Tobin Censor

there is a sinister thing that happens to me when i utilize the wifi at the Tobin Library. now understand im not a hacker nor a white hat even,really not that savvy tech wise. my macbook though its snow leopard so it'll be phased out eventually,it still works and gets online to surf and post to my blog page. the browser just cant upload video anymore.yeah bummer i know.but it works still ok. 

however, at the tobin library it wont let me even find my blog. cant post from there to my blog. but it let me surf the net. the next day i went elsewhere, with the same macbook and got online and was able to post to my blog. 

and at this same tobin library i always have difficultly utilizing the wifi with my chrome tablet. same chrome tablet gets hijacked at the brady green, or works fine elsewhere depending if the hackers mess with me or not.WTF?!somebody is targeting my IP address's and trying to censor me…really. hey you pansi fascist have you ever heard of the 1st Amendment. history repeats itself and these are rerun times it seems to me. with protest and a war that wages on and on. some folk want times to be like they were in the 50s again. i wasn't born yet. but that was when jim crow was alive and well. however,now it seems that jim crow is seeing a resurgence.i have encountered it.the 50s was also the age of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. folks were labeled communist and blacklisted,many of em were artist.personally i rather not be an object lesson for you CENSOR since you didn't pay attention in history class.

really Hillary?

how is it that Hillary Clinton is seemingly getting away with this?! she set up her own private server and sent classified email on the internet from her personal email account, then lied about having done so. and when they investigate they claim their  having difficulty proving it. why hasn't she been charged with espionage, otherwise violating national security and arrested. instead she continues to lie and campaign for office of president.

since, she's allowed to do this let me put this out there: hey Ed Snowden  why not run for office, apparently politicians are allowed to expose classified national security documents online with impunity, no crime was committed according to Clinton. 

as for the investigators having trouble finding the incriminating documents hey people Snowden informed us that the NSA is eaves dropping on everybody.So did Clinton bribe these investigators to look the other way and not find the incriminating stuff?is there a separate hard drive hidden away with the classified stuff on it?

how can the criminal charges against Ed Snowden stand when Hillary Clinton is getting away with all this.!

Fight for our privacy,Americans,or lose it

Fight for our privacy,Americans,or lose it

by Eugene Robinson

eugenrobinson@washpost.com

It seems our elected officials have no intention of reining in the National Security

Agency's mad-scientist quest to know everything about our communications and

movements. If we want our privacy back, we're going to have to fight for it.

Months after Edward Snowden spilled the beans, the NSA- whose mission is 

supposed to be foreign surveillance-is still compiling a  comprehensive record of our domestic phone calls. Every time you dial, the government can find out who, what, when and where.

We hear a lot of patronizing talk from President Obama and other officials about how healthy it is that we're finally having a debate about surveillance and privacy, about security and freedom. The subtext,however,is clear: Get over it.

Interviewed Sunday on "Meet the Press," former NSA Director Michael Hayden offered a stunningly dismissive view of the Fourth Amendment: "We're protected against unreasonable search and seizure,all right? It doesn't say that all searches must be based upon reasonable suspicion. So now, unreasonable search and seizure depends upon the totality of circumstances in which you find yourself."

My circumstances, in their totality,are these:sitting on the couch,minding my own business. What am I doing to deserve an electronic stop-and-frisk?

Thanks to Snowden,we know that the NSA not only pressures phone and Internet companies to hand over data,but also secretly taps into fiber optic communications lines and sucks up as much information,both domestic and foreign,as it can swallow.And we learned earlier this month,courtesy of the Washington Post,that data concerning at least some Americans is ingested as the NSA collects some 5 billion cellphone location records per day.

Bills in the House and Senate to curb the NSA's bulk collection of private phone data appear to have no chance-for now-of getting past the grandees of intelligence committees,Sen.Dianne Feinstein,D-Calif.,and Rep.Mike Rogers,R-Mich.,both of whom vigorously defend the NSA's practices.

As for Obama,he has worked to give the NSA surveillance more of a legal foundation than it had under the Bush administration-but not to curb it.

In the time since Snowden's revelations,no one has effectively made the case that

keeping a log of all our phone calls is necessary.Officials have yet to provide convincing evidence that the program has discovered and prevented an act of terrorism in the United States. 

The theory is supposed to be that only by assembling a big enough "haystack" of data can the elusive "needles" be found: patterns of calls,movements and connections that signal a potential terrorist strike. In reality,though,what seems to happen is that our intelligence agencies get some tidbit of information through other means,perhaps a name or a phone number, and then sift through the NSA data for evidence of a plot.

This scenario is actually a targeted search for which the spooks should have no trouble obtaining a warrant.Storing all that communications data in-house seems more a convenience than a necessity.

As I read the Constitution,though,it's supposed to be inconvenient for the government to invade our privacy.

A federal judge in Washington ruled Monday that the government's widespread

collection of telephone records is likely unconstitutional,but stayed a preliminary injunction while the government appeals.

Meanwhile,what can we do about it?For a start,we can demand to see all of the secret FISA court rulings that make domestic surveillance possible.When we learn what these documents say,privacy advocates can challenge them in court.

We should let our elected representatives know that while domestic surveillance is currently deemed "lawful," it is a betrayal of our traditions and values.We can let our  phone and Internet companies know that we expect them to fight as hard as they can for privacy.

It's simple: Either we demand our privacy-loudly-or we kiss it goodbye.

Police Misconduct

file://localhost/tmp/PreviewPasteboardItems/Police_Misconduct_in_San_Antonio-TCRP_Human_Rights_Report.pdf

POLICE MISCONDUCT IN SAN ANTONIO

THE NEED FOR MORE ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND RESPONSIVENESS

A TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT 2011 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT

WE ARE INDEBTED TO JOANNE HEISEY, RYAN NOVOTNY, ELOISE SANTA MARIA, DEREK MILLER, MELISSA RODRIGUEZ, KEVIN BLODGETT, JANINE WETZEL, AND NICHOLAS JACKSON, WHO COLLABORATED ON THE RESEARCH AND WRITING OF THIS REPORT.

Special thanks to the many organizations and individuals who contributed their knowledge, insight, and stories to this report, including:

Jaime Martínez, Founder, Cesar E. Chavez Legacy and Educational Foundation

Henry Rodriguez, Civil Rights Chair, and George Alejos, Housing Council, LULAC of Texas

M. Lynn Blanco, Miriam Elizondo, Carmen Vasquez, Deana Buril, and Sherrill Case, The Rape Crisis Center in San Antonio

Patrick Filyk and Edward Piña, Attorneys, former Presidents, ACLU San Antonio chapter

Ruby Krebs, former President, San Antonio Gender Association, member of SAPD Citizen Action Advisory Board

Mario Salas, Adjunct Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio, civil rights leader, and author

Jack Ryan, Captain (Ret) Providence, RI Police Department, Co-Director of Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute, Attorney

Timothy Maher, Associate Teaching Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Elena Guajardo and Dee Villarrubia, Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus Oliver W. Hill, President, NAACP of San Antonio Margo Frasier, Austin Police Monitor

Texas Civil Rights Project The Michael Tigar Human Rights Center 1405 Montopolis Drive Austin, TX 78741

www.texascivilrightsproject.org

(512) 474 5073 (phone) (512) 474 0726 (fax)

© Texas Civil Rights Project, 2011 All Rights Reserved

Executive Summary

A string of incidents in the past few years has revealed a troubling pattern of misconduct by San Antonio police officers, ranging from illegal searches and sexual misconduct to unresponsiveness and indifference to victims. The thread connecting these incidents is the fact that better supervision, accountability, and transparency by SAPD could have prevented them. The Texas Civil Rights Project has documented many of these events, discovered through media reports, accounts from community members, SAPD records, and its own intake process.

A review of SAPD’s response to many of these incidents shows that misconduct is often addressed too late — after an officer does something egregious, and too late for the department to try and remedy the officer’s dangerous habits and tendencies. SAPD itself has commissioned a number of independent auditors to study some of these issues. To its credit, some changes are beginning to take place, though many reforms have not yet been considered, fallen by the wayside, or have yet to be implemented.

This report discusses a departmental culture that protects its own and is unwelcoming of supervision. Citizens report a variety of problems in dealing with the police, often when they are the victims and especially when they attempt to lodge complaints against the police. Internal Affairs’ policies and practices create a hostile environment for individuals reporting possible police misconduct. The agency also suffers from a serious lack of transparency that impedes public scrutiny, and many roadblocks protect officers against the possibility of serious repercussions for most of their actions.

SAPD’s current police chief, William McManus, has made efforts to move the department in the right direction by listening to citizens’ concerns and pushing for changes. In order to encourage continued improvement on this front, this report provides forty-one (41) specific recommendations that address institutional problems in SAPD’s culture, training, and policies. The recommended changes focus on the following areas:

• improving the investigation of citizen complaints through greater autonomy for investigators and providing better information and follow-up for complainants;

• increasing supervisor accountability for misconduct by subordinates when the supervisor fails to report or address it;

• facilitating supervisors’ oversight of police officers through the creation of standardized disciplinary guidelines and better monitoring of officers’ job performance;

• supporting officers in dealing with the challenges and pressures of law enforcement through access to mental health services, employee assistance programs, and supervisor training; and,

• equipping officers to deal better with victims and groups who are subject to discrimination, through regular in-service training and partnerships with community organizations, and adding two victim liaisons to the police force.

Note on Sources & Methods

TCRP conducted a broad investigation with the dual goals of documenting the forms of police misconduct prevalent in San Antonio and identifying improvements and best practices to stop these problems from continuing to occur.

A significant part of the factual information gathered for this report comes from SAPD and Internal Affairs records obtained through open government requests.

In addition, TCRP interviewed a large network of community leaders and organizations in San Antonio to learn more about the problems faced most frequently by different constituencies, some of which are not widely discussed in the news media.

TCRP’s own intake process and legal advocacy informed this report on specific issues.

Lastly, this report’s analysis and recommendations takes into account other recent studies of SAPD, including reports by the PERF committee and the Matrix Consulting Group.

More information on select references is available in the Appendix and on our website, http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/go/sapd.

group dynamics in action

As for why the KKK would attack my friend Benny's family made absolutely no sense to me then, and it still doesn't. At that time, the USA was in the midst of the civil rights movement; the Klan was known to attack black people. However, Benny was chubby,fair skinned with freckles, dark brown hair, blue eyes and of Puerto Rican descent. His little brother Paco was brown like me with brown hair and eyes. His mom was fair ash blonde hazel eyes.

I kept asking why? Paco would play with his toy dump trucks and the dirt, under the big tree,lots of shade, in their front yard every day. Maybe, they thought he was black,when he was just a little Puerto Rican kid. Puerto Ricans come in various shades of melanin,surprise, really; as do other Latinos.[ I use Latino because the government definition of Hispanic denies the link to Spain, Portugal and France,  western europe whites. Spain and France once ruled Mexico. And Portugal once ruled Brazil.]

But what I've come to realize is that when it comes to violence from a group of people, that group dynamics come into play.The anonymity of the costume/disguises their faces. Hence,it accentuates the feeling that the perpetrators likely held, that they would not be held responsible for these terrible acts of violence.As well as the prior history of the Klan, which proved to them that they would not face prosecution.

Hammond Times newspaper has archives documenting this terrible event. I'm just 

an unidentifiable shadow in the black and white grainy photo.

make cookies stop the hate

during the fall of '66 i was in 1st grade.that was the year when my front baby teeth fell out all around the same time,leaving me without front teeth for most of the year. that was when i still thought my dad was superman.

one day that fall i walked home from school for lunch.my friend Benny's family lived down block from us; only he took his lunch with him that day so he stayed at school.

there was a giant burning cross erected in his front yard. curious and angry i went down to his house,hoping to help my friends family in time.the KuKluxKlan raped his mom in front of me and Paco, Benny's 4yrs old brother. me and Paco each threw toy pickup trucks at him, trying to hit his head and knock him out and rescue her. toys against evil. then the creep tied us up to some chairs. as he was tying me up i squirmed and grabbed a extra loop of the rope,plus i had on my winter coat already,so as to make my chance of escape. then he set about to setting the very house on fire with us trapped inside. i managed to squirm loose,i tried to undo the  knots on Paco, i couldn't they were tight. so i ran out, 2 yards behind the Klansman.

they were getting their photo taken for the local newspaper [Hammond,IN] next to the burning cross! 

being royally pissed off i yanked the nearest pointy hat off of one of em and threw it at the flames and yelled at em 'liar liar pants on fire' and ran away.surprise,the white klan outfit is flammable.i got away while they put out the flames on one of their own.Benny's house burned to the ground that day in broad daylight. the fire department was five minutes away.either they were out on a call putting out a fire somewheres else,or the fire department was in on it; as in they set the fire,or were complicit in the arson/murders.

i tried to call the FBI when i got home,thinking that they would come immediately and catch the bad guys down the street.my mom stopped me from calling em. i called her a coward and got spanked for that. it was only later on after  3 dead college students bodies were found in the south,[they were freedom riders: and had gone to the south to register black voters to vote] and it was  revealed to the rest of the country that the FBI was corrupt and some were complicit in the death of these 3.at the time and for a long time afterwards i blamed my mom for not calling the police when the Klan showed up and erected that cross in Benny's front yard.and for not letting me call the FBI.

i had to eat lunch and go back to school after going through that. Benny didn't know his house was gone,his mom and brother dead.i had to take a letter from my mom to explain my being late and traumatized.

for día de los muertos i think there should be chocolate cookies with nuts shaped like the klansmen with skull faces made with white icing. bite their heads off and stop the hate.make tacos not war,or cookies...

the blog censor

the blog censor

once upon a time in the USA there existed freedom of the press,including free speech. citizens counted on the Bill of Rights and the1st Amendment protections that it offered us.

for a time we enjoyed the ability to be able to blog about stuff and communicate with others online without censorship. 

but now i must announce with great sadness,that this is no longer the case.although i don't know exactly who the blog censor ,sic moderator is, yes the word moderator did appear on my screen as i attempted to post the offending lines of text to my own blog.

when was the moderator instituted?what is this?its my blog!

of course there is self restraint. maybe some things should not be posted online.

it occurred to me to post a story about what happened to me in '66 during my own encounter with the KKK because once again someone is tagging swastikas and these three letters KKK in our great city of San Antonio,TX/both near synagogs and on the east side in a predominantly black neighborhood.by the way if you buy me some spay paint i will paint a pretty mural over those tags for you.

the Klan once had the audacity to have a parade and rally in Skokie,IL a predominantly Jewish area.they went to court and got a permit because they also have the right to express their opinion even though a lot of people are offended by it. 

guess what we who are offended by the Klan also have the right to have parades too.when they have a rally again how about their opponents parade behind em wearing colorful pointy hats togas and blow those big plastic horns and kazoos.and  make fun of em.actually i think that was done at their last rally.so next time maybe dress like the storm troopers from star wars, darth vader ,all comic con,muertitos,or monty python.always look on the bright side of life. we have an artist who made neon signs that said make tacos not war to protest against the vietnam war.don't forget the dancing dragons from the chinatown parades.squirt guns with food coloring or paintballs to stain the Klans white sheets sounds like fun,