Citizens for Legitimate Government: 19 June 2013

CLG Exclusive: Apartheid at NYU by Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D. www.legitgov.org 18 Jun 2013 Recent reports by The New York Times have disclosed details about the extravagant salaries, loans, loan forgiveness packages, parting gifts and other perks and benefits paid to top administrators and 'star' faculty in the law and medical schools at NYU...Reading these reports might lead one to believe that NYU is home to a coddled, handsomely rewarded faculty, a knot of wriggling leeches living lavishly on the future debts of its students. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

N.Y.U. Gives Its Stars Loans for Summer Homes 18 Jun 2013 Follow one of Fire Island's quaint footpaths away from the ferry dock, past modest cottages and better-appointed vacation homes, to an elegant modern beach house that extends across three lots... Its most interesting feature, however, is not architectural, but financial. The house, which is owned by John Sexton, the president [dirt-bag] of New York University, was bought with a $600,000 loan from an N.Y.U. foundation that eventually grew to be $1 million, according to Suffolk County land records. It is one of a number of loans that N.Y.U. has made to executives and star professors for expensive vacation homes in areas like East Hampton, Fire Island and Litchfield County, Conn., in what educational experts call a bold new frontier for lavish university compensation.

US deploys 1,500 Marines to Yemen: Yemeni official 18 Jun 2013 The United States has deployed 1,500 Marines with advanced arms and military equipment to Yemen, says a Yemeni military official. Some 1,500 Marines were deployed to al-Anad military base in the country's southern province of Lahij, al-Sharea daily quoted the official as saying on Monday. Another 200 also arrived in the capital, Sana'a, to join the American forces already stationed in the capital's Sheraton Hotel. The official also said that American forces usually enter the country in small groups, but the recent large deployment could be in preparation for a possible imminent incident [aka US false flag] in the region.

Afghan Taliban say they killed 4 US troops 18 Jun 2013 The Taliban claimed responsibility Wednesday for an attack in Afghanistan that killed four American troops just hours after the insurgent group announced it would hold talks with the U.S. on finding a political solution to ending the nearly 12-year war in the country. The deadly attack underscores the challenges ahead in trying to end the violence roiling Afghanistan through peace negotiations in Qatar with militants still fighting on the ground.

U.S. to launch formal peace talks with Taliban 18 Jun 2013 The Obama administration will start formal peace talks with the Taliban on Thursday in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, the first direct political contact between them since early last year and the initial step in what the administration hopes will lead to a negotiated end to the protracted war in on Afghanistan. Afghan government representatives are not expected to attend the meeting. But U.S. officials said the United States wants to eventually hand over the process to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his appointed peace council.

Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre death certificates released --Exact number of bullet wounds was not disclosed --The documents were made public only after a Freedom of Information Act request. 18 Jun 2013 All but two of the 26 students and staffers massacred in at Sandy Hook Elementary School died from "multiple gunshot wounds," according to death certificates released Tuesday. The death certificates were made public through the Freedom of Information Act after the Newtown Clerk's Office refused to give them up, citing privacy [?] for the victims' families.

The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings 19 Jun 2013 After contradictory stories emerged about an F.B.I. agent's killing last month of a Chechen man in Orlando, Fla., who was being questioned over ties to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the bureau reassured the public that it would clear up the murky episode. But if such internal investigations are time-tested, their outcomes are also predictable: from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 "subjects" and wounded about 80 others -- and every one of those episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal F.B.I. records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The last two years have followed the same pattern: an F.B.I. spokesman said that since 2011, there had been no findings of improper intentional shootings.

NSA head, lawmakers defend surveillance programs 18 Jun 2013 The head of the National Security Agency [General Keith Alexander] said U.S. surveillance programs had helped disrupt more than 50 possible attacks since September 11, 2001, as sympathetic members of Congress also defended the use of the top-secret spying operations. In the first public hearing dedicated to the programs since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed them this month, members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee showed little will on Tuesday to pursue significant reforms. Instead, both U.S. officials and lawmakers spent hours publicly justifying the phone and Internet monitoring programs as vital security tools and criticized Snowden's decision to leak documents about them to media outlets.

Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment 18 Jun 2013 Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests the court makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it is forced to give the government. The legal filing, which invokes the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about far-reaching National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic. Revelations about the program, called PRISM, have opened fissures between U.S. officials and the involved companies, which have scrambled to reassure their users without violating strict rules against disclosing information that the government has classified as top-secret.

Assange will not leave Ecuador embassy even if Sweden drops extradition bid 18 Jun 2013 Julian Assange will not leave Ecuador's embassy even if Sweden drops its extradition bid over accusations of sexual assault, because he fears moves are already underway by the US to prosecute him on espionage charges, he has said. On the eve of the anniversary of his seeking asylum in the embassy in Knightsbridge, Assange said he believed a sealed indictment had already been lodged by a grand jury in Virginia, which could see him being arrested and extradited by Britain to the US to face prosecution over the WikiLeaks cable releases. "The strong view of my US lawyer is that there is already a sealed indictment, which means I would be arrested, unless the British government gave information or guarantees that would grant me safe passage," the WikiLeaks founder told a small group of news agencies.

Civil rights groups sue NYPD over Muslim spying 18 Jun 2013 The New York Police Department's widespread spying programs directed at Muslims have undermined free worship by innocent people and should be declared unconstitutional, religious leaders and civil rights advocates said Tuesday after the filing of a federal lawsuit. "Our mosque should be an open, religious and spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and censorship," Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff, told a rally outside police headquarters shortly after the suit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn.

Reporter Michael Hastings dies at 33 18 Jun 2013 Award-winning journalist Michael Hastings, best known for the Rolling Stone profile that led to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's retirement, died in a car accident early Tuesday in Los Angeles, according to his employers at Buzzfeed and Rolling Stone. He was 33. Hastings wrote "Runaway General," the 2010 Rolling Stone blockbuster story on Gen. Stanley McChrystal that ultimately led the general to step down from his position leading U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

1 in 9 U.S. bridges in need of repair 19 Jun 2013 More than one in nine bridges in the USA -- at least 66,405, or 11% of the total -- are structurally deficient, according to a new report. These are not rarely used, out-of-the way structures: Each day, Americans take 260 million trips over structurally deficient bridges, says the report from Transportation for America, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition that works to improve transportation. The structurally deficient bridges are 65 years old on average, and the Federal Highway Administration estimates that repairing them would cost $76 billion. [Right, but the sociopaths in the US government would rather fund the Syrian rebel cannibals.]

House passes far-reaching anti-abortion bill 18 Jun 2013 The Republican-led House on Tuesday passed a far-reaching anti-abortion bill that conservatives saw as a milestone in their 40-year campaign against legalized abortion and Democrats characterized as yet another example of a GOP war on women. The legislation, sparked by the murder conviction of a Philadelphia late-term abortion provider, would restrict almost all abortions to the first 20 weeks after conception, defying laws in most states that allow abortions up to when the fetus becomes viable, usually considered to be around 24 weeks. It mirrors 20-week abortion ban laws passed by some states, and lays further groundwork for the ongoing legal battle that abortion foes hope will eventually result in forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal.

Rep. Michael Burgess Says 15-Week-Old Male Fetuses Pleasure Themselves 18 Jun 2013 At what age do young boys begin sexual self-exploration? As early as 15 weeks in utero, according to Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas. "Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful," said Burgess, a former obstetrician-gynecologist. "They stroke their face. If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?" The tea party congressman, 62, made the awkward argument during a House Rules Committee hearing today about H.R. bill 1797, which would ban abortions 20 weeks after fertilization.

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