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Police Dept Shamelessly Lists ‘Qualified Immunity’ as a ‘Unique Benefit’ in Job Posting

A police department in Manchester, New Hampshire is in the spotlight this week after issuing a call asking for new officers, and listing “qualified immunity” as one of the “unique benefits” and perks of employment.

“Located less than an hour from Boston, Manchester enjoys proximity to great schools and attractions, the beach, and the White Mountains. The department offers many opportunities to advance and additional unique benefits including qualified immunity. Click the link and apply now!” the post read.

Hours later, the department took down the post. “Earlier today Manchester Police published a recruitment post that referenced qualified immunity. This post was not the place for the mention of qualified immunity and was not appropriate. The post was removed and archived appropriately. As Chief of Police I take full responsibility for this post and the inappropriate mention of qualified immunity,” Chief Allen Aldenberg said in a department Facebook post.

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Innocent Man Locked in Mental Facility, Forcibly Drugged for YEARS Because No One Cared to ID Him

Every time Joshua Spriestersbach tried telling the doctors, nurses, and staff at a state hospital in Hawaii that they had the wrong man, no one listened and his protests were answered with drugs. After nearly three years, the blithering idiots running the hospital finally figured out their blunder and instead of fixing their mistake, they covered it up by quietly kicking Spriestersbach out on the street with only 50 cents to his name.

The Hawaii Innocence project is now representing Spriesterbach and this week they asked the court to correct this innocent man’s life. The filing by the Innocence Project explains how the state was looking for a man named Thomas Castleberry and grabbed the first person they saw instead, Spriesterbach.

According to the report, at the time, Spriesterbach was homeless and hungry and was waiting in a food line in 2017 outside of a Honolulu shelter. The line was long and he fell asleep only to be roused awake by a cop who was arresting him. Spriesterbach though he was being arrested for breaking the city’s ordinance of laying down on the sidewalk but he was sorely mistaken.

That officer falsely claimed that Spriesterbach was Thomas Castleberry, who had a warrant out for his arrest for violating probation in a 2006 drug case. Spriesterbach and Castleberry had never met, yet police and every official involved with Spriesterbach’s wrongful kidnapping claimed he was Castleberry.

According to the Innocence Project, the incompetence of the police and hospital officials reached utterly criminal levels as all they needed to do to figure out that Spriesterbach was not Castleberry was to compare fingerprints or photographs — but none of that was done.

Instead, officials claimed Spriesterbach was insane for telling the state they had the wrong guy and he was committed to a state mental facility in Hawaii.

“Yet, the more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr. Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the H.S.H. staff and doctors and heavily medicated,” the petition said. “It was understandable that Mr. Spriestersbach was in an agitated state when he was being wrongfully incarcerated for Mr. Castleberry’s crime and despite his continual denial of being Mr. Castleberry and providing all of his relevant identification and places where he was located during Mr. Castleberry’s court appearances, no one would believe him or take any meaningful steps to verify his identity and determine that what Mr. Spriestersbach was telling the truth — he was not Mr. Castleberry.”

The incompetence along the way was systemic. Even his public defenders chose to ignore him instead of simply running his fingerprints or looking at a photo.

Luckily, after spending nearly three years being drugged in a cage, Spriesterbach crossed paths with a competent psychiatrist who finally listened to him. According to the Innocence Project, all it took was a simple Google search to verify Spriesterbach’s identity.

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Study Finds Greater Antibody Response In Recovered COVID-19 Patients Than Vaccinated Ones

A new study has found that individuals that have previously contracted COVID-19 show a more potent antibody response than those who were solely vaccinated for the respiratory virus.

Conducted by a research team at Rockefeller University in New York, the analysis found “that between a first (prime) and second (booster) shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, the memory B cells of infection-naïve individuals produced antibodies that evolved increased neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2,” but also that “no additional increase in the potency or breadth of this activity was observed thereafter.”

Meanwhile, researchers determined that not only do recovered COVID-19 patients possess neutralizing antibodies up to a year after infection, but that such infection simultaneously assists in offering protection against developing variants.

“Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year,” the study read. “During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern.”

The analysis later goes on to conclude, “Memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination.”

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The richest and most war-mongering nation on Earth is still addicted to bombing poor, defenseless nations

A nation-state version of a psychopath, the US refuses to give up its addiction to bombing innocent people. In just over a month, it’s bombed Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan – and shows no signs of developing a conscience. 

Kill anything that moves

March 15, 1968 was a normal day in America. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Race riots in Mississippi were entering their fifth day or so. And at the other end of the globe, in Vietnam, soldiers of the Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, were being briefed by their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, about the exploits of the next day, which would later be dubbed the “My Lai massacre” – where 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were systematically butchered in over four hours, not counting a lunch break the soldiers took in the middle of the carnage. The orders were clear and explicit: the soldiers were to kill every single human being, burn all houses, kill all animals, destroy all food supplies and poison all wells. 

As the briefing progressed, one incident stuck in the mind of artillery forward observer James Flynn, which he would recall years later. A soldier, whose name has been lost to history, expressed some apprehension about the wide-ranging nature of the orders. “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” he asked naively. 

“Kill everything that moves,” came the reply.

Kill everything that moves. This same phrase would be repeated almost verbatim two years later by none other than Henry Kissinger himself while relaying US leader Richard Nixon’s orders: “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

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America’s Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted The People They Claimed To Serve

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in June that he wanted to understand “white rage,” why “thousands of people” tried “to assault this building and … overturn the Constitution of the United States of America.”

If Milley really wants to understand the “rage” of the American people he should start by asking why he and his fellow generals can’t win any wars. As a Marine Corps officer who served at the tail end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I saw firsthand the rapid ideological transformation pervading the military in the wake of these disasters in the Middle East.

Unable to win wars overseas, the military’s leaders went “woke.” Currying ideological favor is easier than trying to end insurgencies. It is also necessary if military leaders want to keep the gravy train of taxpayer funding. Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy and his devastating critique of George Bush and Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election put the military-industrial complex on high alert. Trump was pushing the American right-wing away from the expensive and unending foreign interventions the military-industrial complex needed in order to justify its existence.

For too long, America’s generals have relied on a “stab in the back” thesis to justify their failure on the battlefield. The narrative set in after Vietnam and has calcified today. Former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster tweeted on July 8 in regards to the sweeping march of the Taliban that the “US media is finally reporting on the transformation of Afghanistan after their disinterest and defeatism helped set conditions for capitulation and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

McMaster’s attempt to deflect blame for military failure on an insufficiently obsequious media is unacceptable. He and his fellow generals knew full well that Afghanistan was unstable and that our strategy wasn’t working. Instead of speaking up, they lied to the public and then jumped into the private sector to reap the reward of misbegotten trust.

Milley and his fellow generals deserve, richly, to feel the full weight of the American people’s anger. For 20 years, these leaders lied consistently to the American people and their political masters about the wars in the Middle East. In December 2019, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post published a devastating series of articles on America’s failure in Afghanistan. Using 600 “lessons learned” interviews with top military staff and diplomatic personnel collected by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Whitlock illustrated just how pervasive the gut rot in America’s military really was.

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Ike and Leahy Were Right: The Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were Wrong

In the summer of 1945, President Harry Truman found himself searching for a decisive blow against the Empire of Japan. Despite the many Allied victories during 1944 and 1945, Truman believed Emperor Hirohito would urge his generals to fight on. America suffered 76,000 casualties at the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Truman administration anticipated that a prolonged invasion of mainland Japan would result in even more devastating numbers. Even so, plans were drawn up to invade Japan under the name Operation Downfall.

The estimates for the potential carnage were sobering; the Joint Chiefs of Staff pegged the expected casualties at 1.2 million. Staff for Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur both expected over 1,000 casualties per day, while the personnel at the Department of the Navy thought the totals would run as high as four million, with the Japanese incurring up to 10 million of their own. The Los Angeles Times was a bit more optimistic, projecting one million casualties.

With those numbers, it’s no wonder the US opted to (literally) take the nuclear option by dropping Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6, and then Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9. Japan formally surrendered 24 days later, sparing potentially millions of US servicemen and vindicating the horrifying-yet-necessary bombings.

At least this is the common narrative we’re all taught in grade school. But like so many historical narratives, it’s an oversimplification and historically obtuse.

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