Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday 12 July 2015

USAHitman | Conspiracy News

Link to USAHM Conspiracy News


Posted: 11 Jul 2015 06:12 PM PDT
us-army-hollow-point-bullets.si
In a dramatic shift for the US military, the army is considering the use of bullets that can expand and break up when striking a target to make new pistols more lethal, raising concern that doing so would violate international law.
According to the Army Times, the Pentagon recently reviewed the use of “special purpose ammunition” and determined the army could look into enabling its next-generation XM-17 pistol to use various kinds, including hollow point bullets. Currently, only ball ammunition is used in the army.
The difference is that while ball ammunition penetrates deeper into an enemy when they are struck, hollow point can break up once they hit an individual, destroying a larger area of tissue and generally producing more damage. As a result, they are more lethal.
The other difference is that, unlike ball ammunition, expanding bullets were banned under the 1899 Hague Convention. The bullets are not used by NATO members, either.
Richard Jackson, the special assistant to the US Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War, acknowledged to the Army Times that the Pentagon’s new posture marks “a significant re-interpretation of the legal standard.” However, he insisted that any potential use of such ammunition by the US would not be a violation of international law.
“There’s a myth that (expanding/fragmenting bullets) are prohibited in international armed conflict, but that doesn’t make any sense now,” he told the news outlet.
Jackson went on to say that while the 1899 Hague Convention prohibited the use of expanding bullets internationally, the ban doesn’t actually apply to the US because the US never signed it. He also noted local law enforcement agencies around the world are allowed to use them.
“Very few states have signed [the Hague Convention]and the United States is not one of them,” he said to the Washington Post. “Law enforcement agencies use hollow points all over the world, so if it doesn’t violate the human rights standards that applies these days, why are we applying those standards on the battlefield?”
Even Article 23 of the 1907 Hague Convention, which bans “arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering,” does not apply, Jackson said, because using hollow points on the battlefield in certain situations would be more humane than continuing to use current standards.
“There are actually humanitarian benefits from the use of this type of ammunition,” he told the Post. “By staying in the target there isn’t as many collateral effects….it will not go through the target into a bystander nearby or someone in the next room.”
The Army itself echoed this sentiment in a statement, saying, “The use of this ammunition supports the international law principles of preventing excessive collateral effects and safeguarding civilian lives.”
The Army’s argument is, essentially, that since modern warfare often takes place in urban environments, hollow point bullets would minimize collateral damage. Ball ammunition, because it can penetrate tissue more deeply, can as a result blow through a target and potentially hit others nearby. Ball ammunition can ricochet and hit other people as well. Potentially, these sorts of risks would be reduced with hollow point bullets.
Source
The post ​International violation? US Army considering hollow point bullets for pistols appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 11 Jul 2015 05:45 PM PDT
fbi-mistakes-charleston-shooter-gun.si
The FBI said that “heartbreaking” errors in a background check of Charleston shooter Dylann Roof allowed him to purchase a semi-automatic handgun. Roof used the weapon to kill nine African-American people attending a church Bible study last month.
“We are all sick this has happened,” FBI Director James Comey told reporters at the agency headquarters on Friday. “We wish we could turn back time, because from this vantage point, everything seems obvious. But we cannot.”
The problems began with a drug-related arrest of Dylan Roof in South Carolina weeks before the shooting, during which he admitted to possessing illegal drugs. Under federal rules, that admission alone would have been enough to immediately disqualify Roof from an April gun purchase, according to Comey.
According to CBS News, Roof used birthday money from his father to buy the firearm.
The FBI uses a database known as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to scrutinize people looking to buy weapons. The Bureau has three business days to respond to dealer’s request before a sale can proceed. Comey said that the complicated layout of police jurisdictions in Columbia, South Carolina contributed to the mistakes, according to ABC News.
The FBI examiner who evaluated Roof’s request to buy a gun never saw the arrest report because the wrong arresting agency was listed on the South Carolina criminal history records that she reviewed. Comey said that had the examiner seen the arrest report, Roof’s gun purchase would have been denied.
The West Virginia examiner did find Roof’s arrest on a drug charge, but for some reason the arresting agency listed was the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office, whereas the arresting agency was actually the Columbia Police Department. She contacted the sheriff’s office and the county prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor did not respond and the county sheriff’s office suggested she check with the Columbia police force.
If the examiner had done so, she would have seen an arrest report in which Roof admitted having the drug Suboxone, which is used to treat opiate addiction. However, since she was unfamiliar with the area, her list didn’t include the Columbia Police Department, and she contacted another police department closer to the gun dealer, one which had no report on Roof’s arrest.
Comey said he had ordered an internal 30-day review of what happened, and that FBI officials would be meeting with the victims’ relatives. The Justice Department has begun its own investigation, according to the Associated Press.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, condemned the errors.
“It’s disastrous that this bureaucratic mistake prevented existing laws from working and blocking an illegal gun sale,” Grassley told the AP. “The facts undercut attempts to use the tragedy to enact unnecessary gun laws. The American people, and especially the victims’ families, deserve better.”
Source
The post Failed background check allowed Charleston shooter to purchase gun – FBI appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 11 Jul 2015 05:29 PM PDT
apa.si
The US’s leading professional psychologists’ organization helped justify CIA and Pentagon torture programs, a new 542-page report shows. The psychologists involved later profited from torture-related contracts.
The report, concluded this month, examined the involvement of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the validation of the so-called program of enhanced interrogation, under which terror suspects were subjected to torture at CIA black cites and at the Pentagon’s Guantanamo Bay prison facility.
The document prepared by a former assistant US attorney, David Hoffman, says some of the APA’s senior figures, including its ethics director, pushed to keep the association’s ethics code in line with DoD’s interrogation policies. Other prominent external psychologists took actions that aided CIA’s torture practices, defending it from growing dissent among its own psychologists.
“The evidence supports the conclusion that APA officials colluded with DoD officials to, at the least, adopt and maintain APA ethics policies that were not more restrictive than the guidelines that key DOD officials wanted,” the report published on Friday by the New York Times said. “APA chose its ethics policy based on its goals of helping DoD, managing its PR, and maximizing the growth of the profession.”
The Hoffman report focuses on the APA’s close ties with the Pentagon and can be viewed as complimentary to last December’s Senate report that exposed the brutality of post 9/11 CIA tactics towards terror detainees, the NYT said. It also gives additional details about how the intelligence agency adopted the enhanced interrogation program and solicited outside advice to stem concerns among its own medical professionals.
The report also describes several instances in which senior figures involved in the program moved into the private sector to get lucrative contracts from the CIA and the Pentagon. For instance, Joseph Matarazzo, a former president of the psychological association and a member of the CIA advisory committee, was asked by Mr Kirk Hubbard (CIA psychologist who was chairman of the agency advisory committee), to provide an opinion about whether sleep deprivation constituted torture. The conclusion was that it did not.
Later, Matarazzo became a partner in Mitchell Jessen and Associates, a contracting company created by James Mitchel and Bruce Jessen to consult with the CIA on their interrogation program. They were instructors for the Air Force’s SERE (survival, evasion, rescue and escape) program, in which US troops are subjected to simulated torture to prepare them for possible capture. They adapted the program’s techniques for use against terror detainees, the report said.
After the Hoffman report was made public, the American Psychological Association issued an apology.
“The actions, policies and lack of independence from government influence described in the Hoffman report represented a failure to live up to our core values,” Nadine Kaslow, a former president of the organization, said in a statement. “We profoundly regret and apologize for the behavior and the consequences that ensued.”
One of the more immediate consequences of the report was the resignation of the APA’s ethics chief, Stephen Behnke, according to the Guardian. The psychologists coordinated the group’s public policy statements on interrogations with a top military psychologist, the report said. He later received a Pentagon contract for training interrogators, without notifying the American Psychological Association’s board.
Kaslow told the newspaper that Behnke’s last day at the APA was July 8, after the association received Hoffman’s report, and that further resignations were likely to follow.
A similarly damning report on the APA’s involvement in US government torture programs was published in April.
Source
The post Psychologists adjusted ethics code to Pentagon & CIA post 9/11 torture – report appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 11 Jul 2015 05:00 PM PDT
reddit_s-ceo-ellen-pao-resigns.si
Reddit’s CEO, Ellen Pao, has resigned following protest by users over the recent dismissal of a popular administrator and the introduction of changes to its harassment policy. An online petition calling for Pao’s resignation received 213,000 signatures.
Pao said Friday that it was a “mutual decision” and that she had “not” been fired, according to the website Re/Code.Reddit board member Sam Altman posted a statement on the site explaining Pao’s departure and is doing an ‘Ask Me Anything’ chat with the Reddit community about the resignation.
“Ellen Pao resigned from Reddit today by mutual agreement. I’m delighted to announce that Steve Huffman, founder and the original Reddit CEO, is returning as CEO,” said Sam Altman.
“We are thankful for Ellen’s many contributions to Reddit and the technology industry generally. She brought focus to chaos, recruited a world-class team of executives, and drove growth. She brought a face to Reddit that changed perceptions, and is a pioneer for women in the tech industry. She will remain as an advisor to the board through the end of 2015. I look forward to seeing the great things she does beyond that.”
Pao took over the CEO job in November 2014, but has been under scrutiny by the social networking community during her tenure.
Last week, Reddit moderators shut down 300 discussion pages on the site in protest over Pao’s and management’s handling of the dismissal of popular moderator Victoria Taylor, a top administrator of Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) chats. Taylor was let go for unspecified reasons, but the protest led Pao to issue an apology over the dismissal.
“We screwed up. Not just on July 2, but also over the past several years,” Pao said in a Reddit post. “We haven’t communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes.”
Taylor was the lead employee in moderating AMA chats with major figures, like politicians or celebrities, who participate in the question-and-answer sessions with users.
Some Reddit users speculated that her dismissal was tied to a recent AMA with Rev. Jesse Jackson that went awry, as users lofted controversial questions and racially-based charges at the longtime civil rights activist.
In May, under Pao’s direction, the company also introduced changes to its harassment policy and banned five subreddit communities that were devoted to hating or criticizing fat people, transgender people and other groups. Online users who have a strong tradition of free speech interpreted the ban as an attack on users’ free speech, and a sign that the community was going to start banning content that it found objectionable. Pao apologized on NPR for not alerting moderators of the Reddit communities about the transition sooner.
Altman said in the notice about Pao’s resignation that the company will do more to communicate with moderators and its more than 8,300 active communities. He also said it would deliver clarity on the content policy of Reddit in order to preserve the integrity of the site, but also “maintain reddit as a place where the most open and honest conversations with the entire world can happen.”
A former venture capitalist, Pao has been in the spotlight before, accusing the prominent Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of gender discrimination when she was not promoted to a general or senior partner, and then was subsequently terminated. A jury in March found gender was not the motivating reason for her termination or lack of promotion.
Source
The post Reddit CEO Ellen Pao resigns following community uprising appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.