Mujeres no me faltan, ni el dinero, ni el amor. Pourvu que ça dure !
Source : Los Lobos & Antonio Banderas (Cancion del mariachi, Desperado de Robert Rodriguez).
mercredi 31 octobre 2007
Le retour des pieds nickelés
Deux voleurs armés seulement de ketchup ont tenté de dérober la recette d'un supermarché en tendant une embuscade à un employé sur le chemin de la banque, a rapporté la police grecque.
"Les malfaiteurs ont surgi des fourrés et jeté deux gros sacs remplis de ketchup sur le pare-brise pour arrêter la voiture", a déclaré un responsable des autorités sous couvert d'anonymat.
L'employé s'est débattu avant que ses agresseurs ne prennent la fuite à moto, avec à peine 400 euros sur les 140.000 euros qu'il transportait.
"Les malfaiteurs ont surgi des fourrés et jeté deux gros sacs remplis de ketchup sur le pare-brise pour arrêter la voiture", a déclaré un responsable des autorités sous couvert d'anonymat.
L'employé s'est débattu avant que ses agresseurs ne prennent la fuite à moto, avec à peine 400 euros sur les 140.000 euros qu'il transportait.
Source : Reuters (30 octobre 2007).
dimanche 28 octobre 2007
Wonderland murders.
John Holmes and the Wonderland Murders.
A casual passerby wouldn't notice the house at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles' rustic Laurel Canyon. The white stucco, two-story structure blended generically into the neighborhood around it, a favorite of television producers, character actors, and other minor Hollywood cogs.
But a closer look at the house would have revealed several peculiarities. The stairway leading to the front door was encased in a metal cage and patrolled by a pair of snarling pit bulls. Visitors were required to use an intercom at the bottom of the cage to announce themselves, and, if welcome, the dogs were retired and they were buzzed through an electronic deadbolt. Then there were the denizens of the house, a tough crowd that slept all day and partied all night.
To the cops, 8763 Wonderland was a renowned drug den.
To the public, the address would become synonymous with a crime that horrified even the most jaded Angeleno: In July 1981, four people were bludgeoned to death as they slept in the house.
LAPD announced their primary suspect in the grisly killings: legendary porn star John C. Holmes.
(...)
A little after 4 a.m. on July 1, 1981, three or more intruders one of whom may or may not have been John Holmes crept into 8763 Wonderland carrying lead pipes.
They went from one room to the next, bashing in the brains of the sleeping occupants until four were dead and one was critically wounded. The bloodbath was so profuse that the walls, floors and ceilings were dripping red and the victim's faces were caved in.
A next-door neighbor told police he heard "thumping and groaning," but assumed it was just another wild night at the notorious party house and went back to bed.
Another neighbor later testified in court that she heard screams and looked out the window to see lights on in the house. Annoyed by having her sleep disrupted yet again by the crowd at 8763, she turned on her television to drown out their death throes.
Two female guests had the misfortune of visiting the Wonderland residence on that fatal night--a friend of Lind's, Barbara Richardson, 22, and Launius' estranged wife Susan, 25, who'd arrived from Northern California the day before.
It wasn't until that afternoon -- nearly 12 hours after the attack that a professional mover who was working next door heard moans coming from 8763 and noticed the unrelenting barking of the pit bulls. He found the door ajar, and walked into the living room, where he stumbled across Richardson's body on the sofa.
In an upstairs bedroom, investigators found the body of Miller sprawled on a bed and Deverell lying in a corner of the same room.
In the rear bedroom of the first floor, they found Ronald Launius dead on a bed, and beside him, horribly mutilated but still breathing, his wife Susan.
The police were so overwhelmed by the amount of blood -- which literally trailed from room to room -- that they videotaped it. The grainy tape was used at the trial, marking the first time in American history that a video record of a murder scene was admitted as evidence in criminal trial.
All four victims had drug records, detectives told the media.
David Lind, the thug from Sacramento, narrowly missed being killed. He'd spent the night with a prostitute at a motel in the San Fernando Valley, where he'd transacted several drug deals earlier that evening, he told the cops. During the same interview, he told them about the Nash break-in.
The detectives investigating the case had one pressing question: Where was John Holmes during the killings?
Source : Julia Scheeres.
La Ligue vous conseille de déguster cet article passionnant dans son intégralité, sur le site Crime Library : ici.
Ils attaquent.
Monkeys kill Delhi dy mayor.
A monkey attack reportedly claimed the life of Delhi’s deputy mayor SS Bajwa on Sunday morning. Bajwa had been admitted to Apollo Hospital on Saturday morning after he fell from the terrace of his house in Sarita Vihar and sustained severe head injuries.
Though Bajwa was alone on the terrace when the incident happened and there was no eyewitness, family members claimed a monkey attack caused his fall.
The first-time corporator from Anand Vihar was admitted to the ICU of Apollo Hospital at about 9 am on Saturday. Bajwa’s personal secretary Pawan Bhaskar said, “The deputy mayor’s condition had been critical after the fall and he was diagnosed with multiple organ failure. He was put on a ventilator hours after admission to the hospital. He expired at about 10 am on Sunday.”
Bajwa, 52, is survived by his wife and two sons. He was a businessman and also Delhi BJP’s vice-president. His last rites were performed at Nigambodh Ghat on Sunday evening.
“Bajwaji’s sudden and shocking demise is an irreparable loss to the party and to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). He was a very close associate and we would always look to him for guidance on all vital issues. He had a very good understanding of the city’s needs and problems, though he was relatively new to the MCD,” mayor Arti Mehra said.
The ever-increasing simian population in the national capital has been a concern for the MCD for a long time now. Even the Delhi high court has on several occasions pulled up the civic body and the Delhi government for failing to curb the monkey menace. The simian crisis has been brewing in Delhi with no other state ready to give shelter to the capital’s monkeys.
Even high-security areas such as the parliament building and almost the whole of Lutyen’s are facing the wrath of the simians. Mehra admitted that the monkey menace in the capital has indeed assumed serious proportions but said the MCD was almost helpless.
“We have only two monkey-catchers and there are thousands of monkeys out there. We have also asked the Centre and State governments to transfer monkeys to sanctuaries in other states, but no state is forthcoming,” said Mehra.
Source : DNA India (21 octobre 2007).
La nouvelle sur Times of India et CNN.
A monkey attack reportedly claimed the life of Delhi’s deputy mayor SS Bajwa on Sunday morning. Bajwa had been admitted to Apollo Hospital on Saturday morning after he fell from the terrace of his house in Sarita Vihar and sustained severe head injuries.
Though Bajwa was alone on the terrace when the incident happened and there was no eyewitness, family members claimed a monkey attack caused his fall.
The first-time corporator from Anand Vihar was admitted to the ICU of Apollo Hospital at about 9 am on Saturday. Bajwa’s personal secretary Pawan Bhaskar said, “The deputy mayor’s condition had been critical after the fall and he was diagnosed with multiple organ failure. He was put on a ventilator hours after admission to the hospital. He expired at about 10 am on Sunday.”
Bajwa, 52, is survived by his wife and two sons. He was a businessman and also Delhi BJP’s vice-president. His last rites were performed at Nigambodh Ghat on Sunday evening.
“Bajwaji’s sudden and shocking demise is an irreparable loss to the party and to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). He was a very close associate and we would always look to him for guidance on all vital issues. He had a very good understanding of the city’s needs and problems, though he was relatively new to the MCD,” mayor Arti Mehra said.
The ever-increasing simian population in the national capital has been a concern for the MCD for a long time now. Even the Delhi high court has on several occasions pulled up the civic body and the Delhi government for failing to curb the monkey menace. The simian crisis has been brewing in Delhi with no other state ready to give shelter to the capital’s monkeys.
Even high-security areas such as the parliament building and almost the whole of Lutyen’s are facing the wrath of the simians. Mehra admitted that the monkey menace in the capital has indeed assumed serious proportions but said the MCD was almost helpless.
“We have only two monkey-catchers and there are thousands of monkeys out there. We have also asked the Centre and State governments to transfer monkeys to sanctuaries in other states, but no state is forthcoming,” said Mehra.
Source : DNA India (21 octobre 2007).
La nouvelle sur Times of India et CNN.
samedi 27 octobre 2007
On ne bouge plus...
Le Pérou a organisé un recensement de sa population, pour lequel le président Alan Garcia avait demandé aux habitants de rester chez eux pendant dix heures tandis qu'un demi-million d'étudiants bénévoles procédaient au comptage.
Ils recueillaient notamment des données sur les salaires, le niveau d'éducation, l'emploi, la religion et la situation matrimoniale des 27 millions de Péruviens.
Ils recueillaient notamment des données sur les salaires, le niveau d'éducation, l'emploi, la religion et la situation matrimoniale des 27 millions de Péruviens.
Le recensement a été critiqué, une partie de la presse accusant le président de vouloir invalider le précédent recensement de 2005 pour dissimuler son échec dans la lutte contre la pauvreté.
Le précédent recensement indiquait que la moitié des Péruviens étaient en situation de pauvreté, voire d'extrême pauvreté.
Dans les rues, la police "invitait" ceux qui s'aventuraient dehors à rentrer chez eux.
Le principal syndicat patronal de Lima a estimé que l'arrêt des activités du pays pour le recensement ferait perdre environ 83 millions de dollars à l'économie.
Source : Reuters (21 octobre 2007).
On peut aussi faire un tour dimanche 21 octobre 2007
Flavor II.
Someting left by Somethin.
Flavor Flav (de Public Enemy) est devenu le bachelor de l'émission de télé-réalité supertrash Flavor of Love.
Dans cet épisode culte, la candidate "Somethin" laisse un souvenir par terre sous le coup de l'émotion... Très classe.
Source : Flavor of Love (saison 2).
samedi 20 octobre 2007
Mapoooooouuuuuuka !
A la demande générale, la Ligue vous offre ce pur moment de bonheur.
Mapouka Mapouka.
Source : Kowe mapouka.
Jean-Claude.
"Adam et Eve, j'y crois plus. Je suis trop malin pour ça."
Un grand classique pour le week-end.
Source : TF1 (et MCM).
vendredi 19 octobre 2007
Dis moi ce que tu googlelises...
Sex, Nazi, burrito and Viagra: Who Googles what?
Internet users in Egypt, India and Turkey are the world's most frequent searchers for Web sites using the keyword "sex" on Google search engines, according to statistics provided by Google Inc.
Germany, Mexico and Austria were world's top three searchers of the word "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the "Google Trends" Web site showed.
Chile also came in first place searching for the word "gay", followed by Mexico and Colombia.
The top searchers for other keywords were as follows (in order from first to third place):
"Jihad" - Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan
"Terrorism" - Pakistan, Philippines, Australia
"Hangover" - Ireland, United Kingdom, United States
"Burrito" - United States, Argentina, Canada
"Iraq" - United States, Australia, Canada
"Taliban" - Pakistan, Australia, Canada
"Tom Cruise" - Canada, United States, Australia
"Britney Spears" - Mexico, Venezuela, Canada
"Homosexual" - Philippines, Chile, Venezuela
"Love" - Philippines, Australia, United States
"Botox" - Australia, United States, United Kingdom
"Viagra" - Italy, United Kingdom, Germany
"David Beckham" - Venezuela, United Kingdom, Mexico
"Kate Moss" - Ireland, United Kingdom, Sweden
"Dolly Buster" - Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia
"Car bomb" - Australia, United States, Canada
"Marijuana" - Canada, United States, Australia
"IAEA" - Austria, Pakistan, Iran.
Source : Reuters (17 octobre 2007).
Dans le trou !
La Ligue vous rappelle que la chasse à la brunette à l'aide de pièges est interdite en période de reproduction.
Source : ShaDang.
jeudi 18 octobre 2007
Sex Scandal in the Vatican: A Vatican priest pretends to be gay to better understand the far away world of homosexuality...
... or at least that's what he said:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/10/14/gay.monsignor.ap/index.html
Funniest bit: 'He said he had never been gay and was heterosexual, but remained faithful to his vow of celibacy'.
Riiiiiiight.
Senator Craig on Line 2.
lundi 15 octobre 2007
ELSA.
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Un oiseau, une "mouette" de 1 mètre de large et 60 centimètres de long, baptisé "Elsa". Ainsi décrit, le projet Engin léger pour la surveillance aérienne (ELSA) tient la vedette sur le stand de la police au salon Milipol consacré à la sécurité intérieure des Etats qui s'est ouvert à Paris, porte de Versailles, le 9 octobre. C'est un tout petit drone, muni d'une caméra, pas plus lourd qu'une bouteille d'eau, qui pourrait équiper, à terme, la police nationale pour surveiller à distance villes et quartiers.
"Nous ne sommes pas sur la ligne d'une surveillance de longue durée, de type militaire, assure Thierry Delville, chef des services de technologie de sécurité intérieure. C'est un outil supplémentaire pour les interventions de la police." ELSA servirait pour les grandes manifestations et rassemblements, mais aussi dans le cadre des violences urbaines telles qu'elles se sont déroulées en novembre 2005. Autres exemples de scénario d'emploi avancés par les spécialistes : la surveillance des abords d'une maison dans laquelle se seraient installés des terroristes ; le repérage des voitures brûlées ; ou bien un zoom sur un groupe de personnes, en marge d'une manifestation, pour repérer un porteur de cocktail Molotov. Le survol des zones urbaines étant soumis à autorisation, le drone ne devrait pas dépasser 150 mètres d'altitude, même si sa capacité peut atteindre 500 mètres. Avec une autonomie de 40 minutes, il peut balayer un rayon d'action de 2 kilomètres. Le type de caméra embarquée est variable, à infrarouge la nuit, à intensification de lumière dans la pénombre ou la grisaille...
"Les systèmes d'information et de communication, qui jouent un rôle vital dans la sécurité, doivent en permanence être améliorés pour résister aux performances croissantes des criminels", a affirmé la ministre de l'intérieur, Michèle Alliot-Marie, lors de l'inauguration du salon, en incluant d'emblée les engins légers de surveillance aérienne dans l'équipement des "commissariats du futur". Au mois d'août, la société Sirehna, basée à Nantes, a remporté l'appel d'offres pour réaliser ce prototype "silencieux et quasi indétectable" selon Jean-Pierre Le Goff, PDG de l'entreprise. Livré à la fin de l'année, le 15 décembre, il sera ensuite testé par les services de police avant d'être, le cas échéant, mis en service dans les commissariats, sans doute progressivement, en raison de son coût estimé à 10 000 euros.
Des expérimentations ont déjà eu lieu, toutes dans le département de Seine-Saint-Denis, au grand dam de plusieurs élus qui, disent-ils, n'avaient pas été "prévenus", et qui dénoncent une stigmatisation de quartiers réputés sensibles.
Le 14 juillet 2006, un avion de type Cesna, équipé d'une caméra vidéo télécommandée, avait ainsi survolé une portion du "9-3". Un scénario identique s'était ensuite reproduit le 31 décembre 2006 avec, cette fois, une caméra thermique embarquée pour déceler d'éventuels débordements et les voitures brûlées de la Saint-Sylvestre. Plus récemment, d'autres tests ont été effectués autour du Stade de France, pour la sécurité de la Coupe du monde de rugby. Pour les partisans de ce type de surveillance, le drone remplace avantageusement l'hélicoptère, - déjà utilisé pour les grands rassemblements -, jugé plus spectaculaire, plus bruyant et plus cher.
Pour Daniel Goldberg, député socialiste de Seine-Saint-Denis, il en va tout autrement. L'usage "par des forces civiles d'engins de conception militaire, affirme-t-il, n'est pas neutre". Ayant pris connaissance des déclarations de Mme Alliot-Marie au salon Milipol, le député a aussitôt réagi dans un communiqué en réclamant que le Parlement soit saisi du sujet. "Nos quartiers ne sont pas comparables aux cas extrêmes de prise d'otages ou des pays en guerre civile, dit-il. Sans encadrement légal strict, l'utilisation de drones risque de passer, tôt ou tard, d'un usage exceptionnel en cas de crise à un usage préventif permanent renforçant ainsi la stigmatisation que ressentent les habitants des banlieues."
Réponse par anticipation de la ministre de l'intérieur : "Face aux attentes légitimes et pressantes des citoyens, nous pourrions être tentés de payer un surcroît de sécurité d'un sacrifice en terme de libertés. Que cela soit clair, cela ne sera jamais le choix de la France - et cela ne sera jamais le mien."
ELSA, tout en mousse et pourvu de petites hélices déformables, proche d'un modèle d'aéromodélisme, ne constitue pas un danger en cas de chute, font valoir ses concepteurs. Mais le débat sur le survol urbain, à l'exception des zones stratégiques interdites, de type Seveso, ne fait sans doute que commencer.
Source : Le Monde (11 octobre 2007).
Jonny le survivant.
Jonny Fairplay (le blond au micro) est une petite vedette de la télé réalité us (survivor). Il tente de chauffer une salle hostile jusqu'à que Danny Bonaduce (acteur) monte sur scène...
Source : Fox TV.
dimanche 14 octobre 2007
Lamazou (sur des mers moins ignorées).
Source : Titouan lamazou (Lucia de Catagène).
La Ligue vous conseille : du 11 octobre 2007 au 30 mars 2008, au Musée de l'Homme (Palais de Chaillot, Trocadero) l'exposition « Femmes du Monde » de Titouan Lamazou.
Le site officiel c'est : ici.
Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Suge Knight and the Rampart scandal
Pour ceux qui voudraient en savoir plus sur le Rampart Scandal que la Ligue vous a présenté il y a quelques jours, nous vous recommendons vivement la video ci-dessous (lien Youtube), un excellent documentaire sur l'histoire de deux stars du rap assassinées, de leur producteur aux relations et motifs douteux, et des flics du Crash du Rampart precinct en action:
For those who would like to know more about the Rampart Scandal that we talked about earlier (scroll down) here is a video you can't miss, part of a documentary showing the links between Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, Suge Knight and the Rampart cops doing what they did best:
Reportage par l'excellent Nick Broomfield. Achetez ses DVDs!
Documentary by the excellent Nick Broomfield, go buy his DVDs!
More about the documentary at www.youtube.com, search for Biggie and Tupac documentary.
For those who would like to know more about the Rampart Scandal that we talked about earlier (scroll down) here is a video you can't miss, part of a documentary showing the links between Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, Suge Knight and the Rampart cops doing what they did best:
Reportage par l'excellent Nick Broomfield. Achetez ses DVDs!
Documentary by the excellent Nick Broomfield, go buy his DVDs!
More about the documentary at www.youtube.com, search for Biggie and Tupac documentary.
samedi 13 octobre 2007
Bouge pas ou je siffle.
La police philippine souhaite redorer son blason et va tenter d'adoucir l'image de ses 110.000 agents, a annoncé son nouveau chef, Avelino Razon.
Première mesure, quelque 500 policiers patrouilleront dans les rues de Manille simplement équipés d'une matraque et d'un sifflet. Les fusils d'assaut seront remisés au placard et il est recommandé de ne faire usage de pistolets qu'en dernier recours.
De même, le port de bijoux trop clinquants est également interdit, qu'il s'agisse de chaînes, de gourmettes ou de chevalières, afin de lever tout soupçon éventuel de corruption.
"Nous tentons de revenir à l'essentiel. Nous habituerons les policiers à siffler plutôt qu'à tirer des coups de feu en l'air", a déclaré le nouveau chef de la police, qui dirigeait auparavant l'unité commando de la police nationale.
"Cette stratégie est plus sûre pour nos concitoyens et je veux que ces derniers considèrent les policiers comme leurs amis", a-t-il ajouté.
La vente d'armes est autorisée par la législation philippine et nombre de criminels sont armés, tout comme les policiers et les agents de sécurité des sociétés privées.
Source : Reuters (11 Octobre 2007).
Ben voyons. Faites gaffe les philipins ! Ca commence comme ça et après on vous met une Commission Nationale de Déontologie sur le dos... Méfiance.
Suite Sister Mary.
Le concept album culte de la génération hard rock. Ca valait bien Garou dans Notre Dame de Paris, non ?
Source : Queenrÿche (Operation Mindcrime, 1990).
dimanche 7 octobre 2007
samedi 6 octobre 2007
Déontologie policière : la méthode Mackey.
Ou plutôt la méthode Rafael Perez, gourou de la CRASH team de la police de Rampart (Los Angeles), qui défraya la chronique à la fin des années 90, avant d'inspirer la fameuse STRIKE team de Farmington.
La Ligue a lancé ses chiens sur le net à la recherche des traces de la CRASH team.
Sur le site (très orienté) de World Socialist Web Site on trouve un article documenté et très intéressant, avec une analyse "sociologique" à lire avec un oeil critique :
Substantially more information has been made public in the Los Angeles Police Department corruption and frame-up scandal. News reports have revealed a widespread pattern of unjustified arrests, beatings, drug dealing, witness intimidation, illegal shootings, planting of evidence, frame-ups and perjury at the CRASH unit of the Rampart Division of the LAPD.
CRASH is the acronym for the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, an anti-gang program the LAPD implemented over a decade ago. The Rampart Division covers an eight square-mile area, just west of downtown, which is largely working class, heavily immigrant and densely populated.
LAPD officer Rafael Perez joined Rampart CRASH in 1996. In 1998 Perez was arrested for stealing eight pounds of cocaine, valued at a million dollars, from the Rampart evidence locker. In 1999 Perez began to cooperate in giving evidence against his former associates in the hope of receiving a reduced sentence on the cocaine theft charge. On February 24, 2000 Perez received a five-year prison term on the cocaine theft charges, but he is expected to stay in jail only a little over a year more, given time served and credit for good behavior.
Investigators from a task force put together by the LAPD and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office logged over 50 hours of interviews with Perez over the last six months. Two Los Angeles Times reporters undertook an investigation of the scandal, and bits and pieces of Perez's story began to emerge.
Last month the Los Angeles Times published many of the revelations from 2000 pages of Perez's testimony. The law-breaking activity among police was so pervasive that the Times concluded: “An organized criminal subculture thrived within the LAPD, where a secret fraternity of anti-gang officers and supervisors committed crimes and celebrated shootings.”
Among the most chilling revelations concern outright police murders or attempted murders. In 1996 CRASH officer Kulin Patel shot Juan Saldana when he was running down an apartment hallway. Patel and his partner then planted a gun on Saldana after he went down. When the CRASH supervisor, Sergeant Edward Ortiz, arrived, he delayed calling an ambulance so the officers could concoct a cover story. Saldana bled to death by the time he arrived at the hospital.
In another incident CRASH officers fired 10 rounds at Carlos Vertiz, a 44-year-old man with no criminal record, after they mistook him for a drug dealer. To justify the shooting, officers then planted a shotgun near the dying Vertiz which they claimed he had pointed at them.
In 1996 Perez and his partner Nino Durden shot 19-year-old Javier Ovando in the chest and head and then planted a gun on him. Ovando received a draconian 23-year prison sentence because he would not show contrition. In fact, he was innocent. Ovando was released last year, after serving two years. As a result of his injuries he is now confined to a wheelchair.
On New Year's eve 1996, Rampart CRASH officers opened fire on and wounded two holiday revelers, afterwards arresting them on trumped-up charges. The officers then rehearsed the story that they had fired in self-defense, claiming the revelers had fired guns in the officers' direction. One unnamed officer has reportedly told his attorney that the CRASH cops were out “hunting” that night, that is, looking for people to ambush in sport.
Perez told investigators the lengths to which Rampart officers and their supervisors went to cover up bad shootings. In one instance, a rookie patrol officer shot a man when he opened a closet during a search and was startled to see the man inside. When the rookie's supervisor arrived at the scene he decided the rookie should say the man was holding a mirror, causing him to see his own reflection with a gun and open fire, thinking he had encountered an armed suspect.
Officer Melissa Town shot at a youth who was sitting with a group of friends by a park and then ran when she accosted him. When her supervising sergeant arrived, he pulled a 5-1/2 inch piece of chrome from the bumper of a nearby car and instructed Town that she should say the suspect had pointed it at her.
L'intégralité de l'article : partie 1, partie 2, partie 3, partie 4.
Source : WSWS.org (Don Knowland, Gerardo Nebbia, 13 mars 2000).
Comme toujours, Wikipedia offre un article assez complet sur le sujet :
The Rampart Scandal refers to widespread corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (C.R.A.S.H.) anti-gang unit of the LAPD Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers in the CRASH unit were implicated in misconduct, making it one of the most widespread cases of documented police misconduct in United States history. The convicted offenses include unprovoked shootings, unprovoked beatings, planting of evidence, framing of suspects, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury, and covering up evidence of these activities.
The Rampart Scandal is notable in popular culture because several Rampart police were found to be on the payroll of hip-hop mogul Marion "Suge" Knight of Death Row Records, a convicted felon with known ties to the Bloods gang. Moreover, detective testimony and a wrongful death lawsuit filed on April 16, 2007, holds Rampart CRASH officers Nino Durden, Rafael Pérez, and David Mack responsible for the 1997 drive-by murder of platinum-selling hip hop recording artist Notorious B.I.G.
As of May 2001, the Rampart investigation had brought 58 officers before an internal administrative board. Of these, 12 were suspended, 7 resigned, and 5 were terminated. As a result of the probe into falsified evidence and police perjury, 106 prior criminal convictions were overturned. The Rampart Scandal resulted in more than 140 civil lawsuits against the city of Los Angeles, costing the city an estimated $125 million in settlements.
As a result of the scandal, Police Chief Bernard Parks was not rehired by Mayor James K. Hahn in 2001, which is believed to have precipitated Mayor Hahn's defeat by Antonio Villaraigosa in the 2005 election.
The full extent of Rampart corruption is still not fully known, with several murders and robberies involving Rampart police that remain unsolved to this day.
L'article intégral, c'est : ici.
Source : Wikipedia.
On trouve également un article excelent sur PBS.org, en plusieurs volets, à parcourir dans le détail.In 1995, Perez joined the Rampart anti-gang CRASH unit. There, Perez says, he discovered and eventually became immersed in a cauldron of police misconduct. According to Perez, he first began stealing drug money at the urging of his partner, Nino Durden [Durden has told federal investigators that Perez was the instigator]. One thing led to the next, and by 1998, Perez was stealing and dealing pounds of cocaine.
Arrested and facing the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence, Perez cut a deal with prosecutors and, in the course of 35 interviews, began to unspool a story of widespread police misconduct ("believe me when I tell you, if there was 15 officers in CRASH, 13 of them were putting cases on people").
At his sentencing in February, 2000, Perez marketed his version of what went wrong. He offered apologies and accepted blame. But, he also blamed the "intoxicant" of police power. "The us-against-them ethos of the overzealous cop began to consume me. And the ends justified the means," he told the court. "We vaguely sensed we were doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Time and again, I stepped over that line. Once crossed, I hurdled over it again and again, landing with both feet sometimes on innocent persons. My job became an intoxicant that I lusted after."
While investigators have corroborated some of what Perez has alleged, they have also, they say, found many inconsistencies in his statements. Over the course of the ongoing investigation, Perez's credibility has come under increasing scrutiny. He failed every question on five polygraphs (two polygraph experts believe the tests were improperly administered) and several jail-house informants have testified that Perez boasted of retaliating against the L.A.P.D. and burning cops he didn't like. Investigators have come to believe that Perez has been less than truthful, even cunningly artful in directing the course of the investigation. "He was very self-assured, very cocky. The type of person who wanted to take charge at all time," says lead detective, Brian Tyndall. "We knew he was an admitted, at this time, liar, perjurer. We knew he was a thief. He was a con. That's the best way of probably of describing him. The best word I could use."
"You can't trust Rafael Perez," says Dep. DA Richard Rosenthal, who prosecuted Perez and sat in on most of the debriefings. "He's a perjurer. He is a dope dealer. He's a thief, among any other numerous adjectives you could come up with that would negatively describe his personality."
Pour l'intégralité c'est : ici.
Source : PBS.org.
Pour finir, la Ligue vous conseille un article intéressant sur la CRASH team de Rampart et les insignes secrets des unités de police : ici.
Peeping Tom.
Encore un groupe mené par Mike Patton. Pas mal du tout...
Source : Peeping Tom (Mojo, 2006).
Mutha's Day Out.
Séquence souvenir. 1993 : Locked, du très éphémère Mutha's Day Out (tiré du seul album du groupe : My soul is wet).
Source : Mutha's day Out (Locked, 1993).
Deux autres morceaux : Green et My soul is wet.
vendredi 5 octobre 2007
145 Lafayette.
Je relisais l'autre jour une conversation entre Casaubon et le taxidermiste Salon, dans le Pendule de Foucault.
- Je contrôle. Je me méfie des souterrains mais je veux les comprendre. Ce n’est pas qu’il y ait beaucoup de possibilités. Les catacombes à Rome, me direz-vous. Il n’y a pas de mystère, elles sont pleines de touristes, et sous le contrôle de l’Eglise. Il y a les égouts de Paris… Vous y avez été ? On peut les visiter le lundi, le mercredi et le dernier samedi de chaque mois, en entrant par le pont de l’Alma. Ca aussi c’est un parcours pour touristes. Naturellement à Paris il y a aussi les catacombes, et des caves profondes. Pour ne rien dire du métro. N’avez-vous jamais été au numéro 145 de la rue Lafayette ?
- J’avoue que non.
- Un peu hors de portée, entre la gare de l’Est et la gare du Nord. Un édifice d’abord indiscernable. Seulement si vous l’observez mieux, vous vous rendez compte que les portes semblent en bois mais sont en fer peint, et que les fenêtres donnent sur des pièces inhabitées depuis des siècles. Jamais une lumière. Mais les gens passent et ne savent pas.
- Ne savent pas quoi ?
- Que c’est une fausse maison. C’est une façade, une enveloppe sans toit, sans rien à l’intérieur. Vide. Ce n’est que l’orifice d’une cheminée. Elle sert à l’aération ou à évacuer les émanations du RER. Et quand vous le comprenez, vous avez l’impression d’être devant la gueule des Enfers ; et que seulement si vous pouviez pénétrer dans ces murs, vous auriez accès au Paris souterrain. Il m’est arrivé de passer des heures et des heures devant ces portes qui masquent la porte des portes, la station de départ pour le voyage au centre de la terre. Pourquoi croyez-vous qu’ils ont fait ça ?
- Pour aérer le métro, vous avez dit.
- Les bouches d’aération suffisaient. Non, c’est devant ces souterrains que je commence à avoir des soupçons. Me comprenez-vous ?
Source : Umberto Eco (le Pendule de Foucault).
- Je contrôle. Je me méfie des souterrains mais je veux les comprendre. Ce n’est pas qu’il y ait beaucoup de possibilités. Les catacombes à Rome, me direz-vous. Il n’y a pas de mystère, elles sont pleines de touristes, et sous le contrôle de l’Eglise. Il y a les égouts de Paris… Vous y avez été ? On peut les visiter le lundi, le mercredi et le dernier samedi de chaque mois, en entrant par le pont de l’Alma. Ca aussi c’est un parcours pour touristes. Naturellement à Paris il y a aussi les catacombes, et des caves profondes. Pour ne rien dire du métro. N’avez-vous jamais été au numéro 145 de la rue Lafayette ?
- J’avoue que non.
- Un peu hors de portée, entre la gare de l’Est et la gare du Nord. Un édifice d’abord indiscernable. Seulement si vous l’observez mieux, vous vous rendez compte que les portes semblent en bois mais sont en fer peint, et que les fenêtres donnent sur des pièces inhabitées depuis des siècles. Jamais une lumière. Mais les gens passent et ne savent pas.
- Ne savent pas quoi ?
- Que c’est une fausse maison. C’est une façade, une enveloppe sans toit, sans rien à l’intérieur. Vide. Ce n’est que l’orifice d’une cheminée. Elle sert à l’aération ou à évacuer les émanations du RER. Et quand vous le comprenez, vous avez l’impression d’être devant la gueule des Enfers ; et que seulement si vous pouviez pénétrer dans ces murs, vous auriez accès au Paris souterrain. Il m’est arrivé de passer des heures et des heures devant ces portes qui masquent la porte des portes, la station de départ pour le voyage au centre de la terre. Pourquoi croyez-vous qu’ils ont fait ça ?
- Pour aérer le métro, vous avez dit.
- Les bouches d’aération suffisaient. Non, c’est devant ces souterrains que je commence à avoir des soupçons. Me comprenez-vous ?
Source : Umberto Eco (le Pendule de Foucault).
J'ai donc fait un passage hier soir à cette adresse pour le compte de la ligue avec deux acolytes et nous avons constaté de visu...
L'immeuble est factice, en effet. Fermé par de lourdes portes que je ne suis pas parvenu à forcer. Les fenêtres sont fumées, pas complètement opaques, et laissent entrevoir par endroits les lumières discrètes d'appliques de secours. L'impression générale est assez étrange.
Et grâce à google, la preuve en image :
Source : Google Earth (48°52'45.19''N 2°21'22.05E).
jeudi 4 octobre 2007
Shadow wolves.
AN elite group of Native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan's borders.
The unit, the Shadow Wolves, was recruited from several tribes, including the Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache. It is being sent to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to pass on ancestral sign-reading skills to local border units.
In recent years, members of the Shadow Wolves have mainly tracked smugglers along the US border with Mexico.
But the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan and the US military's failure to hunt down Osama bin Laden - still at large on his 50th birthday on Saturday - has prompted the Pentagon to requisition them.
US Defence Secretary Robert M.Gates said last month: "If I were Osama bin Laden, I'd keep looking over my shoulder."
The Pentagon has been alarmed at the ease with which Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have been slipping in and out of Afghanistan. Defence officials are convinced their movements can be curtailed by the Shadow Wolves.
The unit has earned international respect for its tracking skills in the Arizona desert. It was founded in the early 1970s to curb the flow of marijuana into the US from Mexico and has since tracked people-smugglers across hundreds of square kilometres of the Tohono O'odham tribal reservation, southwest of Tucson.
Harold Thompson, a Navajo Indian, and Gary Ortega, from the Tohono reservation, are experts at "cutting sign", the traditional Indian method of finding and following minute clues from a barren landscape. They can detect twigs snapped by passing humans or hair snagged on a branch and tell how long a sliver of food may have lain in the dirt.
Some military experts want the Shadow Wolves to help to track down bin Laden. Despite a $US25 million bounty on his head and the use of billions of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment, US forces have so far failed to fulfil President George W. Bush's promise to capture bin Laden "dead or alive".
But a senior US official insisted last week that bin Laden's trail had "not gone stone cold". Vice-Admiral Mike McConnell, the new US director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee that bin Laden and his lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were setting up new training camps in northwestern Pakistan.
The deployment of the Shadow Wolves came as Iraqi militants holding a German woman and her son threatened yesterday to kill their captives unless Germany started withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan within 10 days.
The 61-year-old woman made a tearful plea for help to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a video posted by the abductors on an Islamist website.
"I'm asking you to help me," she said in German, sobbing. "We're Germans as well. These people want to kill my son before my eyes and then kill me. I don't want to die like this."
Hannelore Marianne Krause and her adult son were seized on February 6 by armed men who burst into their family home in Baghdad. One of the kidnappers read a statement in Arabic on behalf of a little-known group calling itself the brigade of the Arrows of Righteousness.
"We give the German Government 10 days from the date of this statement to announce and start the withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan, otherwise ... they will not even see the bodies of these two agents," he said.
Source : News.com.au (12 mars 2007).
Source : scottwarrenphotography (photo).
Le reportage photo c'est : ici.
Le site non-officiel c'est par là.
Un article en français sur le site De Source Sûre.
Un article en anglais : là.
L'article wikipedia : cliquez ici.
Le piment fantôme III.
Un quartier du centre de Londres a été bouclé et la police, les pompiers et une équipe de lutte contre les risques chimiques ont été dépêchés... à cause de l'odeur dégagée par la sauce aux piments "maison" d'un chef thaï.
Un cordon de sécurité a été établi lundi soir dans Soho, autour du restaurant le "Thai Cottage" et un service d'ambulances a déployé une unité de réponse en zones à risques.
Les pompiers ont revêtu leurs combinaisons spéciales, ont suivi la trace des émanations et enfoncé une porte pour découvrir l'origine de l'alerte: la sauce "nam prik pao" à base de piments grillés du chef Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon.
"Je faisais une sauce d'accompagnement avec des piments forts volontairement grillés. Pour nous, l'odeur est celle de piments brûlé", a déclaré le pauvre chef encore sous le choc des conséquences de sa spécialité.
"C'est un peu inhabituel (...) Je peux comprendre que des gens qui ne sont pas Thaïlandais ne sachent pas ce que c'est mais ça ne sent pas comme des produits chimiques !"
Source : Reuters (3 octobre 2007).
lundi 1 octobre 2007
Du Rififi dans la Caspienne
The Merman from the Caspian Sea - L'Homme Poisson de la Mer Caspienne
For the last two years residents of coastal areas around the southern and southwestern Caspian Sea have been reporting of some amphibious creature resembling a human being. In March this year an eyewitness account from the crew of the Baku, an Azeri trawler, was published by Iranian newspaper Zindagi: "That creature was swimming parallel course near the boat for a long time," said Gafar Gasanof, a captain of the ship.
"At the beginning we thought it was a big fish, but then we spotted hair on the head of the monster and his fins looked pretty strange... the front part of his body was equipped with arms!" said the captain. Back in Azerbaijan, nobody took his story seriously. It sounded ridiculous to those who thought that the guy must have been drinking while on board.
On the contrary, shortly after the publication of his interview, the offices of the Iranian paper got flooded with numerous letters of the readers who claimed that the story was yet another piece of evidence proving the existence of the so-called "man of the sea." The readers pointed out that many fishermen had repeatedly seen the strange creature at sea and on shore after the seabed volcanoes in the area of Babolsera had come to life in February and offshore oil production operations had intensified in the Caspian.
All the eyewitness accounts provide a similar description of the marine humanoid. His height is 165-168 cm, he has a strong build, a protruding ctenoid stomach, his feet are pinniped and he has four webbed fingers on either of his hands. His skin is of moonlight color. The hair on his head looks black and green. His arms and legs are shorter and heavier than those of a medium-built person. Apart from his fingernails, he has nails growing on the tip of his aquiline nose that look like a dolphin's beak. No information as to his ears. His eyes are large and orbicular. The mouth of the creature is fairly large, his upper jaw is prognathic and his lower lip flows smoothly into the neck, his chin is missing.
Iranians dubbed the creature Runan-shah or "the master of the sea and rivers." The name is partly based on stories about large shoals of fish accompanying the creature at sea. Other stories refer to the waters that would turn crystal clear and stay that way for two or three days after the creature was seen swimming in those areas. Fishermen claim that fishes that stay alive for a while in the net can feel the creature coming out of the deep blue sea. Fishes were reported producing barely heard gurgling sounds as the monster came near. He was said to answer the call of the catch by making similar throaty sounds.
Some researchers believe that there is no smoke without fire and the stories circulating in Iran can be true. Besides, last May Runan-shah was seen by Azeri fishermen living in the villages located between the cities of Astara and Lenkoran. According to a theory, the creature is not alone; there is a family of underwater humans who are on a mission ... to tackle environmental problems of the Caspian.
The reproduction of flora and fauna in the Caspian has significantly deteriorated due to a surge in offshore oil production operations and underwater volcanic activity in the above parts of the sea. The Astrakhan fishermen have long complained about a decrease in the stock of sturgeon, the total disappearance of sprat and the like. The seafood industry figures indicate that the situation in the southern Caspian has worsened even more this year.
The Caspian Runan-shah is not the only species of underwater humans on record. Both Herodotus and Plato believed that original human beings were amphibious and might have founded an underwater state.
Modern doctors actually agree to that theory by saying that hiccup is an atavism dating back to ancient times when humans had both lungs and gills.
A book of collected scientific articles titled "The Universe and Humankind" that was published in St. Petersburg in 1905 contains a story of "marine female" caught in the Caribbean. It also has stories about dead bodies of the amphibious humans washed ashore in the Azores in 1876. Their descriptions largely correspond with the reported description of Runan-shah.
An amphibious humanlike being was reported in Karelia in 1928. The creature was repeatedly seen in the lake of Vedlozero by local residents. A group of researchers from the Petrozavodsk University arrived to investigate the case on location. Unfortunately, the findings were classified and the members of the research party eventually perished in the Gulag.
According to latest reports in the media, Iranians have already started their research of the Caspian phenomenon. The international scientific community might as well help unravel the mystery if politics do not get in the way of science this time around.
Read the original in Russian: htpp://www.pravda.ru/science/2004/6/76/308/18566_amphibious.html (Translated by: Guerman Grachev)
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