Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

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The story behind Tribune's broken deal

At the end of 2007, real estate tycoon Sam Zell took control of Tribune Co. in a deal that promised to re-energize the media conglomerate. But the company struggled under the huge debt burden the deal created, and less than a year later, it filed for bankruptcy.

One of Chicago's most iconic companies — parent to the Chicago Tribune — was propelled into a protracted and in many ways unprecedented odyssey through Chapter 11 reorganization.

On Dec. 31, after four years, Tribune Co. finally emerged from court protection under new ownership, but at a heavy cost. The company's value was diminished, its reputation was tarnished and its ability to respond to market opportunities during its long bankruptcy was constrained.

Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy saga began as an era of superheated Wall Street deal-making fueled by cheap money was coming to an end. The company's tale is emblematic of the American financial crisis itself, in which a seemingly insatiable appetite for speculative risk using exotic investment instruments helped trigger an economic collapse of historic proportions.

Tribune reporters Michael Oneal and Steve Mills, in a four-part series that begins today, tell the story of Tribune Co.'s journey into and through bankruptcy, throwing a spotlight on the key decisions and missed opportunities that marked a perilous time in the history of the company, the media industry and the economy.

Read the full story, "Part one: Zell's big gamble," as a digitalPLUS member.
To view videos and photos and for a look at the rest of the series visit, chicagotribune.com/brokendeal.

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Boeing Dreamliner hit by two more mishaps in Japan

Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner jet suffered a cracked cockpit window and an oil leak on separate flights in Japan on Friday -- the latest in a series of incidents testing confidence in the sophisticated new aircraft.

All Nippon Airways Co said a domestic flight from Tokyo landed safely at Matsuyama airport in western Japan after a crack developed on the cockpit windscreen, and the plane's return to Tokyo was cancelled.

The same airline later said oil was found leaking from an engine of a 787 Dreamliner after the plane landed at Miyazaki airport in southern Japan. An airline spokeswoman said it later returned to Tokyo after some delay. No one was injured in either incident.

The world's first carbon-composite airliner, which has a list price of $207 million, has been beset by problems this week. Some analysts say these are normal teething issues as a new plane enters service under close scrutiny. Others say the incidents could erode public confidence in the aircraft.

The 787 Dreamliner will undergo a comprehensive review of its critical systems by regulators, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Friday.

The review of the jet will include design, manufacture and assembly, after a series of problems in recent weeks, including a battery that caught fire on an empty 787 parked in Boston on Monday.

The agency said it plans to announce more details at a press conference Friday at 9:30 am ET.

U.S. regulators have raised questions about the plane's reliability on long transocean routes, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The 787 Dreamliner made its first commercial flight in late-2011, after a series of production delays put deliveries more than three years behind schedule. By the end of last year, Boeing had sold 848 Dreamliners, and delivered 49.

Earlier this week, a battery fire caused damage to an empty 787 jet operated by Japan Airlines while it was on the ground at Boston airport. The next day, another JAL 787 spilled 40 gallons of fuel onto the taxiway at the same airport after a problem that caused a valve to open, forcing the plane to delay its departure. On Wednesday, ANA cancelled a domestic Dreamliner flight due to a brake-control computer glitch.

Boeing's top Dreamliner engineer, Mike Sinnett, was rolled out midweek to defend the 787, saying the plane's problem rates were no higher than with Boeing's successful 777 jet.

SPIDER WEB CRACK/

ANA said crew noticed a spider web-like crack in a window in front of the pilot's seat about 70 minutes into Friday's flight, which was close to its destination.

"Cracks appear a few times every year in other planes. We don't see this as a sign of a fundamental problem" with Boeing aircraft, a spokesman for the airline said.

On the later flight, the ANA spokeswoman said she could not specify how much oil leaked from the engine. Later on Friday, ANA - which, with JAL flies 24 of the 49 Dreamliners delivered to end-December - launched its maiden service between Tokyo's Narita Airport and San Jose, California with the Dreamliner.

Jun Akiyama, a plane enthusiast who was taking photos at the airport ahead of the San Jose departure, said: "It's worrying. If there was a major accident lives would be at stake, and these defects are only increasing fears."

But Yasushi Uesaka, a systems engineer from Osaka who was also taking pictures nearby, played down the incidents. "When new things come out, there will naturally be defects. That a lot of these defects didn't occur during flight means they're not too critical, I think."

In India - where state-owned Air India has taken delivery of six Dreamliner jets and has more on order - a senior official at the aviation regulator said there was concern at the recent spate of Dreamliner glitches. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has not ordered any Dreamliner checks for now, but is waiting for a safety report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the official said.

Air India spokesman K. Swaminathan said the airline's debut Dreamliner flight to Paris on Thursday went without a hitch.

FUEL SAVINGS

One of Boeing's chief innovations with the 787 is its use of electrical power to run on-board functions such as hydraulics and air conditioning, instead of relying on heavier pneumatic systems used on other planes. The weight savings make the 787 more fuel efficient, a big advantage for airlines battling high jet fuel costs.

To power the electrical system, the 787 uses generators attached to the plane's engines, which produce about 1.5 megawatts of power, enough to power about 300 hot water heaters. The system uses high-voltage distribution panels and powerful batteries, such as the one that caught fire in Boston on Monday.

Makoto Yoda, president of Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa Corp, which makes the Dreamliner batteries, said his company was looking into Monday's fire, and was sending a team of engineers to cooperate with the U.S. investigation.

 

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HP Cloud Ushers in 2013 and GA Compute Service with Reduced Pricing

HP Cloud Services is continuously working to increase efficiency in our datacenters, so we can pass these efforts along to our customers via enhanced enterprise-class service and/or lower prices.  As a result, HP Cloud Services is starting the New Year by permanently lowering the prices on Linux instances of HP Cloud Compute by 12.5% and Object Storage by as much as 25%. 

Furthermore, to celebrate our Compute service’s move to General Availability (GA), we are offering a time-limited 40% discount on all Windows and Linux instances until March 31st, 2013.  We’re doing this to make it even easier for new and existing customers to try our new GA service and perform their initial integration work. You can read more about our differentiated, industry-leading SLA at “Under the Hood of HP Cloud Services SLAs” and about what we’re doing behind the scenes to actually deliver on and surpass our SLAs at “How HP Cloud Services Became Enterprise Class.” 

It’s worth noting that we also recently moved HP Cloud Block Storage to public beta and added several major new features, including bootable persistent volumes and enhancements in volume backup to object storage, as detailed here.  HP Cloud Block Storage is being discounted by 50% while in public beta, so now is the perfect time to give it a test drive if you haven’t already!

You can sign up now to start exploring our enterprise-class cloud.  For ongoing news about our new services, pricing and special offers, follow us on Twitter @hpcloud, subscribe to this blog, and follow our Facebook page.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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UK’s Savile abused hundreds over six decades: report

LONDON (Reuters) – The late British TV presenter Jimmy Savile physically abused hundreds of people over six decades, according to a police-led report on Friday which said he carried out attacks at the BBC and at hospitals where he did voluntary work.

Of his victims, 73 percent were under 18 and 82 percent were female. The oldest was 47 and the youngest just 8.

“Savile’s offending footprint was vast, predatory and opportunistic,” Commander Peter Spindler told reporters.

Savile, one of the BBC’s biggest stars of the 1970s and 80s received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth for charity work. He died in 2011, aged 84, a year before allegations about his abusive behavior emerged in a TV documentary.

Friday’s report said he had committed 214 criminal offences including 34 rapes or serious sexual assaults across the country.

His offending first occurred in 1955 in the northern English city of Manchester and the last attack was in 2009, the report said. He abused people at the BBC from 1965 including in 2006 at the last recording of popular weekly show Top of the Pops.

He also targeted people at hospitals over 30 years from 1965, including at the renowned Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London.

“It is now clear that Savile was hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fund-raising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades,” the report said.

In all, 600 people had come forward to police with information of which 450 related to Savile.

The report, issued jointly by London police and the NSPCC children’s charity, said it was likely there would be more victims who did not feel able to come forward.

Friday’s report is one of 14 launched since the allegations about Savile emerged, including four at the BBC.

The revelations about Savile plunged the BBC into weeks of turmoil and led to resignation of the publicly funded broadcaster’s director general just 54 days into his job.

OTHER STARS QUESTIONED

Detectives have also been looking into allegations against Savile acting with others and into related sex crimes which had no direct link to Savile.

They have since questioned 10 men, including Jim Davidson, a comedian who hosted prime time shows on the BBC in the 1990s, former BBC radio DJ Dave Lee Travis, and Max Clifford, Britain’s most high-profile celebrity publicist.

They all deny any wrongdoing.

A one-time professional wrestler, Savile became famous as a pioneering DJ in the 1960s before becoming a regular fixture on TV hosting prime-time pop and children’s shows until the 1990s.

He also ran about 200 marathons for charity, raising tens of millions of pounds for hospitals, leading some to give him keys to rooms where victims now allege they were abused.

While many colleagues and viewers thought the cigar-chomping Savile was weird, with his long blonde hair, penchant for garish outfits and flashy jewellery, he was considered a “national treasure”, honored not just by the queen but also by the late Pope John Paul II who made him a papal knight in 1990.

Despite rumors and suspicions, his sex crimes only came to light when rival broadcaster ITV aired allegations against him.

That prompted allegations the BBC had covered up allegations of sex abuse after it was revealed it had dropped its own expose shortly after Savile’s death and had run tribute shows about him instead.

A lengthy report last month cleared of the BBC of any cover-up but said it had missed numerous warnings and proved incapable of dealing with the scandal when it finally broke.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.

How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?

Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles to caregiving and the subject of a year-long course that starts at the San Francisco Zen Center in a few weeks.

This approach aims to cultivate compassion, both for older people and the people they depend on, said Ms. Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain and the course’s lead instructor. She’s also the former director of education at the Zen Hospice project in San Francisco and founder of the Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care, which is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in the area.

I caught up with Ms. Block recently, and what follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Let’s start with your experience. Have you been a caregiver?

My experience in caregiving is as a professional providing spiritual care to individuals and families when they are facing and coping with aging and sickness and loss and dying, particularly in hospital and hospice settings.

What kinds of challenges have you witnessed?

People are for the most part unprepared for caregiving. They’re either untrained or unable to trust their own instincts. They lack confidence as well as knowledge. By confidence, I mean understanding and accepting that we don’t know all the answers – what to do, how to fix things.

This past weekend, I was on the phone with a woman who’d brought her mom to live near her in assisted living. The mom had been to the hospital the day before. My conversation with the daughter was about helping her see the truth that her mother needed more care and that was going to change the daughter’s responsibilities and her life. And also, her mother was frail, elderly, and coming nearer to death.

That’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes, because we live in a death-denying society. Also, we live in a fast-paced, demanding world that says don’t sit still — do something. But people receiving care often need most of all for us to spend time with them. When we do that, their mortality and our grief and our helplessness becomes closer to us and more apparent.

How can contemplative caregiving help?

We teach people to cultivate a relationship with aging, sickness and dying. To turn toward it rather than turning away, and to pay close attention. Most people don’t want to do this.

A person needs training to face what is difficult in oneself and in others. There are spiritual muscles we need to develop, just like we develop physical muscles in a gym. Also, the mind needs to be trained to be responsive instead of reactive.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to help your mother, and she says something off-putting to you like “you’ve always been terrible at keeping house. It’s no wonder you lost my pajamas.”

The first thing is to notice your experience. To become aware of that feeling, almost like being slapped emotionally. To notice your chest tightening.

Then I tell people to take a deep breath. And say something to themselves like “soften” to address that tightness. That’s how you can stay facing something uncomfortable rather than turning away.

If I were in this position, I might say something to myself like “hello unhappiness” or “hello suffering” or “hello aging” to tether myself.

The second step would be curiosity about that experience. Like, wow, where do I feel that anger that rose up in me, or that fear? Oh, it’s in my chest. I’m going to feel that, stay with it, investigate it.

Why is that important?

Because as we investigate something we come to understand it. And, paradoxically, when we pay attention to pain it changes. It softens. It moves. It lessens. It deepens. And we get to know it and learn not to be afraid of it or change it or fix it but just come alongside of it.

Over hours, days, months, years, the mind and heart come to know pain. And the response to pain is compassion — the wish for the alleviation of pain.

Let’s go back to what mother said about your housekeeping and the pajamas. Maybe you leave the room for five minutes so you can pay attention to your reaction and remember your training. Then, you can go back in and have a response rather than a reaction. Maybe something like “Mom, I think you’re right. I may not be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m sorry I lost your pajamas. It seems like you’re having a pretty strong response to that, and I’d like to know why it matters so much to you. What’s happening with you today?”

Are other skills important?

Another skill is to become aware of how much we receive as well as give in caregiving. Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy. But the alternative is missing someone’s final chapter, and that can be a real loss.

What will you do in your course?

We’ll teach the principles of contemplative care and discuss them. We’ll have homework, such as ‘Bring me three examples of someone you were caring for who was caring toward you in return.’ That’s one way of practicing attention. And people will train in meditation.

We’ll also explore our own relationship to aging, sickness, dying and loss. We’ll tell our stories: this is the situation I was in, this is where I felt myself shut down, this was the edge of my comfort or knowledge. And we’ll teach principles from Buddhism. Equanimity. Compassion. Deep inner connectedness.

What can people do on their own?

Mindfulness training is offered in almost every city. That’s one of the core components of this approach.

I think every caregiver needs to have their own caregiver — a therapist or a colleague or a friend, someone who is there for them and with whom they can unburden themselves. I think of caregiving as drawing water from a well. We need to make sure that we have whatever nurtures us, whatever supplies that well. And often, that’s connecting with others.

Are other groups doing this kind of work?

In New York City, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care educates the public and professionals about contemplative care. And in New Mexico, the Upaya Zen Center does similar work, much of it centered around death and dying.

People who want to read about this might want to look at a new book of essays, “The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work” (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

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U.S. to review Dreamliner amid more mishaps

Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner jet suffered a cracked cockpit window and an oil leak on separate flights in Japan on Friday -- the latest in a series of incidents testing confidence in the sophisticated new aircraft.

All Nippon Airways Co said a domestic flight from Tokyo landed safely at Matsuyama airport in western Japan after a crack developed on the cockpit windscreen, and the plane's return to Tokyo was cancelled.

The same airline later said oil was found leaking from an engine of a 787 Dreamliner after the plane landed at Miyazaki airport in southern Japan. An airline spokeswoman said it later returned to Tokyo after some delay. No one was injured in either incident.

The world's first carbon-composite airliner, which has a list price of $207 million, has been beset by problems this week. Some analysts say these are normal teething issues as a new plane enters service under close scrutiny. Others say the incidents could erode public confidence in the aircraft.

The 787 Dreamliner will undergo a comprehensive review of its critical systems by regulators, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Friday.

The review of the jet will include design, manufacture and assembly, after a series of problems in recent weeks, including a battery that caught fire on an empty 787 parked in Boston on Monday.

The agency said it plans to announce more details at a press conference Friday at 9:30 am ET.

U.S. regulators have raised questions about the plane's reliability on long transocean routes, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The 787 Dreamliner made its first commercial flight in late-2011, after a series of production delays put deliveries more than three years behind schedule. By the end of last year, Boeing had sold 848 Dreamliners, and delivered 49.

Earlier this week, a battery fire caused damage to an empty 787 jet operated by Japan Airlines while it was on the ground at Boston airport. The next day, another JAL 787 spilled 40 gallons of fuel onto the taxiway at the same airport after a problem that caused a valve to open, forcing the plane to delay its departure. On Wednesday, ANA cancelled a domestic Dreamliner flight due to a brake-control computer glitch.

Boeing's top Dreamliner engineer, Mike Sinnett, was rolled out midweek to defend the 787, saying the plane's problem rates were no higher than with Boeing's successful 777 jet.

SPIDER WEB CRACK/

ANA said crew noticed a spider web-like crack in a window in front of the pilot's seat about 70 minutes into Friday's flight, which was close to its destination.

"Cracks appear a few times every year in other planes. We don't see this as a sign of a fundamental problem" with Boeing aircraft, a spokesman for the airline said.

On the later flight, the ANA spokeswoman said she could not specify how much oil leaked from the engine. Later on Friday, ANA - which, with JAL flies 24 of the 49 Dreamliners delivered to end-December - launched its maiden service between Tokyo's Narita Airport and San Jose, California with the Dreamliner.

Jun Akiyama, a plane enthusiast who was taking photos at the airport ahead of the San Jose departure, said: "It's worrying. If there was a major accident lives would be at stake, and these defects are only increasing fears."

But Yasushi Uesaka, a systems engineer from Osaka who was also taking pictures nearby, played down the incidents. "When new things come out, there will naturally be defects. That a lot of these defects didn't occur during flight means they're not too critical, I think."

In India - where state-owned Air India has taken delivery of six Dreamliner jets and has more on order - a senior official at the aviation regulator said there was concern at the recent spate of Dreamliner glitches. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has not ordered any Dreamliner checks for now, but is waiting for a safety report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the official said.

Air India spokesman K. Swaminathan said the airline's debut Dreamliner flight to Paris on Thursday went without a hitch.

FUEL SAVINGS

One of Boeing's chief innovations with the 787 is its use of electrical power to run on-board functions such as hydraulics and air conditioning, instead of relying on heavier pneumatic systems used on other planes. The weight savings make the 787 more fuel efficient, a big advantage for airlines battling high jet fuel costs.

To power the electrical system, the 787 uses generators attached to the plane's engines, which produce about 1.5 megawatts of power, enough to power about 300 hot water heaters. The system uses high-voltage distribution panels and powerful batteries, such as the one that caught fire in Boston on Monday.

Makoto Yoda, president of Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa Corp, which makes the Dreamliner batteries, said his company was looking into Monday's fire, and was sending a team of engineers to cooperate with the U.S. investigation.

 

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Car stolen from parking lot with 18-month-old inside

Kimberly Delgado (Provided photo / January 10, 2013)

By Peter Nickeas




Tribune reporter

7:02 a.m. CST, January 10, 2013

Police say they have found an 18-month-old girl who was left in a running car that was stolen from a parking lot in Bensenville early Thursday morning.

Kimberly Delgado appeared safe and unharmed, police said shortly before 7 a.m., and she was being checked as precaution.

An Amber Alert was issued after the mother left Kimberly in a black Buick while she went into an apartment building at 940 W. Irving Park Road in Bensenville around 12:40 a.m., according to Bensenville Police Chief Frank Kosman.

"A subject walked out the foyer and walked directly to her car parked directly in front of the foyer. . .and drove away," Kosman said.

Kosman said he had no reason to believe the man knew the child was inside. Police described him as Hispanic, 5-foot-4, 35 to 40 years old, heavy build, black hair, dark complected and wearing a red sweater.

The car has an Illinois license plate, L548500.

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

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Could Alex Jones’s “revolution” actually happen?

Piers Morgan had it easy. Radio show host and author Alex Jones threatened the rest of us with a ”revolution” if the government decides to confiscate guns from the homes and glove compartments of law-abiding Americans. It’s almost too easy to dismiss Jones as a fringe figure, especially since fringe ideas make their way into the mainstream with (exciting? alarming?) frequency these days. So let’s take him seriously.

Let’s accept his premise. Actually, let’s dismiss it first but then turn around and accept it for the sake of argument. The government has not the means nor the mechanism nor the credibility to confiscate 100,000 guns, much less 600,000,000. And those in the government doing the confiscating would be neighbors and relatives of the confiscatory victims: police officers, national guard members, Army reservists. Of course, Jones might say that their intent is bad enough. But “they” — the Obama administration, I assume — have no such intentions, and never did.

But OK. Let’s say that the government tries to confiscate guns and “the people” attempt to revolt.  No doubt that civil disobedience can spring up rather spontaneously and even be organized very quickly, but if rioting were to somehow break out in American cities, it would be isolated and theoretically containable. Organizing a “revolt” would require extensive planning, including the massive transportation of citizens from their homes to wherever the rally points were, a communications infrastructure, and leaders. The same Open Source culture that would make it difficult for the government to plan a confiscation in secret makes it just as unlikely for citizens to plan a feasible response to that confiscation in secret.

One of Jones’s obsessions, which, I confess, I share, is the militarization of the American homeland, and he is not promulgating a conspiracy here. The military has expanded its presence on American soil, and crucially, has expanded the way it is organized to respond to mass contingency events of any kind, including natural disasters and rioting. The U.S. Northern Command does receive intelligence briefings about domestic disturbances from the FBI and DHS, so commanders would be somewhat prepared to deploy troops. Thousands would come from the standing Army, but the bulk would be drawn from state National Guard detachments. It is exceedingly difficult to picture weekend warriors following blind orders en masse to detain or harm U.S. citizens when local police resources are stretched. The government has the power of command and control, but the people have the power of fellow-feeling. The government’s response to any real revolt would probably be quite restrained. There’d be too much attention paid to every movement of every tank to act harshly. The strategy to contain any “revolt” might therefore depend on a period of people letting out their energies and then returning to their normal business. 

Ah, but what if the government controls the communication nodes?  Well, corporations do; I assume Jones would have them immediately bend to a secret executive order shutting down serves and clouds and services like Twitter, but even if corporations agreed to do this, together, it would take days to get even a fraction of the telecom infrastructure offline. Maybe the government would order a mass power outage. But that’s why so many Americans have generators in the first place!  Although government “boards” comprising major telecom and infrastructure executives do exist, the most they’ve ever contemplated doing is to shut down a narrow slice of an infected communications node. These days, they’re focused on the cyber threat.  In the early days of civil defense planning, when there were a few television networks an AT&T had its monopoly, the threat of a government takeover of TV, radio and telephones was technically feasible. Today it is not. Actually, it does not make sense. What’s turned on really cannot be turned off.

But wait. if Jones’s “revolution” is to succeed, he needs to take over the government, because he’d need to dominate communications as well, unless he assumes that his movement would be organic and immune to arguments from elected officials asking for stability and calm.

An objective of anyone who wants to take over the government would be a seizure of the Emergency Broadcast System, which allows the President to speak to the nation through almost any mechanism of communication at any time. The EBS lives at Mt. Weather, the massive FEMA bunker in Virginia, but it can be activated and controlled from at least a dozen other places, including the briefcase of the Emergency Actions officer who travels with the President.  A coordinated violent action to seize control of this key portal would require an incredible amount of prior planning.

Assuming even that the government’s response to isolated-turned-mass rioting is uneven, the President would be able to address Americans anytime he wants. In theory, Jones’s followers could try to take over every broadcast entity in America, or could try and jam the broadcasts using sophisticated electronic warfare technology available to the military, but once again, the practicalities are not possible.

Because there will be no revolt over gun control, because there will not be and cannot be a mass confiscation of guns, playing with these ideas is fanciful and fodder for a sequel to Seven Days in May. Heck, we haven’t even addressed the FEMA concentration camps (which don’t exist).  But that isn’t to say that nothing discussed above will ever be relevant. It is much easier to imagine a small-scale revolt, a series of pre-planned violent protests against the powers that be, perhaps because the political system seems so non-responsive to the worries of people who listen to Alex Jones.  It would not take much to make Americans nervous about the government’s ability to restore law and order. And that frission itself is probably the most unknowable of all these factors.

Patriotic citizens aren’t supposed to speculate about these extremely unlikely events, but the government certainly thinks about them. So maybe we should too.

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‘The Hunger Games’ lead fan favorites at People’s Choice awards

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Post-apocalyptic action film “The Hunger Games” was the big winner at the People’s Choice Awards on Thursday, picking up five awards including favorite movie of the year, while singer Katy Perry again led in the music categories.

Hosted by “The Big Bang Theory” actress Kaley Cuoco, the People’s Choice Awards named winners in more than 40 categories across film, television and music. About 475 million fans voted through the People’s Choice website.

“The Hunger Games,” based on the trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins, beat out “The Avengers,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Snow White and the Huntsman” for the coveted favorite movie accolade.

Jennifer Lawrence, who plays “Hunger Games” heroine Katniss Everdeen, won the favorite movie actress award over Mila Kunis, Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johansson.

“Thank you for loving movies as much as I do, and loving this movie and voting,” Lawrence said.

“The Hunger Games” was also named favorite action film and favorite movie franchise, while its stars Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth won favorite on-screen chemistry.

The People’s Choice is the first of Hollywood’s annual awards shows, but unlike the Oscars or the Golden Globes, the winners are determined by fans, so it provides few insights into likely winners of the movie industry’s top honors in February.

“The Avengers,” which was nominated in eight categories, didn’t go home empty-handed. Robert Downey Jr. was named favorite movie actor for his role as Iron Man in the superhero ensemble box office hit.

“You’ve chosen wisely,” the actor joked on stage.

Adam Sandler picked up the fan favorite award for comedic actor, while former “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston picked up the favorite comedic movie actress award, beating out Mila Kunis, Reese Witherspoon, Emily Blunt and Cameron Diaz.

“I cannot thank you enough for allowing me to be honored with this, after supporting me for almost 20 years,” Aniston said.

Emma Watson of “Harry Potter” fame picked up the favorite dramatic actress accolade for her role in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

“Perks” was also named favorite dramatic movie, while “Ted,” the raunchy R-rated comedy from “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, was named favorite comedy film.

MUSIC AND TELEVISION WINNERS

Katy Perry took home four trophies this year, including favorite female artist and a surprise win for favorite pop artist over Justin Bieber.

Fan favorite Taylor Swift beat out Tim McGraw, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood for favorite country artist.

“You guys have blown my mind with what you’ve done with this album ‘Red.’ I want to thank you for caring about my music and me,” the singer said in her acceptance speech.

Her chart-topping album “Red,” which the singer based on her experiences, was one of 2012′s top-sellers. The singer attended the awards alone following a widely reported split from boyfriend Harry Styles of U.K. boy band One Direction.

Maroon 5 picked up the favorite band award. The band’s popularity skyrocketed in 2012 after lead singer Adam Levine served as a judge on television talent show “The Voice.”

British boy band The Wanted won favorite breakout artist.

In the television categories, CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” was named favorite network comedy, while ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” picked up favorite network drama.

Ellen Pompeo of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Castle” actor Nathan Fillion won the favorite TV dramatic actress and actor awards, while “Glee” stars Lea Michele and Chris Colfer picked up the favorite TV comedic actress and actor awards.

Sandra Bullock was named favorite humanitarian for her efforts in helping victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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