China: Say Protest on phone it cuts off

If You Say “Protest” On A Phone In China, It Cuts Off Automatically

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If You Say “Protest” On A Phone In China, It Cuts Off Automatically

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry Business Insider March 22, 2011

China is tightening up its online censorship even more, the Times reports.

The story recounts an eye-opening anecdote: a Chinese entrepreneur was on the phone with his girlfriend, and quipped, quoting Shakespeare: “The lady doth protest too much.” Upon the word “protest,” the phonecall cut off. He was speaking in English, but this has also happened to people speaking in Mandarin, so it’s not just a one-off.

This and other events like Gmail being blocked in China show that, in the wake of protests in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Chinese government is tightening up its control over the internet even more. (This has Chinese internet stocks rising.)

It also shows the amazing technical prowess of China’s censors: they’re able to monitor and speech-recognize millions of phone conversations, in English and Mandarin, in real time, and cut them off. It is an amazing technological feat. Meanwhile Burma, a China ally and one of the world’s most reclusive dictatorships, is cracking down on Skype, which is one of the few gates to the outside world.

VPN services, which allow computer users to circumvent the “Great Firewall” are being increasingly disrupted, and it’s generally much harder now to access sites outside the firewall.

It’s hard to see a silver lining here. The Chinese government is clearly scared of online activism and is doing everything it can to clamp down, and this is affecting everyone beyond online activists. Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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Radioaction reaches Iceland and Canada

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Radioactive particle traces from Japan reach Iceland, Canada

Reuters March 22, 2011

Miniscule numbers of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected as far away as Iceland, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

They stressed the tiny traces, measured by a network of international monitoring stations as they spread eastwards from Japan across the Pacific, North America, the Atlantic and to Europe, were far too low to cause any harm to humans.

“It’s only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere,” Andreas Stohl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, said. “Over Europe there would be no concern about human health.”

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), a Vienna-based U.N. body for monitoring possible breaches of the atom bomb test ban, has 63 stations worldwide for observing such particles, including one in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.

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Ron Paul: Obama Toward World Government

Ron Paul: Obama Moving Us Toward One World Government

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Ron Paul: Obama Moving Us Toward One World Government

Congressman goes on media blitz to denounce illegal war of aggression against Libya

Steve Watson Infowars.com March 22, 2011

Congressman Ron Paul made a sweep of television appearances yesterday to voice his strong opposition to the attack on Libya, and making it clear that the president is subverting US national sovereignty by bypassing Congress to engage in illegal acts of aggression.

Appearing on Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano, the Congressman pulled no punches when explaining why he believes Obama went to the UN for authority to drop bombs on Libya, rather than congress.

“I think he philosophically believes in one world government,” Paul stated.

“He wants to keep nudging us in that direction. I don’t believe he has a conviction that national sovereignty has any value. So therefore if they can diminish the Congress.” he continued.

“If he diminishes the Congress and he can get his authority from the United Nations then this enhances what he believes in. But he is not alone, the leadership in both parties has been nudging in that direction for a long time.” the Congressman added.

“To think of all the effort that the founders went to to make the Congress the most important body, that they are now the most willing to give up their prerogatives and give it to the executive branch and the judicial branch, and onward and onward. Our leaderships in the House as long as I’ve been there have always deferred to the executive branch.” he said.

Paul once again urged the American people to recognize the military incursion into Libya as a war of opportunity.

“It is unnecessary, it is wrong, it has nothing to do with national security, it has nothing to do with the defence of this country.” he said.

“I think there is more to do with it than just that. That may be their cover. It may be that oil is an important issue here. We didn’t go to Rwanda for humanitarian reasons, so I’m not to sure that oil might not be the real clincher here.”

Watch the video:

The Congressman also appeared on Cavuto on Fox and both Anderson Cooper and In The Arena on CNN, during which he made several salient points.

“I don’t think they are up front with this.” Paul told Elliot Spitzer.

“It is said we are going there for humanitarian reasons, but have you ever noticed around the world there are a lot of humanitarian problems. There is abuse of protesters all through the middle east right now but it’s being done by governments that we endorse – they are our “friendly” dictators.”

Watch the interview:

Paul posed the following question to Anderson Cooper concerning Colonel Gaddafi:

“Why was it that four or five years ago we decided that he was a reformed person and we would start trading with him again, after we knew he was a thug and he’s been a thug for forty something years?”

Watch the interview:

On Cavuto Paul again struck out at the continuous revolving door of dictators that the US military industrial complex is involved with, as well as highlighting the financial fallout of endless war.

“The American people are sick and tired of this. We are in trouble here. We’re spending money overseas, we blow up countries and then we have to rebuild them at the same time we can’t even build our own infrastructure.”

Watch the interview:

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England. Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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Hamas protests U.N. teaching Holocaust

Hamas protests U.N. plans to teach Holocaust in Gaza

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Hamas protests U.N. plans to teach Holocaust in Gaza

Diaa Hadid and Ibrahim Barzak

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The United Nations has launched a new plan to teach the Holocaust in Gaza schools, drawing fierce condemnation from Gaza's militant Hamas rulers, school teachers -- and even the body tasked with peace negotiations with Israel. If implemented, it would be the first time most Palestinian children learn about Jewish suffering. But the outcry underscores how sensitive the issue is to Palestinians.

"Playing with the education of our children in the Gaza Strip is a red line," Hamas Education Minister, Mohammed Asqoul told a website of the group. He said Hamas will block attempts to teach the Holocaust "regardless of the price."

The uproar erupted after a U.N. official told a Jordanian daily in February that UNRWA, the main U.N. agency serving Palestinian refugees, would introduce a short case study about the Holocaust to Gaza students as part of its human rights curriculum.

"Instead of pre-emptive accusations, it is important for Palestinians ... to fully understand the tragedies and suffering that happened to all people through generations, without divvying up facts and taking things out of context," the official, Sami Mushasha, was quoted as saying.

UNRWA representatives refused to comment on the record, but one official said the agency was committed to introducing the curriculum for the next school year, beginning in September.

He added that officials were hesitating because they feared Hamas would incite loyalists to damage U.N. schools or harm their teachers if they introduce the materials. He requested anonymity because he was barred from discussing the matter with the media.

Hamas frequently accuses the U.N. of spreading immorality, and unknown assailants have attacked the agency's property in the past, including the torching of summer camps last year.

Since Hamas seized power of Gaza in 2007, it has viewed the U.N. as the main challenger to their influence in the coastal territory. Officials have tried to limit the international group's vast influence in Gaza, where it operates schools for some 200,000 children.

But the controversy over teaching the Holocaust in Gaza is more than a power struggle between the U.N. and Hamas, whose militant officials frequently deny the Nazi genocide of European Jewry ever occurred.

Many Palestinians are reluctant to acknowledge Jewish suffering, fearing it would diminish recognition of their own claims. Views range from outright denial to challenging the scope of the Holocaust.

Even Hamas' bitter enemy, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, reacted angrily to the U.N. plan. And the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the chief body tasked with negotiating peace with Israel, rejected the idea.

"Teaching the Holocaust to Palestinian students in U.N. schools is unacceptable," said Zakaria al-Agha, a member of the PLO's executive committee.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev called the Palestinian responses "obscene." Israelis consider the Holocaust a central event in modern Jewish history.

Some 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II, and the need to find a sanctuary for hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors contributed to Israel's creation after World War II.

In a war that followed Israel's declaration of independence, more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.

The Palestinians call this dispersal their "Nakba," or catastrophe, and many see the events linked. As such, recognizing the Holocaust is often seen as tantamount to acknowledging Jewish claims to the land.

Israeli officials have long said that Palestinian recognition of Jewish suffering is a necessary step toward peace. But for Gaza residents, empathy is particularly difficult: Most of the territory's 1.5 million residents live in poverty, facing Israeli restrictions in commerce and travel, and hundreds of civilians were killed in an Israeli military offensive against Hamas two years ago, aimed at stopping daily rocket attacks at Israel by Gaza militants.

Yet even if the U.N. moves ahead with the plan this year, it could face another obstacle: its own schoolteachers.

In about a dozen interviews, they said they did not want to teach the materials and warned of rebellion.

"The agency will open the gates of hell with this step," said one schoolteacher, Sami. "This will not work."

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Police brutality against Col. Ann Wright and Daniel Ellsberg at Free Bra...

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What They’re Covering Up at Fukushima

Hirose Takashi Counterpunch March 22, 2011

Introduced by Douglas Lummis

Okinawa

Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex.  Probably his best known book is  Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they’re safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?

He did the TV interview that is partly translated below somewhat against his present impulses.  I talked to him on the telephone today (March 22 , 2011) and he told me that while it made sense to oppose nuclear power back then, now that the disaster has begun he would just as soon remain silent, but the lies they are telling on the radio and TV are so gross that he cannot remain silent.

I have translated only about the first third of the interview (you can see the whole thing in Japanese on you-tube), the part that pertains particularly to what is happening at the Fukushima plants.  In the latter part he talked about how dangerous radiation is in general, and also about the continuing danger of earthquakes.

After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep on sprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagus solution  [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete. Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers.  One, those reactors were expensive, and they just can’t bear the idea of that huge a financial loss.  But more importantly, accepting the sarcophagus solution means admitting that they were wrong, and that they couldn’t fix the things.  On the one hand that’s too much guilt for a human being to bear.  On the other, it means the defeat of the nuclear energy idea, an idea they hold to with almost religious devotion.  And it means not just the loss of those six (or ten) reactors, it means shutting down all the others as well, a financial catastrophe.  If they can only get them cooled down and running again they can say, See, nuclear power isn’t so dangerous after all.  Fukushima is a drama with the whole world watching, that can end in the defeat or (in their frail, I think groundless, hope) victory for the nuclear industry.  Hirose’s account can help us to understand what the drama is about. Douglas Lummis

Hirose Takashi:  The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and the State of the Media

Broadcast by Asahi NewStar, 17 March, 20:00

Interviewers: Yo and Maeda Mari

Yo:  Today many people saw water being sprayed on the reactors from the air and from the ground, but is this effective?

Hirose:  . . . If you want to cool a reactor down with water, you have to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has no meaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity.  Otherwise it’s like pouring water on lava.

Yo:  Reconnect the electricity – that’s to restart the cooling system?

Hirose:  Yes.  The accident was caused by the fact that the tsunami flooded the emergency generators and carried away their fuel tanks.  If that isn’t fixed, there’s no way to recover from this accident.

Yo: Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner/operator of the nuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.

Hirose: Yes, there’s a little bit of hope there.  But what’s worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV).  This is just a cartoon.  Here’s what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph).  This is the butt end of the reactor.  Take a look.  It’s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes.  On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors.  Only the engineers know.  This is where water has been poured in.  This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy.  Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there.  And it’s salt water, right?  You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens?  You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze.  They won’t move.  This will be happening everywhere.  So I can’t believe that it’s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate.  I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this.  You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can’t understand it.

Yo:  It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4.  This morning 30 tons.  Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks.  That’s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up.  Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?

Hirose:  In principle, it can’t.  Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe.  Now it’s a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes.  I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there.  And how long can they last?  I mean, physically.  That’s what the situation has come to now.  When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, “If that’s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!”  Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic.  What we need now is a proper panic.  Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real.

If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the Soviet Union did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, bury the whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, and dump cement over it from the sky.  Because you have to assume the worst case.  Why?  Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with six reactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors.  If even one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must either evacuate the site or stay on and collapse.  So if, for example, one of the reactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time.  We can’t know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them will go.  And if that happens, Daini isn’t so far away, so probably the reactors there will also go down.  Because I assume that workers will not be able to stay there.

I’m speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low.  This is the danger that the world is watching.  Only in Japan is it being hidden.  As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state.  So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down.  Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 per cent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic.  If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible.  Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert.  We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low.  Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week.  That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation.  We’re not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers.  It means of course Tokyo, Osaka.  That’s how fast a radioactive cloud could spread. Of course it would depend on the weather; we can’t know in advance how the radiation would be distributed.  It would be nice if the wind would blow toward the sea, but it doesn’t always do that.  Two days ago, on the 15th, it was blowing toward Tokyo.  That’s how it is. . . .

Yo: Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity.  All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan.  What is the truth of the matter?

Hirose: For example, yesterday.  Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour.  With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn’t explain what this means.  All of the information media are at fault here I think.  They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space.  But that’s one millisievert per year.  A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.  Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose.  You call that safe?  And what media have reported this?  None.  They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it.  The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping.  What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside.  These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say?  They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance.  I want to say the reverse.  Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body.  What happens?  Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.  That’s a thousand times a thousand squared.  That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.”  Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion.  Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Yo:  So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning.  Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose: That’s right.  When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go.  The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children.  Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments.  What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air.  Their instruments don’t eat.  What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material. . . .

Yo:  So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactive material are not the same.

Hirose:  If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima Nuclear Station here in this studio, the answer will be no.  But radioactive particles are carried here by the air.  When the core begins to melt down, elements inside like iodine turn to gas.  It rises to the top, so if there is any crevice it escapes outside.

Yo:  Is there any way to detect this?

Hirose: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not in shape even to do regular monitoring.  They just take an occasional measurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano’s statements.  You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that.  And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much.  That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments.  You can’t do it just by keeping a monitoring post.  It’s no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air.  Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it’s high, it’s low – that’s not the point.  We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going – they don’t have a system in place for doing that now.

Douglas Lummis is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of Radical Democracy. Lummis can be reached at ideaspeddler@gmail.com Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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Libya War: $100 Million Dollars A Day

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Cost Of Libya War: $100 Million Dollars A Day

Megan Scully National Journal March 22, 2011

With U.N. coalition forces bombarding Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi from the sea and air, the United States’ part in the operation could ultimately hit several billion dollars — and require the Pentagon to request emergency funding from Congress to pay for it.

The first day of Operation Odyssey Dawn had a price tag that was well over $100 million for the U.S. in missiles alone. And the U.S. military, which remains in the lead now in its third day, has pumped millions more into air- and sea-launched strikes targeting air-defense sites and ground-force positions along Libya’s coastline.

The ultimate total that the United States spends will hinge on the length and scope of the strikes as well as on the contributions of its coalition allies. But Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said on Monday that the U.S. costs could “easily pass the $1 billion mark on this operation, regardless of how well things go.”

The Pentagon has the money in its budget to cover unexpected contingencies and can also use fourth-quarter dollars to cover the costs of operations now. “They’re very used to doing this operation where they borrow from Peter to pay Paul,” said Gordon Adams, who served as the Office of Management and Budget’s associate director for national security during the Clinton administration.

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Radionuclide Blankets United States

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Radionuclide Blankets United States; Authorities Insist Levels Are Harmless

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com March 22, 2011

Contradicting Barack Obama’s assertion last week that radiation from Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant would not even reach Hawaii, the mainland United States has been blanketed with radioactive Xenon 133 particles, while spent nuclear fuel pools at Fukushima have now reached boiling point and threaten to spew out more radioactive smoke.

Although health authorities insist that levels of the radionuclide Xenon 133 that have been measured are harmless, claims that such radiation would dissolve over the Pacific have been proven completely inaccurate. Indeed, the latest charts show that fallout from Fukushima will not just smother the United States, but most of the globe.

The chart below from the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) shows the spread of Xenon 133 emitted from the Fukushima plant.

CLICK TO ENLARGE. The following chart, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, also shows the spread of Xenon 133 across the United States.

Although Xenon has been released globally, it is considered a far more inert and harmless form of radioactivity in comparison to the far more dangerous iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137.

The next chart, produced by the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety and Meteo France, shows the dispersion of the more dangerous caesium-137 particles from Fukushima on a global scale.

It is important to stress that health authorities insist levels of all four of the radioactive isotopes being released from Fukushima, namely Xenon 133, iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 are harmless to people living outside of the Fukushima exclusion zone. However, those assurances were not adequate to prevent the U.S. military from preparing the, “Mandatory evacuation of thousands of American troops and their families in Japan out of concern over rising radiation levels,” reports CNN.

Despite its apparent harmlessness at current levels, the very fact that such radiation is currently smothering the entire United States completely contradicts assurances made last week by President Barack Obama that the radiation from Fukushima was set to dissipate before it reached Hawaii, never mind the mainland U.S.

“Obama told KDKA-TV of Pittsburgh that experts have assured him that a nuclear release from Japan will dissipate by the time it gets to Hawaii, much less the U.S. mainland,” USA Today reported on March 15. Just days later, reports emerged of small amounts of radiation hitting California.

As we have documented, given the habitual nature of both the Japanese and the U.S. government in deceiving people as to the safety of the air we breathe, the fact that distrust has reigned amidst panic buying of potassium iodide and geiger counters is completely understandable.

Radiation from Fukushima has now been detected as far north-east as British Columbia in Canada and Iceland in Scandinavia, with mainland Europe set to be hit over the coming 24 hours.

Today the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that radiation was still being spewed from Fukushima and that they were unclear of its source. An obvious answer would be the pools holding deadly spent nuclear fuel rods, which according to the latest reports have begun to boil as efforts to cool them down continue to fail, despite Japanese authorities and the global mainstream media continuing to claim that the worst of the problem is over.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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Police Officer Admits Stealing Gov Money

Former Mesquite Police Officer Admits Stealing Government Money

Defendant Faces Up to 10 Years in Federal Prison

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Former Mesquite Police Officer Admits Stealing Government Money Defendant Faces Up to 10 Years in Federal Prison

DALLAS—John David McAllister, 42, a former sergeant with the Mesquite Police Department (MPD), appeared this morning before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney and pleaded guilty to an indictment charging one count of theft of government money, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. McAllister, who remains on a personal recognizance bond, faces a maximum statutory sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 20, 2011, by U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay.

According to plea documents filed in the case, on March 1, 2011, McAllister was head of the MPD's narcotics unit, and his duties included executing search warrants at suspected drug stash locations and assisting uniformed officers with vehicles that were suspected of transporting narcotics or cash thought to be drug proceeds. While on duty that day, he received a call to assist a federal agent with making contact with a suspected drug courier. However, the request was made as part of an undercover money courier operation being conducted by the FBI.

After arriving at a parking lot on Motley Drive in Mesquite, McAllister searched the interior of the vehicle and discovered a duffle bag and a plastic bag containing $100,000 in cash. While McAllister believed the money was drug proceeds and could lawfully be seized, he now knows that the cash was the property of the FBI and had been placed in the vehicle as part of the undercover operation. Law enforcement officers at the scene requested McAllister transport the vehicle and cash to the MPD for processing.

While on his way to the MPD, McAllister removed one of the 52 individually wrapped bundles of cash, containing $2000 in cash, and hid it in his pants. When he arrived at the MPD, McAllister delivered the remaining 51 bundles of cash to the MPD's narcotics unit squad area. Prior to delivering the cash to the squad area, however, McAllister put the bundle of money that he had hidden in his pants into his vehicle. When McAllister was arrested by FBI agents on March 3, 2011, he had a portion of the stolen cash inside his wallet.

The FBI is in charge of the investigation and Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Calvert is in charge of the prosecution. Read more at dallas.fbi.gov

 

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Exploiting Minors to Produce Pornography

John Fred Nicklas IV, of Middle River, Maryland, was sentenced to 60 years in prison two counts of sexually exploiting minors to produce child pornography. Nicklas' fianceé, Shannon Leigh Honea, also of Middle River, pled guilty to the same charges.

Middle River Man Sentenced to 60 Years in Prison for Sexually Exploiting Minors to Produce Child Pornography and His Fianceé Pleads Guilty to the Same Charges

Couple Created Videos in Which He Sexually Molests a Baby and a Minor Female

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Middle River Man Sentenced to 60 Years in Prison for Sexually Exploiting Minors to Produce Child Pornography and His Fianceé Pleads Guilty to the Same Charges Couple Created Videos in Which He Sexually Molests a Baby and a Minor Female

U.S. Attorney’s Office March 22, 2011

BALTIMORE—U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson sentenced John Fred Nicklas IV, age 35, of Middle River, Maryland, today to 60 years in prison, followed by supervised release for life, on two counts of sexually exploiting minors to produce child pornography. Judge Nickerson also ordered that upon his release from prison, Nicklas will be required to register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

Nicklas’ fianceé, Shannon Leigh Honea, age 27, also of Middle River, pleaded guilty today to the same charges.

The sentence and guilty plea were announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Chief James W. Johnson of the Baltimore County Police Department; and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger.

According to Nicklas and Honea’s plea agreements, Baltimore County police detectives operating in an undercover capacity received videos and images of child pornography from a computer located at the residence shared by Nicklas and Honea. A search warrant was executed at their home on July 30, 2009 and over 600 images of child pornography involving prepubescent children and sadomasochistic conduct were seized.

A joint investigation by Baltimore County Police and the FBI revealed that between at least February 15, 2009 and July 30, 2009, Nicklas and Honea arranged to obtain videos depicting the sexual abuse of children and to sexually abuse children in order to make their own videos. Nicklas and Honea had minor females present at their residence in Middle River, Maryland.  hey arranged for the  minor females to change clothes in rooms arranged to visually record the minors changing their clothes in order to produce child pornography, and arranged to have minor females spend the evening at the house so that John Nicklas could sexually abuse the children to produce child pornography.

Nicklas and Honea traveled to other states to obtain minors in order to sexually abuse them and produce child pornography. They kept the images depicting the sexual abuse at their residence. John Fred Nicklas IV also sent a letter to Shannon Leigh Honea explaining how he wanted to have daughters with her so that he could sexually molest the children and describing in detail the sexually explicit activities that he would engage in with the children, starting when they were a year old.

Some of child pornography seized from their home included at least six videos created by Nicklas and Honea depicting him sexually abusing a baby girl and a minor female, and recording three minor females as they changed clothes.

As part of her plea agreement, Honea and the government have agreed that if the court accepts the plea agreement Honea will be sentenced to between 30 to 35 years in prison, followed by supervised release for life. U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson scheduled sentencing for June 8, 2011 at 10:30 a.m.

As a result of her guilty plea, Honea will also be required to register as a sex offender in the place where she resides, where she is an employee, and where she is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

Nicklas and Honea remain detained.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov. Details about Maryland’s program are available at http://www.justice.gov/usao/md/Safe-Childhood/index.html.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI, the Baltimore County Police Department, and the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office for their investigative work and assistance in the prosecution.  Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Bonnie S. Greenberg and Judson Mihok, who are prosecuting the case. Read more at www.fbi.gov

 

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