Friday, March 13, 2015

The Start of the Tsarnaev Trial

I thought I would start you with this:

"What the Government Tells Us?

by John Kaminski — Rebel News March 5, 2015

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, another innocent patsy, railroaded by the New World Order

How many lies are we required to digest before we lose faith completely in what the people in Washington insist is the truth?

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyer, famous for defending other celebrity defendants and getting them to plead guilty to avoid death sentences, says her client has admitted doing the Boston Marathon bombing, so there’s no reason to discuss all those anomalies that made so many people doubt the story on the day that it happened in 2013.

No reason to believe what the government tells us?

Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

No reason to believe what the government tells us?

Arab hijackers flew mindbogglingly complicated jetliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

No reason to believe what the government tells us?

John and Robert Kennedy, plus Martin Luther King, were all assassinated by a lone nuts.

No reason to believe what the government tells us?

Genetically modified foods are good for you, vaccines should be mandatory, President Obama is an American citizen, Russia invaded Ukraine, Syria gassed its own children, and the leader of Libya was mean to his people (thanks for the Gordon Duff endorsement on this last murder) and deserved to be raped and murdered in his own streets.

Are all Americans brain damaged?

Is there no lie the American people won’t swallow without question?

The so-called Boston Marathon bombing was busted as a psyop from the very beginning by numerous witnesses who heard the loudspeakers announcing that a drill was taking place. Trouble is, most Bostonians weren’t glued to the Internet as we were, watching these fellows from a group called The Craft (a Blackwater-type outfit) and people who had lost their limbs in previous accidents perform a drama that eventually led to the pinpointing of two young Chechen men as the culprits in this contrived disaster.

Among the more audacious moves by law enforcement personnel was the shutdown of the city of Watertown and a mandatory house-to-house search that eventually led to the apprehension of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in a sailboat in a suburban backyard. Reports that his throat was cut by police on the scene have prevented the public from ever hearing his explanation of events on that night.

But the precedent that was set was the unannounced lockup of ordinary citizens in their houses and the invasion of police with automatic weapons searching those houses.

Among the more curious events in the case occurred at the arraignment of the younger Tsarnaev in 2013 when fellow members of his wrestling team at Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School said he appeared to speak with an accent, which was something he didn’t have when they knew him as a classmate, leading to speculation that a double had replaced the young Chechen in court.

Judith Clarke has negotiated plea agreements that spared her clients the death penalty for a disturbingly large number of controversial clients, including convicted assassin Buford Furrow, Zacarias Moussaoui (“the 20th 9/11 hijacker”), Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, Ted Kaczynski (“The Unabomber”) and Jared Lee Loughner, who went on a fatal shooting spree in Arizona, killing a federal judge and wounding a member of Congress.

The use of Clarke as a damage control lawyer has kept secret ulterior motives and clandestine federal involvement while precluding exposure of subterranean facts in these cases while preventing the release of information the government does not want people to know.

By and large, the people of New England have accepted officials’ version of the events and responded positively to the police state maneuvers that were imposed after the Patriot’s Day explosions in downtown Boston. Residents were on board with lockdown forced on the city, and honored law enforcement personnel in numerous public ceremonies in the weeks that followed the tragic events.

What remains absent from the public record is the actual evidence linking the Tsarnaev brothers to the bomb blasts, especially since police were on the record as noting the bombs that exploded has been concealed in black backpacks and the photographic evidence clearly shows that Dzohkhar Tsarnaev had been carrying a white one.

Now that defense attorney Clarke has announced to the court that the younger Tsarnaev brother had admitted to the crimes, these discrepancies are not likely to be examined by the court, leading conspiracy theorists who have closely followed this case for two years to believe that the government has followed a formula it has executed in other cases, a technique guaranteed to avoid any questions about procedures, evidence or reports of drills being announced.

No questions about amputees losing their legs elsewhere. No questions about the presence of a uniformed group known as The Craft, who doubtless are now preparing for their next false flag disaster. No questions about a college professor from Mississippi attending the race testifying that over the loudspeaker system that day came announcements that the tragedy that unfolded was only a drill.

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As you can imagine, I am Beaming that even the Globe is calling it a show trial.

"The long-awaited trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is set to begin Wednesday with opening statements in federal court in Boston, the start of what could be the most complete official recounting yet of the Boston Marathon bombings that forever changed the city nearly two years ago."

How often has the official story turned out to be complete BS?

See: The Boston Marathon Bombings: Fully Exposed

Now maybe you think it's funny that I'm a "conspiracy theorist," but I would advise you to look at links again.

"Opening remarks in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial set for March 4" by Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff  February 26, 2015

Opening statements in the trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should begin next Wednesday, nearly two years after the bombs went off, as the federal judge overseeing the case wound down the difficult two-month process of picking a jury.

**************

The court’s announcement of the schedule late Wednesday evening, after the judge hosted weeks of closed-door arguments over potential jurors’ suitability, marked a significant milestone in the challenging process of picking a fair jury in the case....

Tsarnaev, 21, a naturalized US citizen from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, who was living in Cambridge and attending the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, faces multiple charges that carry the possibility of the death penalty....

Tsarnaev’s lawyers, according to court records, plan to argue that he was coerced by his dominating older brother, who influenced him with his extremist views.

Before jury selection began, legal analysts argued that it would be impossible to pick a fair jury in the same city where the bombs went off. Tsarnaev’s lawyers filed three requests with O’Toole to relocate the trial to a district outside of Boston, arguing that answers to a questionnaire completed by 1,373 potential jurors from Eastern Massachusetts showed that 85 percent of them already believed Tsarnaev is guilty or have some connection to the Marathon.

The defense team twice asked the federal appeals court in Boston to intervene. A three-judge panel initially denied that request in January, but is now considering a second request. A hearing was held last week, but two of the three judges have already signaled their refusal to get involved, questioning whether the court has the authority to intervene in O’Toole’s management of the trial....

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RelatedDzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers cite jury pool in bid to dismiss case 

Wait a minute, there are NO BLACKS on the jury?

While empaneling the jury, "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers asked Judge George O’Toole to unseal jury questionnaires and transcripts of closed-door hearings related to the jury selection process so they can cite them in Thursday’s hearing; government prosecutors opposed the request Sunday. The Boston Globe filed a motion asking for the documents to be publicly released."

I don't know if they did because I moved on:

Appeals court to hear Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial relocation arguments

Tsarnaev lawyers ask full appeals court to consider venue change

Tsarnaev lawyers urge appeals court to move trial outside Boston

Appealing to reason in Tsarnaev case

Okay, okay, I get the point, move the trial.

I'm sure his friends would appreciate it:

"Looking back, these friends said their allegiance to — and affection for — Tsarnaev changed gradually over time. Those who once believed Tsarnaev, the school’s former wrestling team captain, was framed by the FBI have now opened their minds to the government’s evidence. They say they have now absorbed the full magnitude of the death and destruction allegedly caused by Tsarnaev and his older brother."

So Silva and Phillipos have turned on him due to government intimidation and threats.

"Tsarnaev friend could be freed under Supreme Court ruling" by Milton J. Valencia and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff  February 25, 2015

A college friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may move to have his obstruction of justice conviction overturned, his lawyer said, after the US Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a ruling that redefined the law that prosecutors used to charge him.

I thought he was now open-minded.

Azamat Tazhayakov, a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth classmate of Tsarnaev, was tried and convicted in US District Court in Boston last year under a stringent obstruction of justice law that was enacted in the wake of numerous Wall Street scandals in which company officials destroyed internal records.

The nation’s high court ruled Wednesday that federal prosecutors could not use that law to charge a Florida fisherman who had thrown undersized fish back into the water to avoid an investigation.

That obstruction of justice charge, which the majority of justices agreed was meant to address paperwork and computers destroyed to avoid detection, provides for a tougher penalty than other obstruction laws.

Federal prosecutors in Boston used that law to charge two of Tsarnaev’s friends, who were accused of removing Tsarnaev’s backpack containing fireworks from his dorm room and throwing it in a dumpster. Tazhayakov was convicted in July 2014 and Dias Kadyrbayev pleaded guilty a month later under an agreement that he could serve seven years in prison.

US District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock had postponed sentencing until the Supreme Court could decide the fisherman’s case, known as the Yates case. The high court ruled in a 5-4 split decision Wednesday that prosecutors wrongly applied the federal law to the fisherman’s case, possibly affecting similar cases across the country.

Nicholas Wooldridge, Tazhayakov’s defense attorney, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the majority’s ruling appears to clear the way for his client’s conviction to be thrown out, based on the argument that the law was wrongly applied. US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz would be barred from trying Tazhayakov again under double jeopardy, he argued.

“It looks like we could be in a very good position, but until everything is said and done, I don’t want to start celebrating too soon,’’ Wooldridge said. “I would say that I am purchasing champagne, but I am not ready to open it yet.’’ 

If a technicality gets one of these poor framed patsies out, fine.

In an e-mail, a spokeswoman for Ortiz said prosecutors are currently studying the US Supreme Court ruling and declined to comment.

It was not immediately clear what effect the Supreme Court ruling will have on Kadyrbayev’s case because of his decision to voluntarily admit his role. His attorney, Robert Stahl, said in a statement, “We are carefully reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision to determine its impact on the case.”

Last fall, Woodlock wrote that he would have to review Kadyrbayev’s guilty plea through the prism of the Yates decision.

“The uncertainty affects not merely the posttrial motions and sentencing in Tazhayakov but also my evaluation of the knowing and voluntary quality of the defendant Kadyrbayev’s plea,’’ Woodlock wrote last fall.

The provision of the obstruction of justice laws that Ortiz’s office used to prosecute the two friends was passed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and it called for a punishment of up to 20 years in prison for the destruction of “any record, document, or tangible object” to obstruct an investigation.

The Yates case involves a Florida fisherman, John Yates, who was prosecuted after he ordered a crewman on his commercial fishing boat to throw red grouper fish back into the Gulf of Mexico after he had been ordered by a state wildlife officer to set the fish aside and return to port.

The court majority found that fish could not themselves be a “tangible object” related to a coverup.

“A fish is no doubt an object that is tangible; fish can be seen, caught, and handled, and a catch, as this case illustrates, is vulnerable to destruction,’’ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. “But it would cut [the federal law] from its financial-fraud mooring to hold that it encompasses any and all objects. . . . A tangible object must . . . be one used to preserve or record information.’’

Writing for the four dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan said her colleagues got it wrong.

“A person who hides a murder victim’s body is no less culpable than one who burns the victim's diary,’’ Kagan wrote. “Destroying evidence is destroying evidence, whether or not that evidence takes documentary form.’’

Wooldridge said he recently spoke with Tazhayakov, who is in the custody of the Essex County Sheriff’s Department while his case is resolved.

“It’s not all the time that I have a connection with my client,’’ Wooldridge said. “But I really do have a connection with him. He’s a good kid. He’s been in there for nearly two years, and I am excited for him to come out. He really deserves to come out of there.’’

The judge has written in court filings that the Yates decision would not affect the case of Robel Phillipos, another Tsarnaev friend who was not charged with obstruction of justice, but was convicted of lying to federal investigators. He faces up to eight years in prison when he is sentenced.

Phillipos’s lawyers said in a statement Wednesday that “we are currently reviewing the implication of the US Supreme Court’s decision. . . . We feel that the decision will have significant bearing in Robel Phillipos’s case as it relates to the materiality of the alleged false statements. The ruling also raises significant issues to be considered at sentencing.”

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"Tsarnaev plea now the big question; Analysts see pros, cons in a switch to guilty" by Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff  March 02, 2015

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has wound his way through the federal justice system since his arrest for the Boston Marathon bombings nearly two years ago, his lawyers trying in vain to have the case relocated to a district outside of Boston. His all-star defense team has sought multiple times to have the case dismissed.

But now, with his lawyers set this week to make their first public declaration in closely watched opening statements, one remaining legal quandary still stands before him: Should he change his plea from not guilty to guilty?

A strange concept, perhaps, considering there is no chance that a guilty plea would prompt prosecutors to lessen the charges he faces. But legal analysts say that continuing to maintain his innocence in the face of seemingly overwhelming evidence against him could actually serve to antagonize jurors — the same jurors who ultimately have the power to sentence him to death.

“If you know you’re going to lose, and the only ball you have in the game is death or life, the more credibility you have the better off you are,” said Robert Sheketoff, a Boston defense lawyer.

It's exactly what the author I led this post with said.

And yet pleading guilty is also a gamble, analysts say, with a major downside: It could make it all but impossible to appeal a conviction on the grounds that he would not have received a fair trial in Boston, which has been a major part of the defense team’s early legal strategy. Declaring guilt takes the steam out of that fairness argument.

“That is a pivotal decision that I think a great defense team has agonized over, for months,” said Martin Weinberg, a veteran Boston defense attorney, “because their credibility is at stake, credibility that will be crucial to the defense team when they ask the jury to spare their client from death.”

As if the $y$tem had any left.

Tsarnaev, a 21-year-old naturalized US citizen who was raised in Cambridge and was taking college classes, is in a predicament few federal defendants have faced, given the strength of the evidence that will be presented against him in court. The FBI has already released surveillance footage of him at the scene, and prosecutors allege they have video footage of him dropping a backpack containing a bomb behind Martin Richard, an 8-year-old Dorchester boy who was killed in the attacks.

Except it was not him and they have no video (it was all a reenactment?).

Days after the bombings, Tsarnaev was arrested after a manhunt in Watertown, found hiding in a boat with apparent confessions scribbled on the inner wall of the vessel. His lawyers have not hinted that they would argue his innocence, but instead they have tried to place responsibility on his influential older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed during a confrontation with police.

Legal analysts say that Tsarnaev, the only person to stand trial for the bombings on April 15, 2013, and his army of defense lawyers will have to walk a fine line between declaring his innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence, which jurors could see as insulting, and defending him from the level of culpability that deserves the death penalty.

Looks like the propaganda pre$$ has rendered a verdict before the case has even come to trial.

Sheketoff said lawyers may want to “save your ammunition for what’s at stake” — the sentencing phase of the trial — but still he called it a gamble. He recalled representing Gary Lee Sampson, an admitted serial killer who was sentenced to death in the same federal court in Boston a decade ago. Sampson pleaded guilty to the carjacking killings of three people but was sentenced to death anyway — although the sentence was later overturned because of problems with a juror.

“You don’t really know, and hindsight is 20/20,” Sheketoff said. “If you pick one and win, you make the right decision.”

Tsarnaev’s lawyers have fought vigorously over the last two months to pick a fair jury, while simultaneously arguing that one can’t be picked in the same city where the bombs went off nearly two years ago. The jury selection process began Jan. 5....

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Okay, enough pre-trial sh**:

"‘It was him,’ defense admits as Marathon bombing trial begins" by Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff  March 04, 2015

After thousands of pages of legal briefs and nearly two years of hearings, a lawyer for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stood in federal court Wednesday, the first day of the long-awaited Marathon bombing trial, and made a startling simple declaration: “It was him.”

Yes, she said, it was Tsarnaev who dropped a backpack containing a bomb on the ground, killing a young boy and a graduate student. And it was Tsarnaev who, along with his brother, went on a violent spree that ended in bloodshed in Watertown.

“There’s little that occurred the week of April the 15th . . . that we dispute,” attorney Judy Clarke told jurors.

In just over 20 minutes, Clarke provided a detailed account of Tsarnaev’s role in the horrific attacks, though she ultimately sought to portray the now-21-year-old defendant as a reluctant participant in the bombings, coerced by a dominating older brother who was the mastermind. He was less culpable, she said, and therefore should be spared the death penalty.

Prosecutors gave their own vivid narrative of the bombings, providing new details in the moments leading up to the explosions and their aftermath, including Tsarnaev’s trip to a grocery store 20 minutes later to shop for a gallon of milk.

The opening statements were a sweeping — and at times heart-wrenching — attempt at justice on the same day that several survivors recounted frightening ordeals to the jury.

See:

Victims testify at Boston Marathon bombing trial

In gripping testimony, carnage in Marathon attacks is recalled

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The long-awaited trial officially began Wednesday after two months of jury selection and nearly two years of legal challenges.

The prosecutor also gave new details in death of Sean Collier, an MIT police officer who was fatally shot while sitting in his cruiser. Assistant US Attorney William Weinreb told jurors surveillance video showed the brothers walk around the corner to the cruiser and open the door. But it wasn’t clear from the video which brother fired the Ruger, the prosecutor said.

RelatedTestimony turns to MIT officer’s death in bombing trial

"For about two hours Thursday, Meng recounted his ordeal. A partner in a mobile application company, Meng said he left work about 10:30 p.m., and “I decided to drive along the Charles River, to relax.” “I didn’t really have a destination,” he said."

Not very responsible of the accidental witness, considering the global warming problem.

Weinreb said investigators also found bloody gloves in Tsarnaev’s Honda Civic that had DNA matching Collier’s.

He said that Tsarnaev and his brother carried out the bombings as retribution for US military involvement in Muslim lands, that he and his brother were inspired by Al Qaeda, and that they learned to build the bombs by reading an Al Qaeda-sponsored online publication.

“He had a side to him he kept hidden even from his closest friends,” Weinreb said.

Jurors will never hear from Tsarnaev’s accomplice, his older brother, Tamerlan, Weinreb said, “because the defendant killed him” by running him over while attempting to get away from police during a shootout in Watertown. But Weinreb called the brothers equal partners. “They agreed to commit these crimes together, and they carried them out together,” he said.

When the prosecution was finished, Clarke told jurors that she would not “sidestep [Dzhokhar’s] responsibility for his actions,” saying “the circumstances that bring us here today still are difficult to grasp, they are incomprehensible, they are inexcusable.”

But she sought to place greater blame on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, saying he had grown extreme in his religious beliefs and had ensnared a loyal younger brother into his plot.

It was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, seven years older than her client, who planned the attacks and bought the pressure cookers and the explosives used to make the bombs and the backpacks to carry them, Clarke insisted. It was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who killed Collier, she said.

“It was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who self-radicalized . . . it was [Dzhokhar] who followed him,” she told jurors. “Unfortunately, and tragically, [Dzhokhar] was brought into his brother’s passion, and his plan, and that led the way to Boylston Street.”

Tsarnaev faces 30 charges, 17 of which carry the possibility of the death penalty. If he is convicted, the same jury will decide in a second phase of the trial whether he should be sentenced to death, though defense lawyers will be able to cite factors they say show he is more deserving of life in prison.

Legal analysts have told the Globe that Tsarnaev's lawyers would not attempt to declare his innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence, that it would insult jurors as they contemplate his fate, but that his lawyers will attempt to use both phases of the trial to convince the jury he is less culpable and his life should be spared.

Like the blog I led this post with, the fact that his lawyers are not using the voluminous amount of evidence showing a scripted and staged crisis drill and complete fraud and hoax as well as exculpatory evidence I've linked here damn near proves a kangaroo court and show trial.

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RelatedAdmitting guilt, but not pleading it, aims at sparing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s life

As for the defendant himself:

"At Marathon bombing trial, Tsarnaev appears detached" by Patricia Wen, Globe Staff  March 05, 2015

Dressed in a dark blazer with an open-collared shirt, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appeared during the first day of testimony in his trial as he did during jury selection: a bearded young man with a flat demeanor, his head often slanted to one side, seemingly half-listening, half-distracted.

The 21-year-old defendant has been virtually silent in all of his court appearances, so there is only his physical appearance — his expressions, his gestures, his posture — to decode what might be going on in his head. So far, the enigmatic former high school wrestling team captain from Cambridge has been consistent: quiet and low-key, leaning back in his chair, conversing generally only when one of his lawyers initiates a chat.

Judging his demeanor is also complicated by the unknown effect of nearly two years in solitary confinement, and the multiple gunshot injuries he sustained that have paralyzed the left side of his face, according to one of his lawyers.

And what the torture did to him.

Earlier this week, one of his lawyers urged caution in trying to interpret Tsarnaev’s appearance. The lawyer complained to US District Court Judge George O’Toole that a top FBI official once publicly characterized Tsarnaev as wearing a smirk, when Tsarnaev suffers from long-term nerve damage to his left cheek that profoundly affects his face.

His current demeanor, in some ways, is also similar to when he was simply a failing student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who smoked — and dealt — copious amounts of marijuana and experimented with psychedelic drugs....

Strange behavior for a pair of radical Islamists, huh!?

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I hope you are not looking for a view into the courtroom because it is rather technical as to why you can't.

Videos show Boston Marathon bombs’ planting, blasts

So we are told.

"Monday was the third day of testimony in the Boston Marathon bombing trial, and an FBI agent testified that Tsarnaev managed a secret Twitter account under the profile name Ghuraba, or stranger, in which he posted extremist views supporting Al Qaeda. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces the possibility of the death penalty. Though his lawyers have admitted that he took part in the bombings, he has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have sought to use the trial to convince jurors that he is less culpable — that his older brother was the mastermind — and their client is less deserving of death."

If true then the two Tsarnaev's were US agents. That is why they were allowed to come and go. It was the price to stay here.

Even had a second Twitter account, according to the FBI (as if anyone would believe them, and how could you and the NSA missed it?).

I suppose that ship has sailed, and I think the kid was shot and placed there:

"Tsarnaev’s own words from inside boat shown in court" by Milton J. Valencia and Patricia Wen, Globe Staff  March 10, 2015

The message, which was disclosed in its complete form for the first time, has become central to Tsarnaev’s trial in federal court in Boston as prosecutors hope to show that he was not only lucid in the hours before his capture, but that he articulated a clear motive for the Marathon bombings.

Defense lawyers hope, however, that the bullet-riddled boat will show jurors that Tsarnaev was in a fragile state of mind when he wrote the message, suggesting that the sentiments in the note were not genuine. They have asked that the jury be allowed to see the entire vessel while prosecutors have proposed cutting the messages from the boat panels and presenting them to the jurors in the courtroom. On Tuesday, only photos and a transcript were shown.

The court proceedings ended early Tuesday....

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Yeah, about that confession in the boat.... 

I suppose all's well that ends.... well.

Meanwhile, outside the courtroom:

"Rent hike blamed in closing of Forum" by Taryn Luna and Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff  February 25, 2015

The Forum restaurant on Boylston Street was so close to the Boston Marathon bombings that shrapnel blasted through its windows, lodging in furniture and the ceiling. But in those tragic moments and over months that followed, the restaurant became a symbol of perseverance and resilience embraced by the city.

Workers were honored for helping bloodied victims. After closing for four months, the refurbished restaurant reopened in better shape than ever. But on Tuesday the owner said Forum would close on March 1, unable to overcome a very ordinary business problem — a rent hike. 

So much for per$everance and re$iliency.

The restaurant’s landlord raised “rent this year by nearly three times our current rate,” according to a statement by Euz Azevedo, the president of Boston Nightlife Ventures, which owns Forum.

“This rent increase makes it financially impossible for Boston Nightlife Ventures to operate and sustain a business at a location that means so much to us and to our city,” Azevedo said....

Related:

“It’s too bad, because I feel like it’s got history,” said Jeff Klein, who was walking past Forum with his 2-year-old daughter, Jules, perched on his shoulders and his 5-month-old son, Calvin, snuggled inside his jacket. “Rent is already so high here for these poor restaurants, and there’s so many restaurants, and they come and they go because owners keep jacking up rent,” said Klein."

What do you expect in Bo$ton these days?

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"Judge in Tsarnaev trial refuses bid to ban protesters; Rallies outside court could sway jury, lawyers said" by Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff  February 24, 2015

The judge in the trial of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has rejected a defense request to ban the “self-appointed supporters” of Tsarnaev from outside the courthouse.

Tsarnaev’s attorneys had argued in December that their client would be unfairly associated with the “outrageous conspiracy theories” espoused by the protesters, and that prospective jurors walking into the courthouse would hold that against him.

The true lawyers trying to obtain justice!

US District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. had apparently ruled on the issue in a closed hearing in late December, but the ruling was only made public Tuesday. The ruling did not include a written explanation.

Defense attorneys had asked O’Toole to order the US Marshals Service to keep demonstrators a reasonable distance from the courthouse, away from victims, jurors, and the public, to insulate Tsarnaev from the “deleterious and prejudicial impact” of the demonstrations.

“Survivors, jurors, witnesses, and members of the public must be able to attend court without being assaulted by inflammatory accusations from any source,” the lawyers wrote. “If they cannot, the fairness of the defendant’s trial is likely to be gravely harmed.’’

Yeah, if he's acquitted they can blame the "conspiracy nuts."

Self-proclaimed supporters of Tsarnaev said at the time that they would oppose an order barring their rights to free speech, but that they would nonetheless refrain from protesting so that they do not interfere with Tsarnaev’s defense.

Tsarnaev faces a host of charges, including 17 that carry the possibility of the death penalty, in the April 15, 2013, bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

Tsarnaev and his alleged coconspirator — his brother, Tamerlan — are also accused of killing an MIT police officer. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was later killed in a confrontation with police.

Jury selection is underway in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s high-profile trial in federal court in Boston. The process began on Jan. 5, with 1,373 prospective jurors from Eastern Massachusetts filling out a questionnaire. O’Toole then called some of those people back for in-person questioning known as voir dire.

By Tuesday, O’Toole had interviewed 248 potential jurors over 20 days to determine whether they are qualified to serve on the jury. O’Toole has said that he wants to find 70 suitable jurors before allowing lawyers and prosecutors to dismiss some for strategic reasons, and by last week he had found 61.

And not one of them a black person.

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And much further away:

"Tsarnaev friend’s family seeking $30m from FBI over death" by Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff  March 02, 2015

Good luck with that.

The father of a man killed by an FBI agent weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings is demanding $30 million from the bureau, saying it harassed his son before he was fatally shot and negligently hired the agent despite his troubled past on the Oakland, Calif., police force.

See: The Man Who Murdered Ibragim Todashev

Abdulbaki Todashev, represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, said from Moscow that the claim filed Monday was the first step toward a wrongful death lawsuit against the bureau for the shooting of his son, Ibragim Todashev, 27, a friend of the late suspected Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

“We started this process in order to bring justice for our son and to hold accountable those who were guilty in the murder of our son,” Todashev said Monday, speaking through a translator. “He was killed in cold blood.”

The Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, and a Florida prosecutor last year cleared the agent, Aaron McFarlane, of wrongdoing. In separate reports, they said Todashev attacked McFarlane and a Massachusetts state trooper after Todashev allegedly confessed to helping Tsarnaev kill three men in Waltham in 2011.

None of it makes any sense, but....

In an e-mail, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment.

Todashev’s claim sent to the FBI Monday said the bureau never should have hired McFarlane given his “propensity for misconduct.”

The Globe reported last year that McFarlane had settled two police brutality lawsuits and faced four internal affairs investigations during four years as an Oakland officer. In 2003, McFarlane testified in a police corruption trial, but invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination after a prosecutor implied that he had falsified a police report. After being granted immunity, McFarlane denied any wrongdoing.

The next year, McFarlane retired on a disability pension, which he continued to collect after the FBI hired him in 2008. The total payout has reached $520,761.09, California officials said Monday. Disability pensions are tax free.

The city of Oakland launched an investigation into McFarlane’s pension after the Globe’s article, but on Monday a spokeswoman said the FBI has refused to release information the city needs to decide whether to revoke it.

“The idea of a member of law enforcement breaching the community’s trust by collecting a disability pension without merit is an affront to the honorable men and women who are true law enforcement professionals, as well as a drain on limited public resources,” said Karen Boyd, spokeswoman for the Oakland city administrator’s office. “The city of Oakland has looked into the concerns raised, but unfortunately, based on the information we have been able to secure to date, the investigation is inconclusive.”

Boyd said the city would release a report on its findings.

Civil liberties groups and Todashev’s family have criticized the FBI’s handling of the May 22, 2013, shooting of Todashev. The FBI refused to release details of the shooting for nearly a year, and then asked the Florida prosecutor investigating the shooting to withhold the FBI agent’s name from his report. The Globe and other media obtained the names because the Florida report was poorly redacted.

“I was shocked to know that a person with the history of Aaron McFarlane was working for the FBI,” Todashev’s father said in an interview. “The FBI, they are doing very bad things for themselves protecting this person. They discredited themselves by protecting this person.” 

I wasn't shocked because the FBI has been totally discredited.

On Monday Carol Rose, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said she hoped the family’s lawsuit would unearth more details about the Todashev shooting and the 2011 triple homicide in Waltham.

In September 2011, the bodies of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s onetime friend Brendan Mess, 25, and Erik Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37, were discovered with their throats slashed in Mess’s apartment. The murders were never solved and the investigation is ongoing.

Related: 

"Weissman, 31, a local entrepreneur.... ?? 

In January 2011, eight months before the triple homicide, Boston police searched a Roslindale apartment where Weissman was living and seized more than $21,000 in cash, along with a drug ledger, a currency counter, digital scales, and a wide assortment of drugs, including marijuana, hashish, cocaine, and Oxycontin. Weissman also was a partner in a small business called Hitman Glass, which manufactured and sold glass bongs used to smoke marijuana, according to a Facebook remembrance page, interviews, and public records. Several friends of the victims noted that each of them had been selling drugs for years.... Weissman, may have ­resorted to selling guns because he had forfeited cash and a stash of drugs when his apartment in Roslindale was raided... The Globe was unable to obtain [his] death certificate."

I think we just found the entrepreneuring killer, and why weren't these guys in jail?

"Boston police searched Weissman’s Roslindale apartment and seized more than $21,000 in cash, along with drug paraphernalia and a wide assortment of drugs, including marijuana, hashish, cocaine, and Oxycontin.... Teken attended Brookline High School and Brandeis University and his father, Avi Teken, is the spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation in Newton."

What were they doing hanging around them? Why would radical Islamist jihadists be hanging with a bunch of drug-dealing, gun-running Jews, and why did the Mossad just pop into my mind?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s alleged role in the Waltham killings has been a sticking point in the defense of his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 21, who faces trial starting this week in federal court in Boston in the April 15, 2013, Marathon bombings and subsequent fatal shooting of an MIT police officer.

He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have suggested that Tamerlan controlled Dzhokhar, just as he may have domineered Todashev.

Yes, “there’s so many unanswered questions.”

Government prosecutors have said they had no evidence of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s role in the Waltham killings beyond Todashev’s confession.

Except he did not confess. That's why he was executed. He wouldn't sign the statement.

In the claim filed Monday, Todashev’s family said his confession was false and coerced. 

Like most government-obtained confessions.

They said Todashev had cooperated with the authorities and denounced the bombings, but grew agitated at the intense pressure from the FBI and other authorities.

They said authorities detained him, intimidated his friends, and arrested his girlfriend on immigration violations. The day of the shooting, the couple had argued because he could not get her out of jail.

The claim also accuses the FBI and troopers of failing to ensure there were enough officers to maintain order during the interrogation at Todashev’s Orlando apartment.

One of the troopers, Joel Gagne, had left the apartment during the interrogation to make a phone call, leaving McFarlane and Massachusetts State Trooper Curtis Cinelli alone with Todashev, a mixed martial arts fighter with a criminal record.

??????? Why bring that up?

According to the government’s accounts, after Gagne left, Todashev allegedly flung a coffee table at McFarlane’s head, opening a gash that required nine staples to close, then lunged at Cinelli with a metal broomstick. McFarlane allegedly ordered Todashev to stop. When he did not, the agent shot him seven times.

???????? 

Nothing about the kid's bad knee or anything, huh?

The claim filed by the Todashev family also identified for the first time the Orlando police officer standing guard outside Todashev’s apartment that day. He was Christopher Savard, a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the document says.

In 2000, as a police sniper, Savard misidentified his target during a hostage situation and fatally shot a mother who had been taken hostage. Savard was cleared of wrongdoing and was removed from the SWAT team, according to news reports.

OMG, the cop killing with impunity is epidemic!

The State Police and the Orlando police also declined to comment Monday.

Todashev, who emigrated from Russia, lived in Cambridge and Allston before moving to Florida. He was a friend and workout buddy of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose father, like Todashev, is an ethnic Chechen.

Harvey Silverglate, a Boston criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, said he was skeptical that Todashev’s claim would clear the legal hurdles needed to move forward — though he hoped it would.

To file a successful claim, he said, typically lawyers need testimony and records that the government will not provide unless compelled to do so in court.

“I guess you should never say never,” Silverglate said. “But I think it is a hugely steep uphill climb to get a case to survive.”

Hassan Shibly, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, acknowledged that the case is challenging. He said the council is handling it pro bono.

But he said the claim intends to hold authorities accountable for their actions in Todashev’s death.

“They’ve withheld a lot of information,” Shibly said. “It definitely has not been an easy task.”

The FBI has denied requests filed by The Boston Globe to say whether McFarlane is still with the FBI and whether the bureau was aware of his record in Oakland when it hired him.

This in the freest and most transparent nation on earth.

--more--"

"Closing in on the truth in tangled Tsarnaev case" by Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff  March 03, 2015

As if any semblance of truth is to be found in the Boston Globe.

So the father of Ibragim Todashev, the workout buddy of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has filed a lawsuit, seeking $30 million from the FBI for the shooting death of his son.

I don’t blame him. If it were my kid, I’d do the same.

There’s a certain irony that a family in Russia has placed its faith in the American justice system just days after Russia’s opposition leader was assassinated in the shadow of the Kremlin.

It certainly is!

The civil suit filed by Abdulbaki Todashev is aimed at getting some answers to the murky mess that unfolded on May 22, 2013, in Ibragim Todashev’s apartment in Orlando.

It wouldn't be if the FBI and police simply told the truth.

The FBI insists agent Aaron McFarlane and a Massachusetts state trooper were attacked by Ibragim Todashev after he had confessed to helping Tamerlan Tsarnaev murder three men in Waltham in 2011. The FBI says McFarlane opened fire on Todashev, a mixed martial arts fighter who had armed himself with a broomstick, after Todashev suddenly turned violent and hurled a coffee table at him.

But, as usual, the FBI’s lack of transparency has raised far more questions than it has answered. For example, the FBI has never explained why it hired McFarlane in the first place, given his checkered history with the Oakland Police Department, where he was accused of being heavy-handed and not exactly a beacon of integrity. Over 11 years, he’s collected $520,761 in tax-free disability pension payments from Oakland — a disability that didn’t prevent him from double-dipping at the FBI.

Even if his lawsuit doesn’t get thrown out, Abdulbaki Todashev faces the prospect of years of stalling, depositions, more stalling and who knows what else before there is a chance he might learn why and how his son died in a hail of bullets on a warm night in Florida.

Just a chance?

But there may be answers closer at hand.

On the eve of opening statements in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, it is more than the deaths of Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and MIT police officer Sean Collier that may be examined and explained in Courtroom 9 of the federal courthouse.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have, like his friend Ibragim Todashev, died in a hail of law enforcement fire, but he will be a proxy defendant alongside his little brother, tried from the grave.

There is absolutely no one who has sat through the two-month jury selection process who believes Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers are going to jump up on the defendant’s table and insist their client is innocent.

And we know why from above.

Instead, the defense wants the jury to answer a more relevant question: was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev an equal partner in the plot to kill and maim as many as possible near the finish line of the Boston Marathon?

Or, will they argue, was he just a follower, a stoner from Cambridge who got sucked into the vortex of the twisted grievance of his brother, a manipulative zealot who had demonstrated two years before those backpacks with the pressure cookers were dropped on Boylston Street that he had no hesitation to kill.

That's the way I feel about reading the war-promoting jew$paper every day.

Prosecutors see this coming, which is why on Monday they argued before Judge George O’Toole that any attempt to turn this into a proxy trial of Tamerlan shouldn’t be allowed during the guilt phase; that what the defense wants to do falls under the category of mitigation, of reducing Dzhokhar’s culpability, which belongs in the penalty phase of the trial, a phase that seems inevitable.

David Bruck, one of Dzhokhar’s lawyers, said two significant things in response. He said that we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the government wasn’t so determined to put Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death and that the Marathon wouldn’t have been bombed if not for Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Whether this trial is just about what happened on Patriots Day 2013 or focuses on wider, murkier questions — about dead men in Waltham and Orlando, about leads on Tamerlan Tsarnaev not followed by the FBI long before the Marathon was bombed — is up to O’Toole.

I’m guessing O’Toole won’t go there. It’s not his style.

Nor is it the propaganda pre$$'s

--more--"

Looks like incitement to me more than an act of grace, and I looked away before I was blinded by the BS. 

And Good Garsh, look who got lost in coverage:

Alleged Hernandez shooting in Fla. becomes issue in trial
Car had Hernandez fingerprint, trooper says
Aaron Hernandez judge won’t allow mention of Fla. shooting
Former neighbor describes Aaron Hernandez as ‘unpleasant and unfriendly’

Would you like to get to know her better?

DNA links Aaron Hernandez to killing, expert says
Aaron Hernandez allegedly made advances on baby sitter
Man says he saw Hernandez with gun
Hernandez held Glock after Lloyd death, gun expert says
Attorneys argue over blurry Aaron Hernandez video

And this is the end of today's posts, readers. I intend to work on some stories to present to you tomorrow in addition to catching up some more -- or not.

NDUs: At Aaron Hernandez trial, victim’s friend recounts last interaction

Testimony in the trial will resume Tuesday.

UPDATE: 

Prosecutors often balk at capital cases 

I struggle with what to do with war criminals and looting banksters.