Sunday, June 30, 2013

Gettysburg, a place where you really feel the full weight of history all around you: the history we've experienced and the very different one we could've had instead; On the 150th anniversary of the battle, the continuing wonder that is MGM's Oscar-nominated 1955 documentary two-reel short, 'Battle of Gettysburg,' narrated by Leslie Nielsen; History Channel's 2011 documentary "Gettysburg" narrated by Sam Rockwell

If you've never been to Gettysburg yourself, much less, like me, visited after spending LOTS of time brushing-up on the various aspects of the 1863 three-day battle that you once knew pretty well, but which has since gotten a bit hazy, it's hard to fully comprehend what took place there. 
Even more so then when as a kid without much knowledge or context, I visited Shiloh around 1967, and actually met someone whose grandfather had fought there.

How so many different aspects of our everyday life -as Americans- we now take for granted that could've been completely different if this battle had turned out differently.

In some ways, the more you actually know in detail about what happened there before visiting, the even harder it is to imagine, since when you are walking around there on a very warm day, all the details just seem like... well, an unbearable weight.

Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg by tour guide Gary Kross

Little Round Top at Gettysburg by tour guide Gary Kross

Five minutes from disaster!

As far as I'm concerned, nobody should ever contemplate running for president of this country who hasn't spent some quality time there absorbing the atmosphere and the might-have-beens.
And talking about it publicly.

It's a genuine eye-opener in ways that you can't really imagine until you actually see it yourself, away from the tours, standing in the middle of an immense field.

The other thing that immediately is noticed by many first-time visitors are the large number of foreign visitors you meet there at the battleground, reminding you all over again -as if you needed reminding- that many other people far from this small Pennsylvania town realize its monumental importance, too.


Gettysburg - Pickett's Charge: The Plan

Video History Today video: Picketts Charge, Gettysburg, PA
-Gives present-day orientation of what took place and how it looks now.

Civil War historian Edwin Bearss - Receding Tide (National Geographic)


Gettysburg National Military Park homepage

See other present day video of Gettysburg and other historical events at

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Repeal1913 YouTube Channel video - MGM's 1955 documentary short: 'Battle of Gettysburg,' narrated by Leslie Nielsen. Filmed entirely on location at Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania. 
Director: Herman Hoffman, Producer/Screenwriter: Dore Schary, with Music Adapted and Conducted by Adolph Deutsch, Orchestrated by Alexander Courage.
1 of 3. Uploaded August 16, 2008. http://youtu.be/byG8wb1Pwzo



AcmeFilmCorporation YouTube Channel video: Gettysburg (2011).
History Channel Civil War documentary depicts the battle thru the eyes of eight men. Uploaded March 20, 2013. Director: Adrian Moat, Narrated by Sam Rockwell.
http://youtu.be/WEZrAmFSCEA

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Claire Berlinski is our prescient eyes-and-ears in Istanbul, front-and-center on the battle between the past and the future -and what comes next- in a very important place: Turkey. With a smart and knowing Twitter feed that's exploding -and golden for journalists- she's now wrapped up the past few months in one great piece in The Tower magazine: "The Gezi Diaries: Can We Still Call Turkey Civilized?"; @ClaireBerlinski


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For months I've been closely following American writer Claire Berlinski's incisive writing from Istanbul, via her various online pieces and her very intensive and very popular Twitter feed, @ClaireBerlinski

Berlinki's like a one-woman wire service the way the timely and useful information just flows in and out of her feed every few seconds for what often seems like hours at a time.
It's quite impressive in its scope in ways that Florida media websites and Twitter feeds aren't and never have been, but ought to be, given their greater resources.
Yet she's the one who pulls it off.

Berlinski reminds us again thru her hard work and diligence that the wonders of technology are useless unless the people using it are both savvy and energetic, not one-note town criers.

That Berlinski lives four blocks from Taksim Square and knows the ins-and-outs of everything, plus speaks the language and is NOT one of the many foreign correspondents there who are forever having to get everything second-hand even while they're eyewitnesses, gives her the effect of knowing things before they happen.
In my opinion, she's lapping the field, which is why I've sent multiple emails out over the past two months with links to particular tweets of hers that were prophetic and spot-on.

Now that she's been front-and-center for months on what's really going down in Taksim Square, and with Prime Minister Erdogan's imperious march to the past, just as Turkey finally has the well-educated and dynamic population it's long needed to take its full place on the stage, the West's fear of Turkey finally going a bridge-too-far -and a subsequent brain drain- is more than just an idle threat as she tells below in a great essay that captures what's really animating the push against Erdogan.

Here's a taste:
According to legend, when the great historian Robert Conquest was asked if he wanted to rename the updated edition of The Great Terror, his history of the Stalinist purges, he replied, “How about, I Told You So, You F***ing Fools.”
And that’s what I’m saying now to every single lazy journalist and policy wonk, professional sycophant, diplomat and idiot pundit who’s never so much as visited this place, the duly-funded social scientists and craven Western politicians and everyone else who for years swallowed Erdoğan’s nonsense and helped to manufacture the fantasy that Turkey was getting more and more democratic by the day.

That's what I'm talking about!

The Tower magazine
The Gezi Diaries: Can We Still Call Turkey Civilized?
By Claire Berlinski
Some see it as a modern democracy with an Islamic tint, an improving, reforming country. But if you were in Istanbul during the last month and a half, you’d have seen something completely different: a violent, authoritarian, increasingly suppressive and brutal regime. Tales from the Dark Side, Turkish style.
I’ve always been a critic of armchair reporting. But when your armchair is four blocks away from Taksim Square, it has one of the best views of the uproar in Istanbul any diligent reporter could ask for. I’m now able to calculate with great precision the time between the beginning of the screaming, the sound of the shot, and the entry of the gas through my window. It’s two and twelve seconds respectively.
Read the rest of her great essay at 
http://www.thetower.org/article/the-gezi-diaries-erdogans-turkey-goes-medieval/
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The Towerhttp://www.thetower.org/ You can see the whole Middle East from here

Claire Berlinski, @ClaireBerlinskihttps://twitter.com/ClaireBerlinski

http://www.berlinski.com/

How do you solve a problem like Marco Rubio? With lots of fact-filled Kaus-centricity! Mickey Kaus continues to write honestly about Rubio while Florida news media remains too cowed to report truth about him; After 19 days of Marco Rubio censoring his own Twitter feed, @MarcoRubio, just like the Miami Herald's two week #newsblackout of anti-amnesty, anti-Rubio news in-print and online, Rubio tweeted, well, more piety; @kausmickey, #RubiosFolly


Rush Limbaugh on reluctance of Republicans to openly criticize Marco Rubio for his pro-amnesty first position. Uploaded June 28, 2013. http://youtu.be/gaFXjKb7UYE.


Caller to Rush Limbaugh Show from El Paso, Texas area relates conversation he had with illegal aliens from Mexico about what they saw as the downside to Schumer-Rubio bill from their perspective: more competition for menial jobs from coming surge of people across border, people who don't want to become citizens. Uploaded June 28, 2013. http://youtu.be/HetlXjLrhqY
How do you solve a problem like Marco Rubio? With lots of fact-filled Kaus-centricity! Mickey Kaus continues to write honestly about Rubio while Florida news media remains too cowed to report truth about him; After 19 days of Marco Rubio censoring his own Twitter feed, @MarcoRubio, just like the Miami Herald's two week #newsblackout of anti-amnesty, anti-Rubio news in-print and online, Rubio tweeted, well, more piety; @kausmickey, #RubiosFolly
Unlocked! 
Now you can finally see for yourself what the Miami Herald has desperately trying to keep quiet about in Ryan Lizza's New Yorker column for the past two weeks, where never was heard a discouraging word -about Rubio (and the Herald's) pro-amnesty first policy.

The New Yorker
GETTING TO MAYBE
Inside the Gang of Eight’s immigration deal
By Ryan Lizza
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/06/24/130624fa_fact_lizza



Here's what Rubio wrote after 19 days of nothing on Twitter:




























































































Friday, June 28, 2013

More intentional Hallandale Beach City Hall misdirection & deception re HB CRA - Media Trackers Florida has more proof of the unseemly behavior at City Hall that HB citizens recognize on sight from past experience: "Hallandale Beach Officials Failed to Document Contacts with Florida Lobbyist"

The chickens are finally coming home to roost in Hallandale Beach and they want an honest audit done on the city's scandal-plagued Community Redevelopment Agency, (CRA), so citizens can finally find out where all the millions of dollars really went. Above, a scene from North Beach, Hallandale Beach, FL. February 14, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
For reasons that I hardly even need explain to most of you regular readers of the blog at this point in the continuing controversy that is the scandalous Hallandale Beach CRA, and the efforts of the city's elected officials and top administrators to suppress any effort by Hallandale Beach citizens to get an honest audit of the CRA, this email of mine was sent this morning to lots of interested parties throughout Florida with an interest in making sure that South Florida taxpayers are not intentionally made monkeys of forever. 

Besides the trustworthy and hardworking elements of the local press corps -a diminishing number to be sure- lots of Broward's most well-informed citizens, civic activists, bloggers and a few selected elected officials, were Florida Governor Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Florida CFO Jeff Atwater and Florida state Senators Jack Latvala, Jeremy Ring and Joseph Abruzzo, as well as Broward Inspector General John W. Scott.

Most of you reading this already know perfectly well why the state legislators who are supposed to represent the best interests of Hallandale Beach's citizens in Tallahassee, state Senator Eleanor Sobel and state Rep. Joe Gibbons, are NOT part of the list.

Certainly things would be easier if they were anything but the colossal failures they've proven themselves to be over so many years on so many issues of interest to this community.
Not just unhelpful, but actual obstacles.

No, our small community's collective misfortune is that Gibbons and Sobel's perfectly dreadful track records in office, individually and collectively, over SO many years, consistently shows that they DON'T put our community's best-interests first, but rather their own, especially their own political futures.
That dismal track record makes them completely untrustworthy in every important respect that counts, especially when it comes to getting the truth for HB's beleaguered citizens out of a City Hall led by their imperious pal, Joy Cooper.

-----


Hallandale Beach Officials Failed to Document Contacts with Florida Lobbyist
By: Tom Lauder 
June 27, 2013

Just to confirm the validity of this post above, not that any is needed, since the facts are crystal clear, as of 5 p.m. Thursday, I'd still NOT received the copies of the text messages sent between lobbyist Judy Stern and Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper and HB City Manager Renee Miller that I requested in writing on June 12th.

Text messages that had one central goal in mind: preventing an honest and accurate audit of the Hallandale Beach CRA so that HB residents, taxpayers and small business owners could FINALLY find out where the millions of CRA dollars really flowed all these years with no genuine oversight or follow-up by officials.
Officials who were, in theory, supposed to do that as part of their official responsibilities -but didn't.

But as we have all learned the hard way, oversight and follow-up were simply words that did NOT exist in their lexicon for YEARS, with important files missing left-and-right and many documents missing or inaccurate in the files that actually were present.

In this most-recent case, CooperMiller and Stern were aghast about a June 4th public request to the entire Broward County Commission requesting an audit of the CRA performed via Broward County Auditor Evan Lukic's office.

Well, you already know what transpired, who said what and who did nothing at all to help HB residents get that long-overdue public accounting that's been denied us all these years by the same powers-that-be at HB City Hall who didn't want any more public scrutiny.

But then this isn't even the first time all year that public disclosure of public information has been a quaint and abstract idea in Hallandale Beach.

Yes, as previously mentioned, the same poorly-run city that DIDN'T publicly disclose its legally-required official Contacts list for well OVER two months, even while city officials, elected and administrators -inc.  the Mayor, City Manager and CRA Director- were meeting with real estate developers, at least one of whom, Stephen Riemer publicly admitted at a March 18th CRA meeting that he wanted the city to (illegally) use its power of eminent domain to buy-out small businesses near properties he  already owns near the FEC tracks, in order that he can build a large development there.

Presumably, after he and the city have chased-out all other existing businesses, however they can to help him personally, no doubt using CRA funds.
That's illegal in this state, of course, as the FL Legislature has made clear, but then lots of federal, state and local laws are routinely ignored in Hallandale Beach with the current crew in charge the past few years, with my blog an accurate chronicle of their years of mendacity and anti-democratic fervor.

As you might well imagine, those small businesses owners resent NOT knowing what's going on and NOT being able to get honest and forthright answers from the very people who are supposed to be working for them, not against them.

But here's what they see with their own eyes, right in front of their businesses: promised, overdue road improvements by the city delayed several times without any sort of public explanation, and after hearing Riemer declare war on them at a public meeting, they can't help but wonder if it's being done intentionally by the city to drive the businesses out, just as Riemer wants, using CRA funds.

Lots and lots of curious coincidences that always turn out the same way, eventually add-up to an interesting fact pattern that's hard to ignore.

There was deception everywhere when Riemer spoke at that March 18th HB CRA meeting against the city's long-promised funding of that CRA-funded road improvement program, which took place without the public knowing anything at all about those private meetings he'd held with city officials because the city didn't post them.

Though they had the opportunity to do the right thing, albeit, after-the-fact, and publicly disclose to the public that they'd met privately with Riemerthe city officials who met with Riemer never disclosed it. 

They acted like this was the first time they were hearing anything at all about Riemer's plans or concerns.

Yes, disingenuous is the word that comes to mind. 
But that's how things continue to roll routinely in a city where the spirit and letter of Florida's  Sunshine Laws are routinely ignored by the very people in charge of following the laws and enforcing them.

In case the link within the story above proves hard to pull up, it's at

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Not in email:

Among the many recent predicates for the email above that help explain it, especially the situation on the city's Fashion Row area -N.E. First Avenue- that has, unfortunately, pitted small business owners against the City of Hallandale Beach, whose employees and elected officials have been arrogant, deceptive, and intentionally duplicitous to them, while blaming others for their own actions, are the following:

TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2013
Future of Hallandale Beach's Fashion Row Arts District on N.E. First Avenue to be discussed at an important 5:30 p.m. meeting on Wednesday at Dekka; What, if any, are insurance executive and developer Stephen L. Riemer's strategic plans for the future of the N.E. First Avenue area, alongside the F.E.C. tracks?; More cases of déjà vu on Hallandale Beach's woeful website


FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2013
Entrepreneur Luciana Preguerman and other Fashion Row shop owners in Hallandale Beach draw a line in the sand over the City Commission/CRA threatening to sabotage an already-approved and budgeted plan for street improvements they've been desperately waiting for, and are livid over the new CRA Director's inability to logically articulate why they're considering such a move. They want answers before Monday night's important CRA meeting at 5 p.m.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

More proof that "Despicable" lives in Broward County, too. How much damage can one man do to a single County in Florida in the year 2013? When it's Mike Satz, the answer is PLENTY!; Broward Bulldog: "State drops burglary case against teen; Satz tolerates police misconduct, Finkelstein says again"

 
The screenshot of Michael Satz on Local10's "This Week in South Florida" that I last used on June 5, 2013 in my blog post titled, "When it comes to Public Integrity, it's "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" at the Broward State Attorney’s Office: What are all you people in Hallandale Beach who want good, clean government looking at me for, anyway? Why are you expecting me to actually do something about the longstanding corruption, incompetency and malfeasance at Hallandale Beach City Hall, to say nothing of what the Broward Inspector General's office just called the city's "gross mismanagement" for years of the HB CRA? After all, I'm only the Broward State's Attorney"
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/when-it-comes-to-public-integrity-its.html
and before that, in my November 6, 2012 blog post titled, "Satz does NOT rhyme with success: Vote NO on Miami Herald's sorry 2012 local and state election coverage: Proof? Their editorial board endorsed carpetbagger Joe Gibbons of Jacksonville and over-the-hill mediocrity Mike Satz BEFORE paper ever printed a single article about their races. Slipshod Herald editors then run thread-bare story about them AFTER the August Primary Early Voting period had started. As usual, too little too late at One Herald Plaza!" http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/satz-does-not-rhyme-with-success-vote.html

Speaking of "Despicable" as I was in yesterday's blog post about the sickening scandal involving the Metropolitan Police in London, and allegations that some members of the force there not only withheld evidence about the murder of an innocent teenage in 1993, but also orchestrated smears against his family, here's more proof, as if we needed  it, that truly  "Despicable" lives in Broward County, too.

So, how much damage can one man do to a single county in Florida in the year 2013? 

Well, when that man has been given a lot of power and discretion and his name is Mike Satz, the answer is considerable damage indeed. 
Damage that even the smartest among us can't even begin to completely know the full extent of right now, but will only come to learn about in the years to come. 
No doubt, after he inflicts even more damage on us by allowing the legions of corrupt and unethical people to continue to ply their trade.

When Mike Satz pricks us, by consistently failing to do his important job properly, of lacking the desire to enthusiastically go after dishonest cops, corrupt lobbyists and unethical elected officials and make public examples of them, and of failing to go after the hiding-in-plain sight corruption in all of its guises in THE most-corrupt county in Florida, especially in this small corrupt and poorly-run city, do we not bleed? 
Yes, we do.
Profusely.

Broward Bulldog
State drops burglary case against teen; Satz tolerates police misconduct, Finkelstein says again
By Dan Christensen,BrowardBulldog.org 
June 25, 2013 AT 6:30 AM
The Broward State Attorney’s Office has dropped a felony burglary charge against a 15-year-old boy who defense attorneys say was coerced by Fort Lauderdale Police into falsely confessing to a crime he did not commit.  
Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein is making an issue of the case as “yet another instance of police misconduct” that Broward State Attorney Michael Satz has done nothing to correct.
Read the rest of the article at
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/06/state-drops-burglary-case-against-teen-misconduct-by-cops-tolerated-by-satz-says-finkelstein/

"Again."

Just like Satz did last week, last month and last year.
And it's true.

And the proof is not only all around us in this county, it is right here for you to read and imagine in your own mind:
Hittleman argued the boy had not been informed of his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, and that police repeatedly had threatened to call Child Protective Services to take away his sister’s two-year-old toddler if he “did not admit to committing the burglary.”
“If I admit it to you, you won’t take my sister’s baby, right?” the boy asked a detective, according to defense court filings.Hittleman’s conclusion:
“It is hard to conceive of circumstances more coercive than those presented here.”
Wow, as if all the negative things we've been told for years by well-informed people about the Fort Lauderdale Police Dept. hadn't jolted us enough, threatening to take little kids away to get confessions.
Despicable.

Yes, more than ever, Mike Satz not only seems to be Joy Cooper's secret weapon for staying
out of jail (and purgatory) for all the serious damage she's personally wrought upon this city and its citizens the past ten years, as he and his bungling staff have been perfectly oblivious to everything going on here, he also is the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. 
Year-after-year.

Not that you asked, but I will NEVER vote for anyone currently working at the Broward State's Attorney's office.
Period.

This curious photo of the mayor's son appeared in my blog post titled, Hallandale Beach's Midnight Vigilante is no Paul Revere! Caught in the act: Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's son's Midnight Ride of campaign sign-stealing -on Election Day!; Anything goes now in HB -even political intimidation- as Broward IG & Broward SAO sleepwalk while laws & ethics are repeatedly laughed at by pols in power; @MayorCooper, #FDLE, @myfloridalegal, @fbi.gov
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/hallandale-beachs-midnight-vigilante-is.html
As for the above situation, if you're curious what happened afterwards, when the Office of the Broward Inspector General and the Broward State's Attorney's office were properly notified about this and many other curious things, like campaign signs for Joy Cooper, Anthony A. Sanders and Bill Julian on city-owned property, i.e. taxpayer property, as well as on church property, for weeks and months, all of which is illegal? 
Nothing.

And yes, in retrospect, I should've described it as "Election Eve," but you get the point nonetheless

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Despicable! Growing national backlash against sickening British police scandal that's only getting worse over time - Prime Minister David Cameron and entire U.K. literally staggered by the depths of despicable revelations re organized undercover police efforts to withhold evidence and smear the family of an innocent teenage boy murdered in 1993. Stephen Lawrence was murdered, and since then, it seems that Police and govt. bureaucrats have intentionally taken aim at his family to keep them quiet via orchestrated smears!; Damning news videos by BBC and Channel 4 News

Channel4News YouTube Channel video: Home Affairs correspondent Simon Israel reports on revelations that Stephen Lawrence's family was targeted and smeared by police. The parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence were treated as a threat to be smeared, according to a former undercover officer with the Metropolitan Police Service. Uploaded June 24, 2013. http://youtu.be/iXjGX35InhQ

BBC-TV video: The MP for Eltham & Plumstead, Clive Efford, who was involved in the call for the original 1997 inquiry into the case, describes the very grave nature of the revelations that some members of the Metropolitan Police -as well as people connected to the Home Office in the '90's- have not only been withholding damaging evidence about the truth surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, but been involved in even further corruption via an organized effort to smear the Lawrence family. MP Efford, a Labour Party member and the Shadow Secretary for Sport, further stated that he believed that the only way the truth will all come out is via a new inquiry that does NOT involve the "police investigating police" agreeing that it was "not going to be good enough" for the British people. And he's 100% correct.
Video at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23030577
Despicable! Growing national backlash against sickening British police scandal that's only getting worse over time - Prime Minister David Cameron and entire U.K. literally staggered by the depths of despicable revelations re organized undercover police efforts to withhold evidence and smear the family of an innocent teenage boy murdered in 1993. Stephen Lawrence was murdered, and since then, it seems that Police and govt. bureaucrats have intentionally taken aim at his family to keep them quiet via orchestrated smears!; Damning news videos by BBC and Channel 4 News 










Much of Britain has woken-up lately feeling like a thunderous punch has been delivered to their collective stomachs, out-of-the-blue, while they were minding their own business this wet summer.
Except that was then quickly followed-up with a swift billy club to the back of the neck and a taser to their groin.
Groggy and barely able to stand, they hold on as best they can and wonder what sordid fact is  coming down the pike next in a police scandal that gets every one's emotions boiling in a flash.
And with that comes the larger possibility of yet another flash point.

Me being me, being interested in the very wide variety of things that I am, which, fairly often, confounds and frustrates both family and friends, and listening, reading and consuming by the ton the digital media that I do every week with a very heavy U.K. flavor, especially radio and TV, I've been following the Stephen Lawrence case for years.

BBC's timeline on the case:

Before these most recent revelations that have taken away every one's breath by their sheer level of cruelty and evil, the “hunt for disinformation” to discredit the Lawrences,l had planned on posting something about it over the Fourth of July weekend, when I'd finally post a lot of non-South Florida posts that I've already written and have been keeping in cold storage until the right time came.


But Monday morning while looking for something else, I found this powerful BBC News video
that falls hard on the heels of all the dozens of news articles, columns, blog posts and radio program discussions so very upsetting and despicable in the tale it told, that I found myself unable to wait any longer.
And when I received my daily Snowmail from London after Noon on Monday from Channel 4 News that gives me the rundown on the news stories they'll be doing later,
https://mailing.channel4.com/public/read_message.jsp;jsessionid=0;apw63?sigreq=1937640847
I was absolutely sure of it. http://www.channel4.com/news/

The Guardian
Police 'smear' campaign targeted Stephen Lawrence's friends and family
Exclusive: former undercover officer Peter Francis says superiors wanted him to find 'dirt' shortly after 1993 murder
Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, The Guardian
23 June 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/23/stephen-lawrence-undercover-police-smears


The Guardian
Stephen Lawrence: Cameron deeply concerned by smear campaign claim
PM calls for investigation into claims undercover police officer was part of operation to smear family of murdered teenager
Alexandra Topping, Paul Lewis, Rob Evans and Patrick Wintour, guardian.co.uk, 
24 June 2013 04.24 EDT


The Telegraph
Who’s keeping tabs on the undercover cops?
Stephen Lawrence's family are not the only ones concerned about their activities
By Philip Johnston
8:43PM BST 24 Jun 2013

I had to get it out of my system before I literally blew a gasket, and so have deleted many prior links to stories about the case that have been attached to the Draft for many months, given that they no longer seem nearly as important to the overall picture, given what we've learned of late.

Most of you reading this now know as well as I do that there are some things that are more than merely dramatic literary license and fictional threats delivered in film or criminal procedural drams on TV, but actually common knowledge.
One of those things that we know to be true is that former policemen in prison have a very difficult time surviving.

But knowing what I know about this case and the way that some undercover police and govt.
bureaucrats seem to have attempted to orchestrate a PR lynch mob against the family of a teenage boy killed for no logical reason other than sheer hate, I only hope it's even worse in prison for the people involved in this case, since they have been drawing a public paycheck for years as guardians of civility, without people they encounter having any idea of the true depths of their immorality.

Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe responds to allegations in the media about undercover officers conduct in the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation:
http://content.met.police.uk/News/Commissioner-statement-following-allegations-about-undercover-officers/1400018214005/1257246745756

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Speaking of incompetent and/or unethical police, I will soon be posting some information here on the blog about what I and many other concerned and well-informed Hallandale Beach residents believe is the completely unsatisfactory performance over the recent past of the Hallandale Beach Police Dept.

I will be mentioning and raising questions about several specific situations and episodes that I am all-too-familiar with, as well as daily policing practices that STILL defy logic and reason despite how obvious it is that they bear no semblance of common sense.
But continue they do, ridiculous or not...

They continue because the HBPD was, is and will likely continue to be led by people who really are NOT that interested in improving the performance and reputation of the police force and making hard choices, so that it at least measures up to what HB residents, taxpayers and small business owners have a reasonable right to expect, considering the giant over-sized slice of the city budget the HBPD currently consumes.
The ratio of HB taxpayer money spent on policing to the actual HB taxpayer's level of satisfaction is completely out-of-whack.

Things really need to change dramatically there soon.
In part, before the HBPD pension problems become so much worse that even the sleepwalking local news media finds themselves unable to ignore the problem any more, and HAVE TO start showing up at HB City Hall in person -which they hate, and not without reason.

Oh the ignominy of them showing-up at 400 S. Federal Highway, knowing perfectly well before they finally find a place to park in the too-small public parking lot that they will be met with a stonewall just like so many HB residents are when they want to know what's really going on at HB City Hall.

Imagine that, reporters actually (finally!) asking hard questions about how large those pension obligations are, and actually reporting what the percentage of the city's future budget they'll be consuming, though the truth is that we all know most of the local print reporters would rather just be leaving messages from their officefor the city's spokesman, messages that will never be returned.

You know, "unavailable for comment."

Try looking up "unavailable for commentin the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel's archives  PLUS the words "Hallandale Beach" and see how many times that comes up.

If yours truly only had a five-dollar bill for every time a newspaper article said that about someone at HB City Hall since i moved here, we'd already have that next trip to Sweden in the Fall already paid for -airfare, lodging and some really good food this time!