Passengers virtually stripped naked by 3-D airport scanner

Yet another way to debase human diginity using the excuse of “security.” Welcome to the White police state.

The airport in Kelowna, B.C., will be the first in Canada to test a new type of passenger scanner that creates a three-dimensional image of people’s bodies.

The new body imager unveiled on Thursday uses high frequency electromagnetic waves known as millimetre waves to create a detailed 3-D image of what a person looks like underneath their clothes.

The security guard operating the machine only sees a simplified image on a computer screen that indicates where ceramic weapons and plastic explosives or other suspicious items might be concealed.

But in a separate, private room, another officer sees the full detailed black and white image of the person’s body.

To be scanned, a passenger simply steps inside a glass pod the size of a large phone booth and puts up his arms above his head.

“The paddles rotate around the body. The radio frequency penetrates the clothing … bounces off the skin and gives … a 3-D holographic image of the body,” said Ian McNaugton, the National Sales Manager for L3 Communications, which makes the machines.

If any suspicious items are identified, the passenger is then checked with a conventional security pat down, McNaughton said.

Ron McAdam, who manages technology and testing for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, spent months working with Canada’s privacy commissioner to make sure the scanner complies with privacy rules.

“The images themselves are not saved…. They are deleted immediately once the passenger is cleared,” said McAdam, who added that the security guard who sees the detailed image never sees the actual passenger.

In addition, passengers don’t have to use the machine, McAdam said. If they have concerns, they can use regular screening lines instead.

Body image concerns some

Outside the airport, passengers gave the machine mixed reviews. Hugo Tinno said he would not volunteer. “I think it shows a little bit too much.”

But Deena Kamozi, who had just dropped off her 14-year-old son, said anything that makes flying safer is a good thing.

“I’m not a big fan of flying anyway, so the safer I feel, the better,” she said.

Kamozi said she had no privacy concerns about the body image.

“Not if it’s going to protect my family on the plane.”

The trial of the $200,000 machine will last until January, after which Transport Canada will decide whether to use the scanner at other Canadian airports.

The low-level radio frequency is safer than a cellphone, which use radio frequencies a thousand times stronger, according to McNaugton.

Other airports around the world, including in Los Angeles, New York City, Moscow and Osaka, are already using the millimetre wave technology, but the machine being testing at Kelowna International is the first in the world to combine the body imaging with a metal detector, McNaugton said.

Supreme Court : No death penalty for child rapists

Pedophiles and rapists rejoice! Bravo white civilization.

“The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.

Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, and the other five states allow it for child rapists. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas allow executions in such cases if the defendant had previously been convicted of raping a child.

The court struggled over how to apply standards laid out in decisions barring executions for the mentally retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed murder. In those cases, the court cited trends in the states away from capital punishment.

In this case, proponents of the Louisiana law said the trend was toward the death penalty, a point mentioned by Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent.

“The harm that is caused to the victims and to society at large by the worst child rapists is grave,” Alito wrote. “It is the judgment of the Louisiana lawmakers and those in an increasing number of other states that these harms justify the death penalty.”

But Kennedy said the absence of any executions for rape and the small number of states that allow it demonstrate “there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape.”

Kennedy also acknowledged that the decision had to come to terms with “the years of long anguish that must be endured by the victim of child rape.”

Still, Kennedy concluded that in cases of crimes against individuals — as opposed to treason, for example — “the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim’s life was not taken.”

The decision does not affect the imposition of the death penalty for other crimes that do not involve murder, including treason and espionage, he said.

“It looks like a smashing victory on all fronts for us,” said Denise LeBoeuf, a longtime capital defense attorney from New Orleans.

The girl’s mother said, “We don’t talk about that” and hung up.

The author of the Louisiana law, former Republican state Rep. Pete Schneider, said even opponents of the death penalty told him they would kill anyone who raped their children. “When are you going to have the courage to stand up for what’s right for all of the people — but especially the children under 12 that have been brutally raped by monsters?” Schneider said, directing his comments to the justices in Wednesday’s majority.

The last executions for crimes other than murder took place in 1964, according to a database maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Ronald Wolfe, 34, died in Missouri’s gas chamber on May 8, 1964 for rape. James Coburn was electrocuted in Alabama on Sept. 4 of that year for robbery.

Patrick Kennedy was convicted in 2003 of raping his stepdaughter at their home in Harvey, La., outside New Orleans. The girl initially told police she was sorting Girl Scout cookies in the garage when two boys assaulted her.

Police arrested Kennedy a couple of weeks after the March 1998 rape, but more than 20 months passed before the girl identified him as her attacker.

His defense attorney at the time argued that blood testing was inconclusive and that the victim was pressured to change her story.

The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the sentence, saying that “short of first-degree murder, we can think of no other non-homicide crime more deserving” of the death penalty. State Chief Justice Pascal Calogero noted in dissent that the U.S. high court already had made clear that capital punishment could not be imposed without the death of the victim, except possibly for espionage or treason.

A second Louisiana man, Richard Davis was sentenced to death in December for repeatedly raping a 5-year-old girl in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport. Local prosecutor Lea Hall told jurors: “Execute this man. Justice has a sword and this sword needs to swing today.”

The high court’s decision leaves intact Kennedy’s conviction, but will lead to a new sentence.

Naked Cowboy sues M&Ms

Complaining about privacy while being naked in the middle of the street, and now suing a candy maker. Get a real job, buddy.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The $6 million lawsuit filed by the New York City street performer known as The Naked Cowboy against M&Ms candy maker Mars Inc can go forward on grounds of trademark infringement, a judge ruled on Monday.

Robert Burck — for 10 years a fixture in Times Square, who strums a white guitar while dressed only in white cowboy boots and hat and skimpy white underwear — filed the suit in February over video billboards depicting a blue M&M dressed in his signature outfit.

U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, ruling that Burck may proceed with his false endorsement claim, “for he plausibly alleges that consumers seeing defendants’ advertisements would conclude — incorrectly — that he had endorsed M&M candy.”

Chin dismissed Burck’s right to privacy claim, noting that New York law protects the name, portrait or picture of a living person but not that of a character or a role created by or performed by a living person.

Burck, who poses for photos with giggling tourists in return for dollars slipped into his boots, has trademarked his look and licensed his name and likeness to companies for endorsements and advertisements, including a Chevrolet commercial that appeared during a Super Bowl, the suit says.

In addition to Mars, Burck sued Chute Gerdeman Inc, the agency that created the ads with the Naked Cowboy M&M as well as ads with M&Ms dressed as other characters associated with New York, including the Statue of Liberty and King Kong.

Chin ordered attorneys for both sides to appear for a pretrial conference on July 11.

White man in wheelchair charged with drunk driving

Such pioneering spirit

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Police in Australia have charged a man for drink driving in a motorized wheelchair after he was found to be six times over the legal alcohol limit, local media reported on Monday.

Police in the tropical northern Queensland city of Cairns said the man had a blood alcohol reading of 0.31, and was so drunk he was asleep at the controls of his motorized wheelchair in a turning lane of a major highway.

“It beggars belief,” Police Inspector Bob Walters told the Cairns Post newspaper, adding wheelchairs, bicycles, horses and skateboards were all considered to be vehicles under the state’s road laws.

“It’s unlawful, it is unacceptable and people should realize it could lead to a fatality,” he said.

Other motorists on the four-lane highway had to swerve to avoid the wheelchair, police said.

Stupid White Inventions : Ugly dog contests

How about a competition on getting a life?

A three-legged, one-eyed, cancer-afflicted dog named Gus has been crowned the World’s Ugliest Dog at a fair in California.

Gus, a Chinese Crested dog, beat allcomers to take the title at the Sonoma-Marin Fair.

Owner Jeanenne Teed, from Florida, said she would spend the $1,600 prize on treatment for Gus’s skin cancer.

The competition has been running for 20 years, and is one of the fair’s top attractions, organisers said.

Vicki DeArmon, marketing director of the fair, said that in the past few years, winners had been dogs that had been abandoned or neglected before being adopted by dog-lovers.

“They may look hard to love, but apparently they are not. I’ve never seen dogs better cared for,” she added.

Gus was rescued from a bad home.

One of his legs was amputated as a consequence of his skin tumour.

He lost an eye to a tomcat in a fight.

White scuba diver charged with killing wife

“Till scuba diving do we part”

SYDNEY, Australia – Eleven days after getting married in 2003, an Alabama woman put on diving gear and slipped into the water off Australia’s coast for what was supposed to be a romantic exploration of a shipwreck with her new husband.

But the dive ended with her drowning and on Friday, almost five years later, her husband, David Gabriel Watson of Birmingham, Ala., was charged with murder for the honeymoon death.

The Queensland state coroner found there was sufficient evidence to charge Watson in the death of his 26-year-old wife, although circumstances of the drowning remain unclear.

Christina Mae Watson, known as Tina, drowned Oct. 22, 2003 while diving at the wreck of the SS Yongala, a passenger and steam freighter that sank during a cyclone in 1911 on the Great Barrier Reef near the northeastern city of Townsville.

Coroner David Glasgow issued the indictment after a months-long investigation. The move triggered extradition proceedings to return Watson to Australia.

Watson faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted of murder. His Australian lawyer did not immediately enter a plea, but he has argued the evidence does not support any criminal charge.

Watson was not present in court and his whereabouts were unclear. He did not testify at the coroner’s inquest, claiming privilege against possible self-incrimination.

But in videotaped police interviews, Watson, who uses the first name Gabe, said his wife began having trouble a few minutes into the dive. He said she panicked and clutched at his mask, pulling it off his face. By the time he restored it, she was sinking away from him, her eyes wide and arms outstretched toward him, he said.

Watson, an experienced diver who had completed a dive rescue course, was acting as a so-called dive buddy for his less-experienced wife. He told police he decided to go for help rather than following her to the sea floor and attempting a rescue.

One of the dive leaders pulled Tina Watson to the surface. Efforts to resuscitate her failed.

During the coroner’s inquest, police testified that they initially thought the death was an accident. However, they became suspicious when Watson changed details of his account.

An autopsy found no pre-existing medical condition that could have explained the young woman’s death. Tests showed there was nothing wrong with her diving gear.

In his findings Friday, Glasgow said the exact circumstances of Tina Watson’s fate may never be known.

“There are only two persons who know what in fact actually occurred,” Glasgow said. “One is Tina, who cannot tell us, and the other is Gabe.”

Watson’s lawyer, Steve Zillman, argued during the inquest that his client had no motive to kill his wife and that the evidence did not support a criminal charge. He accused police of being intent on blaming Watson for the death, no matter what the evidence showed.

But Glasgow said Tina Watson’s father, Tommy Thomas, had provided a possible motive, telling authorities his daughter told him that shortly before they were married, Gabe Watson asked his fiancee to increase her life insurance and change the policy to make him the sole beneficiary. Thomas said his daughter decided to lie to Watson that she had made the changes.

Thomas, Tina Watson’s mother Cindy Thomas and other family members watched the proceedings on a live video link between the courtroom and Alabama, where they live.

Tommy Thomas was quoted by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. as saying the family welcomed Friday’s indictment.

“We’re actually relieved to hear the coroner’s findings,” Thomas said. “It’s something that we have dealt with for quite some time and it validated our beliefs.”

National news agency Australian Associated Press quoted Watson’s U.S. attorney Bob Austin as saying that Watson had not yet decided whether he would fight Australia’s extradition request.

“He’s very disappointed, very distraught and displeased,” Austin was quoted as saying of Watson’s reaction to the coroner’s findings.

Australia and the United States have an extradition treaty, though the process can take months and Watson will be able to challenge any extradition request in U.S. courts.

White mother accused of skinning caged Son, feeding him to relatives!

“The most advanced civilization in human history,” sure if eating your own kid, and/or raping your own daughter and imprisoning her in a dungeon for decades is anything to go by. Why do white do such bizarre things?

A mother is accused of partially skinning her caged son and feeding his flesh to relatives.

Kalra Mauerova, 31, of Brno in the Czech Republic, wept in court as she admitted torturing her son Ondrej, and his ten-year-old brother, Jakub, The Sun reported.

Mauerova, a member of the Grail Movement cult, caged Ondrej for months while relatives, also members of the cult, ate his raw flesh, a judge heard yesterday.

The court in Brno heard the family sexually abused the boys and made them cut themselves with knives.

The boys said they were kept in cages or handcuffed to tables and made to stand for days in their own urine.

The abuse was discovered when a man living nearby installed a TV monitor to keep watch on his newborn baby.

Instead of pictures of his newborn he was confronted by live images of Ondrej naked in the cellar — beaten and chained, The Sun reported.

Mauerova is understood to have installed the monitor so she could watch her victims suffering from her kitchen.

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Police were called, and the boy and his brother, as well as what appeared to be a 13-year-old girl, were freed.

The teenage girl later turned out to be 34 — and one of the torturers.

Mauerova accused the woman — fellow cult member Barbora Skrlova — of brainwashing her.

“Terrible things have happened. I realize it and can’t understand how I could have allowed it,” Mauerova was reported as saying.

The court heard the abuse of Ondrej and Jakub was coordinated via text messages sent by a leader of the Grail Movement cult — who was known only as the “Doctor.”

The trial of Mauerova, another relative and their bogus sister Skrlova — who fled and was later found posing as a boy in Norway — continues.

What are whites teaching their kids?

Stealing money from children selling cookies was never so much fun!

Yet another war criminal goes free

Nothing like a white kangaroo court to wash the blood of their hands

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – A military judge dismissed charges Tuesday against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis.

Col. Steven Folsom dismissed charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani after finding that a four-star general overseeing the case was improperly influenced by an investigator probing the November 2005 shootings by a Marine squad in Haditha.

“Unlawful command influence is the mortal enemy of military justice,” Folsom said. “In order to restore the public confidence, we need to take it back. We need to turn the clock back.”

Chessani, of Rangely, Colo., was the highest-ranking officer to face a combat-related court-martial since the Vietnam War.

The charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they can be refiled, but Folsom barred Marine Forces Central Command from future involvement in the case.

Of eight Marines originally charged in the case, only one is still facing prosecution in the biggest U.S. criminal prosecution involving Iraqi deaths to come out of the war.

The incident occurred after a Marine was killed by a roadside bomb.

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who faces voluntary manslaughter charges, and a squad member shot five men by a car at the scene. Investigators say Wuterich then ordered his men to clear several houses with grenades and gunfire, leaving women and children among the dead.

Wuterich has pleaded not guilty.

Folsom’s ruling comes two weeks after Gen. James Mattis took the stand — a rare courtroom appearance for such a high-ranking officer — to address the judge’s initial finding that there was evidence of unlawful command influence in the case.

Col. John Ewers, the military lawyer who investigated the killings and took Chessani’s statement, later became a top legal adviser to Mattis and sat in on briefings that helped Mattis decide who would be charged.

Mattis testified he never talked with Ewers about Haditha, although Ewers was present during a number of legal meetings where Haditha and Chessani were discussed.

Military policy prohibits Ewers from offering legal advice because he also was an investigator in the case.

Mattis approved the filing of charges against Chessani when he was both commander of the Marine Corps Forces Central Command and the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton. He has since been promoted and serves as commander of both NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation and commander of U.S. Joint Forces.

Four enlisted Marines were originally charged with counts related to the killings and four officers were charged in connection with the investigation, including Chessani.

White male puts girlfriend’s nude shots on MySpace after break up

White chivalry is alive and well.

Alex Phillips, a “wise guy” who wanted to get revenge on his 16-year-old girlfriend by posting photos of her most private parts on MySpace, now faces felony child pornography charges in Wisconsin.

Phillips is 17 and considered an adult under the law, and his former girlfriend is a minor. He told La Crosse County Sheriff’s Department he was just “venting” after she jilted him last week.

The girlfriend had taken the naked photos of herself in her home, then sent them to Phillips on her cell phone, according to Sgt. Mark Yehle. One was “front body nudity” and a second was her “vaginal and anal area,” he said.

“I can only surmise she thought that would impress him somehow,” said Yehle. “She’s not an innocent victim. Kids don’t realize that once a photo is in a digital format and you send it to someone, you better trust that person.”

When the girl discovered the photos had been posted on the Internet with explicit captions, she contacted police, who asked Phillips to take them down or face jail time. Police said the boy refused, saying, “F*** that, I am keeping them up.”

Phillips eventually told police he would take down the photos, but they were still there the next day, according to Yehle, so they contacted MySpace, which immediately had them removed.

Yehle said Phillips has been living with his grandparents, who are his guardians, and not attending school. He also had been previously charged with drug violations.

Phillips, who is one year older than his ex-girlfriend, has been charged with possession of child pornography, sexual exploitation of a child by a person under 18 and defamation. The exploitation charges alone carry a 12-year sentence, according to circuit court papers.

The charges may seem harsh for two teens so close in age, but one Internet safety expert said they are a stern warning. Phillips turns 18 in June, and could have been charged under federal law with even tougher penalties.

Attempts by ABC News to reach Phillips for comment were unsuccessful.

“Generally, law enforcement doesn’t want to do it unless it’s trafficking,” said Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy and security lawyer and volunteer for WiredSafety. “The problem was he was a wise guy.”

“I am sure he will be pleaded out,” she said. “No one wants him to go to jail. It’s more than a slap on the wrist, but if you tell police where to go, you’ll end up in jail.”

Without stiff penalties in cases like these, teens like Phillips can take down the photos then repost them elsewhere. “If you can’t get a kid to stop, it’s like trying to catch a river in your hand,” Aftab said. “They are letting him know how serious this is.”

Phillips’ attitude may have been cavalier, but using the Internet to play out his breakup is not. Incidents like this have been common for years among teens, according to Aftab.

Several years ago in Bergen County, N.J., one teen convinced others to have sex on camera and sold the pictures. In Riverdale, N.Y., a girl distributed a video of herself masturbating and having oral sex with a banana and posted it on Kazaa and “no one could get it down,” she said.

American Idol Scandal

American Idol contestant Antonella Barba was under fire when a series of racy photos were published on the Internet in 2007. She said they were personal photos that were “exploited without my consent,” according to news reports at the time.

“It’s truly an epidemic and no surprise,” said Aftab. “Nothing is private anymore. Everyone wants to be Pamela Anderson.”

With a cell phone or Web cam and Internet access, girls can distribute photos for all to see. “It’s even good kids who you think never in a million years would they do it.”

“They are looking for their 15 megabytes of fame,” she said. “They want to be admired, want someone to want them. A lot of them are lonely and starved for attention. A lot of girls think they have no choice but to pose in this way. And then there are the thrill seekers who do it because it’s edgy and cool.”

Girls as young as 12 take photos of themselves “naked from the neck down,” according to Aftab. “They come from good homes and their parents would be devastated if they knew.”

Such was the case with Deborah Kusich, who was mortified when she discovered sexual photos of her 13-year-old stepdaughter on MySpace.

“She and her friend were humping the bed as if they were having sex,” said the San Carlos, Calif., mother. Other photos were equally suggestive.

When she confronted her, the teen “came completely unglued. … I told her if I could get into her page, anyone could. She was totally naïve about it.”

“I read all this stuff about kids who were putting their names and photos out there and were stalked by predators,” she said. “I had the talk with her about how she was putting herself in the public domain.”

Police doubt Alex Phillips will face “grave consequences” for posting the photos of his girlfriend online, especially because “she created them,” said Yehle.

“This is becoming more common now,” he said. “I can’t say what he’ll get at his age and her age, but they’ll probably come up with a plea agreement.”

Judge suspends L.A. obscenity trial after conceding his website had sexual images

…and a conservative Reagan appointee no less. When perverts run the courts, will justice prevail?

A closely watched obscenity trial in Los Angeles federal court was suspended Wednesday after the judge acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore “a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here.”

In an interview Tuesday with The Times, Kozinski acknowledged posting sexual content on his website. Among the images on the site were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. He defended some of the adult content as “funny” but conceded that other postings were inappropriate.

Kozinski, 57, said that he thought the site was for his private storage and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public, although he also said he had shared some material on the site with friends. After the interview Tuesday evening, he blocked public access to the site.

Kozinski is one of the nation’s highest-ranking judges and has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. He was named chief judge of the 9th Circuit last year and is considered a judicial conservative on most issues. He was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan in 1985.

After publication of an latimes.com article about his website Wednesday morning, the judge offered another explanation for how the material might have been posted to the site. Tuesday evening he had told The Times that he had a clear recollection of some of the most objectionable material and that he was responsible for placing it on the Web. By Wednesday afternoon, as controversy about the website spread, Kozinski was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale.

“Yale called and said he’s pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it,” Kozinski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news website. “I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don’t remember putting some of that stuff there.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed concern about Kozinski’s website.

“If this is true, this is unacceptable behavior for a federal court judge,” she said in a statement.

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics and has known Kozinski for years, called him “a treasure of the federal judiciary.” Gillers said he took the judge at his word that he did not know the site was publicly available. But he said Kozinski was “seriously negligent” in allowing it to be discovered.

“The phrase ’sober as a judge’ resonates with the American public,” Gillers said. “We don’t want them to reveal their private selves publicly. This is going to upset a lot of people.”

Gillers said the disclosure would be humiliating for Kozinski and would “harm his reputation in many quarters” but that the controversy should die there.

He added, however, that if the public concludes the website was intended for the sharing of pornographic material, “that’s a transgression of another order.

“It would be very hard for him to come back from that,” he said.

Kozinski has a reputation as a brilliant legal mind and is seen as a champion of the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. Several years ago, for example, after learning that appeals court administrators had placed filters on computers that denied access to pornography and other materials, Kozinski led a successful effort to have the filters removed.

The judge said it was strictly by chance that he wound up presiding over the trial of filmmaker Ira Isaacs in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Appellate judges occasionally hear criminal cases when they have free time on their calendars, and the Isaacs case was one of two he was given, the judge said.

Isaacs is on trial for distributing sexual fetish videos, featuring acts of bestiality and defecation. The material is considerably more vulgar than the content posted on Kozinski’s website.

The judge said he didn’t think any of the material on his site would qualify as obscene.

“Is it prurient? I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I think it’s odd and interesting. It’s part of life.”

Before the site was taken down, visitors to http://alex.kozinski.com were greeted with the message: “Ain’t nothin’ here. Y’all best be movin’ on, compadre.”

Only those who knew to type in the name of a subdirectory could see the content on the site, which also included some of Kozinski’s essays and legal writings as well as music files and personal photos.

The sexually explicit material on the site was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex. There was a slide show striptease featuring a transsexual, and a folder that contained a series of photos of women’s crotches in snug-fitting clothing or underwear.

Kozinski told The Times that he began saving the sexually explicit materials and other items of interest on his website years ago.

“People send me stuff like this all the time,” he said.

In turn, he said, he occasionally passes on items he finds interesting or funny to others.

Among the sexually explicit material on his site that he defended as humorous were two photos. In one, a young man is bent over in a chair and performing fellatio on himself. In the other, two women are sitting in what appears to be a cafe with their skirts hiked up to reveal their pubic hair and genitalia. Behind them is a sign reading “Bush for President.”

“That is a funny joke,” Kozinski said.

The judge said he planned to delete some of the most objectionable material from his site, including the photo depicting women as cows, which he said was “degrading . . . and just gross.” He also said he planned to get rid of a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is seen shaving her pubic hair.

Before suggesting that his son might have been responsible for posting some of the content, Kozinski told The Times that he, the judge, must have accidentally uploaded the cow and shaving images to his server while intending to upload something else. “I would not keep those files intentionally,” he said. He offered to give a reporter a demonstration of how the error probably occurred.

The judge emphasized that he never used appeals court computers to maintain his site.

The presence of copyrighted music files on Kozinski’s site raises other issues.

More than a dozen MP3 tracks were listed, and they were neither excerpts nor used to illustrate legal opinions, which experts said might have qualified their copying as “fair use.” The artists included Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Weird Al Yankovic.

Uploading such files could violate civil copyright laws if friends or members of the public visited the site and downloaded the songs, according to attorneys who have litigated file-sharing cases for both copyright holders and accused infringers.

Even if no one downloaded the songs, just making them available might run afoul of the law, said Corynne McSherry, staff attorney at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, which often argues the other side of such issues.

Late last year, three of Kozinski’s Circuit Court colleagues noted in a ruling that “the owner of a collection of works who makes them available to the public may be deemed to have distributed copies of the works,” a violation of copyright law if done without permission.

“For him to actually be held liable would take some further investigation, but I think it’s possible,” McSherry said. “It’s a strange story. It’s surprising to me.”

Kozinski was not asked in the Tuesday interview about the music files, and he could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Italian couple caught having sex in Church confessional box

Is nothing sacred to whites?

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian couple who were caught having sex in a church confessional box while morning Mass was being said have repented and made peace with the local bishop.

The couple, in their early 30s, were detained by police earlier this month after they had made love in the confessional box in the cathedral in northern Cesena. They were cautioned for obscene acts in public and disturbing a religious function.

Their lawyer said they had been drinking all night and realized they had gone too far.

The lawyer told the area’s local newspaper on Wednesday the couple met with the local bishop on Tuesday night, asked for his forgiveness and that he had given it.

Last week the bishop celebrated a “Mass of reparation” in the cathedral where the confessional box incident took place to make up for the sacrilege.

White terrorists behead 6 year old girl

Tanks against children? Thats white warfare for you. I guess if you’re going to carry out a genocide you may as well target the kids sooner rather than later.

Palestinian medical workers say a young girl has been killed by Israeli tank fire in the Gaza Strip.

They say the girl’s body was recovered from a house that was hit by a tank shell near Khan Younis.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said a ground force had attacked militants in the area attempting to fire rockets into Israel.

Israel’s security cabinet said it would support Egyptian-brokered efforts to reach a truce with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

The meeting of senior Israeli officials with security responsibilities was expected to discuss a possible invasion of Gaza to prevent militant attacks on southern Israel.

Palestinian medical officials said six-year-old Hadeel Smari was decapitated by the tank shell explosion while she was in the back yard of her house.

Two adult relatives were wounded in the attack, doctors said. Israeli officials said they were unaware of any civilian casualties.

Hamas said one of its gunmen was killed during the Israeli operation in the area.

A mortar shell later hit an Israeli paint factory near Gaza, slightly injuring two people.

On Tuesday Hamas said three of its members were killed by Israeli fire after launching rockets.

Pressure

Correspondents say there has been public pressure on Israel’s leaders to counter militant fire with more than the pinpoint tactics currently in use.

“The security cabinet decided this morning to support Egyptian efforts to achieve calm in the south and to end the daily targeting of Israeli civilians by the terrorists in Gaza,” said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev.

“In parallel, the security cabinet has instructed the military to continue its preparations in the unfortunate event that the Egyptian track should prove unsuccessful,” he added.

Four Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinian rockets or mortars this year.

About 500 people, nearly all of them Palestinians killed in Israeli raids and more than half of those armed militants, have died in violence since the troubled Israeli-Palestinian peace process was revived in November 2007.

Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip and blocks all but essential humanitarian supplies, while launching regular raids in an attempt to counter militant fire.

European truckers on strike

Another reason not to work? Whites should stop committing terrorism(which raises costs) around the world instead of complaining about the price of their oil addiction.

MADRID (AFP) – Tens of thousands of truckers in Spain, France and Portugal on Monday stepped up protests against rising fuel prices, causing mayhem on highways and blocking border crossings.

Huge tailbacks built up around major cities and on the French-Spanish border as French fishermen in Mediterranean ports ended their three-week strike over the spiralling cost of fuel.

Spain’s second largest hauliers’ union Fenadismer, which claims to represent 70,000 out of Spain’s 380,000 truck drivers, launched an open-ended strike on Monday. It said it was “peaceful” but followed “massively”.

Talks Monday between the hauliers and the government ended in failure, Fenadismer said.

“Fenadismer will maintain its national strike” as the government’s proposals were “insufficient”, it said.

Trucks jammed several main highways including at the frontier with France, according to traffic officials, who also reported massive snarls in Madrid and Valencia.

A Spanish truckers’ group calling itself the Platform for the Defence of the Transport Sector, who say they speak for 50,000 truckers, walked off the job last week. They have threatened to disrupt the opening this weekend of the International Exposition in Zaragosa.

The conservative Spanish newspaper ABC said the aim of the strikers was to block oil supplies from refineries and stocks at retail markets this week.

Spanish media said the number of trucks at wholesale markets on Monday were considerably lower than usual.

French truckers struggling with high fuel costs staged fresh protests near the Spanish border and in the southwest.

Several trucks from the southern city of Perpignan disrupted traffic at border posts, preventing trucks from crossing and causing a tailback of some 10 kilometres (six miles) on both sides of the border. Private cars were allowed through.

Protestors branded banners which read: “Trucker = Unemployed,” and “It’s the end of our profession.”

Some 200 trucks converged on the four main motorways leading into Bordeaux Monday morning, causing 30 kilometers (20 miles) of tailbacks in and around the city.

“We are demanding immediate measures” to counter the impact of high fuel prices, said Jean-Pierre Morlin, president of the European trucking organisation for the Aquitaine region.

Portugal’s Transport Minister Mario Lino was to meet later Monday with representatives of road transport associations in a bid to end the strike by truckers who have threatened to “paralyze” the country.

According to police, trucks parked at petrol pumps were stoned overnight or while they were on the road after the strike started at midnight.

Many had their windscreens shattered.

The strikers also blocked entrances to several factories. According to industry figures, there are some 40,000 truckers in Portugal serving an estimated 5,000 firms.

However, French fishermen from Mediterranean ports on Monday ended a three-week strike ahead of a key meeting of European fisheries ministers.

“All of the fleets from the Mediterranean ports went back to work this morning, but we remain very vigilant,” said Ange Natoli, a representative of the Mediterranean fishing fleets.

Fleets in the Channel ports of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Calais and Dunkirk last week called off their strike pending the talks.

Portuguese fishermen called off their five-day-old strike on Wednesday.

However, their counterparts in Spain, home to Europe’s largest fishing fleet, maintained their “indefinite” stoppage launched May 30.

“Almost all the ports in Spain are on strike,” said the head of the Spanish Fisheries Confederation, Javier Garat.

EU fisheries ministers meet on June 23-24 tackle the fuel crisis.

Marine diesel prices have leapt by around 30 percent since the start of 2008, triggering protests in European ports as well as warnings that fishing boat owners face bankruptcy without higher subsidies.

Uncle Sam’s Cyber Force Wants You!

Why are whites such control freaks?

Be depressed. Be very depressed. You thought that cyberspace – a term conjured up long ago by that neuromancer, sci-fi author William Gibson – was the last frontier of freedom. Well, think again. If the U.S. Air Force has anything to say about it, cyber-freedom will, in the not so distant future, be just another word for domination.

Air Force officials, despite a year-long air surge in Iraq, undoubtedly worry that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s “next wars” (two, three, many Afghanistans) won’t have much room for air glory. Recently, looking for new realms to bomb, it launched itself into cyberspace. The Air Force has now set up its own Cyber Command, redefined the Internet as just more “air space” fit for “cyber-craft,” and launched its own Bush-style preemptive strike on the other military services for budgetary control of the same.

If that’s not enough for you, it’s now proposing a massive $30 billion cyberspace boondoggle, as retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore writes below, that will, theoretically, provide the Air Force with the ability to fry any computer on Earth. And don’t think the other services are likely to take this lying down. Expect cyberwar in the Pentagon before this is all over. In the meantime, think of cyberspace, in military terms, as a new realm for nuclear-style strategy, with its own developing version of “first-strike capability,” its own future versions of “mutually assured destruction,” its own “windows of vulnerability” to be closed (while exploiting those of the enemy), and undoubtedly its own “cyber-gaps.”

In fact, it looks like the national-security version of cyberspace may soon be a very, very busy place. Noah Shachtman, who covers the subject like a rug at his Wired Magazine Danger Room blog, recently noted that Comcast, the country’s second-largest Internet provider, “has just advertised for an engineer to handle ‘reconnaissance’ and ‘analysis’ of ’subscriber intelligence’ for the company’s ‘National Security Operations’” – that is, for the U.S. government. (“Day-to-day tasks, the company says in an online job listing, will include ‘deploy[ing], installing] and remov[ing] strategic and tactical data intercept equipment on a nationwide basis to meet Comcast and Government lawful intercept needs.’”) Ain’t that sweet.

And it shouldn’t be too tough a job. As Shachtman also points out, “Since May 2007, all Internet providers have been required to install gear for easy wiretapping under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.”

Sigh. Those who don’t learn from history are bound to… get ever more bloated budgets. Tom

Attention Geeks and Hackers

Uncle Sam’s Cyber Force Wants You!
By William J. Astore

Recently, while I was on a visit to Salon.com, my computer screen momentarily went black. A glitch? A power surge? No, it was a pop-up ad for the U.S. Air Force, warning me that an enemy cyber-attack could come at any moment – with dire consequences for my ability to connect to the Internet. It was an Outer Limits moment. Remember that eerie sci-fi show from the early 1960s? The one that began in a blur with the message, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission”? It felt a little like that.

And speaking of Air Force ads, there’s one currently running on TV and on the Internet that starts with a bird’s eye view of the Pentagon as a narrator intones, “This building will be attacked three million times today. Who’s going to protect it?” Two Army colleagues of mine nearly died on September 11, 2001, when the third hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, so I can’t say I appreciated the none-too-subtle reminder of that day’s carnage. Leaving that aside, it turns out that the ad is referring to cyber-attacks and that the cyber protector it has in mind is a new breed of “air” warrior, part of an entirely new Cyber Command run by the Air Force. Using the latest technology, our cyber elite will “shoot down” enemy hackers and saboteurs, both foreign and domestic, thereby dominating the realm of cyberspace, just as the Air Force is currently seeking to dominate the planet’s air space – and then space itself “to the shining stars and beyond.”

Part of the Air Force’s new “above all” vision of full-spectrum dominance, America’s emerging cyber force has control fantasies that would impress George Orwell. Working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Homeland Security, and other governmental agencies, the Air Force’s stated goal is to gain access to, and control over, any and all networked computers, anywhere on Earth, at a proposed cost to you, the American taxpayer, of $30 billion over the first five years.

Here, the Air Force is advancing the now familiar Bush-era idea that the only effective defense is a dominating offense. According to Lani Kass, previously the head of the Air Force’s Cyberspace Task Force and now a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff, “If you’re defending in cyber [space], you’re already too late. Cyber delivers on the original promise of air power. If you don’t dominate in cyber, you cannot dominate in other domains.”

Such logic is commonplace in today’s Air Force (as it has been for Bush administration foreign policy). A threat is identified, our vulnerability to it is trumpeted, and then our response is to spend tens of billions of dollars launching a quest for total domination. Thus, on May 12th of this year, the Air Force Research Laboratory posted an official “request for proposal” seeking contractor bids to begin the push to achieve “dominant cyber offensive engagement.” The desired capabilities constitute a disturbing militarization of cyberspace:

“Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root access to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms. Robust methodologies to enable access to any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware. [T]echnology to maintain an active presence within the adversaries’ information infrastructure completely undetected. [A]ny and all techniques to enable stealth and persistence capabilities. [C]apability to stealthily exfiltrate information from any remotely-located open or closed computer information systems.”

Stealthily infiltrating, stealing, and exfiltrating: Sounds like cyber-cat burglars, or perhaps invisible cyber-SEALS, as in that U.S. Navy “empty beach at night” commercial. This is consistent with an Air Force-sponsored concept paper on “network-centric warfare,” which posits the deployment of so-called “cyber-craft” in cyberspace to “disable terminals, nodes or the entire network as well as send commands to ‘fry’ their hard drives.” Somebody clever with acronyms came up with D5, an all-encompassing term that embraces the ability to deceive, deny, disrupt, degrade, and destroy an enemy’s computer information systems.

No one, it seems, is the least bit worried that a single-minded pursuit of cyber-”destruction” – analogous to that “crush, kill, destroy” android on the 1960s TV series “Lost in Space” – could create a new arena for that old Cold War nuclear acronym MAD (mutually assured destruction), as America’s enemies and rivals seek to D5 our terminals, nodes, and networks.

Here’s another less-than-comforting thought: America’s new Cyber Force will most likely be widely distributed in basing terms. In fact, the Air Force prefers a “headquarters” spread across several bases here in the U.S., thereby cleverly tapping the political support of more than a few members of Congress.

Finally, if, after all this talk of the need for “information dominance” and the five D’s, you still remain skeptical, the Air Force has prepared an online “What Do You Think?” survey and quiz (paid for, again, by you, the taxpayer, of course) to silence naysayers and cyberspace appeasers. It will disabuse you of the notion that the Internet is a somewhat benign realm where cooperation of all sorts, including the international sort, is possible. You’ll learn, instead, that we face nothing but ceaseless hostility from cyber-thugs seeking to terrorize all of us everywhere all the time.

Of Ugly Babies, Icebergs, and Air Force Computer Systems

Computers and their various networks are unquestionably vital to our national defense – indeed, to our very way of life – and we do need to be able to protect them from cyber attacks. In addition, striking at an enemy’s ability to command and control its forces has always been part of warfare. But spending $6 billion a year for five years on a mini-Manhattan Project to atomize our opponents’ computer networks is an escalatory boondoggle of the worst sort.

Leaving aside the striking potential for the abuse of privacy, or the potentially destabilizing responses of rivals to such aggressive online plans, the Air Force’s militarization of cyberspace is likely to yield uncertain technical benefits at inflated prices, if my experience working on two big Air Force computer projects counts for anything. Admittedly, that experience is a bit dated, but keep in mind that the wheels of procurement reform at the Department of Defense (DoD) do turn slowly, when they turn at all.

Two decades ago, while I was at the Space Surveillance Center in Cheyenne Mountain, the Air Force awarded a contract to update our computer system. The new system, known as SPADOC 4, was, as one Air Force tester put it, the “ugly baby.” Years later, and no prettier, the baby finally came on-line, part of a Cheyenne Mountain upgrade that was hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. One Air Force captain described it in the following way:

“The SPADOC system was designed very poorly in terms of its human machine interface [leading to] a lot of work arounds that make learning the system difficult. [Fortunately,] people are adaptable and they can learn to operate a poorly designed machine, like SPADOC, [but the result is] increased training time, increased stress for the operators, increased human errors under stress and unused machine capabilities.”

My second experience came a decade ago, when I worked on the Air Force Mission Support System or AFMSS. The idea was to enable pilots to plan their missions using the latest tools of technology, rather than paper charts, rulers, and calculators. A sound idea, but again botched in execution.

The Air Force tried to design a mission planner for every platform and mission, from tankers to bombers. To meet such disparate needs took time, money, and massive computing power, so the Air Force went with Unix-based SPARC platforms, which occupied a small room. The software itself was difficult to learn, even counter-intuitive. While the Air Force struggled, year after year, to get AFMSS to work, competitors came along with PC-based flight planners, which provided 80% of AFMSS’s functionality at a fraction of the cost. Naturally, pilots began clamoring for the portable, easy-to-learn PC system.

Fundamentally, the whole DoD procurement cycle had gone wrong – and there lies a lesson for the present cyber-moment. The Pentagon is fairly good at producing decent ships, tanks, and planes (never mind the typical cost overruns, the gold-plating, and so on). After all, an advanced ship or tank, even deployed a few years late, is normally still an effective weapon. But a computer system a few years late? That’s a paperweight or a doorstop. That’s your basic disaster. Hence the push for the DoD to rely, whenever possible, on COTS, or commercial-off-the-shelf, software and hardware.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying it’s only the Pentagon that has trouble designing, acquiring, and fielding new computer systems. Think of it as a problem of large, by-the-book bureaucracies. Just look at the FBI’s computer debacle attempting (for years) to install new systems that failed disastrously, or for that matter the ever more imperial Microsoft’s struggles with Vista.

Judging by my past experience with large-scale Air Force computer projects, that $30 billion will turn out to be just the tip of the cyber-war procurement iceberg and, while you’re at it, call those “five years” of development 10. Shackled to a multi-year procurement cycle of great regulatory rigidity and complexity, the Air Force is likely to struggle but fail to keep up with the far more flexible and creative cyber world, which almost daily sees the fielding of new machines and applications.

Loving Big “Cyber” Brother

Our military is the ultimate centralized, bureaucratic, hierarchical organization. Its tolerance for errors and risky or “deviant” behavior is low. Its culture is designed to foster obedience, loyalty, regularity, and predictability, all usually necessary in handling frantic life-or-death combat situations. It is difficult to imagine a culture more antithetical to the world of computer developers, programmers, and hackers.

So expect a culture clash in militarized cyberspace – and more taxpayers’ money wasted – as the Internet and the civilian computing world continue to outpace anything the DoD can muster. If, however, the Air Force should somehow manage to defy the odds and succeed, the future might be even scarier.

After all, do we really want the military to dominate cyberspace? Let’s say we answer “yes” because we love our big “Above All” cyber brother. Now, imagine you’re Chinese or Indian or Russian. Would you really cede total cyber dominance to the United States without a fight? Not likely. You would simply launch – or intensify – your own cyber war efforts.

Interestingly, a few people have surmised that the Air Force’s cyber war plans are so outlandish they must be bluster – a sort of warning shot to competitors not to dare risk a cyber attack on the U.S., because they’d then face cyber obliteration.

Yet it’s more likely that the Air Force is quite sincere in promoting its $30 billion “mini-Manhattan” cyber-war project. It has its own private reasons for attempting to expand into a new realm (and so create new budget authority as well). After all, as a service, it’s been somewhat marginalized in the War on Terror. Today’s Air Force is in a flat spin, its new planes so expensive that relatively few can be purchased, its pilots increasingly diverted to “fly” Predators and Reapers – unmanned aerial vehicles – its top command eager to ward off the threat of future irrelevancy.

But even in cyberspace, irrelevancy may prove the name of the game. Judging by the results of previous U.S. military-run computer projects, future Air Force “cyber-craft” may prove more than a day late and billions of dollars short.

White man jumps from plane with no parachute, dies

Why do white people do such selfish things?

DUANESBURG, N.Y. – A 29-year-old man leaped out of a plane at 10,000 feet with a camera but no parachute Saturday. His body was found next to a house with a damaged roof, police said.

Sloan Carafello of Schenectady, who was observing on the flight, followed an instructor, student and videographer out the door, wearing no skydiving gear, officials said.

Police said they did not suspect foul play but would not elaborate.

Robert Rawlins, pilot and owner of the Duanesburg Skydiving Club, said he was flying the single-engine plane and had begun to close the door when Carafello jumped.

His body was found next to a house west of Albany.

White man murders wife and baby daughter

More white family values in action? Why would a happily married man need porn?

British man Neil Entwistle is about to go on trial in the US accused of murdering his wife and baby daughter, but some question whether the media speculation around the case has made a fair trial impossible.

In January 2006, the Entwistles appeared to be a happy family with a bright future.

They had just rented a large, attractive home in the quiet hamlet of Hopkinton, a suburb of Boston. It was near Rachel Entwistle’s parents.

Neil Entwistle was looking for an IT job and on their own website they called themselves “the happy couple”.

But prosecutors claim this outward image of suburban bliss hid a darker side to Neil Entwistle.

Sex websites

Court papers, made available by the prosecution, claim a police examination of Mr Entwistle’s computer revealed that, in the days before the killings, he had searched online for ways to commit suicide and “how to kill with a knife”.

It is claimed the computer examination also revealed that during the same time he contacted several sex websites, looking for casual partners.

And it is claimed Mr Entwistle corresponded with another person via a site claiming to be “the world’s largest sex and swingers community”.

Mr Entwistle is said to have posted on the site that he was in a “current relationship but looking for a bit more fun in the bedroom”.

Court papers released previously, and widely reported, suggest Mr Entwistle’s interest in sex with strangers continued when he flew to the UK, that he had a page from a British tabloid containing dozens of numbers for escort agencies.

It is also claimed he was trying to track down an old girlfriend.

In addition, prosecutors say, police investigations revealed Neil Entwistle had run up debts of tens of thousands of dollars and that, instead of returning to the US for the funerals of his wife and nine-month-old daughter, he sent a fax to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Boston relinquishing all responsibility for burial arrangements.

The defence has tried to have much of this evidence ruled inadmissible: seeking partners outside marriage, it claims, may show no more than a wish to spice up one’s sex life.

Mainly, though, the defence has kept quiet about its case.

But court papers suggest Mr Entwistle told police he had come home after running an errand to find his wife and daughter shot dead; that rather than call for help, he covered their bodies with bed clothes, fetched a knife to kill himself, but could not go through with it.

Later that same day Mr Entwistle drove to Boston’s Logan International Airport, left his car there, bought a one-way ticket and, early the next morning, flew to London.

He had no luggage.

Neil Entwistle went to his parents’ home in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. From there he spoke to American police. At this point officers said he was a “person of interest” but not a suspect.

‘Infected’

Prosecutors say he told friends and police two different versions of what happened after he said he discovered the bodies.

After three weeks in the UK, during which the case attracted intense media interest, Neil Entwistle was arrested, sent back to the US and charged with the two murders and related firearms offences. He denies the charges.

We know so much already because American law allows details of a trial to be reported before it starts.

It is very different from British law, where the Contempt of Court Act prevents publication or broadcasting of any but the barest facts after an arrest is made.

In this case, those differences have led to questions in the British press about whether Neil Entwistle will get a fair trial.

It is a claim made by his lawyer Elliot Weinstein too. He has repeatedly and publicly made the point that this trial can never be fair because there has been so much pre-publicity and it takes place close to where the murders happened.

He has failed in his attempts to have the trial moved further away, and has said he believes the juror pool is “impermissibly infected”.

Even the judge Diane Kottmyer has acknowledged difficulties in finding an objective panel of 16 (12 jurors and four alternates).

She talked of how they had “exhausted” the juror pool: more than 200 people have taken part.

‘Fry him’

Several were excused from service because they admitted they had already formed opinions about the case.

It has led to some drama even before the trial’s opening statements.

In front of Neil Entwistle himself, one man said: “I think he’s guilty and I’m unlikely to change my opinion.”

Another man, of the same view, said, as the accused sat less than 20ft (7m) away: “God help me if I’m wrong, God help him if I’m right.”

And outside court a woman repeated to reporters what she’d told the judge: that she had heard other potential jurors say “fry him”.

It has been claimed in both British and American newspapers that the defence’s complaints about fairness could be grounds for a later appeal.

First, of course, the trial must actually take place.

Suspect in Tennessee deputy’s fatal shooting dies

This is the first white guy I’ve seen named “Kermit.”

MONTEAGLE, Tenn. – A man suspected of killing a sheriff’s deputy and wounding another officer has died after shooting himself at the end of a daylong manhunt.

Kermit Bryson died Friday around 12:30 a.m. at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, house supervisor David Trillet said.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director Mark Gwyn said agents found Bryson behind his girlfriend’s house Thursday evening and negotiated with him for about 20 minutes before he shot himself in the head.

Federal, state and local authorities launched a manhunt for Bryson after the Thursday morning shooting death of Grundy County sheriff’s deputy Shane Tate, 28.

Gwyn said officers did not fire any shots during the negotiations in Monteagle, a town of 1,200 people along Interstate 24 about 35 miles northwest of Chattanooga.

“We gave it the best effort we could,” Gwyn said.

Tate died at a mobile home where he was trying to take Bryson into custody on a probation violation warrant.

Officers had been looking for Bryson for six to eight months when they found him around 3 a.m. Thursday at a mobile home in Monteagle.

Shots were fired and Tate died at the scene, Gwyn said.

Monteagle Police Officer Brian Malhoit was grazed by a bullet but not seriously hurt. A reserve deputy also at the scene wasn’t injured.

Gwyn said there were other people in the home at the time of the shooting, although he declined to identify them.

Within hours of the shooting, armed officers were using dogs and helicopters to comb the rugged area at the southern end of the Cumberland Plateau in what TBI spokeswoman Kristin Helm described as “an absolute all-out manhunt.”

A neighbor and longtime friend of Bryson’s said shooting someone would be out of character for him.

“He’s not a bad guy. He had to freak out in some way,” said Tim D. Sanders, 30, before authorities found Bryson.

Sanders said he and Bryson spent weekends in jail together last summer and that the slain deputy was the jailer. He said Tate and Bryson were friendly.

Bryson’s criminal record includes convictions for theft, burglary and a jail escape in 2001.

Grundy County Mayor Ladue Bouldin said Tate was married with five young children and had graduated from Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy just two weeks ago.

Probation officials said the warrant was issued for Bryson because he failed drug screens and violated curfew while on probation for a 2007 felony marijuana possession charge.

Helm said the three officers approached Bryson’s mobile home carefully and made their way inside. Officers often serve warrants early in the morning, expecting that suspects will be asleep.

“The officer was actually shot inside the residence,” she said.

Bryson’s former mother-in-law, Marcia Crowe, said Bryson was married to her daughter for about a year before they divorced several years ago, and they have a 10-year-old daughter.

“I saw it on TV and I just couldn’t believe it,” Crowe, a 57-year-old from Dayton, said in a phone interview Thursday. “I expected him to steal, do dope and stuff like that, but I never thought he would kill someone.”

Brian Grisham, director of the training academy, called Tate a good officer and person.

“He seemed enthusiastic about what he was about to do,” Grisham said.

Jury acquits White terrorist of covering up Iraq killings

What else can be expected from white kangaroo courts?

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – A Marine intelligence officer has been acquitted of charges that he tried to help cover up the killings of 24 Iraqi men, women and children.

A jury of seven officers delivered the verdict Wednesday in favor of 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson after more than five hours of deliberation.

Grayson, who has always maintained he did nothing wrong, was not present at the scene of the killings on Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha. He was accused of telling a sergeant to delete photographs of the dead from a digital camera and laptop computer.

Grayson was found not guilty of two counts of making false official statements, two counts of trying to fraudulently separate from service, and one count of attempt to deceive by making false statements.

Grayson’s lies hindered the investigation into the deaths, prosecutor Lt. Col. Paul H. Atterbury told the jury.

Prosecutors said Grayson also lied five times to investigators before admitting he ordered the photos deleted.

“Gentlemen, why would an otherwise promising officer make a statement like that? The government’s argument is that it was to avoid accountability,” Atterbury said.

The statements came a day after a judge reduced charges against Grayson, dismissing a charge of obstruction of justice.

The judge, Maj. Brian Kasprzyk, did not explain why he dropped the charge. He told the jury Wednesday shortly before closing arguments that they should not infer anything from his decision.

Grayson’s court-martial was the biggest U.S. criminal case involving Iraqi deaths to come out of the war.

Killings followed roadside blast
The Haditha killings occurred after a roadside bomb killed a Marine and wounded two others.

After the bombing, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich and a squad member allegedly shot five men near a car at the scene, investigators said. Wuterich then allegedly ordered his men into several houses, where they cleared rooms with grenades and gunfire, killing the Iraqis, including women and children.

Four enlisted Marines initially were charged with murder in the case and four officers were charged with failing to investigate the deaths. Charges were dropped against five of the Marines but remain against Grayson, Wuterich and Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani.

Still to face court-martial are Wuterich, whose charges include voluntary manslaughter, and Chessani, who has been charged with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order on allegations he mishandled the aftermath of the shooting deaths.

Chessani was the battalion commander.

Dutch man injures posterior in mooning accident

Why do White people like to show their behinds to others?

UTRECHT, Netherlands – Utrecht police say a 21-year-old Dutch man is recovering after a “mooning” that went horribly wrong.

A police statement says the man and two others had run down a street in Utrecht with their pants pulled down in the back “for a joke.”

It says that at one point the 21-year-old “pushed his behind against the window of a restaurant” that broke and resulted in “deep wounds to his derriere.”

The statement released Tuesday says police detained the three men after the incident Sunday morning. But the cafe owner decided not to press charges after the men agreed to pay for the broken window.

The injured man was treated for his injuries at a nearby hospital.

Laying pipe with a smile

Police hunt for white robbers wearing thongs as masks

Whatever happened to respectable ski masks and stockings?

ARVADA, Colo. – Police in a Colorado town are searching for two robbers whose masks showed plenty of fashion sense but little modesty: women’s thong underwear

A surveillance video released this week by police in Arvada, Colo., shows two unarmed men inside the convenience store. They stole an undisclosed amount of cash and cigarettes in the robbery May 16.

One man wore a green thong and the other wore blue. Each thong barely covered the man’s nose, mouth and chin and left the rest of his face exposed. One also wore a pink backpack in which he stuffed the stolen items.

The suspects also wore T-shirts and pants and were described as in their 20s. One had a left arm tattoo.