#1
I've been wondering for a long time why there have been so few instances like this. There is tremendous public anger at the use of SWAT home invasions that far too often target either innocent people or those involved in petty and non-violent offenses.
Break in while screaming, kill any dogs, put family face down, handcuffed, with guns to their heads while screaming threats at them and demanding information, no matter if they are young, elderly, handicapped, naked, whatever.
Then utterly trash home, emptying food containers into a big pile, tearing out fixtures and plumbing, punching holes in drywall and ceilings, clothes, drawers, confiscating any currency greater than $100. Then perhaps "arresting" property if any illegal drugs are found.
Refuse any admission of wrongdoing, apology, or repair when in the wrong, demanding an expensive lawsuit for any compensation. Always exonerate officers clearly in the wrong for wrongdoing after an internal police investigation.
It would be hard to imagine more tyrannical practices short of burning down the building after. It all comes across as little more than brigandage.
#2
What, the state fail to make it clear who is in charge and who is not? Admit an honest error, let alone malicious wrongdoing, under color of authority? Ever? Perish the thought...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/23/2012 11:58 Comments ||
Top||
#3
'Moose, you left out the destruction of official and private recordings, altering of official evidence and legal records & amending of the history of how / if the 'search warrant' was obtained prior to the disasters you so well described.
Or, as they said in the bad old days, "The King can do no wrong."
DeLorean Motor Co., Inc. has unveiled the DeLorean EV, an electric car that marries the legendary Back to the Future DeLorean automobile of the 1980s with a lithium-ion-based, DC-powered, electric drivetrain of today.
"It turns out the DeLorean is a perfect platform for electrification," noted Chris Anthony, CEO of Flux Power, Inc. and Epic Electric Vehicles, both of which worked with DeLorean Motors to develop the powertrain for the new vehicle. "It's well designed, it's lightweight, it never rusts, and it has a design aesthetic that's meant to blow you away."
Surprisingly, the new DeLorean EV is not a publicity stunt. DeLorean Motors, which has serviced, restored and sold DeLoreans since 1995, plans to begin selling the converted EVs in 2013. Interested parties are already said to be lining up to reserve vehicles, which are expected to cost between $90,000 to $100,000.
"We've been surprised by the reaction," said James Espey, vice president of DeLorean Motor Co., in an interview with Design News. "It's killed our web site twice and the phones have been ringing non-stop."
DeLorean has been working on the idea for about four years. Because the company has a 40,000-square-foot warehouse stocked with more than a million parts, its executives fixed on the idea of using the parts in a new, electrically-powered version of the car. Plans are to build between 350 and 400 electric DeLoreans, based on the company's current inventory of parts.
"Our primary business has been parts, service, and restoration," Espey told us. "We've literally got millions of nuts, bolts, and washers. We've got seats, wheels, brakes, and transmissions. It's all here in the building. And the best way to make money off those parts is to assemble them into cars again."
#10
Lithium batteries are currently greatly restricted by their anode materials. Several companies are working on silicon based anodes. I would suggest waiting for silicon-lithium batteries to become commercially available before investing in an all-electric car.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/23/2012 15:57 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Mike, I will wait for the 500 mile long retractible power cord before I buy an all electric car.
Posted by: Grunter in Sydney ||
01/23/2012 18:23 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Grunter,
Yes, I feel the same way; today.
Consider that while petrol (gasoline) has a high energy density, internal combustion engines only use about 25% of that energy. At 10X the charge density, silicon-lithium batteries come close to gasoline's usable energy density. Most power plants on the electric grid are idling at night. If cars could be charged only between midnight and say, 5AM, you wouldn't have to build more power plants. Silicon-Lithium batteries have a fast recharge cycle since so much electric charges can be moved per unit of time. If you had to "fill-up" during the day, it could be done during lunch.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/23/2012 18:56 Comments ||
Top||
amongst them
fileserve filesonic, videoobb, videozer, filejungle, filepost, and uploadstation.
http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/65920166.html (update on sites that are down)
filesharers/hackers threatening retaliation...
Quote from http://avaxhome.ws/avaxhome_news/The_storm.html
'Posted By: nigrrrrrrr Date: 23 Jan 2012 00:47:16
Our hacker brothers should engineer a "Take Down the Planet Week" to teach these SOPA/PIPA scum sucking fascists a fucking lesson! My skills are today pretty rusty to be of any help, but we have nex-gen geniuses that can easily figure out how to completely shut down the RIAA, govt., MPAA etc. systems and starve them from the net for a week.
Everyone must understand WE ARE AT WAR!!! against the powers that serve evil. Evil must be used against itself! A lesson should be delivered! When this NWO really ratchets up, hackers will be the last hope for a free mankind... and free hot babes kind too. '
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] State- owned Air Zim-bob-we has been placed under judicial management after its debt rose to $140 million leaving it facing possible liquidation.
On Friday, the High Court appointed a judicial manager and barred the Air Zim-bob-we board from any involvement with the company after unpaid workers sought an intervention from the courts.
A lawyer representing the Air Zim-bob-we workers, Mr Caleb Mucheche told the state-owned Sunday Mail newspaper the High Court order was a prelude to the liquidation of the national airline.
He said the airline had failed to pay workers since January 2009 and had accrued arrears of up to $35 million by the end of last month.
"Since the court has appointed a judicial manager it means that this is a prelude to liquidation," he said.
"The judicial manager will now move in and the current Air Zim-bob-we board will have to step aside.
"The judicial manager will assess if Air Zim-bob-we is still a going entity but as the way things stand all is not well, he is likely to recommend liquidation.
"That is the process. Whenever a judicial manager comes in, the next step is liquidation."
Air Zim-bob-we also owes millions of dollars to service providers and other supplies.
It was forced to suspend flights to London and Johannesburg early this month after two of its planes were impounded at South Africa's OR International Airport and UK's Gatwick Airport over debts.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
A Saudi woman who defied a driving ban in the kingdom was injured and her companion killed when their car overturned in the northern Hael province, a police spokesman said on Monday.
"One woman was immediately killed and her companion who was driving the car was hospitalised after she suffered several injuries" when their four-wheel-drive vehicle overturned late on Saturday, said police spokesman Abdulaziz al-Zunaidi.
How did the vehicle overturn: perhaps it was flipped over by hard boyz from the Committee for the Protection of Virtue?
Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive. However, they get behind the wheel in desert regions away from the capital.
There have been several incidents reported in recent years of women being killed in accidents while driving despite the ban, one of a host of restrictions imposed on women in the kingdom.
In November 2010, a Saudi who defied the driving ban was killed along with three of her 10 female passengers when her car overturned in a crash.
[Bangla Daily Star] A Dhaka court yesterday summoned BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... and three others to appear before it on February 14 in connection with the Zia Charitable Trust graft case.
Judge Mohammad Zohurul Haque of the Senior Special Judge's Court will decide on the day whether the charges brought against the accused will be taken into cognisance.
On January 16, the Anti-Corruption Commission pressed charges against Khaleda and three others, accusing them of abusing power to set up a charitable organization named after late president Ziaur Rahman.
The other accused are Abul Harris Chowdhury, political secretary to the former prime minister, Khaleda Zia; his assistant personal secretary (APS) Ziaul Islam Munna; and Monirul Islam Khan, APS to former Dhaka City Corporation mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka.
According to the charge sheet submitted by ACC Assistant Director Harunur Rashid, investigation officer of the case, the four accused, in collaboration with each other, realised over Tk 2.17 crore from unknown sources in the name of establishing Shaheed Zia Charitable Trust.
The charge sheet also points out irregularities in spending over Tk 1.24 crore in the process of purchasing a piece of land for the trust.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that the use of a GPS device to monitor one suspect's car over a long period of time qualifies as a search under the Fourth Amendment -- an outcome that could have legal ripple effects on law enforcement reliance on location tracking for investigations. Unanimously. That qualifies as a beatdown.
The decision came in the case of United States v. Jones, a fight between suspect Antoine Jones and federal prosecutors over evidence that investigators obtained while building a case against him on drug trafficking and other charges.
The federal government argued it could track for 28 days a vehicle Jones used -- even though investigators' initial warrant expired and the tracker had been installed out of state -- because Jones traveled on public roads. I wonder if they would argue so forcefully in front of Washington and Jefferson. I wonder if they would argue so forcefully if it was Maxine Waters' car...
That argument had split lower courts, but the justices on Monday held that the government's actions ultimately constituted a search requiring a warrant. All nine justices agreed, albeit with different justifications. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion.
The case had been widely regarded as a major legal test of electronic surveillance and digital privacy. It hands a key defeat to the Obama administration, as lawyers at the Justice Department have defended vigorously their use of location tracking writ large.
In 2004, the FBI and D.C. police began investigating Jones, a night club owner, for trafficking narcotics. Authorities applied in 2005, before a D.C. court, to track the car owned by Jones's wife. According to the court, the warrant was issued with a 10-day time horizon.
But authorities did not install it until the 11th day, and they did it outside of Washington, D.C. They ultimately tracked Jones's movements for 28 days, collecting evidence that led to a number of charges on possession and more. With Jones facing a life sentence, a legal battle ensued over whether the GPS evidence was admissible in those proceedings. The Supreme Court took the case last year.
In arguments, the government contended that vehicles traveling on public roads lack a reasonable expectation of privacy, relying on a 1983 case involving the placement of a so-called beeper in a container that police tracked. But the argument was met with skepticism before the court, which noted the great advances in location tracking technology in over two decades.
Sotomayer said 4th Amendment, but specifically applied "usurpation of property" (his vehicle), adding to the general agreement. However, she added mention of non-usurpation through electronic means as still covered, though with very little precedent. Foreshadowing?
#2
Sounds to me like the police pretty much made the Court's decision for them; IIUC they actually got a warrant to place the tracker, but it was for DC and a certain time frame, but they placed it outside DC and outside the time frame. Made it hard for them to consistently claim they didn't need a warrant.
#3
Good - now iff only the SCOTUS can make a similar decision about Govt-Public non-consensual viewing, reading, stoppage of transmittal, + even [text-in-process] ALTERING, etc. of Personal Emails = aka Private Correspondence.
* FYI WAFF > POLICE STATE USA + NDAA: CREATING AMERICAN TERRORISTS.
Lets not fergit various forms of violent Sectarianism, Anarchies, Intrigues + perhaps ultimately CIVIL WAR???
["THE NIGHT THEY DROVE OLE' DIXIE DOWN" = SONG here].
[Iran Press TV] U.S. Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who suffered severe wounds after being shot in the head during an liquidation attempt outside an Arizona supermarket in January 2010, announced her resignation from Congress Sunday.
In a video posted on her Facebook page, Giffords, speaking in a carefully enunciated, yet halting, manner, explained that she is stepping down from the office she held since 2007 to focus on recovering from the wounds inflicted in the attack.
"I have more work to do on my recovery," Giffords said in the video. "So to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week."
Giffords' announcement comes more than two years after she was shot in the head by a lone gunman outside a Tucson, Ariz., supermarket as she was holding a constituent's meeting. The rampage left six people dead and 13 others maimed, including Giffords.
According to officials in Washington, her resignation is expected to take effect on Monday.
According to this source, it will be effective after the State of the Union address, which makes me think she wants to attend that as her final act as a member of Congress. Best of luck to her in her recovery.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
My brother, just today, sent me an email stating that the Darwin awards had been announced. I then ran across the referenced article which describes a "plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in central Oregon" to create steam to generate electricity.
I once read an article on why Krakatoa was such an explosive volcano. The answer was that Krakatoa was a mixture of two kinds of magma, mafic (high melting point, denser, and more runny) and felsic (created by its interaction with water, lighter, has a lower melting point and is viscous). The lighter felsic floats on top of the heaver (and hotter) mafic. Because it is more viscus, felsic can plug the pipes and so like a thumb blocking the opening of a soda bottle, build up pressure. The water turns to steam and eventually the pipes burst with explosive results.
Hmmmm.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/23/2012 17:08 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I imagine they are laying a metal pipe down there to channel the water down and steam back out. Using the volcano in the same way you use the reactor core in a nuclear plant.
#3
Fundamentally no different than most any geothermal power plant. The general concept is to find an area of anomalously hot rock (recent volcanic flow, for instance) and circulate water through it to collect some of the heat and bring it to a power plant to extract the energy. Some plants in northern California, Indonesia, Iceland, and Philippines all come to mind. The amount of manmade interference in the natural process is MINISCULE.
#4
I know very little about geothermal technology. But I did notice that one of final stages will be to frack the geothermal zone.
I expect that the volume of outrage against fracking a volcano will be expoential to the amount of money Obama's cronies have invested in geothermal energy.
Apparently the preachers were mostly Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Maldivian and Arab 'scholars' who had travelled into the country on 'tourist' visas. Instead of enjoying the beaches they spent their time evangelizing. For some strange reason the Sri Lankan gummint didn't like this.
#2
Sri Lanka has always taken the direct approach dealing with threats and problem children.
After the way they solved the Tamil Tiger problem, they are a favorite of mine. I wish our government(?) would look around and use a few of the "best practices" of other governments that have been successful in controlling or eliminating terrorist threats and the inciters of terrorism.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
01/23/2012 14:31 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Khaleda Zia
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that the use of a GPS device to monitor one suspect's car over a long period of time qualifies as a search under the Fourth Amendment -- an outcome that could have legal ripple effects on law enforcement reliance on location tracking for investigations.
My brother, just today, sent me an email stating that the Darwin awards had been announced. I then ran across the referenced article which describes a "plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in central Oregon" to create steam to generate electricity.
