Archive for February 14th, 2009
Source: LA Times
Two council members want to expand on a state law to make it more difficult for people convicted of certain misdemeanors to own weapons.
Just a few weeks after the Los Angeles City Council approved a batch of new gun and ammunition ordinances tightening restrictions on ammunition vendors, council members Jack Weiss and Janice Hahn are proposing a new law that would make it more difficult for individuals convicted of certain misdemeanors to own guns.
The proposal, which Weiss and Hahn plan to introduce as early as today’s council meeting, would expand on a state law that bars possession of a gun for 10 years if convicted of certain crimes, including assault, illegal weapons sales or threatening a public official or a witness.
L.A. County Sheriff’s Department reloads…L.A. council tightens gun, ammunition laws
Weiss, a candidate for city attorney in the March 3 primary election, has made gun control one of his top campaign issues.
Weiss and Hahn’s measure would add other offenses to the list, including carrying a concealed weapon, possession of an assault weapon, burglary and misdemeanor gang crimes.
Noting that there have been 138 victims of gun violence in L.A. this year, Weiss said it was “time for more aggressive and more creative measures to stop the killing.”
Hahn said the measure was intended to target gangs.
“People who commit these types of crimes have already demonstrated bad judgment, and this ordinance gives us one more tool to keep guns out of their hands and off the streets of Los Angeles,” she said.
The proposal would require council approval and legal review by the city attorney’s office before it is drafted as an ordinance.
Colorado Looks to Double Speed Camera Revenue
Doubling of speed camera ticket cost expected to more than double income for Colorado municipal and state budgets.
With municipal budgets tight across the state of Colorado, members of the General Assembly are looking to offer relief. The Colorado state Senate Transportation Committee voted 4-3 on Thursday to boost the cost of a speed camera ticket from $40 to $75. The measure, Senate Bill 143, also extends the reach of photo ticketing to include nearly any road that runs through the state.
Last May the state authorized the use of freeway photo radar which allows the placement of automated ticketing machines on high-speed roads by erecting a sign that says “work zone.” The bill introduced by Colorado state Senator Bob Bacon covers most of the remaining roads within the state by allowing photo ticketing on any road with a speed limit of 50 MPH or less. Combined with the higher fees, the revised program is expected to generate millions in additional revenue. The Senate committee voted to direct this money into funding accounts labeled “traffic safety.” The bill must now be considered by the full Senate.
Although the legislature is targeting vehicles traveling through work zones, studies show that such laws do nothing to protect actual workers. Work zone fatalities are caused far more often by construction equipment than automobiles. A number of attempts to increase ticketing in the state have also created problems. A Fort Collins speed camera falsely accused a gardener’s truck which, when new, had a top speed of just 99 MPH of blasting through a 30 MPH zone at 132 MPH. Colorado Springs police officers were caught falsifying records in order to meet a ticket quota.
The text of Senate Bill 143 is available in a 20k PDF file at the source link below.
Source: 
Senate Bill 143 (Colorado General Assembly, 2/12/2009)
US veterans sue CIA for alleged drug and mind control experiments
Author: goldironPlaintiffs seek to force the government to contact all the subjects of the testing
It was 1968, and Frank Rochelle was 20 years old and fresh out of Army boot camp when he saw notices posted around his base in Virginia asking for volunteers to test uniforms and equipment.
That might be a good break after the harsh weeks of boot camp, he thought, and signed up.
Instead of equipment testing, though, the Onslow county, North Carolina, native found himself in a bizarre, CIA-funded drug testing and mind-control programme, according to a lawsuit that he and five other veterans and Vietnam Veterans of America filed last week. The suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco against the US department of defence and the CIA.
The plaintiffs seek to force the government to contact all the subjects of the experiments and give them proper healthcare.
The experiments have been the subject of congressional hearings, and in 2003 the US department of veterans affairs released a pamphlet that said nearly 7,000 soldiers had been involved and more than 250 chemicals used on them, including hallucinogens such as LSD and PCP as well as biological and chemical agents.
Lasting from 1950 to 1975, the experiments took place at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. According to the lawsuit, some of the volunteers were even implanted with electrical devices in an effort to control their behaviour.
Rochelle, 60, who has come back to live in Onslow county, said in an interview that there were about two dozen volunteers when he was taken to Edgewood. Once there, they were asked to volunteer a second time, for drug testing. They were told that the experiments were harmless and that their health would be carefully monitored, not just during the tests but afterward, too.
The doctors running the experiments, though, couldn’t have known the drugs were safe, because safety was one of the things they were trying to find out, Rochelle said.
“We volunteered, yes, but we were not fully aware of the dangers,” he said. “None of us knew the kind of drugs they gave us, or the after-effects they’d have.”
Rochelle said he was given just one breath of a chemical in aerosol form that kept him drugged for two and a half days, struggling with visions. He said he saw animals coming out of the walls and his freckles moving like bugs under his skin. At one point, he tried to cut the freckles out with a razor.
Not all the men in his group tested drugs. But he said even those who just tested equipment were mistreated.
“Their idea of testing a gas mask was to give you a faulty one and put you in a gas chamber,” he said. “It was just diabolical.”
The tests lasted about two months. Later, Rochelle was sent to Vietnam.
Now he’s rated 60% disabled by the veterans affairs department, he said, and has struggled to keep his civilian job working on US marine bases. He has breathing problems, and his short-term memory is so bad that he once left his son at a gas station.
Among other problems, he said, his doctor diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and said it came from the drug experiment. He has trouble sleeping and still sometimes has visions from the drug, he said.
A big goal of the lawsuit, Rochelle said, is to get the word out to the thousands of soldiers who were tested. Some may have forgotten all about the tests and not know that’s why they now have health problems.
Blackwater Worldwide Changes Its Name to Xe; Same Mercenaries, but Now with More “Aviation Support”
Author: goldironSource: Cryptogon
Blackwater has probably been used for U.S. Government narcotics trafficking operations before, but it looks like that is going to be a major component of their business going forward.
Note the phrase “aviation support” in the story below. Aviation support is synonymous with narcotics trafficking. If you read, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, this will all make much more sense.
Also note the mention of West Africa as a venue for increased Blackwater/Xe activity. In this context, see: Global Cocaine Trade Moves to Africa:
West Africa is an unlikely center for the international cocaine trade. It is not a producer of the drug nor is it a consumer, as the vast majority of its people are very poor.
Yet a startling 50 tons of cocaine is transported through West Africa each year, according to the latest United Nations estimates. The value of this illicit trade dwarfs entire economies and has the potential to corrupt the region’s fragile states, which are just pulling out of decades of bitter civil wars.
In the past Africa has been a treasure trove looted by covetous colonialists, voracious rebels and kleptocratic rulers — over the last 300 years think slaves, ivory, gold, diamonds, tin and coltan. Now it is a transit point and storeroom for the cocaine trade.
“Drug money is perverting the weak economies in the region,†says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The wholesale value in European streets of cocaine passing through West Africa is $2 billion, he says.
South American cartels used to transport cocaine to the big U.S. market via the Caribbean. But dwindling American consumption, stricter control of the West Indies drugs route, growing cocaine use in Europe and weak law enforcement in West Africa have conspired to bring the drug to the region. It is the path of least resistance.
Grown and processed in South America, the refined cocaine is transported by boat or plane across the Atlantic: The shortest line of latitude brings the cargo straight to West Africa. From there the cartels move the drugs onwards to Europe, along the way paying off West African officials in order to be able to operate freely.
So, we have Blackwater/Xe increasing “aviation support” activities in two of the hottest narcotics trafficking hubs in the world. Coincidences.
Blackwater/Xe/ or whatever those crooks are calling themselves this week, are probably going to be performing the same role as Barry and the Boys did at Mena, Arkansas in the 1980s. Running contractors and cutouts, training drug pilots, retrofitting aircraft, and actually carrying out narcotics trafficking operations. Soup to nuts.
In other words, same shit, different decade.
Via: AP:
Blackwater Worldwide is still protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq, but executives at the beleaguered security firm are taking their biggest step yet to put that work and the ugly reputation it earned the company behind them.
Blackwater said Friday it will no longer operate under the name that came to be known worldwide as a caustic moniker for private security, dropping the tarnished brand for a disarming and simple identity: Xe, which is pronounced like the letter “z.”
It’s a rare surrender for a company that cherished a brand name inspired by the dark-water swamps of northeastern North Carolina, one that survived another rebranding effort about a year ago, following a deadly shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The decision to give it up underscores how badly the Moyock-based company’s brand was damaged by that incident and other security work in Iraq.
“They have established themselves as the bad guys,” said Katy Helvenston, who sued the company following her son’s death during a mission in Fallujah while working for Blackwater in 2004. “They’ve established such a horrible reputation. Why else would they change their name?”
Blackwater acknowledged last year in an interview with the The Associated Press the damage to its reputation had persuaded the company to focus on lines of business other than private security contracting.
The issue came to a head last month, when the State Department said it would not rehire Blackwater to protect its diplomats in Iraq after its current contract with the company expires in May. The company has one other major security contract, details of which are classified.
“It’s not a direct result of a loss of (that) contract, but certainly that is an aspect of our work that we feel we were defined by,” said spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell.
The company is also replacing its bear paw logo with a sleeker black-and-white graphic based on letters that make up the company’s new name. In a note to employees, president Gary Jackson said the name change reflects the company’s new focus, and he indicated Xe would not actively pursue new security business.
“This company will continue to provide personnel protective services for high-threat environments when needed by the U.S. government, but its primary mission will be operating our training facilities around the world,” Jackson said.
It has expanded other businesses such as aviation support, recently building a fleet of 76 aircraft that it has deployed to such hotspots as West Africa and Afghanistan. The company got its start in training and continues to build up that business. Last year, some 25,000 civilians, law enforcement and military personnel attended a Blackwater class.
The company’s changes aren’t entirely voluntary. The 2007 shooting in Nisoor Square involving Blackwater guards left at least a dozen Iraqi civilians dead, infuriated politicians in Baghdad and Washington, triggered congressional hearings and increased calls that the company be banned from Iraq.
Late last year, prosecutors charged five of the company’s contractors — but not Blackwater itself — with manslaughter and weapons violations. In January, Iraqi officials said they would not give the company a license to operate. The State Department responded by informing Blackwater it would not renew a contract that comprises a third of the company’s nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.
“It would hurt us,” company CEO Erik Prince said in an interview before losing the State Department deal. “It would not be a mortal blow, but it would hurt us.”
Blackwater has rebranded before, introducing a new name — Blackwater Worldwide — and slight changes to its logo about a year ago. But Friday’s announcement cuts ties entirely with a name created in 1997 when Prince and some of his former Navy SEAL colleagues launched the company.
Xe will cover the parent brand for the two-dozen subsidiaries, and none of those subsidiaries will retain the word “Blackwater” in their names.
Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and a longtime Blackwater critic, said the new name won’t change the fact that its actions have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.
“Blackwater’s notorious reputation will outlast its name,” she said.
goldiron