Cops acquitted of killing Kelly Thomas man could face federal charges

The two police officers acquitted of violently killing a homeless man in California still might face federal charges as the FBI prepares to reexamine the case.

Testimony and evidence entered during the trial surrounding the death of a schizophrenic homeless man from California will be examined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an FBI spokesperson said Monday.

A representative for the FBI field office in Los Angeles told the LA Times on Monday evening that the United States Department of Justice will review the contents of the case before determining if federal charges should be filed against the two former Fullerton, CA police officers acquitted earlier that night of killing the man, Kelly Thomas, in 2011.

Late Monday, a jury found Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli not guilty of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, respectively, after only a few hours of deliberating.

The two officers were accused of killing Thomas two-and-a-half years ago after confronting him at a metro stop in Fullerton on July 5, 2011. Thomas was suspected of possessing stolen goods, and a minor altercation between him and the police quickly escalated to a terrifying brawl that ended with the mentally disabled man being sent to the hospital clinging to his life.

“Thomas was tackled, hit with a baton, pinned to the ground, punched repeatedly in the ribs, kneed in the head, Tasered four times and then struck in the face with the Taser device eight times,” the Times described the incident when charges were first filed against the officer. He died five days later of injuries sustained at the hands of the police, and disturbingly graphic audio and video footage recorded as he pleaded for his life helped propel the case to the national spotlight.

Later that month, the FBI commenced an investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Thomas and weighed filing federal charges against the Fullerton cops. Now with the completion of the state trial, the FBI says information brought to light during that case will be considered as investigators mull over the merits once again of pursuing federal charges.

"With the conclusion of the state court trial, investigators will examine the evidence and testimony to determine whether further investigation is warranted at the federal level," FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in Los Angeles said in a statement offered to the Times late Monday.

Ron Thomas, father of the deceased, told reporters immediately after the verdict was read that he hoped the Justice Department would consider filing federal charges.

According to the Orange County Register, Mr. Thomas stood up in court after the not guilty verdicts were read by the clerk and asked, “What’s wrong with these people?”

"It's carte blanche for police officers everywhere to beat us, kill us" because the verdict proves "they'll get away with it,” Mr. Thomas said during a press conference late Monday.

"I've never seen something so bad happen to a human being, and have it done by on-duty police officers," he told the Times. "And they can walk away scot-free."

http://rt.com/usa/fbi-kelly-thomas-evidence-589/

20 Years Ago Ruby Ridge carved niche in history as Sara Weaver found God and forgives the Feds.

Ruby Ridge.

Who would have thought 20 years ago this week that those two words would become an icon, a reference point in American culture?

THE RANDY WEAVER CASE

BY JIM OLIVERAnother Federal Fiasco! BATF's entrapment of Randy Weaver led to the violent deaths of three people. Says his defense attorney, Gerry Spence: "What happened to Randy Weaver can happen to anybody in this country."

More than a deadly siege in North Idaho that claimed the lives of a mother, her son and a federal marshal, the standoff at Ruby Ridge became a rallying point for the extremist movement and made Randy Weaver, the white supremacist at the center of the event, a hero to those groups. It also changed the way federal law enforcement handles standoffs with fugitives.



Historians and extremism experts offer varying assessments of the 11-day siege that was named Ruby Ridge after a mountain crest near Naples, Idaho, not far from the hand-built cabin of Weaver and his family.

It took years, including a congressional hearing in 1995, to sort out the sequence of events, and there are still points of disagreement.

A midwife for militia movement

The sparks of anti-government anger that Ruby Ridge ignited in August 1992 grew much larger six months later when federal agents engaged in another siege in Waco, Texas. That event left four federal agents and 83 members of the Branch Davidian religious sect dead.

Those back-to-back events, experts generally agree, fueled the anti-government movement that lingers today, erupting in occasional violence and deadly threats against law enforcement.

The events in North Idaho in August 1992 became “the opening shot in what would soon become a more or less open war between the American radical right and its government,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center and editor of its Intelligence Report, a magazine that tracks extremism.  >>>MORE<<<

Ruby Ridge siege survivor Sara Weaver forgives feds

Kalispell, Mont. — When Sara Weaver saw her father Randy struck in the shoulder by a government sniper's bullet in the Idaho wilderness in August 1992, she began to sprint back to the family's cabin on a mountaintop called Ruby Ridge.

As the 16-year-old closed in, her mother, Vicki, opened the cabin door and stood behind it, holding Sara Weaver's 10-month-old sister in her arms. Just then, a sniper's bullet struck her mother in the head, killing her.

For the next nine days, the surviving Weavers holed up in the cabin while hundreds of federal agents laid siege in a standoff that helped spark an anti-government patriot movement that grew to include the Oklahoma City bombing.

Today, 20 years later, Sara Weaver has left the anger behind, finding religion — and forgiveness. "I went 10 years without understanding how to heal" until becoming a born-again Christian, she said. "All bitterness and anger had to go," she said. "I forgave those that pulled the trigger."

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120820/NATION/208200330#ixzz2496VWANd

edited post at 11:01 pm est.

What is Islam ? Peace (ya right ...) or knife in the back.

The FBI violated the 1st Amendment rights of hundreds of Muslims by using a paid informant to target and monitor several Southern California mosques based solely on religion, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.  Filed on behalf of three Muslim plaintiffs, the suit accuses the FBI and seven of its employees, including Director Robert Mueller, of paying Irvine resident Craig Monteilh to go undercover, infiltrate mosques and record conversations in order to root out potential terrorists.

Islamic Terror Attacks on American Soil

We recently got taken to the mat by a polite, young Muslim living in the U.K. who took issue with our oft-repeated statement that no Muslim-American lost their life to vigilante violence following 9/11.  She provided us a list of six or seven candidates and, after whittling out the ones where the killer was unknown or in cases with mitigating circumstances such as “victim was sleeping with killer’s ex-girlfriend” (and we’re not making that up), we reached a shocking conclusion: 

We were wrong. 

There is one seemingly unambiguous case that occurred in Dallas, Texas where Waqar Hasan, a Muslim convenience storeowner, was gunned down by Mark Anthony Stroman four days after the 9/11 attacks.  Stroman claimed to have been motivated by anger from watching the towers fall.  He is not exactly your average American, however, even apart from the shooting.  For one thing, he is a white supremacist who carried a felony criminal record at the time of the attack.  He also went on to shoot two more people in the weeks that followed. 

Thankfully, an American jury sentenced Mark Stroman to death.  The same cannot be said of many Muslim terrorists such as Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, who not only have sanctuary in Muslim countries, but are often treated as heroes by devout followers of Muhammad.  Nevertheless, we acknowledge that our friend is correct and that there was at least one Muslim killed in an anti-Arab hate crime in the U.S. following the anti-American hate crime on 9/11.  For anyone keeping score: 

People killed by radical Muslims on 9/11:	2,996
Muslim-Americans killed "in revenge":	1

Washington

The frequency and deadliness of international terrorist attacks continue to drop, but Al Qaeda and Islamist extremism remain an adaptable and convert-recruiting foe – as witnessed by the growing number of cases of home-grown Muslim radicals.

Those are among the findings of “Country Reports on Terrorism,” the State Department’s annual report on international terrorist activity.

Among the highlights: The world witnessed 10,999 terrorist attacks in 2009, down from a high of 14,443 in 2006 (think “height of the Iraq war”) and the lowest number in five years. Also last year, the State Department listed 14,971 fatalities from terrorist attacks – down from nearly 23,000 in 2006.  Yet whereas the report claims that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are losing their allure in the Muslim world, especially over a reaction to attacks that kill Muslims, a related finding is that more Western-reared individuals are hearing the siren of radical Islam.

Terrorist Attacks in the U.S. or Against Americans

The following timeline lists terrorist attacks against the United States and Americans living either in the U.S. or abroad.

1920

Sept. 16, New York City: TNT bomb planted in unattended horse-drawn wagon exploded on Wall Street opposite House of Morgan, killing 35 people and injuring hundreds more. Bolshevist or anarchist terrorists believed responsible, but crime never solved.

1975

Jan. 24, New York City: bomb set off in historic Fraunces Tavern killed 4 and injured more than 50 people. Puerto Rican nationalist group (FALN) claimed responsibility, and police tied 13 other bombings to the group.

1979

Nov. 4, Tehran, Iran: Iranian radical students seized the U.S. embassy, taking 66 hostages. 14 were later released. The remaining 52 were freed after 444 days on the day of President Reagan's inauguration.

1982–1991

Lebanon: Thirty US and other Western hostages kidnapped in Lebanon by Hezbollah. Some were killed, some died in captivity, and some were eventually released. Terry Anderson was held for 2,454 days.

1983

April 18, Beirut, Lebanon: U.S. embassy destroyed in suicide car-bomb attack; 63 dead, including 17 Americans. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Oct. 23, Beirut, Lebanon: Shiite suicide bombers exploded truck near U.S. military barracks at Beirut airport, killing 241 marines. Minutes later a second bomb killed 58 French paratroopers in their barracks in West Beirut.

Dec. 12, Kuwait City, Kuwait: Shiite truck bombers attacked the U.S. embassy and other targets, killing 5 and injuring 80.

Over the course of 14 months beginning in 2006, the FBI used Monteilh to “indiscriminately collect” personal information on hundreds or even thousands of Muslim Americans, the lawsuit alleges.

Through this “dragnet” operation, the agency “gathered hundreds of phone numbers, thousands of e-mail addresses, hundreds of hours of video recordings that captured the interiors of mosques, homes and businesses, and ... thousands of hours of audio recordings,” the lawsuit alleges.

Monteilh, who has served prison time for forgery, has previously told The Times that he was recruited by the FBI in 2004 to infiltrate drug-trafficking groups. In 2006, Monteilh said, he was asked to assume the identity of a Muslim convert and go undercover to identify extremists and gather intelligence.

ACLU lawyer Peter Bibring said members of the Muslim community grew suspicious after Monteilh habitually asked probing and invasive questions about their religious beliefs, political views, loyalties and became “increasing aggressive about denouncing U.S. foreign policy.”

“Ironically, the operation ended when members of the Muslim communities of Southern California reported the informant to the police because of his violent rhetoric and ultimately obtained a restraining order against him,” the lawsuit alleged.

Bibring dismisses the idea that the FBI may have been targeting individuals already suspected of criminal activity.MORE

A.G. Holder to Speak at CAIR Affiliated Dinner

CAIR is an un-indicted co-conspirator, they are the front of the Muslim Brotherhood, their leadership has many past times to the worst terrorists the world has known. They support Hamas and AG Holder is a keynote speaker at a dinner affiliated with CAIR.
CAIT should be on the State department list of sponsors of terror.

Muslim Brotherhood Plot to Take Over America

America, your President is aligned with Islamic terrorists. Now what?
Despite ban, Holder to speak to CAIR-linked group

Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to give a keynote speech next week to a Michigan group which includes the local branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations even though the FBI has formally severed contacts with the controversial Muslim civil rights organization.

On Nov. 19, Holder is scheduled to speak in Detroit to the first annual awards banquet of Advocates and Leaders for Police and Community Trust, a coalition of several dozen law enforcement and community groups. An online registration form for the event includes the Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan on a list of “official & participating organizations.”

A spokeswoman for ALPACT confirmed that CAIR is a member of the coalition.

“CAIR has been involved for a while,” said Chandra McMillion, community development facilitator for ALPACT. “CAIR is listed as an official member.”

The executive director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, Dawud Walid, also confirmed its involvement with ALPACT. “It’s really nothing controversial. We’ve been part of this organization for years,” he said. “We meet every month and included with us is the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI.”

Walid said he is a regular at ALPACT meetings—including one held Friday at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit. “A lot of people are there: the NAACP, the ACLU, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee…the National Lawyers’ Guild,” he said.

The FBI claims it cut “formal contacts” with CAIR after federal prosecutors in the 2007 criminal trial of officers of a Texas-based Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, introduced documents the government said showed links between CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, which gave rise to Hamas.

“Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner,” FBI Congressional liaison Richard Powers wrote in an April letter to Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

The Justice Department referred questions about Holder’s speech and CAIR’s involvement to the FBI’s field office in Detroit which, in turn, referred the questions to FBI headquarters in Washington.

FBI Releases Tapes of OKC Bombing Aftermath

“The real story is what’s missing,” said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.
Trentadue gave copies of the tapes to The Oklahoman newspaper, which posted them online and provided copies to The Associated Press.
The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000 pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said.
“Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain’t no such thing as a coincidence,” Trentadue said. He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because “they had run out of tape” or “the tape was being replaced.”
“The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02,” he said. “The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn’t want anybody to see.

A spokesman for the FBI in Oklahoma City, Gary Johnson, declined to comment and referred inquiries about the tapes to FBI officials in Washington, who were not immediately available for comment Sunday.
The soundless recordings show people rushing from nearby buildings after the bomb went off. Some show people fleeing through corridors cluttered with debris. None show the actual explosion that ripped through the federal building.
FBI agents did not report finding any security tapes from the federal building itself.
The FBI in the past refused to release the security camera recordings, leading Trentadue and others to contend the government was hiding evidence that others were involved in the attack.
"It's taken a lawsuit and years to get the tapes," Trentadue said.

COINTELPRO — White Hate Groups (1964-1968)

I put this post together as a suggestion by One of newsnet14’s Readers, Advice givers a244, who in a comment about the rise in Militia Groups sparked my interest and hopefully yours. I’m also doing this to educate and expand my knowledge and hope to do the same for other readers. This one is dedicated to you a244. After looking into this I know it makes me more angry as it should you.

http://www.newsnet14.com/2009/08/cointelpro-white-hate-groups-1964-1968/

Jun 4, 2002 | While Muslim terrorists penetrate our borders with surface-to-air missiles and make every air traveler a potential target, and while INS screw-ups show daily that we have no borders and no real ability to keep any of our enemies out, a surreal battle is taking place within the ranks of our hostage population itself. The debate is whether Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI should have given agents license to keep an eye on suspected terrorists and their ideological supporters if they have not yet blown up a plane.

The trigger of the debate is the recent decision of the Justice Department to remove restrictions it imposed on itself in 1972 that prevent the agency from spying on organizations that have not yet committed an actual crime. A chorus of so-called civil rights groups has already attacked the decision -- which involves no change in the law and no endorsement of illegal behavior -- as though it were an attack on the Constitution itself.

The 1972 restrictions were adopted by the FBI in the face of an assault on its practices by the political left. The issue was the FBI's "COINTELPRO," an effort to counter massive civil disobedience and the growing threat from quasi-military radical groups who had gone from demonizing America to planting more than 1,000 bombs, committing acts of military sabotage and killing at least one innocent math professor in their campaign against the Vietnam War.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/col/horo/2002/06/04/cointelpro/index.html