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Ten days after the mysterious first bomb, another package bomb detonates, killing 17 year-old music prodigy Draylen Mason and critically injuring his mother. As the Austin bomb squad tries to make sense of the scene and the FBI begins their investigation, a third package bomb goes off just a few miles away, injuring 70 year-old Esperanza “Hope” Herrera. It is now clear: there is an active serial bomber on the loose while South by Southwest, one of the largest cultural festivals in the world, is in full swing. From Campside Media, Pegalo Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Season 6 of Witnessed: 19 Days Unlock all episodes of Witnessed: 19 Days, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that's all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe' on the top of the Witnessed: 19 Days show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts and @campside_media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
On the day investigators work the scene of the bomb that struck Draylen Mason's home, 75-year-old Hope Herrera spends the morning caring for her 93-year-old mother. Hope picks up a package from her porch, and it explodes. Six hundred federal agents descend on Austin to work the case and to try to figure out the bomber's identity, and no one knows where the serial bomber will strike next. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/darkness-podcast/support
Strange and Scary Mysteries of the month April 2018 5. Cops Call Kidnapping a Hoax On March 23, 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn were attacked inside their Mare Island, California home. The intruder broke in, drugged the couple and tied them up. Quinn’s eyes were covered with blacked out googles and his ears with headphones that played pre-recorded instructions and threats over and over again. When Quinn finally came to, he found several items missing along with his car, and most frightening, his girlfriend Denise. There was a message left on his voicemail that demanded two payments of $8,500. 4. Founder of Sex Cult Arrested The name Keith Raniere isn’t well known, but he recently made headlines after he was arrested under allegations of sexual trafficking and violence against women. Ranier is one of the founders of, Nxivm,[nex-ium], a cult-like group based in Albany, New York. He co-founded it in1998 together with nurse, Nancy Salzman. Formally, they describe themselves as “a community guided by humanitarian principles that seek to empower people and answer important questions about what it means to be human.” 3. Pilots Spot Arizona UFO On February 24 of this year a Learjet pilot was flying over the Sonoran Desert in Arizona when he radioed traffic controllers asking, “Was anybody, uh, above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago?” The air traffic controller in Albuquerque replied and said, “Negative.” The pilot replied, “Okay, something did.” Someone is then overheard saying “A UFO!” The pilot responds, “Yeah,” chuckling. 2. Boy Witnesses Murder Then Disappears In Ohio, Fourteen-year old Jacob Caldwell has been missing for 7 months. Days after his father’s funeral, he was at his grandmothers, Sally Thomas’ home, with his two brothers. While the siblings played in the upstairs bedroom, he asked his grandmother if he could go downstairs to watch TV. She said, okay and Minutes later, Sally went and checked in on the kids. The two boys were still playing but she could not find Jacob. She called police immediately and realized that the boy might have gone out through the window. 1. Austin Serial Bomber Beginning on March 2, 2018, small parcels containing explosives began appearing in and around Austin, Texas. The first three parcels involved cardboard boxes left on the porch or front yards of the victim’s homes. These were not delivered by any official carrier but likely dropped by the suspect. The first blast occurred on March 2 and killed 39 year old Anthony Stephan House; the second and third blast happened 10 days later and the first killed, 17 year old Draylen Mason and injured his mother. The next one injured a 75-year old Esperanza HErerra. All of the bombs were rigged to explode upon opening and contained shrapnel. The fourth blast on March 18th was a device rigged to explode using a tripwire on a residential sidewalk and This injured two men. The fifth explosion occurred at a FedEx facility in San Antonio. Later in the day, another package containing a bomb was discovered in a FedEx facility in Austin which luckily, was eventually deactivated.
Resources and links mentioned in this episode: We start this episode with a clip from Edna Chavez at the March for Our Lives, but the whole video is a must watch. Danny talks about “Taking on Gun Fundamentalism” [https://socialistworker.org/2018/02/27/how-do-socialists-take-on-gun-fundamentalism] in Socialist Worker, while Chicago activists Alex Vega-Byrnes and Todd St Hill talk about how Chicago high school students are Making the connections to stop gun violence. We quoted LA teacher, Gillian Russom, about the criminalizing and alienating impact of more cops in our schools. You can read her full article here. We talked about how important it is to bring the demands of #BlackLivesMatter into the debate on gun violence, particularly in the wake of the police murder of Stephon Clark. You can read Jesse Hagopian, one of the initiators of the Black Lives Matter in Schools week of action, discuss this and highlight the demands raised by students in Chicago, on his blog. We ended our intro segment with a tribute to Draylen Mason, a Black 17-year old high school student murdered by a package bomb in Austin, Texas. Draylen was a gifted musician who would have learned this week that he had been accepted into the highly selective conservatory at Oberlin. We ended with a clip of him playing bass in a performance of Vanhal’s Concerto and provide the link to the full video here. In our segment with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, we talk about the West Virginia teachers strike, and you won’t want to miss this inspiring solidarity meeting in New York City about the West Virginia teachers strike. You can read more coverage of the strike at Socialist Worker, including Khury Petersen-Smith on How West Virginia Put Class Struggle Back on the Map. In this interview we talk about race, class and Trump in West Virginia—a theme Pranav Jani discusses in more detail in an article about talking socialism in Trump country. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor also weighed in on the new movement against gun violence—and especially the many potential linkages with the Movement for Black Lives. This is a theme she took up in a piece on anti-racism and the uprising against guns. If you enjoyed listening to Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, you can hear her speak at this year’s Socialism 2018 conference, a gathering of nearly 2,000 radicals and activists, featuring more than 100 meetings on topics like those we take up. You can also order both of her books at Haymarket Books. Thank you so much for checking out our first episode. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a review and rating at iTunes, share with your friends and consider subscribing so that you don’t miss any future episodes.
Native Opinon Episode 120 “MR. SERLING, IF YOU ONLY KNEW.” How To Reach Our Show: E-Mail: hosts@nativeopinion.com Twitter: @nativeopinion Facebook: facebook.com/nativeopinionpodcast/ Our Website: nativeopinion.com Our Youtube Channel: https://www.Youtube.com/c/NativeOpinion Leave us a voice mail. Call us! 860–381–0207 Listen LIVE every Friday night, 9pm Eastern Standard Time Through Our Website or via the SPREAKER APP Our Podcast is availible: I-tunes, Google Play Music, Stitcher, i-Heart Radio, and Spotify…or wherever you get your favorite podcasts from… Articles Featured in this episode: ARTICLE 1: TITLE: American Indian teens head to Vatican, hoping to overturn historic papal decrees Mitch Walking Elk and his students are unlikely Vatican visitors. But if all goes as planned, they will meet with Vatican officials in May with a plea: “Rescind the historic papal decrees that justified the domination of native peoples.” These 500-year-old decrees are at the center of a surprising flurry of faith-based activism and interest in the Twin Cities, home to one of the nation’s largest urban American Indian populations. Critics charge they formed the basis of the so-called Doctrine of Discovery, which asserted that the people and wealth of non-Christian lands belonged to those who “discovered” them. Its legacy shapes federal Indian policy to this day and haunts Indians’ well-being, they say. READ MORE ARTICLE 2 TITLE: Cambridge Analytica Execs Bragged Of Using Fake News, Sex To Sway Elections Disturbing undercover interviews with executives from U.K.-based political research firm Cambridge Analytica have revealed admissions of bribery, entrapment and the use of sex workers to sway political elections around the world, according to an investigative series airing Monday. The results of a months’ long investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 News revealed Cambridge Analytica’s inner workings as told by Alexander Nix, the company’s chief executive, and Mark Turnbull, the managing director of CA Political Global, to a reporter posing as a client. The interviews are part of Channel 4 News’ “Data, Democracy and Dirty Tricks”, investigation series. During phone calls and in-person meetings at a London hotel from November 2017 to January 2018, Nix was recorded bragging that his firm and parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) secretly influenced more than 200 elections around the world, including those in Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic, India and Argentina. READ MORE ARTICLE 3 TITLE: Court Rules That Medical Marijuana Card Holders Can’t Buy Firearms If you have a medical marijuana card, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says that you can’t buy a gun. The court ruled 3–0 on Wednesday that a ban preventing medical marijuana card holders from purchasing firearms is not in violation of the Second Amendment, the Associated Press reports. There are nine western states under the appeals court’s jurisdiction, including Nevada, where the case originated. A lawsuit was filed in 2011 by Nevada resident S. Rowan Wilson after she tried to purchase a gun for self-defense and was denied based on a federal ban on the sale of guns to users of illegal drugs. Though marijuana has been legalized in some places on a state-by-state basis, it remains illegal under federal law. The court maintained that drug use “raises the risk of irrational or unpredictable behavior with which gun use should not be associated.” READ MORE ARTICLE 4 TITLE: Public lands are being sold in secret on the internet Ayers Energy LLC is, ostensibly, an energy company based out of either Bedford, Texas, or Cheyenne, Wyoming, depending on what day you look at the results of the Bureau of Land Management’s most recent oil and gas auction. Public information about the company is scarce: It’s not listed as a taxable entity by the Texas Comptroller, and doesn’t appear to be a registered corporation in the state of Texas or Wyoming. In fact, a search for Ayers Energy through Vigilant, a public records database, did not yield any registration records for the company in any state. On March 21, Ayers’ address — according to federal documents — was listed as on Pecan Bend Drive in Bedford, Texas. As of March 22, that address had changed to Central Ave in Cheyenne. But, despite the vague and ever-changing information about Ayers Energy LLC, the company, as of March 20, owns the rights to pursue oil and gas development on 19 parcels of federally-owned lands in San Juan County, Utah, just outside of the boundary of Hovenweep National Monument. READ MORE ARTICLE 5 TITLE: TV station’s closed captioning slurs Austin bombing victim Draylen Mason as “this monkey” A Texas television station has cut ties with a vendor after closed captioning used racist language to insult a black victim of the Austin bomber. Local ABC affiliate KVUE-TV reported Tuesday night on the death of 17-year-old Draylen Mason, who was identified in closed captioning as “this monkey,” reported the Statesman. The station blamed VITAC, an outside company that provides live captioning to KVUE newscasts, and on Thursday terminated its contract with the firm. “We are taking this mistake very seriously and we are heartsick about this terrible error,” KVUE said in a statement. “We apologize to Draylen’s family and to our community. We have demanded an explanation and an apology to Draylen’s family, and VITAC is complying.” READ MORE ARTICLE 6 TITLE: Congress’s new $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, explained On Wednesday night, congressional leaders unveiled the “omni”: a massive 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion spending bill covering everything from defense to border security to opioids. In Congress, a spending bill spanning multiple budget areas is known as an “omnibus.” On Thursday, the House and Senate passed the bill. If signed by President Trump, the legislation will keep the government open through September 30, giving us at least six months without a major budgetary showdown. READ MORE ARTICLE 6 Poll: Native Americans See Far More Discrimination In Areas Where They Are A Majority More than half of Native Americans living on tribal lands or other majority-Native areas say they have experienced racial or ethnic discrimination when interacting with police (55 percent) and applying for jobs (54 percent). That’s according to new poll results being released Tuesday by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. SEE THE FULL POLL HERE
The city of Austin, Texas is currently dealing with a “serial bomber.” This month, there have been four bombings in the city, killing two people and injuring four. The first three bombings were caused by packages left on neighbors doorsteps, while the last bombing involved an explosion left near a hiking trail that was triggered … Continue reading Fermenting Opinions S02E06: A Local Fermenter Reports on the Serial Bomber of Austin
*** Today's Show ***The GOP in TN refused a resolution that would condemn neo-nazis and white supremacists. That's because they couldn't possibly label their supporters as domestic terrorists. Donald Trump is a liar. His base doesn't care. That's the real problem.Democrats are already showing they learned the wrong lesson from PA18 race. And honoring the memory of the 17-year-old young, Black man killed by a package bomb this week.**********************************************************************************Thanks to all of our newest patrons! Robin D. Kevin G.Ryan C.Erika & Bryson C.Matthew H.Trevon S.Benjamin B.Nubyaan S.Ryan R.You all are the REAL MVP!Go to Patreon.com/theBpDShow to become a patron today. **********************************************************************************Notes from the Show with LinksTennessee Republicans Refuse To Condemn Neo-Nazi Organizations.Original Article:https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2018/03/14/tennessee-legislature-refuse-condemn-neo-nazi-white-nationalist/425083002/Opening soundbite can be found at the above Tennessean link as well. VOX News Neo-Nazi Support for Trump Sound Bite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e3T3VHmEkgWhite Supremacists Groups Commits Most extremists killings in 2017: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/white-supremacists-committed-most-extremist-killings-2017-adl-says-n838896SPLC on Increase in Neo-Nazi Groups:https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2018/2017-year-hate-and-extremismDonald Trump Admits To Lying to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Audio Clip From Mark Preston:https://youtu.be/v1q0YiPQqlo?t=3m50sWashington Post Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/03/14/in-fundraising-speech-trump-says-he-made-up-facts-in-meeting-with-justin-trudeau/Jeff Flake Sound Bite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn5t1PKnL-QTwitter Conversation Between Jon Favreau and Abigail: https://twitter.com/abigailgardner/status/973921486728826880Slain African American Teenager, Draylen Mason Playing The Bass. Courtesy of Mason's family, shared by Shaun King: https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/973952768623833088
A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from March 13, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1: Cenk. After months of disputes with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, President Trump removed him Tuesday and nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to head the State Department. Hours after his boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was ousted Steve Goldstein, the undersecretary of public affairs at the State Department, has been fired by the White House. Hour 2: A 17-year-old victim in a series of deadly package bombs delivered to homes in Austin, Texas, was identified Tuesday as Draylen Mason, as a law enforcement source revealed the same person may have constructed the three devices. Mason, described by Austin Police Chief Brian Manley as an "outstanding young man who was going places with his life," was killed when a package on the porch of a Texas home exploded Monday morning. His mother is in stable condition. The name of a 75-year-old woman wounded in a second incident Monday has not been released. The bombings have shaken residents and cast suspicion on one of life's common occurrences: getting a package delivered to your doorstep. Schwarzenegger planning to sue oil companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices