A shocking report from the Florida Times-Union has revealed that in just a three-month time frame, thousands of innocent women were subject to invasive practices in which they were strip-searched just to visit a family member in jail.
The post In Just 3 Months Cops Strip-Searched Thousands of Innocent Women for Visiting Family in Jails appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
An 84-year-old grandmother and holocaust survivor says her treatment by the TSA was so bad that even though she survived Auschwitz, she barely survived the TSA.
The post 84yo Holocaust Survivor Abused by TSA Draws Ominous Parallel With Her Time in Auschwitz appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Authored by Douglas Murray via The Gatestone Institute,
Whenever Britain suffers a terrorist attack -- and it has suffered four Islamist attacks this year alone -- the British public responds the same way.
Twelve years ago, when four suicide bombers detonated homemade bombs on the London underground and on a red-top bus in central London, there was much talk of "Blitz spirit". After 7/7, the media erupted with boasts of wartime echoes. Some people who lived in London noticed a rather different atmosphere. Of course people "got on with their lives" (what else could they do?) but in the days and weeks after the attacks it was not really "business as usual". Especially not after another four suicide bombers went onto the tube a fortnight later, on July 21, and attempted to repeat the exercise. Fortunately, on that occasion the bombs failed to detonate. But during the period that ensued, it was certainly easier than usual to get a seat on the London Underground.
Of course, political leaders relish the opportunity to accentuate and exaggerate these echoes. If the British public are the citizens of London in the Blitz, then the politicians are Winston Churchill. After attacks like the 2013 daytime slaughter of Drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of London, then-Prime Minister David Cameron stressed from the steps of Downing Street that "One of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives. And that is what we shall all do." These themes are thought to play deep to the spirit of the British people.
But the more this conspicuous, self-conscious egging-on of such attitudes is stressed, the thinner it seems to get. In March, after Khalid Masood ploughed a car across Westminster Bridge, mowing down locals and tourists, and crashed the car and stabbed policeman Keith Palmer to death inside the gates of the Palace of Westminster, one prominent British journalist took to the pages of the New York Times to pour out the clichés.
"By Thursday morning, London was, if not quite back to normal, then certainly back in business. As I traveled through the south of the city, up to Chelsea and later over to King"s Cross, Londoners really were going about their lives as on any other day.
"This behavior reflects something deeper than conscious defiance, I think. It would simply not occur to the 8.6 million citizens of this megalopolis to allow one man to send them into hiding. As they say in the East End, you"re having a laugh, aren"t you?"
One wonders when the author last went into an East End pub to have a pint, and whether he honestly believes such honest cockneys still reside there? Nevertheless, he went to boast of the "stoicism" and "ancestral pride" that still exists there and to insist that, "The only way to proceed is -- in the much-loved British slogan -- to keep calm and carry on." Quite why this spirit is meant to reside in the bones of a city in which most of its current residents (according to the last census) have arrived in the decades since the Second World War is never clear.
Similar clichés spilled out after the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena in May. They came out yet again after the London Bridge attack in June. Yet one of the most striking images from that night was of drinkers in Borough Market, where the terrorists finished their assault, being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point, at any rate, looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. Still the clichés continued. The day after the attack, in her address to the nation, Prime Minister Theresa May assured the public that "Our response must be as it has always been when we have been confronted by violence. We must come together, we must pull together."
 One of the most striking images from the June 3, 2017 Borough Market terror attack was of drinkers being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) |
So it is interesting to consider, beneath all the talk of business as usual, and Blitz spirit, and keeping calm and carrying on, what, in fact, are the British public actually feeling? Last month provided a sobering demonstration.
Early in the evening on Friday, November 24 there were reports of shots having been fired at Oxford Circus station. A crowd stampede occurred, with people fleeing in terror down Oxford Street and other parts of one of London"s busiest shopping areas. Terrified crowds barricaded themselves into local shops. A celebrity singer and television presenter called Olly Murs tweeted to his millions of followers that he was in Selfridges department store. "F**k everyone get out of Selfridges now gun shots!! I"m inside." That was his first unwise tweet, followed up shortly after with, "Really not sure what"s happened! I"m in the back office... but people screaming and running towards exits!"
The police announced that they were responding to events as though they were a terrorist incident. Social media and some early national media reports said that not only gunshots had been heard but that a vehicle had ploughed into pedestrians on Oxford Street and that there were bodies and blood everywhere.
Within an hour, however, all this turned out to be nonsense. Not only had there been no vehicular attack -- there had been no gunmen. Reports that the incident may have been sparked by a gang fight rather than a terrorist attack were themselves later quashed. The next day two men who thought they might have been responsible for the panic voluntarily came into a police station and were released without charge. The only casualties from the incident were 16 people injured, one seriously, as a cause of the mass stampede out of Oxford Circus station and through the neighbouring area.
Incidents like this one in London last month easily flow by in the news cycle, and are easily forgotten. They will not be referred to in the speeches of any politician and they immediately fell away from even the "News in Brief" sections of the nation"s media. But they are in fact extremely telling. They suggest that rather than being this persistently stoical, unbending and resilient people, the citizens of London have absorbed the lessons of the terror attacks of the last year and the terror attacks across Europe that have occurred in the years preceding them, in Paris and elsewhere. Contrary to all our public statements, we have become terrorised, just as the terrorists want. So much so that a minor altercation on an average evening can lead to a mass panic, a crowd stampede, and terrified public figures bleating to their followers about wholly imagined horrors. It is a glimpse into the soul of a city. And like all such ugly glimpses, we will turn away from looking at it, rather than consider it and wondering what it truly suggests.
Amid United Nations fears that genetic extinction technology could be used by militaries, a United States military agency has invested $100 million in the doomsday biological technology that can wipe out an entire species.
Scientists now have the knowledge and the tools they need to create and deliver Doomsday genes which can selectively target and exterminate an entire species. And to make matters worse, emails released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), suggest that the United States’s uber-secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has become the world’s largest funder of this “gene drive” research and will heighten international tensions further ahead of a UN expert committee meeting in Montreal beginning on Tuesday.
The UN is debating a ban on this technology as several southern countries fear the application of using extinction technology. The use of genetic extinction technologies in bioweapons is the stuff of nightmares, but so far, known research is focused entirely on pest control and the elimination of diseases. The key word there being “known.”
UN diplomats confirmed that the new email release would worsen the “bad name” of gene drives in some circles. “Many countries [will] have concerns when this technology comes from DARPA, a US military science agency,” one said. “You may be able to remove viruses or the entire mosquito population, but that may also have downstream ecological effects on species that depend on them. My main worry,” he added, “is that we do something irreversible to the environment, despite our good intentions, before we fully appreciate the way that this technology will work.”
Jim Thomas, a co-director of the ETC group which obtained the emails, said the US military’s influence in furthering this technology would strengthen the case for a moratorium. “The dual-use nature of altering and eradicating entire populations is as much a threat to peace and food security as it is a threat to ecosystems,” he said. “Militarization of gene drive funding may even contravene the Enmod convention against hostile uses of environmental modification technologies.”
But while we are on the subject of UN bans, the sanctions they placed on North Korea are being willfully ignored by the rogue regime. It stands to reason that should a military seek the use of this technology, they will also defy the UN’s “authority.”
Todd Kuiken, who has worked with the GBIRd (genetic biocontrol) program, which receives $6.4 million from DARPA, said that the US military’s centrality to genetic technology funding meant that “researchers who depend on grants for their research may reorient their projects to fit the narrow aims of these military agencies,” which could include doomsday genetic weapons. Between 2008 and 2014, the US government spent about $820 million on synthetic biology. Since 2012, most of this has come from DARPA and other military agencies, Kuiken says.
DARPA believes that a sharp decrease in the costs of gene-editing toolkits has created a greater opportunity for hostile or rogue actors to experiment with the technology. “This convergence of low cost and high availability means that applications for gene editing – both positive and negative – could arise from people or states operating outside of the traditional scientific community and international norms,” the official said. “It is incumbent on DARPA to perform this research and develop technologies that can protect against accidental and intentional misuse.”
Interest in the technology among US army bureaus has shot up since a secret report by the elite Jason group of military scientists last year “received considerable attention among various agencies of the US government,” according to an email by Gerald Joyce, who co-chaired a Jason study group in June. A second Jason report was commissioned in 2017 assessing “potential threats this technology might pose in the hands of an adversary, technical obstacles that must be overcome to develop gene drive technology and employ it ‘in the wild’,” Joyce wrote.
The paper would not be publicly disclosed but “widely circulated within the US intelligence and broader national security community”, his email said.
In perhaps the most intrusive move of social media platforms" efforts signal as much virtue as possible and appease their potentially-regulating government overlords, Twitter has announced that it is cracking down on what it defines at hate-speech and not just by looking at its own site.
In what amounts to a major shift in Twitter policy, Mashable"s Kerry Flynn reports that the company announced on Friday that it will be monitoring user"s behavior "on and off the platform" and will suspend a user"s account if they affiliate with violent organizations, according to an update to Twitter"s Help Center on Friday.
Abusive Behavior
We believe in freedom of expression and open dialogue, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we prohibit behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.
Context matters when evaluating for abusive behavior and determining appropriate enforcement actions. Factors we may take into consideration include, but are not limited to whether:
- the behavior is targeted at an individual or group of people;
- the report has been filed by the target of the abuse or a bystander;
- the behavior is newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.
Violence: You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people. This includes, but is not limited to, threatening or promoting terrorism.
You also may not affiliate with organizations that - whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform - use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.
Abuse: You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.
Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
Hateful imagery and display names: You may not use hateful images or symbols in your profile image or profile header. You also may not use your username, display name, or profile bio to engage in abusive behavior, such as targeted harassment or expressing hate towards a person, group, or protected category.
Furthermore, Twitter says it will control the stream of information more broadly...
At times, we may prevent certain content from trending.
As Kerry Flynn notes, these changes comes amid aggressive moves by Twitter to curb abuse and harassment on the site after more than a decade of essentially letting the abusers operate freely.
Over the last week, Twitter has taken action against the accounts of white supremacists. Twitter permanently banned Tim "Treadstone" Gionet, a prominent alt-right troll more widely known as Baked Alaska, earlier this week. It also removed the verification badges of Jason Kessler, one of the organizers of the racist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and of alt-right activist Richard Spencer.
Twitter"s decision to monitor users off site sparked concern from free speech advocates such as Andrew Torba, founder of social network Gab.
"This is a scary precedent to set," he wrote in an email to Mashable.
"Rules like this will only force dissidents and those who are speaking truth to power to silence themselves or risk being silenced by Twitter."
Twitter"s new rules will not be enforced until December 18th...
We’ve updated our rules around abuse and hateful conduct as well as violence and physical harm. These changes will be enforced starting December 18. Read our updated rules here: https://t.co/NGVT3qGFvg
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) November 17, 2017
And of course, "if you"re doing nothing wrong, then why would this be an issue for you" will be instant reposte of those defending yet more intrusion within America"s surveillance state.
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
A black Air Force cadet has admitted to writing racial slurs targeting blacks attempting to generate hate crime outrage.
You may remember the epic speech given by Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy...
“There is absolutely no place in our Air Force for racism. It’s not who we are, nor will we tolerate it in any shape or fashion,” Silveria said.
“I’ve said it before, the area of dignity and respect is my red line. Let me be clear; it won’t be crossed without significant repercussions.”
"If you can"t treat someone with dignity and respect, then get out,"
Along with garnering national coverage and condemnation from politicians, the incident sparked outrage from students at the school and their parents.
In a now-deleted Facebook post, the mother of one of the cadets who said he was a victim of the racist message shared a photo of the whiteboard, calling it "disgusting."
Her post read:
This is why I"m so hurt! Someone left this disgusting message on my sons door at the Airforce Academy in Colorado! I"m angry that people are teaching their children such hate.
These young people are supposed to bond and protect each other and the country. Who would my son have to watch out for? The enemy or the enemy?
I know this is hard to see but it"s the reality my family and the country is dealing with. We cannot tolerate such hatred! Keep your head up son!
In another Facebook post, the cadet"s father wrote, "My son is not playing a victim...The real victim is the person raised with that kind of hate."
The Air Force immediately began investigating the incident after it occurred in September.
And on Tuesday, The Air Force Academy announced that the black cadet who was supposedly the victim of the racial slurs was, in fact, responsible for writing them.
"We can confirm that one of the cadet candidates who was allegedly targeted by racist remarks written outside of their dorm room was actually responsible for the act," the Academy said in a statement.
Officials said the cadet admitted to being behind the racist messages that appeared outside the doors of five black cadets’ rooms, KMGH-ABC reported.
The Air Force Academy has also confirmed that the cadet responsible for the messages is no longer at the school, but they failed to clearly state whether or not he left of his own free will.
* * *
But these incidents keep happening.
Hate crimes should not be tolerated, but neither should faking them. According to the Daily Wire, a similar incident happened just last week. An African American man alleged that someone wrote racial slurs all over his car when he was the one who wrote the slurs. The man, 21-year-old Dauntarius Williams, came forward and admitted that he staged the entire event.
One should be outraged as Silveria says. Not just as an “airman” but as human beings.
Not only do we treat each other with condemnation and hostility, but we also fake horrible things, like this hate crime hoax in the name of creating more outrage.
An ex-fund manager for Mortgage-Backed Securities Fund for financier George Soros has been accused of horrifying crimes against women.
Authored by Drieu Godefridi via The Gatestone Institute,
Terrorism is booming in Europe - even though the European Union statistics say it is not. The EU"s statistics on terrorism, simply put, confuse the issue. They are a fairy-tale.
Since 9/11, in report after report, experts, ministers and public authorities have been saying the same thing: that in Europe (meaning the EU), Islamic terrorism is merely a marginal aberration. Nothing to be afraid of, and if you show too much interest in the matter you are probably on the far-right, aren"t you! Do you want to persecute the Muslims and make them the Jews of today"s Europe?
As experts always do when they want to shut down a debate, they turn to statistics, preferably European statistics. Since July 1, 1999 — the date of its inception — Europol (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) has regularly published an assessment of terrorism in the EU.
 Europol headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. (Image source: OSeveno/Wikimedia Commons) |
If you read Europol"s last ten EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Reports (TE-SAT), you will find, year after year, the number of "failed, foiled or successfully executed" terror attacks and the subsequent number of victims - all you supposedly need to assess the true nature of terrorism in the EU.
For the number of terror attacks in Europe during the last ten years, here is a chart based on Europol"s data:
 Number of terror or terrorist attacks in the EU since 2007 (Data: EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Reports; chart D. Godefridi) |
The first surprise is that according to Europol, the trend is clearly downward: far fewer terror attacks in Europe in 2016 than ten years ago!
Does that seem a bit counter-intuitive? But, hey, those are the official statistics.
Then there are the number of fatalities:
 People killed by terror attacks in the EU since 2007 (Data: EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Reports; chart D. Godefridi) |
This second chart looks much more in line with the feelings of the common man, don"t you think? Approximately 150 dead in the EU from terror attacks in 2015 and 2016, compared to zero in 2007, or 4 in 2014. (That is what is so endearing about statistics: you can manipulate many things, such as the psychological and emotional damage or the consequences of a "foiled attack" -- but not the number of dead bodies).
If you superimpose the two preceding charts, there is, obviously, zero correlation between the number of attacks and the number of dead. Even if there are fewer attacks, more people are being killed. In 2007, there were 583 attacks but zero people killed. In 2016, there were 142 attacks with 142 killed.
 Terror attacks and people killed by terror attacks in the EU since 2007 (Data: EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Reports; chart D. Godefridi) |
Where is the wolf? The problem resides in the European definition of terrorism. Look at the TE-SAT report of 2009:
"What the term "terrorist offences" includes is indicated in Article 1 of the Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on combating terrorism (2002/475/JHA), which all member states have implemented in their national legislation. This Framework Decision specifies that terrorist offences are intentional acts which, given their nature or context, may seriously damage a country or an international organisation when —
- committed with the aim of seriously intimidating a population, or
- unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing an act, or
- seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation".
On this legal basis, Europol distinguishes between different categories of terror attacks; jihadist terrorism; ethno-nationalist and separatist terrorism; left-wing and anarchist terrorism; right-wing terrorism; and finally, "single issue terrorism" (such as animal rights).
There is nothing wrong with these definitions except that one thing has gotten lost: terror. We have known, ever since ancient Rome"s system of law, the importance of accurate definitions; and before that, in ancient Greece, of correct hypotheses. If an attack is not intended to terrorize the public, presumably it should not qualify either as terrorism or as a terrorist attack.
Here is the EU magic: the second part of EU definition — "unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing an act" — whatever act — authorizes one to qualify as "terrorism" countless deeds that are certainly criminal but do not actually terrorize anyone.
That is why for years, the number of Islamic terror attacks has looked so ridiculously small and the other categories so impressively large. In 2007, of the 583 reported attacks, 517 were claimed or attributed to separatist groups in Spain and France. In 2012, Europol reported:
"In 2011, ETA [Basque separatists] committed one terrorist attack in France (Valliere, Creuse). Two ETA members opened fire against the Gendarmerie while trying to escape from a police checkpoint."
Criminal, no doubt! But where is terrorism? Furthermore:
"In France, 62 completed attacks and 13 attempted attacks were reported. All these attacks were carried out by Corsican terrorist groups. Their main target, however, remains the tourism sector. Holiday homes and restaurants are often targeted."
Corsican nationalists want more autonomy for their island. These "nationalists," however, never kill anyone, and they almost never hurt anyone except themselves; and when they burn a paillote (a small restaurant in the form of a hut on the beach) owned by some Frenchman from the continent, you never know if it is to preserve the beauty of Corsican nature, to take over his business, or because the kitchen was dirty. To qualify all of those acts indiscriminately as terrorism, and to classify them in the same category as the Islamist in Marseille who shouted "Allahu akbar" before slitting the throat of a girl and eviscerating her cousin, is morally repugnant. That atrocity in Marseille received worldwide press coverage and was indeed a terror attack in the purest sense of the word.
In short, the EU definition of terrorism, wittingly or unwittingly, confuses the issue. It needs to be revised. One can imagine a new category, such as "political violence," to designate acts that are neither intended to terrorize the public nor that actually do so, but are nonetheless political and violent by nature, such as public political riots, so common, in France. Or the definition of terrorism in American law (18 U.S. Code § 2331), under which no act can be qualified as terrorist if there is no terror intended.1
As for actual terrorism in the EU, it is in fact a simple matter. Here are the facts:
The trend appears the same in 2017. The rest is EU sophistry.
Authored by Judith Bergmann via The Gatestone Institute,
A new German law introducing state censorship on social media platforms came into effect on October 1, 2017. The new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the German state. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online "criminal offenses" such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint -- regardless of whether or the content is accurate or not. Social media companies receive seven days for more complicated cases. If they fail to do so, the German government can fine them up to 50 million euros for failing to comply with the law.
This state censorship makes free speech subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities that are likely to censor more than absolutely necessary, rather than risk a crushing fine. When employees of social media companies are appointed as the state"s private thought police and given the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who shall be allowed to speak and what to say, and who shall be shut down, free speech becomes nothing more than a fairy tale. Or is that perhaps the point?
Meanwhile, the district court in Munich recently sentenced a German journalist, Michael Stürzenberger, to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a senior Nazi official in Berlin in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of "inciting hatred towards Islam" and "denigrating Islam" by publishing the photograph. The court found Stürzenberger guilty of "disseminating the propaganda of anti-constitutional organizations". While the mutual admiration that once existed between al-Husseini and German Nazis is an undisputed historical fact, now evidently history is being rewritten by German courts. Stürzenberger has appealed the verdict.
 A German court recently sentenced journalist Michael Stürzenberger (pictured) to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a Nazi official in Berlin, in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of "inciting hatred towards Islam" and "denigrating Islam" by publishing the photograph. (Image Source: PI News video screenshot) |
Germany has made no secret of its desire to see its new law copied by the rest of the EU, which already has a similar code of conduct for social media giants. The EU Justice Commissioner, Vera Jourova, recently said she might be willing to legislate in the future if the voluntary code of conduct does not produce the desired results. She said, however, that the voluntary code was working "relatively" well, with Facebook removing 66.5% of the material they had been notified was "hateful" between December and May this year. Twitter removed 37.4%, and YouTube took action on 66% of the notifications from users.
While purportedly concerned about online "hate speech," one EU organization, the EU Parliament, had no qualms about letting its premises be used to host a convicted Arab terrorist, Leila Khaled, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) at a conference about "The Role of Women in the Palestinian Popular Struggle" in September. (The EU, the US, Canada, and Australia, have all designated the PFLP a terrorist organization). The conference was organized by, among others, the Spanish delegation of Izquierda Unida (United Left) as part of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left bloc in the European Parliament.
In the UK, Prime Minister Theresa May also said that she will tell internet firms to tackle extremist content:
"Industry needs to go further and faster in automating the detection and removal of terrorist content online... ultimately it is not just the terrorists themselves who we need to defeat. It is the extremist ideologies that fuel them. It is the ideologies that preach hatred, sow division and undermine our common humanity. We must be far more robust in identifying these ideologies and defeating them -- across all parts of our societies."
Prime Minister May keeps insisting that "these ideologies" are spread "across all parts of our societies" when in reality, virtually all terrorism is Islamic. Meanwhile, her own Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has refused to ban the political wing of Hezbollah. Hezbollah"s hate speech, apparently, is perfectly acceptable to the British authorities. So is that of South African Muslim cleric and hate preacher Ebrahim Bham, who was once an interpreter to the Taliban"s head legal advisor. He was allowed to enter the UK to speak in the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, a government building, at the "Palestine Expo" a large Jew-hate event in London in July. Bham is known for quoting Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels and saying that all Jews and Christians are "agents of Satan". Meanwhile, a scholar such as Robert Spencer is banned from entering the UK, supposedly on the grounds that what he reports -- accurately -- is "Islamophobic".
The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) also recently stated that online "hate crimes" will be prosecuted "with the same robust and proactive approach used with offline offending". The decision to treat online offenses in the same way as offline offenses is expected to increase hate crime prosecutions, already at the highest recorded level ever. Prosecutors completed 15,442 hate crime cases in 2015-16.
Jews in Britain, who have experienced a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism over the past three years, are frequently on the receiving end of hate crimes. Nevertheless, their cases constitute less than a fraction of the statistics. In 2016/17, the CPS prosecuted 14,480 hate crimes. According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism:
"we have yet to see a single year in which more than a couple of dozen anti-Semitic hate crimes were prosecuted. So far in 2017, we are aware of... 21 prosecutions, in 2016 there were 20, and in 2015 there were just 12. So serious are the failures by the CPS to take action that we have had to privately prosecute alleged anti-Semites ourselves and challenge the CPS through judicial review, the first of which we won in March. Last year only 1.9% of hate crime against Jews was prosecuted, signaling to police forces that their effort in investigating hate crimes against Jews might be wasted, and sending the strong message to anti-Semites that they need not fear the law... Each year since 2014 has been a record-breaking year for anti-Semitic crime: between 2014 and 2016, anti-Semitic crime surged by 45%".
Almost one in three British Jews have apparently considered leaving Britain due to anti-Semitism in the past two years.
British authorities seem far more concerned with "Islamophobia" than with the increase in hate crimes against Jews. In fact, the police has teamed up with Transport for London authorities to encourage people to report hate crimes during "National Hate Crime Awareness Week", which runs from October 14-21. Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police will hold more than 200 community events to "reassure communities that London"s public transport system is safe for everyone". The events are specifically targeted at Muslims; officers have visited the East London Mosque to encourage reporting hate crimes.
Last year, London mayor Sadiq Khan"s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) announced it was spending £1,730,726 of taxpayer money policing speech online after applying for a grant from the Home Office. Meanwhile, Khan said that he does not have the funds to monitor the 200 jihadists estimated to be in London, out of the 400 jihadists who have so far returned to the capital from Syria and Iraq. (He also implicitly admitted that he does not know the whereabouts of the jihadists who have returned). When asked by the journalist Piers Morgan why the mayor could not have them monitored, Khan answered:
"Because the Met Police budget, roughly speaking, 15 percent, 20 percent is funded by me, the mayor. The rest comes from central government. If the Met Police is being shrunk and reduced, they"ve got to prioritize and use their resources in a sensible, savvy way."
When Morgan asked what could possibly be a bigger priority than, "people coming back from a Syrian battlefield with intent to harm British citizens", Khan did not answer. Perhaps because it is hard to admit in public that fighting "Islamophobia" is now a higher priority than fighting terrorism?
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
Power corrupts.
Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.
We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.
A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it.
Abuse of power - and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible - works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.
For instance, 20 years ago, I took up a sexual harassment lawsuit on behalf of a young woman - a state employee - who claimed that her boss, a politically powerful man, had arranged for her to meet him in a hotel room, where he then allegedly dropped his pants, propositioned her and invited her to perform oral sex on him.
Despite the fact that this man had a well-known reputation for womanizing and this woman was merely one in a long line of women who had accused the man of groping, propositioning, and pressuring them for sexual favors in the workplace, she was denounced as white trash and subjected to a massive smear campaign by the man’s wife, friends and colleagues (including the leading women’s rights organizations of the day), while he was given lucrative book deals and paid lavish sums for speaking engagements.
William Jefferson Clinton eventually agreed to settle the case and pay Paula Jones $850,000.
Here we are 20 years later and not much has changed.
We’re still shocked by sexual harassment in the workplace, the victims of these sexual predators are still being harassed and smeared, and those who stand to gain the most by overlooking wrongdoing (all across the political spectrum) are still turning a blind eye to misconduct when it’s politically expedient to do so.
This time, it’s Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein - longtime Clinton associate and a powerhouse when it comes to raising money for Democrats - who is being accused of decades of sexual assaults, aggressively sexual overtures and harassment.
I won’t go into the nauseating details here. You can read them for yourself at the New York Times and the New Yorker.
Suffice it to say that it’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.
This isn’t just happening in Hollywood, however.
And it’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.
For every high-profile power broker who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds - thousands - of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder - in many cases, literally - simply because they can.
The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue, because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it. Case in point: The Justice Department will no longer attempt to police the police when it comes to official misconduct. Instead, it plans to give police agencies more money and authority to “fight” crime.
The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex. Case in point: Rather than scaling back on America’s endless wars, President Trump—like his predecessors—has continued to expand America’s military empire and its attempts to police the globe.
The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so, because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers. Case in point: The USA Liberty Act, proposed as a way to “fix” all that’s wrong with domestic surveillance, will instead legitimize the government’s snooping powers.
Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.
For starters, let’s recommit to abiding by the rule of law.
Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.
We need to stop being victimized by these predators.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, I’m not just talking about the political predators in office, but the ones who are running the show behind the scenes—the shadow government—comprised of unelected government bureaucrats whose powers are unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and beyond the reach of the law.
There is no way to erase the scars left by the government’s greed for money and power, its disregard for human life, its corruption and graft, its pollution of the environment, its reliance on excessive force in order to ensure compliance, its covert activities, its illegal surveillance, and its blatant disdain for the rule of law.
“We the people” - men and women alike - have been victims of the police state for so long that not many Americans even remember what it is to be truly free anymore. Worse, few want to shoulder the responsibility that goes along with maintaining freedom.
Still, we must try.
Like America, Britain is unfit and unsafe to live in – both countries police states, serving privileged interests exclusively, allied in waging wars OF terror in multiple theaters, along with abolishing fundamental homeland freedoms.
The latest civil rights abuse came from hardline home secretary Amber Rudd.
She’s spearheading a Tory effort to criminalize readership of so-called extremist content online – punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
The same holds for anyone publishing content Tories call extremist, especially about Britain’s military, intelligence services and police that could be considered related to preparing terrorist acts.
“I want to make sure those who view despicable terrorist content online, including jihadi websites, far-right propaganda and bomb-making instructions, face the full force of the law,” Rudd blustered, adding:
“There is currently a gap in the law around material (that) is viewed or streamed from the Internet without being permanently downloaded.”
“This is an increasingly common means by which material is accessed online for criminal purposes and is a particularly prevalent means of viewing extremist material such as videos and web pages.”
A Home Office analysis showed thousands of online ISIS tweets and other material over the past year.
Unmentioned was US and UK support for the terrorist group, recruiting, arming, funding, training and directing its fighters, using them as imperial foot soldiers in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
The way to end extremist online content from ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups is by no longer supporting them, combating their fighters instead of using them.
Most important is ending US-led imperial wars in multiple theaters. ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups were created to serve as imperial ground forces, aided by Pentagon-led terror-bombing.
Changes Rudd proposed aim to strengthen Britain’s 2000 Terrorism Act. It authorizes civil liberties-destroying police powers, including repressive stop-and-searches ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.
It criminalizes being a member of, supporting, or wearing clothing arousing suspicion of involvement with a proscribed group. Dozens named are nearly all Muslim ones.
Current UK law applies only to downloaded and saved extremist material. Proposed changes criminalize reading it online.
Commenting on the proposed measure, Law Professor Jonathan Turley noted that “civil libertarians have warned that Great Britain has been in a free fall from the criminalization of speech to the expansion of the surveillance state.”
Tories aren’t “satiated by their ever-expanding criminalization of speech. They now want to criminalize even viewing sites on the Internet.”
“As always, officials are basically telling the public to ‘trust us, we’re the government.’ “ Criminalizing readership of online content amounts to “an anti-civil liberties campaign.”
A previous article discussed Prime Minister Theresa May wanting greater government control of the Internet.
If readership of material Tories call unacceptable is criminalized, what’s next?
Thought control? Criminalizing legitimate criticism of government policies? Public protests against government policies? Banning free expression on any topics online or in public spaces altogether?
Turley quoted from Orwell’s 1984 as follows:
“We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.”
“The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.”
“They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.”
“We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
America, Britain and other Western nations are heading toward instituting full-blown tyranny.
Perhaps another state-sponsored 9/11-type incident will assure it.
Submitted by Mike Miles, journalist, writer and book author
Foreign Affairs Magazine Advances Domestic Terrorism To Remove Alternative Media
Is Foreign Affairs magazine advancing “domestic terrorism” because it could help remove alternative media, and even jail editors and writers or worse. The recent article is entitled “Should We Treat Domestic Terrorists the Way We Treat ISIS? What Works—and What Doesn"t.” It begins as follows:
The mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday night has again raised fears about terrorism. There’s much we don’t yet know. The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed the attack, but the FBI claims that there is no international terrorism link. The attacker, Stephen Paddock, was 64 years old and white, fitting a stereotype of a right-wing terrorist more than a jihadist one. And he may just be a crazy nut. But regardless of Paddock’s particular pathology, the situation highlights how the United States treats similar forms of violence differently depending on the nature of the perpetrator.
Many commentators have already demanded that we make a case for domestic terrorism including such prominent Youtubers as Philip DeFranco. He runs a website of some six million and offers mildly libertarian commentary. But perhaps he doesn’t understand that he may eventually become a victim of what he wants to invoke. There are many such well-meaning people who quite possibly misunderstand what is happening
How about PropOrNot? This outfit lists around websites “friendly” to Russia and in total includes many of the major alternative websites in the country. Those who run the website say they believe these sites provide propaganda for Russia.
A recent reading of PropOrNot seems to reveal that the site may have reduced some of the finger-pointing. It says that it does not “censor.” However it continues to list websites nonetheless. The Washington Post drew information from PropOrNot long ago when it was trying to paint alternative websites as Russian sympathizers.
Interestingly, the recent shooting in Las Vegas didn’t make much sense to some people because neither the shooter nor people shot fit into known patterns of terrorism – or so we are told. But what if the real reason to shoot so many people was at least in part to create support for domestic terrorism?
It is surely “conspiratorial” to ask such a question and certainly it must seem far-fetched. On the other hand some commentators have pointed out that there may have been at least two shooters on two separate floors.
The main point here is that the determination to assault the alternative media seems to have taken a big step forward with this article in Foreign Affairs magazine. No new legislation may be needed, according to the article. The FBI simply needs to go after people who are supposedly questionable. Sooner or later this could include the alternative media.
Here’s a quote from the end of the article that back-peddles from some of its more Draconian observations about what the FBI could easily do once people supposedly began to make a fuss about “terrorism” on America’s shores:
… Legislation should factor in counterterrorism measures we don’t want as well as ones we do. … The language should be tightly worded and subject to regular legislative oversight—the definition of a foreign terrorist organization is broad, and any domestic legislation should focus heavily on the threat or use of violence and be regularly reviewed to ensure that changes in group behavior are reflected.
And another quote:
The right-wing threat in particular is comparable to that of jihadist violence at home, and similar resources should be allocated to addressing it. The FBI and DHS should create larger offices dedicated to domestic groups and otherwise develop their intelligence presence.
Will the FBI really be subject to “legislative oversight” and be “regularly reviewed.” The people suggesting this supposed advancement are, at the top, possibly some of the most powerful and wealthy people on the planet. This project may not be bound by constraints any more than the current investigation into Trump is being adequately constrained. And it may be happening sooner rather than later.
Of course maybe Congress has dropped legislative authority to create a well-funded group of reporters that will “expose” the alternative media in the US and perhaps abroad. On the other hand, the move to concentrate on domestic terrorism and then to heighten the battle against the alternative media seems like it could be advancing in earnest. It is certainly possible that the alternative media read by tens of millions is ready to repel the FBI and other forces that could be trying to remove it. But what if it is not?
Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
The UK’s home secretary, Amber Rudd, is the latest bureaucrat to highlight the increased global trend of governments going completely insane.
Her latest plan is to threaten the British population with up to 15 years in prison for the crime of watching “terrorist material.” Yes, you read that right.
The Guardian reports:
People who repeatedly view terrorist content online could face up to 15 years behind bars in a move designed to tighten the laws tackling radicalisation the home secretary, Amber Rudd, is to announce on Tuesday.
A new maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment will also apply to terrorists who publish information about members of the armed forces, police and intelligence services for the purposes of preparing acts of terrorism.
The tightening of the law around viewing terrorist material is part of a review of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy following the increasing frequency of terrorist attacks in Britain this year.
“I want to make sure those who view despicable terrorist content online, including jihadi websites, far-right propaganda and bomb-making instructions, face the full force of the law,” said Rudd. “There is currently a gap in the law around material [that] is viewed or streamed from the internet without being permanently downloaded.
According to the Home Office the updated offence will ensure that only those found to repeatedly view online terrorist material will be guilty of the offence, to safeguard those who click on a link by mistake or who could argue that they did so out of curiosity rather than with criminal intent. A defence of “reasonable excuse” would still be available to academics, journalists or others who may have a legitimate reason to view such material.
The UK is clearly embracing pre-crime here, since it’s clear someone watching terrorist propaganda in the privacy of their own home does not harm anyone else.
Thus, this is a victimless crime, and as I’ve maintained on many occasions, I do not believe such a thing exists. If there’s no victim, there’s no crime.
What the UK is arguing here is that watching “terrorist material” increases the likelihood of someone committing a violent terrorist attack in the future. So you’re actually being punished for what you might potentially do in the future.
This is pre-crime and it’s totally insane.
Beyond that, we can pretty much guarantee that the definition of “terrorist material” will expand over time to whatever politicians don’t want the rabble exposed to.
But it gets worse still. Here’s what Rudd had to say about her government’s demented crusade against technology itself.
Rudd also caused some consternation at the fringe meeting by criticising the tech industry for their “patronising” attitude that “sneered” at politicians who did not always get it right.
She claimed it was not necessary for her to understand how end-to-end encryption worked to know that it was helping criminals.
It’d be funny if it weren’t so incredibly sad.
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Authored by Nikita Vladimirov via CampusReform.org,
A new survey published by The Brookings Institution finds that about one-in-five undergraduate students approve of using violence to shut down controversial speakers.
A majority of undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities also agreed with a hypothetical protest in which a group “opposed to the speaker disrupts the speech by loudly and repeatedly shouting so that the audience cannot hear the speaker.”
According to the survey, 51 percent of students agreed that such a demonstration would be acceptable, while 49 percent disagreed. Not surprisingly, the response to the hypothetical scenario was also largely partisan, with 62 percent of Democrats approving of the protest, compared to just 39 percent of Republicans .
“I find the numbers in the above table to be highly concerning, because they show that a very significant fraction of students, across all categories, believe it is acceptable to silence (by shouting) a speaker they find offensive,” wrote John Villasenor, the author of the survey and a Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow.
The study further found that 19 percent of responders said that they approved of using violence “to prevent the speaker from speaking.” An 81 percent majority, on the other hand, did not approve of the violent approach.
“A surprisingly large fraction of students believe it is acceptable to act—including resorting to violence—to shut down expression they consider offensive,” Villasenor wrote.
While 39 percent of responders indicated that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, 44 percent said that it is not protected by the document. Another 16 percent remained undecided.
In one survey question, the students were also asked if they prefered a learning environment where certain views are prohibited versus an open learning environment “where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints.”
According to the study, 53 percent of responders said that they prefer the former while only 47 percent chose the latter.
“The survey results establish with data what has been clear anecdotally to anyone who has been observing campus dynamics in recent years: Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses,” Villasenor wrote.
“In fact, despite protestations to the contrary (often with statements like ‘we fully support the First Amendment, but…’),” he asserted that “freedom of expression is clearly not, in practice, available on many campuses, including many public campuses that have First Amendment obligations.”
Villasenor surveyed a pool of 1,500 undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities between August 17 - 31. The margin of error is between 2-6 percent.
Authored by Michael Rozeff via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
Eleven years ago, this essay argued against hate-crime laws.
One argument read “People can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions.”
This has now come to pass, I am sorry to say. This week, the Congress passed S. J. Res. 49, and President Trump signed it, making it part of the U.S. legal code.
The law rejects “White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups…” But why? Because of their ideas? Because of their expression of these ideas?
No government that stands for freedom and free speech, whose charge is to protect rights, should be singling out specific groups by name and by law declaring them as outlaws or threats because of their philosophies. If they have committed a crime, such as defamation of character or incitement to riot or riot itself, then charge them and try them. But American government has no legitimate authority to single out some of its citizens in this way. This, furthermore, is an exceedingly bad precedent. Who’s next?
The resolution is too specific, but it’s also dangerously vague. The term “other hate groups” has no known definition. Suppose that this term is defined by a group like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC currently names 917 groups as hate groups (see here for a list). Their criteria are not restricted to violent actions. They comprise SPEECH. They say “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” They are very clear about this: “Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.”
This Congressional resolution is a declaration that certain kinds of groups, some named but many, many others open to inclusion, are to be attacked by the U.S. government.
The law urges “the President and the President’s Cabinet to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups.” The term “threats” in the first paragraph is vague, dangerously vague. However, the very next paragraph singles outfree speech actions when “hundreds of torch-bearing White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis chanted racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant slogans…” The same sentence joins this with violent actions “…and violently engaged with counter-demonstrators on and around the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville…”
This law regards free speech as a threat, linking it to violence, painting them with one brush. There can be no justice that can stem from such a completely sloppy and inexcusably amateurish legal treatment. This linkage is made clear in paragraph seven with this language: “…communities everywhere are concerned about the growing and open display of hate and violence being perpetrated by those groups…” There is no distinction made here between the “open display of hate” and “violence being perpetrated”. As I predicted 11 years ago in arguing against hate crime laws, hate speech is being identified with hate crime.
I am just as uncomfortable with the notion of defining and singling out “hate speech” as some sort of new danger or threat or harmful activity or crime, to be dealt with by government or courts of law as I was 11 years ago with the idea of “hate crime”. The standard categories of crime are quite enough without adding to them a government laundry list of prejudices and aversions that everyone is not supposed to express or feel, under penalty of government law.
Evansville, IN — In what many police accountability critics consider a measly slap on the wrist, Indiana’s Evansville Police Department (EPD) suspended one of their own for five days without pay. Sgt. Rob Hahn was caught on police body camera footage punching a handcuffed suspect in his testicles.
EPD spokesman Sgt. Jason Cullum said Sgt. Hahn was called to assist a felony warrant arrest on a suspect who was residing at a local Evansville motel. Cullum said Hahd “did a couple of things that violated our use of force policy.” For starters, after handcuffing the suspect, Hahn shoved the suspect’s head against the wall.
As the Courier & Press reports:
The encounter started when officers were serving an out-of-county warrant on a man in August at the Arrowhead Motel on North Fares Avenue. Hahn and three patrol officers arrived to arrest the suspect.
When the man did not open his door, the officers went inside the motel room and found him standing in the bathroom on the phone.
Body camera video shows the man was promptly handcuffed. He was not resisting arrest when Hahn shoved and later hit him.
After manhandling the suspect, Cullum said Hahn threw the man on the motel room’s bed. As Hahn walked by the man laying on the bed, he punched the man in his genitals.
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“As he walked by he punched the individual in the groin area,” Cullum said.
EPD Sgt. Jason Cullum (spox) description of why Hahn was suspended. pic.twitter.com/MTUqeE0c0l
— Tori Fater (@vrfater) September 11, 2017
As TFTP reviewed the body camera footage, it was noted the suspect repeatedly objected to being punched in the privates. He demanded to speak with Hahn’s supervisor about the incident.
READ MORE: Cops Kill Deaf Electrical Engineer, Detain the Only Witness and Delete His Video
Adding insult to injury, when the suspect confronted Hahn, asking him why he did what he did, the officer of the law, who is supposed to operate with a high level of integrity, lied about having hit the man in the testicles.
In the video, one can clearly see Hahn walk by and punch the man in the genitals, and then someone can be heard laughing about it. We playback the video a few times in order to confirm our suspicions, but it appears as though someone is laughing during the time the suspect is writhing in pain from being punched.
After several apparently painful minutes, the man was able to regain his composure long enough to be able to get to his feet and make his way to the squad car. Then he confronted Hahn.
“That was wrong! Ya’ll were wrong for that!” “Why did you punch me in the nuts, man?” the man asked, to which Hahn responded, “I didn’t do shit to you! You’ve got the wrong motherfucker!” Hahn insisted, “I didn’t lay a hand on you buddy.”
Hahn insisted he should have simply turned himself in for the outstanding warrant, implying nothing bad would have happened to him if he had. The man responded, “That doesn’t mean you have to punch me in the nuts!” he said. Again Hahn lied, “I didn’t touch ya!”
The entire incident serves to illustrate what many people already know. Police will routinely victimize a suspect’s civil rights, treat them with indignity, and then lie about it when confronted. Fortunately, Hahn did the right thing and turned himself in. But we wonder if he would have done so if the victim, in this case, had just remained silent. We don’t think so.
READ MORE: BREAKING: Church of England Admits it "Colluded" to Cover-Up Decades of Child Rape
It’s important that each citizen flex their rights and use all available measures to hold police accountable for their actions. As a result of Hahn’s misconduct, and his five-day unpaid suspension, the man will likely be able to file a civil lawsuit and collect a settlement for damages sustained in the contact with Evansville Police Department. Unfortunately, the Evansville taxpayer will likely foot the bill.
