Prosecutorial Abuse On Steroids

by William L. Anderson [edited by Amicus Curia]

Many casual observers of George Zimmerman’s show trial were surprised it ended with a “not guilty” verdict, given how the politics of race had so infected the entire saga from beginning to the announcement of the jury’s decision. After all, not only was Zimmerman indicted on charges based on the assumtion he had intentionally pursued Trayvon Martin with personal ill will and animosity while being in that supposed frame of mind when he shot the teen (17), but the weight of the very President of the United States had effectively declared Zimmerman guilty of a racially-motivated murder notwithstanding the preliminary nature of the proceedings.

There will be no shortfall of commentary on the verdict, the outlandish media coverage (which declared Zimmerman to be a “white Hispanic” laying the groundwork for the racial angle in the case to be most fully exploited). But let’s deal with another more familiar perspective: the prosecutorial abuse which helped drive this case. The politics of race, front-and-center, not only drove the push for criminal charges, but so did electoral politics–specifically electoral politics defining the recent career of Special Prosecutor Angela Corey.

At this point, it can be said, even after the trial has ended, confusion about what happened remains, but it’s also clear the State of Florida did not meet the legal burden of proof needed for a conviction–important to remember as President Obama, Al Sharpton, and any number of commentators openly were declaring this was a high-profile action involving race, a trial where the law should be bypassed and mob rule be the arbiter. Make no mistake; Obama, Sharpton, and the New York Times were declaring their belief the jury should have ignored legal standards of proof in exchange for a verdict the NYT declared would have been an “emotional catharsis.”

The NYT, and most news outlets, had refused to note the gated community where Zimmerman lived had been hit hard with numerous burglaries, thefts, or break-ins with recent months. The NAACP previously publicly declared Zimmerman a racist because he had made a number of calls before when on neighborhood watch. Both blacks and whites who lived there were adamant in their statements about the problems of crime:

One black neighbor of George Zimmerman said the neighborhood’s recent history should be taken into account.

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.”

Understand this information was easily available to any journalist interested in finding out some fact. But in retrospect, most mainstream journalists and pundits had no interest in going outside of their narrow narratives of race. Ironically, those journalists would champion a prosecutor who had engaged in conduct which raised questions about her fairness in cases involving people of color. In fact, not one mainstream account referred to Corey’s tenuous relations with ethnic minorities. Once she secured charges of second-degree murder, she reached heroic stature in the eyes of the media.

Corey, before Martin was killed, had received numerous bitter complaints of prosecutorial abuse threatening her career. After Florida Gov. Rick Scott had appointed Corey as a special prosecutor to investigate the shooting (the police and local prosecutors had elected not to charge Zimmerman, concluding the facts didn’t meet the legal threshold to warrant it), it became a forgone conclusion things would end badly. Corey was in the midst of severe criticism for prosecutorial abuse in a case involving a 12-year-old boy named Cristian Fernandez charged as an adult with murder.

Fernandez had pushed his two-year-old brother against a bookshelf; the child died soon afterward. While punishment clearly was warranted, Corey’s decision to try him as an adult facing life in prison was seen as overkill by a number of people involved in Florida’s system of “justice.” Cory had not expected the level of public anger over her heavy-handed decision; she clearly was looking for a way to save or at least re-charge her career.

Scott’s appointment was a way for her to do it. First, it would re-establish her “get tough with crime” persona. Second, it would blunt the wrath racial minorities felt toward her. As one might expect, she pursued what essentially was a sham investigation and an inevitable outcome, an outcome that had obvious political ramifications.

The lead-up to Corey’s second-degree murder indictment against George Zimmerman came after what was an almost unprecedented campaign of vilification against him involving coordinated efforts by prominent blacks such as Al Sharpton, the U.S. Department of Justice (led by Attorney General Eric Holder), and the news media. In light of the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case, according to a number of journalists who covered the proceedings, what went down was shocking.

Early on, the media from CNN to the New York Times to NBC News (and especially its sister network, MSNBC) falsely claimed the Hispanic Zimmerman was “white,” that he killed Martin for “racial reasons.” There was no proof, but it didn’t matter as journalists simply declared what they wanted to opine.

Perhaps the lowest point of what was a very low standard for media coverage came when NBC News literally spliced together quotes from Zimmerman on a 911 call in order to make it look as though Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin. NBC reported the conversation between Zimmerman and the 911 dispatcher as follows:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

This actually is what transpired during the call:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

The contrast is obvious as NBC deliberately tried to make the conversation something it wasn’t for the purpose of painting Zimmerman as a homicidal racist. (The NBC brass first insisted the network had done no wrong, but later quietly fired some people as even by the abysmal standards to which mainstream journalists adhere this was intolerably over the top.)

However, mainstream journalists were hardly finished completing their self-appointed tasks of trying to railroad Zimmerman to prison. About the time NBC News was busy splicing together Zimmerman’s comments, CNN solemnly broadcast Zimmerman had called Martin a “f*cking coon.” The left-wing Daily Kos picked it up, as did other news outlets. Two weeks later, CNN finally admitted he was saying, “f*cking cold,”…but not before legal analysts all over the country were declaring the statement “proved” Zimmerman was targeting and intending to kill blacks.

Not to be outdone by its competitors, ABC News declared to its viewers Zimmerman had “no injuries” from his encounter with Martin. Finally, President Barack Obama himself weighed in, essentially arguing Zimmerman was a racist murderer who needed to be prosecuted. (He and his attorney general Eric Holder – the same Eric Holder who was in charge of covering up the federal murders at Waco in 1993 – would look into pursuing federal charges against Zimmerman, something the journalists applauded. (Obama made more inflammatory statements at a press conference the afternoon following the announcement of the verdict.)

Yet another reason, other than sheer dishonesty/demagoguery and the desire to railroad a man into prison led ABC to obscure the fact that Zimmerman had received injuries during that fatal encounter. Corey, herself, had withheld photographs and other exculpatory evidence Martin had injured Zimmerman before gaining the indictment, an action which enraged the famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, who publicly criticized her. (For her part, Corey called Harvard University, ranted for 40 minutes, and threatened to sue the university.)

Why did Corey even file second-degree murder charges when it was clear that the state could not meet that threshold of evidence? The mainstream media made a conviction more likely, as journalists of supposedly reputable organizations literally made things up out of whole cloth, putting the lies on the Internet and the airwaves. The frenzy the media worked up made it easier for Corey to look like a crusader for justice rather than the dishonest opportunist she really was.

We can never know with certainty what happened in that encounter, other than Trayvon Martin was shot dead. At some point, Martin and Zimmerman tangled, Zimmerman getting the worst of it, which led to the shooting. What is known, however, is Corey’s people never came close to presenting evidence matching their rhetoric or the poisonous rhetoric American politicians and journalists had been spewing.

The trial of George Zimmerman was a show trial, but somewhere along the line, the six female jurors did not adhere to their pre-written script. However, that won’t stop those in power and those who supposedly make a living as journalists from making ludicrous claims Trayvon Martin was the Second Coming of Emmett Till or that Zimmerman was guilty of second-degree murder because Al Sharpton said so. This is the sorry state of current “justice” in the United States and…it will only get worse.

President Carter Speaks Out

Violence erupts in Olympia’s Sylvester Park

By JEREMY PAWLOSKI (360)754-5445

Olympia — A chaotic fight in downtown Olympia after 4 p.m. Tuesday left the sidewalks stained with blood and two men in area hospitals with stab wounds — including one who was in serious condition Tuesday night, according to police.

“We’re still trying to sort it all it out,” WSP spokesman Sgt. Jason Hicks said. “The investigation is still new, and it’s an evolving situation. As we get more details, those will be given out.”

According to onlookers and police, the fight started about 4:10 p.m., when a man got into an altercation with a group of people who were near the gazebo in Sylvester Park. The man stabbed one of the members of the group, Hicks said.

Witnesses said that the man was then chased by the group to an Olympia Intercity Transit bus that was parked at a stop at Capitol Way and Legion Way.

The group prevented the bus from leaving the stop by standing in front of it, witnesses said, and the man was unable to get on. At some point, the man who could not get on the bus also was stabbed, Hicks said. It was unclear Tuesday whether he was stabbed by the first stabbing victim from the park or another suspect, Hicks said.

The man who was stabbed in Sylvester Park fled to the train tunnel adjacent to the Governor Hotel. He was taken to an area hospital and was in serious condition Tuesday evening, Olympia police said.

Apply to March here: ClimateMarch.org
Like and follow us here: Facebook.com/ClimateMarch

On March 1, 2014, 1,000 climate patriots will set-out from Los Angeles, CA, walking 2,980 miles across America to Washington, DC, inspiring and motivating the general public and elected officials to act now to address the climate crisis. This will be the largest coast-to-coast march in American history.

Death squads? Only in banana republics and rogue dictatorships abroad, you say? Can’t happen here? Mason County Sheriff Salisbury feels the need for a tank to serve warrants says his department. Deputies now sport black star-wars style ninja attire on duty, taser citizens at the drop of a feather, lie in their reports and testimony, exuding an adversarial attitude while demonstrating their incompetence.

Riot Police?…or Storm Troopers?

“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control

SWAT teams raiding poker games and trying to stop underage drinking? Overwhelming paramilitary force is on the rise

BY RADLEY BALKO

Excerpted from “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces”

Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.

Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after his death. “None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia–Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation.” Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that’s when they brought in the SWAT team.

On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadn’t slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi’s heart.

Sal Culosi’s last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: “Dude, what are you doing?”

In March 2006, just two months after its ridiculous gambling investigation resulted in the death of an unarmed man, the Fairfax County Police Department issued a press release warning residents not to participate in office betting pools tied to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The title: “Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk.” Given the proximity to Culosi’s death, residents could be forgiven for thinking the police department believed wagering on sports was a crime punishable by execution.

In January 2011, the Culosi family accepted a $2 million settlement offer from Fairfax County. That same year, Virginia’s government spent $20 million promoting the state lottery.

Some say we are on a road that leads straight to the World War III, but in order to see that, to fully understand what is at stake, you have to look at the big picture and connect the dots. This video below examines the history of the dollar, its relation to oil, and the real motives behind the wars of the past two decades.

WWIII is here–it just hasn’t gone nuclear…yet. Hitler got a lot of bad press for eugenics, so the PR folks have decided to rename it: JOBS, JOBS, JOBS (i.e. Pollution, GMO’s, and slow death, death, death) Different name, same end result, over 2 million people die each year from air pollution alone. Multiply that figure by the 6 years or so WWII lasted and you get a number that rivals Hitler’s. If that isn’t an ongoing holocaust, then what is? Remind yourself, this is only for air pollution as a cause of death. Water pollution, lack of basic health care, untreated curable disease, starvation, drought, violent deaths and war casualties, those all add greatly to the total. More people are dying per day RIGHT NOW as you read this than were being killed/gassed in WWII. But since the mainstream media doesn’t present these numbers to the public, they don’t exist. Or, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? You decide.

The video IS well directed and compelling. Petrodollars is a term you’d herd on occasion, but never really considered. It makes sense. You already suspected the dollar as the international currency was doomed, but only thought of it being so in terms of interest rates and the failure of our national budget, the giveaways to corporations too big to fail. You hadn’t thought of it as propped up by a consortium of oil producing nations bribed/coerced by U.S. military might as the only remaining superpower.

This really means the triggers poised to push us into the abyss are at least 2-pronged: Collapse of our economy due to abuse of creating more monetary units than our productivity base can justify when foreign sovereigns exhibit a loss of confidence in the dollar. (There are 2x as many dollars abroad as at home in the U.S.) The collapse (as w/the Soviet Union) of our ability to maintain a global military presence capable of coercing foreign oil producers into underwriting petrodollars. The current phracking boom in Wyoming and the Dakotas will temporarily slow this collapse, but won’t forestall it indefinitely. China’s rabid development will hasten it since they’re already plotting with other nations on how to eliminate the dollar as the international monetary unit.

On this day, Oct. 10 in 1944, 800 Gypsy children, including more than a hundred boys between 9 and 14 years old are systematically murdered.

Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller “satellite” camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four “bathhouses,” in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used as fodder for medical experiments, overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele (“the Angel of Death”).

A mini-revolt took place on October 7, 1944. As several hundred Jewish prisoners were being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to the furnace to dispose of the bodies, they blew up one of the gas chambers and set fire to another, using explosives smuggled to them from Jewish women who worked in a nearby armaments factory. Of the roughly 450 prisoners involved in the sabotage, about 250 managed to escape the camp during the ensuing chaos. They were all found and shot. Those co-conspirators who never made it out of the camp were also executed, as were five women from the armaments factory-but not before being tortured for detailed information on the smuggling operation. None of the women talked.

Gypsies, too, had been singled out for brutal treatment by Hitler’s regime early on. Deemed “carriers of disease” and “unreliable elements who cannot be put to useful work,” they were marked for extermination along with the Jews of Europe from the earliest years of the war. Approximately 1.5 million Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis. In 1950, as Gypsies attempted to gain compensation for their suffering, as were other victims of the Holocaust, the German government denied them anything, saying, “Gypsies have been persecuted under the Nazis not for any racial reason but because of an asocial and criminal record.” They were stigmatized even in light of the atrocities committed against them.

by GEORGE PRENTICE

A study published Friday in the journal Environmental Research Letters indicates that 2.1 million deaths worldwide can be linked to air pollution. Simply put, the deaths are connected to fine particulate matter lodged into human lungs, triggering a litany of health problems, including lung cancer and heart disease.

Carbon Credit

The study also found that 470,000 deaths are linked each year to human sources of ozone, including automobile and industrial exhaust, triggering respiratory disease.

Researchers said their new study had an advantage over previous research in that it did not rely simply on one climate model, but several, estimating concentrations of air pollution around the world.

Most of the estimated global deaths likely occur in East and South Asia, according to the research, which have larger populations and severe air pollution.

“Air pollution is probably one of the most important environmental risk factors for health,” said researcher Jason West, assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The authors noted that climate change could affect air quality in a number of ways. Moist or wet regions, for example, might see less ozone production, while drier areas might see more.

Perseverance

George Zimmerman and Mark O’Mara

by LISA LUCAS AND CORKY SIEMASZKO

George Zimmerman’s fate is in the hands of an all-female jury Friday after his defense team and prosecutors got their last licks in the racially charged case.

While only one of the jurors is a minority, five of them are moms.

Several of them looked uneasy when a photograph of slain 17-year-old Trayvon Martin flashed on a screen in the Florida courtroom.

There were no eyewitnesses to the struggle on Feb. 26, 2012 in an Orlando-area town house complex that ended with Martin dead from a bullet in his chest.

The all-female jury will have to rely on the often-conflicting testimony from the 58 witnesses put on the stand during the two-week trial.

[However, an expert defense witness testified Martin was leaning over or on top of Zimmerman when he was shot. There were cuts on the back of Zimmerman’s head consistent with it allegedly being slammed against the pavement, facial injuries sustained by Zimmerman, and testimony it was Zimmerman’s voice heard screaming for help in the 911 call.]

So the panel, which got its final instructions from Judge Debra Nelson, will have to rely on the often-conflicting testimony from the 58 witnesses prosecutors and defense attorneys put on the stand during the two-week trial.

The jury completed its first abbreviated day of deliberations without reaching a verdict and will resume again on Saturday.

Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder and could get life in prison if he is convicted.

George Zimmerman sweats at close of trial

But Nelson, over the loud objections of Team Zimmerman, has also given the jury the option of convicting the 29-year-old neighborhood watchman of manslaughter.

Zimmerman could get up to 30 years to life in prison if convicted on that charge.

Before the jury got the case, lawyers from both sides took them through the evidence again.

Zimmerman’s lead defense attorney, Mark O’Mara, went first. He said Zimmerman is “not guilty of anything but protecting his own life.”

Zimmerman’s injuries from the night of the fatal confrontation.

Martin, he said, sowed the seeds of his own destruction.

“We know he had the opportunity to go home, and he didn’t do that,” O’Mara said. “The person who decided to make the night violent was the guy who didn’t go home when he had the chance.”

There were four minutes from the moment Zimmerman reported to a police dispatcher that Martin was “running” to the moment when a resident called 911 to report a fight in progress, O’Mara said.

Trayvon Martin, 17

To demonstrate that, O’Mara then said nothing for four minutes as Zimmerman nervously mopped his brow.

“Four minutes,” O’Mara told the jury. “That felt like a long time. Four minutes to what? To walk home? To run home?”

But Martin didn’t do that, the lawyer said, adding that he circled back and attacked Zimmerman.

Prosecutors have not produced “a shred of evidence” in this “bizarro case” to show that Zimmerman had any other option but to shoot the teenager, O’Mara said.

Trayvon Martin’s parents: Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin

O’Mara did not mention that Martin was black or that Zimmerman was part Hispanic.

Instead, O’Mara said there was no malice in Zimmerman’s voice when he first reported to a 911 dispatcher that a suspicious teenager was wandering through the development.

But O’Mara, in his argument, scrubbed the foul language Zimmerman used in the call when he told the dispatcher, “F—ing punks … These a–holes, they always get away.”

RELATED: TRAYVON MARTIN SHOOTING: COURT BATTLE OVER ANIMATED RE-ENACTMENT

Judge Debra Nelson

Despite testimony from Zimmerman’s two criminal justice professors and a police officer from the Virginia department that turned down his employment application, O’Mara said he was not “frustrated” or a “wannabe cop.”

Zimmerman, he said, was an “involved citizen.”

O’Mara also deftly reminded the jury how the prosecution’s star witness, 19-year-old Rachel Jeantel, undermined herself with embarrassing admissions about her lack of education on the stand. He said Jeantel never wanted to be involved in the case.

But O’Mara left out that Jeantel never wavered in her insistence that she was on the phone with Martin just before the shooting and said the doomed teenager’s last words were, “Get off! Get off!”

George Zimmerman

Wrapping up his three-hour-plus spiel, O’Mara reminded the jury that it’s not illegal to follow a person.

O’Mara preceded prosecutor John Guy, who argued that Zimmerman lied “over and over and over” again about what happened.

If Zimmerman had listened when a police dispatcher told him it wasn’t necessary to keep tailing Martin, “none of us would be here,” Guy said.

Mrs. Shellie Zimmerman

RELATED: ZIMMERMAN’S EX-TEACHER SAYS HE COVERED ‘STAND YOUR GROUND’

“That child had every right to be afraid of a strange man following him,” Guy said. “And did that child not have the right to defend himself from that strange man?”

Guy also waded into territory O’Mara avoided, stating flatly that “this case is not about race; this is about right and wrong.”

Then Guy left the jury something to think about: “What if it was Trayvon Martin who shot and killed George Zimmerman? What would your verdict be?”

“That’s how you know it’s not about race.”

Sybrina Fulton, grieving mother

On Thursday, prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda told the jury that the only thing Martin was guilty of “was buying Skittles” at a 7-Eleven.

The refusal by Sanford police and prosecutors to charge Zimmerman with a crime is the chief reason that the fatal shooting exploded into a national story.

African-Americans were especially outraged, citing this as a glaring example of unequal justice. President Obama weighed in saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Barraged with criticism, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, appointed State Attorney Angela Corey to revisit the case and she decided there was evidence to charge Zimmerman.

In an interview after the shooting with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Zimmerman explained what happened by saying, “I feel like it was all God’s plan.” He then apologized to Martin’s parents and said he was not racist.

Trayvon’s angry dad, Tracy Martin, rejected Zimmerman’s words.

“There is no way that my God wanted George Zimmerman to murder my teenage son,” he said.

Trayvon Martin

BREAKING NEWS: George Zimmerman has been acquitted of all charges in the February 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla.

The jury of six women informed Judge Debra Nelson shortly before 10 p.m. local time Saturday that they had reached a verdict after deliberating for approximately 15 hours over two days.

After hearing the verdict, Judge Nelson told Zimmerman he was free to go.

Supporters of Martin’s family who had gathered outside the courthouse yelled out “No! No!”
“Today, justice failed Trayvon Martin and his family,” said Roslyn M. Brock, Chairman of the NAACP in a statement. “We call immediately for the Justice Department to conduct an investigation into the civil rights violations committed against Trayvon Martin. This case has re-energized the movement to end racial profiling in the United States.”

“We are outraged and heartbroken over today’s verdict,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, in another statement. “We stand with Trayvon’s family and we are called to act. We will pursue civil rights charges with the Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the removal of Stand Your Ground laws in every state, and we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed.”

Zimmerman was initially charged with second-degree murder in the death of Martin, but jurors could have also convicted Zimmerman on the lesser charge of manslaughter. The jury had asked for a clarification on the manslaughter charge earlier in the evening.

If convicted, the 29-year-old former neighborhood watch volunteer would have faced a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder or 30 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter.

The jurors sent Judge Debra Nelson a note asking for clarification on the manslaughter charge, the less-serious charge Zimmerman faces, after deliberating for about eight hours Saturday. The question read simply: “May we please have clarification for the instruction on manslaughter?”

As jurors awaited an answer, Nelson talked to lawyers at the bench and then said court would recess for a half hour. When attorneys returned, prosecutor Richard Mantei said that after conducting research, he would suggest asking the jurors to elaborate. Defense attorney Mark O’Mara agreed.

“Let’s get clarification on their confusion,” O’Mara said.

The judge then sent a note back to the jury that read: “The court can’t engage in general discussion but may be able to address a specific question regarding clarification of the instructions regarding manslaughter. If you have a specific question, please submit it.”

The jury also recessed for an hour for dinner, during which they were allowed to continue deliberating. They did not immediately respond to the judge’s note.

During the day about two dozen people gathered outside the courthouse awaiting a verdict, with supporters of the Martin family outnumbering those there for Zimmerman. One man held a sign that read, “We love you George.” A woman lay in the grass in a hoodie, her arms spread, in a re-creation of Martin’s death.

On Twitter, Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, shared what she called her favorite Bible verse: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

During closing arguments, Zimmerman’s attorney attempted to portray him as a neighborhood activist who shot Martin in self-defense and prosecutors attempted to paint him as a wannabe cop whose misguided suspicion resulted in the teen’s death.

As the jury began their discussions, police and civic leaders in this Orlando suburb went on national television to plead for calm in Sanford and across the country, no matter what the verdict.

“There is no party in this case who wants to see any violence,” Seminole County Sheriff Don Eslinger said. “We have an expectation upon this announcement that our community will continue to act peacefully.”

There were big protests in Sanford and other cities across the country last year when authorities waited 44 days before arresting Zimmerman.

Zimmerman shot Martin as the two fought following a confrontation in the gated Sanford community where Zimmerman lives.

“Your verdict should not be influenced by feelings of prejudice, bias or sympathy,” Judge Debra Nelson told the jury, reading from a 27-page set of instructions. “Your verdict must be based on the evidence, and on the law contained in these instructions.”

Graphic Pics of Zimmerman’s Injuries

Post by Dan Graves:

Dan Graves You need to dig a little deeper than the local media for the truth. All you hear are the surface headlines. Trayvon had drugs in his system. The skittles and the drink were to mix a concoction know as “lean” (his Facebook page said he really liked it). He was busted in school and women’s jewelry and burglary tools were found in his backpack. According to Zimmerman he was “looking around at homes” It took him over 40 minutes to walk back from the 7-11 which was only 10 minutes from his house. Hmmmmmm. Wonder what took him so long? Could Zimmerman maybe have seen what he said he saw. The jury sure thought so. His Facebook page shows pictures of him refereeing a mma style street fight. His page showed he had a great interest in it. It also said he punched a bus driver. ( suspended again) I wonder why the media never reported this? Hmmmmmmmmm

Media personality Rush Limbaugh argued for the plausibility of Martin’s motivation for assaulting Zimmerman as homophobia after hearing his girlfriend advise him to run because “he might be a rapist”. Gay advocates/activists have said little about the speculative argument supporting gay profiling in the case. Much of the polemics surrounding the case  are speculative in nature.

Bon Apetit!

You’ve seen the commercials.

All American Dad, pump sprayer in hand, attacking those pesky weeds growing in the cracks of his family’s driveway with a vengeance. He chooses Roundup, of course.

Why? Because Roundup kills weeds to the root so they won’t come back making you the laughingstock of your suburban neighborhood.

Roundup, Roundup everywhere. Most homeowners use it without a second thought. Many schools even use it, blithely spraying around planting beds and sidewalks where children walk and play, tracking its residues into classrooms, cars, homes and little bodies.

Roundup is indisputably the King of Herbicides and one of Monsanto’s most lucrative crown jewels. Not only is it widely used by consumers, it is also heavily used by industrial agriculture – more popular than any other herbicide worldwide. Its residues are found on the staple crops of the Western diet – sugar, corn, soy and wheat – and in the plethora of processed foods made with these foods as well. In particular, GMO corn and soy are heavily doused in Roundup as these crops are genetically engineered to be immune to its withering effects.

The trouble is, while Roundup is highly effective at killing weeds, it’s also proving highly effective at killing us too – slowly but surely and insidiously – via Roundup’s deadly active ingredient – glyphosate.

While the pesticide industry maintains that glyphosate is minimally toxic to humans, new research published in the Journal Entropy strongly argues otherwise by shedding light on exactly how glyphosate disrupts mammalian physiology.

Authored by Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff of MIT, the paper investigates glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, an overlooked component of lethal toxicity to mammals.

In the in depth video interview below on her groundbreaking research, Dr. Seneff describes the mechanism by which the glyphosate in Roundup disrupts human biological processes.

The currently accepted view is that ghyphosate is not harmful to humans or any mammals because the shikimate pathway found in plants is absent in animals. The shikimate pathway is involved with the plant’s synthesis of certain amino acids and is lethally disrupted by glyphosate.

What has been completely overlooked until now is that the shikimate pathway is present in beneficial gut bacteria, which play a critical role in human health. Gut bacteria aid digestion, prevent permeability of the gastointestinal tract, synthesize vitamins and provide the foundation for robust immunity.

Glyphosate Disrupts the Functioning of Beneficial Gut Bacteria

In synergy with disruption of the biosynthesis of important amino acids via the shikimate pathway, glyphosate inhibits the cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes produced by the gut microbiome. CYP enzymes are critical to human biology because they detoxify the multitude of foreign chemical compounds, xenobiotics, that we are exposed to in our modern environment today.

As a result, humans exposed to glyphosate through use of Roundup in their community or through ingestion of its residues on industrialized food products become even more vulnerable to the damaging effects of other chemicals and environmental toxins they encounter!

What’s worse is that the negative impact of glyphosate exposure is slow and insidious over months and years as inflammation gradually gains a foothold in the cellular systems of the body.

The consequences of this systemic inflammation are most of the diseases and conditions associated with the Western lifestyle:

Gastrointestinal disorders
Obesity
Diabetes
Heart Disease
Depression
Autism
Infertility
Cancer
Multiple Sclerosis
Alzheimer’s disease

And the list goes on and on and on …
In summary, Dr. Seneff’s study of Roundup’s ghastly glyphosate uncovers the manner in which this lethal environmental toxin gradually and inevitably disrupts homeostatis in the human body with the tragic end result of disease, degeneration, and widespread suffering.

Still want to “shoot” those weeds this weekend with some Roundup and buy those unlabeled, GMO laced processed foods in the pretty packages at the supermarket?

Tens of millions of American retirees and Social Security recipients have worked a lifetime to be dependent on payments from the U.S. Treasury. Now, however, the Treasury hasn’t and has yet to send those checks normally due on the 1st. It is almost half-way through the month of July, 2013. A call to the federal office of personnel management, which keeps track of such things, says there has been a ‘glitch’ in the U.S. Treasury, but not to worry–the check’s in the mail…or will be. They can’t say just when, but in the sweet bye & bye.

Those struggling to buy food, pay for their medications, and cover the rent are now facing eviction, going hungry, and possibly dying from lack of the drugs intended to save their lives. Whether a nebulous promise that the check will be in the mail someday is sufficient to shield a tenant from a writ of restitution in an unlawful detainer eviction action is dubious.

Today, the mainstream media (NPR) finally reported on this disturbing event, using doublespeak straight out of 1984, they reported NOT that the U.S. Treasury wasn’t paying its bills and was defaulting on its obligations, but that last month the Treasury took in more money than it paid out…good news to the gullible. OF COURSE they took in more money than they paid out. We can all manage the same magic by not paying our own bills!

So why the perfidy?…the disingenuous shell game, the hiding the ball? Why not simply admit the Treasury failed to pay its obligations on time?  The answer is disturbingly simple and terrifying: to mollify the public/creditors and avoid a panic. Twice the number of dollars are held abroad by foreign sovereigns and corporations too big to fail as exist within the U.S. If the Treasury is seen as unable to pay its obligations, a cascading lack of confidence (already underway for some time, now, in China) in the dollar will ensue, rupturing the global economy and sending the American empire the way of the Soviet Union.

Ask your friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances who depend on receiving a check (not direct deposit) from the U.S. Treasury if they’ve been paid this month, or if “the check’s in the mail”? Something wicked this way comes. The furtive dissembling of the truth indicates storm clouds gathering on the economic horizon–a hurricane of unprecedented and fatal proportions.

It’s like our neighborhood credit union has suffered an unsolved string of armed robberies. Finally, good fortune reigns and the masked bandit is caught red handed during the most recent attempt, except when the mask is removed, customers gasp to see…it’s Uncle Sam!

Full Faith & Credit