Taken: HI convict pleads guilty to stealing $200,000 in gov’t welfare

Taken: HI convict pleads guilty to stealing $200,000 in gov’t welfare
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TAKEN: Man admits he too $ 200,000 in government benefits over 14 years

By Malia Zimmerman | Watchdog.org

HONOLULU — Hawaii has some of the most generous welfare benefits in the country, and one man took full advantage of them.

The man, who went by the name “Vaughn Sherwood” — a name he apparently stole — took more than $ 200,000 from taxpayers, the FBI said.

On Thursday, shackled in handcuffs and dressed in a white prison uniform, he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to four counts related to theft of government property, identity theft and illegal possession of a firearm.

Under oath, “Sherwood,” 67, willingly admitted to using eight names, nine Social Security numbers and six dates of birth to create a variety of identities to take welfare cash, food stamps, student tuition assistance, public housing subsidies and Medicaid.

According to Ron Johnson, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, the man inherited $ 360,000 from his deceased parents and, without disclosing it to the government, hid the cash in two safe deposit boxes at two banks. The federal indictment revealed Sherwood also owned a sailboat and a jet boat and drove a Mercedes Benz S420.

He lived in an apartment in Waikiki, yet he admitted Thursday he obtained $ 6,500 in welfare cash payments, $ 5,800 in food stamps and $ 24,000 in medical benefits from the state Department of Human Services over nine years. He claimed he was homeless.

Court records also show the man secured $ 109,000 in Section 8 housing assistance over a 14-year period from the city and county of Honolulu.

Sherwood acknowledged Thursday that his under graduate and master’s degree tuition at the three University of Hawaii campuses were paid with federal student tuition assistance.

Using a false identity and claiming to have heart failure, he applied with the Department of Human Services to be his own caregiver in 2009 and received $ 8,000 from Medicaid.

He obtained a firearm by mail using a third party, even though he was already a convicted criminal.

The FBI now knows in 1999 he legally changed his name to Kevin Patrick Halverson in Hawaii, and he stole several other identities, including those of Vaughn Sherwood and Kevin Halverson, who were living in other states.

Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang was unsure what to call him in court and finally settled on “Mr. Halverson.”

The man has been held in federal prison since being arrested Oct. 18. His sentencing is set for May 22. He could face up to 22 years in prison and may have to pay restitution and fines.

Reach Malia Zimmerman at Malia@hawaiireporter.com

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Gov’t Secret Chemical Warfare Against The Public Exposed

Gov’t Secret Chemical Warfare Against The Public Exposed
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Pentagon “gay bomb” was only part of the plan to destroy the sexes

Infowars.com
January 11, 2014

Alex Jones and Dr. Edward Group expose the chemical warfare that’s been unleashed on the public: chemicals are added to the food supply that disrupt hormones, reduce fertility and wreck havoc on gender identity, effectively making men act like women and women act like men.

For example, a Kaiser Permanente study published online in the journal Birth Defects Research stated that in utero exposure to Bisphenol-A may adversely affect male genital development.

“This finding indicates that BPA may interfere with testosterone function during fetal development because the shortened AGD indicates under-developed male genitalia, likely due to an abnormal testosterone function,” the report said.

As you can see, the starling facts of this Brave New World program are hiding in plain view.

This article was posted: Saturday, January 11, 2014 at 1:00 pm

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Gov’t pays $1,123,463 to develop strawberry harvest-aiding robots

Gov’t pays $1,123,463 to develop strawberry harvest-aiding robots
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By Eric Scheiner | CNS News

The U.S. Department of Agriculture  (USDA) has given an award of $ 1,123,463 to the University of California, Davis to develop “relatively small, inexpensive robots” to aid in harvesting strawberries.

The announcement was made in late October as part of a series of USDA awards “to spur the development and use of robots in American agriculture production,” according to a USDA press release.

The release describes the UC Davis robotics grant as a “project (that) will develop relatively small, inexpensive robots to aid in human harvesting of strawberries.”

Read more at CNS News. 

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UK watchdog bans govt ‘Go home’ ads targeting immigrants

Published time: October 09, 2013 15:54

Sceenshot from YouTube video

A UK advertising watchdog has banned a controversial Home Office advert suggesting that illegal immigrants in the UK to ‘Go home or face arrest,’ saying that it was misleading. However, the ad was not ruled to be ‘offensive’ or ‘distressing.’

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) absolved the government campaign of either attribute, despite the widespread belief that it was offensive forming the basis for the majority of the 224 complaints filed against it. The vans bearing the controversial slogan were driven around six London boroughs with large immigrant populations as part of a Home Office pilot scheme in July.

The ASA took issue merely with “inaccurate statistics” on the vans, but complainants deemed the ads to be “racist.” Out of the five categories of complaint made, a mere two general points were upheld, the first being that the writing on the ads was not legible, and the second being that the ad was not substantiated and misleading.

After instructing illegal immigrants to “go home,” the ads cited a statistic that there had been “106 arrests last week in your area” across the six boroughs.  

The ASA said that the figure “related to arrests made throughout a significant part of London north of the Thames,” and not necessarily relate to the specific areas where people would have seen the vans.

Additionally, the arrests had been made more than two weeks prior to the vans being sent out, not in the last week, and the ASA ruled that a breach had been committed under “misleading advertising” and “substantiation.” “We…noted the posters were displayed during the week of 22 to 28 July,” said the ASA, conceding that the data provided in support of the “106 arrests” statistic in fact “related to the week 30 June to 6 July.”

However, the watchdog conceded that that “most” of the complaints had challenged whether “the poster, and in particular the phrase ‘Go home’, was offensive,” because it was considered to be “reminiscent of slogans used by racist groups to attack immigrants in the past.”

The slogan has echoes of the Neo-Nazi National Front rhetoric in the 1970s, with ASA chief executive Guy Parker telling BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme that it “clearly carries baggage.” However, he added that the campaign was unlikely to cause “widespread offence.”

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Labour Party Conference two weeks ago that: “Those ad vans were driving past the offices and homes of families whose parents and grandparents had to endure those same slogans scrawled high in graffiti 40 years ago.”

The ASA highlighted that complaints had been made accusing the campaign of having the potential to exacerbate racial tensions, particularly within multicultural communities. Britain’s business secretary, Vince Cable, himself termed the campaign ‘stupid and offensive’. However, the ASA did not uphold the criticisms.

“We concluded that the poster was unlikely to incite or exacerbate racial hatred and tensions in multi-cultural communities,” it said.

The Home Office responded, stating the advert would not appear again in its previous incarnation and welcoming their dismissal of complaints calling it ‘offensive’. “We are pleased the ASA has concluded that our pilot was neither offensive nor irresponsible,” said a Home Office spokesperson.

“This campaign was about encouraging illegal immigrants to leave the country voluntarily and was not targeted at particular racial or ethnic groups.”

This means that the UK’s government still remains at liberty to direct the ‘Go Home’ slogan at UK illegal immigrants, providing statistics are both relevant and accurate, and the writing is of a legible size – the second complaint which was upheld was made by a ‘few’ people who found the most questionable feature of the vans to be the fact that the smaller print was illegible on a moving vehicle.  

“We considered… that small print should be clearly visible to a normally sighted person reading the marketing communication once from a reasonable distance and at a reasonable speed,” said the ASA in its ruling.

“The ad must not appear again in its current form,” the ASA report concluded.

RT – News

UK watchdog bans govt ‘Go home’ ads targeting immigrants

Greek govt cracks down on neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, arrests leader

Published time: September 28, 2013 13:33

Supporters and members of extreme-right Golden Dawn party hold Greek national flags as they sing the national anthem outside the Greek police headquarters in Athens September 28, 2013 (Reuters / John Kolesidis)

Greek police have arrested the leader, several MPs and dozens of members of ultra-right Golden Dawn party on charges of leading a “criminal organization.” The party promised to respond with mass rallies of its supporters.

Greek police issued arrest warrants for Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos, party spokesman and MP Ilias Kassidiairis, two other prominent members, at least five other party MPs, as well as number of ordinary party members.

“The Secretary General and one lawmaker of the Golden Dawn Party were arrested a short while ago after arrest warrants were issued,” Greek police informed journalists.

Police have detained about 30 members of the ultra-right party, which won 18 seats in the Greek parliament in the June 2012 elections, having received close to 7 percent of the popular vote.

“Democracy in Greece is strong,” Justice Minister Haralambos Athanassiou said after meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias. “All those arrested will have a fair trial,” he said.

In response to the crackdown, the neo-Nazi party called on to its supporters to “resist unlawfulness.”

“We call upon everyone to support our moral and just struggle against the corrupt system,” a statement said on the party’s website.

The ultra-right party faced a public backlash after the Sept. 18 murder of 34-year-old anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, who was stabbed to death in Keratsini by George Roupakias, 45, an avowed supporter of Golden Dawn.

In the aftermath of the killing, the government signaled it would take a tough line against the neo-Nazi party.

“This government is determined not to allow the descendants of the Nazis to poison our social life, to commit crimes, terrorize and undermine the foundations of the country that gave birth to democracy,” Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said in a televised address a day after the killing.

The man who allegedly murdered the rapper confessed to the killing when detained by police, and volunteered that he had links to Golden Dawn. The party, however, denied any links to the murderer and the killing.

After the killing, an investigation revealed that sympathetic members of Greek law enforcement agencies had helped to train the Golden Dawn party’s paramilitary wing. As a result nine police officers, including two high-ranking officials, were fired while two senior police officials resigned for “personal reasons.”

The murder of the anti-fascist activist sparked mass protests nationwide as people held street protests to express their anger with the murder, clashing with police on Wednesday night.

The anti-fascist mass rallies apparently prompted the Greek government to launch a crackdown on the members of Golden Dawn, reportedly including wiretapping party members.

But Mihaloliakos and other leaders of Golden Dawn appeared to be defiant ahead of their arrest.

“We will exhaust any means within our legal constitutional rights to defend our political honor,” Mihaloliakos told reporters on Thursday.

On Friday, Golden Dawn threatened to pull its 18 MPs out of parliament in protest against the murder accusations, a move that could potentially prompt by-elections in 15 regions of the country and – if the opposition were to win those elections – it could threaten the small majority of the ruling coalition, which currently controls 155 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

A good result for the opposition could mean that the ruling coalition would become politically untenable, The Guardian reported Mihaloliakos as saying Friday.

“Golden Dawn holds a weapon in its hands to cause a political earthquake. Those in charge should bear that well in mind,” Mihaloliakos said.

Greece’s finance minister downplayed the political risks of arrests of the Golden Dawn party members.

“There is no risk of destabilization,” Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras told reporters on Saturday.

On Saturday, the ultranationalists called on their supporters to rally outside the police headquarters in Athens where their leaders were being held.

“Shame on them, the people will lift Golden Dawn higher,” Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros told reporters shortly before his own arrest.

The Golden Dawn party has expressed open hostility toward left-wing opponents and immigrants in Greece, championing slogans such as “clean up the stench,” and “Greece for the Greeks.” They have pledged to eject all immigrants from Greece and secure Greece’s borders with landmines and armed patrols. The party has also opposed austerity measures introduced in exchange for bailout credits from the EU, IMF and European Central Bank – the so-called “Troika”. 

The arrests of Golden Dawn leaders are the largest crackdown against a political party in Greece since the fall of the neo-fascist military junta in 1974.

RT – News

Greek govt cracks down on neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, arrests leader

Polish govt again silent over alleged CIA ‘black hole’ sites on its territory

Published time: September 24, 2013 13:18

A guard shuts the gate to the airport in Szymany in northeastern Poland in this file 2005 picture. Polish media said November 5, 2005 the airport was identified by Human Rights Watch as a potential site of alleged CIA prisons used to interrogate al Qaeda captives. Poland strongly denied it was hosting such facilities.(Reuters / Tomasz Marek)

Warsaw has, for a second time in 12 months, rejected a request from the European Court of Human Rights to hand over information involving the alleged existence of secret CIA prisons operating on its territory.

The Polish government said it could not comply with a new request filed by the European court over the detention of Saudi-born Abu Zubaydah, who was later transferred to Guantanamo Bay prison, Reuters reported Tuesday. The officials said their comments might compromise a Polish criminal investigation.

“The government takes the position that at the present stage of domestic proceedings, were they to address in detail all the questions submitted by the court, they could be seen as interfering with the competencies of the prosecution authority and the courts,” the agency reported the government as saying in its statement.

Although Poland has been applauded for being the only Eastern European country to begin its own investigation into claims of clandestine CIA prisons operating in the country, human rights activists have expressed their frustration with the lack of progress in the government’s five-year-old inquiry.

Human rights organizations say the secret prisons served for “extraordinary rendition” of suspects who were flown in from around the world without legislative oversight, and were often tortured.

Any proven participation of Polish officials in the alleged US intelligence program would be considered a crime under both Polish and international law.

In 2008, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, while falling short of admitting Poland’s participation in the CIA program, vowed that his country would never act outside the boundaries of democracy.

“This is a painful but very clear proof that no politician, even if hand-in-hand with the biggest superpower in the world, can do something that will never see the light of the day,” Tusk said. “We must act calmly, discreetly and in the spirit of responsibility for the state on this, but we can take no pride in the fact that such cases must be investigated in Poland.”

Five years later, Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, the chief of Poland’s intelligence services from 2002 to 2004, was formally charged in Poland with “depriving prisoners of their liberty” in US President George W. Bush’s so-called “War on Terror.”

Investigators believe a military base in Stare Kiejkuty, northeastern Poland, was the location of one of the CIA secret prisons between December 2002 and September 2003.

Some of the terrorist suspects allegedly transferred through Poland ended up in Guantanamo Bay, where the conditions are so deplorable that a 2005 Amnesty International report dubbed it the “Gulag of our times.”

In January 2013, Polish prosecutors awarded Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002 and is now being held in Guantanamo, “victim status” in the investigation, following claims he was subjected to extraordinary rendition and secret detention in Poland.

Zubaydah, whose lawyer says he was detained and tortured for 4 1/2 years in secret CIA prisons in Thailand, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Morocco, was one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006.

Zubaydah, however, was eventually told by his US captors that they had made a mistake in suspecting him of being a leading member of Al-Qaeda. This was after he had been subjected 83 times to waterboarding, according to a 2005 US Justice Department legal memo.

Waterboarding, which has now been universally condemned as a form of torture, is a technique that leads victims to believe they are drowning.

“They told me, ‘Sorry, we discover that you are not No. 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,’” said Abu Zubaida, according to the transcript of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

Another victim of the interrogation technique was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, who was alleged to have been waterboarded 183 times while being held at Stare Kiejkuty.

More astonishing, however, is how much the president of Poland at the time, Alexander Kwasniewski, was apparently aware of the activities between Polish intelligence and the CIA.

In 2011, Gazeta Wyborcza reported that, based on a high-ranking source in Poland’s Democratic Left Alliance, Kwasniewski only found out about the CIA “black site” at Stare Kiejkuty, situated just over 100 kilometers from Warsaw, when Bush personally thanked him for Poland‘s assistance in the “War on Terror.”

When Kwasniewski subsequently learned that CIA-leased planes had been flying terrorist suspects in and out of Poland, he ordered the detention center to be shut down, the sources told the Polish daily.

The newspaper added, however, that Poland’s investigation is being actively pursued, that Zubaydah’s lawyer had access to many of the case files and that it would provide the European Court of Human Rights with extracts of the files that were not confidential.

The US has acknowledged that it had secret prisons around the world where it detained suspects in the “War on Terror.” Holding the detainees on foreign territory meant that the individuals were not entitled to legal protection guaranteed under US law.

Polish officials, meanwhile, still deny the country hosted any US “black sites,” though they say that in 2002 and 2003, CIA aircraft made illegal flights into an airfield in northern Poland, near the site of the alleged prison.

RT – News

Polish govt again silent over alleged CIA ‘black hole’ sites on its territory

Syrian Christian village in crossfire as govt forces try to squeeze out Al Nusra rebels

Published time: September 07, 2013 14:57

A Syrian rebel fires a heavy machine gun mounted on the back of a vehicle in Maaloula, a suburb of Damascus, in this image taken from a September 4, 2013 video footage obtained from a social media website (Social media website via Reuters TV)

Download video (28.47 MB)

Heavy fighting between rebels and regime forces continues in Syria’s predominately Christian village of Maaloula, which was earlier partially destroyed by Al-Qaeda affiliated rebels.

“There are clashes just inside the town in the western district between Popular Committees (militia) and rebel forces,” director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul Rahman, told AFP.

“There are also clashes between soldiers backed by militias and rebel fighters around the area of one of the entrances to Maaloula,” he said.

State television citing a military source reports several rebels have been killed and their weapons destroyed as the army targeted a hotel and surrounding positions on the outskirts of Maaloula, north of Damascus, where a group of rebels were stationed.

Maaloula – a mountain village of 2,000 residents, 60km northeast of Damascus – is home to some of the most ancient Orthodox Christian relics and is a major pilgrimage destination. It’s also one of the very few places in the world where people still speak Aramaic, a biblical-era language that Jesus is believed to have spoken.

An RT news crew traveled to the site, but was not allowed to enter the city for safety reasons. 

“The militants, around 300 people, hide [sic] in Safir hotel, there are ancient caves there under the village – they use them as well. They watch us – and we watch them, but if we start moving – they’ll attack us. But unlikely before the sunset,” a Syrian army soldier told RT’s Maria Finoshina.

However, the opposition Syrian National Coalition said members of the Free Syrian Army had withdrawn from Maaloula earlier this week, after destroying army posts at Maaloula.

Earlier this week, reports indicated that militants had broken into the village and shelled Christian churches with mortars, the Surya al-Ain website reported. A fire broke out in the temple of the Holy Prophet Elijah, and the building suffered damage.

The National Coalition said they were in the area for several hours, “but did not attack any church or convent”.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government sent reinforcements, including tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Government forces have taken up positions outside the village, Rami Abdul-Rahman said, adding that were clashes on Friday around the village, which is on a UNESCO list of proposed world heritage sites.

“The Syrian army plans an operation to clear Maaloula from Jabhat al Nusra rebels. There have been rumors that the rebels have left the village, but the army says they’re still there. Even if they leave Maaloula, they can hide nearby and return,” RT’s correspondent reports.

Earlier on Thursday, government war planes launched three air strikes on the checkpoint held by the rebels.

Until Wednesday, this mountain village of 2,000 residents near Damascus, had managed to remain mostly unaffected by the civil war that, according to UN estimates, has already claimed more than 100,000 lives.

RT – News

Syrian Christian village in crossfire as govt forces try to squeeze out Al Nusra rebels

Syrian govt greenlights UN chemical weapons probe

   

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Breaking news

Syrian govt greenlights UN chemical weapons probe

Syrian govt greenlights UN chemical weapons probe

Published time: August 25, 2013 12:56

Syria has given the “green light” for UN experts to visit the site of an alleged chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb, state TV reports, citing the Foreign Ministry.

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Syrian govt greenlights UN chemical weapons probe