A Case of Judicial Murder?

From:  Paul Craig Roberts 

“When we tolerate what we know to be wrong–when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened–when we fail to speak up and speak out–we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.” – Robert Francis Kennedy

John Remington Graham

 

I have been asked many times why I have intervened in the federal prosecution of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man who was convicted and sentenced to death in the Boston  Marathon bombing case where two brothers, on April 15, 2013, allegedly detonated pressure cooker bombs on Boylston Street in front of the Forum Restaurant that killed or maimed many people.

As I wrap up my career of fifty years as a member of the bar, including service as a public defender in state and federal courts, co-founder of an accredited law school, and chief public prosecutor in Minnesota state courts, I am apprehensive that my country might be entering into an era of judicial murder.

Judicial murder is the practice of designing a trial to get a guilty verdict, regardless of the facts, and a death sentence carried out.  It has happened in many countries in all ages.  It has been recognized as a threat of public justice by the United States Supreme Court in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45 at 72-72 (1932). Judicial murder is followed by corruption and destruction of society.The judicial murder of Socrates was followed by loss of the classical civilization of ancient Greece.  The judicial murder of Jesus of Nazareth, whether son of God or venerable philosopher, was followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple. The judicial murder of Joan of Arc was followed by loss of most English lands in France. The judicial murder of Charles the First was followed by loss of the free constitution of England.  The judicial murder of Louis XVI was followed by 150 years of defeat, ruin, suffering, and chaos in France.  Judicial murder in the Third Reich was followed by humiliating defeat of Germany.  Judicial murder in the Soviet Union was followed by collapse of the Soviet empire.  If the justice system cannot be trusted, evil consequences follow.

My active intervention in the case began when I assisted the Russian aunt, herself a lawyer, of Dzhokhar file pro se papers in the federal district court in Boston, asking that she be recognized as a friend of the court so she could present evidence conclusively showing, by FBI-gathered evidence, incorporated by reference into the indictment, that Dzhokhar could not have detonated the bomb he was supposed to have detonated.  I proceeded in this way as instructed by the bar liaison officer of the federal district court and the clerk’s office.  Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote up this legal adventure in his column of August 17, 2015, in a way which draws from the judicial record, and portrays the scenario clearly enough.  The link is https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/08/17/fbi-evidence-proves-innocence-accused-boston-marathon-bomber-dzhokhar-tsarnaev.  Those unfamiliar with this case need to read that article.

 

The claim of the Russian aunt sounds fantastic only so long as one believes newspapers and does not pay attention to critical, undeniable facts gathered by the FBI, and the language of the indictment as returned on June 27, 2013, especially paragraphs 6, 7, and 24.  A number of things have caused me to doubt Dzhokhar’s guilt.

The FBI crime lab determined from fragments at the scene of the explosions by no later than April 16, 2013, that the culprits were carrying heavy-laden black backpacks on Boyleston Street just before the explosions.  This was not an evaporating investigation theory, but was incorporated into the indictment, was part of the government’s case-in-chief, and was never disavowed by anyone involved in the trial.  On April 18, 2013, the FBI determined that the culprits were portrayed in a street video maintained by the Whiskey Steak House on Boyleston Street. Two still frames were used to identify the brothers Tamerlan, who was shot dead by police, and Dzhokhar, who survived, and was charged, convicted, and sentenced to death.   A third still-frame from the same street video shows Dzhokhar, carrying not a heavy-laden black backpack, but a light-weight white backpack over his right shoulder. The very evidence used by the FBI, and described in the indictment to identify Dzhokhar eliminates him as certainly as white is distinguished from black. The FBI evidence of an exploded backpack is black and the FBI’s identification of Dzhokhar at the scene of the crime shows him with a white backpack. This exculpatory evidence was kept out of the trial.

What of the confessions attributed to Dzhokhar?  The law has always known that, contrary to popular belief, confessions are highly unreliable, often contrived or staged by artifice, or otherwise false, which is why the law has long used safeguards to assure that alleged confessions are received only cautiously under proper circumstances.  The alleged confession by Dzhokhar written in the dark on the side of a boat under which the boy injured from gunshot woulds was hiding is highly suspect. Moreover, if Dzhokhar was willing to confess, why was he hiding?  The confession at sentencing was plainly enough scripted for him, and is not corroborated by what the law calls the “corpus delicti.”  

 

But more troubling evidence exists.  Dr. Lorraine Day was the chief of orthopedic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital for some twenty-five years.  She treated many grave injuries, and is an impeccable medical expert.  She prepared a decisive report, dated May 4, 2015, on the Boston bombing case, which she concluded was a hoax. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/34vs8r/lorraine_day_md_former_chief_of_orthopedic/  She observed, for example, that photos of the scene after the explosions revealed no blood when it should have been visible everywhere, and that, when blood did appear, it was of a bright orange red Hollywood color, not maroon as real blood appears in real life.  The Boston marathon case appears to be at least contaminated by crisis actors if not entirely a false flag event. The video of the man showing no trauma whose leg is purported to be blown away being wheeled down the street sitting upright in a wheelchair is a dead giveaway as to the presence of crisis actors. Any such casualty mishandled in such a way would have quickly bled to death.

The trial of Dzhokhar raises more serious questions. Mr. Tsarnaev was defended by court-appointed lawyers who did not do their job.  His chief counsel had powerful exculpatory evidence available, yet she forcefully asserted that he was guilty in her opening statement, never used the exculpatory evidence at trial, and did not even ask for a verdict of not guilty in her final argument to the jury. Dzhokhar had no defense.  As a lawyer with a half century of experience, it was painful for me to watch what looked like a show trial in which the verdict and sentence were assured in advance.

On verge of retirement, I have no interest in acquiring notoriety to build a practice. I have nothing to gain from coming to the defense of a person abandoned by law, the media, and everyone but his aunt. But my country has everything to lose from judicial murder in behalf of some government agenda. We must examine if that is the case and, if so, prevent it.

As a last hurrah as a lawyer, I recently filed a motion in behalf of three American citizens before the First Circuit in the appeal of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, asking that they be recognized as friends of the court, so they can show that, on the basis of facts actually of record before the federal district court in Boston, Dzhokhar did not detonate a pressure-cooker bomb on Boylston Street on April 15, 2013, as charged in the indictment. The government and major media of the United States have created such confusion and libelled the accused so foully that it is impossible for the average citizen relying on newspapers to imagine that Dzhokhar is innocent. Major media waged a lock-step propaganda campaign against Mr. Tsarnaev. 

However, perhaps a turning point occurred on Monday of this week. Newsweek on October 23, 2017, reported, two years and two months after Dr. Roberts’ report on my filing in behalf of Dzhokhar’s aunt, Maret Tsarnaeva, that evidence might exist of Dzhokhar’s innocence. http://www.newsweek.com/boston-marathon-bombers-aunt-says-fbi-set-her-nephew-and-she-has-proof-691058 If other of the American media would join Newsweek in informing the public that there is doubt about the conviction, perhaps not only a possible case of wrongful conviction can be corrected, but also a case of possible judicial murder could be prevented.

 – John Remington Graham of the Minnesota Bar (#3664X), jrgraham@novicomfusion.com, 418-888-5049.

 

Regulation Is Killing Community Banks – Public Banks Can Revive Them

From:  Common Dreams 

by

Ellen Brown

Crushing regulations are driving small banks to sell out to the megabanks, a consolidation process that appears to be intentional. Publicly-owned banks can help avoid that trend and keep credit flowing in local economies.

"Killing off the community banks with regulation means killing off the small and medium-size businesses that rely on them for funding, along with the local economies that rely on those businesses," writes Brown. "Community banks service local markets in a way that the megabanks with their standardized lending models are not interested in or capable of." (Photo: Blackline)

At his confirmation hearing in January 2017, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said, “regulation is killing community banks.” If the process is not reversed, he warned, we could “end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country.” That would be bad for both jobs and the economy. “I think that we all appreciate the engine of growth is with small and medium-sized businesses,” said Mnuchin. “We’re losing the ability for small and medium-sized banks to make good loans to small and medium-sized businesses in the community, where they understand those credit risks better than anybody else.”

The number of US banks with assets under $100 million dropped from 13,000 in 1995 to under 1,900 in 2014. The regulatory burden imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act exacerbated this trend, with community banks losing market share at double the rate during the four years after 2010 as in the four years before. But the number had already dropped to only 2,625 in 2010.  What happened between 1995 and 2010?

Six weeks after September 11, 2001, the 1,100 page Patriot Act was dropped on congressional legislators, who were required to vote on it the next day. The Patriot Act added provisions to the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act that not only expanded the federal government’s wiretapping and surveillance powers but outlawed the funding of terrorism, imposing greater scrutiny on banks and stiff criminal penalties for non-compliance. Banks must now collect and verify customer-provided information, check names of customers against lists of known or suspected terrorists, determine risk levels posed by customers, and report suspicious persons, organizations and transactions. One small banker complained that banks have been turned into spies secretly reporting to the federal government. If they fail to comply, they can face stiff enforcement actions, whether or not actual money-laundering crimes are alleged.

In 2010, one small New Jersey bank pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and was fined $5 million for failure to file suspicious-activity and cash-transaction reports. The bank was acquired a few months later by another bank. Another small New Jersey bank was ordered to shut down a large international wire transfer business because of deficiencies in monitoring for suspicious transactions. It closed its doors after it was hit with $8 million in fines over its inadequate monitoring policies.

Complying with the new rules demands a level of technical expertise not available to ordinary mortals, requiring the hiring of yet more specialized staff and buying more anti-laundering software. Small banks cannot afford the risk of massive fines or the added staff needed to avoid them, and that burden is getting worse. In February 2017, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed a new rule that would add a new category requiring the flagging of suspicious “cyberevents.” According to an April 2017 article in American Banker:

[T]he “cyberevent” category requires institutions to detect and report all varieties of digital mischief, whether directed at a customer’s account or at the bank itself. . . .

Under a worst-case scenario, a bank’s failure to detect a suspicious [email] attachment or a phishing attack could theoretically result in criminal prosecution, massive fines and

One large bank estimated that the proposed change with the new cyberevent reporting requirement would cost it an additional $9.6 million every year.

Besides the cost of hiring an army of compliance officers to deal with a thousand pages of regulations, banks have been hit with increased capital requirements imposed by the Financial Stability Board under Basel III, eliminating the smaller banks’ profit margins. They have little recourse but to sell to the larger banks, which have large compliance departments and can skirt the capital requirements by parking assets in off-balance-sheet vehicles.

In a September 2014 article titled “The FDIC’s New Capital Rules and Their Expected Impact on Community Banks,” Richard Morris and Monica Reyes Grajales noted that “a full discussion of the rules would resemble an advanced course in calculus,” and that the regulators have ignored protests that the rules would have a devastating impact on community banks. Why? The authors suggested that the rules reflect “the new vision of bank regulation – that there should be bigger and fewer banks in the industry.” That means bank consolidation is an intended result of the punishing rules.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, sponsor of the Financial CHOICE Act downsizing Dodd-Frank, concurs. In a speech in July 2015, he said:

Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer. But because Washington can control a handful of big established firms much easier than many small and zealous competitors, this is likely an intended consequence of the Act. Dodd-Frank concentrates greater assets in fewer institutions. It codifies into law ‘Too Big to Fail’ . . . . [Emphasis added.]

Dodd-Frank institutionalizes “too big to fail” by authorizing the biggest banks to “bail in” or confiscate their creditors’ money in the event of insolvency. The legislation ostensibly reining in the too-big-to-fail banks has just made them bigger. Wall Street lobbyists were well known to have their fingerprints all over Dodd-Frank.

   Restoring Community Banking: The Model of North Dakota  

Killing off the community banks with regulation means killing off the small and medium-size businesses that rely on them for funding, along with the local economies that rely on those businesses. Community banks service local markets in a way that the megabanks with their standardized lending models are not interested in or capable of.

How can the community banks be preserved and nurtured? For some ideas, we can look to a state where they are still thriving – North Dakota. In an article titled “How One State Escaped Wall Street’s Rule and Created a Banking System That’s 83% Locally Owned,” Stacy Mitchell writes that North Dakota’s banking sector bears little resemblance to that of the rest of the country:

With 89 small and mid-sized community banks and 38 credit unions, North Dakota has six times as many locally owned financial institutions per person as the rest of the nation. And these local banks and credit unions control a resounding 83 percent of deposits in the state — more than twice the 30 percent market share that small and mid-sized financial institutions have nationally.

Their secret is the century-old Bank of North Dakota (BND), the nation’s only state-owned depository bank, which partners with and supports the state’s local banks. In an April 2015 article titled “Is Dodd-Frank Killing Community Banks? The More Important Question is How to Save Them”, Matt Stannard writes:

Public banks offer unique benefits to community banks, including collateralization of deposits, protection from poaching of customers by big banks, the creation of more successful deals, and . . . regulatory compliance. The Bank of North Dakota, the nation’s only public bank, directly supports community banks and enables them to meet regulatory requirements such as asset to loan ratios and deposit to loan ratios. . . . [I]t keeps community banks solvent in other ways, lessening the impact of regulatory compliance on banks’ bottom lines.

We know from FDIC data in 2009 that North Dakota had almost 16 banks per 100,000 people, the most in the country. A more important figure, however, is community banks’ loan averages per capita, which was $12,000 in North Dakota, compared to only $3,000 nationally. . . . During the last decade, banks in North Dakota with less than $1 billion in assets have averaged a stunning 434 percent more small business lending than the national average.

The BND has been very profitable for the state and its citizens – more profitable, according to the Wall Street Journal, than JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The BND does not compete with local banks but partners with them, helping with capitalization and liquidity and allowing them to take on larger loans that would otherwise go to larger out-of-state banks.

In order to help rural lenders with regulatory compliance, in 2011 the BND was directed by the state legislature to get into the rural home mortgage origination business. Rural banks that saw only three to five mortgages a year could not shoulder the regulatory burden, leading to business lost to out-of-state banks. After a successful pilot program, SB 2064, establishing the Mortgage Origination Program, was signed by North Dakota’s governor on April 3, 2013. It states that the BND may establish a residential mortgage loan program under which the Bank may originate residential mortgages if private sector mortgage loan services are not reasonably available. Under this program a local financial institution or credit union may assist the Bank in taking a loan application, gathering required documents, ordering required legal documents, and maintaining contact with the borrower. At a hearing on the bill, Rick Clayburgh, President of the North Dakota Bankers Association, testified in its support:

Over the past years because of the regulatory burdens our banks face by the passage of Dodd Frank, and now the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it has become very prohibitive for a number of our banks to provide residential mortgage services anymore. We two years ago worked both with the Independent Community Bankers Association, and our Association and the Bank of North Dakota to come up with the idea in this program to help the bank provide services into the parts of the state that really residential mortgaging has seized up. We have a number of our banks that have terminated doing mortgage loans in their communities. They have stopped the process because they cannot afford to be written up by their regulator.

Under the Mortgage Origination Program, local banks get paid what is essentially a finder’s fee for sending rural mortgage loans to the BND. If the BND touches the money first, the onus is on it to deal with the regulators, something it can afford to do by capitalizing on economies of scale. The local bank thus avoids having to deal with regulatory compliance while keeping its customer.

The BND is the only model of a publicly-owned depository bank in the US; but in Germany, the publicly-owned Sparkassen banks operate a network of over 15,600 branches and are the financial backbone supporting Germany’s strong local business sector. In the matter of regulatory compliance, they too capitalize on economies of scale, by providing a compliance department that pools resources to deal with the onerous regulations imposed on banks by the EU.

The BND and the Sparkassen are proven models for maintaining the viability of local credit and banking services. It is time other states followed North Dakota’s lead, not only to protect their local communities and local banks, but to bolster their revenues, escape the noose of Washington and Wall Street, and provide a bail-in-proof depository for their public funds.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Ellen Brown is an attorney and founder of the Public Banking Institute. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt, and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.

Don't Be Distracted...Focus on Making Reform Permanent!

In our era, a key progressive goal is to so distract decision-makers in the White House, Congress, and the pro-limited government movement, that we fail to seize this opportunity to focus on making permanent reforms, especially constitutional reforms, that will change the trajectory of government growth over the next generation.

There are some very smart progressives who realize that the most dangerous part of this Republican coalition, is NOT just Republican control of the White House or Republican majorities in Congress.

Democrats have dealt with those before and they know that the executive orders, budgets, tax policies and laws these majorities enact are only temporary, until the next Democratic super-majorities which come periodically, about once a generation.

What Democrats and progressives REALLY fear is the combination of Republican Congressional majorities, control of the White House AND majorities in the legislatures of 33, almost 2/3, of the states plus split, or near majority control in at least 5 more states and the power they offer for constitutional reform.

The emerging new technology of constitutional reform, refining the strategy of pressure from the states and the public that has resulted in the enactment of 12 of the 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, could give 2/3 of the states who agreed on the text of an Amendment that was also popular with voters, the power to force Congress to propose that Amendment or something very similar.

States could force Congress to act  without resorting to a convention that is still a very divisive issue in American politics.

It was pressure from the states and the public that forced Congress to propose the Bill of Rights and more recently Presidential term limits.  It could be done again.

If there were active Presidential, Congressional, business community, or widespread grassroots leadership for such an effort to mobilize states to force Congress to propose an Amendment, it could well succeed.

And success for almost any Amendment would transform the balance of state and federal power, taking power away from Washington and giving it back to states and the people, where most voters believe it belongs.

Creating a viable path to taking power out of Washington would totally frustrate progressives' long term plan to create an even more powerful higher tax, higher regulation, higher spending federal government over the next generation.

Especially dangerous for advocates of bigger government is the possibility that pro-limited government forces will find a way to permanently curb the power of the so-called "deep state", often referred to as the administrative state.

The power of the "administrative state" now allows a President to, in many ways, "rule by decree" reinterpreting laws passed years ago, to essentially create new laws without the consent of Congress.  Using that power is a key part of progressive strategy for imposing their economic and cultural agenda on the country the next time they elect a President, without the need for approval by Congress.

Free from the fear of arbitrary federal regulation, the value of assets in energy, agriculture, natural resources, manufacturing, financial markets, technology, and small business could skyrocket, and our rate of economic growth and job creation could double.

But the current power of federal regulators and the near-certainty of a future progressive president who will exploit that power threaten our hopes for high economic growth, our resulting ability to responsibly fund both our defense needs and a safety net for the poor and elderly, our 2nd Amendment rights, our religious freedom, and the very checks and balances on the abuse on federal power that were intended by the authors of our Constitution,

That is the reason that the effort, now unanimously  backed by the RNC with the approval of the White House, and by Resolutions in 26 state legislative chambers, to mobilize states to persuade Congress to propose the "Regulation Freedom Amendment" to require that Congress approve major new federal regulations is so important.

With just a little more support and momentum, this effort could become one of the major issues of 2018, uniting libertarians, conservatives of all kinds, and a majority of the public around the idea that the people and their elected representatives, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington should make the rules that govern us.

That issue and the fact that most Democrats in Washington want send more power to Washington, and give more power to un-elected bureaucrats, things most voters oppose. could totally change the dynamics of the 2018 election.

And that is why the Regulation Freedom Amendment and the effort to "end regulation without representation" deserve your active support, including your time, your resources, and the contacts you have built up over your years of work and living.

We need people at all levels  to contact elected officials urging support for the Amendment, to attend and speak at conferences and political meetings around the nation, and to help us raise the money we need to grow this effort.

If some of your passion and energy were directed towards finding others who would like to be actively involved in this effort to "drain the swamp", you could have a decisive impact at a decisive moment in the effort to reverse the trend towards a more powerful, centralized and abusive federal government.

The historic "triple 'White House/Congressional/State Legislative majorities and the unique opportunity they presents may not come again for a generation, or ever.  We must take advantage of it now or we will look back with regret on the opportunity that we missed!

If you want to discuss, call or email me.

Roman Buhler

Director

The Madison Coalition

202 255 5000

www.RegulationFreedom.Org

Trump Backs Off Promise To Release All Suppressed JFK Documents Today; Permits Partial Release

From:  Justice Integrity Project 

by Andrew Kreig

In a chaotic chapter of government efforts to suppress research into the evidence regarding President Kennedy's 1963 assassination, President Trump on Oct. 26 suddenly backed away from his promises this week to comply with a 1992 Congressional law and release all remaining documents related to the assassination.

The president released in full via the National Archives website at about 7:30 p.m. some 2,891 remaining documents after a conference call with news reporters beginning at 5:46 p.m. This followed a day in which many in the public long focused on the document release were left wondering until after normal business hours what was happening.

Update: One expert suggested privately to fellow researchers that his preliminary review of the documents and the initial media coverage indicates vast confusion in the news coverage, as follows:

Most journalists who mentioned the numbers of documents in their initial reporting implied that the released documents, 2,891, came from the trove of some 3,100 that had been expected to be released in full on Oct. 26. Instead, the expert said, at least 98 percent of the released documents appeared to be from the larger universe of some 30,000 documents that had been previously released with partial redactions.

In other words, the new information may be far less than implied by initial news reports, even those from major news organizations. A further implication is that staff disorganization in the White House must have been at a monumental level for a 25-year project regarding the murder of a president in broad daylight in what's been called "The Crime of the Century" to crash into such confusion and secrecy on its long-anticipated deadline day. 

The White House issued a statement saying that it was giving federal agencies until March 12 to register objections to remaining documents.The White House scheduling a decision on the those objections by April 26, with some documents to be released on a rolling basis in the meantime.

Earlier in the week, Trump had promised compliance and transparency on the documents. They were supposed to have been released by Oct. 26 as part of a process begun after the U.S. Senate and House each passed by unanimous votes in 1992 the so-called "JFK Act" to release all documents absent compelling national security reasons.

This editor has been monitoring these developments closely for years via the Justice Integrity Project and Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA). Along with more than 200 other reporters and interested parties, I joined a White House conference call that began at 5:46 p.m. (EST) whereby officials described how and why they were only partially complying with their own and congressional timetables. Also, I undertook a number of interviews this week with U.S. and international outlets to describe the importance of developments.

The news is summarized in an appendix to this column. It contains a number of news stories and commentaries arranged in reverse chronological order. Another appendix includes our so-far 43-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination," which helps show how virtually all major U.S. media continue to support the controversial 1964 Warren Report claiming that former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to kill Kennedy in Dallas.

Virtually all major media also couch their coverage in terms of smearing researchers with the term "conspiracy theorists," a term popularized by the CIA in the 1960s to discredit critics of the Warren Report, previously declassified CIA documents show.

Especially notable among the columns this week are those by JFK research experts John M. Newman, Dan Hardway, and Jacob Hornberger. Important also is a  news story by the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette in which noted forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, chairman of CAPA, described medical evidence proving that the accused JFK assassin Oswald could not alone have killed Kennedy, as alleged by the 1964 Warren Commission.

Wecht has been a leader in arranging with CAPA and the South Texas College of Law / Houston a unique mock trial, State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald, that will showcase at the school top medical experts discussing evidence. Proponents from CAPA believe the evidence will show conclusively on the basis of scientific facts that Oswald could not alone have killed Kennedy, in contrast to claims by government authorities and the vast majority of news reporters..Details of the mock trial are here. Many researchers believe also that Oswald did not fire any shots, but such a conclusion is not necessary to raise doubts about the professed certitude of authorities that he acted alone.

Newman, a historian and national intelligence expert, argues that Oswald was an undercover intelligence operative and that agencies have tried through the years to hide embarrassing information. Hardway, an attorney and former staff investigator for Congress into Oswald's alleged activities, argues in his column that intelligence agencies and the news media have concocted the smear "conspiracy theory" to deter honest investigations into the Kennedy death.

Hornberger, leader of the Libertarian think tank Future of Freedom Foundation and also an attorney and a book publisher, predicted early this week that Trump would back away from his promise to release all documents. Hornberger alleged days ago that Trump, as deal-maker, likely promised transparency in order to frighten secrets-keepers at the FBI and CIA to make a secret deal to help protect his own secrets and viability despite ongoing federal probes into his 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent actions. 

Trump's White House statement contradicting his earlier statements said in part:

The American public expects -- and deserves -- its Government to provide as much access as possible to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records (records) so that the people may finally be fully informed about all aspects of this pivotal event. Therefore, I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted. 

At the same time, executive departments and agencies (agencies) have proposed to me that certain information should continue to be redacted because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns.  I have no choice --today -- but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our Nation's security. 

To further address these concerns, I am also ordering agencies to re-review each and every one of those redactions over the next 180 days.  At the end of that period, I will order the public disclosure of any information that the agencies cannot demonstrate meets the statutory standard for continued postponement of disclosure under section 5(g)(2)(D) of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (44 U.S.C. 2107 note) (the "Act"). 

A CIA spokesperson added:

We welcome the President’s directive to conduct further review of the records in the JFK Assassination Records Collection to identify any additional information that can be released, while still protecting our officers, partners, sources, and methods.CIA has been working diligently to release to the public as much CIA information as possible from the collection.

Pursuant to the JFK Assassination Records Act of 1992, more than 87,000 CIA records were identified as falling within the scope of the collection.

Of those, CIA has already released more than 69,000 records to the public in full, without redaction. Every single one of the approximately 18,000 remaining CIA records in the collection will ultimately be released, with no document withheld in full. 

While some of these 18,000 records currently contain targeted redactions, the information redacted represents less than one percent of the total CIA information in the collection.

CIA’s current redactions were undertaken with the intent to protect information in the collection whose disclosure would harm national security -- including the names of CIA assets and current and former CIA officers, as well as specific intelligence methods and partnerships that remain viable to protecting the nation today. 

The news coverage from mainstream media focused heavily on reporters' claim that "conspiracy theorists" dominate the debate and steer the public away from what the reporters consistently claim is Oswald's guilt. The news organizations bring forward for the most part the same few supposed experts who with near-unanimity allege that Oswald in fact killed Kennedy, acting alone.

CNN -- whose parent company Time-Life played a key role in suppressing the Zapruder film that provided contrary evidence to the mainstream narrative that Oswald killed Kennedy with three shots from the rear -- exemplified the questionable news coverage the evening of Oct. 26. CNN's commentators repeatedly mocked critics of the official narrative. The anchors and experts (clearly cherry-picked to reiterate the death's official narrative) framed their discussion around whether delays in providing evidence would fuel "conspiracy" thinking. That stressed the commentators' theme that the most important documents in the case were those involving Oswald's purported Communist sympathies.

Our immediate goal with this column is to report the evening's breaking news ASAP.

Future reports here will follow up in more depth with analysis of why the U.S. mainstream news media remain so committed to reiterating a narrative that the American public reject by large majorities, according to public opinion polls showing that between 60 and about 75 percent of Americans reject the Warren Report's main conclusion -- and thus the standard news accounts by media elites.

As a further preview, we note that we now know conclusively that the CIA led the way in a secret propaganda campaign against the American public and in violation of the CIA's charter to manipulate the nation's news media to popularize the smear "conspiracy theorist." This is shown by a previously declassified 1967 CIA document, known as "CIA Dispatch 1035-960."

The 50-page CIA memo instructed its agents to contact their media contacts and disparage as "conspiracy theorists" those who were criticizing the Warren Commission findings that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and acted alone. The 1967 document is here in the original, and here in reformatted text of its summary. Minutes of CIA meeting that same year indicated fear that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison would win a conviction in his murder conspiracy case naming International Trade Mart executive Clay Shaw as being at the center of a plot to murder the president.

Shaw, the only person ever indicted in connection with the JFK murder, was acquitted after he denied that he was involved with the CIA and after many key prosecution witnesses died in untimely fashion.

Garrison outlined his theory of the case in video that NBC broadcast in 1967 (under rules then requiring a right of reply) in response to NBC's attacks on Garrison to thwart his prosecution. In a 27-minute address to the nation, Garrison argued in favor of a rational evaluation of evidence and against what he called a dangerous "fairy tale" being spread by the Warren Commission and powerful media about the Kennedy murder case in order to confuse the public. At the eight-minute mark or so, Garrison talks specifically about the importance of his documentary evidence -- even though he possessed only some of the four million pages of evidence declassified primarily in recent years about the assassination.

The 1991 film JFK by Oliver Stone portrayed Garrison as a truth-seeker, and led to popular pressure on Congress to order release of suppressed JFK assassination documents. Some four million pages have been released so far. These provide informed researchers fairly clear ideas of what had caused Kennedy's murder and why it still matters.

To be continued. 

Toxic tensions in the heart of 'Cancer Alley'

From:  CNN

The EPA says this town has the nation's highest risk of developing cancer from air toxins. The plant emitting the toxins says otherwise. Locals are outraged.

By Victor Blackwell, Wayne Drash and Christopher Lett, CNN

Updated 7:36 PM ET, Fri October 20, 2017

EPA: Plant emits 99% of US chloroprene pollution 08:28

LaPlace, Louisiana (CNN)Geraldine Watkins sits at the kitchen table in her ranch home, rattling off the names of friends and relatives in her small Louisiana town who've died of cancer over the last 40 years.

Her grandchildren suffer an array of ailments, from skin conditions to breathing problems. Her 7-year-old great-grandson's breathing is so labored, she says, "you can feel his heart trying to jump out of his chest."

Watkins lives in the shadow of a plant that spews chloroprene -- a chemical so toxic the Environmental Protection Agency says nearby residents face the highest risk in the country of developing cancer from air toxins.  MORE

Mercury Systems Announces Safety-Certifiable Multi-Core Solution for Avionics and Communications

From:  NasDaq

NOTE:  Along with polluting industries companies such as Green Hills Software, Inc. (GHS), will find themselves mentioned in the now coming online Lincoln's Risk-Registry.  Look for announcements.  

BuiltSAFE ROCK-2 Subsystem Integrated with INTEGRITY-178 is Aligned to FACE Standard

ANDOVER, Mass., Oct. 20, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mercury Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRCY) (www.mrcy.com) announced that its BuiltSAFE™ ROCK-2 avionics subsystem is now available pre-integrated with the Green Hills Software safe and secure INTEGRITY-178 tuMP® (time-variant unified multiprocessing) real-time operating system (RTOS). INTEGRITY-178 tuMP enables the full multi-core capabilities of the ROCK-2 subsystem to be utilized for applications requiring DO-178C certification. The combined software and hardware solution is aligned with the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) V2.1 Technical Standard and was demonstrated at this week's FACE Technical Interchange Meeting.  MORE

Linda, you have a lot to learn

By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Bloodworth-Thomason from Fellowship of the Mind

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason has a lot to learn about being free and in community with others.  Standing up for the truth is required of us as human beings.  It does not matter who it is, the truth needs to be told, both to affirm those who suffer harm and to remind those who violate the rights of others of their error.  ‘Doing the right thing,’ means all of the time, every time, not when it is convenient or emotionally easy. 

To put it plainly, she believes she can enjoy a relationship with a sexual predator and cut this off from any judgement of herself when her ‘friend’ violates the personal autonomy of someone else.  This is absurd, wishful thinking which expresses an ugly truth about Ms. Bloodworth and uncounted others. 

What about the many victims Bill Clinton has left in his wake?  What about the campaigns of destruction waged by Hillary Clinton on these victims of Bill’s sexual addiction? 

On John and Ken Show in Los Angeles, a radio talk show, their phone line, “The Moist Line,” for people to leave messages for what scum bag needs to be thrown into the proverbial dumpster this week, only two names were mentioned several times by many women.  One was Harvey Weinstein and the other was, “What about Bill Clinton?”  We have not forgotten. 

Bill and Harvey from The gateway Pundit, Harv chuckling

For you to not counsel Bill Clinton on this matter as your attorney uncle would, is to turn the hashtag, “#MeToo,” into “PoundMeToo,” probably not what you intended, but you are in the arena with a word processor and TV cameras. 

Not being believed, being discounted, dismissed, causes trauma which sends ripples of pain down the entire life of an individual.   Each of us is responsible for our own lives and can be judged when we give the semblance of honor to those whose own actions are at variance with these values when we choose to ignore this human responsibility.   

Linda, you are, as you refused to admit, a hypocrite. 

Freedom from sexual harassment is not just for women in Hollywood, it is for all of us, women and men all of our lives.  Freedom goes way beyond respect for our bodies. Our freedom includes our choices, how we live, love and work as long as we do no harm to others. 

The freedom which increased the recognized autonomy for women, minorities, yes, and for men, to choose their own paths in life, have been expensive.  That cost has been borne by women and men, many now dead, who put their lives on hold to stand up for the rights of those who could not speak for themselves or who were ignored for the reasons which a few weeks ago remained unspoken by those in the Entertainment Industry.

This could not have happened without the collusion of thousands of individuals.  It is easy to understand why so many women and men remained silent, but those reasons do not excuse them or mitigate their continued suffering.    

One tiny step has been taken, despite the overt nature of the sexual predators, male and female, operating within the Entertainment Industry.   But we remain in a world where the Equal Rights Amendment is still unratified, despite the fact most believe this has long since happened.

Linda, you have enabled a sexual predator and then attempted to evade accountability, kicking his victims to the curb.  You admitted this openly when you said, “I will be the first to admit that clearly delineated moral choices can still be painfully complex where friendship is involved. One of the best friends I will ever have and a man I love dearly, former President Bill Clinton, has certainly taxed my feminist conscience, but always without diminishing my affection. I even helped write his apology to the nation for his own sexual misconduct, was sitting next to him when he delivered it, and believe to this day it was based on something that was none of our business. And yes, some may call it hypocritical, but I confess to having had no problem warning at least three top-level Democratic operatives against allowing Harvey Weinstein to host political fundraisers. A warning that evidently (and to the glee of Fox News) fell on deaf ears.”

There is a road out of your hypocrisy.  Read on.  We need a lot more than the ratification of the ERA, as important as that is.  Hear this, there is no space in our world for protecting predators in any arena.

Explaining you were sympathetic when it cost you nothing should make you cringe.  I’m sure Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan and others in your industry are relieved.  They can more on, heal, know they are safe.  But there are others who are not safe, not one bit. 

You recounted your personal experiences in the Entertainment Industry.  It is the same in every part of our world where an elite, usually male, but not always, can dictate terms which include demanding favors, sexual or other, from those beneath them.  The relative power of the individual makes it easy to ignore obligations or make demands on those who work for them or are themselves in politics. 

Every part of the political arena, corporate life, the military, and more are subject to the same abuses.  Your silence within your own industry is mirrored in the still unresolved acts of Bill and Hillary Clinton.   

Much of my life was spent in GOP and Libertarian politics.  It was exactly the same.  As a condition of employment Ed Crane of CATO required women who worked there to have sex with him.  Crane was never a proponent of freedom but enjoyed a half-million dollars a year for manicuring issues for his employers, the Kochs.  I exposed this but no on in that arena cared much.  There is, despite that, a difference between being a Libertine and a Libertarian.     

You don’t like Donald Trump so denouncing him is easy.  Trump admitted his failing openly and apologized to his victim.   But Bill apologized to those he had not directly victimized only after being impeached.   So where is the lesson learned?  Gossip has it his behavior has not changed.  How about if we ask his Secret Service Agents?  They likely know.

Corporate Officers are also known to behave in the same way.  Ideology does not matter but power does. 

Linda, you were whining when you wrote, “As for the small screen, I myself was the creator of a man-loving, feminist show called Designing Women. We were arguably one of the most progressive, loudmouthed, female series ever — unapologetically, week after week, we showcased issues involving the objectification of women, violence against women and sexual harassment. Out of 163 episodes, we received one Emmy … for hairdressing. (It might be worth noting that Television Academy voters were 80 percent male.)”

I happen to have a partner who had some comments on your Poplar Bluff Mule memories, which play so large in Designing Women.  Your characterization for your ‘designing women,’ were your parents, descendants of the Bloodworth boys on Lester Street.  One of the boys went into law in Poplar Bluff. 

The Bloodworth boys learned about girl power from those Brake Girls who lived across Lester Street.  The Bloodworth Boys lost a fist-fight to the four Brake girls after bullying the recently fatherless sisters on the subject of racism.  Their mother had run for Butler County Clerk in an alliance between the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the then Negro population, which took on the Klu Klux Klan, who bought the election with free drinks with the quid pro quo they would vote for the Klan candidate against the widow.  Jesse Lee Collins-Brake lost, but broke the back politically of the Klan in the Boot Heel ever after.  The young Bloodworth boys were gloating over this loss and took it as a license to bully the girls.  The Brake girls whipped their asses with their KerPow, continuing to swim with their black friends in the Black and Current Rivers. 

Everyone, Brake and Bloodworth went home with black eyes. 

To their credit, the Bloodworth boys learned their lesson and, thereafter, fought for desegregation and positive race relations the rest of their lives.  However, they did not seem to communicate to you the full source of the conflict; to not bully girls.  Now, you know and we can move on.  To exonerate yourself you need to advocate to Bill, as his ghost writer, that beyond admission of guilt, sorrow, and apology, he needs to tell the truth about his bullying and quid pro quos for sex and make restitution.  One way he and Hillary can do this is to reroute the $250.000 given to them by Harvey Weinstein and instead create the Harvey Weinstein “Endowment” and add their own millions, not as hush money, but as true restitution.  Since Bill and Hillary now control $900M, this coming after poverty when their campaign fund was down to $50,000 in March 1992, could make a dent in the ladies’ problems. 

Bill and Hillary ignored all the wisdom and solutions offered them in favor of power and money, only pretending to care about solving so many problems.    

The lives led by the Bloodworth Boys and Those Brake Girls from Poplar Bluff could solve many of the problems Americans face today.  Go back and ask your families, and some Mules.  If they don’t know, you can come ask me.