'Christine Ford threw her under the bus': Close family member of ‘sex assault' witness Leland Keyser confirms she did NOT corroborate school friend Ford's story to FBI
Daily Mail
October 3, 2018
Leland Keyser was shocked when Christine Ford named her as a corroborating witness to her claims that Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a high school party, Keyser's relative exclusively told DailyMailTV.
The family member, who did not wish to be named said: 'Christine didn't give her so much as a heads up - as far as I know they haven't really spoken for several years and they're certainly not close anymore.
Leland was completely blindsided by her name being thrown into it all.' Keyser's family member said the former pro golfer couldn't corroborate Ford's story when she was interviewed by the FBI on Saturday.
Thursday, October 04, 2018
SOME OF THE FINE PEOPLE TRUMP TALKED ABOUT
3 Men Arrested In SoCal, 1 In San Francisco In Connection With 2017 White Nationalist Rally In Virginia
Associated Press
October 3, 2018
Four members of a militant white supremacist group from California were arrested on charges they traveled to Virginia last year to incite a riot and attack counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally that turned deadly, federal authorities said Tuesday.
The defendants — Benjamin Drake Daley, Michael Paul Miselis, Thomas Walter Gillen and Cole Evan White — are part of the Rise Above Movement, which espouses anti-Semitic views and meets regularly in public parks to train in boxing and other fighting techniques, according to an affidavit written by an FBI agent.
The affidavit alleges the four were “among the most violent individuals present in Charlottesville” in August 2017 during a torch-lit march on the University of Virginia campus and a larger rally in downtown the following day.
Associated Press
October 3, 2018
Four members of a militant white supremacist group from California were arrested on charges they traveled to Virginia last year to incite a riot and attack counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally that turned deadly, federal authorities said Tuesday.
The defendants — Benjamin Drake Daley, Michael Paul Miselis, Thomas Walter Gillen and Cole Evan White — are part of the Rise Above Movement, which espouses anti-Semitic views and meets regularly in public parks to train in boxing and other fighting techniques, according to an affidavit written by an FBI agent.
The affidavit alleges the four were “among the most violent individuals present in Charlottesville” in August 2017 during a torch-lit march on the University of Virginia campus and a larger rally in downtown the following day.
OWNER OF A FERRARI, INTERNATIONAL BANK ACCOUNTS AND MULTIPLE HOMES WILL SOON RESIDE IN GRAYBAR HOTEL
Phantom Secure CEO, whose encrypted cellphone company catered to drug traffickers, pleads guilty
By Kristina Davis
The San Diego Union-Tribune
October 2, 2018
SAN DIEGO -- The CEO of a Canadian company that provided encrypted cellphone messaging services to criminal organizations around the world, allowing them to operate secretly on secure networks, pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court Tuesday to a racketeering conspiracy.
Phantom Secure, under the leadership of Vincent Ramos, earned some $80 million in profits over the past 10 years — an amount that he has agreed to forfeit as part of the plea agreement. Also on the forfeiture list are tens of millions of dollars in other assets, including cryptocurrency; property in British Columbia, Los Angeles and the Las Vegas area; gold and silver; a Land Rover and a Ferrari Cabriolet.
The devices the company sold were actually gutted Blackberries, with the usual abilities to make phone calls, take pictures and surf the web replaced with an untraceable text messaging system, according to court records. The messages were routed through encrypted servers in Hong Kong and Panama and further disguised by virtual proxy networks.
The FBI estimates some 20,000 such devices have been sold throughout the world — with about half of them being used by Australia’s underworld, according to officials there. Members of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel were also customers, authorities said.
As part of the plea, Ramos admitted to facilitating the importation, exportation and distribution of wholesale quantities of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine throughout the world, including the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Canada, Thailand and Europe.
The investigation into Phantom Secure was truly a global effort, with law enforcement in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Panama coordinating on several fronts and in various undercover capacities to infiltrate the company.
To prevent law enforcement from getting their hands on the special phones, Phantom Secure required existing customers — referred to as “executives” — to vouch for new customers, then conducted background checks. The company’s safeguard didn’t always work.
One of the big breaks in the case came during the San Diego FBI investigation of Owen Hanson, a former University of Southern California football player who built a global gambling and drug-smuggling empire. An undercover agent who had gained Hanson’s trust at the tail end of the investigation was able to get a Phantom Secure phone of his own, according to court records, which do not name Hanson but include detailed descriptions of the case.
Another safeguard also failed. When Hanson was arrested, authorities say Phantom sent a signal to remotely erase data from his phone. But the signal did not reach in time, and the data was preserved.
In another undercover probe, several agents posing as high-level traffickers met with Ramos in Las Vegas in February 2017, explaining they were expanding into South America and Europe. They indicated they would need GPS tracking in case they had to locate cooperators to be killed, according to the complaint.
“Right, right, right, right,” Ramos responded, and later assured the devices cannot be hacked, the complaint says.
Ramos, 40, who lives in the Vancouver area, faces up to 20 years in prison. He has agreed to serve at least five years of his sentence in the U.S. before requesting to be transferred to Canadian authorities, according to his plea deal.
His co-defendants — Kim Augustus Rodd, Younes Nasri, Michael Gamboa and Christopher Poquiz — remain international fugitives.
Ramos’ guilty plea came the same morning as the last figure in the 23-defendant Hanson prosecution was sentenced.
In a nearby courtroom Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge William Q. Hayes sentenced Luke Fairfield to 21 months in prison on a racketeering conspiracy charge.
Fairfield was Hanson’s accountant, helping him hide profits in various shell companies and instructing others how to structure deposits to avoid bank reporting requirements, according to his plea agreement.
Fairfield, whose office was in Old Town, thought the proceeds were from Hanson’s gambling operation and didn’t know of the drug empire. He was implicated when a former gambling “runner” left the organization and began cooperating with the FBI.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Young called him a “key member” of Hanson’s ODOG Enterprise.
The judge called Fairfield’s participation in the scheme “aggravated” because of the significant amount of money laundered, the use of his expertise and the four-year stretch of illegal activity.
Fairfield, who has since lost his CPA license, tearfully expressed “incredible remorse” for getting involved and said he “should have dropped Owen as a client” when he learned of the criminal nature of his business.
After pleading guilty in March 2017, he has cooperated in the investigation, even being cleared to fly to Australia to testify in prosecutions involving Hanson’s enterprise there.
By Kristina Davis
The San Diego Union-Tribune
October 2, 2018
SAN DIEGO -- The CEO of a Canadian company that provided encrypted cellphone messaging services to criminal organizations around the world, allowing them to operate secretly on secure networks, pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court Tuesday to a racketeering conspiracy.
Phantom Secure, under the leadership of Vincent Ramos, earned some $80 million in profits over the past 10 years — an amount that he has agreed to forfeit as part of the plea agreement. Also on the forfeiture list are tens of millions of dollars in other assets, including cryptocurrency; property in British Columbia, Los Angeles and the Las Vegas area; gold and silver; a Land Rover and a Ferrari Cabriolet.
The devices the company sold were actually gutted Blackberries, with the usual abilities to make phone calls, take pictures and surf the web replaced with an untraceable text messaging system, according to court records. The messages were routed through encrypted servers in Hong Kong and Panama and further disguised by virtual proxy networks.
The FBI estimates some 20,000 such devices have been sold throughout the world — with about half of them being used by Australia’s underworld, according to officials there. Members of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel were also customers, authorities said.
As part of the plea, Ramos admitted to facilitating the importation, exportation and distribution of wholesale quantities of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine throughout the world, including the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Canada, Thailand and Europe.
The investigation into Phantom Secure was truly a global effort, with law enforcement in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Panama coordinating on several fronts and in various undercover capacities to infiltrate the company.
To prevent law enforcement from getting their hands on the special phones, Phantom Secure required existing customers — referred to as “executives” — to vouch for new customers, then conducted background checks. The company’s safeguard didn’t always work.
One of the big breaks in the case came during the San Diego FBI investigation of Owen Hanson, a former University of Southern California football player who built a global gambling and drug-smuggling empire. An undercover agent who had gained Hanson’s trust at the tail end of the investigation was able to get a Phantom Secure phone of his own, according to court records, which do not name Hanson but include detailed descriptions of the case.
Another safeguard also failed. When Hanson was arrested, authorities say Phantom sent a signal to remotely erase data from his phone. But the signal did not reach in time, and the data was preserved.
In another undercover probe, several agents posing as high-level traffickers met with Ramos in Las Vegas in February 2017, explaining they were expanding into South America and Europe. They indicated they would need GPS tracking in case they had to locate cooperators to be killed, according to the complaint.
“Right, right, right, right,” Ramos responded, and later assured the devices cannot be hacked, the complaint says.
Ramos, 40, who lives in the Vancouver area, faces up to 20 years in prison. He has agreed to serve at least five years of his sentence in the U.S. before requesting to be transferred to Canadian authorities, according to his plea deal.
His co-defendants — Kim Augustus Rodd, Younes Nasri, Michael Gamboa and Christopher Poquiz — remain international fugitives.
Ramos’ guilty plea came the same morning as the last figure in the 23-defendant Hanson prosecution was sentenced.
In a nearby courtroom Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge William Q. Hayes sentenced Luke Fairfield to 21 months in prison on a racketeering conspiracy charge.
Fairfield was Hanson’s accountant, helping him hide profits in various shell companies and instructing others how to structure deposits to avoid bank reporting requirements, according to his plea agreement.
Fairfield, whose office was in Old Town, thought the proceeds were from Hanson’s gambling operation and didn’t know of the drug empire. He was implicated when a former gambling “runner” left the organization and began cooperating with the FBI.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Young called him a “key member” of Hanson’s ODOG Enterprise.
The judge called Fairfield’s participation in the scheme “aggravated” because of the significant amount of money laundered, the use of his expertise and the four-year stretch of illegal activity.
Fairfield, who has since lost his CPA license, tearfully expressed “incredible remorse” for getting involved and said he “should have dropped Owen as a client” when he learned of the criminal nature of his business.
After pleading guilty in March 2017, he has cooperated in the investigation, even being cleared to fly to Australia to testify in prosecutions involving Hanson’s enterprise there.
THE NIGHT SHIFT IN THE HOSTON POLICE EVIDENCE ROOM WILL BECOME A MUCH MORE POPULAR ASSIGNMENT
So many questions about H-Town sex-robot ban
By Scott Henson
Grits for Breakfast
October 2, 2018
Even the Chronicle's headline, "City Council may move to block sex robots near Galleria," raises so many questions ....
Will Houston only prohibit sex robots near the Galleria, and if so why has it alone been designated a sex-robot free zone? Will there be specified areas of town where one is allowed to have sex with robots? Areas where it's required?
It's not clear to me in which part of Houston it's legal to engage in coitus with a sex robot - whoops, oh yeah ... it's everywhere.
The Chronicle quoted an attorney declaring, “There are currently no laws in the U.S. to prevent the sale of the type of dolls intended for this ‘robot brothel."
For the record: If the City Council is interfering with their constituents' robot coitus, is that a cock-block, a bot-block, a bot-cock-block, or some other iteration Grits hasn't considered?
It feels like certain terms need to be updated for the scenario. The phrase "sex machine," for example, takes on completely different connotations.
If a person voids the warranty on one of these machines, would they be charged with a deviant sex act?
For that matter, which movements by the City Council, in particular, will block bot cocks?
City Councils in Texas can only create Class C misdemeanors; they cannot create new crimes whose punishment involves jail time. So will the robots be ticketed? Or will their owners receive the citation while the bots are seized as contraband?
If police begin to seize sex bots, I'd expect the night shift in the HPD evidence room to become a much more popular assignment.
Or will this be a zoning initiative, where the City blocks bot cocks in some sections of town and not others? And how will neighborhoods know whether theirs is considered sex-robot friendly or if, as near the Galleria, they have been designated a Pleasure-Free-Zone?
Just to mention it, "brothel" appears to be a term used only by their critics, not the company itself. But the Chron story repeated the term ten times in one story and five times in another, including in both headlines. Not that they're taking sides, or anything.
Never mind that this is a "brothel" in which, under current law, no one can be prosecuted for solicitation, pimping, human trafficking, etc., or that the vicimization/degradation has been delegated to machines, which might be a better situation than the Best-Little-Whorehouse-In-Texas model.
It has to do with sex, so we'd better ban it.
The whole brouhaha began because "Toronto-based KinkySdollS had announced plans to open a Houston branch where 'adult love dolls' constructed of synthetic skin and highly articulated skeletons would be available 'to rent before you buy.'
To be fair, an adult love doll sounds like a big investment, so maybe rent before you buy isn't such a bad idea.
How many boat owners' spouses wish their partners had taken such a precaution?
Regardless, the Outrage-Industrial-Complex kicked into gear. Mayor Sylvester Turner soon announced he will not tolerate the sale of what amount to elaborate sex toys in his fair city.
However, the mayor comes at the argument from a point of weakness, knowing full well that, if the business opens, there is almost certainly a market for it. Hence, the need for a City Council vote.
For the time being, apparently, we're going to ignore the fact that the constitutional precedent against banning sale of sex toys is already well established. (If you'd forgotten, Sen. Ted Cruz can remind you; he's been through this fight.)
These stories tickled my funnybone, but they also show how ill-conceived criminal laws get passed, with politicians and the media conjoined in a corrupt confederacy to "do something" about a made-up problem.
The breathless response - bandying around the term "brothel" to maximize the shame/scandal factor aimed at a new local business - smacks of a prudery-based overreaction by government, intersecting with the media's need to promote salacious stories. Not exactly our society's best moment.
In the end, your correspondent agrees with the assessment of the Endgadget writer who declared sex robots "no more dangerous or awe-inspiring than a Roomba." And surely the government has better things to do than specify which body parts one can and can't insert into a Roomba.
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Wednesday the Houston city council put the world on notice that “We are not Sin City” by banning the robo brothel. The council did however allow the sale of the sex dolls.
By Scott Henson
Grits for Breakfast
October 2, 2018
Even the Chronicle's headline, "City Council may move to block sex robots near Galleria," raises so many questions ....
Will Houston only prohibit sex robots near the Galleria, and if so why has it alone been designated a sex-robot free zone? Will there be specified areas of town where one is allowed to have sex with robots? Areas where it's required?
It's not clear to me in which part of Houston it's legal to engage in coitus with a sex robot - whoops, oh yeah ... it's everywhere.
The Chronicle quoted an attorney declaring, “There are currently no laws in the U.S. to prevent the sale of the type of dolls intended for this ‘robot brothel."
For the record: If the City Council is interfering with their constituents' robot coitus, is that a cock-block, a bot-block, a bot-cock-block, or some other iteration Grits hasn't considered?
It feels like certain terms need to be updated for the scenario. The phrase "sex machine," for example, takes on completely different connotations.
If a person voids the warranty on one of these machines, would they be charged with a deviant sex act?
For that matter, which movements by the City Council, in particular, will block bot cocks?
City Councils in Texas can only create Class C misdemeanors; they cannot create new crimes whose punishment involves jail time. So will the robots be ticketed? Or will their owners receive the citation while the bots are seized as contraband?
If police begin to seize sex bots, I'd expect the night shift in the HPD evidence room to become a much more popular assignment.
Or will this be a zoning initiative, where the City blocks bot cocks in some sections of town and not others? And how will neighborhoods know whether theirs is considered sex-robot friendly or if, as near the Galleria, they have been designated a Pleasure-Free-Zone?
Just to mention it, "brothel" appears to be a term used only by their critics, not the company itself. But the Chron story repeated the term ten times in one story and five times in another, including in both headlines. Not that they're taking sides, or anything.
Never mind that this is a "brothel" in which, under current law, no one can be prosecuted for solicitation, pimping, human trafficking, etc., or that the vicimization/degradation has been delegated to machines, which might be a better situation than the Best-Little-Whorehouse-In-Texas model.
It has to do with sex, so we'd better ban it.
The whole brouhaha began because "Toronto-based KinkySdollS had announced plans to open a Houston branch where 'adult love dolls' constructed of synthetic skin and highly articulated skeletons would be available 'to rent before you buy.'
To be fair, an adult love doll sounds like a big investment, so maybe rent before you buy isn't such a bad idea.
How many boat owners' spouses wish their partners had taken such a precaution?
Regardless, the Outrage-Industrial-Complex kicked into gear. Mayor Sylvester Turner soon announced he will not tolerate the sale of what amount to elaborate sex toys in his fair city.
However, the mayor comes at the argument from a point of weakness, knowing full well that, if the business opens, there is almost certainly a market for it. Hence, the need for a City Council vote.
For the time being, apparently, we're going to ignore the fact that the constitutional precedent against banning sale of sex toys is already well established. (If you'd forgotten, Sen. Ted Cruz can remind you; he's been through this fight.)
These stories tickled my funnybone, but they also show how ill-conceived criminal laws get passed, with politicians and the media conjoined in a corrupt confederacy to "do something" about a made-up problem.
The breathless response - bandying around the term "brothel" to maximize the shame/scandal factor aimed at a new local business - smacks of a prudery-based overreaction by government, intersecting with the media's need to promote salacious stories. Not exactly our society's best moment.
In the end, your correspondent agrees with the assessment of the Endgadget writer who declared sex robots "no more dangerous or awe-inspiring than a Roomba." And surely the government has better things to do than specify which body parts one can and can't insert into a Roomba.
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Wednesday the Houston city council put the world on notice that “We are not Sin City” by banning the robo brothel. The council did however allow the sale of the sex dolls.
Wednesday, October 03, 2018
FLASH: CHRISTINE FORD OUTED AS PYCHOLOGIST FOR SEAL TEAM 6
John Brennan reveals that Kavanaugh accuser Christine Ford counseled members of the SEAL team that killed Obama bin Laden
By Ima Schnuck
The Unconventional Gazette
October 3, 2018
NEWS FLASH: John Brennan reveals that Dr. Ford was the psychologist for SEAL Team 6 in the killing of Al Qaeda leader Obama bin Laden on May 2, 2011.
After a flurry of social media claims that Christine Ford and members of her family were connected to the CIA, former CIA director John Brennan revealed that she provided counseling to members of SEAL Team 6 after they returned from killing Al Qaeda leader Obama bin Laden. Brennan referred to Ford as a “national treasure.”
The Unconventional Gazette contacted a former member of SEAL Team 6. After asking us not to identify him, he told us that Dr. Ford was instrumental in in treating him and his fellow team members for PTSD. He said killing Obama bin Laden, his young adult son and a woman identified as Bushra Mish el Abrar, and then dumping Obama’s shot-up corpse into the ocean was not an inconsequential event.
After having been treated for PTSD by Dr. Ford, he is convinced that she was telling the truth when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her.
As for any CIA connections, Brennan refused to comment on those allegations. The Unconventional Gazette does not believe there is any truth to the social media allegations of a CIA connection.
By Ima Schnuck
The Unconventional Gazette
October 3, 2018
NEWS FLASH: John Brennan reveals that Dr. Ford was the psychologist for SEAL Team 6 in the killing of Al Qaeda leader Obama bin Laden on May 2, 2011.
After a flurry of social media claims that Christine Ford and members of her family were connected to the CIA, former CIA director John Brennan revealed that she provided counseling to members of SEAL Team 6 after they returned from killing Al Qaeda leader Obama bin Laden. Brennan referred to Ford as a “national treasure.”
The Unconventional Gazette contacted a former member of SEAL Team 6. After asking us not to identify him, he told us that Dr. Ford was instrumental in in treating him and his fellow team members for PTSD. He said killing Obama bin Laden, his young adult son and a woman identified as Bushra Mish el Abrar, and then dumping Obama’s shot-up corpse into the ocean was not an inconsequential event.
After having been treated for PTSD by Dr. Ford, he is convinced that she was telling the truth when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her.
As for any CIA connections, Brennan refused to comment on those allegations. The Unconventional Gazette does not believe there is any truth to the social media allegations of a CIA connection.
I GUESS THEY ARE LOOKING FOR KLINGONS
by Bob Walsh
I got my first political poll phone call last night. I don't know if it was a real poll or a push poll as it never got that far. When they asked me what I considered my racial/ethnic persuasion to be I responded "human." At that time the young man, who was obviously reading (poorly) off of a script said; "Thank you, I have no more questions." and hung up.
I didn't know we allowed Klingons to vote, but after all this is California so you never know.
I got my first political poll phone call last night. I don't know if it was a real poll or a push poll as it never got that far. When they asked me what I considered my racial/ethnic persuasion to be I responded "human." At that time the young man, who was obviously reading (poorly) off of a script said; "Thank you, I have no more questions." and hung up.
I didn't know we allowed Klingons to vote, but after all this is California so you never know.
EXCREMENT OCCURS
by Bob Walsh
According to the local constabulary in Florence, Colorado the local bowling alley was kind of like a local barber shop or old time general store. People would come by to hang out and the owner, Ector Rodriguez, knew a LOT of people.
On Sunday Rodriguez went around back to unjam a jammed up pin setter machine. When he did not come back the employees went to look for him. They found that he was in some fashion killed by the action of the machine which apparently unjammed at a very inconvenient time.
According to the local constabulary in Florence, Colorado the local bowling alley was kind of like a local barber shop or old time general store. People would come by to hang out and the owner, Ector Rodriguez, knew a LOT of people.
On Sunday Rodriguez went around back to unjam a jammed up pin setter machine. When he did not come back the employees went to look for him. They found that he was in some fashion killed by the action of the machine which apparently unjammed at a very inconvenient time.
IS THE BLUE WAVE FALTERING ??
by Bob Walsh
Even that outpost of liberal idiocy, CNN, has now concluded that the much-hoped-for Blue Wave that is supposed to sweep the evil Republicans out of power seems to be petering out. They are even allowing as how it is now at least a reasonable possibility that the Republicans will GAIN seats in the senate and may very probably hold on to control of the house.
Damn, I bet those CNN asswipes are practically suicidal.
Even that outpost of liberal idiocy, CNN, has now concluded that the much-hoped-for Blue Wave that is supposed to sweep the evil Republicans out of power seems to be petering out. They are even allowing as how it is now at least a reasonable possibility that the Republicans will GAIN seats in the senate and may very probably hold on to control of the house.
Damn, I bet those CNN asswipes are practically suicidal.
THE SECOND DOOR
Records Raise Questions About Ford's Double-Door Story
By Thomas Lipscomb
RealClear Politics
October 2, 2018
Former CIA Director John Brennan assures us that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, is “a national treasure.” And his former colleague, James Comey, has urged investigators to “dig deeper.”
So begin at the beginning of her Senate Judiciary Committee testimony: “I had never told the details to anyone until May 2012, during a couple’s counseling session. The reason this came up in counseling is that my husband and I had completed a very extensive, very long remodel of our home and I insisted on a second front door, an idea that he and others disagreed with and could not understand. In explaining why I wanted a second front door, I began to describe the assault in detail.”
Under questioning from Sen. Diane Feinstein, Ford described an agonizing after-effect of the alleged Kavanaugh attack that caused her to demand that second door: “Anxiety, phobia and PTSD-like symptoms are the types of things that I’ve been coping with,” Ford said. “More specially, claustrophobia, panic and that type of thing.”
FEINSTEIN: “Is that the reason for the second front door? Claustrophobia?”
FORD: “Correct.”
The trade-off, apparently, was evident in Ford’s statement that “our house does not look aesthetically pleasing from the curb.” From the view on Google Earth, or Redfin, one can’t see the second door easily and the house appears no uglier “from the curb” than it ever did, if it did. But a glance at the real estate databases about Ford’s house are instructive.
The Fords bought the house on June 20, 2007. And the “very extensive, very long remodel,” including the second front door, were completed under a building permit granted in 2008.
So a natural question is why, four years after the remodeling, which also added two rooms and a bathroom, is the installation of that second door still such a bone of contention between the couple that it was an issue in the counseling they were undergoing in May 2012?
One key may be Ford’s continuing testimony to Feinstein, after describing the aesthetic difficulties “from the curb.”
FEINSTEIN: “I see. And do you have that second front door?”
FORD: “Yes.”
FEINSTEIN: “It…”
FORD: “It — it now is a place to host Google interns. Because we live near Google, so we get to have — other students can live there.”
Now that she mentions it, the additional remodeling in effect added a self-contained unit to the house, with its own entrance, perfect for “hosting” or even possibly renting, in violation of the local zoning. Perhaps a professional office might be a perfect use, if an illegal one. And in the tight Palo Alto real estate market, there are a lot of games played for some serious income.
And that may answer another strange anomaly. Because since 1993, and through some listings even today, there was another tenant at what is now the Ford property. It is listed as this person’s residence from 1993 to July 2007, a week or so after she sold the house to the Fords.
Her name is Dr. Sylvia Randall, and she listed this address for her California licensed practice of psychotherapy, including couples psychotherapy, until her move to Oregon in 2007.
Currently she only practices in that state, where she also pursues her new career as a talented artist as well.
But many existing directories still have Dr. Randall’s address listed at what is now the Ford residence.
Which raises other questions. Why has Christine Ford never said a word about Dr. Randall? And why has she been evasive about the transcripts of her crucial 2012 therapy session, which she can’t seem to recall much about either? Did she provide them to the Washington Post, or did she just provide the therapist’s summary? Who was the psychologist?
In a phone call, I asked Dr. Randall if she had sold her house to the Fords. She asked back how I had found out. I asked if she was the couples therapist who treated the Fords. She would not answer yes or no, replying, “I am a couples therapist.”
So was the second door an escape for Christine Blasey Ford’s terrors or was documenting her terrors a ruse for sneaking a rental unit through tough local zoning ordinances? And if the second door allowed access and egress for the tenant of a second housing unit, rather than for the primary resident, how did the door’s existence ameliorate Ford’s professed claustrophobia?
None of this means that her charges against Kavanaugh might not be perfectly valid, but her explanation for the “second door” looks like it could use more investigation. At the very least it appears to be a far more complicated element of Ford’s credibility than it originally appeared.
Thomas H. Lipscomb is the founding publisher of Times Books. His news reporting has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, New York Sun and other papers.
By Thomas Lipscomb
RealClear Politics
October 2, 2018
Former CIA Director John Brennan assures us that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, is “a national treasure.” And his former colleague, James Comey, has urged investigators to “dig deeper.”
So begin at the beginning of her Senate Judiciary Committee testimony: “I had never told the details to anyone until May 2012, during a couple’s counseling session. The reason this came up in counseling is that my husband and I had completed a very extensive, very long remodel of our home and I insisted on a second front door, an idea that he and others disagreed with and could not understand. In explaining why I wanted a second front door, I began to describe the assault in detail.”
Under questioning from Sen. Diane Feinstein, Ford described an agonizing after-effect of the alleged Kavanaugh attack that caused her to demand that second door: “Anxiety, phobia and PTSD-like symptoms are the types of things that I’ve been coping with,” Ford said. “More specially, claustrophobia, panic and that type of thing.”
FEINSTEIN: “Is that the reason for the second front door? Claustrophobia?”
FORD: “Correct.”
The trade-off, apparently, was evident in Ford’s statement that “our house does not look aesthetically pleasing from the curb.” From the view on Google Earth, or Redfin, one can’t see the second door easily and the house appears no uglier “from the curb” than it ever did, if it did. But a glance at the real estate databases about Ford’s house are instructive.
The Fords bought the house on June 20, 2007. And the “very extensive, very long remodel,” including the second front door, were completed under a building permit granted in 2008.
So a natural question is why, four years after the remodeling, which also added two rooms and a bathroom, is the installation of that second door still such a bone of contention between the couple that it was an issue in the counseling they were undergoing in May 2012?
One key may be Ford’s continuing testimony to Feinstein, after describing the aesthetic difficulties “from the curb.”
FEINSTEIN: “I see. And do you have that second front door?”
FORD: “Yes.”
FEINSTEIN: “It…”
FORD: “It — it now is a place to host Google interns. Because we live near Google, so we get to have — other students can live there.”
Now that she mentions it, the additional remodeling in effect added a self-contained unit to the house, with its own entrance, perfect for “hosting” or even possibly renting, in violation of the local zoning. Perhaps a professional office might be a perfect use, if an illegal one. And in the tight Palo Alto real estate market, there are a lot of games played for some serious income.
And that may answer another strange anomaly. Because since 1993, and through some listings even today, there was another tenant at what is now the Ford property. It is listed as this person’s residence from 1993 to July 2007, a week or so after she sold the house to the Fords.
Her name is Dr. Sylvia Randall, and she listed this address for her California licensed practice of psychotherapy, including couples psychotherapy, until her move to Oregon in 2007.
Currently she only practices in that state, where she also pursues her new career as a talented artist as well.
But many existing directories still have Dr. Randall’s address listed at what is now the Ford residence.
Which raises other questions. Why has Christine Ford never said a word about Dr. Randall? And why has she been evasive about the transcripts of her crucial 2012 therapy session, which she can’t seem to recall much about either? Did she provide them to the Washington Post, or did she just provide the therapist’s summary? Who was the psychologist?
In a phone call, I asked Dr. Randall if she had sold her house to the Fords. She asked back how I had found out. I asked if she was the couples therapist who treated the Fords. She would not answer yes or no, replying, “I am a couples therapist.”
So was the second door an escape for Christine Blasey Ford’s terrors or was documenting her terrors a ruse for sneaking a rental unit through tough local zoning ordinances? And if the second door allowed access and egress for the tenant of a second housing unit, rather than for the primary resident, how did the door’s existence ameliorate Ford’s professed claustrophobia?
None of this means that her charges against Kavanaugh might not be perfectly valid, but her explanation for the “second door” looks like it could use more investigation. At the very least it appears to be a far more complicated element of Ford’s credibility than it originally appeared.
Thomas H. Lipscomb is the founding publisher of Times Books. His news reporting has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, New York Sun and other papers.
HOUSTON IS NO. 1 IN THE WORLD ….. LAUGHING STOCK THAT IS
By Tracy Clark-Flory
Jezebel
October 2, 2018
The Toronto-based company KinkySdollS has announced plans to open an “Adult Love Dolls Brothel” in Houston, Texas—and, holy shit, are people losing their goddamn minds over it.
The proposed business would allow customers to rent the anatomically-correct dolls by the half-hour or hour. To attribute artificial intelligence to the dolls—which run anywhere from $2,199 to $3,500 each—would be quite a leap, as they are simply able to moan, according to the Toronto Sun. Which is to say, they are less advanced than a Teddy Ruxpin. (The company does have a $10,000 sex doll with advanced AI, but it’s display-only.) Somehow, however, the media narrative has been transformed into a battle against a “sex robot brothel.”
Last week, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said during a press conference that, while he’s “not trying to be the moral police or anything,” the brothel was “not the sort of business I’m looking for in the city of Houston.” The City Council is considering the “expansion of an existing ordinance on ‘sexual arcades’ to include businesses that carry ‘anthropomorphic devices and objects utilized for entertainment,’” reports The Daily Beast. The city has also halted construction on the planned storefront amid questions over a permit.
But, most entertaining of all, the “sex robot brothel” is being attacked by Elijah Rising, a Christian nonprofit seeking to end sex trafficking, in part “through prayer.” The group—which explicitly blames pornography for the sexual abuse cases “sweeping through churches around the world”—offers free two-hour van tours of “high-probability trafficking areas” in Houston, which it calls “a rolling Human Trafficking 101 class with visuals.” (I am sure that those “high probability” trafficking victims really appreciate being gawked at as though they were a tourist attraction.)
The group has launched a Change.org petition titled, “Keep Robot Brothels Out Of Houston,” that currently has nearly 13,000 signatures. It reads, “As a nonprofit whose mission is to end sex trafficking we have seen the progression as sex buyers go from pornography to strip clubs to purchasing sex—robot brothels will ultimately harm men, their understanding of healthy sexuality, and increase the demand for the prostitution and sexual exploitation of women and children.” There is no causative proof attached to that particular statement—but, rest assured, they have seen it.
Here we have the slow creep of anti-trafficking rhetoric on normal, healthy sexual expression. Is a person lured into sex trafficking by having sexual thoughts? By masturbating with a hand? By jerking it with a Tenga egg? What about a Fleshlight? Diddling with a dildo? Riding a Sybian? Doing any of the above while having phone sex? While watching porn? What is the original sex-trafficking gateway drug?
On the petition’s companion site, it reads, “As long as we further reduce the female body as an object for masturbation free from the ‘inconvenience’ of consent, women will not be seen as equals.” Do life-like dildos dehumanize men—or does a faux torso need to be attached? Is a head required? Should we go after sex shops that sell various objects that can be put on, around, or in one’s genitals? I actually would very much like to know the thinking here!
By all means, let us please—now more than ever—have nuanced, thoughtful conversations about consent, gender, power, and all aspects of our sexual culture. But what a thing to occupy a worldview in which it’s even remotely possible to boil down the complex reality of human sexual fantasy and entertainment into a grave and inevitably escalating threat—whether it’s around porn or stripping or sex dolls or sex work.
That is to say nothing of the routine conflation of sex trafficking with sex work—it is the total erasure of the consensual sex trade.
The fear around things like this is so often a religiously-motivated one centered around the specter of detaching sex from love and marriage. The fear is sex, and sexual pleasure, outside of a procreative context. It’s a fear that motivates so many political attacks on everything from reproductive rights to sex education. And it’s a fear so profoundly and sadly blinding that it makes one see an immobile doll that can moan as a, in Elijah Rising’s words, “humanoid” robot.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Houston should be lauded, not laughed at, for protecting these life-like dolls from being forced into sex work and becoming the victims of sex trafficking.
Jezebel
October 2, 2018
The Toronto-based company KinkySdollS has announced plans to open an “Adult Love Dolls Brothel” in Houston, Texas—and, holy shit, are people losing their goddamn minds over it.
The proposed business would allow customers to rent the anatomically-correct dolls by the half-hour or hour. To attribute artificial intelligence to the dolls—which run anywhere from $2,199 to $3,500 each—would be quite a leap, as they are simply able to moan, according to the Toronto Sun. Which is to say, they are less advanced than a Teddy Ruxpin. (The company does have a $10,000 sex doll with advanced AI, but it’s display-only.) Somehow, however, the media narrative has been transformed into a battle against a “sex robot brothel.”
Last week, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said during a press conference that, while he’s “not trying to be the moral police or anything,” the brothel was “not the sort of business I’m looking for in the city of Houston.” The City Council is considering the “expansion of an existing ordinance on ‘sexual arcades’ to include businesses that carry ‘anthropomorphic devices and objects utilized for entertainment,’” reports The Daily Beast. The city has also halted construction on the planned storefront amid questions over a permit.
But, most entertaining of all, the “sex robot brothel” is being attacked by Elijah Rising, a Christian nonprofit seeking to end sex trafficking, in part “through prayer.” The group—which explicitly blames pornography for the sexual abuse cases “sweeping through churches around the world”—offers free two-hour van tours of “high-probability trafficking areas” in Houston, which it calls “a rolling Human Trafficking 101 class with visuals.” (I am sure that those “high probability” trafficking victims really appreciate being gawked at as though they were a tourist attraction.)
The group has launched a Change.org petition titled, “Keep Robot Brothels Out Of Houston,” that currently has nearly 13,000 signatures. It reads, “As a nonprofit whose mission is to end sex trafficking we have seen the progression as sex buyers go from pornography to strip clubs to purchasing sex—robot brothels will ultimately harm men, their understanding of healthy sexuality, and increase the demand for the prostitution and sexual exploitation of women and children.” There is no causative proof attached to that particular statement—but, rest assured, they have seen it.
Here we have the slow creep of anti-trafficking rhetoric on normal, healthy sexual expression. Is a person lured into sex trafficking by having sexual thoughts? By masturbating with a hand? By jerking it with a Tenga egg? What about a Fleshlight? Diddling with a dildo? Riding a Sybian? Doing any of the above while having phone sex? While watching porn? What is the original sex-trafficking gateway drug?
On the petition’s companion site, it reads, “As long as we further reduce the female body as an object for masturbation free from the ‘inconvenience’ of consent, women will not be seen as equals.” Do life-like dildos dehumanize men—or does a faux torso need to be attached? Is a head required? Should we go after sex shops that sell various objects that can be put on, around, or in one’s genitals? I actually would very much like to know the thinking here!
By all means, let us please—now more than ever—have nuanced, thoughtful conversations about consent, gender, power, and all aspects of our sexual culture. But what a thing to occupy a worldview in which it’s even remotely possible to boil down the complex reality of human sexual fantasy and entertainment into a grave and inevitably escalating threat—whether it’s around porn or stripping or sex dolls or sex work.
That is to say nothing of the routine conflation of sex trafficking with sex work—it is the total erasure of the consensual sex trade.
The fear around things like this is so often a religiously-motivated one centered around the specter of detaching sex from love and marriage. The fear is sex, and sexual pleasure, outside of a procreative context. It’s a fear that motivates so many political attacks on everything from reproductive rights to sex education. And it’s a fear so profoundly and sadly blinding that it makes one see an immobile doll that can moan as a, in Elijah Rising’s words, “humanoid” robot.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Houston should be lauded, not laughed at, for protecting these life-like dolls from being forced into sex work and becoming the victims of sex trafficking.
IS SEX PLEASURE OR WORK?
A U.S. Marine Colonel was about to start the morning briefing to his staff. While waiting for the coffee machine to finish its brewing, the colonel decided to pose a question to all assembled.
He explained that his wife had been a bit frisky the night before and he failed to get his usual amount of sound sleep. He posed the question of just how much of sex was "work" and how much of it was "pleasure?" A Major chimed in with 75-25% in favor of work .
A Captain said it was 50-50%. A lieutenant responded with 25-75% in favor of pleasure , depending upon his state of inebriation at the time.
There being no consensus, the colonel turned to the PFC who was in charge of making the coffee. What was HIS opinion?
Without any hesitation, the young PFC responded, "Sir, it has to be 100% pleasure."
The colonel was surprised and, as you might guess, asked why.
"Well, sir, if there was any work involved, the officers would have me doing it for them."
EDITOR’S NOTE: If sex is work, I have been unemployed for quite some time.
He explained that his wife had been a bit frisky the night before and he failed to get his usual amount of sound sleep. He posed the question of just how much of sex was "work" and how much of it was "pleasure?" A Major chimed in with 75-25% in favor of work .
A Captain said it was 50-50%. A lieutenant responded with 25-75% in favor of pleasure , depending upon his state of inebriation at the time.
There being no consensus, the colonel turned to the PFC who was in charge of making the coffee. What was HIS opinion?
Without any hesitation, the young PFC responded, "Sir, it has to be 100% pleasure."
The colonel was surprised and, as you might guess, asked why.
"Well, sir, if there was any work involved, the officers would have me doing it for them."
EDITOR’S NOTE: If sex is work, I have been unemployed for quite some time.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
HAD IT HAPPENED IN NEW YORK, CHRISTINE FORD WOULD HAVE BEEN THE VICTIM OF ATTEMPTED ILLEGAL ENTRY
NYPD has classified a number of forcible rapes as illegal entry
It is well known that in submitting crime reports to the FBI, many police agencies cook the books to make themselves look good and their jurisdictions look safe with a low serious crime rate.
For example, Houston PD reported several obvious murders as suicides. One of its own captains has accused LAPD of not reporting 10 percent of aggravated assaults to the FBI. NYPD reported some aggravated assaults where the victim barely survived as disorderly conduct. Better yet, NYPD reported a number of forcible rapes as illegal entry. That’s no joke, that’s what NYPD really did.
Thus if Kavanaugh had attempted to rape Christine Ford in New York and she had reported it to NYPD, he could have been charged with attempted illegal entry.
Now folks, come on, let’s not keep Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court because of an attempted illegal entry when he was a 17-year-old soused-up high school teenager.
It is well known that in submitting crime reports to the FBI, many police agencies cook the books to make themselves look good and their jurisdictions look safe with a low serious crime rate.
For example, Houston PD reported several obvious murders as suicides. One of its own captains has accused LAPD of not reporting 10 percent of aggravated assaults to the FBI. NYPD reported some aggravated assaults where the victim barely survived as disorderly conduct. Better yet, NYPD reported a number of forcible rapes as illegal entry. That’s no joke, that’s what NYPD really did.
Thus if Kavanaugh had attempted to rape Christine Ford in New York and she had reported it to NYPD, he could have been charged with attempted illegal entry.
Now folks, come on, let’s not keep Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court because of an attempted illegal entry when he was a 17-year-old soused-up high school teenager.
MOONBEAM GIVES A GIFT TO DANGEROUS JUVENILE CRIMINALS
by Bob Walsh
Under the current law persons as young as 14 can be prosecuted as adults for certain serious crimes. Governor Moonbeam has just signed a bill into law that prohibits the prosecution of anyone under 16 as an adult no matter what their crime or criminal history is. It is unclear right now if this law will be applied retroactively.
Liberalism, the gift that keeps on giving, especially if you are a violent, dangerous criminal.
EDITOR'S NOTE: How dare you call a juvenile a criminal. I'm calling the PC police on you.
Under the current law persons as young as 14 can be prosecuted as adults for certain serious crimes. Governor Moonbeam has just signed a bill into law that prohibits the prosecution of anyone under 16 as an adult no matter what their crime or criminal history is. It is unclear right now if this law will be applied retroactively.
Liberalism, the gift that keeps on giving, especially if you are a violent, dangerous criminal.
EDITOR'S NOTE: How dare you call a juvenile a criminal. I'm calling the PC police on you.
HUNTER SEVERELY INJURED BY DEAD BEAR IN ALASKA
by Bob Walsh
So, it seems that William McCormick and Zachary Tennyson were hunting for bear near Moose Pass. They spotted the bear upslope from them and shot him. The bear tumbled down the slope, along with some rocks and other debris that hit and landed on McCormick.
McCormick suffered life-threatening injuries and was airlifted out. The bear had killed a hiker and badly mauled one of the volunteers that went out looking for him.
So, it seems that William McCormick and Zachary Tennyson were hunting for bear near Moose Pass. They spotted the bear upslope from them and shot him. The bear tumbled down the slope, along with some rocks and other debris that hit and landed on McCormick.
McCormick suffered life-threatening injuries and was airlifted out. The bear had killed a hiker and badly mauled one of the volunteers that went out looking for him.
CALIFORNIA TO LET HUNDREDS OF CONVICTED MURDERERS WALK OUT OF PRISON
by Bob Walsh
Governor Moonbeam, the paragon of strange, has signed into law SB1437. This bill accomplishes two goals. It essentially destroys the "felony murder" rule in the formerly great state of California. Unless the state can PROVE that YOU pulled the trigger, you can not be found guilty of murder.
In addition the law is retroactive. It is estimated that as many as 800 people currently in prison for conviction of first degree murder who were not the "actual" killer will appeal for re-sentencing.
But it's all good because Jerry also signed the bill that requires publicly held corporation in CA must have at least one woman on their board of directors. After all, fair is fair.
Governor Moonbeam, the paragon of strange, has signed into law SB1437. This bill accomplishes two goals. It essentially destroys the "felony murder" rule in the formerly great state of California. Unless the state can PROVE that YOU pulled the trigger, you can not be found guilty of murder.
In addition the law is retroactive. It is estimated that as many as 800 people currently in prison for conviction of first degree murder who were not the "actual" killer will appeal for re-sentencing.
But it's all good because Jerry also signed the bill that requires publicly held corporation in CA must have at least one woman on their board of directors. After all, fair is fair.
WITH A FRIEND LIKE THIS, KAVANAUGH CERTAINLY DOES NOT NEED ANY ENEMIES
Brett Kavanaugh was 'a frequent and heavy drinker' at Yale who was 'belligerent and aggressive' when drunk, says 'troubled' former classmate who is now demanding to speak to FBI investigators
Daily Mail
September 30, 2018
Charles 'Chad' Ludington who said he was Brett Kavanaugh's friend at Yale and sometimes drank with him, has described him as 'a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker'.
Ludington, who now teaches at North Carolina State University, said on Sunday that he is 'deeply troubled' by what he claims is a blatant mischaracterization by Kavanaugh of his drinking at Yale. He went on the record after hearing Kavanaugh's testimony during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
In addition to being a 'frequent' and 'heavy drinker', Ludington said Kavanaugh was often belligerent and aggressive when drunk. He added that on many occasions he heard Kavanaugh slur his words and saw him stagger from alcohol consumption.
Ludington said he plans to speak to the FBI because he believes Kavanaugh downplayed the 'degree and frequency' of his drinking during the Senate hearing. During the hearing on Thursday, Kavanaugh insisted that he had never blacked out from drinking alcohol.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says the Supreme Court nominee is not a 'stumbling bumbling drunk gang rapist' so there is no need for the FBI to question his college classmates about his drinking.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Reports say the FBI is talking to Ludington.
And the shit keeps piling on.
Now the Democrats say that Kavanaugh has demonstrated he does not have the temperament to be a judge. That’s because during his opening statement at Thursday’s senate hearing he was pissed off at the Dems for the hatchet job they were doing on him.
Daily Mail
September 30, 2018
Charles 'Chad' Ludington who said he was Brett Kavanaugh's friend at Yale and sometimes drank with him, has described him as 'a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker'.
Ludington, who now teaches at North Carolina State University, said on Sunday that he is 'deeply troubled' by what he claims is a blatant mischaracterization by Kavanaugh of his drinking at Yale. He went on the record after hearing Kavanaugh's testimony during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
In addition to being a 'frequent' and 'heavy drinker', Ludington said Kavanaugh was often belligerent and aggressive when drunk. He added that on many occasions he heard Kavanaugh slur his words and saw him stagger from alcohol consumption.
Ludington said he plans to speak to the FBI because he believes Kavanaugh downplayed the 'degree and frequency' of his drinking during the Senate hearing. During the hearing on Thursday, Kavanaugh insisted that he had never blacked out from drinking alcohol.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says the Supreme Court nominee is not a 'stumbling bumbling drunk gang rapist' so there is no need for the FBI to question his college classmates about his drinking.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Reports say the FBI is talking to Ludington.
And the shit keeps piling on.
Now the Democrats say that Kavanaugh has demonstrated he does not have the temperament to be a judge. That’s because during his opening statement at Thursday’s senate hearing he was pissed off at the Dems for the hatchet job they were doing on him.
POLICE DOGS CAN BE HEROES TOO
19 K-9 line of duty deaths this year highlight police dogs' important jobs
By Stefanie Dazio
Newsday
September 30, 2018
LONG ISLAND, NY — When Rocky died earlier this month after he was ejected from a Riverhead police car pursuing a suspect, he joined 18 other fellow K-9 officers killed in the line of duty in the United States this year.
The 8-year-old German shepherd was also part of a large community of trained canine officers serving across Long Island and New York City, assisting in daily policing and performing work for specialized units, law enforcement officials said. The dogs help find missing persons or criminal suspects, locate evidence, detect explosives and sniff out deadly drugs.
Police departments Islandwide, the NYPD and the State Police all spend money, time and other resources to train, maintain and rely on these dogs' special skills.
“Having the dog is immeasurable in police work,” said Malverne Police Chief John Aresta, who is president of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police. “They can do things that we can’t,” he said, noting that during searches for bombs or other explosives police may not find dangerous materials until too late if dogs are not used.
“When everybody’s given up all hope of finding a person who committed a crime or a missing person, the dog is able to put it all together,” said Rocky’s handler, Riverhead Police Officer John Morris, who witnesses first hand the work canine units can do. “He searches with his nose as opposed to looking with his eyes.”
The NYPD has more than 130 dogs assigned to transit, narcotics, bomb squad and counterterrorism, and they are trained for each specific unit, officials said. The explosive detectors, also called vapor wake dogs, take 15 months to train.
"The work they do is unheralded," NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said Friday, as he thanked more than a dozen NYPD canines and their handlers for their work during the UN General Assembly week. "It is not an easy job. I know they are our best friends but having a dog 24 hours a day, seven days a week is not an easy task and I know they are part of your family," O'Neill told the handlers.
The Suffolk County Police Department’s K-9 training academy runs 16 weeks for its basic patrol course and then another eight to 10 weeks of specialty training, Chief of Department Stuart Cameron said.
Among other things, these police dogs are trained to track ground disturbances, such as the smell of trampled grass, rather than sniff for a specific human’s smell like a bloodhound, he said.
Suffolk police have seven explosives-detection dogs — plus one that is based at MacArthur Airport — as well as eight narcotics-detection and two human remains-detection dogs. One unit is completing a basic patrol course and four more will start training soon.
Cameron suggested using canine units to search for human remains on Gilgo Beach, where the search for missing woman Shannan Gilbert led to the discovery of 10 other sets of human remains that law enforcement believed to be the work of one or more serial killers.
“There’s no technology that I’m aware of that is as capable of odor detection as a K-9,” he said. “I’ve seen them do amazing things.”
The department buys the dogs, usually German shepherds from Eastern Europe, for about $7,000, he said. The dogs are valued at $25,000 to $30,000 after training.
Early this month, State Police graduated 12 police dogs, including one that will be assigned to the Farmingdale-based Troop L, in an Albany ceremony. There are three other state K-9 teams assigned to Long Island.
“Our dogs have amazing and unique abilities that allow our members to be much more effective in so many aspects of our job,” State Police officials said in a statement. “Every day our canine teams are hard at work, making major finds and at times bringing closure to families who have a missing loved one. Our teams across the state regularly locate missing persons, or suspects, locate key pieces of evidence, and seize deadly drugs from our communities.”
Nassau police also have a canine unit but declined to comment for this story.
Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller said his department has had K-9 units for more than 30 years. The department currently has Titan, whose handler is Officer Jack Doscinski, and is already looking to replace Rocky, the chief said.
Malverne's Chief Aresta said in addition to sometimes acting in a community public relations role, K-9s can act as crime deterrents and often persuade criminals to surrender more quickly.
“They don’t know what that dog is thinking. They don’t know what’s going on inside that dog’s mind,” he said of suspects. “But they do know that dog is fearless.”
Police work often puts canine units in dangerous situations like riding in speeding cars, responding to active shooting threats or checking for explosives.
Aresta said the dogs can’t be restrained in the back seats of police vehicles — in some departments, officers keep a trunk release button on their belts to be able to free the dogs when they’re not near the cruisers. He added that some forces have issued K-9 bulletproof vests, but they’re not commonplace and usually not used regularly unless there’s a known shooting threat because the heavy vests can cause the dogs to overheat. Suffolk police officials also said their dogs don't wear safety restraints, but they are kept in padded areas in police cruisers.
Born in Poland, Rocky began his police training with Morris in May of 2011. The dog was certified in patrol work — such as finding people and recovering evidence — and narcotics detection for marijuana, hash, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, MDMA, black tar heroin and methamphetamines.
Trained in German commands — “suche” means “search” — Rocky once found a missing elderly woman with dementia who likely would have frozen to death in the snow and freezing temperatures. Another time, he discovered a shooting suspect who was hiding in one house and the gun used to commit the crime in another.
Officials said Rocky was secured in the back of Morris’ vehicle — police dogs are usually in separate compartments and do not wear seat belts — when Morris responded to a pursuit of a suspect who had left a DWI checkpoint and struck an officer with his vehicle around 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 2.
During the pursuit, Morris lost control of his vehicle and struck a utility pole on West Main Street in Riverhead, police said. Rocky was ejected from the vehicle and died at the scene.
He was the 19th police dog killed in the line of duty nationwide in 2018, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a nonprofit organization that tracks law-enforcement deaths in the line of duty, including canines.
Rocky loved to work, Morris said, and would go from playing with Morris’ two sons to waiting at the police vehicle’s trunk — which he learned to open himself — once he saw his handler in uniform.
“Work was the most fun for him,” Morris said. “If he could talk, I think he would probably tell people he was honored to do it. He loved to work, he loved getting in that police car.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Not only heroes, but them K-9s take a bite out of crime.
This also begs the question: Is a police officer justified if he shoots someone who is trying to kill a police dog?
By Stefanie Dazio
Newsday
September 30, 2018
LONG ISLAND, NY — When Rocky died earlier this month after he was ejected from a Riverhead police car pursuing a suspect, he joined 18 other fellow K-9 officers killed in the line of duty in the United States this year.
The 8-year-old German shepherd was also part of a large community of trained canine officers serving across Long Island and New York City, assisting in daily policing and performing work for specialized units, law enforcement officials said. The dogs help find missing persons or criminal suspects, locate evidence, detect explosives and sniff out deadly drugs.
Police departments Islandwide, the NYPD and the State Police all spend money, time and other resources to train, maintain and rely on these dogs' special skills.
“Having the dog is immeasurable in police work,” said Malverne Police Chief John Aresta, who is president of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police. “They can do things that we can’t,” he said, noting that during searches for bombs or other explosives police may not find dangerous materials until too late if dogs are not used.
“When everybody’s given up all hope of finding a person who committed a crime or a missing person, the dog is able to put it all together,” said Rocky’s handler, Riverhead Police Officer John Morris, who witnesses first hand the work canine units can do. “He searches with his nose as opposed to looking with his eyes.”
The NYPD has more than 130 dogs assigned to transit, narcotics, bomb squad and counterterrorism, and they are trained for each specific unit, officials said. The explosive detectors, also called vapor wake dogs, take 15 months to train.
"The work they do is unheralded," NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said Friday, as he thanked more than a dozen NYPD canines and their handlers for their work during the UN General Assembly week. "It is not an easy job. I know they are our best friends but having a dog 24 hours a day, seven days a week is not an easy task and I know they are part of your family," O'Neill told the handlers.
The Suffolk County Police Department’s K-9 training academy runs 16 weeks for its basic patrol course and then another eight to 10 weeks of specialty training, Chief of Department Stuart Cameron said.
Among other things, these police dogs are trained to track ground disturbances, such as the smell of trampled grass, rather than sniff for a specific human’s smell like a bloodhound, he said.
Suffolk police have seven explosives-detection dogs — plus one that is based at MacArthur Airport — as well as eight narcotics-detection and two human remains-detection dogs. One unit is completing a basic patrol course and four more will start training soon.
Cameron suggested using canine units to search for human remains on Gilgo Beach, where the search for missing woman Shannan Gilbert led to the discovery of 10 other sets of human remains that law enforcement believed to be the work of one or more serial killers.
“There’s no technology that I’m aware of that is as capable of odor detection as a K-9,” he said. “I’ve seen them do amazing things.”
The department buys the dogs, usually German shepherds from Eastern Europe, for about $7,000, he said. The dogs are valued at $25,000 to $30,000 after training.
Early this month, State Police graduated 12 police dogs, including one that will be assigned to the Farmingdale-based Troop L, in an Albany ceremony. There are three other state K-9 teams assigned to Long Island.
“Our dogs have amazing and unique abilities that allow our members to be much more effective in so many aspects of our job,” State Police officials said in a statement. “Every day our canine teams are hard at work, making major finds and at times bringing closure to families who have a missing loved one. Our teams across the state regularly locate missing persons, or suspects, locate key pieces of evidence, and seize deadly drugs from our communities.”
Nassau police also have a canine unit but declined to comment for this story.
Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller said his department has had K-9 units for more than 30 years. The department currently has Titan, whose handler is Officer Jack Doscinski, and is already looking to replace Rocky, the chief said.
Malverne's Chief Aresta said in addition to sometimes acting in a community public relations role, K-9s can act as crime deterrents and often persuade criminals to surrender more quickly.
“They don’t know what that dog is thinking. They don’t know what’s going on inside that dog’s mind,” he said of suspects. “But they do know that dog is fearless.”
Police work often puts canine units in dangerous situations like riding in speeding cars, responding to active shooting threats or checking for explosives.
Aresta said the dogs can’t be restrained in the back seats of police vehicles — in some departments, officers keep a trunk release button on their belts to be able to free the dogs when they’re not near the cruisers. He added that some forces have issued K-9 bulletproof vests, but they’re not commonplace and usually not used regularly unless there’s a known shooting threat because the heavy vests can cause the dogs to overheat. Suffolk police officials also said their dogs don't wear safety restraints, but they are kept in padded areas in police cruisers.
Born in Poland, Rocky began his police training with Morris in May of 2011. The dog was certified in patrol work — such as finding people and recovering evidence — and narcotics detection for marijuana, hash, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, MDMA, black tar heroin and methamphetamines.
Trained in German commands — “suche” means “search” — Rocky once found a missing elderly woman with dementia who likely would have frozen to death in the snow and freezing temperatures. Another time, he discovered a shooting suspect who was hiding in one house and the gun used to commit the crime in another.
Officials said Rocky was secured in the back of Morris’ vehicle — police dogs are usually in separate compartments and do not wear seat belts — when Morris responded to a pursuit of a suspect who had left a DWI checkpoint and struck an officer with his vehicle around 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 2.
During the pursuit, Morris lost control of his vehicle and struck a utility pole on West Main Street in Riverhead, police said. Rocky was ejected from the vehicle and died at the scene.
He was the 19th police dog killed in the line of duty nationwide in 2018, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a nonprofit organization that tracks law-enforcement deaths in the line of duty, including canines.
Rocky loved to work, Morris said, and would go from playing with Morris’ two sons to waiting at the police vehicle’s trunk — which he learned to open himself — once he saw his handler in uniform.
“Work was the most fun for him,” Morris said. “If he could talk, I think he would probably tell people he was honored to do it. He loved to work, he loved getting in that police car.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Not only heroes, but them K-9s take a bite out of crime.
This also begs the question: Is a police officer justified if he shoots someone who is trying to kill a police dog?
ISRAEL CLAIMS IRAN HAS NEVER ABIDED BY OBAMA’S NUCLEAR AGREEMENT
ANALYSIS: New Revelations Prove Netanyahu Right on Iran's Nuclear Program
By Yochanan Visser
Israel Today
September 30, 2018
On Friday, Iran responded to the speech Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gave during the annual General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City in which he revealed Iran has another never disclosed nuclear site in its capital Tehran.
Netanyahu said a secret nuclear warehouse inside Tehran contained 300 tons of nuclear-related material and demanded the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) immediately examined the evidence Israel has in its possession.
The Israeli PM also said Iran had recently spread 15 kilograms of radioactive material around Tehran last month to in an effort to hide its activities in the facility.
When Israel shared this information with the IAEA recently the nuclear watchdog did nothing according to an unnamed Israel official who spoke with TV Channel 10 in the country.
The Mossad, Israel’s Spy Agency, knows exactly what is stored in the facility the official said just like it knew what was in the secret nuclear archive in Tehran where Israel stole Iran’s nuclear secrets on January 31 this year.
Iran now says Netanyahu’s claims were “baseless and ridiculous” according to Bahran Qassemi, the spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Javad Zariff, Iran’s Foreign Minister called Netanyahu’s presentation at the UNGA “an arts and craft show” meant to obfuscate Israel has his own secret nuclear secret and undeclared actual atomic arsenal a reference to what Israel calls its life insurance.
Israel’s estimated sixty-five to eighty-five warheads, according to a Rand Corporation study are meant as the ultimate defensive weapon in case the country is threatened with annihilation, however.
Israel has, furthermore, repeatedly promised it would never be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Iran, on the other hand, is aggressively exporting the Islamic Revolution to other parts of the Middle East and is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.
The Islamic Republic is not only using words to threaten Israel with destruction but is actively working on the annihilation of the Jewish state which it calls a cancer tumor which must be removed.
In addition, Iran is causing mayhem in several Arab countries such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon which was the first Arab country to become an Iranian satellite state.
Netanyahu’s revelations at the UNGA followed recent information about how Iran continues to deceive the world about its nuclear weapons program which is still in place until this very day despite the 2015 landmark-nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and six world powers.
This was revealed by Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, the writer of the 2009 book “The Secret War with Iran”, in a Hebrew language article which was published on September 7.
In the article, which was based on original Iranian documents, Bergman revealed that the material the Mossad seized during the daring raid in Tehran earlier this year clearly showed that Iran has never stopped working on the development of a nuclear weapon.
Officially the Islamic Republic stopped its nuclear weapons program dubbed ‘AMAD’ in 2003 when the US army invaded Iraq in March 2003 and the regime in Tehran thought it would be next in line.
Bergman wrote that the Mossad had observed the warehouse in Tehran for more than one year and knew exactly what was stored there.
When a team of dozens of Mossad agents broke into the facility they knew which of the 32 giants safes contained the most relevant information about the AMAD project and its secret successor ‘project Sfand’.
The Sfand project, which was headed by nuclear scientist Fakhri Zada, was started in the fall of 2003.
Zada received a letter from Abassi-Duwani, another Iranian nuclear expert, who advised Zada to publish the parts of the atomic project that were peaceful in character in order to deceive the international community.
Abassi-Dawani wrote that neutron research should be kept secret because it would reveal that Iran continued research for the development of a nuclear weapon.
The Mossad also seized a letter written by then-Iranian Defense Minister Simhani which stated that Sfand would include: project Serab 1, a facility for an underground test with an atomic bomb and Serab 2 and 3, facilities for the production and integration of a nuclear warhead for the Shihab 3 ballistic missile.
The leaders of the Sfand project, which was a direct result of a decision by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Al Khamenei, also decided to deny the IAEA access to military facilities where Iran was conducting work on its nuclear weapons program.
For this reason, Iran initially denied IAEA inspectors access to the military base near Parchin where the Islamic Republic was suspected of having conducted tests with detonators for nuclear warheads in special tubes.
When the IAEA was finally granted access to Parchin the Iranians had removed virtually all evidence their nuclear activities there.
Bergman now published so-called selfies of Iranian nuclear scientists standing next to two different kinds of test chambers for the detonators at Parchin.
“Presumably none of the photographers imagined that his pictures would ever reach Israel," Bergman wrote, adding that the photos he had seen proved beyond doubt that Iran had lied about the military dimensions of its nuclear program.
The Mossad material also proved Iran had lied about equipment for neutron research which it said was not in its possession and about its possession of a sophisticated camera that could capture the moment of the chain reaction that leads to the detonation of an atomic bomb.
The 55,000 pages and 182 disks stolen by the Mossad contained further evidence that Iran was actually developing a nuclear weapon in underground bunkers and with equipment that the Islamic Republic had always claimed was not in its possession.
“The bottom line of the material is clear and sharp and indisputable: it is a mega-scam in which senior Iranian officials and hundreds of people participated for years," Bergman wrote.
"For two decades Iran denied that it had a military nuclear project. But the contents of the safes brought to Israel tell a different, completely opposite, and undeniable story: For years, Iran has been conducting a covert nuclear project aimed at producing five nuclear bombs," he asserted.
Both Bergman, who has contacts within the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services, and the Israeli government are convinced the Sfand project continued after the implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, in 2016.
Iran’s mega-scam started in 1987 when Khamenei, during a secret meeting of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran ordered the development of a nuclear weapon because of “external threats.”
“The little we can do to stand up to this danger is to make our enemies aware that we can defend ourselves. Accordingly, any step we take here will serve the defense of our nation and your revolution. With this aim in mind, you must work hard and fast,” Khamenei said at the time.
By Yochanan Visser
Israel Today
September 30, 2018
On Friday, Iran responded to the speech Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gave during the annual General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City in which he revealed Iran has another never disclosed nuclear site in its capital Tehran.
Netanyahu said a secret nuclear warehouse inside Tehran contained 300 tons of nuclear-related material and demanded the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) immediately examined the evidence Israel has in its possession.
The Israeli PM also said Iran had recently spread 15 kilograms of radioactive material around Tehran last month to in an effort to hide its activities in the facility.
When Israel shared this information with the IAEA recently the nuclear watchdog did nothing according to an unnamed Israel official who spoke with TV Channel 10 in the country.
The Mossad, Israel’s Spy Agency, knows exactly what is stored in the facility the official said just like it knew what was in the secret nuclear archive in Tehran where Israel stole Iran’s nuclear secrets on January 31 this year.
Iran now says Netanyahu’s claims were “baseless and ridiculous” according to Bahran Qassemi, the spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Javad Zariff, Iran’s Foreign Minister called Netanyahu’s presentation at the UNGA “an arts and craft show” meant to obfuscate Israel has his own secret nuclear secret and undeclared actual atomic arsenal a reference to what Israel calls its life insurance.
Israel’s estimated sixty-five to eighty-five warheads, according to a Rand Corporation study are meant as the ultimate defensive weapon in case the country is threatened with annihilation, however.
Israel has, furthermore, repeatedly promised it would never be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Iran, on the other hand, is aggressively exporting the Islamic Revolution to other parts of the Middle East and is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.
The Islamic Republic is not only using words to threaten Israel with destruction but is actively working on the annihilation of the Jewish state which it calls a cancer tumor which must be removed.
In addition, Iran is causing mayhem in several Arab countries such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon which was the first Arab country to become an Iranian satellite state.
Netanyahu’s revelations at the UNGA followed recent information about how Iran continues to deceive the world about its nuclear weapons program which is still in place until this very day despite the 2015 landmark-nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and six world powers.
This was revealed by Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, the writer of the 2009 book “The Secret War with Iran”, in a Hebrew language article which was published on September 7.
In the article, which was based on original Iranian documents, Bergman revealed that the material the Mossad seized during the daring raid in Tehran earlier this year clearly showed that Iran has never stopped working on the development of a nuclear weapon.
Officially the Islamic Republic stopped its nuclear weapons program dubbed ‘AMAD’ in 2003 when the US army invaded Iraq in March 2003 and the regime in Tehran thought it would be next in line.
Bergman wrote that the Mossad had observed the warehouse in Tehran for more than one year and knew exactly what was stored there.
When a team of dozens of Mossad agents broke into the facility they knew which of the 32 giants safes contained the most relevant information about the AMAD project and its secret successor ‘project Sfand’.
The Sfand project, which was headed by nuclear scientist Fakhri Zada, was started in the fall of 2003.
Zada received a letter from Abassi-Duwani, another Iranian nuclear expert, who advised Zada to publish the parts of the atomic project that were peaceful in character in order to deceive the international community.
Abassi-Dawani wrote that neutron research should be kept secret because it would reveal that Iran continued research for the development of a nuclear weapon.
The Mossad also seized a letter written by then-Iranian Defense Minister Simhani which stated that Sfand would include: project Serab 1, a facility for an underground test with an atomic bomb and Serab 2 and 3, facilities for the production and integration of a nuclear warhead for the Shihab 3 ballistic missile.
The leaders of the Sfand project, which was a direct result of a decision by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Al Khamenei, also decided to deny the IAEA access to military facilities where Iran was conducting work on its nuclear weapons program.
For this reason, Iran initially denied IAEA inspectors access to the military base near Parchin where the Islamic Republic was suspected of having conducted tests with detonators for nuclear warheads in special tubes.
When the IAEA was finally granted access to Parchin the Iranians had removed virtually all evidence their nuclear activities there.
Bergman now published so-called selfies of Iranian nuclear scientists standing next to two different kinds of test chambers for the detonators at Parchin.
“Presumably none of the photographers imagined that his pictures would ever reach Israel," Bergman wrote, adding that the photos he had seen proved beyond doubt that Iran had lied about the military dimensions of its nuclear program.
The Mossad material also proved Iran had lied about equipment for neutron research which it said was not in its possession and about its possession of a sophisticated camera that could capture the moment of the chain reaction that leads to the detonation of an atomic bomb.
The 55,000 pages and 182 disks stolen by the Mossad contained further evidence that Iran was actually developing a nuclear weapon in underground bunkers and with equipment that the Islamic Republic had always claimed was not in its possession.
“The bottom line of the material is clear and sharp and indisputable: it is a mega-scam in which senior Iranian officials and hundreds of people participated for years," Bergman wrote.
"For two decades Iran denied that it had a military nuclear project. But the contents of the safes brought to Israel tell a different, completely opposite, and undeniable story: For years, Iran has been conducting a covert nuclear project aimed at producing five nuclear bombs," he asserted.
Both Bergman, who has contacts within the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services, and the Israeli government are convinced the Sfand project continued after the implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, in 2016.
Iran’s mega-scam started in 1987 when Khamenei, during a secret meeting of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran ordered the development of a nuclear weapon because of “external threats.”
“The little we can do to stand up to this danger is to make our enemies aware that we can defend ourselves. Accordingly, any step we take here will serve the defense of our nation and your revolution. With this aim in mind, you must work hard and fast,” Khamenei said at the time.
THE PAN AM 103 INVESTIGATION HAS LEFT A SORDID STAIN ON THE CIA, FBI AND BRITISH INTEL
How the whole world was sold a monstrous lie over Lockerbie: Author claims it WASN'T Libya who bombed the 747 jumbo jet - and the prime suspect is alive and living in Washington
By Douglas Boyd
Daily Mail
September 29, 2018
It was just a few days before Christmas, and Pan Am flight 103 was at cruising altitude, packed with students heading home to America. Maid of the Seas, a 747 jumbo jet, had left on schedule from Heathrow at 6.25pm, the start of a long journey through the night to New York, Detroit and the holidays.
As she approached the Solway Firth 38 minutes into the flight, the crew had started serving drinks – and it was then that, far below, Alan Topp, an air traffic controller at Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport found himself blinking in disbelief. The single green box on the screen in front of him that marked the location of Pan Am 103 had disappeared.
Briefly, it was replaced by five new boxes, representing the nose cone, the wings, the main fuselage and the tailplane. These, too, then vanished as they fell below the radar horizon while bodies, luggage and debris spilled out into the void six miles above the Scottish borders.
It was two minutes before they hit Lockerbie.
The worst damage in the town came from the wings containing 20,000 gallons of aviation fuel, which exploded on impact and gouged a crater 30ft wide, 100ft long and 30ft feet deep in Sherwood Crescent. Two houses were completely obliterated along with their inhabitants.
It is a tragic irony that Flight 103 had become a sort of ‘student special’ after a terror threat to US airlines was relayed to all American diplomats in Europe with the result that many cancelled their reservations.
The empty seats were offered at cheap rates by student travel agencies. More than half of the passengers, 137, were under 30 and many had called their parents excitedly before they boarded, saying how lucky they had been to get a cheap seat just before Christmas.
That is how Dr Jim Swire, a Worcestershire GP, and his wife Jane learned that their daughter Flora was booked on the flight, heading across the Atlantic to see her boyfriend.
With a loss of 259 lives on board and 11 more on the ground, the destruction of Maid of the Seas, blown up by a terrorist bomb on December 21, 1988, was the worst civil aviation disaster in British history. Yet 30 years later, we still do not officially know who is responsible for mass murder high in the air above a small Scottish market town preparing for Christmas.
It is nothing short of a scandal.
There was, of course, a fall guy. Eleven years after the atrocity, a 47-year-old Libyan Arab Airlines security officer called Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted on a tissue of lies which centred on the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to remember him buying clothes similar to those that may have been in the suitcase with the bomb that would rip through the fuselage.
A low-level Libyan CIA ‘asset’ called Abdul Majid Giaka said he recalled seeing al-Megrahi collect a brown Samsonite suitcase from the Arrivals carousel in Malta’s Luqa airport on December 20, 1988. On the following morning, he alleged, the unaccompanied suitcase was loaded on to a flight to Frankfurt, from where it would be transferred to London on a Pan Am ‘feeder flight’ and loaded aboard Flight 103 – before then exploding.
A further 11 years later, al-Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment at an extraordinary trial held in a disused American air base near Utrecht, Holland.
After years investigating the Lockerbie disaster and its background, I have found that little of the evidence against him can be taken at face value. Instead, a very different story has emerged from the morass of lies, one that should have been apparent from the very start.
It is a story of incompetence, vengeance, political expediency and then a cover-up orchestrated from the very highest levels in London and in Washington – where the real bomber is said to live today, under the cover of an American witness protection scheme.
In the days and months after the crash, thousands of police, military personnel and specialised investigators from Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch scoured southern Scotland, finding debris over an area of 1,500 square miles. Investigators from the US Federal Aviation Authority and the FBI took part.
Representatives of the CIA were present for reasons not divulged. Charred material said to have been found some weeks after the bombing in woods near Lockerbie was sent for analysis to Fort Halstead in Kent, the Ministry of Defence research establishment, where senior scientific officer Thomas Hayes identified bits of black plastic, metal and wire mesh as parts of a Toshiba radio-cassette player.
It had contained a bomb and a small piece of circuit board that Hayes believed to be the remnants of a timer. After three years of the joint British/US investigation, this and other evidence pointed in one clear direction: an obscure terrorist group called the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
Sleeper cells from the organisation had been arrested in a series of raids in Germany a few weeks before Lockerbie, in which bombs hidden in Toshiba radio-cassette players had been seized alongside a fearsome arsenal of explosives, firearms and ammunition.
Shortly after the disaster, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, keen to boost its credentials as a political rather than terrorist organisation, published an 80-page report claiming the PFLP-GC had been paid to blow up the plane – by Iran.
It also named a man called Abu Elias as a prime suspect for breaking into the Pan Am baggage store in Heathrow and planting the bomb. The baggage handling area had been broken into with bolt croppers shortly before Flight 103 took off.
Years later, of course, the world would be persuaded to accept a very different story. But in September 1989, the evidence of Iranian guilt seemed so clear that the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a public statement saying: ‘The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur, Iran’s former interior minister. The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad Jibril, leader of the PFLP-GC.’
INDEED, the fate of the passengers and crew of Flight 103 was sealed not in Libya but five months earlier in Tehran after the shooting down of an Iran Air Airbus A300 by the American warship USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988.
The Vincennes, sailing illegally in Iranian waters, inexplicably mistook the passenger jet for a hostile fighter, despite the fact it was climbing in Iranian airspace and its transponder clearly identified it as a civilian aircraft. All 290 people on board were killed.
According to a former Iranian intelligence officer, Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini responded by ordering a ‘qisas’ – a like-for-like punishment under Sharia law – that required the destruction of an American aircraft in revenge.
Iran needed a deniable proxy and its intelligence service knew who to turn to: the PFLP-GC, with whom it had discussed collaboration a few months earlier. The group’s leader, Ahmed Jibril, was a Palestine-born former Syrian Army officer linked to Syrian and Soviet intelligence.
He, in turn, hired Jordanian explosives expert Marwan Khreesat to design a bomb that could pass through airport luggage checks and, for preference, detonate over water, destroying the aircraft, killing all on board and leaving no clues. The terrorist group had already proved its bomb could work – blowing up a Swissair flight on February 21, 1970, killing all 47 passengers and crew, and an Austrian Airlines jet the same day, which managed to land safely at Frankfurt airport.
When news of the qisas reached Lebanon, Jibril called Tehran and offered to execute it.
It is likely that the US National Security Agency and Israeli interceptors monitored the unencrypted phone call. Evidence exists that the price agreed was in the region of £7.7 million – £1.5 million on the handshake and the balance on completion.
And so, in 1988, Jibril sent a key lieutenant, 30-year-old Hafaz Mohammed Hussein Dalkamoni to the PFLP-GC’s European headquarters in the Serbian town of Krusevac, where weapons, explosives and other material were stored. His mission was to activate Jibril’s several sleeper cells in Germany. The following month, bomb-maker Khreesat was despatched to Neuss, near Dusseldorf, where the German police photographed a stream of his visitors, including a known PFLP-GC courier.
Suspicions grew that an attack on Frankfurt airport – near which other members of the cell had a base – was being planned.
The team were observed buying radios and computer equipment, batteries, switches, alarm clocks and cable.
Telephone calls were monitored to a kebab restaurant in Cyprus, which functioned as a postbox for Jibril. And in a call to Damascus bomb-maker Khreesat said he had made changes to ‘the medicine’, which was now ‘stronger than before’.
In fact, Khreesat built five bombs, concealed inside Toshiba radio-cassette players, each containing a barometric switch that started a timer when the pressure inside the plane fell to a pre-set level, meaning the aircraft would be destroyed around 38 minutes into the flight – a clear match to the Lockerbie explosion. On October 24, in a call to Amman, Jordan, Khreesat said he would be done in a few days.
After a CIA warning of an imminent terror attack, the German police launched raids on a dozen apartments, including the ones at Neuss and Frankfurt.
Khreesat and Dalkamoni and a dozen others were arrested in possession of an extraordinary haul of weapons and bomb- making equipment.
Their car contained blasting caps and an alarm clock modified to serve as a timing device – and a Toshiba radio-cassette player already converted into a bomb.
Five kilos of the Czech-made explosive Semtex were also taken away, with 5.7 kilos of another unidentified plastic explosive, three kilos of TNT and 89 detonators.
How was it, then, that Libya came to take the blame, in the face of such overwhelming evidence, and why?
The answer lies in Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, which prompted the First Gulf War – for which Washington and London needed the compliance of Iraq’s neighbours Iran and Syria.
A plausible new Lockerbie suspect had to be found and, conveniently, in June 1991 a CIA officer had ‘a hunch’ that the Iran/PFLP-GC theory was a false lead.
Instead, he saw similarities between Lockerbie and the arrest in Senegal of two Libyans carrying 20lb of explosives and triggering devices like the one from which the Lockerbie fragments had apparently come.
The theory gained traction because of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s known financial support for terrorists, including the IRA, and because it turned out that Gaddafi himself was happy to accept the blame.
Libya had been an international pariah under strict economic sanctions since the murder of British PC Yvonne Fletcher, shot dead in London in 1984, and it was the prospect of the lifting of these sanctions that led Gaddafi’s intelligence service to find a plausible scapegoat.
The 47-year-old airline security officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi fitted the bill. He had been abroad on business on December 20-21, passing though Malta’s Luqa airport on both days.
All that was needed was evidence. Fortunately, the CIA had a very low-level Libyan ‘asset’, Abdul Majid Giaka, on secondment from his job as a mechanic for Gaddafi’s intelligence service to Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta.
After a large reward was offered for information about the Lockerbie bombers, Giaka suddenly volunteered that he had seen al-Megrahi collect a brown Samsonite suitcase from the arrivals carousel in Luqa airport on December 20, 1988. The following morning, he alleged, the suitcase was loaded on to a flight to Frankfurt, from where it would be transferred to London on a Pan Am transfer and loaded aboard Flight 103.
Giaka became a star prosecution witness alongside Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who testified he had sold clothes similar to those found close to the bomb to a man fitting al-Megrahi’s description.
There was forensic evidence, too. A fingernail-sized fragment of a circuit board, recovered in Scottish woodland months after the crash, was identified as a remnant of the device that brought down Pan Am 103.
FBI officer Thomas Thurman also identified it as part of an electronic timer made by MEBO, a Swiss firm which made circuit boards for domestic appliances and had supplied some to Libya. One of MEBO’S technicians named Ulrich Lumpert was willing to testify that he had made this particular board. On November 14, 1991 al-Megrahi and an ‘accomplice’ called Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah were formally accused at simultaneous press conferences in Edinburgh and Washington. Gaddafi was ordered to extradite them, but resisted, offering to try them in Libya.
The stalemate was not resolved until almost ten years later when it was agreed the two Libyans should face justice in a Scottish court sitting at Kamp van Zeist, a disused American Air Force base in Utrecht, Holland.
Al-Megrahi was found guilty. Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah was cleared, yet the stench of a fix remained. MEBO’s co-owner, Edwin Bollier, for example, revealed he had declined an FBI offer of several million dollars for a circuit board to be used in evidence and to testify that the fragment produced in court was part of one specifically supplied to Libya.
In 2007, his technician Lumpert admitted he had lied. He also confessed to stealing part of a timing board from MEBO and handing it to an ‘official person investigating the Lockerbie case’.
There were problems, too, with the technical evidence.
FBI explosive ‘expert’ Thurman was later revealed to be a politics graduate with no relevant scientific training who had altered laboratory reports to favour the prosecution in 30 cases.
Even the identifying witness, shopkeeper Gauci, was tainted. The court was not told he had initially picked out a photograph of a completely different terror suspect and only in the course of 18 further statements did his description of the clothes shopper change to fit al-Megrahi. Gauci’s financial reward from the CIA was not disclosed.
The investigators glossed over the question of how the terrorists were supposed to prime their bomb in Malta and expect it to explode two flights later.
The small number of people who had followed the trial, including relatives of victims such as Jim Swire and the Rev John Mosey, each of whom lost a daughter, and the official United Nations observer Professor Hans Kochler, considered the verdict a gross miscarriage of justice.
On August 20, 2009, al-Megrahi, in the final stages of terminal prostate cancer, was released on compassionate grounds ahead of his second appeal against conviction.
Shortly after he was flown back to Libya, Alistair Darling, then the Chancellor, and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond both denied the release had anything to do with a deal struck with the Libyan government over BP oil contracts.
However, there is another reason why the release might have been politically expedient. Al-Megrahi’s new lawyers wanted to call hundreds of pages of evidence withheld from his original trial that would have linked the case to Iran and the PFLP-GC, rather than al-Megrahi and Libya – to the huge embarrassment of Westminster and Washington.
The Labour Government was so concerned that Foreign Secretary David Miliband issued a public interest immunity certificate exempting the prosecution from disclosing any evidence it chose to hide.
Most of the participants in the story went to the grave without the truth being told. Al-Megrahi died at home with his family on May 20, 2012. Palestinian terror leader Ahmed Jibril was blown up by a roadside bomb placed by an Al Qaeda-linked group on August 26, 2014. Bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat reportedly died in October 2016.
Only the mysterious Abu Elias, claimed to be the person most likely to have placed the Samsonite suitcase on Flight 103, is believed to be still alive. He was named in the Scottish parliament in 2009 and is thought to be living in Washington DC under a witness protection programme and employed by the local education authority under the name of Basel Bushnaq. If true, this is the crowning scandal of the whole sordid affair.
© Douglas Boyd, 2018
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” It looks like Boyd has got his ducks in line here.
By Douglas Boyd
Daily Mail
September 29, 2018
It was just a few days before Christmas, and Pan Am flight 103 was at cruising altitude, packed with students heading home to America. Maid of the Seas, a 747 jumbo jet, had left on schedule from Heathrow at 6.25pm, the start of a long journey through the night to New York, Detroit and the holidays.
As she approached the Solway Firth 38 minutes into the flight, the crew had started serving drinks – and it was then that, far below, Alan Topp, an air traffic controller at Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport found himself blinking in disbelief. The single green box on the screen in front of him that marked the location of Pan Am 103 had disappeared.
Briefly, it was replaced by five new boxes, representing the nose cone, the wings, the main fuselage and the tailplane. These, too, then vanished as they fell below the radar horizon while bodies, luggage and debris spilled out into the void six miles above the Scottish borders.
It was two minutes before they hit Lockerbie.
The worst damage in the town came from the wings containing 20,000 gallons of aviation fuel, which exploded on impact and gouged a crater 30ft wide, 100ft long and 30ft feet deep in Sherwood Crescent. Two houses were completely obliterated along with their inhabitants.
It is a tragic irony that Flight 103 had become a sort of ‘student special’ after a terror threat to US airlines was relayed to all American diplomats in Europe with the result that many cancelled their reservations.
The empty seats were offered at cheap rates by student travel agencies. More than half of the passengers, 137, were under 30 and many had called their parents excitedly before they boarded, saying how lucky they had been to get a cheap seat just before Christmas.
That is how Dr Jim Swire, a Worcestershire GP, and his wife Jane learned that their daughter Flora was booked on the flight, heading across the Atlantic to see her boyfriend.
With a loss of 259 lives on board and 11 more on the ground, the destruction of Maid of the Seas, blown up by a terrorist bomb on December 21, 1988, was the worst civil aviation disaster in British history. Yet 30 years later, we still do not officially know who is responsible for mass murder high in the air above a small Scottish market town preparing for Christmas.
It is nothing short of a scandal.
There was, of course, a fall guy. Eleven years after the atrocity, a 47-year-old Libyan Arab Airlines security officer called Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted on a tissue of lies which centred on the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to remember him buying clothes similar to those that may have been in the suitcase with the bomb that would rip through the fuselage.
A low-level Libyan CIA ‘asset’ called Abdul Majid Giaka said he recalled seeing al-Megrahi collect a brown Samsonite suitcase from the Arrivals carousel in Malta’s Luqa airport on December 20, 1988. On the following morning, he alleged, the unaccompanied suitcase was loaded on to a flight to Frankfurt, from where it would be transferred to London on a Pan Am ‘feeder flight’ and loaded aboard Flight 103 – before then exploding.
A further 11 years later, al-Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment at an extraordinary trial held in a disused American air base near Utrecht, Holland.
After years investigating the Lockerbie disaster and its background, I have found that little of the evidence against him can be taken at face value. Instead, a very different story has emerged from the morass of lies, one that should have been apparent from the very start.
It is a story of incompetence, vengeance, political expediency and then a cover-up orchestrated from the very highest levels in London and in Washington – where the real bomber is said to live today, under the cover of an American witness protection scheme.
In the days and months after the crash, thousands of police, military personnel and specialised investigators from Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch scoured southern Scotland, finding debris over an area of 1,500 square miles. Investigators from the US Federal Aviation Authority and the FBI took part.
Representatives of the CIA were present for reasons not divulged. Charred material said to have been found some weeks after the bombing in woods near Lockerbie was sent for analysis to Fort Halstead in Kent, the Ministry of Defence research establishment, where senior scientific officer Thomas Hayes identified bits of black plastic, metal and wire mesh as parts of a Toshiba radio-cassette player.
It had contained a bomb and a small piece of circuit board that Hayes believed to be the remnants of a timer. After three years of the joint British/US investigation, this and other evidence pointed in one clear direction: an obscure terrorist group called the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
Sleeper cells from the organisation had been arrested in a series of raids in Germany a few weeks before Lockerbie, in which bombs hidden in Toshiba radio-cassette players had been seized alongside a fearsome arsenal of explosives, firearms and ammunition.
Shortly after the disaster, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, keen to boost its credentials as a political rather than terrorist organisation, published an 80-page report claiming the PFLP-GC had been paid to blow up the plane – by Iran.
It also named a man called Abu Elias as a prime suspect for breaking into the Pan Am baggage store in Heathrow and planting the bomb. The baggage handling area had been broken into with bolt croppers shortly before Flight 103 took off.
Years later, of course, the world would be persuaded to accept a very different story. But in September 1989, the evidence of Iranian guilt seemed so clear that the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a public statement saying: ‘The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur, Iran’s former interior minister. The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad Jibril, leader of the PFLP-GC.’
INDEED, the fate of the passengers and crew of Flight 103 was sealed not in Libya but five months earlier in Tehran after the shooting down of an Iran Air Airbus A300 by the American warship USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988.
The Vincennes, sailing illegally in Iranian waters, inexplicably mistook the passenger jet for a hostile fighter, despite the fact it was climbing in Iranian airspace and its transponder clearly identified it as a civilian aircraft. All 290 people on board were killed.
According to a former Iranian intelligence officer, Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini responded by ordering a ‘qisas’ – a like-for-like punishment under Sharia law – that required the destruction of an American aircraft in revenge.
Iran needed a deniable proxy and its intelligence service knew who to turn to: the PFLP-GC, with whom it had discussed collaboration a few months earlier. The group’s leader, Ahmed Jibril, was a Palestine-born former Syrian Army officer linked to Syrian and Soviet intelligence.
He, in turn, hired Jordanian explosives expert Marwan Khreesat to design a bomb that could pass through airport luggage checks and, for preference, detonate over water, destroying the aircraft, killing all on board and leaving no clues. The terrorist group had already proved its bomb could work – blowing up a Swissair flight on February 21, 1970, killing all 47 passengers and crew, and an Austrian Airlines jet the same day, which managed to land safely at Frankfurt airport.
When news of the qisas reached Lebanon, Jibril called Tehran and offered to execute it.
It is likely that the US National Security Agency and Israeli interceptors monitored the unencrypted phone call. Evidence exists that the price agreed was in the region of £7.7 million – £1.5 million on the handshake and the balance on completion.
And so, in 1988, Jibril sent a key lieutenant, 30-year-old Hafaz Mohammed Hussein Dalkamoni to the PFLP-GC’s European headquarters in the Serbian town of Krusevac, where weapons, explosives and other material were stored. His mission was to activate Jibril’s several sleeper cells in Germany. The following month, bomb-maker Khreesat was despatched to Neuss, near Dusseldorf, where the German police photographed a stream of his visitors, including a known PFLP-GC courier.
Suspicions grew that an attack on Frankfurt airport – near which other members of the cell had a base – was being planned.
The team were observed buying radios and computer equipment, batteries, switches, alarm clocks and cable.
Telephone calls were monitored to a kebab restaurant in Cyprus, which functioned as a postbox for Jibril. And in a call to Damascus bomb-maker Khreesat said he had made changes to ‘the medicine’, which was now ‘stronger than before’.
In fact, Khreesat built five bombs, concealed inside Toshiba radio-cassette players, each containing a barometric switch that started a timer when the pressure inside the plane fell to a pre-set level, meaning the aircraft would be destroyed around 38 minutes into the flight – a clear match to the Lockerbie explosion. On October 24, in a call to Amman, Jordan, Khreesat said he would be done in a few days.
After a CIA warning of an imminent terror attack, the German police launched raids on a dozen apartments, including the ones at Neuss and Frankfurt.
Khreesat and Dalkamoni and a dozen others were arrested in possession of an extraordinary haul of weapons and bomb- making equipment.
Their car contained blasting caps and an alarm clock modified to serve as a timing device – and a Toshiba radio-cassette player already converted into a bomb.
Five kilos of the Czech-made explosive Semtex were also taken away, with 5.7 kilos of another unidentified plastic explosive, three kilos of TNT and 89 detonators.
How was it, then, that Libya came to take the blame, in the face of such overwhelming evidence, and why?
The answer lies in Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, which prompted the First Gulf War – for which Washington and London needed the compliance of Iraq’s neighbours Iran and Syria.
A plausible new Lockerbie suspect had to be found and, conveniently, in June 1991 a CIA officer had ‘a hunch’ that the Iran/PFLP-GC theory was a false lead.
Instead, he saw similarities between Lockerbie and the arrest in Senegal of two Libyans carrying 20lb of explosives and triggering devices like the one from which the Lockerbie fragments had apparently come.
The theory gained traction because of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s known financial support for terrorists, including the IRA, and because it turned out that Gaddafi himself was happy to accept the blame.
Libya had been an international pariah under strict economic sanctions since the murder of British PC Yvonne Fletcher, shot dead in London in 1984, and it was the prospect of the lifting of these sanctions that led Gaddafi’s intelligence service to find a plausible scapegoat.
The 47-year-old airline security officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi fitted the bill. He had been abroad on business on December 20-21, passing though Malta’s Luqa airport on both days.
All that was needed was evidence. Fortunately, the CIA had a very low-level Libyan ‘asset’, Abdul Majid Giaka, on secondment from his job as a mechanic for Gaddafi’s intelligence service to Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta.
After a large reward was offered for information about the Lockerbie bombers, Giaka suddenly volunteered that he had seen al-Megrahi collect a brown Samsonite suitcase from the arrivals carousel in Luqa airport on December 20, 1988. The following morning, he alleged, the suitcase was loaded on to a flight to Frankfurt, from where it would be transferred to London on a Pan Am transfer and loaded aboard Flight 103.
Giaka became a star prosecution witness alongside Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who testified he had sold clothes similar to those found close to the bomb to a man fitting al-Megrahi’s description.
There was forensic evidence, too. A fingernail-sized fragment of a circuit board, recovered in Scottish woodland months after the crash, was identified as a remnant of the device that brought down Pan Am 103.
FBI officer Thomas Thurman also identified it as part of an electronic timer made by MEBO, a Swiss firm which made circuit boards for domestic appliances and had supplied some to Libya. One of MEBO’S technicians named Ulrich Lumpert was willing to testify that he had made this particular board. On November 14, 1991 al-Megrahi and an ‘accomplice’ called Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah were formally accused at simultaneous press conferences in Edinburgh and Washington. Gaddafi was ordered to extradite them, but resisted, offering to try them in Libya.
The stalemate was not resolved until almost ten years later when it was agreed the two Libyans should face justice in a Scottish court sitting at Kamp van Zeist, a disused American Air Force base in Utrecht, Holland.
Al-Megrahi was found guilty. Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah was cleared, yet the stench of a fix remained. MEBO’s co-owner, Edwin Bollier, for example, revealed he had declined an FBI offer of several million dollars for a circuit board to be used in evidence and to testify that the fragment produced in court was part of one specifically supplied to Libya.
In 2007, his technician Lumpert admitted he had lied. He also confessed to stealing part of a timing board from MEBO and handing it to an ‘official person investigating the Lockerbie case’.
There were problems, too, with the technical evidence.
FBI explosive ‘expert’ Thurman was later revealed to be a politics graduate with no relevant scientific training who had altered laboratory reports to favour the prosecution in 30 cases.
Even the identifying witness, shopkeeper Gauci, was tainted. The court was not told he had initially picked out a photograph of a completely different terror suspect and only in the course of 18 further statements did his description of the clothes shopper change to fit al-Megrahi. Gauci’s financial reward from the CIA was not disclosed.
The investigators glossed over the question of how the terrorists were supposed to prime their bomb in Malta and expect it to explode two flights later.
The small number of people who had followed the trial, including relatives of victims such as Jim Swire and the Rev John Mosey, each of whom lost a daughter, and the official United Nations observer Professor Hans Kochler, considered the verdict a gross miscarriage of justice.
On August 20, 2009, al-Megrahi, in the final stages of terminal prostate cancer, was released on compassionate grounds ahead of his second appeal against conviction.
Shortly after he was flown back to Libya, Alistair Darling, then the Chancellor, and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond both denied the release had anything to do with a deal struck with the Libyan government over BP oil contracts.
However, there is another reason why the release might have been politically expedient. Al-Megrahi’s new lawyers wanted to call hundreds of pages of evidence withheld from his original trial that would have linked the case to Iran and the PFLP-GC, rather than al-Megrahi and Libya – to the huge embarrassment of Westminster and Washington.
The Labour Government was so concerned that Foreign Secretary David Miliband issued a public interest immunity certificate exempting the prosecution from disclosing any evidence it chose to hide.
Most of the participants in the story went to the grave without the truth being told. Al-Megrahi died at home with his family on May 20, 2012. Palestinian terror leader Ahmed Jibril was blown up by a roadside bomb placed by an Al Qaeda-linked group on August 26, 2014. Bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat reportedly died in October 2016.
Only the mysterious Abu Elias, claimed to be the person most likely to have placed the Samsonite suitcase on Flight 103, is believed to be still alive. He was named in the Scottish parliament in 2009 and is thought to be living in Washington DC under a witness protection programme and employed by the local education authority under the name of Basel Bushnaq. If true, this is the crowning scandal of the whole sordid affair.
© Douglas Boyd, 2018
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” It looks like Boyd has got his ducks in line here.
Monday, October 01, 2018
THE GAME IS ALL BUT OVER
Too much shit, even if completely false, has piled up on Kavanaugh for him to be confirmed by the senate
California Senator Camel Hairass – oops, that was a Freudian slip, it should read Kamala Harris – received the following anonymous letter in an envelope with no return address:
Dear, Senator Grassley, et al.
The current situation regarding the accusations made by Dr. Ford against Brett Kavanaugh have prompted me to write you today. I have moved on with my life since he forced himself on me as well. The times were so different, and I didn't expect to be taken seriously, embarrass my family, be believed at all.
I was at a party with a friend. I had been drinking. She left with another boy, leaving me to find my own way home. Kavanaugh and a friend offered me a ride home. I don't know the other boy's name. I was in his car to go home.
His friend was behind me in the backseat. Kavanaugh kissed me forcefully. I told him I only wanted a ride home. Kavanaugh continued to grope me over my clothes, forcing his kisses on me and putting his hand under my sweater. 'No,' I yelled at him. The boy in the backseat reached around, putting his hand over my mouth and holding my arm to keep me in the car. I screamed into his hand. Kavanaugh continued his forcing himself on me. He pulled up my sweater and bra exposing my breasts, and reached into my panties, inserting his fingers into my vagina. My screams were silenced by the boy in the backseat covering my mouth and groping me as well. Kavanaugh slapped me and told me to be quiet and forced me to perform oral sex on him. He climaxed in my mouth. They forced me to go into the backseat and took turns raping me several times each.
They dropped me off two blocks from my home. 'No one will believe if you tell. Be a good girl,' he told me.
Watching what has happened to Anita Hill and Dr. Ford has me petrified to come forward in person or even provide my name. A group of white men, powerful senators who won't believe me, will come after me. Like Dr. Ford, I'm a teacher, I have an education, a family, a child, a home. I have credibility. Just because something happens a long time ago, because a rape victim doesn't want to personally come forward, does not mean something can't be true.
Jane Doe, Oceanside, California.
Camel Hairass – oops, there I go again – gave the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee before Thursday’s hearing. A conference call was held with Kavenaugh during which he vehemently denied this new accusation. “Nothing -- the whole thing is ridiculous. Nothing ever -- anything like that, nothing I mean, that's -- the whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn't happen, not anything close,” Kavanaugh insisted.
The Daily mail says that because Jane Doe complained about Judiciary Committee Republican “white men”, that suggests she may be black or Hispanic.
I firmly believe this latest accusation is a bucket full of stinking shit! But because the letter is now out there for all to see, it sure looks like the game is all but over. The Democrats have succeeded in the total destruction of a good man. I cannot see how Judge Kavenaugh will be seated on the Supreme Court.
California Senator Camel Hairass – oops, that was a Freudian slip, it should read Kamala Harris – received the following anonymous letter in an envelope with no return address:
Dear, Senator Grassley, et al.
The current situation regarding the accusations made by Dr. Ford against Brett Kavanaugh have prompted me to write you today. I have moved on with my life since he forced himself on me as well. The times were so different, and I didn't expect to be taken seriously, embarrass my family, be believed at all.
I was at a party with a friend. I had been drinking. She left with another boy, leaving me to find my own way home. Kavanaugh and a friend offered me a ride home. I don't know the other boy's name. I was in his car to go home.
His friend was behind me in the backseat. Kavanaugh kissed me forcefully. I told him I only wanted a ride home. Kavanaugh continued to grope me over my clothes, forcing his kisses on me and putting his hand under my sweater. 'No,' I yelled at him. The boy in the backseat reached around, putting his hand over my mouth and holding my arm to keep me in the car. I screamed into his hand. Kavanaugh continued his forcing himself on me. He pulled up my sweater and bra exposing my breasts, and reached into my panties, inserting his fingers into my vagina. My screams were silenced by the boy in the backseat covering my mouth and groping me as well. Kavanaugh slapped me and told me to be quiet and forced me to perform oral sex on him. He climaxed in my mouth. They forced me to go into the backseat and took turns raping me several times each.
They dropped me off two blocks from my home. 'No one will believe if you tell. Be a good girl,' he told me.
Watching what has happened to Anita Hill and Dr. Ford has me petrified to come forward in person or even provide my name. A group of white men, powerful senators who won't believe me, will come after me. Like Dr. Ford, I'm a teacher, I have an education, a family, a child, a home. I have credibility. Just because something happens a long time ago, because a rape victim doesn't want to personally come forward, does not mean something can't be true.
Jane Doe, Oceanside, California.
Camel Hairass – oops, there I go again – gave the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee before Thursday’s hearing. A conference call was held with Kavenaugh during which he vehemently denied this new accusation. “Nothing -- the whole thing is ridiculous. Nothing ever -- anything like that, nothing I mean, that's -- the whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn't happen, not anything close,” Kavanaugh insisted.
The Daily mail says that because Jane Doe complained about Judiciary Committee Republican “white men”, that suggests she may be black or Hispanic.
I firmly believe this latest accusation is a bucket full of stinking shit! But because the letter is now out there for all to see, it sure looks like the game is all but over. The Democrats have succeeded in the total destruction of a good man. I cannot see how Judge Kavenaugh will be seated on the Supreme Court.
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