CIA Torture Made Latin America Safe for China. If you want to see how the use of torture has undermined U.S. influence and power, look at Latin America. From San Salvador to Santiago, the continent's citizens are all too familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation techniques. Some still have the mental and physical scars to prove it. This week, for instance, Brazil's National Truth Commission released its long-awaited report on the human rights abuses committed during Brazil's military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. Some of the torture methods used were imported by the 300 Brazilian military personnel who attended the infamous School of the Americas in the U.S. -controlled Panama Canal Zone. Among their direct and indirect victims was President Dilma Rousseff, who was arrested and tortured during those years. Accepting the commission's report, she wept as she recounted her experiences.
During the latter stages of the Cold War, Central America was a veritable laboratory for U.S. torture techniques. Did a Group of NYPD Cops Plant Guns on Innocent People to Make Arrests? An open letter from Copwatch Santa Ana to the Santa Ana Police Department and City of Santa Ana. This text is a statement by Copwatch Santa Ana about the rampant police harassment of local community copwatchers since March 2014. The collective is based in Santa Ana, CA. The statement was released on October 9, 2014. Copwatch Santa Ana (CWSA) is an all-volunteer, horizontally-organized collective of individuals based in Santa Ana.
The collective works to observe and document police activity within the confines of the ‘law’ while revealing the rampant police misconduct and brutality that plagues not only the SAPD but local municipal police departments across the country. CWSA believes that observing police activity is a crucial first step in organizing towards radical self-determination and building an effective self-defense against state-sponsored violence. We are writing this as an effort to shine a light on the violent terror and harassment of local community copwatchers by Officers James D. Video (Enjoy!) From Santa Ana to Palestine - Ferguson to Anaheim - Fuck the Police! The EyeOpener Report- Sibel Edmonds on “The Lone Gladio” The National (Security) Anthem.
Assange in Sweden › Criticism of Sweden’s record-long detentions is growing. ‘Those two weeks were so far the worst in my life. Because I was heartbroken, I was afraid, I was worried, I did not know what lay ahead.’ - Andreas Nygren, today with an NGO helping minors in detention ‘I’d very much prefer to be locked up with rats and bad food.’ - Göran, in pretrial detention for 850 days with no access to the outside world Transcript: Göran sat in pretrial detention for 850 days – criticism of Sweden’s record-long detentions is growing Source: Program: In the Name of the Law Radio channel: Swedish State Radio (sverigesradio.se) Broadcast date: 6 July 2014 Original language: Swedish Length: 29:32 STARTS: Lasse Wierup, Presenter: Sweden should have a humane correctional system.
So why are we one of the countries that can keep people detained indefinitely in extreme isolation? And why is it that many agree with the UN and other bodies who say that the system should be changed? "TSA and Pigs" The CIA Must Tell the Truth About My Rendition At 12 Years Old. Blacklisted: The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a TerroristThe Intercept.
The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept. The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists.
Blog of Rights. Tor Developer Suspects NSA Interception of Amazon Purchase. ByMikael ThalenJanuary 25th, 2014 Updated 01/26/2014 at 7:13 am Andrea Shepard, a Seattle-based core developer for the Tor Project, suspects her recently ordered keyboard may have been intercepted by the NSA. Following the purchase of a new IBM Thinkpad Keyboard from Amazon.com, Shepard discovered her package to be taking a strange detour to the East Coast, revealed by a screenshot of her shipment tracking information. You’d think #NSA shipment ‘interdiction’ would be more subtle… pic.twitter.com/KVCscLbdgG— Andrea (@puellavulnerata) January 24, 2014 Instead of shipping straight towards Seattle from the Amazon storage warehouse in Santa Ana, California, Shepard’s package made its way clear across the country to Dulles, Virginia. Jumping around an area deep inside what some privacy experts refer to as America’s “military and intelligence belt,” the package was finally delivered to its new endpoint in Alexandria.
Tags: appelbaum, featured, latest, nsa, secondary, snowden. Information Isn't Free: These Whistleblowers Lost Almost Everything for Sharing. Just one-third of Americans believe Edward Snowden did the right thing when he revealed the vast domestic surveillance apparatus that the National Security Agency had installed to monitor them.
Yet, according to the same YouGov poll, a slim majority believe that "Americans have a right to know about the surveillance programs he revealed. " That discrepancy helps articulate the plight of the modern whistleblower: We may want to know if illegal activity is transpiring in the convoluted underbelly of our engorged military industrial complex, but we seem to dismiss or even resent the deeds of those who clue us in. Maybe it stems from a vestigial patriotism that harkens back to an era when the NSA hadn't yet sicced their spies and cryptologists on the entirety of the American public. Maybe it's due to the aggressive political messaging condemning the leaks, or from our basic cognitive intolerance of tattlers.
There has been a good deal of public debate over the severity of charges like these. Man Calls a Suicide Prevention Hotline, SWAT Team Shows Up and Kills Him. Roy, Utah – A Roy, Utah man, Jose Calzada, 35, placed a call to a suicide prevention hotline at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and threatened to kill himself, seven hour later he was shot and killed by police, according to law enforcement.
According to ABC 4, neighbors described Calzada as a quiet, friendly man, who was divorced and now lived in the home with his girlfriend and her children. The first tragic mistake in this case was made when the Weber County Consolidated Dispatch Center sent officers to the residence rather than some type of crisis response team trained to deal with suicidal individuals.
From previous cases, such as that of Jason Turk, who was shot twice in the face after a suicide call to 9-1-1 by his wife, or that of Christian Alberto Sierra, who was suffering from depression and had attempted suicide when police showed up and shot him four times, killing him, most know all too well what happens when you send officers to “assist” people threatening suicide.