Killer of American scientist Suzanne Eaton confesses. Local Crete farmer

The Killer may have been apprehended but that is small comfort to the grieving family, friends and associates of Dr. Eaton

Excerpted from People and Keep Talking Greece 7.15.2019

The body of scientist Suzanne Eaton, who had been missing in Greece for nearly a week, was found on July 8

A local man has confessed to the murder of Suzanne Eaton a week after the missing U.S. scientist’s body was found by authorities in Crete, Greece.

A 27-year-old suspect has been arrested by police for the murder of the US biologist. According to local media, the father of two has confessed the heinous crime that shocked the communities in Crete, Greece and around the globe.

The farmer is married and a father of two, he is from Maleme and lives in Kissamos area together with his family.

According to local flashnews, despite all his attempts to cover the crime by throwing the body of the 60-year-old scientist in an old German bunker, he made a grave mistake that led police to his detention.

Traces of the car he used to transfer the body were found outside the bunker where the body was found.

The traces the car tires left on the soil, other findings in the crime scene as evaluation of mobile phone signals on the day Eaton went missing helped police make the murderer’s profile and limit the circle of suspects.

The suspect’s grave mistake was that while he was inside the bunker disposing Eaton’s body his mobile was turned on, leaving behind digital footprint that was easy for police to detect during investigation.

The perpetrator’s identity was ultimately revealed, police arrested him early Monday afternoon.

In the hands of police is reportedly also a foreign laborer who was working for the 27-year-old farmer. The laborer allegedly helped the murderer to transfer and hide the body in the bunker.

Local police announced on Monday the suspect is currently being detained and that they expect to have more information in the coming day, according to the outlet.

The shocking news comes nearly one week after a spokesperson for the police in Crete said authorities had discovered Eaton’s body approximately 200 feet inside of a cave — a site that was formerly used as a World War II bunker.

Located underneath an air shaft that had been covered with a large wooden pallet, police said they believe Eaton’s body, which was discovered face-down, was dumped inside of the cave after she had been suffocated to death.

The scientist had also suffered minor stab wounds to her body, though officials said they did not appear to have caused her death.

“The only thing we can say is that the [death] resulted from a criminal act,” Greek state coroner Antonis Papadomanolakis told the Associated Press last week.

Eaton, who worked at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany, disappeared while out for a run on the afternoon of July 2, her family said on Search for Suzanne, a Facebook page they set up to find her.

She was attending a conference at the Orthodox Academy of Crete and was somewhat familiar with the area as she had attended conferences there previously.

The 59-year-old scientist was known to run for 30 minutes every day, and the family said that she had done so the previous day at the same time, though details of where she was going remain unknown. Her cell phone and other belongings were left in her hotel room.

https://people.com/crime/man-confesses-murdering-american-scientist-suzanne-eaton-crete-greece/

https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2019/07/15/suzanne-eaton-man-arrested-farmer/

“Communists.” I thought MAD Magazine was dead. No!!! We have Lindsey Graham

Talk about Old School!!! What is this?? 1955? We can’t expect anything else but crude stupidity from this worthless moronic Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. McCarthyism is alive and well in Trump’s America

Excerpted from CNN 7.15.2019

Washington (CNN)Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump’s strongest allies on Capitol Hill, declined on Monday to condemn the President over his racist tweets against several minority members of Congress, instead calling them a “bunch of communists.”

Graham’s comments, which were later tweeted out by Trump, are the latest example of congressional Republican alignment with Trump in the face of fierce controversy.

“Well, we all know that (New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ) and this crowd are a bunch of communists, they hate Israel, they hate our own country,” Graham said during an appearance on “Fox and Friends.” “They’re calling the guards along our border, the border patrol agents, ‘concentration camp guards.’ They accuse people who support Israel of doing it for the Benjamins. They’re anti-Semitic. They’re anti-America.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/lindsey-graham-communists-democratic-congresswomen/index.html

Caught in Mideast crossfire. Oakland bakery takes Warrior star off menu

The Warriors superstar just got burned. Obviously Draymond Green failed to take a course in Middle East Politics prior to his trip to Israel.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 7.14.2019

A Palestinian-Syrian chef in Oakland is discontinuing a popular item at her restaurant that is named after Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors

Reem Assil, who has been praised by publications like The Chronicle and Food and Wine, has played a vital role in sparking Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood as a food destination. One of her signatures at her Arab bakery, Reem’s California, has been the “Draymond Green,” a seasonal vegetable wrap.

Assil, a lifelong community activist, has also been outspoken concerning social and political issues both inside and outside of the restaurant world. When her bakery opened in Fruitvale in 2018, it drew the ire of members of the Bay Area’s Jewish community, due to a mural of Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian woman convicted of terrorism in Israel.

“I’m a small business and it’s not easy taking these kinds of stances,” Assil said. “But I think it’s important we do the right things with our platforms.”

The chef’s decision to stop selling the dish is linked to Green’s 2018 visit to Israel. While there, Green posed for a photo holding a military rifle as though he were a sniper, during a stop at the base of an Israeli Defense Force counter-terrorism unit, the Yamam.

The 2018 photo, as well as an accompanying video of Green taking target practice, exploded across the internet and proved to be fodder for political debates around Palestine and Israel relations, as well as the power of an athlete’s platform when it comes to political commentary.

“Draymond should have done more homework on where he was going,” Assil told The Chronicle on Thursday, the same day she announced via her website she would be pulling the wrap from her menu. “I think it’s important to let him know how those images impact Palestinians, people that are fans of his that want him to understand where these feelings are coming from.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Oakland-bakery-discontinues-signature-Draymond-14092205.php#photo-17559805

Greek tragedy. Oakland scientist brutally murdered in Nazi Bunker on Crete

A murder on bucolic Crete in the Greek isles. Dr. Eaton was from Oakland, yet the local Bay Area media has failed to give this crime story the attention it deserves.

The Daily Beast 7.12.2019

The tortured corpse of a 59-year-old American superstar scientist was found wrapped in burlap inside a secret Nazi bunker on the island of Crete, Greece. Police want to know why.

Suzanne Eaton was, by every standard, an accomplished woman. The 59-year-old molecular biologist from Oakland, California, held a black belt in Taekwondo and was a globetrotting speaker on the international science circuit. She was married to a British scientist with whom she had two children, and she was an avid runner, racking up several miles on her daily 30-minute run.

Eaton, who worked as a research leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, was last seen playing piano at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, in Kolymbari, on July 2, where she was attending a conference.

Her family and friends assumed that she had gone for a run and perhaps passed out in the stifling heat wave or fallen on rough terrain during her workout. Her passport, money, phone, cycling shoes, and laptop were all found in her hotel room, they say. All that was missing were her running shoes.

Her relatives and friends raised nearly $50,000 to aid the search through an online campaign. Then, on July 9, her body was found by two local residents exploring a World War II-era Nazi bunker about seven miles from where Eaton had been staying.

suzanne eaton II 7.13.2019

Her body, which was wrapped in burlap, showed signs of torture, including stab wounds, but her official cause of death, according to the coroner, was asphyxiation. The coroner said she likely suffered a “slow and painful death.”

There was no immediate sign of sexual violence, according to investigators, who said she was still dressed when she was found. A full autopsy is under way. Her body was in such an advanced state of decomposition after a week in the extreme heat that dental records had to be used for a positive identification.

On Friday, Crete’s police spokesperson Eleni Papathanasiou confirmed to The Daily Beast that they were questioning several suspects, including some with neo-Nazi ties, who may know something about what happened to Eaton.

Papathanasiou also said they were looking into whether the location of her body inside a labyrinth of tunnels dug out by Nazis occupying Crete during World War II was connected to the murder. “It is of course part of the investigation,” Papathanasiou told The Daily Beast. “It is a curious place to leave a body, especially when the victim was living and working in Germany.”

San Francisco refuses to bow to Feds. Will not cooperate with ICE Immigration Raids

San Francisco will not be part of the abhorrent Gestapo style activity planned for San Francisco by an Administration run amok as the Incumbent caters to his Base at the expense of the most vulnerable citizens.

San Francisco Examiner 7.12.2019

Mayor London Breed on Friday said San Francisco police and officials will not cooperate with immigration agents after President Donald Trump confirmed raids are planned this weekend to deport undocumented immigrants in several U.S cities, including San Francisco.

“San Francisco stands behind our sanctuary city policy. We have been and will continue to be a sanctuary city,” said Breed.

“We will support and stand by our immigrant community and continue to invest and provide resources to help address a challenging time,” Breed said, speaking at a press conference at City Hall.

Breed said undocumented immigrants have the right to remain silent and to have an attorney, and encouraged residents to call both the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs and the San Francisco Rapid Response Network hotline in the case of a raid.

The threat of raids has prompted several protests from pro-immigrants organizations in San Francisco and around the Bay Area this week, including one in front of the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement headquarters on Sansome Street Friday.

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union have conducted campaigns to inform immigrants of their legal rights in advance of the raids. Nonprofits working with the immigrant community said they have received hundreds of frightened phone calls from undocumented immigrants in the past few weeks.

Joining Breed at the press conference, Assemblymember David Chiu said “Donald Trump has decided to continue to wage his war against our immigrant communities, a war that is immoral, unjust, racist and xenophobic.”

“If you have to come after them, you are going to have to come through all of us,” said Chiu.

“We will get through this,” Breed said.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/sf-braces-for-immigration-raids/

American terror: Police State raids brutalize undocumented residents

The Police State is a reality.

Excerpted from the San Jose Mercury News 7.11.2019

The prospect of nationwide immigration raids starting this weekend has spread fear in the Bay Area’s immigrant communities and added new urgency to local advocates’ efforts to defend undocumented residents across the region.

Activists have set up a network of hotlines to confirm reports about raids and readied a cadre of volunteer lawyers to assist detainees in court, in preparation for what could be the largest coordinated operation to detain immigrants since President Donald Trump took office.

MCH-L-RAIDS1-0630 — FILE – In this Feb. 7, 2017, file photo released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, foreign nationals are arrested during a targeted enforcement operation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

“We want to respond with power, not panic,” said Sandy Valenciano, 26, an immigrant rights activist in Oakland, who is undocumented.

The Trump administration is planning to begin a nationwide immigration enforcement operation, moving forward with plans that had been announced — and subsequently postponed — by Trump late last month amid objections from Congressional leaders and officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

Though plans for the raids appear to still be in flux, multiple news outlets have reported that the operation is set to begin Sunday and will target at least 2,000 immigrants with final deportation orders, as well as any “collateral” individuals without documentation who are found in the process.

At least 10 cities are expected to be targeted, including San Francisco. A spokesperson for ICE’s San Francisco office declined to confirm whether or where any raids would occur, but the office noted that it directs enforcement and removal operations around the Bay Area, not just in the city itself.

Activists monitoring ICE activity said they’d already seen a spike in Bay Area enforcement actions since last weekend, particularly in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties.

“It seems to us that their operation has already begun, in one way or another, here in Northern California,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, an attorney with the San Francisco Bar Association, which is coordinating pro bono legal assistance for immigrants detained locally.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/11/ice-raids-bay-area-immigration-detention/

Nazis in Montana: Woman’s testimony bolsters claim against neo-Nazi blogger

There are a lot of sick and demented people in America. It defies any sense of humanity that anyone could engage in such abhorrent behavior. Sick and twisted people commit these outrages. No amount of monetary relief will cure the pain inflicted on the subjects of such hate crimes.

Excerpted from The Missoulian 7.11.2019

A Whitefish real estate agent testified for more than an hour in federal court in Missoula Thursday about the “troll storm” of threats and anti-Semitic rants unleashed upon her by neo-Nazi blogger Andrew Anglin.

Attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, who brought the case in 2017 on behalf of Tanya Gersh (picture above), asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch to award more than $4.5 million — $1 million in past lost wages, $2.5 million in future lost wages, $1.2 million in compensatory damages and a punitive damages amount left up to Lynch — in their favor against Anglin.

In a hearing to bolster their claim to that figure, Gersh brought much of the terror she and her family have endured in the last 18 months to the witness stand.

“I’ve lost my sense of safety, security,” she told reporters at a media conference after the hearing. “I don’t know that I’m ever going to get it back.”

In contrast, Anglin was not in court on Thursday, nor was an attorney to represent him. The Ohio native has not appeared in public since he called on the followers of his Daily Stormer website to flood the Whitefish family’s phones, social media and email with hate speech; a barrage described by the federal judge on Thursday as an “atrocity.”

Gersh’s attorney, David Dinelli of the Southern Poverty Law Center, displayed some of those messages, emails and online comments on a large screen.

“Oh, sorry, I think I have the wrong number,” one caller said in a voicemail. “I was looking for the crematorium” — an apparent reference to the crematoria used to burn the bodies of Jews executed in Nazi death camps during World War II. Gersh and her family are Jewish.

“You’re surprisingly easy to find online, and in real life,” another caller said.

These messages were seemingly stoked by the Daily Stormer, where Anglin wrote posts that included photos of Gersh sitting next to a fire with a Star of David on her chest, and her then-12-year-old son superimposed onto another image. Seeing her son’s face, Gersh said, is what urged her and her husband, Judah, to pack their luggage the night they learned of Anglin’s posts.

The Gersh family did not flee that night, but the luggage remained packed for several weeks, Gersh said. She had spent years establishing a career in Whitefish she could be proud of, longer yet building a loving family who felt safe never locking their doors.

“To this day I am just really sick that they could take it all away in a second,” she said.

The emotional trauma that remains a part of her personal and family life to this day began in 2016, when Anglin accused Gersh of trying to force the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer to sell her building in Whitefish. Anglin posted personal information on Gersh, her husband and their son online, and Gersh received hundreds of threats and anti-Semitic messages.

She now sees a psychiatrist and takes anti-depression medication, Gersh testified. She sought medical treatment for tension in her shoulder, and used to grind her teeth down at night due to stress.

https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/whitefish-woman-s-testimony-bolsters-claim-for-damages-sought-against/article_a32b0956-37fd-5d02-941d-6b0d98963b