Tag: Crime & Punishment

BUSTED! (Again)

Stealing is despicable…..but the theft of culture is unforgivable…..

Looks like the Green Family of Hobby Lobby fame has been caught again with stolen artifacts….this time one of the oldest sagas in history….the Epic of Gilgamesh….and must return it to where it belongs….

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet bought by the Hobby Lobby for display in the Museum of the Bible should be returned to Iraq, US federal prosecutors said in a civil complaint Monday. The cuneiform tablet is inscribed with a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh, hence, its name: the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet. NBC News reports Hobby Lobby purchased it for $1.6 million in 2014 by a major auction house that is unnamed in the complaint. That auction house allegedly told Hobby Lobby the tablet, one of 12 bearing the creation story, was acquired in San Francisco prior to 1981. The complaint details a different backstory. One part of it, per NPR: In 2013, the person who possessed the tablet at the time allegedly got in touch with the auction house’s London office with an offer to sell it.

But the auction house’s antiquities department head was reportedly told the tablet’s provenance was not iron-clad, meaning a public auction wouldn’t be possible. Hobby Lobby acquired it in a private sale that next year. Three years later, in July 2017, the company agreed to pay a $3 million fine over thousands of artifacts it acquired without verifying their provenance; federal authorities said they had been smuggled out of Iraq. In October 2017, a Museum of the Bible curator doing provenance research on the Gilgamesh tablet reached out to the auction house. A press release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations division notes “the Auction House withheld information about the tablet’s provenance,” leading the museum to realize something was amiss. Agents from the HSI division seized the tablet last year.

I have written about all the problems this family has had with their Museum of the Bible…..it seems it is full of stolen artifacts and fakes…..which cost the family millions to acquire.

https://lobotero.com/2020/05/17/a-sucker-born-every-minute-3/

https://lobotero.com/2020/03/19/theft-of-culture/

Desperation leads to stupidity and that leads to loss of money……and yet this group has been caught many times with stolen artifacts and yet they pay a fine and go on stealing the culture and history of other people….all in the hope of proving a premises….if it were anybody other than some religious twats they would be under a jail.

Time for people like these to be taught a valuable lesson and made to pay dearly for their crimes.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A Sucker Born Every Minute

I have written several times about the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, being conned in their endless search to prove the Bible is a historic document.

The family has scanned the world for artifacts that can prove the existence of everything in the Bible and in doing so has been caught with fakes and stolen artifacts…..read the story so far……https://lobotero.com/2020/03/19/theft-of-culture/

It looks like they were conned yet again…..

Dirk Obbink seemed eerily calm when a reporter knocked on his door near Oxford University last year. “I’d like to tell it,” the scholar said of his alleged role in a major antiquities scandal. “But I’m under a duty not to speak about the matter while it’s under investigation.” But that reporter, Ariel Sabar, has untangled the byzantine tale of how Obbink—a world-renowned classicist from Nebraska—allegedly made millions selling stolen papyri to US evangelicals, including a New Testament fragment that set the world of biblical studies on fire. In Sabar’s Atlantic piece, Obbink is portrayed as a legitimate papyrologist enticed by money. And in the Green family, who own the craft-store chain Hobby Lobby, he appears to have found the perfect mark.

The gospel fragment is one of several Obbink apparently sold to Hobby Lobby for the Green family’s Museum of the Bible and falsely dated to “circa 100 AD,” making them unique—the only New Testament fragments from the century in which Jesus is said to have lived and showing how his earliest chroniclers portrayed him. But those documents weren’t Obbink’s to sell. The scholar was arrested in April and accused of selling artifacts from Oxford’s Sackler Library, which was housing ancient texts on loan from the Egypt Exploration Society, per ArtNet. Now Obbink is out of an Oxford job and facing an uncertain future. But he maintains his innocence, saying that incriminating documents “have been fabricated in a malicious attempt to harm my reputation and career.” Click for Sabar’s full article.

Apparently this family has never heard the saying “buyer beware”…..ignorance and greed work well together and the Green family is proof of how profitable ignorance can be.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Covid-19 Fraud In Mississippi

In the recent past a pharmacist and a doctor and his son were nailed for prescription fraud against Medicare…..well it seems that we also have some d/bags that were hoarding supplies in this time of emergency….

A pharmaceutical company owned by Ocean Springs developer Kenneth Ritchey is accused in a federal court case of hoarding scarce personal protective equipment needed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with federal agents recovering a trove of respirator masks, face shields, gloves and other items from the business.

FBI agents raided Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals Plus LLC on North Halstead Road on April 17, but Southern District U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst declined then to comment on the investigation.

Ritchey is a former business partner of Clark Levi, a pharmacist who owned Lovelace Drugs in downtown Ocean Springs before he died in a car crash with his wife.

I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

You Have A Friend At DOJ

Soon to be a song recorded by pedophile Ted Nugent……(snark)

If you are in the pocket of Donald the Orange then you have a free ticket to act and do as he sees fit….with that traitor Barr at DOJ Trump sycophants can literally get away with murder on 5th Avenue (I heard that somewhere before)…..

Another criminal is about to get away with his crimes simply because he is a Trump worshiper…..this d/bag has pleaded guilty but he has the Orange dolt on his side…..

Who?

A big win for President Trump: The Justice Department said Thursday it is dropping the criminal case against Michael Flynn, per the AP. The case involving Trump’s first national security adviser had become a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI’s Russia investigation. The move is a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the last three years had maintained that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in a January 2017 interview. Flynn himself admitted as much, and became a key cooperator for Mueller as he investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

In court documents being filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it is dropping the case “after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.” The Justice Department said it had concluded that Flynn’s interview by the FBI was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the interview on January 24, 2017, was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.” The US attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, recommended the move to Attorney General William Barr last week and formalized the recommendation in a document this week. The decision is certain to be embraced by Trump, but it will likely add to Democratic concerns that Attorney General William Barr is excessively loyal to the president.

This illustrates that if you kneel before the god of idiocy enough you can get away with any crime you choose.

Don’t try this at your next court appearance….this is a one off for Trump’s “piss boys” (you need to watch “History of the World Part One” to understand that)……

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Flynn–The Case That Will Not Go Away

No that is not Errol Flynn…..this is that criminal the Trump tried to force onto the nation as a natsec adviser…..after pleading guilty he has decided that he will change his tune…..and there are several views of this situation…..

Michael Flynn is trying to get his case dismissed, with his lawyers arguing that newly released FBI documents show that agents set him up before interviewing him in 2017. “What is our goal?” reads one handwritten note. “Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” The former national security adviser eventually pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the Trump transition to the White House. Here are some early takes on the new developments, from both sides:

  • Unfair: At Bloomberg, Eli Lake writes the FBI went after Flynn over obscure violations under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse, as they say, but at the same time justice demands that the law be applied fairly and consistently,” he writes. “Flynn was being squeezed for crimes that are rarely, if ever, enforced. He relented only under financial pressure and a promise that his son, who worked with him in his consulting group, would not be prosecuted.” Lake wonders if Democrats would be so quick to forgive the FBI tactics if the target were in the Obama administration.
  • Not unfair: The idea he was “set up” is absurd, writes Randall D. Eliason at the Washington Post. “Any witness interviewed by the FBI has essentially three choices: tell the truth, lie, or assert the right to remain silent,” he writes. “The FBI had no way of knowing which option Flynn would choose when he walked into the interview. All Flynn had to do was tell the truth, or tell the agents he wasn’t comfortable talking to them. He chose instead to lie.”
  • Dismiss: Toss the case, writes law professor Jonathan Turley at the Hill. “These new documents further undermine the view of both the legitimacy and motivations of those investigations under former FBI director James Comey,” he writes. “For all of those who have long seen a concerted effort within the Justice Department to target the Trump administration, the fragments will read like a Dead Sea Scrolls version of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy.”
  • Business as usual: Actually, “framing what happened to Flynn primarily as a ‘deep state’ conspiracy to take down Trump obscures the reality that this is a routine and completely legal FBI practice that will continue unless there are serious statutory reforms,” writes at Scott Shackford at Reason. He points to a similar tactic used against Martha Stewart. “What the agency did to Flynn was wrong, not because he worked for Trump, but because it is wrong to induce an otherwise not-guilty person to break the law,” argues Shackford. “And it’s something FBI interviewers do regularly so that they can use their dishonesty as leverage when there’s little evidence of actual criminal behavior.”

Then there is the “pardon” by the president that is always dangling out there…..but if a person accepts the pardon then they are admitting that they are guilty of the crimes they have been charged with…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–26Mar20

We all have heard of those people (I use the term loosely) that are coughing on fruit or sneezing on toilet seats, licking stuff…..etc etc etc…….these people need to be stopped and held accountable for the endangering people’s lives.

Well someone has stepped up…..

A 26-year-old Missouri man was arrested this week after he allegedly made a video of himself licking items at a Walmart in an attempt to mock the coronavirus, which has killed thousands of people across the globe.

The Warren County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on Tuesday charged Cody Lee Pfister with making a terrorist threat in the second degree, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The incident took place on March 11 at the Warrenton Walmart, according to court records.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/489495-police-missouri-man-charged-with-making-terrorist-threat-for

Now the DOJ has stepped up as well……

People who intentionally spread the coronavirus could face criminal charges under federal terrorism laws, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official said Tuesday.

In a memo to top Justice Department leaders, law enforcement agency chiefs and U.S. Attorneys across the country, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said prosecutors and investigators could come across cases of “purposeful exposure and infection of others with COVID-19.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/24/coronavirus-terrorism-justice-department-147821

Now my governor (the moron he is) has decided to follow Trump’s lead and not to order a stay at home order……my question for the DOJ is……since that could make the virus spread faster could the moron Tate Reeves be charged?

God I hope so!

1,000 Americans have died from this virus……how many more will have to do the same to protect stupidity?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Does Anyone Remember The Hack Of 2016?

Closing Thought–23Mar20

I know that events and situations around this pandemic are moving at a break neck speed and issues of 4 years ago hold no interests these days…..but after all the exposure the Mueller thingy and the investigation digging and finding Russians were truly messing in our elections.

Does any of that ring a bell?

Just thought you might like to know……after all the pundits opinions, money spent, investigations and indictments issued…..the DOJ has decided to drop the cases……

Big news Monday night: Buried amid the panic over the corona virus. Robert Mueller’s prosecutors got the green light to flush down the toilet  one of their major cases alleging that Russia hacked the 2016 U.S. Presidential election – US District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich on Monday evening granted the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case against Concord Management and Consulting. This is more than a black eye. It is an indictment and rebuke of a corrupt group of prosecutors who worked for Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. They filed a case without foundation and smeared a group of foreigners that they (the prosecutors) did not think would fight back. Big mistake.

Let me take you back to February 2018. The headlines of the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and The Atlantic blared the following propaganda:

A Cornerstone of Russia Hacked the 2016 Election Collapses

More on the decision…..

The Justice Department is moving to drop charges against two Russian companies that were accused of funding a social media campaign to sway American public opinion during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Prosecutors said they concluded that a trial, against a corporate defendant with no presence in the United States and no prospect of meaningful punishment even if convicted, would likely expose sensitive law enforcement tools and techniques, “potentially undermining their effectiveness.”

Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering were among three companies and 13 individuals charged in 2018 by special counsel Robert Mueller in a conspiracy to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 presidential race. The effort was aimed at dividing American public opinion and sowing discord in the electorate, officials said.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-to-drop-case-against-two-russian-companies-accused-of-2016-election-meddling-2020-03-16

So basically the whole investigation and indictment process was a massive waste of time and money.

Glad to see that DC is still the wasteful pile of manure it has always been.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Women’s History #2–Patty And The SLA

Long before ISIS or Al-Qaeda…there was the SLA…

SLA?

Symbionese Liberation Army!

Maybe one of their famous members might help you understand……Patty Hearst…..does that ring a bell?

(At the sound of the horn sprint to Google and learn)

The older you are the more that name will mean to you….

First Patty Hearst…….

Around 9 o’clock in the evening on February 4, 1974, there was a knock on the door of apartment #4 at 2603 Benvenue Street in Berkeley, California. In burst a group of men and women with their guns drawn. They grabbed a surprised 19-year-old college student named Patty Hearst, beat up her fiancé, threw her in the trunk of their car and drove off.

Thus began one of the strangest cases in FBI history.

Hearst, it was soon discovered, had been kidnapped by a group of armed radicals that billed themselves as the Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA. Led by a hardened criminal named Donald DeFreeze, the SLA wanted nothing less than to incite a guerrilla war against the U.S. government and destroy what they called the “capitalist state.” Their ranks included women and men, blacks and whites, and anarchists and extremists from various walks in life.

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/patty-hearst

The group that took then converted Patty Hearst was the Symbionese Liberation Army…..

In 1974 a little-known but wealthy Berkeley undergraduate, Patricia Hearst, became a media celebrity after being kidnapped by a group of revolutionaries calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army. The kidnap victim transformed into a seemingly willing accomplice; over the months of her kidnapping, she participated in crimes, claimed allegiance to the S.L.A., and defended her captors as valiant heroes. From tape recordings, her trial testimony and own telling of the story years later, several different versions of events emerge, but there seems to be no resolution to the questions about her transformation. Her parents thought that she had been brainwashed; experts suggested that she was a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, mistakenly identifying with her captors in an effort at self-preservation. Yet it is also possible that Hearst repudiated her upbringing to flirt with radical terrorism.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/guerrilla-rise-and-fall-symbionese-liberation-army/

The 1970s was a fascinating time in history….without Patty Hearst this group would have been just a minor footnote in history….if that….

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–26Feb20

How to counter fake news…..well Ethiopia has passed a new law to do just that…counter fake news…..

Ethiopia’s parliament, the House of Peoples’ Representatives (HoPR), has passed a law aimed at combating fake news and curbing hate speech.

The passage comes three months after the cabinet led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, approved it and forwarded it to the house. It is known as the Hate Speech and Misinformation Law and was approved with a majority vote, 23 against and 2 abstentions.

Core planks of the new law include:

  • Prevent individuals from engaging in speech that incites violence, promote hatred and discrimination against a person or a group.
  • Promote tolerance, civil discourse and dialogue, mutual respect and understanding and strengthening democratic governance.
  • Control and suppress the dissemination and proliferation of hate speech, disinformation and other related false and misleading information.
  • Prohibits disseminating hate speech by means of broadcasting, print or social media using text, image, audio or video.

“It is deemed necessary to enact the law because the nation cannot address problems arising from hate speeches and fake news with existing laws,” a November 2019 statement issued from the council of ministers said.

Social media has been identified as one of the main avenues used to incite ethically tinged violence leading to deaths and displacements in East Africa’s most populous nation. The law also comes with months to keenly awaited elections.

The country is currently listed among global leaders in the area of internally displaced people. Ethiopia, as Africa’s second most populous nation, had a restrictive media space prior to April 2018 and the coming into office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Sticking by his reform promise, Abiy released hundreds of political prisoners, jailed press men and opened up the media landscape. Under his watch, media outlets previously banned were allowed to return and operate in the country.

Social media has however been a blessing and headache for Abiy. His office has effectively used Twitter and Facebook to project work being done by government.

But the platform has also been blamed for the rise in the spread of fake news and the peddling of hate speech. As expected the new law continues to receive backlash from journalists and human rights activists especially.

(africanews.com)

But then who decides what is true and what is fake?

That eternal question….and fodder for so many blog posts.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Justice For Sale?

I have always believed that American politics is for sale and this year’s election is proving my point. Through all those years I believed that American justice was safe from the cash of millionaires…..I was so very wrong……

President Trump issued a pardon Tuesday to Michael Milken, the disgraced former junk bond king who later became a prominent Los Angeles philanthropist, in a mass clemency to 11 convicted felons that marked a dramatic expansion of the president’s intervention in judicial matters since his Senate impeachment acquittal.

…

Nearly all of those granted clemency had strong advocates who were the president’s close friends, including his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, and even Eddie Gallagher, the former Navy SEAL who was charged with war crimes — all were named in the White House official statement.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-02-18/trump-rod-blagojevich-commute-sentence

The list of all those wealthy d/bags that Trump has pardoned….https://www.businessinsider.com/who-has-trump-pardoned-so-far-arpaio-johnson-scooter-libby-2018-5

Let’s begin with the trial of the year 2008…the sell of a US Senate seat……

Rod Blagojevich is going home. President Trump on Tuesday commuted the sentence of the former Illinois governor, reports ABC News. Blagojevich has been imprisoned since 2012 after being convicted on corruption charges. Among other things, he famously tried to sell the vacant Senate seat of Barack Obama after Obama won the 2008 presidential election. Also Tuesday, Trump pardoned former NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik and, earlier, he pardoned former NFL owner Edward Debartolo Jr. Coverage:

  • Blagojevich was serving a 14-year sentence and expected to get out in 2024 with good behavior. Instead, the AP reports that he is expected to walk out of prison on Tuesday.
  • Trump spoke briefly to reporters after the news, saying he didn’t know Blagojevich well (he noted Blagojevich’s appearance on Celebrity Apprentice) and characterizing his 8 years behind bars as a “long time,” per ABC. He also called Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence “ridiculous.” Trump had previously floated the idea of commuting the sentence.
  • Talking Points Memo notes Trump also cited Blagojevich’s kids: “They’re growing older, they’re going to high school now, and they rarely get to see their father outside of an orange uniform.”
  • The New York Times reports that members of the GOP told Trump not to do it, “arguing that Mr. Blagojevich’s crime epitomizes the corruption that Mr. Trump had said he wanted to tackle as president.”
  • To that end, this from the conservative site Twitchy: “Is that how you ‘drain the swamp’? By letting people in the swamp out of it?” And the conservative Washington Examiner calls the commutation “very swampy,” arguing Blagojevich does not deserve it and that the president’s move “doesn’t simply fuel the swamp. It floods it with gallons of festering water and a banqueting invitation to the mosquito corruption clique.”
  • But Media Matters argues the commutation shows the influence Fox News has over Trump, calling the conservative hosts “sympathetic” to Blagojevich’s cause. The site notes that among Trump’s remarks Tuesday was this one: “I watched his wife on television,” which it pegs as a “clear reference” to her at least seven appearances on Fox News.
  • As for Kerik, the New York Post reports that he was actually released from prison in 2013 after serving three years of a four-year sentence. He previously pleaded guilty to tax fraud and lying to those vetting him for the position of Homeland Security director after George W. Bush nominated him.
  • CNBC reports via the White House that Trump “granted some form of executive clemency” to 11 people on Tuesday. Another one making headlines was former “junk bond king” Michael Milken, whom Trump pardoned, Reuters reports. Since serving two years behind bars on securities violations charges, he has started a nonprofit that funds research on cancer, financial markets, and a wide range of other issues.
  • The rest of those 11: Pardons were given to entrepreneur Ariel Friedler, former contractor Paul Pogue, former US government procurement officer David Safavian, and Angela Stanton, who was implicated in a stolen vehicle ring. Commutations were given to three women, two who were convicted on drug charges and one on healthcare fraud charges.

Is justice for sale?

Yes it is!

Out of the blue President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned or commuted the sentences of eleven people. One of those who received a full pardon from the president is Paul Pogue, the founder of a large Texas construction company.

Pogue pleaded guilty to underpaying his taxes over a three-year period by $473,000. The White House published a long list of the charitable giving Pogue has made to support Trump’s decision to issue the pardon.

Family of One of the Felons President Pardoned Donated Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars to Trump Campaign: Report

Money has it privileges and one of those is that they can commit crimes and walk……

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”