Tuesday, January 7, 2014

14-01-08 Was asked by a Los Angeles journalist to comment on the departure of corrupt Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca



Occupy Tel Aviv, January 8  - the departure of corrupt Sheriff Lee Baca is of course good news.
However, Lee Baca is only a small part of the corruption in Los Angeles County. It remains unclear why the federal agencies, who were aware of his corruption all along, decided to take action, and why at this particular time. 
The people of Los Angeles County should not be fooled to believe that the federal government has any intention of protecting their Human, Constitutional and Civil Rights.
The core of the corruption in Los Angeles County is in the corrupt judges of the Los Angeles Superior Court. However, judicial corruption in Los Angeles County is patronized by the US District Court, Central District of California, the US Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit, the US Supreme Court, and the US Department of Justice, as documented in the Human Rights Alert (NGO) report (2010).
The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council (2010) was based on official, expert, and media reports, as well as original research.  It was reviewed by the professional staff of the United Nations and incorporated into the first ever international review of Human Rights in the United States with the note:
"Corruption of the courts and the legal profession, and discrimination by law enforcement in California".
The report focused on two subjects only:
* Large-scale, long-term false imprisonment, and
* Racketeering in the courts by judges, attorneys and bankers.
The two key events of recent years, highlighting the corruption in Los Angeles County are:
* The Rampart Scandal (1998-2000), and 
* The false imprisonment in solitary of 70 year old former US prosecutor Richard Fine (2009-2010).
Both events document the patronizing of the corruption by federal agencies.
Of particular concern is the fact that Alejandro Mayorkas, at the time US Attorney for the Central District of California, who was a key figure in patronizing the corruption during the Rampart Scandal is now appointed No 2 at DHS.  It portends the establishment of the corruption, which was and is typical of Los Angeles County, nationwide, under the guise of fighting "terror".
____
Joseph Zernik, PhD
Human Rights Alert (NGO)
Occupy Tel Aviv
____
* The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations was incorporated into the 2010 Periodic Review Report regarding Human Rights in the United States, with the note: "corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California". 
* The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations was incorporated into the 2013 Periodic Review Report regarding Human Rights in Israel, with the note: "lack of integrity of the electronic records of the Supreme Court, the district courts and the detainees courts in Israel."

LINKS:
[1] 10-04-08 Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the UPR of the United States, as it appears in the United Nations Human Rights Council site
[2] 10-04-08 Human Rights Alert (NGO) Appendix I to submission for the 2010 UPR of Human Rights in the United States, as it appears on the UN site:
[3] 10-10-01 United Nations Human Rights Council Professional Staff Report, referring to Human Rights Alert submission with the note "corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California" (page 6, paragraph 45)
[4] 13-12-16 Human Rights Alert: Alejandro Mayorkas - key figure in the Rampart Scandal (1998-2000) - is up for Number 2 at DHS!

14-01-07 CONGRATULATIONS! Corrupt Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca steps down!

SHOCKER: Sheriff Lee Baca to Announce His Retirement on Tuesday at 10 AM.

 January 6th, 2014 by  Celeste Fremon

Photo of Lee Baca by Saxon Brice for WitnessLA

In a surprising turn of events, WitnessLA has learned that Sheriff Lee Baca will announce 
that he will not finish out his term as the head of the nation’s largest sheriff’s department. The announcement will reportedly come at 10 am Tuesday morning.
Up until now, 71-year-old Sheriff Baca has continued to reaffirm that he was running for a fifth term as sheriff. And that he wasn’t at all worried about challengers Bob Olmsted and Paul Tanaka, who are considered to be the most serious of the candidates running against him. Yet, with the unveiling of 18 federal indictments in December, and many more reportedly still to come, plus a rising tide of department scandals that still shows no sign of abatement, observers were no longer calling Baca’s reelection a sure thing.
Baca is presently serving his fourth term in office. He was sworn in for his first term as sheriff on December 7, 1998.
The pending announcement comes as a shock to even most of those who know the sheriff, sources told us. Baca reportedly spoke to each of the members of the LA County Board of Supervisors individually on Monday night. He reportedly briefed members of his command staff days before, meeting with many of them individually.

WHO WILL TAKE BACA’S PLACE?
It will be up to the LA County Board of Supervisors to choose an interim sheriff to replace Baca, although attorneys from the County Counsel’s office are expected to brief the board in the near future on the fine points of this process.
With the sitting sheriff removing himself from the race, at least one, possibly two additional candidates are likely to enter the contest to join the existing top contenders—Olmsted and Tanaka.
One of those, Assistant Sheriff Todd Rogers, is expected to announce his candidacy as early as Tuesday—reportedly with Baca’s blessing, and possibly the support of some of the sheriff’s high ticket donors.
The other possible new entry is Long Beach Chief of Police/former LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, who was considering stepping into the race even before word of Baca’s impending announcement was confirmed. (Last summer McDonnell came close to declaring his candidacy, but then decided against it.)
In the meantime, Tanaka is said to have acquired some deep pocket campaign donors. While Olmsted’s campaign is now being run by heavy hitter veteran campaign consultant, John Shallman, who most recently ran Mike Feuer’s campaign for City Attorney.
More soon.

14-01-07 Democracy Needs Whistleblowers — That's Why I Broke into the FBI in 1971// שרקנים* חיוניים לדמוקרטיה!

===Democracy Needs Whistleblowers — That's Why I Broke into the FBI in 1971// שרקנים* חיוניים לדמוקרטיה! ==
[עברית להלן]
Democracy Needs Whistleblowers — That's Why I Broke into the FBI in 1971
By Bonnie Raines, The Guardian
Like Snowden, we broke laws to reveal something that was more dangerous, and we wanted to hold J Edgar Hoover accountable.
אתמול התפרסם לראשונה הסיפור המלא של פריצה למטה האפ.בי.אי ב-1971.  הפורצים - פרופסור לפיזיקה, שני סטודנטים לדוקטוראט, ונהג טקסי.  מטרתם - לגנוב מסמכים המעידים על ריגול של האפ. בי.אי. על פעילים חברתיים נגד המלחמה בוייטנאם. הם הדליפו את החומר לעיתונות, ובפעם הראשונה הוכיחו מעל לכל ספק את פעילותו הבלתי חוקית של האפ בי איי תחת הובר.
=ואצלנו=
מושתלים במחאה החברתית זה מובן מאליו...
*שרקן - מדליף מידע על הממשלה, בכדי להתריע את הציבור - whistleblower

READ MORE»
http://act.alternet.org/go/41831?t=9&akid=11377.1117888.XprQ1S

14-01-07 US Misc News of the Abuse: Cop tasers, then shoots schizophrenic teen


 
Alex Kane, AlterNet
The boy's father said, "They killed my son in cold blood. We called for help and they killed my son." READ MORE»
http://act.alternet.org/go/41828?t=3&akid=11377.1117888.XprQ1S

14-01-07 US: Why no banksters prosecuted?

The first, who raised the question was Gretchen Morgenson, around 2008, in NYT.
It should be noted, the Morgenson herself caused the collapse of Countrywide on January 8, 2008.  It was one of the key events that launched the financial crisis.  She published a story about.... fraud in the court by Countrywide.  Within hours, Countrywide collapsed, and they stopped trading in the NYSE...  So the story of the financial crisis, from the start, is tightly linked to corruption of the courts and the legal profession.
I was in contact with her then.
The answer is clear - the US courts would not permit the conviction of the banksters.  Judges like the corrupt Jed Rakoff have already shown that.
It is the same situation as the prosecution of the corrupt LAPD cops.  After corrupt California judge Jacqueline Connor overturned jury conviction in the First Rampart Trial in 2001(Troll, we are talking the historical event, not rampant corruption... :)), it became clear that the LASP would not permit the conviction of corrupt LAPD cops.  Already then, media suggested that the judges were afraid that convicted cops would tell the full story of judicial corruption underlying the Rampart scandal.
So they stopped the prosecutions.
Same story here: The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the UN for the first ever international review of Human Rights in the United States focused on racketeering by judges, banksters, attorneys in the LA courts.  The earliest documented case was from 1998!  and by the early 2000s, FBI defined LA County as "The epicenter of the epidemic of real estate and mortgage fraud"...
Both US and California judges cannot afford for any bankster to be convicted!  It is risky for them!
jz
LINKS:
[1] 08-01-08 Case of Borrower Hills (01-22574) - in the US Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh. Countrywide's Three "Recreated Letters" and a Transcript
[1] 12-06-08 Courts and Judges as racketeering enterprises under RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) - key element in the current financial crisis
[2] Bribing of state and US judges by Bank of America must be serious concern. ...
[3]  14-01-06 Duplicitous US judges: Jed Rakoff, Richard Leon

____
Joseph Zernik, PhD
Human Rights Alert (NGO)
Occupy Tel Aviv
____
* The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations was incorporated into the 2010 Periodic Review Report regarding Human Rights in the United States, with the note: "corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California". 
* The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations was incorporated into the 2013 Periodic Review Report regarding Human Rights in Israel, with the note: "lack of integrity of the electronic records of the Supreme Court, the district courts and the detainees courts in Israel."



On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 11:04 PM, Gary  wrote:
Here is a very good column by USDC (SD-NY) Judge Jed Rakoff that recently appeared in The New York Review of Books

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS:  Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jan/09/financial-crisis-why-no-executive-prosecutions/

14-01-07 ISRAEL: Natan Zach's poem: "I am an illegal immigrant too".// נתן זך: גם אני מסתנן בלתי חוקי



Natan Zach, leading Israeli poet, arrived in Palestine as a child in 1936, with his parents, Jewish immigrants from Nazi Germany, at a time that the British authorities prohibited Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Zach today published the poem, "Me Too", in response to the African asylum seekers crisis in Israel.

Apologies to Zach for my shoddy translation... jz                  
  =Me Too=
Me too, an illegal immigrant
Who arrived here not by free will
And not because by parents read Theodore's book*
That man, which not every generation gets the like of whom
Had he lived in his homeland, would have become
At the end, a refugee from Vienna or Sudan
Garden variety illegal immigrant
Undesirable
In the eyes of the White Book**
Or the black
Of each generation.***

Allusions:
* Theodore Herzl (1860 – 1904), Jewish writer, his book Der Judenstaat
(1896) - Altneuland predicted the birth of the State of Israel.  Born in Vienna, he died long before WWII..
** White Book - British official policy statement, which prohibited Jewish immigration to Palestine during WWII, dooming such refugees.
*** A line from the Passsover Hagaddah, saying that in each generation one must see himself as if delivered from slavery in Egypt.

14-01-07 US: The good old days - Burglars Behind 1971 Break-In at FBI Office in Philadelphia Tell All

A physics professor and a taxi driver, in a low tech perfect crime against the perfect target, with an ulterior motive!  jz
____

Burglars Behind 1971 Break-In at FBI Office in Philadelphia Tell All

Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com 
While many Americans were watching a televised title bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier nearly 23 years, antiwar activists were breaking into the FBI office in Philadelphia and stealing confidential documents.
What happened that day was largely unknown until the author of a new book convinced five of the eight burglars to detail what happened, the New York Times reports.
The men and women, who can no longer be prosecuted, said they were motivated by the desire to expose the agency for using dirty tricks to spy on dissident groups.
They sent many of the records to newspaper reporters, unveiling widespread, extensive spying.
“When you talked to people outside the movement about what the F.B.I. was doing, nobody wanted to believe it,” said one of the burglars, Keith Forsyth. “There was only one way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their handwriting.”

14-01-07 The good old days: Burglars Behind 1971 Break-In at FBI Office in Philadelphia Tell All

A physics professor and a taxi driver, in a low tech perfect crime against the perfect target, with an ulterior motive!  jz
____

Burglars Behind 1971 Break-In at FBI Office in Philadelphia Tell All

Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com 
While many Americans were watching a televised title bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier nearly 23 years, antiwar activists were breaking into the FBI office in Philadelphia and stealing confidential documents.
What happened that day was largely unknown until the author of a new book convinced five of the eight burglars to detail what happened, the New York Times reports.
The men and women, who can no longer be prosecuted, said they were motivated by the desire to expose the agency for using dirty tricks to spy on dissident groups.
They sent many of the records to newspaper reporters, unveiling widespread, extensive spying.
“When you talked to people outside the movement about what the F.B.I. was doing, nobody wanted to believe it,” said one of the burglars, Keith Forsyth. “There was only one way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their handwriting.”