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#a swatting call reported that a dozen students at the school had been shot and killed
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@staff there's no option to report this and I don't know if anyone even checks your @s because you get so many but the fact that I am getting advertisements for belligerent pro-gun pro-Jesus far-right t shirts LESS THAN A WEEK after another mass shooting that killed a bunch of children and two days after multiple schools in my area were locked down because of swatting calls is one thing, because I realize your ad service likely doesn't vet what comes through
BUT I CANNOT BLOCK THESE ADS.
THERE IS NO OPTION TO STOP THEM.
You need to fix this immediately.
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notyetneedcoffee · 4 years
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Assassin For Hire 6
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Pairings: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes x Reader
Warning: not for this chapter, other than the angst that goes with this story
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Bucky strode across the crowded room, the small congregations of people moving out of his path. They just cleared out of his way, either consciously aware of who he was or unconsciously aware of his desire to kill someone. Steve frowned at his approach, but you couldn’t help the dark chuckle.  
“What?” Steve whispered just as Bucky stepped up to the two of you.  
“Just enjoying the way that Buck makes all the big bad SWAT members skitter out of his way.” You smirked.  
Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. Bucky didn’t actually smile, but you could see fury in his eyes turn to amusement. “This is an awful lot of people for a covert operation, Steve.”
“It’s not a covert operation, Buck.”
“I said to keep it quiet.”
“Arresting most of a local gang, their middle men to their buyers and contacts into larger criminal organizations, and serving the full warrants for everything else,” Steve sighed. “It’s taking a small army.”  
“I could have kept it quiet.” He breathed quietly.  
“That would have been fun.” Natasha silently slid between Steve and Bucky. “We could have kept score.”
You smiled at her. Nat volunteered to lead the second team after Steve approached her. The two of them would lead the raiding teams while you and Bucky went after Sarah’s family. Steve insisted a coordinated effort was necessary to minimize the risk to everyone.
Bucky wanted to go beat in the heads of the bad guys behind all of this. The desire to inflict some pain made his hands clench. Still, the protective urge for the little girl cool enough to hire an assassin to save her family had him stepping out of the main event. He’d insisted on being the one at Sarah’s house.  
“I’ve got everything we’re going to need.” You showed Buck the thick file in your hand. “Although you may want to put a hankie in your pocket if you want to be a real gentleman. I think there may be tears.”
Nat laughed, thinking it absurd. However, Bucky pulled two neatly folded and pressed white cotton handkerchiefs from his pocket. Her mouth fell open. “Already figured on that, Doll.” He smiled at you. “Hope you don’t mind if I might give away the ones you got me for Christmas.”
You smiled, thumb running over the delicately embroidered double B’s. “Of course, I don’t mind.”
He tucked them back in his pocket. “I’m going to check on the surveillance team one more time. We leave in thirty.”  
“Handkerchiefs?” Nat’s eyebrow rose.
You smiled. “Every time I cried, he always reached for one out of habit but never had any. So, I made sure he had some.”
“Back in the day, he always had two.” Steve said absently. “A nice one to offer a girl, and older one for me in case I forgot mine.” Nat shot him a questioning look. “I was sick a lot, or bleeding after getting my ass beat.”
You slipped an arm around his waist. “Tough guy.”
Steve pressed his lips into your hair and continued to read over the plan, triple checking the details.  
“Thank you for this.” You whispered.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“Getting us involved in a local Police matter, though, could be opening a can of worms.” Nat agreed.
“It’s still the right thing to do.” Steve insisted. “Let’s get moving. Time to pull the teams together.”
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You got out of the car and walked with Bucky towards the blocky mid-century apartment building. It’d seen better days. Even though suburban city had good schools and neighborhoods, there were still pockets of neglect. Sarah lived right in the middle of one.  
Bucky touched the com unit at his ear. “Report.”
“Unit One, no activity.”
“Unit Two, no activity.”
“Unit Three, all’s quiet here too.”
“Unit Four, they finished dinner and are settling in for,” a pause. “looks like The Simpsons.”
He’d set guards to keep an eye on the building and the family. “Good. I’m dropping off this channel. If you need to alert us, use Com 2.” You gave Bucky a sideways look. He explained, “This is going to get personal. No need for all of them to hear everything.”
“You’re such a softy.” You whispered.
“Shut up.” He whispered back, hiding his grin.
He punched in the four digit code for the crappy security door and held it open for you. The hall smelled of musty carpet and stale cigarette smoke. A collection of faded and well used kids bikes leaned against the wall by the stairs. You didn’t see an elevator.
“Come on.” Bucky led you to the second floor. He took a deep, cleansing breath before knocking on the door.  
The door opened. A small woman in sweats, with her hair pulled up in a messy ponytail started to smile, but as she stared at Bucky, eyes moving from his grim expression to black boots and back up to exposed metal arm, she took a step back.  
“Mrs. Jacobs,” Bucky tried to soften his voice. “May we come in? We need to talk.”
“You’re Barnes,” the lanky teenage stepped up behind his mother. “You’re the Winter Soldier.”
Mary Jacobs took deep breath, plastering a smile on her face that didn’t touch her eyes. “This must be about Sarah’s trip. Please come in. I’m sorry I’m not dressed. I must have missed your call. Um, can I offer you something?”
“No thank you, we’re fine.” You smiled back. The living room was tiny, just enough room for a sofa and small table and television. A cheap bookcase was overflowing with books in corner. They were well used, probably second hand, but were stacked neatly and taken care of. You noticed Sarah peeking out of doorway. “Hi, want to come join us?”
Sarah stepped out into the hall, hovering just on the edge of little living room. That calm, distant look sat firmly in place. You kept one on her as Bucky asked Mary Jacobs to join him at the little kitchen table pushed against the wall.  
“Mrs. Jacob,” Bucky looked far too large at the little table.  
“Mary, please.”
“Mary,” Bucky amended. “This isn’t about the Avenger Tower visit. This is in regards to something that Sarah brought...”
“No!” Sarah dashed forward, angry tears instantly filling her eyes. “You just said you’d fix it! You can’t tell, you can’t!”
“What did you do, squirt?” Josh put both his hands on his little sister’s shoulders, turning her around. “What?”
“It’s okay, Josh.” You tried to sooth, handing Bucky the large file. “None of you are in trouble.”
He opened it, sliding a photograph to Mary. “Two years ago in June you were working relief shifts in the ER at General. You treated this man for stab wound.”
“Sarah, go to your room.” Mary’s back went very stiff.
“She’s the one who led me to him.” Bucky said, sparing a glance for the brave little girl. “Had gathered intel like a pro.”
“What?” Her mother breathed
“She was looking for help.” You offered. “And she reached out to those who would best be able to help. She’s a smart kid.”
“When you treated him?” Bucky tapped Abruzzo’s picture. “What did do? Offer to pay you for extra pills?”
Mary looked away. Josh scowled.
“Your assignments were pretty regular up until this point, but after you because to take shorter and shorter relief assignments. Then there’s this.” Bucky slid another paper across.  
Mary’s jaws clenched. “Those weren’t my bills. My ex-husband did that.”
“We believe you.” You said.
“What did you do, Mary? We’re here to help, if you tell me everything. This can be fixed.” Bucky insisted.  
She shook her head, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.  
“He held enough over you that you couldn’t stop, couldn’t back out.” Bucky continued. “Then he wanted more, even more than you could give. He threatened your boy. Got him involved.”
Tears slipped from Mary’s eyes. Josh barked. “Stop it.”
Bucky pulled out warrants and pages with dozens of photos on them. “As we speak, teams are arresting everyone and completely dismantling their organization.” He gave Mary a chance to let that sink in. “Now tell me everything and let me help with the rest of it.”
“All of them?” She almost touched the photograph, but pulled her fingers away at the last moment.
“All of them.” You smiled.  
“Are you asking me to testify?” Mary looked up, frightened. “I won’t let my kids...”
“No,” Bucky shook his head. “Just a statement. We have enough evidence to keep you out of everything else. But, Mary, it’s necessary for us to get the complete story that led Sarah to ask for my help.”
Tears filled her eyes. Bucky took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out for her. Mary took it with a watery laugh. Dabbing her eyes. “Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “They were going to garner my wages for the debit my ex ran up. I couldn’t afford an attorney and the amount they were going to take would mean choosing between rent and my student loans. I was already working as much as I could. If I defaulted on my loan, they would revoke my license and then I couldn’t work. I didn’t give him pills. At first it was a script pad.” Mary wept. “It was so much money. But then the threats started, he wanted more. The more I did, the more he wanted.”
“And the less you got.” Bucky offered.
She wept into his hanky. You watched the kids, hold on to one another. Josh looked anguished, embarrassed. Sarah just kept her face unreadable, though her body leaned into her brother. Mary told her story, confirming the information you’d uncovered and verifying the parts you’d speculated, including the threats against Josh and Sarah.
An hour and a half later, Bucky reached across the table and covered Mary’s hand with his own. “Thank you. I know that wasn’t easy.”
“Am I going to get into trouble for doing these things?” Her tears began again. “I know that I should, but I don’t want to lose my kids.”  
“No.” Bucky shook his head. “We’ve negotiated terms based on special circumstances and,” he gave Sarah a sly look. “Informant status. However, a few things will have to change.”
“That stolen car goes back.”
“Yes sir.” Josh readily agreed. “Hate it anyway.”
“You’re nursing status will be subject to probation and you’ll be required to undergo regular reviews for two years.” Bucky looked at Mary. “I’m afraid picking up relief work won’t be sufficient. However, we do know a facility that’s hiring. You’ll report to work next Monday.”
She looked over the paper. “This is,” she breathed. “This is the Avengers Compound.”
“You’d be surprised how often we all get banged up.” You smiled.
“This is,” Mary paused. “You’re going to pay me this much?”
“Stark.” You shrugged. “He pays well. You need to be competent and confidential. Your records are good. We already know you can keep your mouth shut.”  
“We’ve arranged to a zero-interest loan for you, enough for you to get out from under everything and replace your vehicles with something more reliable.” Bucky leaned back in his chair turning his face to Josh. “You have to do your part too. Lettering is all well and good, but I expect you to keep that GPA up.”  
“Yes, sir.”
“And help your Ma.” Bucky ordered. “You’re likely be moving into someplace bigger and she’ll need help taking care of everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you,” Bucky motioned for Sarah to step closer. She came forward, head bowed, to stand in front of him. “No need for any more lying.” Bucky brushed her bangs out of her face. “Keep a sharp eye out, though. You’re a pretty sharp cookie. I don’t want you to worry anymore, though. If you need anything, get into any kind of trouble, you let me know. Promise?”
She nodded, the calm finally breaking and eyes filling with fat tears. Bucky pulled out his other handkerchief. Sarah took it and held it to her face before leaning into him. He wrapped his arms around her slight frame rubbing her back. He caught your eye, looking much calmer than he had for days.
“It’s okay, Sugar.” Bucky cooed. “Things are going to be okay now.”
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“How’d it go?” Steve walked out of the office as you and Bucky got home.  
“Best assignment ever!” You kissed his cheek before sitting down to take off your boots.  
“A woman cried her eyes out for more than an hour.” Bucky looked at you incredulously.  
“Purging herself of guilt and secrets.” You sat up straight. “And then you offered her safety, and a new job, and a way out of debt, and most importantly a good future with her kids. Best assignment ever.”
Bucky looked over a Steve, “The sweep got everyone?”  
You’d only gotten a short briefing in the car.
“Yes.” Steve nodded. “It’ll stick, too. Like you said, they’re stupid. The cops gathered enough evidence to take every down and then some. I’m still working on the paperwork.” He squeezed Bucky’s shoulder. “You better now?”
You watched the last of the tension slip away from Buck’s body. He got to go from being the assassin to the hero on this one. It was a foreign feeling, but one he would like to get used to. A sideway grin spread over his face. “Yeah, I am actually. Thanks for your help, punk.”
Steve pulled him into a tight hug. “Anytime, jerk.”
END
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thesewomenarebadass · 6 years
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Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai was born on the 12th of July 1997. She is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest ever recipient of a Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy.
Malala Yousafzai was born in Mingora, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan to Ziauddin Yousafzai and Tor Pekai Yousafzai. Her family are Sunni Muslims of Pashtun ethnicity. She has two younger brothers, Khushal and Atal, and was named after Malalai of Maiwand, a famous Pashtun poet and warrior woman from Pakistan.
Yousafzai was educated mostly by her father, who was a school owner, poet and educational activist. It was her father who persuaded her to become a politician instead of a doctor, and she was inspired by Benazir Bhutto and Muhammed Ali Jinnah.
She started speaking about women’s educational rights in September 2008, at an event that had a lot of press coverage. In 2009, she began as a trainee and then a peer educator in the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's Open Minds Pakistan youth programme.
In 2008, Aamer Ahmed Khan of the BBC Urdu website and his colleagues decided to ask a schoolgirl to blog anonymously about her life there. Their correspondent in Peshawar had been in touch with Ziauddin Yousafzai but could not find any students willing to do risk the danger. Finally, Yousafzai suggested his own daughter, 11-year-old Malala. At the time, Taliban militants were taking over the Swat Valley, banning television, music, girls' education, and women from going shopping. On 3 January 2009, Yousafzai's first entry was posted to the BBC Urdu blog. The blog records her thoughts during the First Battle of Swat, as military operations take place, more girls stop coming to school, and her school closes. The Taliban set an edict that no girls could attend school after January 2009 and had already blown up more than a hundred girls' schools. The following day was the first time she read excerpts from her blog that had been published in a local newspaper.
Following the decree, the Taliban demolished several more local schools. Yousafzai wrote: “It seems that it is only when dozens of schools have been destroyed and hundreds others closed down that the army thinks about protecting them. Had they conducted their operations here properly, this situation would not have arisen.”
In February 2009, girls' schools were still closed, so in unity, private schools for boys decided to close until 9 February. On 7 February, she and her brother returned to Mingora, where the streets were empty, and there was an "eerie silence". Their home had been robbed and their television was stolen.
After boys' schools reopened, the Taliban removed restrictions on girls' primary education, but only where there was co-education. Only 70 pupils attended, out of 700 pupils who were registered.
On the 18th February, she spoke out against the Taliban on Capital Talk, the national current affairs show. Three days later, local Taliban leader announced on his radio station that he was removing the ban on girl’s education, and women would be allowed to attend school until they sat their exams, but they had to wear burqas. When the schools reopened, Yousafzai write that the atmosphere in class was almost like it had been before, and 19 out of 27 pupils came to class, but the Taliban were still active in the area. Shelling continued, and relief goods meant for evacuated people were stolen. Only two days later, there was a battle between the military and Taliban.
Her blog ended on 12 March 2009, and she and her father were approached by a New York Times reporter about filming a documentary.
In May, the Pakistani Army moved into the region to regain control during the Second Battle of Swat. Malala’s home was evacuated, and her family was separated. She was sent into the countryside to live with relatives while her father went to Peshawar to protest and lobby for support. Then, after criticising militants at a press conference, her father received a death threat by a Taliban commander. That summer she dedicated herself to becoming a politician.
Eventually the prime minister made an announcement saying that it was safe for them to return home. The Yousafzai family reunited, and they headed home, after briefly making a stop to meet with a group of activists that had been invited to see Barack Obama's representative, Richard Holbrooke. Yousafzai pleaded with Holbrooke to intercede in the situation. When her family finally did return home, they found it had not been damaged, and the school had remained mostly unscathed.
Following the documentary, Malala was interviewed on AVT Khyber, Daily Aaj, and Canada's Toronto Star. She made a second appearance on Capital Talk. Her blogger identity was revealed by December 2009. She also began advocating for female education on TV. From 2009 to 2010 she was the chair of the District Child Assembly of the Khpal Kor Foundation.
In 2011, Archbishop Desmond Tutu nominated Yousafzai for the International Children's Peace Prize of the KidsRights Foundation. She was the first Pakistani girl to be nominated for the award, but she did not win it.
On 19 December 2011, the Prime Minister awarded her the National Peace Award for Youth. At the proceedings, she stated that she hoped to create a national political party to promote education. The prime minister authorised the set up of an IT campus in the Swat Degree College for Women at her request, and a secondary school was renamed after her. In 2012, Yousafzai was beginning to organise the Malala Education Foundation, which would help poor girls go to school.
As she became more famous she began receiving more and more death threats. When the threats didn’t get her to stop her work, the Taliban leaders decided to kill her. A spokesman said they were "forced" to act. On 9 October 2012, a gunman shot Yousafzai when she was on her way home from an exam. She was hit with a bullet, which went through her head, neck, and ended in her shoulder. Kainat Riaz and Shazia Ramzan were also injured in the assault but were stable enough to describe the attack.
Yousafzai was flown to a military hospital, where doctors were required to begin operating after swelling developed in the left part of her brain. After a five-hour operation, doctors managed to remove the bullet, and the following day they carried out a decompressive craniectomy, in which part of the skull is removed to allow room for the brain to swell. Offers to treat Yousafzai came from all over the globe. On the 15th of October, she went to Britain for further treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Yousafzai was out of her coma by October 2012, was responding well to treatment, and was said to have a good chance of fully recovering without any brain damage. She was discharged on the 3rd of January and underwent a five-hour long operation on 2nd of February to reconstruct her skull and give her a cochlear implant.
The attack was covered by media outlets all over the world, and outrage and compassion for Malala came rushing in. Several Pakistani cities held protests against the murder attempt the next day, and the Right to Education petition received over 2 million signatures, Pakistani officials offered 10 million rupees for information leading to the attackers. Asif Ali Zardari described the shooting as an attack on "civilized people".
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that Malala "is the symbol of the infidels and obscenity", and threatened to attack her again if she lived. The Taliban justified the attack, stating that the Quran says that "people propagating against Islam and Islamic forces would be killed", and that "Sharia says that even a child can be killed if he is propagating against Islam".
The day after the shooting police named Atta Ullah Khan as the shooter in the attack. As of 2015 he remained at large. Six men were also arrested for involvement in the attack, but there was not enough evidence to condemn them. As of November 2012, Mullah Fazlullah, who ordered the attack on Malala, was confirmed to be hiding in Eastern Afghanistan.
In 2014, Major General Asim Bajwa told the media that the assailants belong to a militant group called "Shura". Israrur Rehman was the first group member to be recognised and detained. All other members of the group were arrested using intel received during his interrogation. In 2015, the arrested men were sentenced to life in prison with the chance of eligibility for parole, and possible release, after 25 years.
In June 2015, it was exposed that eight of the ten men had been covertly acquitted, and one of them was the organiser of the assault. It is believed that all the others who shot Malala escaped to Afghanistan afterwards and were never caught.
Malala spoke at the UN in July 2013, at the request of Gordon Brown. In September, she spoke at Harvard University, and in October she met with Barack Obama and his family. In December, she addressed the Oxford Union. In July 2014, Yousafzai spoke at the Girl Summit in London, advocating for rights for girls. In October 2014, after receiving the World Children's Prize for the rights of the child in Mariefred, Sweden, she donated $50,000 to help rebuild 65 schools in Gaza.
The 12th of July 2013 has been named "Malala Day".
Yousafzai was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize and is the youngest Nobel laureate. The prize was shared with Kailash Satyarthi, a children's rights activist from India.
Yousafzai opened a school in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, near the Syrian border, for Syrian refugees. The Malala Fund subsidises the school.
Yousafzai's book I Am Malala, co-written with British journalist Christina Lamb, was published in October 2013.
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racheljoyscott · 7 years
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Unanswered Questions
Small sampling of either the deviations from the official report that arise in witness testimony concerning Columbine High or very odd but barely mentioned facts within mainstream reports include: 
Eyewitness reports of up to a dozen shooters, some of them adult men
NATO vehicles on the scene less than fifteen minutes after the commencement of the shooting; and SWAT teams reported shooting at students and at each other
Eric Harris was undergoing extensive psychiatric treatment and was taking the quasi-hallucinogenic "anti-depressant" substance known as Luvox, yet his psychiatrist was never questioned
Harris' father, Wayne Harris, had extensive Air Force intelligence links from his time at Plattsburgh air force base (even after its closing) 
Several of the bombs found in the school were said by (quickly reassigned) law enforcement authorities to have been too complex for such inexperienced teens to have built by themselves.
The number of witnesses pressured by police to change their stories - Bryan Frye, Courtney Haulman, Jennifer Tindall, etc.
If you read the search warrant for Eric's house after the massacre (pg 25676), it states "Detective Nick Rogers of Denver Police Department responded to REDACTED South Reed Street, County of Jefferson, State of Colorado, with the Denver and Sheridan Police Departments SWAT Team at about 2:00 p.m. Upon arrival, they discovered Eric Harris' parents and sister inside the house." There's more, of course. But who was the female inside the house? 
The bank teller (Erik Buckner's mom, pg 1331 of the 11K) who told police that Chris Morris, E&D came into her bank and cashed their checks on April 9th, and that Chris Morris withdrew all the money in his account. What did he use it for?
Why did police concentrate on setting up a perimeter at the same time dispatch(via phone) is hearing the sound of gunshots within the school?
Why did it take police so long to enter the school, and why did it take almost three hours for them to reach the library, the area where the shooters were last seen? Who gave the orders not to go in?
Why did over 100 eye- and ear- witnesses dispute the official theory of only two shooters? Why did over 40 of those witnesses identify other participants BY NAME?
If the two shooters committed suicide shortly after noon, as police claim, how come at least 35 witnesses saw or heard suspects/gunshots/explosions after that time?
Why are there conflicting eyewitness accounts on the place and manner in which at least four of the dead victims were killed? Were victims being moved around? Was the crime scene being rearranged?
If left-handed Klebold shot himself in the left temple, why was his suicide weapon found clutched in his right hand?
How did students manage to keep seriously wounded teacher Dave Sanders alive for more than three hours while awaiting rescue, yet he was dead within 20 minutes of the police taking control of him? His corpse was later found with his shirt off. Is that first-aid? Or a sure-fire way of sending someone into shock?
What was the motive? Why would two teens who were not bullied, did not hate everyone, and were not psychopathic suddenly decide to destroy the lives of a dozen fellow students and themselves just six weeks before graduation?
Why would Harris and Klebold plan for a suicide mission and at the same time make normal plans for a post 4-20 future? Like seeking help on an English class essay from a teacher a few days before the attack, like making a date to see a movie the day after, like putting in a work schedule for the next week, like going to an out-of-town college with your dad to pick out a dorm room, like making plans to visit your old friends in New York.
Where is the gun shot residue(GSR) test evidence for Harris and Klebold and the other suspects?
Why was fingerprint evidence for Harris and Klebold not found on all but two of the hundreds of obects gathered at the scene? Whose fingerprints, if any, were found on the weapons seized?
Why does the official story claim, without a shred of evidence, that it was Harris and Klebold that set the South Wadsworth diversionary bomb (an incendiary device that exploded a couple of miles away from the school minutes before the shooting started)?
Why did authorities claim the two shotguns seized had no serial numbers when later documents clearly show they did have serial numbers? Why did they not try to find out who sold Harris and Klebold the Hi-Point 9mm rifle and the pump-action shotgun that were used in the shooting?
Were the school administrators warned, as rumored? Who was Principle Frank DeAngelis looking for, as reported by one student who saw him running up and down the interior cafeteria stairs right before the shooting broke out?
Why did a science teacher tell his students that they had been expecting a fire drill? Was a bomb found in a trash can on 4-19, as one source indicated? Were bomb threats phoned into the school on the morning of 4-20, as two others claimed?
Why didn’t the Final Report conclude that shooters entered Science rooms 1 and 8, when numerous shell casings were taken from these areas?
Why didn’t the Final Report mention the brief exit of a shooter on the east side, according to many eyewitnesses?
If the person seen on the roof of the school was a repairman, as police claim, why do witnesses say he was holding a weapon? Were shell casings found there, as some said?
Who scheduled ‘crisis training’ drills at Columbine High Schol(CHS) in the weeks before and what was the exact nature of this training?
What was a Denver police officer and a Jefferson County sheriff doing at Columbine High Shcool that morning before the shooting started?
What does reputed video evidence from the library and admin office areas show? Why does local media refuse to release on-scene video footage from the first half-hour of the incident?
What happened to all the evidence taken from the computers of the trenchcoat mafia gang?
Where are dozens of missing interviews of students, especially those in the science hall? Why are there still thousands of pages of investgatory materials that have never been made public, including hundreds of reports of non-Columbine witnesses and tipsters?
Why has the school district’s own report on the shooting, which included the extensive disciplinary records of the trenchcoat mafia associates, not been made public?
Did investigators even try to interview Harris’ psychologist, the man perhaps best positioned to know his mental state at the time?
Why did investigators show a remarkable lack of curiousity about connections with numerous similar school violence-related incidents occuring around the same time in the metro-Denver area and around the country?
Why did LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office personnel travel to the scene afterwards? What was the subject of a 10-minute phone call made by the NYPD to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office on 4-20?
Who invited the FBI and the ATF to the scene?
Why was the US Attorney’s Office (federal) consulted on ‘prosecutive decisions’ for this local crime?
Why was all but one of the seven ‘investigatory’ teams headed or co-headed by an FBI man? (the one exception was a team headed by a CBI(Colorado Bureau of Investigation) man, who was himself ‘ex’-FBI) Was the entire crime scene ‘federalized’ soon after the shooting started, under powers granted by the ‘Anti-terrorism Act’ (“for the protection of the people and the state”) signed by President Clinton exactly three years before- on April 20, 1996?
Why did FBI special agent Dwayne Fusilier not recuse himself from the investigation, as his son helped make a Columbine school video two years before that eerily mimicked the shooting?
What were two high-ranking military figures (a colonel and a general) in cami uniforms doing at the scene? Why was a memorial service at a public park afterwards ringed by military trucks? Who authorized a flyover by military jets and why?
Feel free to add on.
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friend-clarity · 5 years
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New Jersey Kosher Market Shooting
Dec 11, 2019  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Two adherents of the Black Hebrew Israelites attacked a kosher grocery store in New Jersey, murdering three civilians and a detective, and wounding others.
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Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said Friday it’s his opinion that the shooters who killed a police officer and three civilians on Tuesday afternoon had an even more sinister objective – killing students at a religious school next door.
“My opinion is that as more info comes out it’ll become increasingly clear that the target was the 50 children at the Yeshiva attached to that store,” the mayor wrote on Twitter just after 8 a.m. “We will never know 100% but the doorway to the yeshiva was 3 feet away (and) it seems he goes in that direction 1st.”
The two attackers, who identified with the Black Israelite group that is known for their anti Semitic views, killed four people during Tuesday’s rampage.
The same day, President Trump issued an executive order expanding Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on U.S. college campuses who are increasingly facing strident anti-Semitism.
“They mostly trade in anti-Semitism,” explains Heidi Beirish, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)’s Intelligence Project, which tracks extremist groups, of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. “They call (Jews) sometimes devilish imposters or devils, because they think of themselves as the true Israelites.”
The extreme group has roots in the 1800s, when some fringe Black Pentecostal preachers in the South began asserting that far from present day Jews being the “real” descendants of the ancient Israelites, black Africans were, and it is the descendants of America’s former slaves who are the “real” Jews, The movement gave birth to many factions, some of which are peaceful. But some factions have become extremist and angry. “Although most Hebrew Israelites are neither explicitly racist nor anti-Semitic and do not advocate violence,” the SPLC noted, “there is a rising extremist sector within the Hebrew Israelite movement” that foments intense hatred of Jews and calls for the death of slavery of Jews and Whites.
In the past decade, hostile, anti-Semitic Black Hebrew Israelite branches have proliferated, with dozens of new Black Hebrew churches springing up, particularly in the Northeastern United States. Members confront and harass both Jews and Whites. Black Hebrews gained attention in January 2019 when four racist Black Hebrew members spewed racist bile at a group of students from Covington Catholic High School when they visited the National Mall in Washington DC on a school trip. One student’s face-off with a Native American drummer, who later said he was trying to heal over the hateful rhetoric, went viral.
More recently, groups of Hebrew Israelites from South London gathered to terrify and scream at Hassidic Jews on Shabbat in the North London neighborhood of Stamford Hill, which is home to the largest Hassidic population in Europe. Police were called to the scene on September 7, 2019, after a group of 20-30 Hebrew Israelites gathered and screamed insults at passing Jews.
The London group said they went by many names, not only Hebrew Israelites, perhaps contributing to confusion about just how big their hateful cult is and what they stand for.
On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, two Hebrew Israelite members in New Jersey took their hate much further, writing an anti-Semitic manifesto. Though police have not released this document, they described it as brief and “rambling”. It seemed to call for violence and death to Jews.
The two killers, whose names I won’t dignify by using here, a woman aged 50 and a man aged 47, were wanted for murder in connection the earlier killing of Jersey City resident MIchael Rumberger, who was killed by a blow to his head and was found dead in the trunk of his car in Bayonne, New Jersey, on December 8.
Two days later, a veteran Jersey City Detective, Joe Seals, spied the killers in a cemetery in Jersey City. Realizing that they matched the description of suspects in Mr. Rumberger’s murder, Det. Seals approached the pair, who shot him dead in cold blood. Det. Seals, a 40-year-old married father with five children, was left dead on the ground in the cemetery.
The murderers then entered a U-Haul truck that they’d stolen and seemingly outfitted for a major terror attack. Inside were a pipe bomb as well as a second explosive device. The truck also housed their hateful manifest. The pair drove the truck slowly and deliberately about a mile, to the JC Kosher Supermarket. Owned by Moshe and Mindel Ferencz, the store opened three years ago to cater to a small but growing Jewish Hassidic population that has been moving to Jersey City from nearby Brooklyn. The Ferenczs were among the first Hassidic families to move, and they were raising their three young children in their new community.
Moshe had just stepped out of the store to attend the brief afternoon Mincha service in a synagogue next door when the killers pulled up outside. They pulled out high powered rifles and started firing at the kosher market, then burst inside and continued shooting. Panicked synagogue members witnessed the scene and frantically dialed 911. Within moments, SWAT teams and other police officers from across New York and New Jersey were congregating at the scene. As police helicopters circled overhead, law enforcement officers came under intense fire from high profile rifles.
The firefight lasted for hours. One nearby resident, 67-year-old Willy McDonald told reporters, “This is one of the biggest gunfights I’ve seen in a while, and I’ve been in Vietnam.” Schools in the area were put on lockdown and police officers went door to door urging residents to stay inside for their safety. Bus and train service were suspended in the area and an exit of the New Jersey Turnpike was closed amid the firefight.
A shopper inside JC Kosher Supermarket managed to escape and described what it was like when the killers burst in: “I was standing by the salad bar in the grocery and I heard three shots, bullets shattered the glass of the grocery. Suddenly I saw two people come in, with long black raincoats and long guns. They tried to point the gun at me. I pushed it away and ran away.”
Inside the store, two Hassidic Jews and one employee were murdered by the killers. Mindel Ferencz, 33, died in her store, leaving her three young children without their mother. 49-year-old worker Miguel Douglas was also murdered. The third victim was Moshe Deutsch, a 24-year-old rabbinical student from nearby Brooklyn. Several others were injured, including at least one Hassidic passer by outside, and one Hassidic customer who seems to have been shot several times as they ran out of the store.
Shockingly, Jewish members of a group called Americans Against Anti-Semitism visited the scene of the shooting later that night, and found that non-Jewish neighbors who’d gathered were blaming the Jews for the violence that had just resulted in their deaths. “They would do that to us,” one local woman said of the Jewish victims, somehow inverting the situation to make it seem as if Jews were killers. “I blame the Jews,” another local complained. “If they was dead, they got shot dead, that’s great” one local man declared. Several neighbors expressed the hope that Jews would move away.
“I’ve cried my eyes out already,” said Victoria Ferencz, Mindel’s mother-in-law. “I’m feeling pretty broken… I feel sorry for my son. (Mindel’s) going to heaven, but he and his children will have it hard.” Mindel personified “a life of selflessness, and dedication to others,” said a local Jewish organization. She and her husband Moshe, among the first Hassidic families to move into Jersey City five years ago, decided to open their supermarket to help support their friends and neighbors so they could easily access kosher food in their new community.
Grocery employee Miguel Douglas was praised by his pastor who told local reporters that Mr. Douglas was an immigrant from Ecuador and lived with his wife and eleven-year-old daughter: “He was an excellent person, he really looked out for his family, and they were inseparable.”
The day after the attack, Rabbi David Niederman, the Executive Director and President of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, praised the victims, including Mr. Deutsch, whom he described as an “extremely kind and generous” and a “go-to person when his peers needed help”. Mr. Deutsch recently helped lead a food drive during the Jewish holidays that helped feed 2,000 people.
In the midst of speaking to reporters, Rabbi Niederman began to cry, saying, “Can you imagine a few hundred bullets went into the body of a 24-year-old?” referring to Mr. Deutsch. “How can we as a people, a community, bear that?”
His question is one all of us must ask. With this horrific attack, a new front has opened in what increasingly feels like a war against America’s Jews. Last year the FBI reported that Jews, which make up fewer than 2% of Americans, accounted for 57% of victims of hate crimes in the USA. The Anti-Defamation League reported that violent attacks on American Jews doubled in 2018 from their already high levels in 2017. In fact, 2018, the most recent year for which records are available, saw the third highest levels of ant-Jewish hate and attacks since records began. With the attack in Jersey City, a new hate group has taken its place among the many that seek our destruction.
As we mourn our murdered brethren and pray for the recovery of the shoppers and passersby who were injured in the attack, let’s take a moment to appreciate the Jewish life that was so brutally attacked. In the memory of those who were killed and injured, let’s embrace the Jewish life they so loved, and commit ourselves to doing mitzvot in their memories.
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jerrytackettca · 5 years
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Unvaccinated Americans Now Barred From Public Spaces
If you had any doubts about growing tyranny in the U.S., several recent news stories should open your eyes to the harsh truth. The U.S. Constitution protects the civil liberties of all Americans, including freedom of thought, speech, conscience, religious belief and the right to dissent and petition the government, as well as the right to assembly.1,2,3
Yet these constitutional rights are being infringed upon in remarkably blatant ways these days: Unvaccinated infants, children and teens under the age of 18 are being banned from entering public places in Rockland County, New York; a SWAT team was sent to break down the door of a home in another state where parents were caring for an unvaccinated child with a high fever after a doctor reported the child should have been taken to a hospital;
Legislators in several states have introduced bills to suspend the legal right of parents to make medical risk decisions for their minor children and allow doctors instead to get "informed consent" from the young children themselves; a pediatrician politician in California is lobbying for a law that will give state health department officials the power to deny a medical exemption written by a child's physician.
The times we live in are as surreal as they are terrifying, and clearly demonstrate that unless we stand together to protect the rights of ALL, and not just select groups who agree with the status quo, we are all in jeopardy. Even if you are not affected right now by the forced vaccination dragnet sweeping across the nation, rest assured, in time you will be caught in its net as well if in the future you decline even one of the dozens of government recommended vaccinations for yourselves or your children.
Unvaccinated Children in New York Suburb Barred From Public Places
Perhaps the most egregious example of the “boiled frog” game currently being played to see how apathetic and compliant Americans are when their constitutional rights are stripped away, was the Rockland County, New York, ban on unvaccinated children. As of March 27, 2019, anyone under the age of 18 who is not vaccinated against measles was barred from entering “public places,”4,5 defined as:6
"[A] place where more than 10 persons are intended to congregate for purposes such as civic, governmental, social, or religious functions, or for recreation or shopping, or for food or drink consumption, or awaiting transportation, or for daycare or educational purposes, or for medical treatment.
A place of public assembly shall also include public transportation vehicles, including but not limited to, publicly or privately owned buses or trains, but does not include taxi or livery vehicles."
Considering "public places" includes just about any space outside the domain of your private home, unvaccinated infants, children and teens were essentially being placed under what closely resembles house arrest. Parents whose unvaccinated child was caught in a public place faced six months in jail or a $500 fine.7
Children with state-approved medical exemptions were exempted from the ban, but not those with religious exemptions. Schools were also barred from allowing unvaccinated students from attending, unless they have an approved medical exemption. Within the first four days of the ban, nearly 500 MMR vaccinations were administered.8
Fortunately, on April 5, a Rockland County judge lifted the state of emergency, saying the number of measles cases did not meet the legal definition of an epidemic required for an emergency order declaration.9 Judge Rolf Thorsen also stated that unvaccinated children are “hereby permitted to return to their respective schools forthwith and otherwise to assemble in public places.”10
Rockland County has a large orthodox and Hasidic Jewish community, a portion of which declines a number of vaccines for religious reasons. (One commonly cited religious objection is that some vaccines use DNA proteins from aborted fetal cells and rubella vaccine in the MMR shot was created using aborted fetal cells.)
County commissioner of health Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert said they've had "excellent cooperation from the [orthodox Jewish] community,"11 with many rabbis urging their congregations to vaccinate their children.
To learn why the forced vaccination campaign is more about Big Pharma profit-making than protecting public health, see "Why Herd Immunity Is a Hoax." You can also find more information about measles and why the hype about the infection's risks is being overblown in "Measles Propaganda Can Have Dire Public Health Ramifications."
The Push to Eliminate Parental Right to Protect the Welfare of Minor Children
In related news, there's a growing push for health care providers in the U.S. and Canada to vaccinate minors without their parents' consent if they feel a child is "mature" enough to make his or her own health risk decisions. Timothy Caulfield, a professor of health law and policy at the University of Alberta, told the Calgary Herald:12
"From an ethical and legal perspective, if they are a competent teenager, then they are the ones you should be having the conversations with … I would say there is an obligation to revisit this topic [of vaccination] with a patient who has become competent."
Calgary Herald continues:13
"The mature minor doctrine plays out on a case-by-case basis. So, a minor may be competent to make decisions about vaccines, but maybe not open-heart surgery. Still, given vaccines are considered safe, and given that discussions around vaccinations would be relatively straightforward, 'I think it's entirely possible a 13-, 14- or 15-year old would be competent on their own to consent' to the shots, Caulfield said."
A Washington, D.C., lawmaker introduced a bill last month to allow minor children of any age to get vaccines in the city without a parent's knowledge or consent after a doctor says a child is "mature" enough to make the decision.14
The problem with this reasoning is that vaccines come with risks that can be greater for some individuals than others and, unlike a mother or father, minor children are not always aware of their own health or vaccine reaction history. Will a doctor truly inform a child and will the child be able to understand?
Just how long of a list of possible side effects are children going to be given when the topic of vaccination comes up?
Is a 13-year-old really capable of deciding whether the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, encephalopathy, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy, rheumatoid arthritis or other serious brain and immune system disorders are risks that he or she is willing to take to obtain temporary artificial immunity to a particular infection, if even temporary vaccine-acquired immunity is obtained?
These are among a long list of vaccine injuries for which patients have received compensation from the federal vaccine injury compensation program. For a more extensive list of potential side effects, see "How Much Do You Really Know About Vaccine Safety?"
One could easily argue the decision to vaccinate requires far greater critical thinking skills, maturity and careful consideration than weighing the benefits and risks of open-heart surgery.
New York Bill Aims to Strip Parental Consent for Vaccination of Minors
The same "mature minor" doctrine is being more frequently called for in the U.S. as well. As reported by The Vaccine Reaction:15
“[S]everal states already use the ‘mature minor’ doctrine to give minors the right to make vaccines decisions and other decisions about medical interventions without parental knowledge or consent. So far, the rights of minors to seek and receive vaccination varies from state to state. For example … Washington has been using the recent outbreak of measles to invoke the mature minor policy.
Similar laws are in place in Alaska, Arkansas, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. Expanding that slippery slope, a new bill has been introduced in New York that would permit minors 14 years of age and older to be vaccinated without parental permission ...
State Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy have introduced bill S. 4244/A. 6564 proposing to allow children older than age 13 to ask for and receive any of the vaccines in the Public Health Law, which would include poliomyelitis, mumps, measles, diphtheria, rubella, varicella, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis, tetanus, pneumococcal disease, meningococcal disease and hepatitis B.”
Vaccine Package Inserts Debunk 'Safety Across the Board' Claims
Will the doctor giving a vaccine to a child without the parent's knowledge or consent actually read the vaccine package insert to the child, and explain what it all means? As just one example, the 2005 package insert for Sanofi Pasteur's Tripedia vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis or DTaP) states:16,17
"A review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found evidence for a causal relationship between tetanus toxoid and both brachial neuritis and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
A few cases of demyelinating diseases of the CNS [central nervous system] have been reported following some tetanus toxoid-containing vaccines or tetanus and diphtheria toxoid-containing vaccines, although the IOM concluded that the evidence was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship.
Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.
Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship to components of Tripedia vaccine."
According to this insert, Sanofi Pasteur admits SIDS, autism and brain inflammation are all side effects reported after Tripedia DTaP vaccinations and were reported frequently enough to warrant inclusion, even if a causal relationship cannot be established due to the limitations of prelicensure studies and a lack of vaccine adverse event reporting by vaccine providers that was mandated under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 but is not enforced.
In 2017, DTaP was one of five vaccines ruled by the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) to have caused the death of a 5-month-old baby boy, who died of SIDS within 24 hours of vaccination.18
The Tripedia DTaP vaccine also contains a number of bioactive and potentially hazardous ingredients, including casein, to which some children are allergic; the excitotoxin MSG; thimerosal (mercury) and aluminum, both of which are neurotoxic; formaldehyde and polysorbate 80.
To say that all vaccines are so safe that parents don't even need to be involved in the vaccine decision-making process is irresponsible in the extreme. It is mothers and fathers, who are legally responsible for their minor children, and they are the ones who will bear the emotional and financial burden if something goes wrong, not the doctor and certainly not the vaccine manufacturer.
Vaccine administrators and manufacturers were effectively shielded from any financial liability for vaccine injuries and deaths by amendments to the 1986 Act and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.
California Legislator Aims to Make It Even More Difficult to Obtain Medical Exemption
As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) in "Don't Let Them Frighten You Into Giving Up This Medical Choice," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and medical trade organizations have so narrowed the definition of a medical exemption that almost no previous vaccine reaction or health condition is considered a contraindication to vaccination.
More than 99 percent of Americans do not qualify for a medical exemption under federal vaccine guidelines today.
California state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, Sacramento, who spearheaded the 2015 campaign to eliminate the personal belief vaccination for children attending day care and school, has now introduced a bill to make it even more difficult to get a medical vaccine exemption in the state. According to Pan, since the removal of the personal belief exemption in California, medical exemptions to vaccination for children have tripled in the state.19
"It is clear that a small number of physicians are monetizing their exemption-granting authority and profiting from the sale of medical exemptions," he told ABC News.20 The new bill, SB276, would make health officials employed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) the final judge of the validity of all medical exemptions written by private physicians. As reported by the news station:21
"Additionally, under SB 276, CDPH will create and maintain a database of medical exemptions, and CDPH and County Health Officers will have the authority to revoke medical exemptions granted by licensed physicians if they are found to be fraudulent or inconsistent with contraindications to vaccination per CDC guidelines.
The lawmaker argues the implementation of Senate Bill 277, which abolished the personal belief exemption in California, generated an overall vaccination rate increase to more than 95 percent statewide.
Pan says California has also experienced a dramatic increase in the number of medical exemptions. Since the passage of SB 277, the rate of medical exemptions has more than tripled (from 0.2 percent in 2015-16 to 0.7 percent in 2017-18). Low vaccination rates in certain pockets of the state put children and communities at risk."
Let me repeat that: 0.7 percent of Californian children have received a medical exemption from vaccination, and they now want you to believe this miniscule ratio of unvaccinated children put communities at serious risk for disease outbreaks? At risk of what, exactly? If all of these vaccines are so effective at protecting against disease, what's the concern?
1 in 168 Children Require Emergency Care After First Round of Vaccinations
In 2015, immunologist Tetyana Obukhanych, Ph.D., wrote an open letter22 to legislators explaining why children who have not received certain vaccines (specifically IPV, DTaP, HepB, and Hib) pose no risk to others. She also addressed the frequency of serious adverse events, stressing the importance of personal choice in the face of such risks:
"It is often stated that vaccination rarely leads to serious adverse events. Unfortunately, this statement is not supported by science. A recent study done in Ontario, Canada, established that vaccination actually leads to an emergency room visit for 1 in 168 children following their 12-month vaccination appointment and for 1 in 730 children following their 18-month vaccination appointment (see appendix for a scientific study, Item #5).
When the risk of an adverse event requiring an ER visit after well-baby vaccinations is demonstrably so high, vaccination must remain a choice for parents, who may understandably be unwilling to assume this immediate risk in order to protect their children from diseases that are generally considered mild or that their children may never be exposed to."
In the lecture above, Obukhanych, who wrote the book "Vaccine Illusion: How Vaccination Compromises Our Natural Immunity and What We Can Do to Regain Our Health," explains how vaccines damage your immune function, which can result in any number of adverse health effects.
Health and Human Services Has Neglected Critical Vaccine Safety Obligations for Decades
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 granted partial financial immunity to vaccine makers for injuries and deaths caused by their vaccines and, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declared FDA licensed and CDC recommended vaccines to be "unavoidably unsafe" and effectively removed all remaining liability from the multibillion-dollar vaccine industry.
With that liability risk eliminated, so was any incentive to make sure their products are safe. The responsibility to ensure vaccine safety instead falls on the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS). As reported by AIM Integrative Medicine:23
"Hence, since 1986, HHS has had the primary and virtually sole responsibility to make and assure improvements in the licensing, manufacturing, adverse reaction reporting, research, safety and efficacy testing of vaccines in order to reduce the risk of adverse vaccine reactions.
In order to assure HHS meets its vaccine safety obligations, Congress required as part of the 1986 Act that the Secretary of HHS submit biennial reports to Congress detailing the improvements in vaccine safety made by HHS in the preceding two years."
August 2017, Del Bigtree, founder of Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children's Health Defense, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the HHS, requesting access to its safety reports.24 After being stonewalled for eight months, ICAN and Kennedy sued the HHS, demanding copies of the congressional reports to be released.
As noted by ICAN,25 "provisions of the (1986 Act) … legally require the HHS to conduct science that reduces the risk of vaccine injury. Failure to do so could result in legal action against HHS … HHS has not acted in its duties regarding vaccine safety, forcing 78 million American children into a vaccine program with no safety provisions."
ICAN also recently sued the FDA after the agency failed to respond to FOIA requests for copies of the clinical trials it relied upon when licensing influenza vaccines for pregnant women.
A February 11, 2019 ICAN update26 reveals "the FDA has not licensed any influenza vaccine as an indicated use for pregnant women, let alone conducted or required any pharmaceutical company to conduct any clinical trial which supports the safety of injecting pregnant women with the influenza vaccine."
Refusal of Medical Treatment Treated as a Violent Crime
The last piece of news I'm going to cover here is the Arizona case where a SWAT team with guns drawn used a battering-ram to break down the door to the home of a family whose 2-year-old son had a fever and a doctor reported them to state authorities for failing to take the child to a hospital. As reported by NBC News:27
"Sarah Beck brought her 2-year-old son to Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine on Feb. 25 and was told he had a temperature of more than 105 [degrees Fahrenheit], according to reports by the Chandler Police Department.
The doctor believed the child could be suffering from a 'life-threatening' illness that could not be tested for at the clinic, so she told Beck to take the toddler to the hospital … The mother was reluctant because the boy wasn't vaccinated, and she feared 'possible repercussions,' the report said.
When the doctor found out later that day the child had never made it to the hospital, she called the DCS [Department of Child Services], which contacted the Chandler Police Department because 'there was a present danger to (the child's) health/wellbeing and that he required immediate medical attention,' police said."
The parents insisted the child did not need medical attention as he was recovering and his fever was rapidly coming down. The doctor suspected the child might have meningitis, but it turned out to be respiratory syncytial virus, and the parents appear to have been correct in their assessment that he was not in severe danger.
One could also argue that tyrannical repercussions against those who choose not to vaccinate their children is at fault here, as the parents would probably not have hesitated to take the boy to the hospital had they not been fearful of repercussions — a fear that is well warranted, I might add. This case is a frightening illustration of medical tyranny, where excessive violence is used against parents who disagree with the medical establishment.
In this case, the couple's three children were all removed from the home, and Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa (who has worked on legislation that requires DCS to obtain a search warrant before removing a child) expressed concern that the baby pregnant Sarah is carrying might be taken from them as well "over a misdiagnosis by the doctor."28
"I call on DCS to immediately return the children who are also being traumatized due to this misdiagnosis," Townsend said in a statement. "The parents were correct; the doctor was wrong."
Don't Let Them Shut Down the Vaccine Safety Conversation
Again and again, we find that there are big gaps in vaccine science and the most basic of safety investigations has been neglected or never was performed in the first place. Yet, we are told over and over again that "There is no debate. The science is settled: Vaccines are safe. End of discussion."
If you missed Loe Fisher's commentary on the effort to shut down the public conversation about health and vaccination, while calls for "no exceptions" mandatory vaccinations grow stronger, I urge you to read it or watch her video today. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to push this conversation into the broad light of day, because having the right to make our own decisions about medical risk taking such as vaccination is at the very heart of our freedom as individuals.
When government officials can break down your door because you disagree with your doctor, when doctors can sweet-talk your child into getting vaccinated without your child fully understanding the risks, when politicians can ban your children from entering public spaces simply because they're unvaccinated, then you know the end of freedom is very, very near.
The time to take a stand for the rights of everyone, not just the select few, is running out. And remember, once one small group loses its right to autonomy, everyone's right to autonomy will disappear shortly thereafter. Guaranteed. Because that's how tyranny works.
Don't think for a second that just because you believe in vaccination, and you and all of your children have received all your shots, that you're somehow immune from government overreach and tyranny. Before you know it, you may not have a choice in whether you want to take a certain drug or not.
Or the kind of surgical procedure that government health officials tell you that you must get. Or, you might suddenly find yourself part of a group deemed unfit to reproduce and be required to get sterilized "for the greater good" of society.
Who knows where it might end? In time, you may not have the right to choose your education — the government will decide what kind of worker bee they need, and what profession you're best suited for. Or, you may lose your right to marry someone the government does not approve of — if you're granted marital rights at all, that is.
Who's to say such civil and human rights cannot be taken away by certain individuals in control of an authoritarian government? Eliminating the legal right to exercise informed consent to vaccine risk-taking and to decline a vaccination for health reasons or for personal beliefs is a very slippery slope. One thing is for sure: It will not end there.
from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/04/09/measles-outbreak-rockland-county.aspx
source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/unvaccinated-americans-now-barred-from-public-spaces
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paullassiterca · 5 years
Text
Unvaccinated Americans Now Barred From Public Spaces
If you had any doubts about growing tyranny in the U.S., several recent news stories should open your eyes to the harsh truth. The U.S. Constitution protects the civil liberties of all Americans, including freedom of thought, speech, conscience, religious belief and the right to dissent and petition the government, as well as the right to assembly.1,2,3
Yet these constitutional rights are being infringed upon in remarkably blatant ways these days: Unvaccinated infants, children and teens under the age of 18 are being banned from entering public places in Rockland County, New York; a SWAT team was sent to break down the door of a home in another state where parents were caring for an unvaccinated child with a high fever after a doctor reported the child should have been taken to a hospital;
Legislators in several states have introduced bills to suspend the legal right of parents to make medical risk decisions for their minor children and allow doctors instead to get “informed consent” from the young children themselves; a pediatrician politician in California is lobbying for a law that will give state health department officials the power to deny a medical exemption written by a child’s physician.
The times we live in are as surreal as they are terrifying, and clearly demonstrate that unless we stand together to protect the rights of ALL, and not just select groups who agree with the status quo, we are all in jeopardy. Even if you are not affected right now by the forced vaccination dragnet sweeping across the nation, rest assured, in time you will be caught in its net as well if in the future you decline even one of the dozens of government recommended vaccinations for yourselves or your children.
Unvaccinated Children in New York Suburb Barred From Public Places
youtube
Perhaps the most egregious example of the “boiled frog” game currently being played to see how apathetic and compliant Americans are when their constitutional rights are stripped away, was the Rockland County, New York, ban on unvaccinated children. As of March 27, 2019, anyone under the age of 18 who is not vaccinated against measles was barred from entering “public places,”4,5 defined as:6
“[A] place where more than 10 persons are intended to congregate for purposes such as civic, governmental, social, or religious functions, or for recreation or shopping, or for food or drink consumption, or awaiting transportation, or for daycare or educational purposes, or for medical treatment.
A place of public assembly shall also include public transportation vehicles, including but not limited to, publicly or privately owned buses or trains, but does not include taxi or livery vehicles.”
Considering “public places” includes just about any space outside the domain of your private home, unvaccinated infants, children and teens were essentially being placed under what closely resembles house arrest. Parents whose unvaccinated child was caught in a public place faced six months in jail or a $500 fine.7
Children with state-approved medical exemptions were exempted from the ban, but not those with religious exemptions. Schools were also barred from allowing unvaccinated students from attending, unless they have an approved medical exemption. Within the first four days of the ban, nearly 500 MMR vaccinations were administered.8
Fortunately, on April 5, a Rockland County judge lifted the state of emergency, saying the number of measles cases did not meet the legal definition of an epidemic required for an emergency order declaration.9 Judge Rolf Thorsen also stated that unvaccinated children are “hereby permitted to return to their respective schools forthwith and otherwise to assemble in public places.”10
Rockland County has a large orthodox and Hasidic Jewish community, a portion of which declines a number of vaccines for religious reasons. (One commonly cited religious objection is that some vaccines use DNA proteins from aborted fetal cells and rubella vaccine in the MMR shot was created using aborted fetal cells.)
County commissioner of health Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert said they’ve had “excellent cooperation from the [orthodox Jewish] community,”11 with many rabbis urging their congregations to vaccinate their children.
To learn why the forced vaccination campaign is more about Big Pharma profit-making than protecting public health, see “Why Herd Immunity Is a Hoax.” You can also find more information about measles and why the hype about the infection’s risks is being overblown in “Measles Propaganda Can Have Dire Public Health Ramifications.”
The Push to Eliminate Parental Right to Protect the Welfare of Minor Children
In related news, there’s a growing push for health care providers in the U.S. and Canada to vaccinate minors without their parents’ consent if they feel a child is “mature” enough to make his or her own health risk decisions. Timothy Caulfield, a professor of health law and policy at the University of Alberta, told the Calgary Herald:12
“From an ethical and legal perspective, if they are a competent teenager, then they are the ones you should be having the conversations with … I would say there is an obligation to revisit this topic [of vaccination] with a patient who has become competent.”
Calgary Herald continues:13
“The mature minor doctrine plays out on a case-by-case basis. So, a minor may be competent to make decisions about vaccines, but maybe not open-heart surgery. Still, given vaccines are considered safe, and given that discussions around vaccinations would be relatively straightforward, ‘I think it’s entirely possible a 13-, 14- or 15-year old would be competent on their own to consent’ to the shots, Caulfield said.”
A Washington, D.C., lawmaker introduced a bill last month to allow minor children of any age to get vaccines in the city without a parent’s knowledge or consent after a doctor says a child is “mature” enough to make the decision.14
The problem with this reasoning is that vaccines come with risks that can be greater for some individuals than others and, unlike a mother or father, minor children are not always aware of their own health or vaccine reaction history. Will a doctor truly inform a child and will the child be able to understand?
Just how long of a list of possible side effects are children going to be given when the topic of vaccination comes up?
Is a 13-year-old really capable of deciding whether the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, encephalopathy, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy, rheumatoid arthritis or other serious brain and immune system disorders are risks that he or she is willing to take to obtain temporary artificial immunity to a particular infection, if even temporary vaccine-acquired immunity is obtained?
These are among a long list of vaccine injuries for which patients have received compensation from the federal vaccine injury compensation program. For a more extensive list of potential side effects, see “How Much Do You Really Know About Vaccine Safety?”
One could easily argue the decision to vaccinate requires far greater critical thinking skills, maturity and careful consideration than weighing the benefits and risks of open-heart surgery.
New York Bill Aims to Strip Parental Consent for Vaccination of Minors
The same “mature minor” doctrine is being more frequently called for in the U.S. as well. As reported by The Vaccine Reaction:15
“[S]everal states already use the ‘mature minor’ doctrine to give minors the right to make vaccines decisions and other decisions about medical interventions without parental knowledge or consent. So far, the rights of minors to seek and receive vaccination varies from state to state. For example … Washington has been using the recent outbreak of measles to invoke the mature minor policy.
Similar laws are in place in Alaska, Arkansas, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. Expanding that slippery slope, a new bill has been introduced in New York that would permit minors 14 years of age and older to be vaccinated without parental permission …
State Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy have introduced bill S. 4244/A. 6564 proposing to allow children older than age 13 to ask for and receive any of the vaccines in the Public Health Law, which would include poliomyelitis, mumps, measles, diphtheria, rubella, varicella, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis, tetanus, pneumococcal disease, meningococcal disease and hepatitis B.”
Vaccine Package Inserts Debunk 'Safety Across the Board’ Claims
Will the doctor giving a vaccine to a child without the parent’s knowledge or consent actually read the vaccine package insert to the child, and explain what it all means? As just one example, the 2005 package insert for Sanofi Pasteur’s Tripedia vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis or DTaP) states:16,17
“A review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found evidence for a causal relationship between tetanus toxoid and both brachial neuritis and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
A few cases of demyelinating diseases of the CNS [central nervous system] have been reported following some tetanus toxoid-containing vaccines or tetanus and diphtheria toxoid-containing vaccines, although the IOM concluded that the evidence was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship.
Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.
Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship to components of Tripedia vaccine.”
According to this insert, Sanofi Pasteur admits SIDS, autism and brain inflammation are all side effects reported after Tripedia DTaP vaccinations and were reported frequently enough to warrant inclusion, even if a causal relationship cannot be established due to the limitations of prelicensure studies and a lack of vaccine adverse event reporting by vaccine providers that was mandated under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 but is not enforced.
In 2017, DTaP was one of five vaccines ruled by the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) to have caused the death of a 5-month-old baby boy, who died of SIDS within 24 hours of vaccination.18
The Tripedia DTaP vaccine also contains a number of bioactive and potentially hazardous ingredients, including casein, to which some children are allergic; the excitotoxin MSG; thimerosal (mercury) and aluminum, both of which are neurotoxic; formaldehyde and polysorbate 80.
To say that all vaccines are so safe that parents don’t even need to be involved in the vaccine decision-making process is irresponsible in the extreme. It is mothers and fathers, who are legally responsible for their minor children, and they are the ones who will bear the emotional and financial burden if something goes wrong, not the doctor and certainly not the vaccine manufacturer.
Vaccine administrators and manufacturers were effectively shielded from any financial liability for vaccine injuries and deaths by amendments to the 1986 Act and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.
California Legislator Aims to Make It Even More Difficult to Obtain Medical Exemption
As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) in “Don’t Let Them Frighten You Into Giving Up This Medical Choice,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and medical trade organizations have so narrowed the definition of a medical exemption that almost no previous vaccine reaction or health condition is considered a contraindication to vaccination.
More than 99 percent of Americans do not qualify for a medical exemption under federal vaccine guidelines today.
California state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, Sacramento, who spearheaded the 2015 campaign to eliminate the personal belief vaccination for children attending day care and school, has now introduced a bill to make it even more difficult to get a medical vaccine exemption in the state. According to Pan, since the removal of the personal belief exemption in California, medical exemptions to vaccination for children have tripled in the state.19
“It is clear that a small number of physicians are monetizing their exemption-granting authority and profiting from the sale of medical exemptions,” he told ABC News.20 The new bill, SB276, would make health officials employed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) the final judge of the validity of all medical exemptions written by private physicians. As reported by the news station:21
“Additionally, under SB 276, CDPH will create and maintain a database of medical exemptions, and CDPH and County Health Officers will have the authority to revoke medical exemptions granted by licensed physicians if they are found to be fraudulent or inconsistent with contraindications to vaccination per CDC guidelines.
The lawmaker argues the implementation of Senate Bill 277, which abolished the personal belief exemption in California, generated an overall vaccination rate increase to more than 95 percent statewide.
Pan says California has also experienced a dramatic increase in the number of medical exemptions. Since the passage of SB 277, the rate of medical exemptions has more than tripled (from 0.2 percent in 2015-16 to 0.7 percent in 2017-18). Low vaccination rates in certain pockets of the state put children and communities at risk.”
Let me repeat that: 0.7 percent of Californian children have received a medical exemption from vaccination, and they now want you to believe this miniscule ratio of unvaccinated children put communities at serious risk for disease outbreaks? At risk of what, exactly? If all of these vaccines are so effective at protecting against disease, what’s the concern?
1 in 168 Children Require Emergency Care After First Round of Vaccinations
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In 2015, immunologist Tetyana Obukhanych, Ph.D., wrote an open letter22 to legislators explaining why children who have not received certain vaccines (specifically IPV, DTaP, HepB, and Hib) pose no risk to others. She also addressed the frequency of serious adverse events, stressing the importance of personal choice in the face of such risks:
“It is often stated that vaccination rarely leads to serious adverse events. Unfortunately, this statement is not supported by science. A recent study done in Ontario, Canada, established that vaccination actually leads to an emergency room visit for 1 in 168 children following their 12-month vaccination appointment and for 1 in 730 children following their 18-month vaccination appointment (see appendix for a scientific study, Item #5).
When the risk of an adverse event requiring an ER visit after well-baby vaccinations is demonstrably so high, vaccination must remain a choice for parents, who may understandably be unwilling to assume this immediate risk in order to protect their children from diseases that are generally considered mild or that their children may never be exposed to.”
In the lecture above, Obukhanych, who wrote the book “Vaccine Illusion: How Vaccination Compromises Our Natural Immunity and What We Can Do to Regain Our Health,” explains how vaccines damage your immune function, which can result in any number of adverse health effects.
Health and Human Services Has Neglected Critical Vaccine Safety Obligations for Decades
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 granted partial financial immunity to vaccine makers for injuries and deaths caused by their vaccines and, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declared FDA licensed and CDC recommended vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe” and effectively removed all remaining liability from the multibillion-dollar vaccine industry.
With that liability risk eliminated, so was any incentive to make sure their products are safe. The responsibility to ensure vaccine safety instead falls on the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS). As reported by AIM Integrative Medicine:23
“Hence, since 1986, HHS has had the primary and virtually sole responsibility to make and assure improvements in the licensing, manufacturing, adverse reaction reporting, research, safety and efficacy testing of vaccines in order to reduce the risk of adverse vaccine reactions.
In order to assure HHS meets its vaccine safety obligations, Congress required as part of the 1986 Act that the Secretary of HHS submit biennial reports to Congress detailing the improvements in vaccine safety made by HHS in the preceding two years.”
August 2017, Del Bigtree, founder of Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the HHS, requesting access to its safety reports.24 After being stonewalled for eight months, ICAN and Kennedy sued the HHS, demanding copies of the congressional reports to be released.
As noted by ICAN,25 “provisions of the (1986 Act) … legally require the HHS to conduct science that reduces the risk of vaccine injury. Failure to do so could result in legal action against HHS … HHS has not acted in its duties regarding vaccine safety, forcing 78 million American children into a vaccine program with no safety provisions.”
ICAN also recently sued the FDA after the agency failed to respond to FOIA requests for copies of the clinical trials it relied upon when licensing influenza vaccines for pregnant women.
A February 11, 2019 ICAN update26 reveals “the FDA has not licensed any influenza vaccine as an indicated use for pregnant women, let alone conducted or required any pharmaceutical company to conduct any clinical trial which supports the safety of injecting pregnant women with the influenza vaccine.”
Refusal of Medical Treatment Treated as a Violent Crime
The last piece of news I’m going to cover here is the Arizona case where a SWAT team with guns drawn used a battering-ram to break down the door to the home of a family whose 2-year-old son had a fever and a doctor reported them to state authorities for failing to take the child to a hospital. As reported by NBC News:27
“Sarah Beck brought her 2-year-old son to Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine on Feb. 25 and was told he had a temperature of more than 105 [degrees Fahrenheit], according to reports by the Chandler Police Department.
The doctor believed the child could be suffering from a 'life-threatening’ illness that could not be tested for at the clinic, so she told Beck to take the toddler to the hospital … The mother was reluctant because the boy wasn’t vaccinated, and she feared 'possible repercussions,’ the report said.
When the doctor found out later that day the child had never made it to the hospital, she called the DCS [Department of Child Services], which contacted the Chandler Police Department because 'there was a present danger to (the child’s) health/wellbeing and that he required immediate medical attention,’ police said.”
The parents insisted the child did not need medical attention as he was recovering and his fever was rapidly coming down. The doctor suspected the child might have meningitis, but it turned out to be respiratory syncytial virus, and the parents appear to have been correct in their assessment that he was not in severe danger.
One could also argue that tyrannical repercussions against those who choose not to vaccinate their children is at fault here, as the parents would probably not have hesitated to take the boy to the hospital had they not been fearful of repercussions — a fear that is well warranted, I might add. This case is a frightening illustration of medical tyranny, where excessive violence is used against parents who disagree with the medical establishment.
In this case, the couple’s three children were all removed from the home, and Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa (who has worked on legislation that requires DCS to obtain a search warrant before removing a child) expressed concern that the baby pregnant Sarah is carrying might be taken from them as well “over a misdiagnosis by the doctor.”28
“I call on DCS to immediately return the children who are also being traumatized due to this misdiagnosis,” Townsend said in a statement. “The parents were correct; the doctor was wrong.”
Don’t Let Them Shut Down the Vaccine Safety Conversation
Again and again, we find that there are big gaps in vaccine science and the most basic of safety investigations has been neglected or never was performed in the first place. Yet, we are told over and over again that “There is no debate. The science is settled: Vaccines are safe. End of discussion.���
If you missed Loe Fisher’s commentary on the effort to shut down the public conversation about health and vaccination, while calls for “no exceptions” mandatory vaccinations grow stronger, I urge you to read it or watch her video today. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to push this conversation into the broad light of day, because having the right to make our own decisions about medical risk taking such as vaccination is at the very heart of our freedom as individuals.
When government officials can break down your door because you disagree with your doctor, when doctors can sweet-talk your child into getting vaccinated without your child fully understanding the risks, when politicians can ban your children from entering public spaces simply because they’re unvaccinated, then you know the end of freedom is very, very near.
The time to take a stand for the rights of everyone, not just the select few, is running out. And remember, once one small group loses its right to autonomy, everyone’s right to autonomy will disappear shortly thereafter. Guaranteed. Because that’s how tyranny works.
Don’t think for a second that just because you believe in vaccination, and you and all of your children have received all your shots, that you’re somehow immune from government overreach and tyranny. Before you know it, you may not have a choice in whether you want to take a certain drug or not.
Or the kind of surgical procedure that government health officials tell you that you must get. Or, you might suddenly find yourself part of a group deemed unfit to reproduce and be required to get sterilized “for the greater good” of society.
Who knows where it might end? In time, you may not have the right to choose your education — the government will decide what kind of worker bee they need, and what profession you’re best suited for. Or, you may lose your right to marry someone the government does not approve of — if you’re granted marital rights at all, that is.
Who’s to say such civil and human rights cannot be taken away by certain individuals in control of an authoritarian government? Eliminating the legal right to exercise informed consent to vaccine risk-taking and to decline a vaccination for health reasons or for personal beliefs is a very slippery slope. One thing is for sure: It will not end there.
from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/04/09/measles-outbreak-rockland-county.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/184052867026
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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – A tall, hooded gunman dressed in black and covering his face with a bandana opened fire late Wednesday during “college night” at a crowded country dance bar in Southern California, killing 12 people, including a sheriff’s sergeant.
Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean identified the gunman as David Ian Long, 28, a Marine veteran, who was described as “acting a little irrationally” when police were called to his home earlier this year to investigate a disturbance.
He was armed with a Glock 21 .45-caliber handgun that had an extended magazine. He died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Authorities said the gunfire broke out at the Borderline Bar & Grill, a country-western dance bar in Thousand Oaks, which is about 40 miles west of Los Angeles. Hundreds of people fled in terror, including some who used bar stools to break windows and escape.
“It’s a horrific scene in there,” said Dean, who choked up at one point while speaking to reporters in the bar’s parking lot. “There’s blood everywhere.”
A hooded gunman dressed in black opened fire on a country dance bar popular with college students in Southern California, killing 11 people and a sheriff’s sergeant. The shooter also died in the melee.
“It appears he walked up to the scene, shot the security guard who was standing outside, then stepped inside,” Dean said. “It appears that he turned to the right and shot several of the other security guards and employees, and began opening fire inside the nightclub.”
Pepperdine University said on Twitter that “multiple” students from the college were at the scene during the attack.
Eighteen people transported themselves to local hospitals, and two were taken by ambulance, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus, who was shot after he entered the building, died at a hospital early Thursday.
Helus and a passing highway patrolman were responding to several 911 calls when they arrived at the bar around 11:20 p.m., the sheriff said. They heard gunfire and went inside.
People comfort each other at the scene of a mass shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Nov. 8, 2018. Marvin O. Jimenez
Helus was immediately hit with multiple gunshots, Dean said. The highway patrolman cleared the perimeter and pulled Helus out and waited as a SWAT team and scores more officers arrived.
The sheriff said there were “multiple other victims” with different levels of injury. He said it was not known whether there was a terrorism link. He called the shooting a “tragic, tragic situation.”
The bar, which includes a large dance hall with a stage and a pool room along with several smaller areas for eating and drinking, is a popular hangout for students from nearby California Lutheran University, particularly on College Night.
It’s also close to several other universities including California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo, Pepperdine University in Malibu and Moorpark College in Moorpark.
It was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since 17 classmates and teachers were gunned down at a Parkland, Florida, school nine months ago. It also came less than two weeks after a gunman killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Matt Wennerstrom, 20, said the attacker, armed with a handgun, first opened fire on employees working the front desk.
“I grabbed as many people as I could and pulled them down underneath the pool table we were close to until he ran out of bullets for that magazine and had to reload,” he said.
Wennerstrom, a regular customer at the bar, said he and other patrons used bar stools to break open a window to help people escape. “We were shuttling as many people out as we could,” he said.
He described the gunman as around 6-feet-2, dressed in black.
President Donald Trump tweeted early Thursday that he had been briefed on “the terrible shooting in California. Law Enforcement and First Responders, together with the FBI, are on scene.”
A witness, John Hedge, said he saw the suspect tossing smoke bombs into the front of the restaurant, KABC-TV reports.
“The gunman was throwing smoke grenades all over the place. I saw him point to the back of the cash register … and he just kept firing. I ran out the front door,” he said.
Taylor Von Molt, 21, who was line dancing in the bar when the shooting broke out, told CNN that the burly gunman was wearing sunglasses and his face was partially covered by a bandana.
She said he first heard what sounded like a balloon popping until she realized it was gun shots. Von Molt said she fell down rushing toward the exits and was slightly injured attempting to get up.
The extent of the victims’ injuries was not immediately clear. Hundreds of people were inside the bar when the shooting occurred, the Los Angeles Times reported. Law enforcement and emergency crews flooded the scene and police urged the public to avoid the area.
Officers at the scene said the gunman might have used smoke bombs in the incident, but authorities later said they could not confirm that.
Jeremy Childs
@Jeremy_Childs
Approaching the scene of Borderline. Dozen of sheriff’s vehicles lined up + the buzz of helicopters overhead.
9:23 AM – Nov 8, 2018 · Borderline Bar & Grill
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Officers indicated that about 30 shots had been fired and that victims fled from the bar into the surrounding neighborhood. Shots were still being fired when officers arrived on the scene.
The Borderline Bar & Grill describes itself on its website as the county’s “Largest Country Dance Hall & Live Music Venue” with 2,500 square feet of open dance floor. It was reportedly college night at the venue when the shooting occurred.
via The Conservative Brief
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cleopatrarps · 6 years
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Two injured in shooting incident at Indiana middle school: officials
(Reuters) – An adult and a teenager were injured in a shooting at an Indiana middle school on Friday and a suspect was in custody, according to the Indiana State Police and a hospital official.
Police is seen near Noblesville West Middle School in Noblesville, Indiana, U.S., May 25, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. COURTESY CHRISTOPHER REILY/via REUTERS
The victims were taken to a hospital, said the State Police, which did not provide further details on them.
“We have notified the parents of the children that have been impacted by this,” Indiana State Police Captain David Bursten told reporters.
“Two people have been impacted by this. They are at the hospital and they are receiving treatment and I don’t know their condition,” he said.
The incident took place at Noblesville West Middle School, about 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Indianapolis, and authorities said the school was placed on lockdown.
Danielle Sirilla, a spokeswoman for IU Methodist Hospital said an adult was taken to the hospital while a teenager was taken to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health nearby. She said no information was available on their condition.
A live video feed from local TV station WTTV showed dozens of police on the scene and a sniffer dog being deployed, likely to search for weapons.
Police is seen near Noblesville West Middle School in Noblesville, Indiana, U.S., May 25, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. COURTESY CHRISTOPHER REILY/via REUTERS
An unnamed student who spoke to the broadcaster said the shooter entered a science class and the teacher swatted a gun away from the shooter, who may have been a fellow student.
Police did not provide details of the incident.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, flying back from Europe, released a statement saying he was monitoring the situation.
“Our thoughts are with all those affected by this horrible situation,” he said, adding that about 100 state police officers had been made available to work with local responders.
The incident occurred a week after a 17-year-old high school student in Santa Fe, Texas, near Houston shot and killed eight classmates and two teachers, the latest in a string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools.
In contrast to Florida, where the killing of 17 teens and educators in February sparked a youth-led movement calling for new restrictions on gun ownership, the Texas tragedy saw elected officials and survivors alike voicing support for gun rights.
Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas and Ben Klayman in Detroit; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown
The post Two injured in shooting incident at Indiana middle school: officials appeared first on World The News.
from World The News https://ift.tt/2Lp79Hb via News of World
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party-hard-or-die · 6 years
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Two injured in shooting incident at Indiana middle school: officials
(Reuters) – An adult and a teenager were injured in a shooting at an Indiana middle school on Friday and a suspect was in custody, according to the Indiana State Police and a hospital official.
Police is seen near Noblesville West Middle School in Noblesville, Indiana, U.S., May 25, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. COURTESY CHRISTOPHER REILY/via REUTERS
The victims were taken to a hospital, said the State Police, which did not provide further details on them.
“We have notified the parents of the children that have been impacted by this,” Indiana State Police Captain David Bursten told reporters.
“Two people have been impacted by this. They are at the hospital and they are receiving treatment and I don’t know their condition,” he said.
The incident took place at Noblesville West Middle School, about 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Indianapolis, and authorities said the school was placed on lockdown.
Danielle Sirilla, a spokeswoman for IU Methodist Hospital said an adult was taken to the hospital while a teenager was taken to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health nearby. She said no information was available on their condition.
A live video feed from local TV station WTTV showed dozens of police on the scene and a sniffer dog being deployed, likely to search for weapons.
Police is seen near Noblesville West Middle School in Noblesville, Indiana, U.S., May 25, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. COURTESY CHRISTOPHER REILY/via REUTERS
An unnamed student who spoke to the broadcaster said the shooter entered a science class and the teacher swatted a gun away from the shooter, who may have been a fellow student.
Police did not provide details of the incident.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, flying back from Europe, released a statement saying he was monitoring the situation.
“Our thoughts are with all those affected by this horrible situation,” he said, adding that about 100 state police officers had been made available to work with local responders.
The incident occurred a week after a 17-year-old high school student in Santa Fe, Texas, near Houston shot and killed eight classmates and two teachers, the latest in a string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools.
In contrast to Florida, where the killing of 17 teens and educators in February sparked a youth-led movement calling for new restrictions on gun ownership, the Texas tragedy saw elected officials and survivors alike voicing support for gun rights.
Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas and Ben Klayman in Detroit; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown
The post Two injured in shooting incident at Indiana middle school: officials appeared first on World The News.
from World The News https://ift.tt/2Lp79Hb via Breaking News
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newestbalance · 6 years
Text
Two injured in shooting incident at Indiana middle school: officials
(Reuters) – An adult and a teenager were injured in a shooting at an Indiana middle school on Friday and a suspect was in custody, according to the Indiana State Police and a hospital official.
Police is seen near Noblesville West Middle School in Noblesville, Indiana, U.S., May 25, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. COURTESY CHRISTOPHER REILY/via REUTERS
The victims were taken to a hospital, said the State Police, which did not provide further details on them.
“We have notified the parents of the children that have been impacted by this,” Indiana State Police Captain David Bursten told reporters.
“Two people have been impacted by this. They are at the hospital and they are receiving treatment and I don’t know their condition,” he said.
The incident took place at Noblesville West Middle School, about 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Indianapolis, and authorities said the school was placed on lockdown.
Danielle Sirilla, a spokeswoman for IU Methodist Hospital said an adult was taken to the hospital while a teenager was taken to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health nearby. She said no information was available on their condition.
A live video feed from local TV station WTTV showed dozens of police on the scene and a sniffer dog being deployed, likely to search for weapons.
Police is seen near Noblesville West Middle School in Noblesville, Indiana, U.S., May 25, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. COURTESY CHRISTOPHER REILY/via REUTERS
An unnamed student who spoke to the broadcaster said the shooter entered a science class and the teacher swatted a gun away from the shooter, who may have been a fellow student.
Police did not provide details of the incident.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, flying back from Europe, released a statement saying he was monitoring the situation.
“Our thoughts are with all those affected by this horrible situation,” he said, adding that about 100 state police officers had been made available to work with local responders.
The incident occurred a week after a 17-year-old high school student in Santa Fe, Texas, near Houston shot and killed eight classmates and two teachers, the latest in a string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools.
In contrast to Florida, where the killing of 17 teens and educators in February sparked a youth-led movement calling for new restrictions on gun ownership, the Texas tragedy saw elected officials and survivors alike voicing support for gun rights.
Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas and Ben Klayman in Detroit; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown
The post Two injured in shooting incident at Indiana middle school: officials appeared first on World The News.
from World The News https://ift.tt/2Lp79Hb via Everyday News
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clusterassets · 6 years
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New world news from Time: A New Netflix Series Tells the Story of the Philippines’ Drug War. But Its Critics Are Condemning Amo as Propaganda
A week after it premiered, few of the extras that feature in Netflix’s first ever Philippine series had seen the show. Outside the barbecue stand she runs in the Manila neighborhood where Cannes award-winning director Brillante Mendoza shot Amo (pronounced “am-ohr,” it means boss), Nerisa Perez recalled acting in one of its scenes. A fictional SWAT team had raided a nearby shanty, killing her fictional brother, and Perez had to sink to her knees and lament his death. “What did my brother do?” was her line. None of the dozen or so people outside Perez’s stall — some of whom also appear in Amo — had caught their neighbor’s big moment. Still, their memories of the shoot were vivid: “It felt so real. We were afraid,” one said.
Only about 50,000 of Netflix’s 125 million subscribers, or about 0.04%, live in the Philippines. Nevertheless, Amo has proved controversial. The series is set against the backdrop of President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and follows a high-school student entangled in the drug trade. But unlike the directors of Netflix’s other long-running drug war series, Narcos, Mendoza, 57, is an unapologetic advocate of the brutal suppression of pushers and users. The Philippines’ most famous director has said Duterte’s campaign is “necessary” for his own and “other countries afflicted with the drug problem,” according to Agence France-Presse. He has filmed and telecast both of the president’s State of the Nation Addresses, and previously worked on government anti-drug films.
Mendoza’s apparent closeness to Duterte has prompted allegations that his series is propaganda for the bloody campaign. Officially, more than 4,000 people have been killed in police anti-drug operations since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016. However an opposition senator has alleged that as many as 20,000 people may have been killed on Duterte’s watch, citing a further 16,355 homicide cases classified as deaths “under investigation” from July 1, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2017.
Read more: The Mutineer: How Antonio Trillanes Came to Lead the Fight Against Rodrigo Duterte
While Mendoza is not the first Filipino filmmaker to address the drug war, his international reputation and Netflix’s backing lend Amo a profile far beyond previous pro-drug war movies like Double Barrel and Kamandag Ng Droga. Criticism has followed. A petition that asks Netflix to cancel the show, started by a Filipino mother whose disabled son was murdered in the drug war, has gathered more than 10,000 signatures. A group of 13 human rights groups recently called on Netflix to cancel the series they claim “aims to justify extrajudicial killings,” according to CNN.
“Anyone familiar with the Duterte drug war will find little in Amo’s 13 episodes that corresponds to the reality of the state-backed campaign of unlawful killings that has killed more than 12,000 Filipinos since July 2016,” Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phelim Kine tells TIME by email. He adds: “Several sequences in Amo appear to be deliberate efforts to reinforce the government’s willfully deceptive counter-narrative to scrupulously documented human rights abuses linked to the anti-drug campaign.”
In response to the criticism, Netflix told TIME via email that the service “offers a diverse choice for consumers to decide on what, where and when they want to watch. We understand that viewers may have opposing opinions but leave it to them to decide.”
The controversy over Amo comes amid a broader debate on how the Philippine drug war is presented to the world. In February, the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched a preliminary examination into allegations of crimes committed by the state. Duterte continues to direct expletive-laden tirades at the European Union and U.S. State Department, U.N. special rapporteur Agnes Callamard (whom he threatened to slap “because you are insulting me… You are f–king me and I do not want it”) and ICC investigators, whom he says he will have arrested. Meanwhile Foreign Secretary Alan Cayetano claims Human Rights Watch is “misrepresenting” the drug war, portraying “an unfair and unjust image of our country.”
Noel Celis—AFP/Getty Images Analyn Roxas, 26, mourns with her sister after her partner, Valien Mendoza, a suspected drug dealer, was gunned down by unidentified assailants in Manila, March 7, 2017.
‘There is no investigation’
On a corner table in the house Luzviminda Siapo shares with her mother and surviving daughter is a shrine to her dead son, Raymart. A vase of flowers, and offerings of cookies decorate the table in front of a framed photograph of the smiling 19-year-old. There’s also a motorcycle helmet, keeping faith with a promise Siapo had made to buy her son a motorcycle.
Speaking with TIME in Cavite, an hour’s drive south of Manila, Siapo says she was working as a domestic helper in Kuwait when relatives informed her of Raymart’s death. A neighbor had formally accused Raymart of selling marijuana after an argument. The following day, 14 masked men arrived on motorbikes looking for her son. The men abducted Raymart, who is disabled, took him to a parking lot, and shot him twice in the head.
Although witnesses told Siapo the group that abducted Raymart included police, his death is not counted in the more than 4,000 killings that the Philippine National Police (PNP) say have occurred when suspects fought back during “legitimate police operations.” Instead, it is classified as a death “under investigation.” That term is a misnomer.
“They haven’t closed the case but nobody is investigating,” Siapo says. “There is no investigation.”
Research by human rights groups and journalists has tied police, or mercenaries acting at the behest of the police, to deaths “under investigation.” Last year, two senior police officers told Reuters that members of the PNP planted evidence at crime scenes, carried out most of the killings blamed on vigilantes and received financial rewards for street executions.
There is scant hope of justice for the victims of extrajudicial killing — so common in the Philippines that many refer to it by the initials EJK — even in what appear to be slam-dunk cases. The police officers who kidnapped, ransomed and killed Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo at the police headquarters Camp Crane in October 2016 have yet to be sentenced. Officers at the National Bureau of Investigation determined to have murdered a former mayor in his jail cell have been reinstated to active duty following the president’s intervention.
Mendoza’s series, Siapo says, does not show the stark reality of the war on drugs, “If you see EJK victims, if you see Kian [Loyd delos Santos],” referring to a 17-year-old boy who was fatally shot by plainclothes police and abandoned next to a pigsty in a case that galvanized what was previously scant opposition to the drug war, “they were killed; the police killed them.”
Noel Celis—AFP/Getty Images Relatives and supporters of 17-year-old student Kian Loyd Delos Santos, who was allegedly killed by police, participate in his funeral march in Manila on Aug. 26, 2017.
After a scheduled interview with Mendoza was cancelled, he told TIME by email that he was “very sorry” for Siapo’s loss but denied Amo is propaganda or that the government had a hand in making it.
“My job is to engage my audience intelligently on what they are watching. What I want is for my audience to have their own take on the subject matter, have a healthy discussion among themselves, to scrutinize the show if they don’t agree on what they see,” he writes.
To be sure, Amo does show corruption in both the rank-and-file and the upper echelons of the PNP. The first half of Amo focuses on high school student Joseph (Vince Rillon), who is introduced as a drug runner and then gets sucked deeper into the trade, supplying designer narcotics to Manila’s elite. To research the role, Rillon tells TIME near his house in Mandaluyong, he talked with high school students in slum areas that actually pushed drugs. The second half of Amo dramatizes the real-life killing of the Korean businessman Joo. In Mendoza’s telling, the victim — rendered as a Japanese national — is involved in the drug trade.
Some local critics have complemented Mendoza’s breathtaking “guerilla-style handheld camera work.” Others, however, have derided the series for its flat characters, the lack of cohesion across its 13 episodes, and the fact women are rendered almost exclusively as either grieving partners or prostitutes.
‘It’s justifiable to exterminate them’
It is easy to see why Mendoza made Amo, and why Netflix commissioned the series. Though the rate of killings has slowed in recent months, the first year of the drug war exerted a grotesquely cinematic pull. Manila’s rain-slicked streets looked like a wet-down set. TV crews’ rigs and police lights rendered murder scenes in vivid high contrast. And the president — true to his nom-de-guerre, Duterte Harry — would speak straight to camera, dragging his finger across his throat as he threatened to kill criminals. There were curbside bodies in B-movie poses. Blood pooled on asphalt and smeared over linoleum. There were heads bound with yellow duct tape along major boulevards, and bodies bagged in cobalt plastic or strewn with cardboard signs.
Images associated with the drug war inevitably penetrated popular culture. In Navotas — the Manila neighborhood where Raymart Siapo was killed — a restaurant named its dishes after police kill methods. Last November, Apple removed mobile phone games from its App Store that allowed users playing as Duterte and Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa to kill drug addicts, the BBC reports. “Murder has been reduced to a meme,” journalist Patricia Evangelista wrote after reporting on a series of killings in which killers had scrawled attempted witticisms on signs strewn over the dead; over the duct-taped head of one cadaver, they had drawn eyes, a nose and a grinning mouth.
Read More: Photographs From The Front Lines of Philippines’ Drug War by James Nachtwey
Activist filmmaker Kiri Dalena tells TIME such cruelties are calculated. When she documented the killings of leftist rebels known as the New People’s Army in the Philippine mountains years ago, she says, their maggot-infested bodies were often left rotting in the sun with locals afraid to move them.
“It’s a sort of warning that you do not join the New People’s Army, otherwise this will happen to you,” Dalena says, adding that a similar strategy may be at play in the way police display the bodies of drug suspects and readily tip off Manila’s press corps. “People always assume when people die a gruesome death it has something to do with drugs; when there’s torture it has something to do with drugs.”
Amo is propaganda in that it reinforces the idea of the Philippines as so irredeemably corrupted by “the drug menace” that it requires Duterte’s savage solution. But even if the country is far from the most egregious example of global drug use, saying so is dangerous. In May last year, Duterte fired the Chairman of the Dangerous Drugs Board, Benjamin Reyes, for hewing to the findings of the Philippines’ last household survey on drug use (1.8 million users) rather than the parroting the 3, 4, or 7 million addicts Duterte and Cayetano have variously claimed.
Reyes’ successor resigned after suggesting a new 10,000-bed “mega drug rehab” facility was a mistake, urging community-based treatment instead. Duterte’s most ardent critic, Leila de Lima, has now been in jail for 14 months. The Philippines top lawyer called Vice President Leni Robredo “treasonous” for publicly condeming the drug war. Critical journalists are accused of “destabilizing” the country, deemed by Duterte legitimate targets for assassination, harassed by state-sponsored cohorts of online trolls and banned from covering government events.
As Duterte’s sky-high approval ratings attest, his portrayal of the Philippines as a crime-ridden, near narco state enjoys popular support. The president’s statement that he is “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts has met with horrified reactions overseas, but did not significantly dent his popularity at home.
“The middle class already had issues regarding the urban poor encroaching upon the cities, and then you have the drug addicts who are unproductive and become snatchers,” says Dalena. “A lot of Filipinos have been persuaded that there’s no hope for these people and that they are no longer human beings. Therefore they no longer have human rights and it’s justifiable to exterminate them.”
Ezra Acayan—Reuters Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte listens to Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Ronald Dela Rosa at the presidential palace in Manila, Philippines on Jan. 29, 2017.
How then, should filmmakers engage? Rather than calling for the censorship of pro-government voices like Mendoza’s, Dalena’s collective RESBAK — a local slang term for fighting back with reinforcements — attempts to reflect the experience of urban poor communities that have been most terrorized by the drug war. In December 2016, the group filmed a powerful alternative version of a popular Filipino Christmas song, with relatives of drug war victims holding up cardboard signs bearing empowering messages. Other works include a dance performance called 15 Minutes of Your Time mocking the government’s attempts to cure addicts with Zumba classes. Then there’s the mural on the side of Manila’s Baclaran church, for which RESBAK-affiliated artists sought mosaic contributions from drug war victims who were seeking sanctuary there.
Of Mendoza’s assertion that his series presents the drug war from different angles so that the viewer can decide, Dalena says: “Perhaps in a different time, maybe it would have worked, [but] this is not a time to be ambiguous or to be safe. What is his stand? For the killings? I haven’t heard any opposition from him.”
A few nights before PNP Chief Dela Rosa retired from his post with “no regrets” to take a new job at the head of the Bureau of Corrections, the presenters on local radio station Wave 89.1 did their best to soothe the bumper-to-bumper drivers inching through the notorious Manila gridlock. Between slow jams, Wave’s hosts riffed on TV shows that Filipinos binge-watched at the expense of other tasks. One listener spent hours watching Friends 14 years after its finale, another had missed filing tax returns because of the American legal comedy Drop Dead Diva. Modern Family had meanwhile stood in for the real family of a woman working overseas. There was no mention, however, of Amo.
A few blocks east, a busking rap group comprised of Vincent, 15, David, 9, and Christopher, 8, plied their trade. Most of the nightly 300 to 800 Pesos ($6 to $15) they earn comes from tourists enthralled by their flow. The tourists are unaware that their upbeat rap, in Filipino, tells the story of Kian Loyd delos Santos’ killing.
“Hey fellow Filipinos, let’s go, let’s wake up,” it begins, before talking about being abducted then shot by police.
“Goodbye to all, take care,” Vincent raps in the voice of Kian: “Justice is all I need, and hopefully I’m the last.”
— With reporting by Martin San Diego / Manila
April 30, 2018 at 02:38PM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com
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Florida shooting: At least 17 dead in high school attack
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Media caption“We knew it wasn’t a drill”: Students, police and politicians react in the aftermath of the shooting
At least 17 people are dead after a 19-year-old man opened fire at a high school campus in Parkland, Florida.
The suspect was Nikolas Cruz, a former student at the school who had been expelled. He escaped with fleeing students but is now in police custody.
As the attack unfolded students were forced to hide as police swooped in on the building.
It is the deadliest school shooting since 26 people were killed at Connecticut school Sandy Hook in 2012.
It is the sixth school shooting incident this year so far that has either wounded or killed students.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters Mr Cruz killed three people outside the school, before entering the building and killing another 12.
Two people later died after being taken to hospital.
“It’s catastrophic. There really are no words,” Sheriff Israel tweeted later.
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Media captionHow US mass shootings are getting worse
Three people remain in a critical condition and three others are in stable condition, health officials said.
The victims are still being identified. Sheriff Israel said a football coach was among the dead but no names have been released.
How the attack unfolded
The attack began at 14:30 local time (19:30 GMT) on Wednesday at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, about an hour north of Miami.
The local public school district tweeted that “students and staff heard what sounded like gunfire” just before the end of the day.
Witnesses said that the suspect set off a fire alarm before he began shooting.
Florida shooting: How the attack happened
Florida shooting: A survivor’s story
As it happened: Florida school gunman shoots ‘dozens’
Police and Swat team members swarmed the campus and began clearing students from the school, as parents and ambulances converged on the scene.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Video footage from the scene showed students being evacuated in small groups
Mr Cruz, who had been expelled for “disciplinary reasons”, was taken into custody without incident in the nearby town of Coral Springs about an hour after he left the high school, according to police.
Officials gave no details of the reasons for his expulsion but student Victoria Olvera, 17, told the Associated Press it was because of a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend.
She also said he had been abusive towards the ex-girlfriend.
Is domestic violence a common theme in mass shootings?
Why some argue teachers should be armed
Local media report that Mr Cruz bought his gun, an AR-15, legally and kept it locked away in the house of the family he was staying with, following his adoptive mother’s death in November.
Neighbours and friends said Mr Cruz was known to shoot at chickens, and talk about shooting lizards, squirrels and frogs.
“We have already begun to dissect his websites and things on social media that he was on and some of the things… are very, very disturbing,” Sheriff Israel said.
Image copyright Broward’s Sheriff’s Office
Image caption Police released a photo of Nikolas Cruz
‘Worst nightmare’
The school has nearly 3,000 students. Classes are cancelled for the rest of this week.
Many students said they thought it was a drill because a fire alarm practice had taken place shortly before the shooting.
Students told US media they hid under desks, in closets or barricaded doors as loud shots rang out.
One student, Bailey Vosberg, said: “I heard what sounded like fireworks and I looked at my friend and he asked me if I heard that.”
“Immediately, I knew. I didn’t say anything to him, I just hopped over the fence and I went straight to the road that our school is located on – and as I got there there was just Swat cars and police units, police vehicles just flying by, helicopters over the top of us.”
Image copyright EPA
Image caption Students were reunited with parents at a nearby “staging area” in Coral Springs
Caesar Figueroa, a parent, told CBS News his daughter was hiding in a closet when she called him.
He told the news outlet that he told her not to call him because he did not want the gunman to hear her voice.
“It’s the worst nightmare not hearing from my daughter for 20 minutes, it was the longest 20 minutes of my life,” Mr Figeuroa said.
A teacher told WSVN that she hid in a closet with 19 students for 40 minutes – and that the school underwent training for such a situation six weeks ago.
What’s the reaction been?
Florida Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that the shooting was “designed & executed to maximize loss of life”.
But he said that it was too soon to debate whether tighter gun laws could have stopped it.
“You should know the facts of that incident before you run out and prescribe some law that you claim could have prevented it,” he told Fox News.
Florida Governor Rick Scott said the shooting was “pure evil”, but also refused to be drawn into a discussion about gun control.
“There’s a time to continue to have these conversations about how through law enforcement… we make sure people are safe,” he said.
President Donald Trump tweeted his condolences.
Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2018
End of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
Congressman Ted Deutch, the district’s representative, tweeted: “I’m sick about this news from home. Just spoke with the sheriff. This is devastating.”
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Media captionSandy Hook Senator: ‘This happens nowhere else’
How do previous school shootings compare?
Wednesday’s attack is at least the 18th shooting in the US this year on or around school premises, according to research by Everytown for Gun Safety.
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Media captionA guide to the weapons available in the US and the rate at which they fire
Since 2013, there have been 291 reported school shootings in America, which averages out to about one per week.
This is the worst shooting since 2012, when gunman Adam Lanza attacked Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
He shot dead 20 young children and six adults before killing himself.
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The post Florida shooting: At least 17 dead in high school attack appeared first on dailygate.
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clubofinfo · 7 years
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Expert: Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement. — Steve Silberman, The New York Times Life in the American police state is an endless series of don’ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don’t talk back to police officers, don’t even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don’t run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don’t carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don’t expect privacy in public, don’t let your kids walk to the playground alone, don’t engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don’t try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don’t play music for tips in a metro station, don’t feed whales, and on and on. Here’s another don’t to the add the growing list of things that could get you or a loved one tasered, shot or killed, especially if you are autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffer from dementia, disabled or have any other condition that might hinder your ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order: don’t call the cops. Sometimes it’s dangerous enough calling the cops when you’re not contending with a disability. For instance, Justine Damond called 911 to report a disturbance and ended up dead after police dispatched to investigate instead shot the 40-year-old yoga instructor. Likewise, Carl Williams called 911 to report a robbery and ended up being shot by police, who mistook him for a robber in his own home. Unfortunately, the risks just skyrocket when a disability is involved. Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons. Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died. The Schrocks are not alone in this experience. Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers. That’s according to a study by the Ruderman Family Foundation, which reports that “disabled individuals make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention. This is true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers are ultimately fully exonerated… Many more disabled civilians experience non-lethal violence and abuse at the hands of law enforcement officers.” Trained to shoot first and ask questions later, police pose a risk to anyone with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent or require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-I’ll-shoot tactics employed by America’s police forces. For example, in South Carolina, police tasered an 86-year-old grandfather reportedly in the early stages of dementia, while he was jogging backwards away from them. Now this happened after Albert Chatfield led police on a car chase, running red lights and turning randomly. However, at the point that police chose to shock the old man with electric charges, he was out of the car, on his feet, and outnumbered by police officers much younger than him. In Georgia, campus police shot and killed a 21-year-old student who was suffering a mental health crisis. Scout Schultz was shot through the heart by campus police when he approached four of them late one night while holding a pocketknife, shouting “Shoot me!” Although police may have feared for their lives, the blade was still in its closed position. In Oklahoma, police shot and killed a 35-year-old deaf man seen holding a two-foot metal pipe on his front porch (he used the pipe to fend off stray dogs while walking). Despite the fact that witnesses warned police that Magdiel Sanchez couldn’t hear—and thus comply—with their shouted orders to drop the pipe and get on the ground, police shot the man when he was about 15 feet away from them. In Maryland, police (moonlighting as security guards) used extreme force to eject a 26-year-old man with Downs Syndrome and a low IQ from a movie theater after the man insisted on sitting through a second screening of a film. Autopsy results indicate that Ethan Saylor died of complications arising from asphyxiation, likely caused by a chokehold. In Florida, police armed with assault rifles fired three shots at a 27-year-old nonverbal, autistic man who was sitting on the ground, playing with a toy truck. Police missed the autistic man and instead shot his behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to get him back to his group home. The therapist, bleeding from a gunshot wound, was then handcuffed and left lying face down on the ground for 20 minutes. In Texas, police handcuffed, tasered and then used a baton to subdue a 7-year-old student who has severe ADHD and a mood disorder. With school counselors otherwise occupied, school officials called police and the child’s mother to assist after Yosio Lopez started banging his head on a wall. The police arrived first. In New Mexico, police tasered, then opened fire on a 38-year-old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia, all in an attempt to get James Boyd to leave a makeshift campsite. Boyd’s death provoked a wave of protests over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics. In Ohio, police forcefully subdued a 37-year-old bipolar woman wearing only a nightgown in near-freezing temperatures who was neither armed, violent, intoxicated, nor suspected of criminal activity. After being slammed onto the sidewalk, handcuffed and left unconscious on the street, Tanisha Anderson died as a result of being restrained in a prone position. And in North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed a 29-year-old deaf motorist after he failed to pull over during a traffic stop. Daniel K. Harris was shot after exiting his car, allegedly because the trooper feared he might be reaching for a weapon. These cases, and the hundreds—if not thousands—more that go undocumented every year speak to a crisis in policing when it comes to law enforcement’s failure to adequately assess, de-escalate and manage encounters with special needs or disabled individuals. While the research is relatively scant, what has been happening is telling. Over the course of six months, police shot and killed someone who was in mental crisis every 36 hours. Among 124 police killings analyzed by The Washington Post in which mental illness appeared to be a factor, “They were overwhelmingly men, more than half of them white. Nine in 10 were armed with some kind of weapon, and most died close to home.” But there were also important distinctions, reports the Post. “This group was more likely to wield a weapon less lethal than a firearm. Six had toy guns; 3 in 10 carried a blade, such as a knife or a machete — weapons that rarely prove deadly to police officers. According to data maintained by the FBI and other organizations, only three officers have been killed with an edged weapon in the past decade. Nearly a dozen of the mentally distraught people killed were military veterans, many of them suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their service, according to police or family members. Another was a former California Highway Patrol officer who had been forced into retirement after enduring a severe beating during a traffic stop that left him suffering from depression and PTSD. And in 45 cases, police were called to help someone get medical treatment, or after the person had tried and failed to get treatment on his own.” The U.S. Supreme Court, as might be expected, has thus far continued to immunize police against charges of wrongdoing when it comes to use of force against those with a mental illness. In a 2015 ruling, the Court declared that police could not be sued for forcing their way into a mentally ill woman’s room at a group home and shooting her five times when she advanced on them with a knife.  The justices did not address  whether police must take special precautions when arresting mentally ill individuals. (The Americans with Disabilities Act requires “reasonable accommodations” for people with mental illnesses, which in this case might have been less confrontational tactics.) Where does this leave us? For starters, we need better police training across the board, but especially when it comes to de-escalation tactics and crisis intervention. A study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that CIT (Crisis Intervention Team)-trained officers made fewer arrests, used less force, and connected more people with mental-health services than their non-trained peers. As The Washington Post points out: “Although new recruits typically spend nearly 60 hours learning to handle a gun, according to a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, they receive only eight hours of training to de-escalate tense situations and eight hours learning strategies for handling the mentally ill. Otherwise, police are taught to employ tactics that tend to be counterproductive in such encounters, experts said. For example, most officers are trained to seize control when dealing with an armed suspect, often through stern, shouted commands. But yelling and pointing guns is ‘like pouring gasoline on a fire when you do that with the mentally ill,’ said Ron Honberg, policy director with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.” Second, police need to learn how to slow confrontations down, instead of ramping up the tension (and the noise). After Ethan Saylor’s death in Maryland, police recruits are now required to take a four-hour course in which they learn “de-escalation tactics” for dealing with disabled individuals: speak calmly, give space, be patient. One officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department’s “mental response teams” suggests that instead of rushing to take someone into custody, police should try to slow things down and persuade the person to come with them. Third, with all the questionable funds flowing to police departments these days, why not use some of those funds to establish what one disability-rights activist describes as “a 911-type number dedicated to handling mental-health emergencies, with community crisis-response teams at the ready rather than police officers.” In the end, while we need to make encounters with police officers safer for people with disabilities, what we really need is to make encounters with police safer for citizens across the board, no matter how they’re packaged. As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the problem is not that police officers are inherently bad—in fact, there are many good, caring officers in law enforcement—but when cops are trained to be military warriors instead of peace officers, we’re all viewed as potential threats. http://clubof.info/
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