totalyNOTaPIRATE [none/use name]
Malcolm X’s family sues FBI, CIA and NYPD for $100m over his murder
Lawsuit alleges law enforcement agencies knew of plot to kill civil rights leader but did not act to stop it Marina Dunbar and agency Fri 15 Nov 2024 19.42 GMT
The family of Malcolm X, the militant civil rights leader who was assassinated almost 60 years ago, filed a $100m federal lawsuit on Friday that accuses the FBI, the CIA and the New York police department (NYPD) of allowing his murder.
The lawsuit, brought by Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and other family members, alleges the law enforcement agencies concealed evidence they knew of the plot to kill him but did not act to stop it.
“We believe that they all conspired to assassinate Malcolm X, one of the greatest thought leaders of the 20th century,” Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who is representing the family, said at a press conference. US-crime-ASSASSINATION-MALCOMX<br>Organization of African American Unity member Mustafa Hassan ©, with Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump (3rd L) and Ilyasah Shabazz (2nd L), speaks at a press conference in New York on July 25, 2023, to discuss developments in the murder of her father, civil rights leader Malcolm X. (Photo by Ed JONES / AFP) (Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images) Witness claims police said ‘Is he one of us?’ as they restrained Malcolm X killer Read more
The wrongful death lawsuit was announced at a memorial center on the site in New York City where Malcolm X was killed in 1965. It seeks to answer questions surrounding the assassination, and paint an accurate history of the events, Crump said.
It is also intended to bring reparations to the family. There was no comment from the FBI, the CIA or the NYPD by Friday afternoon.
“This cover up spanned decades, blocking the Shabazz family’s access to the truth and their right to pursue justice,” said Crump in a statement. “We are making history by standing here to confront those wrongs and seeking accountability in the courts.”
Malcolm X became prominent as the national spokesperson of the Nation of Islam, an African American Muslim group that espoused Black separatism.
After more than a decade with the group, he publicly broke with it in 1964. He moderated some of his earlier views on racial separation, angering some Nation of Islam members and drawing death threats.
Talmadge Hayer, then a member of the Nation of Islam, confessed in court to being one of the three assassins. But speculation that the government may have been aware of the assassination plan and allowed it to happen has persisted for decades.
Shabazz was two on 21 February 1965, when she, her mother and her siblings witnessed her father being shot and killed while preparing to speak at New York’s Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. From theguardian
This past May, Marlena Stell, a patient with symptoms nearly identical to Porsha’s, arrived at another hospital in the system, Houston Methodist The Woodlands. According to medical records, she, too, was 11 weeks along and bleeding heavily. An ultrasound confirmed there was no fetal heartbeat and indicated the miscarriage wasn’t complete. “I assumed they would do whatever to get the bleeding to stop,” Stell said.
Instead, she bled for hours at the hospital. She wanted a D&C to clear out the rest of the tissue, but the doctor gave her methergine, a medication that’s typically used after childbirth to stop bleeding but that isn’t standard care in the middle of a miscarriage, doctors told ProPublica. “She had heavy bleeding, and she had an ultrasound that’s consistent with retained products of conception.” said Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, who reviewed the records. “The standard of care would be a D&C.”
Stell says that instead, she was sent home and told to “let the miscarriage take its course.” She completed her miscarriage later that night, but doctors who reviewed her case, so similar to Porsha’s, said it showed how much of a gamble physicians take when they don’t follow the standard of care. “She got lucky — she could have died,” Abbott said. (Houston Methodist did not respond to a request for comment on Stell’s care.)
It hadn’t occurred to Hope that the laws governing abortion could have any effect on his wife’s miscarriage. Now it’s the only explanation that makes sense to him. “We all know pregnancies can come out beautifully or horribly,” Hope told ProPublica. “Instead of putting laws in place to make pregnancies safer, we created laws that put them back in danger.”
For months, Hope’s youngest son didn’t understand that his mom was gone. Porsha’s long hair had been braided, and anytime the toddler saw a woman with braids from afar, he would take off after her, shouting, “That’s mommy!”
A couple weeks ago, Hope flew to Amsterdam to quiet his mind. It was his first trip without Porsha, but as he walked the city, he didn’t know how to experience it without her. He kept thinking about how she would love the Christmas lights and want to try all the pastries. How she would have teased him when he fell asleep on a boat tour of the canals. “I thought getting away would help,” he wrote in his journal. “But all I’ve done is imagine her beside me.”
Nazi Germany Amnesty International says: “Treblinka,Sobibor? Never heard of”
Amnesty International’s Israel branch has distanced itself from the rights group’s allegation that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza, but said “serious crimes” were potentially taking place that needed investigation.
The local branch, which operates as a separate charity from the international organisation, said in a statement: “While the Israeli section of Amnesty International does not accept the accusation that Israel is committing genocide, based on the information available to us, we are concerned that serious crimes are being committed in Gaza, that must be investigated.” Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip Israel’s war in Gaza amounts to genocide, Amnesty International report finds Read more
The 296-page report, examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, found that Israel had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting that the “atrocity crimes” against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.
While its publication was largely welcomed by Palestinians and humanitarian groups, it was met with fury in Israel. “The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies,” Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The United States said it disagreed with the conclusions of the report. “We have said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
Multiple attempts to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the war in Gaza, now raging for 14 months, have failed, although mediator Qatar said on Thursday it would resume its role, raising tentative hopes that progress could be made in fresh negotiations.
Egypt, another major mediator, has put forward a proposal involving a temporary ceasefire lasting 45-60 days, with a staged hostage release and prisoner swap. A Hamas delegation met with Egyptian negotiators in Cairo earlier this week, and Israel is considering sending its own delegation in the next few days – the most movement on talks since the last round collapsed in August.
The Egyptian proposal also suggests that the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority take control of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Israel seized in May, and a substantial increase in the supply of aid. An average of 50 trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel in November, UN data shows. Aid agencies say at least 500 are needed to meet the population’s needs amid a dire humanitarian crisis and the approach of winter.
In Gaza, at least 39 people were killed by Israeli fire in the preceding 24 hours, according to medics, including at least 20 who died when an overnight airstrike set alight cooking gas canisters and tents tents housing displaced families in what Israel has dubbed a “humanitarian zone”. Israel said the strike targeted senior Hamas operatives, whom it did not identify.
Other Israeli strikes reported on Thursday hit Gaza City, where medics said an airstrike destroyed a house where an extended family had taken shelter and damaged two nearby homes, killing at least three people.
Residents searched for loved ones and belongings among the charred wreckage in Mawasi, a coastal area in the south of the strip, where hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to seek shelter.
At a funeral for those killed in Mawasi in nearby Khan Younis, Abu Anas Mustafa told Reuters that the Amnesty report was “a victory for Palestinian diplomacy”, although he said it “came late”.
“It is the 430th day of the war today, and Israel has been carrying out massacres and a genocide from the first 10 days of the war,” he said.
At Methodist, the emergency room doctor reached Davis, the on-call OB-GYN, to discuss the ultrasound, according to records. They agreed on a plan of “observation in the hospital to monitor bleeding.”
Around 8:30 p.m., just after Hope arrived, Porsha passed out. Terrified, he took her head in his hands and tried to bring her back to consciousness. “Babe, look at me,” he told her. “Focus.” Her blood pressure was dipping dangerously low. She had held off on accepting a blood transfusion until he got there. Now, as she came to, she agreed to receive one and then another.
By this point, it was clear that she needed a D&C, more than a dozen OB-GYNs who reviewed her case told ProPublica. She was hemorrhaging, and the standard of care is to vacuum out the residual tissue so the uterus can clamp down, physicians told ProPublica.
“Complete the miscarriage and the bleeding will stop,” said Dr. Lauren Thaxton, an OB-GYN who recently left Texas.
“At every point, it’s kind of shocking,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco who reviewed Porsha’s case. “She is having significant blood loss and the physician didn’t move toward aspiration.”
All Porsha talked about was her devastation of losing the pregnancy. She was cold, crying and in extreme pain. She wanted to be at home with her boys. Unsure what to say, Hope leaned his chest over the cot, passing his body heat to her.
At 9:45 p.m., Esmeralda Acosta, a nurse, wrote that Porsha was “continuing to pass large clots the size of grapefruit.” Fifteen minutes later, when the nurse learned Davis planned to send Porsha to a floor with fewer nurses, she “voiced concern” that he wanted to take her out of the emergency room, given her condition, according to medical records.
At 10:20 p.m., seven hours after Porsha arrived, Davis came to see her. Hope remembered what his mother had told him on the phone earlier that night: “She needs a D&C.” The doctor seemed confident about a different approach: misoprostol. If that didn’t work, Hope remembers him saying, they would move on to the procedure.
A pill sounded good to Porsha because the idea of surgery scared her. Davis did not explain that a D&C involved no incisions, just suction, according to Hope, or tell them that it would stop the bleeding faster. The Ngumezis followed his recommendation without question. “I’m thinking, ‘He’s the OB, he’s probably seen this a thousand times, he probably knows what’s right,’” Hope said.
But more than a dozen doctors who reviewed Porsha’s case were concerned by this recommendation. Many said it was dangerous to give misoprostol to a woman who’s bleeding heavily, especially one with a blood clotting disorder. “That’s not what you do,” said Dr. Elliott Main, the former medical director for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative and an expert in hemorrhage, after reviewing the case. “She needed to go to the operating room.” Main and others said doctors are obliged to counsel patients on the risks and benefits of all their options, including a D&C.
Performing a D&C, though, attracts more attention from colleagues, creating a higher barrier in a state where abortion is illegal, explained Goulding, the OB-GYN in Houston. Staff are familiar with misoprostol because it’s used for labor, and it only requires a doctor and a nurse to administer it. To do a procedure, on the other hand, a doctor would need to find an operating room, an anesthesiologist and a nursing team. “You have to convince everyone that it is legal and won’t put them at risk,” said Goulding. “Many people may be afraid and misinformed and refuse to participate — even if it’s for a miscarriage.”
Davis moved Porsha to a less-intensive unit, according to records. Hope wondered why they were leaving the emergency room if the nurse seemed so worried. But instead of pushing back, he rubbed Porsha’s arms, trying to comfort her. The hospital was reputable. “Since we were at Methodist, I felt I could trust the doctors.”
On their way to the other ward, Porsha complained of chest pain. She kept remarking on it when they got to the new room. From this point forward, there are no nurse’s notes recording how much she continued to bleed. “My wife says she doesn’t feel right, and last time she said that, she passed out,” Hope told a nurse. Furious, he tried to hold it together so as not to alarm Porsha. “We need to see the doctor,” he insisted.
Her vital signs looked fine. But many physicians told ProPublica that when healthy pregnant patients are hemorrhaging, their bodies can compensate for a long time, until they crash. Any sign of distress, such as chest pain, could be a red flag; the symptom warranted investigation with tests, like an electrocardiogram or X-ray, experts said. To them, Porsha’s case underscored how important it is that doctors be able to intervene before there are signs of a life-threatening emergency.
But Davis didn’t order any tests, according to records.
Around 1:30 a.m., Hope was sitting by Porsha’s bed, his hands on her chest, telling her, “We are going to figure this out.” They were talking about what she might like for breakfast when she began gasping for air.
“Help, I need help!” he shouted to the nurses through the intercom. “She can’t breathe.”
Hours later, Hope returned home in a daze. “Is mommy still at the hospital?” one of his sons asked. Hope nodded; he couldn’t find the words to tell the boys they’d lost their mother. He dressed them and drove them to school, like the previous day had been a bad dream. He reached for his phone to call Porsha, as he did every morning that he dropped the kids off. But then he remembered that he couldn’t.
Friends kept reaching out. Most of his family’s network worked in medicine, and after they said how sorry they were, one after another repeated the same message. All she needed was a D&C, said one. They shouldn’t have given her that medication, said another. It’s a simple procedure, the callers continued. We do this all the time in Nigeria.
Since Porsha died, several families in Texas have spoken publicly about similar circumstances. This May, when Ryan Hamilton’s wife was bleeding while miscarrying at 13 weeks, the first doctor they saw at Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville noted no fetal cardiac activity and ordered misoprostol, according to medical records. When they returned because the bleeding got worse, an emergency doctor on call, Kyle Demler, said he couldn’t do anything considering “the current stance” in Texas, according to Hamilton, who recorded his recollection of the conversation shortly after speaking with Demler. (Neither Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville nor Demler responded to several requests for comment.)
They drove an hour to another hospital asking for a D&C to stop the bleeding, but there, too, the physician would only prescribe misoprostol, medical records indicate. Back home, Hamilton’s wife continued bleeding until he found her passed out on the bathroom floor. “You don’t think it can really happen like that,” said Hamilton. “It feels like you’re living in some sort of movie, it’s so unbelievable.”
Across Texas, physicians say they blame the law for interfering with medical care. After ProPublica reported last month on two women who died after delays in miscarriage care, 111 OB-GYNs sent a letter to Texas policymakers, saying that “the law does not allow Texas women to get the lifesaving care they need.”
Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN in Dallas, told ProPublica that if one person on a medical team doubts the doctor’s choice to proceed with a D&C, the physician might back down. “You constantly feel like you have someone looking over your shoulder in a punitive, vigilante type of way.”
The criminal penalties are so chilling that even women with diagnoses included in the law’s exceptions are facing delays and denials. Last year, for example, legislators added an update to the ban for patients diagnosed with previable premature rupture of membranes, in which a patient’s water breaks before a fetus can survive. Doctors can still face prosecution for providing abortions in those cases, but they are offered the chance to justify themselves with what’s called an “affirmative defense,” not unlike a murder suspect arguing self defense. This modest change has not stopped some doctors from transferring those patients instead of treating them; Dr. Allison Gilbert, an OB-GYN in Dallas, said doctors send them to her from other hospitals. “They didn’t feel like other staff members would be comfortable proceeding with the abortion,” she said. “It’s frustrating that places still feel like they can’t act on some of these cases that are clearly emergencies.” Women denied treatment for ectopic pregnancies, another exception in the law, have filed federal complaints.
In response to ProPublica’s questions about Houston Methodist’s guidance on miscarriage management, a spokesperson, Gale Smith, said that the hospital has an ethics committee, which can usually respond within hours to help physicians and patients make “appropriate decisions” in compliance with state laws.
After Porsha died, Davis described in the medical record a patient who looked stable: He was tracking her vital signs, her bleeding was “mild” and she was “said not to be in distress.” He ordered bloodwork “to ensure patient wasn’t having concerning bleeding.” Medical experts who reviewed Porsha’s case couldn’t understand why Davis noted that a nurse and other providers reported “decreasing bleeding” in the emergency department when the record indicated otherwise. “He doesn’t document the heavy bleeding that the nurse clearly documented, including the significant bleeding that prompted the blood transfusion, which is surprising,” Grossman, the UCSF professor, said.
Patients who are miscarrying still don’t know what to expect from Houston Methodist.
Reuters and guardian algo are reporting:
Israeli tanks fire on southern Lebanon as officials says ceasefire with Hezbollah violated
Israeli tank fire hit six areas in southern Lebanon on Thursday and the Israeli military said its ceasefire with Hezbollah was breached after what it called suspects, some in vehicles, arrived at several areas in the southern zone, reports Reuters.
A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, intended to allow people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas.
The Israeli military had urged residents of towns along the border strip not to return yet for their own safety.
On Thursday morning, Israeli tank fire hit six areas within that border strip, state media and Lebanese security sources said. The rounds struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, Khiyam, Taybe and the agricultural plains around Marjayoun, all of which lie within two kilometres of the blue line demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were injured in Markaba.
Reuters reports that Lebanese families displaced from their homes near the southern border have tried to return to check on their properties. But Israeli troops remain stationed within Lebanese territory in towns along the border and Reuters reporters heard surveillance drones flying over parts of southern Lebanon.
There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel, said Reuters.
Hezbollah has said its fighters “remain fully equipped to deal with the aspirations and assaults of the Israeli enemy.” Its forces will monitor Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon “with their hands on the trigger”, Reuters reports.
Time is a flat circle
"The US Central Command said its forces conducted dozens of airstrikes on Islamic State targets in central Syria on Sunday
In a statement, the Centcom said its strikes were aimed to ensure that the Islamic State does not take advantage of the current situation in Syria.
“Battle damage assessments are underway, and there are no indications of civilian casualties,” reads a statement by Centcom posted on X.
“There should be no doubt – we will not allow Isis to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria,” said Gen Michael Erik Kurilla.
“All organizations in Syria should know that we will hold them accountable if they partner with or support Isis in any way,” Kurilla added."
Washington Post cartoonist resigns over paper’s refusal to publish cartoon critical of Jeff Bezos Pulitzer prize winner Ann Telnaes drew a cartoon of the paper’s owner kneeling before Donald Trump Ramon Antonio Vargas Sat 4 Jan 2025 10.23 EST The Washington Post’s Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from her position at the newspaper after its refusal to publish a satirical cartoon depicting the outlet’s owner Jeff Bezos – along with other media and technology barons – kneeling before Donald Trump as he gears up for his second US presidency. “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” Telnaes wrote on Friday in an online post on the Substack platform detailing her decision to quit. “Until now.” In a statement reported by the New York Times, the Post’s opinions editor, David Shipley, defended the newspaper’s decision against publishing Telnaes’s cartoon, saying he disagreed with her “interpretation of events” and that “the only bias was against repetition”. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” said Shipley, whose statement added that he had spoken with Telnaes and asked her to reconsider leaving. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication.” Telnaes’s Substack post from Friday contained a rough draft of her cartoon. Beside Bezos, who founded Amazon before buying the Post, the cartoon portrayed caricatures of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Walt Disney Co mascot Mickey Mouse. “The cartoon … criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with … Trump,” Telnaes said. “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. “To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a gamechanger … and dangerous for a free press.” Telnaes announced her resignation less than three months after the Post and Bezos faced withering backlash over the outlet’s decision to prevent its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris in the presidential election of 5 November. Soon-Shiong had also similarly refused to allow the LA Times’ editorial board to publish an endorsement of Harris. Readers met both outlets with more than 200,000 subscription cancellations combined, the overwhelming majority of those affecting the Post’s larger readership, according to reports. And commentators accused the two newspapers of demonstrating what has been classified as “anticipatory obedience” to Trump after he had repeatedly accused the media of being enemies of the state and promised retribution against many in the industry if he defeated Harris. Trump then scored a decisive victory against Harris to wrest back the Oval Office, which he had lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. After his victory, Zuckerberg dined with Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort. His company Meta also donated $1m to a fund for Trump’s second inauguration. Observers interpreted those to be conciliatory gestures after Trump during his first presidency had criticized Zuckerberg and his Facebook platform of being “anti-Trump”.
From the guardian: https://archive.is/mtc85
Syrian forces suffer 14 fatalities in countryside clashes
Transitional administration said 10 police members also wounded by ‘remnants’ of Assad regime in Tartous Reuters Wed 25 Dec 2024 23.35 GMT
Fourteen members of the Syrian police were killed in an “ambush” by forces loyal to the ousted government in the Tartous countryside, the transitional administration said early on Thursday, as demonstrations and an overnight curfew elsewhere marked the most widespread unrest since Bashar al-Assad’s removal more than two weeks ago.
Syria’s new interior minister said on Telegram that 10 police members were also wounded by what he called “remnants” of the Assad government in Tartous, vowing to crack down on “anyone who dares to undermine Syria’s security or endanger the lives of its citizens”.
Earlier, Syrian police imposed an overnight curfew in the city of Homs, state media reported, after unrest there linked to demonstrations that residents said were led by members of the minority Alawite and Shi’ite Muslim religious communities.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the demands of the demonstrators nor the degree of disturbance that took place.
Some residents said the demonstrations were linked to pressure and violence in recent days aimed at members of the Alawite minority, a sect long seen as loyal to Assad, who was toppled by Sunni Islamist rebels on 8 December.
Spokespersons for Syria’s new ruling administration led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaida affiliate, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the curfew.
State media said the curfew was being imposed for one night, from 6pm local time (1500 GMT) until 8am on Thursday morning.
The country’s new leaders have repeatedly vowed to protect minority religious groups, who fear the former rebels now in control could seek to impose a conservative form of Islamist government.
Small demonstrations also took place in other areas on or near Syria’s coast, where most of the country’s Alawite minority live, including in Tartous.
The demonstrations took place about the time an undated video was circulated on social networks showing a fire inside an Alawite shrine in the city of Aleppo, with armed men walking about inside and posing near human bodies.
The interior ministry said on its official Telegram account the video dated back to the rebel offensive on Aleppo in late November and the violence was carried out by unknown groups, adding whoever was circulating the video now appeared to be seeking to incite sectarian strife.
The ministry also said some members of the former regime had attacked interior ministry forces in Syria’s coastal area on Wednesday, leaving a number of dead and wounded.
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