FBI Agent Who Executed Ibragim Todashev is a Corrupt Ex-Oakland Cop

Ibragim Todashev

By Joanne Potter and Abby Martin

Source: Media Roots

The city of Boston was shaken last year when its marathon was tragically bombed, leaving three people dead and 264 others injured. The alleged mastermind behind the deadly attacks, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with Boston police. His little brother and alleged co-perpetrator, Dzhohar, is now awaiting trial and will potentially face execution.

Amidst the insanity ensuing from last year’s horrors, one story was largely swept under the rug: the bizarre execution of 27 year old Chechan-American Ibragim Todashev. A month after the bombings, Todashev was interrogated by state and federal officials at his Orlando apartment about his alleged association with the Tsarneavs and his purported role in the Waltham triple murders of 2011.

According to official reports, Todashev was in the process of writing a confession to the Waltham homicides when for no apparent reason, he ‘flipped out’ and propelled a coffee table into the air, striking the agent on the back of his head. He then ran to the kitchen area of his apartment and armed himself with a red pole/broom handle. The unnamed FBI agent shot Todashev seven times, once in the head.

Earlier this year, an internal FBI investigation and Florida State Attorney cleared the FBI agent who fatally shot Ibragim Todashev of any wrong doing. Prosecutor Jeffrey L. Ashton ruled the shooting was reasonable in that: ‘the actions of the Special Agent of the FBI were justified in self-defense and in defense of another’.

Aaron McFarlane

Recent unredacted documents reveal the unnamed agent to be Special Agent Aaron McFarlane, an ex-Oakland police officer with quite a controversial record in his short stint on the force.

The ‘Riders’ case was the biggest police corruption scandal ever witnessed by Oakland Police Department. It cost the Department nearly $11 million to settle civil lawsuits by 119 people who claimed they were falsely arrested, beaten, and had evidence falsified against them. The plaintiffs also alleged that Oakland Police Department turned a blind eye to the police misconduct.

Officers Clarence Mabanag, Jude Siapno, and Matthew Hornung stood accused of 26 counts including kidnapping, assault, conspiracy, false arrests and lying in police reports. McFarlane testified in defense of Mabanag, stating that he had always taught him how to write accurate police reports. However, under cross-examination it was alleged that McFarlane had falsified his own reports at the request of the group’s leader. Once he was faced with evidence proving his guilt, McFarlane pled the fifth.

After five years and two mistrials, the charges were dismissed against the three officers. McFarlane was never charged in connection with falsifying police reports or potentially lying on the witness stand. Regardless, he ended up in legal trouble for committing the same types of actions as the riders.

In November 2003, a man named Aaron Girard filed a civil suit against Aaron McFarlane and his Oakland PD colleague, Steven Nowak, for aggravated battery, false arrest, violation of his civil rights and emotional distress. Girard stated he had witnessed McFarlane and Nowak physically beating an individual who had already been subdued in front of a hospital. Girard took a photograph of the incident and when McFarlane and Nowak realized, they attacked him. The plaintiff alleged he was beaten, kicked and punched around the body, suffering injuries to his shoulder, arm, knee and neck. He claimed he was then falsely arrested by McFarlane and Nowak. Neither McFarlane nor Nowak ever faced charges over the incident.

Additionally, both officers were previously sued by a man named Michael Cole, who filed his complaint on March 26 of the same year (2003). The full details of the complaint are unavailable, although the pair were accused of beating the plaintiff with a ‘hand foot and billy club’ before falsely imprisoning him.

After serving only four years in the police force, Macfarlane retired on disability with a leg injury, collecting a pension of more than $52 thousand dollars annually for the rest of his life.

In his short time as an officer, McFarlane had been accused of falsifying police reports, lying under oath, aggravated battery, making false arrests, violating the rights of suspects, assault with a weapon and false imprisonment, yet was never convicted of any charges.

Other than the questionable circumstances surrounding the death of Ibragim Todashev, it is not known if Aaron McFarlane has ever been involved in any other incident after leaving the Oakland Police Department. And it’s not likely to be known, considering the agency’s secrecy surrounding the release of his identity.

According to Carol Rose, executive director of ACLU of  Massachusetts,

“We still don’t know what happened…nor why the explanations from those who were present at the shooting death have been inconsistent, suggesting at various times that Mr. Todashev allegedly threatened agents, including with a knife, a pipe, a stick or pole, an agent’s gun, the deceased’s martial arts training, or even a samurai sword.”

Unfortunately, the investigators on the case weren’t able to interview McFarlane himself about what happened, and had to rely only on prewritten statements.

This alone should prove the report is inconclusive, and prompt the investigation to re-open. However, a New York Times FOIA request reveals that between 1993 and 2011, FBI agents fatally shot about 70 subjects and wounded 80 others, and in every single case, the agent’s use of force was determined to be justified.

When a federal agency coordinates with so many forces to try to suppress the truth, there’s usually something to hide.

**

Watch Abby Martin break down Aaron McFarlane’s track record and the case of Ibragim Todashev starting at 14:45:

Swiss Voters Reject Multibillion Dollar Boondoggle

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In a vote last Sunday, 53.7% of Swiss voters rejected a government plan to fund the procurement of 22 Gripen fighter jets which would have cost at least $3.5 billion. In a public statement, Susanne Leutenegger Oberholzer, a Social Democrat member of parliament said: “The people have spoken. We surely don’t have the money for such unnecessary acquisitions.” Supporters of the plan such as Federal Councilor and defense minister, Ueli Maurer argued “This decision has the effect of creating security gaps” but a majority of voters expressed their belief that money spent to procure the planes could be better be spent on other things.

This story should be especially striking to U.S. citizens, who are constantly told they live in a Democracy yet don’t have a chance in hell of voting down similar military spending proposals or ones much worse like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project. According to a Bloomberg article quoting Pentagon officials, the program’s life-cycle cost including development and decades of support is projected to top $1.5 trillion. The manufacture of the F-35 funnels business to a global network of contractors including 1,300 suppliers in 45 states, making it the defense project “too big to kill”. Despite a number of high profile technical problems and numerous delays the F-35 remains in development and is expected to go into full production in 2019, seven years later than planned. By that time other countries are likely to have cheaper unmanned drone fighters with superior performance and capabilities. How does this colossal waste of money and time make us safer?

Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan Sentenced to 3 Months in Jail, 5 Years Probation

Cecily McMillan being arrested as the NYPD clears Zuccotti Park during a six-month memorial celebration of the Occupy Movement in March 2012

Cecily McMillan being arrested as the NYPD clears Zuccotti Park during a six-month memorial celebration of the Occupy Movement in March 2012

By Dave Lindorff

Source: This Can’t Be Happening

Occupy activist Cecily McMillan, convicted on May 5 of second-degree felony assault of a New York cop whom she and witnesses claimed had grabbed her breast from behind, bruising it, stood her ground before her sentence was rendered, refusing the judge’s insistence that she should “take responsibility for her conduct.”

Risking the possibility that Judge Ronald Zwiebel might sentence her to the maximum seven years for the charge she was convicted of, McMillan would only apologize for what she termed “the accident” of involuntarily throwing back her elbow when grabbed by behind from someone she could not even see. Insisting to the judge that she lived in accordance to the “law of love,” she said, in her pre-sentencing statement, “Violence is not permitted. This being the law that I live by, I can say with certainty that I am innocent of the crime I have been convicted of… I cannot confess to a crime that I did not commit. I cannot throw away my dignity in return for my freedom.”

It was a bold and risky stand for the 25-year-old New School for Social Research graduate student to take, given the high sentencing stakes. In the end, though, the judge, — who during the trial had blocked her defense from presenting key evidence that she had acted in her own defense against being groped by a cop (for example the police officer’s record of brutality and corruption), while allowing the prosecution to present evidence and statements normally not considered permissible in a trial (such as presenting to the jury evidence about an arrest of McMillan that had not yet been tried or adjudicated) — sentenced her to only a short term in jail.

She still has a five-year felony probationary sentence, which leaves her a convicted felon, a serious impediment to employment, and one that could leave her subject to limitations on her freedom of movement for five years.

McMillan’s many supporters nonetheless hailed the short sentence, which could see her released in as little as 60 days, as a victory, one which many attributed to the massive outpouring of support she has received since her arrest, during her trial, and since especially since her conviction. That support has included a jailhouse visit by two members of Pussy Riot, who condemned her conviction and jailing, a letter of of support from the president of the New School, support from five members of the New York City Council (but so far not a word from New York City’s supposedly leftist and former activist Mayor Bill De Blasio), an online petition signed by over 167,000 people, and an unusual letter from nine of the 12 jurors in her case calling on the judge not to sentence her to any jail time.

McMillan’s attorney Martin Stolar, said he was “relieved” that her sentence was not two years, but also said that he had appealed the conviction to the state’s Court of Appeal.

The 5/14 episode of the “This Can’t Be Happening” podcast featuring McMillan’s attorney Martin Stolar and Lucy Parks, a member of her support team at JusticeforCecily.com, who provide more background about the case.

http://s51.podbean.com/pb/731f8f8398fd122e92501fb18648dbdc/537ae434/data1/blogs18/661545/uploads/ThisCantBeHappening_051414.mp3

The Odessa Massacre was a Carefully Staged Covert Intelligence Operation

By Joe Giambrone

Source GlobalResearch.ca

odessa-molotov

What happened on May 2nd of this year in Odessa, Ukraine, was a complex event that has been glossed over by most news sources. The US corporate coverage has been criminal in its demonization of anti-Maidan/anti-coup activists. The propaganda narrative has even attempted to blame the victims for starting the fires that allegedly killed them. This is two levels removed from reality, and perhaps even three.

Much more information is available than has been reported in America’s criminally-complicit mainstream news. But even alternative journals have failed to pursue the most damning, morally repugnant aspect to this story: who started the violence, and why?

When a massacre happens the horrors of the atrocities tend to distract the public’s attention from the details of how it came to be in the first place. This is known to provocateurs, be they in Kiev, Moscow or in Langley Virginia. Langley is the home base of the Central Intelligence Agency, of course. The CIA director visited Kiev, confirmed by the White House on April 15th, and “dozens” of CIA agents are reported to be in Ukraine “advising” the unelected coup regime as I type this.

On May 2nd a series of events occurred that can be pieced together from the numerous videos and photographs. These show undercover police provocateurs dressed up as anti-Maidan/pro-Russian activists, but these are coordinated by a uniformed officer. The officer is identified, at Oriental Review, as “Odessa Interior ministry branch Colonel Dmitry Fucheji.”

 

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Confirmation and analysis is provided by Russian news anchor Pavel Pchelkin at Channel One Russia. The gunmen, allegedly from the “pro-Russian” side were undercover agents coordinated by the Ukrainian interior ministry. A platoon of approximately 30 armed undercover agents fired numerous rounds at the football crowds, who were known to be “pro unity” or “pro Ukraine” and aligned with the Maidan coup government. The undercover/gunmen started a street battle from behind police lines, hiding behind a wall of officers and instigating the football crowd to attack them.

The neo-Nazi Right Sector joined the enraged football crowd, and together they pursued these provocateurs – who were dressed similarly to “pro-Russian” protesters – pursuing them all the way back to the Union hall, where the actual non-violent anti-Maidan activists had set up camp. Once this violence had begun it was easily turned against the real anti-Maidan activists, and the police provocateurs disappeared back into the police brigades.

Further confirmation comes from a Ukrainian official, acting Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky:

“This action [in Odessa] was not prepared at some internal level, it was a well-planned and coordinated action in which some authorities’ representatives have taken part.”

This is a false flag event.

Undercover provocateurs shot at the football crowds to initiate the violence.

The violence was led and drawn back toward the political targets: the anti-Maidan activists.

Mass murder followed.

The next level of reality that intrudes upon and discredits Western media reporting is the idea that the fires did the killing. This is also false. The victims inside the union hall were mostly murdered with gunshots, as well as strangled to death by the neo-Nazi Right Sector storm troopers, who also were seen inside the building waving flags and cheering.

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Most of the bodies seen in photographs were burned in order to hide evidence of gunshot wounds (warning: graphic photographs). This is also not reported across the media spectrum, as if it were of no importance. If the fire is to blame, this is akin to an act of nature, rather than a series of cold-blooded murders by rampaging neo-Nazi thugs allied with our supposed good buddies in Kiev.

Western media, therefore, has become a complicit propaganda organ in spinning narratives for the US State Department and its Nazi partners in the Ukraine. It truly sickens me the depravity and gall of these psychopaths (in both nations) who, in broad daylight, support the worst of the worst, war criminals, mass murderers, racist violent lunatics. This has been true of Syria and Libya prior, and now it is true in the Ukraine.

These imperial games do not amuse the Russians, of course. Russia has an intimate history with Naziism in World War Two. More Russians died in that war than did Americans, Brits, Japanese or Germans. The US/EU empowerment of the most violent, sadistic and murderous forces in Ukraine has driven the world to a true crisis point.

Already $3.2Bn has been dumped on the neo-Nazi unelected coup government, and Obama has knowingly and deceitfully called them “duly elected.”

Since when is gaining power through Molotov cocktails, snipers and bludgeoning the police considered “duly elected?”

This neo-Nazi power seizure has been a US project for quite a while now. Obama’s neo-con strategist, Victoria Nuland, has bragged that $5Bn of US tax money has been poured into Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union in order to influence the political system there. Nuland was caught on tape choosing “Yats” to be the frontman for US/NATO interests.

Arseniy Yatsenuk’s own foundation website prominently lists, as William Blum noted:

NATO, the National Endowment for Democracy, the US State Department, Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs in the UK), the German Marshall Fund (a think tank founded by the German government in honor of the US Marshall Plan), as well as a couple of international banks. Is any comment needed?

US meddling in the 2004 Ukrainian elections was already exposed. The US corporate usual suspects are salivating on setting up shop in their new Nazi utopia.

This latest manifestation of covert US foreign policy should shock the entire world to its core and cause them to question just about every assumption they may have had about the US. Actual voting – democracy – is demonized in Crimea and in the other eastern provinces of Ukraine, while firebomb tossing Nazi psychopaths, who gleefully rape and strangle to death pregnant women, are promised $27Bn in IMF graft and loan guarantees to help cement their power over Kiev.

That message couldn’t be clearer.

Week of Revolutionaries

Looking at my Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints, I noticed this week is a particularly rich one for birth dates of prominent historical figures, each a revolutionary whether in the fields of politics, art and/or philosophy.

sandino

Today marks the 119th anniversary of the birthday of Augusto Sandino, national hero of Nicaragua and inspiration for the Sandinista movement. To learn a little more about his life in the context of Nicaraguan politics and history, read this overview written shortly after returning from my trip to Nicaragua.

Other birthdays this week:

The great modern American revolutionary and central figure in the civil rights movement Malcolm X was born on May 19 1925.

On May 20 1959, Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwoʻole was born. He was a talented musician and outspoken supporter of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement making him in a sense the Bob Marley of Hawaii.

May 21 marks the birthday of French Primitivist painter Henri Rousseau (1844) and Beat poet Robert Creeley (1926).

Composer, poet, philosopher and pioneer of afro-futurism Sun Ra was born on May 22 1914.

May 23 is the birthday of Transcendentalist and early feminist writer Margaret Fuller (1810) and San Francisco gay rights activist and political leader Harvey Milk (1930).

Lastly, May 24 1941 is the birthday of influential musician and poet Bob Dylan.

Saturday Matinee: dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

Synopsis by Other Cinema:

Buckle up for DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, the acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9/11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1990s, such characters were apparently no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of anonymous bombs in suitcases.

Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster. Playing on Don DeLillo‘s riff in his novel Mao II: “what terrorists gain, novelists lose” and “home is a failed idea,” he blends archival footage of hijackings with surreal and banal themes, including fast food, pet statistics, disco, and his quirky home movies. David Shea composed the superb soundtrack to this free fall through history, best described in the words of one hijacked Pepsi executive as “running the gamut of many emotions, from surprise to shock to fear, to joy, to laughter, and then again, fear.”

Selected Press Quotes

“Exceptional for its juice, its jazzy compelling fusion of social and aesthetic issues, and its stomach-churning power.” —The New York Times

“A sense of urgency and a wrenching emotional attack.” —The Times (London)

“Each cut turns a screw deeper until your mind hurts.” —San Francisco Bay Guardian

“An eccentric, roller coaster ride through history.” —Time Out

This American Empire, It Too Will Collapse

Imperial_Overreach

By Dave Lefcourt

Source: RINF.com

Here is my sense; like all empires before it this American one reached its apex after WWII. It’s on a downward trajectory and will eventually fall or be overtaken.

And I believe most Americans will be taken by surprise as in “How could this happen”?

That’s because most Americans are in the words of Paul Craig Roberts “insouciant”, without a care, too passively indifferent, too besotted with technological gadgetry, have feelings of entitlement and believe in American exceptionalism to bother to notice their government has become sinister-which most others in the world recognize, but their governments too intimidated or blackmailed into following us or they will be demonized. Think Iran, Iraq under Saddam-though earlier an ally in his war with Iran in the 80′s-now the newly announced new cold war with Russia and soon to be China.

As for us Americans take an honest look at what passes for our modern American “culture” nowadays-and contributes to maintaining domestic tranquility at all costs. In no particular order:

Consumerism-excessive and beyond all need. And in conjunction with it

Corporatism and commercialization of the public square i.e. the “mallization” of America.

Sports mania, particularly over Pro football and its marketing.

Popular movies featuring gore, crashes, mayhem, aliens, illusion, “virtual” characters replacing real people.

Celebrity gossip as “news”.

Government surveillance by way of technological gadgetry-cell phones, ipods, computers, email, GPS, EZ pass, toll cameras.

MSM becoming complicit in government actions and its propaganda

Addiction with drugs and alcohol

Incarceration-the highest rates of all 1 st world industrialized democraci

Militarization of local and state police

A trillion dollars in college student debt.

Though certainly not contributing to maintaining domestic tranquility, throw in the bailouts of the big banks too big to fail, income inequality worse than the 1920′s and clearly articulated in the 2011 occupy movement that coined the disparity between the 1% and the 99%, no single payer universal health insurance coverage for all, ignoring global warming and the further despoiling of the environment, the demise of domestic manufacturing, the outsourcing of jobs, home foreclosures and bankruptcy stemming from unscrupulous lenders et al and domestically its an America becoming unrecognizable to these old eyes.

As for the policies and actions of our government that unmistakably reveals its true nature, here again in no particular order are:

  • The war industry-the trillion dollar military/corporate/political complex and its revolving door of key players that move seamlessly between each to maintain its control. The other key element is the creation of,
  • “Enemies” contrived such as the “global war on terror”, and the new “cold war” with Russia.
  • Initiating unnecessary and illegal wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq
  • CIA coups, assassinations to create instability to promote endless war
  • NSA surveillance of everyone in the world through “back doors” of computers and software
  • Absolute control of the political agenda and the enacting of laws, regulations oversight and enforcement to the benefit of corporate interests
  • Justice Department lawyers writing memos “legalizing” all executive actions but kept secret for reasons of national security with no oversight by the Congress or the courts
  • Exercise hegemony worldwide, surround Iran, Russia with “allies”, NATO, a thousand military bases worldwide and a floating armada of carrier task forces
  • Initiate cyberwarfare as was done in Iran in 2010 and its enrichment of uranium
  • Engage in extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and torture of suspects
  • Targeting and prosecuting whistleblowers, hounding Edward Snowden for exposing the NSA‘s illegal surveillance practices.

These domestic and foreign policies and actions are not those of a government that is representative of the people in a democratic republic. These are policies and actions of a plutocracy of oligarchs and an empire willing to go to any length to maintain its hegemony worldwide and control domestically.

Incredibly, what’s propping up this edifice of domestic indulgence and propaganda and foreign villainy is the FED printing money, selling billions in treasury notes to China, Japan, even Russia underpinned by what else, our previous debt in the trillions and all based on the assumption these countries will continue to buy our debt. But it’s a form of blackmail these other countries have accepted, at least for the present. That can’t last forever.

For sure one can’t predict the actual demise of an empire, even the American one. But hubris, American exceptionalism, the sense of entitlement and the idea of it being the “indispensible nation” surely won’t save it from the trash heap of other empires long gone. Such illusions may contribute, even hasten that inevitable collapse.

Dave is the author of “DECEIT AND EXCESS IN AMERICA, HOW THE MONEYED INTERESTS HAVE STOLEN AMERICA AND HOW WE CAN GET IT BACK”, Authorhouse, 2009