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Anonymous Posts St. Louis Police Dispatch Tapes From Day of Ferguson Shooting

by Celia34Vuvukbw Posted on August 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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This was just posted by @theanonmessage, a twitter account affiliated with Anonymous’ Operation Ferguson, a member of which I interviewed last night. According to @theanonmessage, this recording contains audio excerpts from St. Louis County police dispatch over several hours on August 9, 2014, the day Michael Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer. The dispatcher starts talking about the Brown shooting around the 10-minute mark, while intermittently handling other calls. We are still listening to the recordings and working to corroborate their authenticity; see below the recording for an updating list of interesting moments, with time stamps included.

If you want to try to decipher the dispatch codes, here’s a dictionary for that.

9:35: “Ferguson is asking for assistance with crowd control . . .”

10:58: “Now they have a large group gathering there, she doesn’t know any further. . .”

11:20: “We just got another call stating it was an officer-involved shooting . . .”

11:30: “Be advised, this information came from the news . . .”

11:55: “We’re just getting information from the news and we just called Ferguson back again and they don’t know anything about it . . .”

20:00: “. . .destruction of property . . .”

21:55: “They are requesting more cars. Do you want me to send more of your cars?”

43:55: “Attention all cars, be advised that in reference to the call 2947 Canfield Drive, we are switching over to the riot channel at this time . . .”

Update, 4:40 p.m. ET: I tried to verify the dispatch recordings with St. Louis County Police but their media contact, Brian Shelman, did not answer the phone and his voicemail was full.

Update 2, 5:05 p.m. ET: Mashable is confirming that the St. Louis County Police Department is “aware of this and currently investigating.”

Update 3, 6:05 p.m. ET: A twitter follower of mine points out that the dispatch recording probably comes from Broadcastify, a database of public safety radio audio streams that’s available to anyone who pays for a subscription. It’s “far from a hack,” he says.

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Anonymous’ "Op Ferguson" Says It Will ID the Officer Who Killed Michael Brown

by Jaqueline2060 Posted on August 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Update (4:12 p.m. ET): Anonymous has obtained and posted St. Louis police dispatch tapes from the day of the shooting.

The police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, says he is withholding the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager, out of concern for the safety of the officer and his family. But that might be easier said than done. Just a few hours later, the hacktivist group Anonymous announced on Twitter that it was now “making a final confirmation on the name of Mike Brown’s murderer,” adding: “It will be released the moment we receive it.”

I traded emails last night with one of the half-dozen core Anonymous members working on Operation Ferguson, as the group’s effort to pressure and shame the local police department is known. They were still working to verify the identity of the shooter. “I can only tell you that our source is very close personally to the officer who killed Mike Brown, and that this person is terrified to be our source,” said the anon, whom I will call Fawkes. He added that the source “reached out to us, we did not seek out this person.”

The claim to have outed the Ferguson shooter comes only two days after Anonymous announced the launch of Operation Ferguson in this video:

The computer-generated voice, graphics, and hacking threats are trademark Anonymous, but one aspect is unusual: a demand for federal legislation “that will set strict national standards for police misconduct and misbehavior.” Though Anonymous has a strong anarchist strain that disdains politics, Fawkes told me that the idea wasn’t controversial within the group. “We have done a few of these ‘justice ops’ and it seems there needs to be a larger solution to the problem on a nationwide level,” he told me. “There was no debate—everyone on the team embraced the idea.”

Ferguson is 60 percent black. Virtually all its cops are white. Read more stats ››

It has been a busy few days for Operation Ferguson. The hackers shut down the city’s website for a few hours on Sunday night and Tuesday morning, posted the home address and number of St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar, and dropped an email bomb that crammed city and police inboxes with junk messages. The goal was “to get journalists like you to do interviews with us, and incidentally maybe talk about the issue at hand in the process,” Fawkes told me. “Looks like it worked.”

In previous “justice ops,” Anonymous hackers have targeted the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system to protest the Charles Hill and Oscar Grant shootings and the transit system’s attempt to dampen protests by shutting down cellphone signals. Other Anonymous ops have uncovered criminal evidence or the names of suspects. “It’s actually back to the classics,” said McGill University cultural anthropologist Gabriella Coleman, author of the forthcoming book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, whom I met last night in a chatroom where hackers were plotting their next moves. She added that “a lot of old-school folks came back for this,” though they’ve been careful to avoid the attention of law enforcement and other anons by using fresh pseudonyms.

But the veterans’ participation hasn’t stopped Op Ferguson from seeming unhinged at times. On Tuesday afternoon, one Anonymous Twitter account threatened to release information about the police chief’s daughter unless he disclosed the name of the officer who’d killed Brown. (The threat was later withdrawn.) And the op’s Twitter account repeated a bogus internet rumor attributing a screenshot of a racist Facebook tirade to Belmar’s wife—the tweet has since been deleted.

“We are not exactly known for being ‘responsible,’ nor for worrying overly much about the safety of cops,” Fawkes told me. “After all, they have vests and assault weapons. I think they can look after themselves. This is psychological and information warfare, not a love fest.”

Half outlaw, half idealist, Anonymous has always operated at the margins of legitimacy, its tactics ranging from gumshoe detective work to illegal hacking and shameless PR stunts. It’s hard to know whether its current claim to have ID’d Brown’s killer will be borne out. “I don’t think they have it,” Coleman told me. But, she added: “I would not be surprised if they do soon.”

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Anonymous’ "Op Ferguson" Says It Will ID the Officer Who Killed Michael Brown

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Ferguson Is 60 Percent Black. Virtually All Its Cops Are White.

by AveryWinder Posted on August 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Black residents of Ferguson, Missouri, the working-class city in northern St. Louis county where an unarmed black teenager was shot dead by police officers on Saturday, say the town has been a “powder keg” of racial imbalance for decades. “They treat us like second class all the way down the line,” one black resident told the LA Times. A black city alderman said the ensuing protests are “a boiling over of tensions that had been going on for a long while.”

Here’s a by-the-numbers look at who lives in Ferguson, who’s in charge, who gets stopped by police, and more.

All icons courtesy of the Noun Project. Houses: Laurène Smith

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the number of black members of Ferguson’s school board.

Source – 

Ferguson Is 60 Percent Black. Virtually All Its Cops Are White.

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Stanford will dump its coal company investments

by MichaelDanielso Posted on May 7, 2014

Suck it, Harvard

Stanford will dump its coal company investments

By

Hammerin Man

Stanford University’s endowment fund is a fat one — nearly $19 billion rich. And, moving forward, none of those riches will be sunk into the ghastly practice of coal mining.

The university – which is situated on the edge of Silicon Valley, a hotbed for clean technology companies like Tesla – announced on Tuesday that its board of trustees had approved a divestment resolution. According to the university’s statement, the fund will sell off stocks and abstain from buying any more in “publicly traded companies whose principal business is the mining of coal for use in energy generation.”

“Stanford has a responsibility as a global citizen to promote sustainability for our planet, and we work intensively to do so through our research, our educational programs and our campus operations,” Stanford President John Hennessy said in the statement. “Moving away from coal in the investment context is a small, but constructive, step while work continues, at Stanford and elsewhere, to develop broadly viable sustainable energy solutions for the future.”

The Washington Post reports that Stanford is “the twelfth and most prestigious university” to divest from fossil fuel companies:

Stanford’s move comes after protests last week by climate activists at other leading universities. Seven students at Washington University in St. Louis were arrested demanding Peabody Energy chief executive Gregory H. Boyce resign from the university’s board of trustees, and a student was arrested at Harvard University for trying along with half a dozen other students to blockade the office of Harvard president Drew Faust. More than 100 faculty members have signed a letter to Faust urging the university to divest. …

Stanford has also been pressed from within; its board of trustees includes Tom Steyer, a wealthy former hedge fund head who has devoted himself to promoting policies that might slow climate change. …

The divestment movement has convinced Seattle, San Francisco, Portland and other cities to shed fossil fuel firms. Other colleges that have divested include Hampshire College, Pitzer College, and College of the Atlantic.

But most colleges have not gone along.

As the Post reporter notes, the move to dump coal holdings might not just make ethical sense — it could be a prudent financial move, with many coal stocks flailing this year as the federal government starts to get at least a little bit serious about curbing climate change.


Source
Stanford to divest from coal companies, Stanford University
Stanford becomes the most prominent university yet to divest from coal, The Washington Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Bee-killing pesticide companies are pretending to save bees

by bvds34dfsg Posted on June 12, 2013

Bee-killing pesticide companies are pretending to save bees

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Even as bees drop dead around the world after sucking down pesticide-laced nectar, pesticide makers are touting their investments in bee research.

Nearly a third of commercial honeybee colonies in U.S. were wiped out last year, for a complicated array of reasons, scientists say: disease, stress, poor nutrition, mite infestations, and — yes — pesticides. Neonicotinoid pesticides seem to be particularly damaging to bees, so much so that the European Union is moving to ban them (but the U.S. is not).

Now the two main manufacturers of neonicotinoids, Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, are promoting their commitments to bee health, as is agro-giant Monsanto. From a feature story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

Monsanto Co., which two years ago bought an Israeli bee research company, hosts an industry conference on bee health at its headquarters in Creve Coeur this month. Bayer CropScience is building a 5,500-square-foot “bee health center” in North Carolina, and with fellow chemical giant, Syngenta, has developed a “comprehensive action plan” for bee health.

“The beekeeping industry has always crawled on its hands and knees to USDA and universities, begging for help,” said Jerry Hayes, a bee industry veteran recently hired by Monsanto to run its bee research efforts. “Now we have this very large company involved that knows how important bees are to agriculture.”

With a very large company involved, the bees are as good as saved, right?

Not surprisingly, the industry is downplaying the role of insecticides in bee deaths.

For example, Iain Kelly of Bayer CropScience does a suspiciously incomplete job of explaining the scary plight of bees during an interview with North Carolina Public Radio about the company’s new bee research center:

Kelly … says other insects and diseases are invading much of the bee’s natural habitat.

“They have real problems now with pests and pathogens, including viruses and fungal diseases,” Kelly says.

“We’ve lost a lot of the natural foliage for them as well, which is a big concern to beekeepers.”

Yeah, we know, this is a multi-faceted problem. But what about the pesticides? More on that from the Post-Dispatch:

Published last year, a study by Purdue University found that dead bees that had foraged in and around corn fields contained high levels of neonicotinoid compounds. The study was prompted by massive bee die-offs that happened in the spring, when corn planters were spewing neonicotinoid-containing dust.

“I know, definitively, that there’s a relationship between treated seed and spring die-offs,” said Christian Krupke, the study’s lead author. “It (neonicotinoids) blows out behind the planter and gets in the air, it lands on dandelions. It lands on the bees, even.”

While Krupke says there’s no direct link between neonicotinoids and Colony Collapse Disorder, he said, “anything that’s a stressor to bees is a concern now. We know they’re weaker because of it.”

The industry, however, flatly denies any link between bee health and the neonicotinoids it produces.

“There’s no scientific evidence linking neonics with bee health — period,” said Dave Fischer, director of environmental toxicity and risk assessment at Bayer CropScience.

Perhaps pesticide makers are hoping their happy PR buzz will distract us from the missing buzz of these critical pollinators.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Manhattan to see more killer heat waves

by fuirpycf Posted on May 21, 2013

Manhattan to see more killer heat waves

By John Upton

Shutterstock

/ Joshua HavivManhattan, one of the places where climate change will kill people.

Climate change is expected to boost homicidal heat waves in Manhattan, while cold snaps in the densely packed borough should become slightly less deadly.

Researchers from Columbia University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention used climate models and two emissions scenarios to project seasonal patterns in temperature-related deaths in Manhattan. In all 32 of the scenarios developed by the researchers, the spike in summertime heat-related deaths was forecast to more than outweigh the decline in deaths caused by cold weather.

The study was published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Monthly analyses showed that the largest percentage increases [in deaths] may occur in May and September,” the scientists wrote.

From Climate Central:

The study found that heat-related mortality may rise 20 percent by the 2020s, and in some worst-case scenarios, it could increase by 90 percent or more by the 2080s, and the net temperature-related mortality, which includes the drop in deaths related to cold weather, could jump by a third compared to current levels. …

Some other studies have claimed that as heat wave-related deaths increase, they will be offset by a reduction in cold weather-related deaths, keeping the net change in mortality low or possibly even resulting in fewer temperature-related deaths per year. This study, however, finds the opposite to be true.

Extreme heat is already the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S., killing an average of 117 people per year during the 2003-2012 period. Hot temperatures can contribute to cardiovascular disease, aggravate respiratory illness, and cause heat stroke, among other life-threatening conditions.

Even a small amount of global warming can have a large effect on weather extremes, as recent studies have shown.

City dwellers can expect to be hit particularly hard by the heat waves that are growing in frequency around the world, as The Guardian reports:

Last year, the hottest summer since record-keeping began in the US, saw a string of days on which the temperature hit more than 37.7C (100F) in a number of US cities.

The week-long heatwave killed 82 people, according to figures compiled by the Associated Press.

In large metropolitan areas, such as New York, the impact of those temperature extremes are compounded by densely built-up areas. Cities such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St Louis have also recorded sharp rises in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes during heatwaves, according to the draft of the National Climate Assessment, which was released last year.

“Urban heat islands, combined with an ageing population and increased urbanisation, are projected to increase the vulnerability of urban populations to heat-related health impacts in the future,” the assessment said.

Hot enough for ya?

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blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

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Peabody Energy screwing former coal workers out of health care

by Justin Elder Posted on April 18, 2013

Peabody Energy screwing former coal workers out of health care

By John Upton

Shutterstock

A coal worker holding the actual heart of Peabody Energy CEO Gregory H. Boyce. 

If there’s anything darker than coal, it’s the hearts of coal company executives. They ask workers to risk their lives to extract the filthiest of all fossil fuels — and then they screw over those workers.

On Thursday, police arrested 14 people in St. Louis, Mo., during the latest in a series of large union-organized protests against such dark-heartedness by Peabody Energy. Workers say the company robbed them of desperately needed retirement health benefits through a cynical corporate maneuver.

The coal giant spun off a subsidiary in 2007 called Patriot Coal, which then bought up some business assets from Arch Coal. Patriot assumed many of Peabody’s and Arch Coal’s worker liabilities — it’s legally on the hook to pay for the health care and other retirement benefits of former workers and their families.

But oh, guess what, Patriot declared bankruptcy. Now it’s asking a bankruptcy court to allow it to weasel out of more than $1 billion worth of health and other benefits owed to retired miners, many whom never worked for Patriot and many of whom were left ill by their former jobs.

From an interview with an affected miner by NPR reporter Maria Altman:

CHARLES WHITLOW: I think there’s 12 pills there every morning, and there’s six pills here for supper.

ALTMAN: He takes more than two dozen pills daily, some of them for coal-related health problems, including CWP, known as black lung. Last year, he says the cost of all those pills topped $13,000.

WHITLOW: I lost my trust I had in Peabody. I used to be proud to say that I did work for Peabody Coal Company, but I’m a long ways from telling anybody that now.

ALTMAN: Whitlow and his wife, Brenda, are among hundreds who’ve written letters to the bankruptcy court asking that Peabody be held accountable.

University of Illinois law Professor Robert Lawless says the judge’s options are limited, though, because it’s perfectly legal for corporations to spin off both assets and liabilities.

As for Patriot Coal, Lawless says a bankruptcy law does make it harder to drop retirees’ health benefits, but he says it still happens, most recently with Hostess Brands Incorporated.

The United Mine Workers of America claims in court that Peabody set up Patriot to fail. The union alleges that the spinoff company was created as a way of wiping Peabody’s hands clean of obligations to care for the health of its retired workers.

From the St. Louis Business Journal‘s coverage of Wednesday’s protest:

An estimated 2,000 attended the protest, the fifth such protest in St. Louis, according to Phil Smith, director of communications for UMWA.

Union members planted 1,000 white crosses at Kiener Plaza. According to union officials, the crosses were “in memory of the 666 fatalities that have occurred at mines operated by Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and Patriot Coal or their subsidiaries since 1903 and symbolize the more than 22,000 active and retired miners, dependents and surviving spouses who will be at risk if Patriot Coal, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal succeed in their efforts to effectively eliminate contractually-guaranteed health care benefits.”

Protesters traveled from Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virgina to attend the protest.

Peabody’s response to the rally? From St. Louis Public Radio:

Peabody officials have said that the miners should bring their concerns to the bankruptcy court.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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blogs about ecology

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Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 17, 2012

Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

By Philip Bump

Morgan Burke

There are several factors that probably contribute to what the Atlantic Cities refers to as St. Louis’ “asthma epidemic.” High rates of smoking, for example. And: air pollution.

The number of children suffering from asthma in the St. Louis metropolitan area is nearly three times the national average, according to Asthma Friendly St. Louis, a community program designed to help school-age kids and teens manage respiratory illness. Despite the efforts of several community initiatives, the disease is often poorly managed because of a lack of access to care and educational resources. …

In East St. Louis, which sits across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Illinois, asthma rates are among the highest in the nation, and experts suspect that this is linked to the high rates of pollution and poverty in the city. 44 percent of East St. Louis residents live on incomes below the federal poverty line.

CDC

Missouri asthma hospitalization rates.

The link between pollution and asthma — a terrifying, occasionally deadly inflammation in the lungs — is well-established. But the effects of pollution, particulate soot pollution, may be much broader than previously understood. From the NRDC’s Switchboard blog:

A new study in The Lancet, developed by an international group of experts, finds that outdoor air pollution, especially fine particulate matter (soot) contributes to more than 3.2 million premature deaths around the world each year. …

This new, more refined study also finds that:

Air pollution ranks among the top ten global health risks associated with mortality and disease.
Most of the premature deaths due to air pollution are in China and other countries in Asia. In fact, air pollution is the 4th highest risk factor right behind smoking in East Asia.

But outside of Asia, the risks are still high. Globally, outdoor air pollution ranks as the 8th highest risk factor for premature death, posing a greater danger than high cholesterol.

The study was timed, coincidentally or not, to go public as the EPA announced new restrictions on soot pollution, dropping the allowable standard of small particles by 20 percent — a step that could save 15,000 lives a year.

The group Abt Associates also unveiled Air Counts, an online map that allows visitors to assess the effects of soot reductions in various cities around the country. Dropping the amount of particulate matter in New York City by 250 metric tons a year could save 67 lives — and more than half a billion dollars in costs. (In heavily polluted Beijing, a similar drop would have less of an effect, saving only 29 lives.)

St. Louis is not included on Abt’s map, so it’s hard to say the extent to which lives might be saved by the EPA’s new standard. But in a state that sees a higher rate-of-death from asthma than the rest of the country, particularly among African-Americans …

CDC

… even one life saved makes the calculus worth it.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Tiny twisters could power your town — someday

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 14, 2012

Tiny twisters could power your town — someday

By Susie Cagle

You thought you were cool with your wind turbines, hippies? Canadian inventor Louis Michaud sees your wind turbines and raises you a freaking tornado.

m_bridi

Yes, climate change may be unleashing monster tornadoes upon us now, but those aren’t the tornadoes Michaud wants to “control and exploit.” Today the inventor won a grant through the Thiel Foundation’s “revolutionary” Breakout Labs to develop power-generating twisters.

The Toronto Star reports:

[B]y today’s measure, Michaud’s idea is the definition of radical. Through his company AVEtec — the AVE standing for “atmospheric vortex engine” — the long-term plan is to take waste heat from a thermal power plant or industrial facility and use it to create a controllable twister that can generate electricity.

Here’s how it works: Waste heat is blown at an angle into a large circular structure, creating a flow of spinning hot air. We all know heat travels upward and as it does it spins itself into a rising vortex.

The higher the twister grows, the greater the temperature differential between top and bottom, creating stronger and stronger convective forces that act like fuel for the vortex, eventually allowing it to take on a life of its own.

The result is that hot air initially blown into the bottom of the structure starts getting sucked in so forcefully that it spins electricity-generating turbines installed at the base …

Given the destructive history of naturally formed tornadoes, many people might be freaked out by the thought of having man-made tornadoes intentionally scattered near cities and power plants.

Michaud assured that his twisters are much safer to operate and control than, say, a nuclear plant. And because they’re fuelled by the waste heat that’s initially supplied, all the operator has to do is throttle back or cut off that heat to weaken or stop the vortex.

True to its self-proclaimed radical spirit, Breakout Labs has also backed meat and leather 3D printing from Modern Meadow. Essentially it funds magic.

So hey, is anyone out there working on a protective forcefield for cyclists …?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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