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In the wake of repeated sexual assault allegations (including one involving several students), a failed school levy backed by semi-legal campaign financing, and a

In the early morning hours of May 8th they came for James Robinson, age 32, a factory worker in Akron Ohio. According to friends who checked his home afterwords, they kicked in his door, took his computer, and his dog is missing. It was later discovered he was arrested for allegedly violating the computer fraud and abuse act(CFAA) by launching or participating in a distributed denial of service attack against websites belonging to the Akron Police Department.

American media is in a race to the bottom. There seems to be no finish line, but this week the Washington Post seemed to be gaining ground in the pack on Fox News. On June 9th, it ran an Op-Ed endorsing Gina Haspel as the Trump nominee was in the middle of a raucous Senate confirmation hearing. This signals bi-partisan support for Haspel, who supervised torture at secret prisons during her long CIA career, despite opposition from large grassroots constituencies and small Progressive caucuses within the Democratic Party. Haspel was disrupted by chants of “Bloody Gina!

Several citizens have called upon the Mockingbird to investigate several ongoing issues with the Yellow Springs Public Schools System and The Yellow Springs Police Department. Multiple leads have been given and multiple documents have been leaked by multiple people. This has lead our staff on a long series of public records requests to verify claims and construct a narrative around what has now become a widening group of stories. These stories seem to show an expanding pattern of flailing behind covering and arrogant obfuscations.

Earlier this month The Mockingbird reported on two alleged incidents of sexual assault by a student in the Yellow Springs Schools system on at least one other student. This story, set against a backdrop of poor record keeping by the YSPD and the

There has been much talk of Russian interference with the 2016 general election in order to put Putin's finger on the scale for Trump. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been called in front of Congress to answer questions about how Cambridge Analytica got away with mining and using all that data. What the mainstream media, while focusing on Facebook, has failed to amplify is the role of several intelligence community connected firms in the election and what retired spies are involved. Cambridge Analytica did not act alone, they had partners and those partners had connections.

It is hard to determine the truth as to what happened when president Trump ordered a “one-off” military strike on Syria with “smart. Very smart.” missiles. There are conflicting reports on the actual targets of the strikes and these reports vary by source country. As it stands, the United States, the UK and France participated in the strike. The United States, Russia, Iran, and Turkey have military forces operating in Syria along with non-state actors that include two different versions of a Free Syrian Army, Kurdish forces from the YGP, Kurdish forces from Iraq and Hezbollah.

When Andy Ginther unveiled his infrastructure capital improvement plan for 2018 last week he failed to mention how it would enable the police to hear and see everything you see and do on any street in the city. While the only direct surveillance cost listed in the promotional material is $1 million to be spent on a gunfire detection system the amount is much greater. An additional $5 million for police is hidden in the electricity budget for 2018 with an additional $1.7 million to be spent on yet more capital improvements by FY 2022.

The unproven concept that Russian intelligence directly attack American election systems in 2016 keeps being repeated as fact in the media. The details are either shallow or classified. One person, Air Force Veteran and private contractor Reality Winner, remains held without bail still awaiting trial for leaking a single memo on the subject to The Intercept.

The Trump administration has instructed it's DHS personnel to build a database of journalists and “media influencers.” Presumably since the President equates “fake news” with “said bad stuff about the me” this database will be used to retaliate either through direct punishment or denial of access or both. The Free Speech and Freedom of the Press implications are obvious and are being discussed, but not with the details of implementation. Those details do not make the implications more palatable to anyone who lacks a totalitarian heart.