents — in some cases for plausibly benign uses as writing memoirs. Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser Sandy Berger stole documents from the National Archives in 2003 by stuffing them inside his clothing and then destroyed some classified materials. He claimed he wanted to review the documents to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Gen. David Petraeus was forced to resign as CIA director in 2012 after it was revealed he had improperly handled classified materials, including taking some to his home and sharing them with his biographer with whom he was having an affair.

While there have been cases where criminal charges have been brought — Berger was fined $50,000 by a federal judge and lost his security clearance, and Petraeus got two years probation and a $100,000 fine — it is rare for a high-profile figure to face any meaningful criminal consequences for such actions. That, of course, is not the case with whistleblowers — including Reality Winner, Jeffrey Sterling, Terry Albury, and Daniel Hale — who have been aggressively prosecuted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

The revelation that Biden illicitly stored classified materials, including in his garage, is a grave embarrassment to the president, particularly in light of the fact that Democrats have hammered away at Trump for months over the classified documents he retained at Mar-a-Lago. But there is also a relevant story from Biden’s past that bears mentioning.

Keep reading

Scientists Redirect Lightning Strikes Using a Weather-controlling Super Laser

Scientists in France have created a way to divert lightning strikes using a weather-controlling super laser.

Researchers with the Polytechnic Institute of Paris guided the strikes from thunderclouds to places where they don’t cause damage. The team says the new technique could save power stations, airports, launchpads, and other buildings from disaster.

The system creates a virtual lightning rod, metal conductors that intercept flashes and guide their currents into the ground.

“The findings extend the current understanding of laser physics in the atmosphere and may aid in the development of novel lightning protection strategies,” says corresponding author Dr. Aurelien Houard, according to a statement from SWNS.

The five-ton device is about the size of a large car and fires up to a thousand pulses per second. The scientists installed it near a telecommunications tower in the Swiss Alps – which is struck by lightning around 100 times a year.

Keep reading