Georgia may Put PTSD Diagnosis on Licenses

Current and former service members living in Georgia could soon add a new piece of information to their driver’s license: a posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis.

Under a law recently pushed through the state legislature, post-traumatic stress disorder would be noted on the license in the same way that a person’s license might indicate corrective lenses are required for vision, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Adding the information would be voluntary and require a sworn statement from a doctor. If signed by the governor, the bill would become law on July 1.

Forty years since the Kent State massacre

May 4 marks the 40th anniversary of the shootings of unarmed student protesters at Kent State University in northeast Ohio. The Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others at a rally against the Nixon administration’s decision to escalate the Vietnam War by invading neighboring Cambodia.

The four students who died were Allison B. Krause and Jeffrey Glenn Miller, who had participated in the antiwar protest, and two bystanders, Sandra Lee Scheuer and William Know Schroeder, who were walking between classes when the troops opened fire. Miller was killed instantly, Scheuer died within minutes, while Krause and Schroeder succumbed to their wounds after several hours.

One of the students wounded, Dean Kahler, 20, was a first-semester freshman who was a curious onlooker to the protest. A bullet cut his spinal column, leaving him in a wheelchair to this day.

At least 67 bullets were fired during the 13-second fusillade, and students were hit over a wide area. The closest of the victims, one of the wounded, was 71 feet from where the troops formed a firing line. The furthest, wounded in the neck, was 750 feet away. The four dead students were between 265 and 345 feet distant. None of the victims was armed or could have posed a physical threat to the guardsmen.

The Kent State Massacre was part of a wave of violent state repression that swept the United States in the aftermath of the April 30 television announcement by President Richard Nixon that US forces had crossed the border from Vietnam and invaded Cambodia.

Court upholds murder conviction of corpsman

ATLANTA — Georgia’s top court has upheld a murder conviction and life prison sentence given to a Navy corpsman who served two tours in Iraq.

The Supreme Court of Georgia on Monday affirmed the conviction of Robert Bella Devega III, who was convicted of the March 2007 killing of Saifullah Afzal. Prosecutors say officers located Devega, who had fled to Dobbins Air Reserve Base after the killing, by tracking his cell phone number.

Devega’s attorneys asked the court to grant him a new trial, contending that his attorney was ineffective. But the court’s unanimous ruling found no errors in the trial court that would warrant a reversal.

Former Fulton County, GA, Sheriff’s Deputy Convicted on Obstruction of Justice Charges Related to Federal Investigation of Inmate Death

Richard Glasco

ATLANTA, GA—Mitnee Markette Jones, 46, of Atlanta, Georgia, a former Fulton County Sheriff’s Department deputy assigned to work at the Fulton County Jail, was convicted by a federal jury late yesterday in Atlanta for her role in the obstruction of a federal investigation of a 2008 inmate death.

Acting United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “We’re still uncertain exactly why Mr. Glasco died, but this conviction brings us one step closer to learning the truth. Deputy Jones lied and covered up what happened in Mr. Glasco’s cell, and now she is being held accountable.”

Gregory Jones, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Atlanta, said, “The conviction of Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy/Jailer Mitnee Jones on charges related to lying to the FBI and providing false statements as part of a serious investigation into the death of a Fulton County jail inmate should serve as a message to others that the FBI expects full cooperation in such matters. For a sworn law enforcement officer to deliberately mislead a federal investigation is unconscionable, and the jury, with a returned verdict of guilty, agreed that it should not be tolerated.”

CO of Naval Supply Corps School fired

The commanding officer of the Navy Supply Corps School in Athens, Georgia was fired Friday, Navy officials said.

Capt. John Titus Jr., 45, was relieved of command by the head of Navy Education and Training Command, Rear Adm. Joseph F. Kilkenny, because of a “lack of confidence in his ability to lead,” said Ed Barker, an NETC spokesman in Florida.

Titus’s removal, the first CO firing of 2010, comes after a Judge Advocate General’s Corps‘s investigation, Barker said. The spokesman declined to disclose the nature of the investigation.

The school will be run temporarily by its executive officer, Cmdr. Raymond Wilson, until a permanent replacement is identified, Baker said.

Titus, originally from New Jersey, was commissioned in 1987. He was last promoted in August 2008, about the same time he arrived at the Supply School, Navy records show.

Miramar Marine Held for Murder of his Wife

SAN DIEGO — The body of an 18-year-old woman was found inside a Mira Mesa apartment Tuesday morning, and a 21-year-old Marine believed to be her husband was arrested less than four hours later in San Bernardino County on suspicion of murder, authorities said.

San Diego police found the body shortly before 9 a.m. in the one-bedroom, second-story apartment on Hillery Drive near Westonhill Drive, said homicide Lt. Kevin Rooney.

Rooney said the body did not show obvious signs of trauma.

“The cause of death was not obvious, although several things in the apartment suggested it was a murder,” Rooney said, adding that he could not elaborate.

The suspect, Lance Cpl. Patrick Poteat, was arrested at 12:35 p.m. Tuesday by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies, who stopped him as he was driving in Yucca Valley.

Poteat is a telephone and computer repairman at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, a base spokesman said. He had not been deployed and had no previous duty stations.

Yucca Valley is about 30 miles from Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, but it is not yet known where Poteat was headed, Rooney said. Records showed he previously lived in Twentynine Palms and Jackson, Ga.

America’s Secret ICE Castles

“If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement‘s (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International‘s Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report “Jailed Without Justice” and said in an interview, “It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn’t believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren’t anything wrong.”

ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians–Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors, insurance agents, religious workers–in order to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. Jacqueline Stevens has reported a web-exclusive companion piece on ICE agents’ ruse operations.

• ICE Agents’ Ruse Operations

• Secret Courts Exploit Immigrants

  Jacqueline Stevens: You don’t need to go to Iran or North Korea to find secret courts. Try attending a US immigration hearing.

Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants–nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Department of Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Ann Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.

Hitler calls on Georgians to win back Abkhazia

The television channel “Sakartvelo” aired a remarkably creative video that, in theory at least, should entice young people to join the army. The video does not particularly have any distinguishing special effects; in it, some cheerful young men are heading from a recruiting station to the army headquarters. As they enter through the welcoming, swung-open doors, it seems to be the perfect place for a slogan such as: “Welcome to the army, son!” But instead, a quote by Adolf Hitler appears on television screens.

“We once and for all must understand that we will never be able to regain the lost territory with prayers, which have become a formality, nor with hopes in the League of Nations, but with the strength of our weapons. Adolf Hitler. 1932.” These subtitles are accompanied by a well-performed voiceover – perhaps to make it more convincing.Perhaps only the creators of the video know why the Fuhrer needed to be included in the propaganda campaign – especially since there is already an abundance of similar banal expressions that could be found in the repertoires of many politicians and military commanders. Thus, there was absolutely no need to include Hitler as the main “revenge expert.”

Russia surprised by U.S., EU stance on UN anti-Nazi resolution

Russia is concerned over the stance of the United States and the European Union on a United Nations resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism and the desecration of World War II monuments, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia said on Sunday.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted on December 18, 2009 a draft resolution proposed by Russia on combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

The resolution is aimed at condemning attempts to heroize the Nazi movement and former Waffen-SS members and desecrate monuments to the fighters against Nazism.

“It is highly bewildering and regrettable that the United States voted against the resolution, supported by an overwhelming majority of UN member states, and a number of states, including all European Union members, abstained in the vote on the draft,” the ministry said in a statement.

Retired Army Major Sentenced to 57 Months in Prison for Role in Bribery Scheme Involving DOD Contracts in Kuwait

A retired major in the U.S. Army today was sentenced to 57 months in prison for his role in a bribery scheme related to Department of Defense (DOD) contracts awarded in Kuwait, announced Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer and Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division Christine A. Varney.

Christopher H. Murray, 42, a resident of Cataula, Ga., was also ordered by Judge Clay D. Land of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia – Columbus Division to pay $245,000 in restitution and to serve three years of supervised release following the prison term.

Murray pleaded guilty in January 2009 to a five-count criminal information charging him with four counts of bribery and one count of making a false statement. According to the court documents, in 2005 and 2006, then-Major Murray served as a contracting specialist in the small purchases branch of the contracting office at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. As a contracting specialist, Murray was responsible for soliciting bids for military contracts, evaluating the sufficiency of those bids, and then recommending the award of contracts to particular contractors. In this capacity, Murray solicited and received approximately $225,000 in bribes from DOD contractors in exchange for recommending the award of contracts for various goods and services.

See document here.

Fugitive worked for Homeland Security

NEWARK, New Jersey – Prosecutors don’t understand how a fugitive wanted in New Jersey worked for the Department of Homeland Security in Georgia despite a nationwide alert for her arrest.

Tahaya Buchanan was sought on a 2007 indictment on charges of staging the theft of her Range Rover.

Paul Loriquet of the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office says the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Atlanta was unaware of the 39-year-old’s status even after Buchanan was arrested in July during a traffic stop in which police noticed the warrant.

Immigration spokeswoman Ana Santiago tells The Star-Ledger of Newark she did not have information whether the office regularly checks its employee list against national criminal warrants.

A Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman in Washington said Wednesday she couldn’t immediately comment.

Buchanan pleaded guilty to one charge of insurance fraud on Monday and faces three months probation.

States change police lineups after wrongful convictions

Police are dramatically changing the way they conduct suspect lineups after a mounting number of wrongful convictions based on mistaken identifications.

At least five states — Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia — and some major U.S. cities have either revamped or started changing the way law enforcement officials use photographic lineups to identify suspects. Since changing its policy in April, Dallas Police Department Lt. David Pughes says the department has conducted 1,400 lineups and believes “we’re bringing a stronger piece of evidence to court.”

Analysts say the changes are transforming the way police investigate crime.

One third of Georgians favour anti-Saakashvili Revolution

38,34 percent of participants of poll on Georgian site www.gamokitxva.ge support the replacement of present government in revolutionary way. Citizens of Georgia also demand from the opposition not to negotiate with the Saakashvili regime Georgia Times reports.

Only 5,72 percent of respondents declared for negotiations with government, when they were asked what are their demands from opposition. 30,06 percent declared for continuing the protest actions against regime. 12,62 percent vote for strengthening of parliamentary opposition, other respondents didn’t form their position.

Mikheil Saakashvili and his regime are not about making the lives of Georgians better, they are not about promises of western-style prosperity. They are about feathering their own nests and those of their cronies and they are about duping the Georgian people, who at first thought that a new horizon was reachable under a man who had studied in the USA.

Sailors escorted from country after fisticuffs

Two sailors traveling with Vice President Joe Biden’s advance team got into a scuffle with a foreign official in the former Soviet republic of Georgia on Tuesday and were removed from the country under military escort, a Navy spokesman said.

The two sailors have been reassigned while the incident is under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said Cmdr. Cappy Surette, a Navy spokesman.

The sailors, who were not identified, were working with Biden’s advance team. The fight involved a former Georgia government minister and occurred at a Marriott Hotel in the country’s capital, Tbilisi.

At the time of the fight, Biden was in the Ukraine, where he stopped prior to visiting Georgia.

The vice president’s office declined to comment.

US military gets the squeeze in Central Asia

Kyrgyzstan has slapped the US military with a dishonorable discharge from the Manas Air Base, throwing a monkey wrench into US President Barack Obama’s plans to bolster troop strength in Afghanistan just as the Taliban is showing a startling resurgence. Now, Washington will be forced to go shopping for other real estate opportunities across Central Asia. But the options are limited.

Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev made the announcement about the base closure during a joint press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on February 3.

This might interest our local press

Police in Savannah, Ga. reached an agreement with a local newspaper on Monday in a dispute over records the news media wanted routinely released to the public.

The Savannah-Chatham department has agreed to start releasing a blanket daily list of all police reports, which will in turn be available online during weekdays and by hard copy when requested, according to Savannah Morning News.

Cynthia McKinney Prevented From Leaving U.S.

Former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has been prevented from leaving the country after she planned to give a speech in Damascus Syria at a Conference being held to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Russia says U.S. mercenaries, others fought for Georgia

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – Russia has evidence that citizens from NATO member states including the United States and Turkey fought for Georgia in the five-day August war, Russia’s top investigator said on Monday. A senior security official in Tbilisi dismissed the statement and said by law only Georgian nationals could serve in the country’s armed forces.