Russian Counterterror Troops Tackle Training Exercise With One Heck of a Bang
Kyle Mizokami,Popular Mechanics16 hours
From Popular Mechanics
A video of a Russian counterterrorism exercise ends
with terrorists apprehended-and the bus they were riding in completely
trashed.
The video, shot somewhere in Russia likely several years ago, shows Ministry of the Interior OMON
troops-a paramilitary government force stationed in most Russian
cities-performing a training exercise and stopping a bus occupied by
"terrorists" with typical aplomb.
First, a BTR-80 armored personnel carrier cuts the
bus off, forcing it to slow down while firing its 14.5-millimeter heavy
machine gun. The BTR-80 is the support element, firing (hopefully)
blanks in order to intimidate the terrorists.
But in the most nutso move, an OMON agent wearing a heavy Explosive Ordnance Disposal bomb suit
catches up to the bus and whacks it with an explosive charge. The
charge trashes the bus, blowing out the glass and leaving a huge scorch
mark on the side. The explosion is so big the OMON agent disappears in
the cloud of debris.
Who knows why OMON would use such a ridiculously
powerful explosion to stop the bus, but some possibilities are to damage
the bus axle, forcing it to a stop, or to disable an even more
dangerous explosive device the terrorists might have. The men
onboard-probably OMON troopers unfortunately singled out to play the
role of terrorists-appear stunned but otherwise unharmed by the
explosion. Just another day at work.
LISTEN HERE
Newly discovered audio recordings of Hillary Clinton from the early
1980s include the former first lady’s frank and detailed assessment of
the most significant criminal case of her legal career: defending a man
accused of raping a 12-year-old girl.
In 1975, the same year she married Bill, Hillary Clinton agreed to
serve as the court-appointed attorney for Thomas Alfred Taylor, a
41-year-old accused of raping the child after luring her into a car. The recordings, which date from
1983-1987 and have never before been reported, include Clinton’s
suggestion that she knew Taylor was guilty at the time. She says she
used a legal technicality to plead her client, who faced 30 years to
life in prison, down to a lesser charge. The recording and transcript,
along with court documents pertaining to the case, are embedded below.
The full story of the Taylor defense calls into question Clinton’s
narrative of her early years as a devoted women and children’s advocate
in Arkansas—a narrative the 2016 presidential frontrunner continues to
promote on her current book tour.
Her comments on the rape trial are part of more than five hours of
unpublished interviews conducted by Arkansas reporter Roy Reed with
then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife in the mid-1980s.
The interviews, archived at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, were intended for an Esquire magazine
profile that was never published, and offer a rare personal glimpse of
the couple during a pivotal moment in their political careers.
But Hillary Clinton’s most revealing comments—and those most likely to inflame critics—concern the decades-old rape case.
‘The Prosecutor Had Evidence’
The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
Twenty-seven-year-old Hillary Rodham had just moved to Fayetteville,
and was running the University of Arkansas’ newly-formed legal aid
clinic, when she received a call from prosecutor Mahlon Gibson.
“The prosecutor called me a few years ago, he said he had a guy who
had been accused of rape, and the guy wanted a woman lawyer,” said
Clinton in the interview. “Would I do it as a favor for him?”
The case was not easy. In the early hours of May 10, 1975, the
Springdale, Arkansas police department received a call from a nearby
hospital. It was treating a 12-year-old girl who said she had been
raped.
The suspect was identified as Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old factory worker and friend of the girl’s family.
And though the former first lady mentioned the ethical difficulties of the case in Living History, her written account some three decades later is short on details and has a far different tone than the tapes.
“It was a fascinating case, it was a very interesting case,” Clinton
says in the recording. “This guy was accused of raping a 12-year-old.
Course he claimed that he didn’t, and all this stuff” (LISTEN HERE).
Describing the events almost a decade after they had occurred,
Clinton’s struck a casual and complacent attitude toward her client and
the trial for rape of a minor.
“I had him take a polygraph, which he passed – which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” she added with a laugh.
Clinton can also be heard laughing at several points when discussing
the crime lab’s accidental destruction of DNA evidence that tied Taylor
to the crime.
From a legal ethics perspective, once she agreed to take the case,
Clinton was required to defend her client to the fullest even if she did
believe he was guilty.
“We’re hired guns,” Ronald D. Rotunda, a professor of legal ethics at Chapman University, told the Washington Free Beacon.
“We don’t have to believe the client is innocent…our job is to
represent the client in the best way we can within the bounds of the
law.”
However, Rotunda said, for a lawyer to disclose the results of a
client’s polygraph and guilt is a potential violation of attorney-client
privilege.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “Unless the client says: ‘You’re free
to tell people that you really think I’m a scumbag, and the only reason I
got a lighter sentence is because you’re a really clever lawyer.’” Clinton was suspended from the Arkansas bar in March of 2002 for failing to keep up with continuing legal education requirements, according to Arkansas judicial records.
Public records provide few details of what happened on the night in
question. The Washington County Sherriff’s Office, which investigated
the case after the Springdale Police Department handled the initial
arrest, said it was unable to provide an incident report since many
records from that time were not maintained and others were destroyed in a
flood.
A lengthy yet largely overlooked 2008 Newsday story focused on Clinton’s legal strategy of attacking the credibility of the 12-year-old victim.
The girl had joined Taylor and two male acquaintances, including one
15-year-old boy she had a crush on, on a late-night trip to the bowling
alley, according to Newsday.
Taylor drove the group around in his truck, pouring the girl whisky and coke on the way.
The group later drove to a “weedy ravine” near the highway where Taylor raped the 12-year-old.
Around 4 a.m., the girl and her mother went to the hospital, where
she was given medical tests and reported that she had been assaulted.
Taylor was arrested on May 13, 1975. The court initially appointed
public defender John Barry Baker to serve as his attorney. But Taylor
insisted he wanted a female lawyer.
The lawyer he would end up with: Hillary Rodham.
According to court documents, the prosecution’s case was based on
testimony from the 12-year-old girl and the two male witnesses as well
as on a “pair of men’s undershorts taken from the defendant herein.” In a July 28, 1975, court
affidavit, Clinton wrote that she had been informed the young girl was
“emotionally unstable” and had a “tendency to seek out older men and
engage in fantasizing.”
“I have also been told by an expert in child psychology that children
in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual
experiences and that adolescents in disorganized families, such as the
complainant’s, are even more prone to exaggerate behavior,” Clinton
said.
Clinton said the child had “in the past made false accusations about
persons, claiming they had attacked her body” and that the girl
“exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her
way.”
But the interview reveals that an error by the prosecution would
render unnecessary these attacks on the credibility of a 12-year-old
rape victim.
‘We had a lot of fun with Maupin’
Hillary Clinton 2016 Facebook
“You know, what was sad about it,” Clinton told Reed, “was that the
prosecutor had evidence, among which was [Taylor’s] underwear, which was
bloody.”
Clinton wrote in Living History that she was able to win a
plea deal for her client after she obtained forensic testimony that
“cast doubt on the evidentiary value of semen and blood samples
collected by the sheriff’s office.”
She did that by seizing on a missing link in the chain of evidence.
According to Clinton’s interview, the prosecution lost track of its own
forensic evidence after the testing was complete.
“The crime lab took the pair of underpants, neatly cut out the part
that they were gonna test, tested it, came back with the result of what
kind of blood it was what was mixed in with it – then sent the pants
back with the hole in it to evidence,” said Clinton (LISTEN HERE). “Of course the crime lab had thrown away the piece they had cut out.” Clinton said she got permission
from the court to take the underwear to a renowned forensics expert in
New York City to see if he could confirm that the evidence had been
invalidated.
“The story through the grape vine was that if you could get [this
investigator] interested in the case then you had the foremost expert in
the world willing to testify, so maybe it came out the way you wanted
it to come out,” she said.
She said the investigator examined the cut-up underwear and told her there was not enough blood left on it to test.
When Clinton returned to Arkansas, she said she gave the prosecutor a
clipping of the New York forensic investigator’s “Who’s Who.”
“I handed it to Gibson, and I said, ‘Well this guy’s ready to come up
from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice,’” said Clinton,
breaking into laughter.
“So we were gonna plea bargain,” she continued.
When she went before Judge Cummings to present the plea, he asked her
to leave the room while he interrogated her client, she said.
“I said, ‘Judge I can’t leave the room, I’m his lawyer,’” said
Clinton, laughing. “He said, ‘I know but I don’t want to talk about this
in front of you.’”
“So that was Maupin [Cummings], we had a lot of fun with Maupin,” Clinton added.
Reed asked what happened to the rapist.
“Oh, he plea bargained. Got him off with time served in the county
jail, he’d been in the county jail for about two months,” said Clinton.
When asked why Taylor wanted a female lawyer, Clinton responded, “Who knows. Probably saw a TV show. He just wanted one.”
Taylor, who pleaded to unlawful fondling of a chid, was sentenced to
one year in prison, with two months reduced for time served. He died in
1992.
‘Is This About That Rape of Me?’
Hillary and Bill, 1982 / Ready for Hillary Facebook
Neither Reed nor a spokesman for Hillary Clinton returned a request for comment.
The Taylor case was a minor episode in the lengthy career of Clinton, who writes in Living History, before moving on to other topics, that the trial inspired her co-founding of the first rape crisis hotline in Fayetteville.
Clinton and her supporters highlight her decades of advocacy on
behalf of women and children, from her legal work at the Children’s
Defense Fund to her women’s rights initiatives at the Bill, Hillary, and
Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
And yet there are parallels between the tactics Clinton employed to
defend Taylor and the tactics she, her husband, and their allies have
used to defend themselves against accusations of wrongdoing over the
course of their three decades in public life.
In the interview with Reed, Clinton does not mention the hotline, nor
does she discuss the plight of the 12-year-old girl who had been
attacked.
Now 52, the victim resides in the same town where she was born.
Divorced and living alone, she blames her troubled life on the
attack. She was in prison for check forgery to pay for her prior
addiction to methamphetamines when Newsday interviewed her in 2008. The story says she harbored no ill will toward Clinton.
According to her, that is not the case.
“Is this about that rape of me?” she asked when a Free Beacon reporter knocked on her door and requested an interview.
Declining an interview, she nevertheless expressed deep and abiding hostility toward the Newsday reporter who spoke to her in 2008—and toward her assailant’s defender, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Christians Are Still Persecuted Around the World. Here's Where.
Last
Sunday's Easter bombing in Pakistan targeting Christians should come as
no surprise—Christians are persecuted around the globe.
A
tragic Easter evening at a crowded park in Lahore, Pakistan, is the
latest reminder that outside of the Western world, Christianity is
increasingly a targeted minority.
The
Taliban faction, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the
suicide attack that killed more than 70 and wounded hundreds, mostly
children. More than 5,000 militants were rounded up in Pakistan and all but approximately 200 were released during the government’s investigation.
Attacks against Christians are a pattern in Pakistan in recent years. In March of 2015,
for example, 14 people were killed and more than 70 injured after
suicide bombers targeted two churches in Lahore, and at least 80 were
killed in a church bomb attack in 2013 in the city of Peshawar.
Human rights organizations have an uphill battle when it comes to raising Western awareness of incidents like these. David Curry,
CEO of Open Doors U.S.A., part of an international organization that
tracks and brings awareness of Christian persecution, sees the Western
focus on persecution in America and Europe as part of the problem.
“I don't believe most Americans have an accurate understanding of the real state of Christian persecution around the world,”says
Curry. News coverage is selected according to consumer demand, he adds.
“But for news consumers to clamor for such coverage, they need to be
aware of the extent of the problem.”
Open Doors reports
a significant increase in attacks against Christians during 2014-2015.
Last year, more than 7,000 Christians were killed for their faith, which
they note is “almost 3,000 more than the previous year.”The
largest areas of growing Christian persecution occur in the Middle
East, Africa, and Central Asia. Those numbers are expected to scale
upward.
The
Center for Inquiry (CFI), an organization whose Campaign for Free
Expression promotes the rights of religious and nonreligious individuals
globally, has seen the same patterns. “We were the sole secular
humanist organization to press the State Department to label ISIS’s
crimes against Muslims and Christians as genocide,”says Paul Fidalgo, the communications director for CFI.
In March, pressures from human rights organizations finally succeeded in getting the U.S. State Department
to apply this genocidal label to the Islamic State. Secretary of State,
John Kerry, provided a laundry list of war crimes by IS that helped to
secure that official condemnation, including the horrific beheading of 49 Egyptian and Ethiopian Coptic Christians in 2015.
The
difficulty in addressing these human rights violations is significantly
stronger, however, when it comes to recognized states. In many
countries, suppression of minority religious groups is codified in legal
systems in the form of blasphemy laws.
These laws serve as a means to justify and prosecute religious and
nonreligious minorities. (The United States still has a few
unenforceable blasphemy laws left on the books.)
A 2012 report from Pew Research shows that 22 percent of “the world’s countries and territories”have
blasphemy laws, and 11 percent penalize apostasy. In many locations,
punishments can result in fines, but in others, blasphemy is on par with
treason and can result in death.
The
safety of individuals in countries with blasphemy laws is difficult to
secure by foreign advocates. Frequently, governments, like Saudi Arabia,
whose human rights record is repeatedly questioned by advocacy groups,
see international pressure to improve human rights as a guise for
challenging their sovereignty. (Saudi Arabia has a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.)
State
responses like these belie the significant individual human cost they
dismiss. In a few individual cases, the end result is freedom. In Sudan,
a 27 year old Christian woman, Meriam Ibrahim, was sentenced to death
for apostasy after converting and was turned in to the authorities by
her brother. Groups like Open Doors and Center for Inquiry both called for her release, and she was eventually allowed to receive asylum in the United States.
Other individuals, like Pakistani Asia Bibi,
a Christian accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, are still
uncertain what the future holds. She’s been on death row since 2010. Her
strongest advocate, Punjab governor Salman Taseer, was assassinated for his support in 2011. She is currently the subject of ongoing protests and threats while her case is appealed.
Even
in countries that boast a form of official secularity and religious
freedom—such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh—the state unofficial
intolerance religious groups, or failure to address social intolerance,
only increases the suppression of religious groups. “Bangladesh is
perhaps the clearest example,” notes Fidalgo, “where you have secular
activists and Christians being murdered, more or less with impunity.”
For
those who are aware of this global situation, calls for change are
growing. Through official statements and social media, many Muslims have
expressed their support and solidarity with those who are persecuted.
For example, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the exiled world head of the Ahmadiyya
Muslim Community—a group also persecuted in Pakistan for their belief in a prophet after Muhammad and which is constitutionally unrecognized by the state as Muslim—released a statement
expressing his sympathies and condolences, condemning the Lahore
attack. “Never can such attacks be justified in any shape or form,”he says, “and so all forms of terrorism and extremism must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
Effective
international solutions, however, are still a long way away and those
engaged in human rights want to see actions with teeth. “Right now few
leaders are offering more than condolences after major attacks on
Christians,”says Curry,
“They need to go to the countries, meet with its leaders and people to
find bipartisan ways to protect Christians and promote religious freedom
to all.”
We have to “look beyond our borders,”adds
Fidalgo. We need to recognize that “people truly are suffering in
unthinkable ways—being beaten by mobs, imprisoned, executed, flogged—for
holding certain beliefs or questioning the majority.”
“And
then we need to start bringing to bear our diplomatic and economic
influence and making serious efforts to make change. Sometimes we are
doing that, but not nearly often enough, nor forcefully enough.”
President Obama has nominated Judge Merrick Garland
for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The President could not have
picked anyone more dangerous to the preservation of our Constitution;
especially the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. As a member of the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit, Merrick Garland supported a DC gun
ban in 2007. He voted to reconsider DC v. Heller. Heller was the
landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held in a
5-4 decision that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to
possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as
self-defense within the home. A subsequent case, known as McDonald v.
Chicago, extended the Heller ruling to the states. The McDonald decision prevents states, cities and
other legislative bodies from restricting the rights guaranteed by the
Second Amendment as defined by Heller. The Heller and McDonald decisions
are the defensive line protecting our freedom from legislative and
executive overreach. They are both now hanging by a thread.
. The Heller and McDonald decisions are Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy. I cannot imagine a more disrespectful
action towards the memory of this great man than to nominate his nemesis
as his replacement. With the assistance of U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch
(Utah), this is exactly what President Obama has done.
. In a 2000 case, Merrick Garland voted to maintain a
registration of gun owners, supporting efforts by the Clinton
administration to use the instant check system to illegally retain gun
owners’ names. As of this morning, at least seven GOP U.S. Senators have
agreed to meet with Merrick Garland to start the process of
confirmation:
• Susan Collins (Maine)
• Jeff Flake (Arizona)
• Mark Kirk (Illinois)
• Roy Blunt (Missouri)
• Thad Cochran (Mississippi)
• James Inhofe (Oklahoma)
• Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire) In addition to the list above, Senator Orin Hatch
(Utah) not only recommended Merrick Garland’s nomination to President
Obama, he is supported by Senator Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) on the
Senate Judiciary Committee that is tasked with oversight of the
nomination process. If Merrick Garland is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme
Court, he will work to implement a gun registration, adopt
semi-automatic and handgun bans, and even allow the “DHS/FBI Terrorist
Watch-list” to be used
to prevent law abiding citizens from owning a firearm. The timing of Merrick Garland’s nomination is
critical and suspicious. On March 4, 2016, the full U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 4th Circuit agreed to rehear a case that could
potentially deal a blow to a Maryland gun control law that bans assault
weapons and high-capacity magazines. The ruling in this case would set
the precedence for lifting of similar bans in other states, including CT
and NY. This 4th Circuit panel ruling is entirely contingent on the DC
v. Heller Supreme Court decision. Regardless of how the 4th Circuit
Court of Appeals rules, the escalation of this case to the U.S. Supreme
Court will provide Judge Garland with the exact case needed to overturn
Heller. All Oath Keepers are asked to take the following actions: 1. If your Senator is one of the GOP members listed
above that has either supported the Merrick Garland nomination or agreed
to meet with him to initiate the confirmation process, you need to call
their office today to voice your disapproval. Your Senator’s contact
information is available at: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm 2. Use the following link provided by the National Rifle Association to take action: http://www.nrailafrontlines.com/block_garland_scotus_nomination 3. Use the following link provided by Gun Owners of
America to write your representatives regarding this attempted breech of
your Second Amendment rights: https://gunowners.org/alert03162016.htm
Oath Keepers leadership will do its’ best to keep
our members informed and provide the tools and guidance needed to
maintain our rights as guaranteed by The U.S. Constitution.
Editor in Chief for Oath Keepers; Unemployed poet; Lover of
Nature and Nature's beauty. Slave to all cats.
Reading interests include study of hidden history, classical literature.
Concerned Constitutional American. Honorably discharged USMC Viet Nam
Veteran.
