Category Archives: Opinion

PEOPLE ARE THE PRESS: Federal Court Rules it is Not Illegal to Film Police or Government Officials

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

In what I consider the most important recent news event, the Federal First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that citizens have the legal right to film police while they are performing their public duties.

The case involved attorney Simon Glik in Boston who observed an arrest in the Boston Common that he thought was abusive.  So he flipped out his cellphone camera and filmed the cops.  They arrested him.

The Court has responded to this – one of the increasing number of cases nationwide in which cops try to take cameras from or arrest citizens who try to record them during arrests – by affirming a lower court ruling in Glik’s favor.  In this case, as in most similar cases, the police attempted to charge someone with ‘wiretapping’ because the video cameras are ‘secretly’ recording audio.  Of course any court recognizes that only a simpleton would associate using a video camera with wiretapping.

The Court stated:

The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity]. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting the free discussion of governmental affairs.

Episodes of police misconduct, brutality and murder are increasing nationwide. Police powers are growing, government agencies are eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, personal data is being pulled into government databases, and security paranoia is reaching nearly hysterical levels. The fact is that the police are committing crimes – including murder – at an alarming rate. Cops are using violence against innocent demonstrators. They are killing helpless people in the subways of Oakland. They are beating homeless people to death in Fullerton, California. They are raiding political activist groups before and during public events on the chance that these groups might be planning something illegal. Filming these cops is absolutely the least that citizens should be doing.

The Court has made it abundantly clear that citizens have always had the legal right to use video cameras on the police and that arrests of citizens in these circumstances is illegal.  That is why all cases nationwide that police forces have brought against people with video cameras have been thrown out of court.

It should now be clear that police departments arresting people for filming are liable in civil courts.

The Court went further than its decision on filming police activities. It also stated that citizens recording police or government officials have the same legal protections afforded to the press. In other words: citizens are journalists.

The Court said:

Moreover, changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.

There is no legal definition of or requirement for being a journalist.  In fact, much of CNN’s video coverage comes from ‘iReporters’ who are citizen journalists filming events around the world and sending in their footage via the CNN web site.  Those people are fully protected by all the same laws that protect journalists and their sources.

I think this is a long-overdue and definitive ruling that clarifies legally what has been obvious all along.  People always have the right to film their police officers doing the public duties that public monies pay for.

Finally, and most important: People Are the Press.

 

Beauty and Love Are Another Song – Song About the Youth Uprising in England

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Michel Montecrossa’s latest video examines the desperation behind the rioting in Great Britain. His direct and heartfelt approach works to cut through all the recent bullshit about the rioters being simple thugs with nothing more on their minds than robbery and destruction. Riots are open wounds that erupt after enormous damage has already been done to a population. The seething pressure is always there for a long time before exploding in everyone’s faces. By definition, riots involve damage and robbery. What else would there be to do at a riot? Riots are anger and desperate hopelessness that cannot be controlled. Yes, of course one must punish people who burn down buildings. But one must also have the intellect and social responsibility to seriously look at why children and adults would feel so awful that the only thing they can think of doing is burning down a city. That is serious rebellion and it is going to spread. The world is under incredible economic pressure and the people who suffer understand that governments tied to extreme wealth and corporate interests are responsible. Populations are going off like bombs. The uprisings in the Middle East are directly connected to the uprisings London because both groups of people have become aware that the same corporations control what happens in both places. The dictators and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are kept there because they provide certain corporations with efficiency in the region. Assad is exterminating people in Syria because it is convenient for Western companies and politicians that he do so. The Western governments have wanted globalization and now they’ve got it. Globalization of uprisings and riots. One must remember that the riots in Great Britain were started by a policeman who killed a young man. A policeman who chose, just like the policemen in Syria, to point his gun and fire a bullet into the body of a human being. A violent reaction to such an act should be expected in most cases.

Michelmontecrossa.com

British Riots Indicate Global Revolt Against Corporate Control of Governments

by Cimaxion

Below is a BBC news video of a man named Darcus Howe trying to explain what he has observed as being the cause of the violent rioting that is burning down parts of London and other cities across Great Britain. The news woman should probably be dismissed as quickly as possible because she is incompetent and obviously has a problem with the answers she’s getting.

Mr. Howe’s honest attempt to communicate his ideas about what has led to these riots should be listened to carefully. It is common knowledge that Great Britain has descended in the past ten years into the western world’s most closely observed police state. Everyone is watched on every street corner everywhere every day. Police routinely suppress free expression and demonstrations. According to Mr. Howe, they are also searching non-whites for no reason. Under such conditions, with the addition of worldwide financial panic and ‘austerity measures’ being put into place that strip services from the poor and middle classes, all it takes is a single flashpoint to ignite massive riots.

In case you had not gotten the picture yet, we are seeing a global explosion of rebellion, demonstration and riot. I firmly believe that all the rioting and revolt in the Middle East is directly connected to the rioting and revolt going on in Europe. People are finally seeing a broad general picture of a world and its governments, whether they be democratic or authoritarian, being controlled and dominated by a handful of powerful global corporations. Under such control, governments lean their decisions in favor of these corporate entities and the very wealthy people behind them.

The UK riots have broken out very shortly after the expanding news story of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporations committing crimes in partnership with the police as part of what they represent as ‘journalism.’ That is basically a tip of the iceberg example of corporate control of a nation.

To call the riots simple acts of vandalism by thugs is a gross simplification of the situation. All riots start from some cause which comes at the end of a long resentment and building desperation. When the riots actually break out they include all sorts of people, many of whom are simple thugs and criminals. But those thugs don’t normally break into riots that burn cities down. They are normally robbing convenience stores and shooting each other. Something much larger than them brings them out into open battle on the streets.

Widespread unemployment, idleness and the easy access to video information from all over the world builds anger and resentment toward governments that seem locked into corporate bonds. People begin to realize that it doesn’t matter who they elect. All the candidates are run by the corporations. The defining signal to the world, much to everyone’s surprise, was the election of Barack Obama. He won his office by seeming to promise something new – something independent and free. But as soon as he took office the world saw that he was just another corporate middle man. The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are simply at the behest of the corporations that insist upon such a course which includes the very profitable activity of ‘nation building.’ That Obama signal – that horrific disappointment – has led directly to this global explosion of rage. Obama, by not being who he should have been, lit the fuse. The bomb is now going off.

Here’s a man explaining the riots to a journalist in London:

The ongoing worldwide explosion of violence is the beginning of a global war against corporate control of nations.

We are watching the beginnings of a worldwide effort to break government away from this corporate control. It mirrors the efforts of prior centuries to break away from the control of the Church.

It’s going to get worse and it’s going to spread virulently. The fact that London has exploded should indicate to everyone that it is leaping past all predictability.

Thank you to Dangerous Minds for the videos.

Police in Fullerton, California Commit Organized Brutal Murder of Homeless Man

by Cimaxion | 7 Comments

A group of at least six Fullerton, California police officers brutally beat an ill homeless man to death on July 5th, according to witnesses and news reports. The story is exploding across the national news media because of some video that shows witnesses at the scene of the beating talking about what they saw moments before. They describe a group of officers stomping and beating a helpless Kelly Thomas to death as he screamed for help.  Here is an extremely graphic close up picture of what these police did to the head of their victim.  This was an extremely brutal and extended crime in which a human being was beaten into a pulp by sociopathic murderers.

When a small police force in a small Southern California city can put six murderous cops on scene at one time you know you have a real statistical problem. In other words, you can bet your life that you have a police department that is a very clear and present threat to the lives of the citizens.

The FBI has now joined the investigation and will probably extend its inquiries deep inside the Fullerton department.  What they will find there one can already guess at.

The story has reached the national news. I saw Brian Williams do a story on it tonight. In that story, the mayor of Fullerton says he thinks people should calm down because things are reaching almost ‘lynch mob’ proportions. Oh yuh think? Really? And how does the mayor of Fullerton think people should react to a group of brutal thug cops murdering a helpless man? Does he think they should allow a Fullerton court to handle the situation? Cops murder people and nothing happens. It’s common. Courts have serious problems handling cops who murder. They simply can’t deal with the problem.

In Syria, government forces – cops and soldiers – are shooting and beating people to death every day. We have no problem when the Syrian people pick up guns and shoot those cops. Why should we object to the citizens of Fullerton fighting back against an armed force of violent murderers? There’s absolutely no reason to trust a cop in Fullerton. The city is just a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, right off an exit on the Five freeway. You certainly don’t want to get pulled over by these guys. I’d approach a Fullerton cop with extreme caution and preferably with a gun in my hand (I obviously mean that as a general attitude and not as an actual course of action!).

Shooting cops who are murdering someone is legal, by the way. Another cop can do it. A citizen can do it. It may be a very risky proposition and I would certainly not recommend it, but it is just as legal as shooting a regular citizen if one sees that a murder is imminent. Quite simply, it is always legal to prevent a murder through any means necessary.  It would have been perfectly legal for someone to have walked up and done something to those Fullerton cops while they were committing murder.  Remember that.  It’s actually a prediction.

For now, we have citizens using the power of the cell phone camera to shoot cops who are committing crimes and atrocities. Those cameras in the hands of people everywhere need to roll every time someone sees a cop beating or killing someone. But beyond that, there is a serious argument to be made for armed confrontation against a police force that is fielding dangerous killers. After all, you cannot deny the numbers. If multiple squad cars in Fullerton pull up to a scene and the accumulated force of cops on hand decide to beat a man to death, then you can safely assume that those cops represent the fundamental picture of that police force. At that point, the Fullerton police force becomes an armed group occupying a city. They can and should be resisted by every means available, legal and physical. People will start killing killer cops. It’s inevitable in a world where a cop can shoot a bullet through the back of an unarmed man on a subway platform in Oakland and get off in court with a relatively minor conviction. Cops carry guns. They are dangerous people. Their training is suspect. Their histories are often suspect. They become cops for reasons other than wanting to protect people. They should not be viewed with the respect generally afforded to them. They should be viewed with suspicion. They should be treated as potential threats.

Cops who kill are actually pretty easy to identify and find. They are also easy to destroy financially. The cops on scene at the killing on July 5th should spend the rest of their lives in jail and should lose their homes, their finances and everything else they may hold dear. Pro bono legal services to such ends should be provided to the family of the dead man by major law firms. One way or another, killer cops must be destroyed.

So, pigs of Fullerton, squeal for the camera!

NASA Begins its End

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

The final landing of a NASA space shuttle yesterday, though hailed as the final act of a great technical achievement over the past 30 years, actually represents a complete failure on the part of the United States to build upon the work of scientists and technicians from the 1960s and 70s. It should shock most of the world that the leading superpower, with the world’s most advanced space exploration systems, could not figure out a way to even build a second version of the space shuttle. I’ve never seen a product of technology that stays with version 1.0 for thirty years. There is no viable plan in existence for launching human beings off the earth by the United States. There’s a lot of vaporware and talk. There are models of crew capsules that will maybe one day launch people toward an asteroid or even to Mars. Maybe. None of it works. None of it even has a working toilet. There are no rockets being designed that could even launch the miraculous capsule into orbit. And that crew capsule? If you’ve seen it you then realize that NASA is simply building the Apollo system all over again with extra bunks for three more astronauts. But they can’t build the thing. It doesn’t exist.

There are no longer any means available to the United States for getting people to the International Space Station. There are no means available for getting any equipment up there. The U.S. must rely on rides hitched aboard Russian spacecraft for an indefinite period of time that many NASA experts are now saying could extend to 10 years.

Russia has a more advanced and reliable space exploration system than the United States.

In the mid 1990s I went to a boring Hollywood party and wandered around with a drink in my hand for about half an hour before running into an older couple sitting alone. They seemed uncomfortable and out of place. So I said hello and sat down next to them. The man turned out to be a retired engineer who worked on the design for the Lunar Landing Module during the Apollo years. I asked him why NASA had been unable to return to the moon. His answer was: ‘Because they can’t.’

He explained that NASA had been been decimated by enormous loss of technical knowledge due to retirement. He said that the agency had not properly stored its accumulation of knowledge. He said that if engineers wanted to build a rocket, command module and lander to get back to the moon, they would be completely unable to do so and would be forced to relearn almost everything that had been learned during Apollo. He then said that this would become very clear to the nation sometime within the next 15 to 20 years as existing technology wore out and could not be replaced. I told him that he seemed very depressed about it. He nodded and said the situation was much worse than he could explain. He said that technical notes from engineers hadn’t even been saved. The knowledge was just totally lost.

I think that guy was right. I don’t think NASA could build a new shuttle even if it tried.

NASA’s insistence on transferring launch responsibilities over to private space companies would perhaps make some sense if we had seen it being phased in alongside the existing shuttle technology.  But to shut down our only means of space transport and hope for the best with future private launches is simply begging for disaster.  How tested will this new private space launch technology be?  Why would an astronaut climb into a rocket built by some company run by PayPal’s founder?  It’s insane and stupid.  What if the first private launch vehicle with astronauts explodes on liftoff?  What happens then?  Is there even a backup plan?

Hugh Grant Helps Expose Phone Hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

This is simply mind-boggling. Actor Hugh Grant breaks down in his car and gets help from a passing motorist who happens to be an editor at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World paper. This obviously troubled editor then proceeds to boast to Mr. Grant about his phone hacking schemes at News of the World! Grant then wears his own wire and goes to meet the fool at a bar where he records every word the guy says!

But watch how the editor, Paul McMullen, debates Grant by defending the phone hacking! Grant just nails this imbecile to the floor with a withering verbal assault that just about sums up this whole affair.

This conspiracy to hack into personal and possibly business phone accounts by Rupert Murdoch’s news people is spreading all over the place like a brush fire. The FBI has announced that it is opening an investigation into the News Corporation here in the U.S. The criminality is obviously very widespread and will begin to reach into the highest echelons of the news world. It is a shame that a bit of excrement like Rupert Murdoch can amass so much power and then create such humiliation for the entire profession of journalism. We can ill afford government efforts to exert more control over journalists. I am almost certain that this spreading criminality in the News Corporation will lead to politicians screaming for more oversight and regulation of free speech and journalism in the U.S.